Revelations from Patch 6.2: Buried Memories

[Hurlstone]

MSQ

This is probably one of my favourite Patch MSQ updates. I adore Zero as a character. Its really cool how they have taken what was just a cool-looking Voidsent in the expansion and made them into an important, tragic person. Her past has left her a little cold but with hints of mortality seeping through. Her voice actress is wonderful (Do we know who it is? She sounds familiar.) I really love that we got a rather a nice lore dump on the Thirteenth, such as learning about the Memoriate, more how it fell to Darkness and the way Voidsent conduct business within their hierarchies. The castle was gorgeous, and I really liked Zeros sanctuary. Loved spending time in those ruins with friendly(ish) demons just blobbing about. Shame we cannot really go back yet. The Fiends where great, amd I am unashamedly in love with Barbariccia in both her forms. Its a shame she did not get more time to shine. Golbez looks like he is being worthy of the name. I wonder if he will be the final big-boss of the Patch content, or if perhaps they are building him up to be 7.0’s boss… the more we play in the void, the more I think elements of this story are gonna bleed into the future.

Abyssos

I really enjoyed this. Lahabrea was wonderfully well-written, and the revelations around him where great. Sundered evil twin… lover who just used him for her own goals… and still plenty of mysteries into just what exactly she was doing and how their child plays into it. I have to say whilst I did start to think the stuff with the present professor was gonna eventual be more important… I did not expect to see Pandæmonium turn up in the present day lifestream! Very curious to see what this will mean, and how Lahabrea and Elidibus will play into it.

Nothing major, but MSQ-related I just wanted to mention...

how happy I am they remembered to update Cyella and Unukalhai's dialogues over at the Crystarium! Cyella will mention she was once a memoriate too and that she'd like to meet Zero, if only as compatriots. Unukalhai is excited about the prospect of joining you, but says he'd just be a burden BUT ALSO that he's interested in the restoration of The Empty as something that might aid in doing the same with the 13th, and that he's planning to meet up with those responsible! Ryne and Gaia hype!

Ohh, thank you for bringing this to my attention!

After learning that these two where connected to the Void only a few weeks past I quickly decided to finally do the Waring Triad/Endwalker Jobs quests, and really enjoyed them. Its a shame that they will unlikely play a big part in the Voids future, given how locked they are behind Job Quests and stuff, but I appreciate the fact that the MSQ does at least mention them and that they get extra dialogue. If we get to see RYne and Gia again soon I will be VERY happy!

[SannaR]

There's a dialogue option that addresses this.

If you go in as Reaper, and then tell her at one point that you're nothing like Zenos, she'll say that your pact with your avatar does seem to be more equitable than hers was. So, while we still don't know anything about the voidsent we're bonded to, at least we know we're not exploiting it like Zenos was her.

I'm glad that our situation with our Avatar isn't as bad as what went down with Zero.

[RyuDragnier]

False until proven true.

The only thing Hydaelyn needed to constantly expend energy for was maintaining the seal on Zodiark. No mention of needing to keep the dimensional barriers up, or that her death would cause the reflections to recombine with the Source.

Really not sure where this idea's coming from?

Let me paint the picture.

The Studium Alchemist questline mentions at the end a prophecy.
"The serpent that sleeps in the deep slowly sheds its skin of old.

Eventually, the serpent devours its own tail, and renders new flesh using its own. The pain felt with cause the earth to quake, the mountains to crumble, and the rivers to run dry. Thus, seven wedges must be driven into its back."

There's also the Studium FSH questline outright pointing out how Zodiark's death has caused the aether currents all over the world to start changing (possibly to their original form). Zodiark originally altered the flow of the world's aether currents to prevent The Final Days from continuing, something that was thought to be permanent, but his death has proved was not. We can infer the same thing about Hydaelyn and the Sundering.

There's also the fact that Minfillia's soul appears in the dungeon before Hydaelyn, despite the fact that her soul passed on while on the First. This means there's a link in the Lifestreams of the various shards and the Source, likely done by Hydaelyn since she was in the Lifestream the entire time (among all shards as well since she Sundered herself along with everything else).

With Hydaelyn's death, we're also starting to see very bizarre things happening with the Lifestream that didn't happen before. The soul crystal leading to Pandaemonium showing up when it did to Claudien now instead of it appearing long ago, and the (possibly) Unsundered Pandaemonium itself suddenly APPEARING in the Lifestream in the present day, meaning it was in the Lifestream the whole time, but likely hidden by Hydaelyn.

There are too many hints of an upcoming disaster and bizarre things happening, enough to infer that losing both Zodiark and Hydaelyn will start (and already has started) causing us a lot of problems in the upcoming expansions.

[sidurgu-12]

Let me paint the picture.

The Studium Alchemist questline mentions at the end a prophecy.
"The serpent that sleeps in the deep slowly sheds its skin of old.

Eventually, the serpent devours its own tail, and renders new flesh using its own. The pain felt with cause the earth to quake, the mountains to crumble, and the rivers to run dry. Thus, seven wedges must be driven into its back."

There's also the Studium FSH questline outright pointing out how Zodiark's death has caused the aether currents all over the world to start changing (possibly to their original form). Zodiark originally altered the flow of the world's aether currents to prevent The Final Days from continuing, something that was thought to be permanent, but his death has proved was not. We can infer the same thing about Hydaelyn and the Sundering.

There's also the fact that Minfillia's soul appears in the dungeon before Hydaelyn, despite the fact that her soul passed on while on the First. This means there's a link in the Lifestreams of the various shards and the Source, likely done by Hydaelyn since she was in the Lifestream the entire time (among all shards as well since she Sundered herself along with everything else).

With Hydaelyn's death, we're also starting to see very bizarre things happening with the Lifestream that didn't happen before. The soul crystal leading to Pandaemonium showing up when it did to Claudien now instead of it appearing long ago, and the (possibly) Unsundered Pandaemonium itself suddenly APPEARING in the Lifestream in the present day, meaning it was in the Lifestream the whole time, but likely hidden by Hydaelyn.

There are too many hints of an upcoming disaster and bizarre things happening, enough to infer that losing both Zodiark and Hydaelyn will start (and already has started) causing us a lot of problems in the upcoming expansions.

hydaelyn brought minfillia and hades souls back to the source.
zodiark protected the world by artificially stimulating the worlds aether thus preventing stagnation. with his death that disappears. the currents are changing because of this.

[YianKutku]

MSQ

I'm kind of interested in the concept of the "domain" in the Thirteenth. Apparently weak voidsent either cannot create a domain, or cannot maintain a domain for long, and so they have to subordinate themselves to a stronger voidsent, or scavenge off the edges.

The idea that there is no death in the Thirteenth led to a hasty handwave explanation for our previous excursion during the Crystal Tower raids, which did make me slightly amused. It's obviously intended to be a recurring idea in this patch series, to justify why we need Zero to crystallize defeated voidsent, and I can imagine the lore team scrambling to make it fit with our tearing through the World Of Darkness alliance raid.

I'm not sure what to think about Zero. There's the obvious speculation this is FFXIV's version of Zeromus as Miss Zero, but I accept that it's just speculation for the moment. Personality-wise, she understandably only knows the whole Yosuga Reason of the Thirteenth, ie eat or be eaten. Which ends up turning into what we're familiar with regarding voidsent pacts in the setting: voidsent will bargain, and will demand payment before doing anything, but will usually uphold that bargain... unless they believe they can obtain an overwhelming advantage via betrayal. But they don't dare do so if there is any risk of the other party of the bargain being able to hurt them. Thus, it's a careful form of "the strong do what they will, the weak do what they must", where the strong still need rigid social norms and hierarchy so they don't waste their own power jockeying for position.

So Zero is all edgy and full Renegade in the Mass Effect sense, because that's what she's been used to since the fall of the Thirteenth. And she's still noticeably nicer and more empathetic than the usual denizen of the Thirteenth.

It probably doesn't help that Zero's most recent tutor and therapist was Zenos, who is not exactly the most representative or stable of the Source.

We'll probably be learning more about the Contramemoria War in subsequent patches. I'm curious how Igeyorhm managed to orchestrate it, given she was (according to Emet-Selch) working solo at the time, albeit probably with black-masked minions, given Zero's use of the plural "servants of Darkness". We know they made use of Primal/Eidolon summoning, so it was a technique already available to the Ascians at that time, but I don't know if the "turned evil" part of the Contramemoria War was a reference to Tempering, or just people with too much power.

Cyella was also a former Memoriate. In hindsight it makes some sense why she didn't mention it; there was no need to, since she lost her powers and she didn't think the history of the Thirteenth before the Flood was relevant. And we (the WoL and allies) have no information or context of what "Memoriate" meant anyway, prior to our current foray into the Thirteenth. If anything, Cyella would probably automatically translate "memoria" into "auracite" for our convenience.

For the duties, I admit I was waiting for the "back attack" part of Scarmiglione's reappearance with increasing nervousness. After we defeated him the first time in the dungeon, I assumed he would be the Trial, up until I saw the solo duty shimmer around Zero, at which point I may have emitted a Metal Gear Solid alarm sound.

After the solo duty, I knew Barbariccia would be the Trial, given the trailer and Estinien's line sourced from Kain. I hadn't expected that many hair references, though; I don't know if this is something from the original Japanese script of FFIV that had been left out of English translations, or if it's the FFXIV team going "Barbariccia, hehe, barber". Story-wise, there wasn't really any forward movement with her appearance: she showed up, threatened us, and then was defeated and crystallized, gaining very little extra information in the process. The lone defector afterwards who informed us about Golbez's communications devices could have been inserted at any point.

Still, we have Barbariccia's crystal, so there's probably a reason we are explicitly told to keep it. I don't know if it's going to be the expected "suddenly our Echo works with the crystal", or if we'll be using it for another plan.

Abyssos

Apparently despite the name of the raid floor, we went straight through Abyssos and into Tartaros at the end.

Lahabrea literally ripping out his emotional side caused so many problems down the line, mostly because he evidently could not understand why everyone else, including his own son, acted on emotion. As in, it seemed literally alien to him. A lot of the dysfunction between himself and Erichthonios could have been avoided if Lahabrea had been honest, as painful as it was, and also acted with empathy and any amount of warmth. Erichthonios was so obviously craving his father's approval, and Lahabrea was just "approval is irrelevant, you are not competent".

Themis praising my character for being uncommonly perceptive after the "reveal" of being Elidibus felt a bit hollow. Sir, you are literally wearing a white robe. Hythlodaeus told us that only former public office holders and the seat of Elidibus wear white robes (as a symbol of their impartiality), and it is not difficult to narrow those down to the people likely to be interested in whatever is happening in Pandemonium, and you are too short to be Venat the former Azem.

When we learned how the rogue Hephaistos was amplifying certain emotions and thoughts to make people more susceptible to his manipulations, the first thing I immediately thought of was how similar that sounds to Tempering. I wonder if this is where the Ascians got their inspiration, which would further imply either this Lahabrea unearthed his rogue Hephaistos half once again during the Sundering, or the Lahabrea we know in the present is that rogue Hephaistos half. Either way, that knowledge had to have come from Hephaistos.

It's interesting to see Hephaistos's model, and that unlike his older Lahabrea self, Hephaistos looks very different, because he has no eyebrows. Not sure if this is due to Highlander face design, or because he's been working too close to fiery creations.

[sidurgu-12]

snip.

iirc very slight correction

voidsent immortality was brought up briefly in the ct raid where thay say the cloud of darkness will soon reform but because of the pact renewal she cant cross.

Anyone feel free to correct me though. its been a hot minute.

[Rannie]

hydaelyn brought minfillia and hades souls back to the source.

^ this is correct

She actually says that she brought those two over when she took possession of Kriles Body during the quest in which we get the Elpis flower from her. Granted she doesn't mention Emet by name but in the end it's VERY clear it was him. For anyone who wants to know when she says this.

And off the wall but who else can see Emet kicking and screaming at Hydaelyn, all the while crying out grumpily that he doesn't want to go as she's trying to carry him back? Anyone?

[sidurgu-12]

^ this is correct

She actually says that she brought those two over when she took possession of Kriles Body during the quest in which we get the Elpis flower from her. Granted she doesn't mention Emet by name but in the end it's VERY clear it was him. For anyone who wants to know when she says this.

And off the wall but who else can see Emet kicking and screaming at Hydaelyn, all the while crying out grumpily that he doesn't want to go as she's trying to carry him back? Anyone?

not at first but now thats exactly how i see it lol.

[Kranel_San]

Seeing as I haven't seen someone discussing or even mentioning this. I thought to myself to drop this screenshot I managed to take that might give us a clue or two.

[Rannie]

Seeing as I haven't seen someone discussing or even mentioning this. I thought to myself to drop this screenshot I managed to take that might give us a clue or two.

I saw that and haven't had a chance to post my thoughts on the msq yet I literally stopped playing on that scene and stared at it. So I'm wondering about it but then again those

statues too in The fell Court of Troia gets me wondering also. The ones on the stairs and the sides not where we fight bearice....