Tales from the Dawn #4: "A Question of Death" (Jullus)

[KariTheFox]

The Garleans very much were attacked with regularity even after the formation of the Republic.

Is there a source for that that isn't just Garleans repeating what they learned about history after the founding of the Empire?

While we know it's true that Garlemald was involved in military conflicts up until the founding of the empire, we don't actually know the nature of those conflicts. They could have been defensive, or attacking other nations, or they could have been working as third party mercanaries.

But it doesn't make much sense to me that the Garlean Republic would be a good target for invasion, given it is poor in resources, with a remote and inhospitable climate. Nomad raiding a fledgling city is one thing, but when the Repulic has a standing army and is firmly established, it stops being worth it.

[SentioftheHoukai]

This is not quite true.





While it is true that early on its history, the Garlean Republic was victim to raids by other tribes, it appears that in a number of decades, they were able to rally with the help of espionage and mercanaries to be minor nation, weak compared to thier neighbors, but still a firmly established sovereign state. For a period of over 500 years, which even by Eorzean reckoning, must be a pretty long time.

The idea that the Garleans are history's victims, forever doomed to be enslaved and subjugated by stronger nations (and therefore, we must become strong and subjugate those barbarians first) is not historical fact. It is a narrative that draws on disparate facts about conflicts that happened centuries ago, in order to tell a founding story about the Garlean Empire that justifies xenophobia and paranoia. Much like how real life fascist movements have foundational narratives about barbarians at the gates, ready to destroy thier pure civilization at any moment.

I don't know how many times I'll need to state that so long as you continue to overlook the crimes of the city-states, and the good guy factions up to and including Venat it doesn't matter how many times you call every Ancient ever psychopathic murderers or the Garlean children inevitable proto-Fuhrers. But, at least for tonight I think I'm content to stop trying.

I will never take any of these lazy, half-arsed Fascism! accusations seriously when so many on here are under the delusion that none of the main cast or their allies have ever wronged anyone, or if they did that it's justified. Perhaps when this forum does change, I will finally overlook the fact you all seem damn well near stone-sturdy convinced that some of us are secretly scheming to get Square to prepare for the Rising of the Eternal Garlemald Empire, mk. II. We are not the ones with the nefarious agenda here, of that I can assure you even if I'm certain my words will yet go unheeded. As ever.

I don't know when caring for defenseless innocents became such a sin, but I do know it needs to cease.

[KariTheFox]

I don't know how many times I'll need to state that so long as you continue to overlook the crimes of the city-states, and the good guy factions up to and including Venat it doesn't matter how many time you call every Ancient ever psychopathic murderers or the Garlean children inevitable proto-Fuhrers. But, at least for tonight I think I'm content to stop trying.

Maybe you could try making a point instead of engaging in whataboutism and bad faith misreadings of my posts.

I will never take any of these lazy, half-arsed Fascism! accusations seriously when so many on here are under the delusion that none of the main cast or their allies have ever wronged anyone, or if they did that it's justified. Perhaps when this forum does change, I will finally overlook the fact you all seem damn well near stone-sturdy convinced that some of us are secretly scheming to get Square to prepare for the Rising of the Eternal Garlemald Empire, mk. II. We are not the ones with the nefarious agenda here, of that I can assure you even if I'm certain my words will yet go unheeded. As ever.

What are you talking about? Pointing out the historical similarities between the Garlean Empire's founding mythology, and the beliefs of real life fascists is not accusing anyone on the forums of being... anything. It's talking about history and how a piece of fiction might have been influenced by that history. Seriously, what?

[SentioftheHoukai]

Maybe you could try making a point instead of engaging in whataboutism and bad faith misreadings of my posts.

Why should I? You do realize the "Fascism!" gotchas are routinely parodied and ridiculed in the media, including video games right? Up to and including the old Vampire the Masquerade video game and the more recent Cyberpunk 2077. It's as you said:

The idea that the Garleans are history's victims, forever doomed to be enslaved and subjugated by stronger nations (and therefore, we must become strong and subjugate those barbarians first) is not historical fact. It is a narrative that draws on disparate facts about conflicts that happened centuries ago, in order to tell a founding story about the Garlean Empire that justifies xenophobia and paranoia. Much like how real life fascist movements have foundational narratives about barbarians at the gates, ready to destroy thier pure civilization at any moment.

Of course Garlemald are not forever victims, but the fact remains that they were victims once and are in a prime position to become victims again due to the crimes of their forefathers, as Eorzea at large is like to see it. Also, your point about fascist movements can easily be turned right back around. Just as Nazi Germany, or Stalinist Russia pulled the "barbarians at the gates" fallacy so too has modern society taken to falsely labeling many things "fascism" without truly understanding their opponents. They hide behind this, to conceal their far more simplistic intent of visiting violence upon those that they feel deserve it. THIS is what the media ridicules and parodies, humanity's tendency to twist and apply labels to mislead and organize witchhunts out of misguided, righteous rage. The irony, then is that they fail to realize that they risk becoming the monsters they see and seek to eradicate.

Of course, some of them simply do not care, and it's far too dangerous to permit the "sins of the father" philosophy to enable further turns of the cycles of vengeance and victimhood. 'Twould seem to me that the lessons we were taught back in Heavensward were either not properly/fully absorbed or that people have forgotten/discarded the principles its primary lesson bestowed upon us. For though the situation at hand may differ, it is nevertheless not so different that the same moral principles can no longer be applied. But then, it's my belief that Endwalker's morals and Heavensward's morals are positively perpendicular and oppositional.

[Foxowl]

About the story: pretty good. I called it being Jullus in the other thread, yay!

Will definitely be interesting to see where in the game's content they choose to continue some of the loose Garlemald ends, whether it be later in 6.x MSQ, in more small side-quests (maybe continuing the role quest capstones), or not really at all till 7.x. The door is open as far as I know for Matsuno to come back in the next expansion; he's only ruled out for the 6.x series, so if he chooses (and the team asks) him to return and write some questline, I wouldn't be surprised to see him dealing with the downfall of the Empire. That said, it just might be focused on Dalmasca, but seeing as Matsuno has contributed to writing Ilsabard lore in the past, with the backstories for Gabranth and his father especially, some of the happenings in those other regions could be brought up too.

If they go with the MSQ route, since I assume the void storyline will take us at least to the end of 6.4 (likely 6.5 and maybe even into 7.0, but I have my theories that the Thirteenth's purpose in the story here is to wrap up Y'shtola's story, the one non-Baldesion Scion who hasn't had their storyline tied up in a neat ball yet, and I think they're going to send her to the First at the end of Endwalker, albeit with a new two-way travel possibility. I'm sure it'll be a great win for the people here who love to complain about how much the Scions suck ). Maybe we'll revisit Garlemald to gain some knowledge or aid from them with the void issue-- Reaper lore is based on Garleans so there's a connection there.

I honestly have no idea where the game is trying to go with Corvos though. I was dead sure it'd be in Endwalker as an exploration zone, given just how many times it was mentioned in the story and has continued to be mentioned, to a comedic level. Several B-team Scions have been sent there as well. I only started playing at the end of Shadowbringers and so wasn't caught up with lore until basically 6.0, so I'm not sure if they've done this level of "mention a place repeatedly" without following up on it very soon. Still, it could be that Corvos is a 7.x destination. I highly doubt 7.0 will focus on Ilsabard though. There's plenty to do there but it's not really the direction the story seems to want to take, so side content for 7.x is probably more likely. They'll have to expand the world map for 7.0 unless somehow we exclusively visit other shards or Ivalice areas, so with the opportunity to add new continents I do hope they just fucking pull back the clouds since we've now visited the continent (similar to how they did with the Ivalice sections of Othard, even though the map was made in Stormblood AND also took a whole expansion to be fully added and colored).

Okay, now about the topic that has taken up most of this thread, for better or for worse. Almost 7 pages have been dedicated to an asinine argument about the method of delivering a reference source, and I think my brain was ready to melt. There has to be a way of having a discussion without just trying to win debate points on each other, please. It's fully just ad hominem attacks at this point. In my opinion Sounsyy's website is a fantastic compiled source of information, regardless of what server hosts it.

I do think it's interesting to consider where the Garleans will go and how they'll be treated post-downfall though. Endwalker didn't give us the fullest picture, but it seems like while some might stay in the capital/northern area, there's not much left for them and most plan to immigrate to different countries and also the Moon. The Magna Glacies were first settled out of necessity anyway, so without the Garlean industrial machine, it seems like it'll be pretty inhospitable. The pre-magitek Republic did survive for a while, so given enough time, I imagine rebuilding is possible, though Garlemald doesn't have the privilege of Doma being a.) fertile and b.) on the coast for trade, so reconstruction could take a pretty long time.

So where do the Garleans go?

Sharlayan: Fairly reasonable, as we see in this short story--they haven't ever intervened in Garlean affairs before the Empire was destroyed anyway, and they're pretty accepting of all races, especially now that the Forum isn't locking the borders to continue building the Aitiascope/Labyrinthos, so any Garlean immigrants will probably have a good time there.

Radz-at-Han: It's always been neutral anyway and visited often by Garleans, so they shouldn't have trouble living there. The biggest issue is that Thavnair is also itself rebuilding, but maybe that opens up opportunities for Garlean immigrants to work and help out.

Kugane: It's had a Garlean presence in the past, so maybe. Not a lot of Easterners seem to like them though.

Eorzea: It's complicated. I would say Ishgard and maybe Limsa Lominsa are the only city-states where Garleans wouldn't have a really tough time--Ishgard being a latecomer to the Alliance against Garlemald and not having many direct interactions with Garleans, dealing with the aftermath of its own war unrelated to the global one, and already harboring Garlean defectors like the one Ironworks employee in the Gunbreaker job quests. Lucia, a Garlean who has also personally seen the destruction of the capitol, being head of the Temple Knights also bodes well as she'd be able to vouch for them and protect them. I'm not sure if Coerthans would take offense to Garleans for directly causing the permanent climate shift due to Dalamud falling. Limsa is already so full of people across the world, so while they directly fought against the Garleans, they might be willing to take them in with less judgement. Ul'dah is already awful with refugees, so trading the Ala Mhigans finally able to leave Thanalan for more refugees (from the other side) would probably not go over too well. There are Garlean pockets in Ul'dah like the Lemures, but even they hide their race while in public. Gridania has had too much direct Garlean contact and is already bad at being tolerant, so I'd say no. Ala Mhigo is absolutely where anti-Garlean sentiment will be at its peak, but within the story I could also see it being the first city-state to resolve the issue somewhat, because it'll be so prominent and cause so much conflict. Half the post-Stormblood Ala Mhigo stories we've gotten revolve around this conflict, even though it's through Fordola and not pureblood Garleans. I'm sure Idyllshire will welcome anyone if they go as far to get there.
Eorzea as a whole is simultaneously working on accepting the Tribes as of post-SHB as well, so I think there's potential for acceptance to be found in some way.

Outer Former Garlean Provinces: Yikes. The outer ex-provinces of Garlemald-- Ala Mhigo, Doma, Nagxia, Dalmasca, and Bozja won't be particularly accepting of Garlean immigrants, in a somewhat justified way. The ultimate message of FFXIV is to at least offer everyone second chances, and through the Garlean lens we can see this through Stormblood and the Gunbreaker job quests, so in the overarching moral lens of the game these provinces should work to build good relationships with Garleans, but man if I don't get why it's hard. The Garlean race is separate from Garlemald as an entity, but the Empire (and we have visual proof of this) completely razed Doma, Dalmasca, Bozja, and Ala Mhigo at least. There's definitely a way to find common ground and feel empathy now that the Garlean homeland has been similarly obliterated, but faulting the Empire for being utterly ruthless in its conquering and governing of the provinces is certainly understandable. I think it’s also important to note that the destruction caused by the Empire is explicitly the Empire’s purpose. Perhaps in older versions of the game one could make an argument about Garlemald truly believing in a cause that was just from a certain point of view, but as of 4.4 we know that from the founding of the Empire until mid-ARR, the man leading and controlling the philosophy and mission of the Garleans was directing it to, as he says, “solely to sow the seeds of chaos.” Even after Emet exited the scene, Varis was still acting out of an Ascian-based delusional ideology where he was the center of the world, and it likely stemmed from his relationship with Solus/Emet as well. All of this is to say that while the Garleans themselves are victims of having their own nationalism taken hold of by an immortal mastermind with his own agenda, the Empire they served and the actions they took were specifically chosen to be those of a chaos-bringing “evil” empire.

Inner Former Garlean Provinces: This is where it gets more interesting, because we don’t quite know the specifics of foggy Ilsabard, or how their relationships with the Garleans are today, being the longest-standing provinces. Out of all the vassal states, the inner ones like Landis and Corvos (I’m sure there are others that we know little about) probably already have the largest Garlean populations, both military and civilian. The Garlean-Corvosi issue is probably the most interesting, and it’s the most likely way the issue of the future of Garlemald will get brought up in the story. If Matsuno returns I expect he’ll touch on this stuff as well, since it falls along the lines of themes he’s already used in Bozja (and Ivalice too with the Bangaa and the Lexentales). So could be decent immigration spots, could be just as bad as the outer provinces.

The Moon: Hell yeah space bunnies!

New World/Meracydia: I assume a Garlean would have about the same reception as any other person from the Three Continents in either of these places. For a while I had a small idea for a New World expansion where a faction would be a Garlean legion who set up a colony on the coast of the New World, with a conquistador theme. Not sure if I’d like that given how many times we’ve just had Garleans in the story as a faction (the main villains in 1.0, 2.0, and 4.0, tertiary villains in 3.0, and multiple side questlines with them as the antagonists). It’s probably a good time to just introduce new enemies in the way Eulmore served the plot in the First.

In the end, I do feel like the argument I’ve seen some people here like Senti make that the Garleans are in grave danger in the same way they were hundreds of years ago in Corvos is a little exaggerated. Time has progressed, the continents, kingdoms, and countries are connected more than ever before, and the Eorzean Alliance seems determined to help the people of Garlemald recover from the collapse and the Final Days. Having the Warrior of Light also be sympathetic to the Garlean people (not necessarily all the leadership) and being best friends with almost all world leaders is also a good sign. Because this is a video game, and all time passes at the same time, we the players have caused a great amount of change all over the world (and worlds), and the biggest change beside toppling a few governments is trying to make people accept each other more. I’m sure the edgy ones here are rolling your eyes at how sappy that sounds, but it really is how the game works—look at the soup scene in Garlemald in EW. If the Garleans are taken advantage of by a whole nation/military, it’ll be in Ilsabard where the countries aren’t part of the Warrior of Light’s friendship mega-alliance right now, but I don’t doubt the alliance will step in to aid the Garleans if that happens, regardless of the past wars.

Sorry for such a long post, I just like listing things and going into every area and evaluating their tolerance piqued my interest. I guess your regularly scheduled debate club can continue now.

[Cleretic]

The Garlean Empire is in an odd situation regarding 'are they fascist', because the answer isn't a clear yes or no; they're a mish-mash of different inspirations of a good half-dozen empires throughout history, including the fascist ones, but it also includes the old-fashioned Roman-style imperialism that fascism sort of fashioned itself on. That makes it absolutely fair to compare them to fascists, but also fair to see that in various parts of the empire that isn't quite what you're seeing. But it also makes it occasionally hard to tell which you're looking at, there's a lot of grey area and the two ideologies don't exactly exist contemporary to each other in real life, so there's a lot of gut feel going on; we don't exactly have to ask these sorts of questions about real people.

My general read of each Imperial leader on that 'fascist or imperialist' question is as follows.
Gaius: Imperialist, but had some very clearly fascist (particularly Nazi) imagery and plans at times. His 1.x appearances went really hard on them.
Regula: Imperialist.
Varis: Fascist, pretty overtly.
Zenos: Fascist in a different direction; he's less 'the guy that promotes those ideals' and more the inevitable beneficiary of it all.
Solus/Emet: Outwardly imperialist, inwardly neither but clearly pushing towards fascism for his own ends.
Yotsuyu: Neither, fueled entirely by vengeance.
Gabranth: Imperialist but more outwardly egalitarian about it.
Quintus: Right on the border; you can definitely see where Varis learned it all and why Quintus still sides with him, but there's still that patriarchal imperialist 'we should rule because we'll bring you order and stability' to it.
Varros: I get the feeling he doesn't care and just sides with whoever will benefit him.

As I didn't play during 1.0, I can't really speak for Nael Darnus.

Underlings tended to fall in line with their current ruler for either survivability or ideological reasons; Jullus very clearly shared a lot of what Quintus taught him, although I feel like probably not as strongly. It was more 'what he was taught' rather than what he truly felt, so he actually took on board and recognized when things went against it.

[KageTokage]

It feels wrong to me for the Garleans to be totally ousted from Corvos again with no hope of returning.

They may not have a "rightful" claim to the place, but they at minimum have just as much of a right to be there as anyone else.

Though I suppose it may be less that they can't return and more that they have nothing to return to in the wake of the Final Days, but it's still certainly a more hospitable place then the ruins of Garlemald.

[Theodric]

Is there a source for that that isn't just Garleans repeating what they learned about history after the founding of the Empire?

While we know it's true that Garlemald was involved in military conflicts up until the founding of the empire, we don't actually know the nature of those conflicts. They could have been defensive, or attacking other nations, or they could have been working as third party mercanaries.

But it doesn't make much sense to me that the Garlean Republic would be a good target for invasion, given it is poor in resources, with a remote and inhospitable climate. Nomad raiding a fledgling city is one thing, but when the Repulic has a standing army and is firmly established, it stops being worth it.

A source for just that was already posted - in response to you, no less - back on page three of this very thread:

The Garleans were attacked even over those scant resources as outlined in the reaper job quests:



Furthermore, ceruleum is an incredibly valuable resource that can only be found in specific places - and all signs are pointing to many nations embracing magitek to a greater degree even when accounting for purely non-military pursuits.

The NPC where the dialogue comes from is Drusilla, the Reaper job trainer and an Imperial defector who gives a balanced and unbiased view of her people's plight.

[Alleo]

The NPC where the dialogue comes from is Drusilla, the Reaper job trainer and an Imperial defector who gives a balanced and unbiased view of her people's plight.

Wasnt it also Drusilla who told us that her grandfather tried to take out Solus because they disagreed that just because they had a horrible past its fine to do the same to others?

[KageTokage]

The Lemures didn't take issue with reclaiming Corvos, but the excuse of "conquer or be conquered" that was used to justify taking over lands well outside scope of what they had owned originally was what turned them against the emperor.