My “Next job” predictions: “Scouting” and “Fending”

[MikkoAkure]

I'll take a look and see if I can find an explicit statement in game. The circumstances surrounding the Calamity of Water are stated in game and in the EEvol1 at least: white and black mages from two opposing nations at war whose magicks used the land's aether as fuel, leaving the land with basically nothing but water aether leftover. The main reason white magic and black magic are forbidden arts is that they consume ambient aether. From this we are meant to infer that neither the Amdapori nor the Mhachi used much water magic if at all, since there was so much of water aether and so little else left.

Nothing in the EE or anywhere in the game says that the world's aether was unbalanced to water because White Mages couldn't use water spells. White Mage could use a water spell until Endwalker came out so I'm not sure the writers were trying to make us infer anything from the gameplay anyway. The only sources I can find of anyone saying that Amdapori mages only used wind and earth and caused the Calamity that way are random people on Reddit guessing without a source and a few of them were just joking.

1.0's White Mage questline tells a different story:

In his pride and avarice, man brought down the wrath of the elementals upon himself. A great deluge was sent to cleanse the land of his wicked presence, in the wake of which the forest rose to swallow up all that was not washed away. Thus did the Six Umbral Era begin… or so it is told.

Oha-Sok is the collective fury of the elementals given form. Their suffering summoned her forth, and in her turn she stokes the fire of their rage with her keening. As I related to you earlier, it was the rage of the elementals that brought an end to the civilization of the Fifth Astral Era. And now the selfsame harbinger of that destruction is come once more. The histories vividly describe the fearsome nature of the elemental of nihility─or ‘the Wrath,’ as she is sometimes called. It is writ that each time she keens, she sets off a hundred of her kind to doing the same. Ever more elementals shall join the keening, and so shall it continue until their chorus rends the land asunder. And then the heavens shall spill forth a deluge of tears, and the trees weep till they are hoarse of voice. Oha-Sok’s awakening spells cataclysm for Eorzea…

We also learn in ShB that that element imbalance starts on the affected Shard and the excess energy flows to the Source. Even if this Yoshi-P-era 1.0 story is now non-canon and Oha-Sok didn't summon a deluge to wipe away the Magi and it got out of control, the aether being sucked dry from the war would also mean that water aether going crazy on a Shard and being siphoned off to the Source would tip the balance towards water anyway.


Aaaanyway, sort of back on topic, anyone have any ideas for what type of weapon a scouting class could use that doesn't get too close to anyone else's territory? There's already a handful of jobs that just use different lengths/types of swords so that's a possibility, but a boring one.