Echoes of Vana'diel FFXI Alliance Raid

[Brixy]

I played FFXI for right at 15 years so maybe I can break this down in an easy to digest format without spoilers for those that want to go back and play XI before this raid hits. The simple fact that Atomos exist is all that's needed to allow XI into XIV. Atomos has full control over time in XI and is used as a primary means for the player to time travel. The raid name itself could be a hint to Atomos as well. In XI, Atomos is an idle watcher of time that floats in the sky of an area called the Walk of Echoes, which is pretty much a limbo area between time. Atomos is responsible for watching over time itself, as well as devouring it if it chooses lol. Atomos was also used in multiple different expansions to set up "what if" scenarios (trying to word that without spoilers lol).

How does this tie FFXI into FFXIV? The simple answer is that Atomos has already been used multiple times in the story for XIV as well. Atomos had to come from somewhere, and my bet isn't on the 13th like the story wants you to think. The Atomos that are in the 13th were most likely just idle watchers like they were in XI and actually originate from the Walk of Echoes. They basically act like a set of linked wormholes capable of moving through every timeline and dimension. Shantotto most likely used Atomos in some way to travel to XIV years ago for the event and she specifically references it in XI as "dimensional travel" while unlocking her trust. Y'shtola (also based on an extremely smart Black Mage similar to Shantotto) found a way to harness Atomos into a gate for Endwalker as well. I couldn't paint a clearer picture of what they are trying to set up if I tried lol.

As far as what I'm expecting from the raid:
Shadow Lord or riot. He is easily the most recurring plot device in many of the expansions. Shadowlord was the boss of base FFXI, Dynamis final boss as the Dynamis Lord, Shadowlord [S] fight via the Fiat Lux battlefield as well as a core part of WotG storyline, Apoc Nigh used him as a plot device, Technically used during Ark Angels story... dude is a very core part of the FFXI story to say the least lol. I think it would be interesting if one of the raids was based on the BCNM Ranked missions from base XI. Ahriman + Dragon for 1 fight, Archlich + a bunch of skeletons for the 2nd fight, then Shadowlord for the final fight.

If they wanted to go above and beyond:
First fight would be ShadowLord and immediately be sucked in by Atomos to the past, 2nd fight would be the spitewardens + Lady Lilith, final fight would be Shadowlord [S].
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If they really wanted to shoehorn XI's story into XIV I think they have enough bullshit to pull from tbh lol. We know that the Ascians lead the source to become shattered with the creation of Meteion (And thus dynamis) which caused the Zodiark + Hydaelyn fight to happen. This also caused the ancients to split into the different races that we have in XIV. Something similar happend in XI as well. There was an ancient race called the Zilart that lived in the gate of the gods that posessed the "Whisper of the Souls", allowing them to communicate telepathically. Sounds almost like the echo huh? However, over time they started becoming overcome by the emptiness and those that lost this ability became known as Kuluu. tl;dr is that the Zilart cause some big boom booms to the primary crystal in Vana'diel and it gets split into 5 weaker crystals. Each crystal created a different race with it. Sounds very similar to what happened with Dynamis and the ancients demise right? Now pair that with Atomos watching over all timelines and tada... you now have FFXI and FFXIV being ripple dimensions.