Quote Originally Posted by Teah_Kaye View Post
So the only thing I'm pretty confident will turn out to be true is S9 being connected to Ancients somehow, the proto-alphabet is a clear link between the people of S9, Loporrits and the Twelve (both of which we know were created by the Ancients) and the Ancients themselves who apparently use the same alphabet in their maps for Elpis and its subzones as well.

That being said, diamondedge83's post inspired me to pull out my tinfoil hat...

Admittedly I have not played FF9 and my speculation surrounding elements pertaining to that game will probably be of lower quality, but I read into it a bit and had some thoughts. What if S9 was created by the Ascians and is inhabited by Genomes, who were intended to take on the souls of the people who were trapped in Zodiark after the Ascians' plan was complete? I don't think we ever got any elaboration on how that part of the plan was supposed to work, we just assumed they would immediately be restored in body and soul, but maybe that wouldn't be possible on such a large scale and creating vessels for the souls of the sacrificed people was a compromise.

And in that case they've been blissfully partying it up in their cyberpunk city for thousands of years, waiting for their cue to go in and intercept all those souls and unaware of recent developments that will have made their original purpose obsolete. Maybe the people of S9 are either lacking souls entirely and we'll have to give them the bad news that the souls they've been awaiting aren't coming after all or they've been haphazardly pulling them from the Lifestream following Zodiark's demise.
FFIX is great, It's not my favorite, but it is the game I consider to be the quintessential FF game, you should play it if you get the chance. Your idea would also incorporate themes from FFX in the form of Zanarkand, a city made up of dreams (which aren't fundamentally different from souls). Someone else had mentioned that Azem had their own plan which is why they left the convocation, but didn't join Venat. Perhaps S9 could be that. Souls safely stored away in their own little Matrix-esque dream world, meanwhile outside, Genome like beings manage the city and can't be affected by the Endsinger as they are without souls.