Ultima the High Seraph.

[Catwho]

...All that said, there's also a new problem to this one that wasn't there most of the other times this idea's come up: that now, there's another villain named Ultima who's from space and had a storyline of appearing on the planet long ago and whose influence has caused some serious problems ever since both directly and indirectly. ...In a game that happens to share an awful lot of names in its credits with FFXIV. So now Theoretical MSQ Villain Ultima not only has to be appreciably different from Ivalice Raids Villain Ultima, it also needs to be different from FFXVI Villain Ultima, which is probably gonna be a harder job since most of the points of differentiation between XIV Ultima and Final Fantasy Tactics Ultima are actually exactly the things she shares with XVI Ultima!

Actually, it doesn't have to be that different from XVI Ultima.

FFXVI spoilers:

The Ultimas from XVI had to flee their planet because a natural disaster attacked it. Like the Ea, they lost their physical forms at some point and were using the Bearer breeding program to try to get the humans on their new planet capable of becoming hosts for at least one of them. I assume Clive as Mythos was only intended to become the first new host body. (Hello, slightly borrowed plot from FF9.) However, the ecosystem of Valisthea was not conductive to the humans having magic naturally, which is why they had to make the Mothercrystals as aether batteries and teach humanity magic. And when the humans realized they were being manipulated by their own gods and rebelled against them, they ended up getting subjugated by the Ultimas for the next 800 years.

Anyway, the implication is that the XVI Ultimas, of which there were originally 8-9 that we know of - were the only survivors of their disaster that made it to the world in XVI.

What if others made it to the world in XIV? Hitched a ride in white or black auracite, where Meteion couldn't get to them, and landed on planets where they could bide their time and try to make the local wildlife strong enough to eventually become hosts?

[Lunair]

Trimmed.

Oh wait. I went back just to check, and she WASN'T noted to be a rock, rather "an embodiment of pure ruination". The exact line is on page 200 of Encyclopaedia Eorzea Vol 3, and reads;

"Ultima, the High Seraph"
"So named for her ability to wield the ultimate form of destructive magic, the High Seraph was once nothing more than an embodiment of pure ruination. Yet, over time, the terror in which people held her shifted to reverence, and by a process not unlike the prayer-fueled creation of a primal, this worship quickened within Ultima a sense of self-awareness."

This directly suggests that she's only achieved the level of self awareness we see due to the collective beliefs of those aware of her. That said, what "an embodiment of pure ruination" actually translates to is vague as hell.

As for the thing about auspices and tural vidraal, I mention those cases because during a particular interview, it was asked why there're so many primals, auspices, kami, and so on in the far east when they were basically unknown in Eorzea, and it was stated that it was due to the regional beliefs in that area. they believe in these things, and so these things exist. it begs the question of how the original inspiration for the beliefs came to be, but does seem to indicate rather heavily that the auspices and similar existences fall into the same category, and the parallels between Tural Vidraal and Auspices gets mentioned in Dawntrail. (I'm looking for the interview to cite it, but trying to find a particular dev interview is always a pain in the ass, so it may take a minute so to speak.)

Also, while I WAS referencing the archbishop earlier, it was specifically prior to his transformation into Thordan that he tempered the Heaven's Ward, during the first time all of the Heaven's Ward were granted audience with him at one time. https://www.4gamer.net/games/199/G019924/20210810055/

[Cleretic]

Oh wait. I went back just to check, and she WASN'T noted to be a rock, rather "an embodiment of pure ruination". The exact line is on page 200 of Encyclopaedia Eorzea Vol 3, and reads;

"Ultima, the High Seraph"
"So named for her ability to wield the ultimate form of destructive magic, the High Seraph was once nothing more than an embodiment of pure ruination. Yet, over time, the terror in which people held her shifted to reverence, and by a process not unlike the prayer-fueled creation of a primal, this worship quickened within Ultima a sense of self-awareness."

This directly suggests that she's only achieved the level of self awareness we see due to the collective beliefs of those aware of her. That said, what "an embodiment of pure ruination" actually translates to is vague as hell.

Yeah, that's all the exact same stuff I said before, and the description's also present on the Triple Triad card. But I would point out that 'self-awareness' is a very abstract concept itself, and is hard to both quantify and to apply to things that we aren't; not only is it hard to define what self-awareness is, it's hard to define what does or doesn't have it. Yeah, a rock definitely wouldn't have self-awareness, but what about, say, a beetle? A wild tiger? A crow? How aware are they of their own selves in relation to the greater world? Hell, what about a hive insect like a bee? They're abundantly aware of their own presence and role in relation to the rest of their hive, is that self-awareness? If Ultima didn't have self-awareness before but did later, where did it start? (And a side-question given that all these sources are in-universe and therefore fallible, who figured this out and wrote it down?) If we look at Ultima's form, how much of that was made by that process of communal belief shaping its form, and how much was what it was originally?

My gut feel based on both what we've got and what could be interesting if they did 'Major Arc Villain Ultima' is the Jenova comparison that Raikai brought up. Perhaps Ultima was something akin to an insect or a virus, and was merely acting instinctually, and perhaps in service to a role in something greater (a society? A hive? An entire organism?) until eventually it gained enough self-awareness to make more conscious decisions. Then you've got that leading question of exactly where it came from, that inevitably has an answer of 'something bigger, scarier and capable of being a cool boss fight'.

Actually, it doesn't have to be that different from XVI Ultima.

I'm gonna be brutally honest here, I would balk and walk out at the reveal that we're literally and explicitly getting FFXVI leftovers.

FFXIV is in a funky position with basically every FF game after XIII (debatably including XII), that it already borrows so much from them in terms of aesthetic and literal assets and resources that it can't reference them in the same way as older games, because it would actually look lazy. Doing their own Necron, or more directly even their own version of FFT Ultima, looks and feels like the tribute it is because they self-evidently had to do significant effort to recreate it; you couldn't do that with any of the HD-era games, because it would look easy.

That problem is even worse for FFXVI, because at least someone else made the other games! Literally and explicitly going 'we're doing XVI Ultima but in XIV' would look like reheating their own work, and that'd just feel exceptionally lazy and desperate, especially for a major villain.

(I also hate FFXVI, which doesn't help but is largely an unrelated extra problem.)

[StormChase]

The struggle with Ultima as the Big Bad Villain is that... well, we kinda already beat her. Quite a while ago, in fact!

That's not an insurmountable obstacle to overcome in writing, but it is one: to do Ultima as a new, big villain that would feel fresh and interesting, you need to package it in a way that makes it more than just 'the boss we beat in Orbonne 30+ levels ago' (chances are good it'll be 40+ by the time they get to do anything), and importantly, feels like it. You need to frame and build up to this theoretical Ultima reprise in a way that doesn't feel like a rerun, or it'll just feel like a waste of time to a lot of people. The last thing we want to feel from a story is like we're watching a rerun.

Ultima arrived on Etheirys before the Sundering, so there are pieces of her on other Shards. I think, hypothetically, that's how she could come back. But whether or not that'd feel stale, IDK.

[Pimsan20]

Ultima arrived on Etheirys before the Sundering, so there are pieces of her on other Shards. I think, hypothetically, that's how she could come back. But whether or not that'd feel stale, IDK.

I mean it is possible. If so, then we could get a Jenova situation where the pieces of Ultima is trying rejoin with each other. Like the Reunion from 7.

[mallleable]

I don't think we would deal with a sundered Ultima that's trying to put itself back together, and I would not want another 'rejoining' plot. However, an idea that could be entertaining is that the original Ultima spell had been split up, and scattered across the cosmos. Someone like an Ultima Prime or another big bad could then try to piece it back together, and declare themselves a god. Perhaps the magick in the Heart of Sabik, and The Key are parts of the original Ultima spell.

[Enkidoh]

Ultima arrived on Etheirys before the Sundering, so there are pieces of her on other Shards. I think, hypothetically, that's how she could come back. But whether or not that'd feel stale, IDK.

Not if she was contained with the Heart of Sabik and Lahabrea had it on his person when the Sundering occurred, as Lahabrea remained Unsundered, so therefore there would be no 'parts' of her on the Shards. Of course feel free to contradict me or add clarification to that.

[Cassar]

Ultima arrived on Etheirys before the Sundering, so there are pieces of her on other Shards. I think, hypothetically, that's how she could come back. But whether or not that'd feel stale, IDK.

This is assuming that she arrived and stayed on Etheirys during the Sundering. I'm under the impression that Ultima is an entity that has visited us at least twice - once when it left the Heart of Sabik for Athena, and another time during the Allagan era (hence the quote I mentioned earlier).

[Cleretic]

This is assuming that she arrived and stayed on Etheirys during the Sundering. I'm under the impression that Ultima is an entity that has visited us at least twice - once when it left the Heart of Sabik for Athena, and another time during the Allagan era (hence the quote I mentioned earlier).

It's also assuming that she landed on Etheirys before or during the Sundering. What I think could be possible in that 'there's no evidence it didn't happen' way is that Ultima was in (or itself was) a meteor that perhaps scraped the planet before the Sundering, and only crashed into it afterwards. The Heart of Sabik would therefore be part chipped off beforehand, while Ultima itself turns up later.