Revelations from Patch 7.4: Into the Mist

[Diclonius]

So, my best reckoning on these...

Factoring in that extra line (I didn't remember it off the top of my head), the milalla were trying to get the key to work for a while. That 'we' is both historic and current; they probably were trying for hundreds of years. Probably not consecutively, I'm imagining 'every generation we give it another shot', but they just haven't succeeded.

As for why Preservation wouldn't have stepped in until very late? First of all, we can't assume that they would've necessarily cared for a lot of that time; they ultimately used it to solve a resource and energy crisis, so it's entirely possible it just wasn't an avenue worth pursuing/caring about for a long time. After all, Calyx was rather famously cool with going small and sustainable with the 'five thousand Endless' plan in the earlier patches. But on top of that, we don't actually know how accepted and recognized that fact is; we know that's true because of sources we found independently, but from Preservation's side? The milalla are just a cultural minority with a specific origin myth, and a religious artifact that doesn't do the thing they say it should. That doesn't exactly sound like something you'd pursue as Plan A to me.

That makes more sense, thank you for helping!

I'm guessing their lack of success is because the soul of Azem is needed to make the key function in the first place, and the Speaker was the only Milalla to be possessed of it since the time they fled the Source. Either way I still find it to be very questionable phrasing and I'm glad to know I wasn't the only one confused by interpretation.

I think Calyx and Halmarut know a lot more than they're letting on based off the latter's ominous foreshadowing, and Ascian plots tend to be rather far reaching from experience, so I do find it weird that they wouldn't have foreseen an energy crisis or sought out the key much sooner if they were knowledgeable about it. Then again, it's unclear how deep the extent of the Winterer's involvement in the 9th is just yet, so we'll have to wait and see if this is all part of the plan!

[Iscah]

MSQ:

I should have taken notes the other day when I'd done the first part. I have probably forgotten a couple of things.

THE ENDING

Firstly, a couple of links I meant to share in the 7.3 discussion but misplaced for a while: an interesting Reddit post from 7.3 that draws some connections that are coming back now. Most relevantly, a connection between Halmarut (associated with plants) and the goddess Demeter, hinted at in 7.3 by the name Demetrius -- so perhaps we can assume that Halmarut has been involved with Preservation for a while. A separate discussion proposed that the then-mysterious Ascian might have been acting as the simulant Sphene too, rather than that being just a creation of Calyx, in which case for all Halmarut's quirky presentation here, she's already been acting as a competent villain against us.

It's curious that we now have a second example of a "green" Au Ra after Varshahn (though he just had green horns, not scales as well). Can we assume there's a whole clan of them somewhere? Though on the other hand both characters are "fakes" and Halmarut may have just made it look like that because she liked the colour scheme or something.

Halmarut's rambling seems to confirm to me that the term "Winterers" is metaphorical: withdrawing to a safe place to "outlast the great withering to come", indicating that this coming disaster is something temporary to be waited out -- but then that doesn't really seem to add up with the "world doomed to die" talk which suggests a more final destruction. Though maybe if the world dies it rejoins automatically, and that's what the Ascians wanted... but as Fandaniel indicated, the individual remaining Ascians are free of the Ancients' goal now. So what does Halmarut want? And why not approach us to warn us if we're genuinely endangering the world?


RANDOM OBSERVATIONS

They let Sphene be healer for duty support! I hope they fixed that for the Meso Terminal too.

It was cute that G'raha talked about Lyna, but also kind of odd because (once we were told we have to drink the medicine) I was anticipating a different reference back to when Chessamile forced us to take something similar, and I'm pretty sure she said something about having to force the Exarch to take it too. Though I suppose Lyna probably teamed up with her on that front.

Treno character outfits are an odd mix of different styles. Lumull and Eyaney in modern-looking Everseeker gear, but most of the others are in a mix of the new tome sets, Heirloom aiming top, Crested, and (another vibe again) the Mistic mage sets which seemed out of place and Turali-looking among the designs of last patch's dungeon sets and still don't seem like they fit in here. Is it supposed to be from some other FFIX culture? Also interesting that Miyali's costume is the one Historia set that had people saying "why is this here, it's not based on any FFIX character" -- I wonder if it was, at the time, sneaking in a design that they wanted to use for this NPC in the future.

There was a random unnamed character in white and red crafter gear who was playing with a dog on the farm earlier, and then at the end was on the main street apparently searching for a dodo, while down by the canal there was another character with a dodo. It could all just be a simple "the farm animals ran away when the monsters invaded the field" thing, but it seems like it could be a reference to something else.

And replies to other MSQ posts:

Things that stuck out to me from MSQ:

G'raha casually talking about Lyna and waxing nostalgic over the Crystarium and his time on the First in a positive way is nice. How disgusting was that syrup Lyna forced on him that he compares it to "sin" when the guy's only dropped a single swear in his entire existence with us (during CT, btw).

"Sin" isn't a swear word, and "____ as sin" is an established phrase just meaning "very _____".

I don't recall him swearing during CT either, so I'm assuming it was something minor.

I'm not all that disappointed by Halmarut since we knew the Ascians were back in play after 7.3. I'm just... irritated she's doing the "If you knew what I know, we'd be on the same page" shtick Elidibus did back in 2.1, and this time entirely offscreen except in front of Calyx. She's understandably wary of us given our resumé, but you can't expect us to change onto the "right" course without even knowing what we're doing "wrong," let alone how to fix it. It's the usual "don't tell us anything and then blame us for not knowing" bit that's just... worn by this point.

Yes, that's my feeling too. It's no good muttering to herself about how the world is doomed if we don't change course, if she doesn't intend to warn us about our current course.

[EdwinLi]

That makes more sense, thank you for helping!

I'm guessing their lack of success is because the soul of Azem is needed to make the key function in the first place, and the Speaker was the only Milalla to be possessed of it since the time they fled the Source. Either way I still find it to be very questionable phrasing and I'm glad to know I wasn't the only one confused by interpretation.

I think Calyx and Halmarut know a lot more than they're letting on based off the latter's ominous foreshadowing, and Ascian plots tend to be rather far reaching from experience, so I do find it weird that they wouldn't have foreseen an energy crisis or sought out the key much sooner if they were knowledgeable about it. Then again, it's unclear how deep the extent of the Winterer's involvement in the 9th is just yet, so we'll have to wait and see if this is all part of the plan!

This does bring up a lot of questions about Azem though....

for starters, when was the Key created by him will be among the first set of questions people will be asking since the Shards did not exist until after the Sundering.

The other is what was his main goal with creating the ability to travel to other Shards?

How did it become lost in the first place until it was found?

and among many other things.

either way it seem this expansion was just setting up for the eventual focus on who Azem was.

[Cleretic]

This does bring up a lot of questions about Azem though....

Also, this entire theory breaks down when we remember what the actual history of 'successful Key uses' is. ...In fact I'm not gonna spoiler tag this because this is all pre-7.4 stuff. We do have three unambiguously successful Key uses.

1. Use by Speaker Loquloqui to get from the Source to the Ninth.

2. Grafting of Alexandria onto the Source, by Preservation.

3. The 'twelfth floor' portal to Living Memory (or at least its closure, we don't know the whole process), also by Preservation, specifically Endless Sphene.

If you want to give partial credit of 'well you got the Key to do something even if it wasn't what you planned', Preservation gets at least one extra count through the failed experiments we learned about in 7.3, and plausibly the first use of the gate by Robor and Alayla, but we don't really know any details there. But crucially, there's one person who hasn't gotten a successful use out of the thing: us. As in, the only person that we can say with some degree of confidence does have Azem's soul.

So either Azem's soul is not actually in any way necessary, or Preservation have made some very alarming discoveries!

[Cilia]

FYI, that one didn't come with this patch; Hildibrand's stuff is coming in the 7.x5 patches, and you just played the 7.35 one!

For what it's worth, while I was surprisingly on board with the 7.25 Hildibrand questline, the 7.35 one mainly got a reaction of 'wow, y'all found One New Joke'. Sometimes Hildibrand has a habit of going all-in on different variations on one gag, and this time they really hoped the Oglop joke was a massive hit.

Well 7.3.5 was the Deep Dungeon, and I'm not at all fond of the mystery dungeon playstyle so I just kept to my usual crafting and dungeon grinds. As someone who is very fond of IX (while cognizant of it's shortcomings), seeing another small reference to it was very nice. There were other jokes in there, but I still want an oglop minion now that they're confirmed to exist in XIV's setting (and are far from the most egregious reference, even to IX).

Also, this entire theory breaks down when we remember what the actual history of 'successful Key uses' is. ...In fact I'm not gonna spoiler tag this because this is all pre-7.4 stuff. We do have three unambiguously successful Key uses.

<snip>

So either Azem's soul is not actually in any way necessary, or Preservation have made some very alarming discoveries!

A lot of this comes from how Azem's symbol (Sol) showed up when Queen Eternal started to invoke the Key's power, but it's very important to remember that we ultimately still know nothing about the artifact's creation and original owner. It sounds like something Azem would make, and if anyone could make something like that it would be the Ancients (Ascians), but we also know that Azem was sundered and would have no reason to make such a thing beforehand. It's able to defy known laws regarding travel across the reflections, but in such a way that remains unreliable to everyone other than Calyx... who has Ascian backers, so it's clear he knows more than we do at the moment. If anything the Key functions like Halmarut's recently revealed power to punch small holes in reality on a grander scale.

They can't keep us in the dark about this thing forever, and since I seriously doubt 8.0 is going to be a sojourn across the Storm Surged Ninth, answers will have to come sooner than later unless we're just going to meander across referenced but unexplored Source locations like the Blindfrost and Nagxia. That said... Halmarut's ominous foretelling might only apply to the Storm Surged Ninth, and there's a curiously unused gate in the park where we fought the Behemoth during the MSQ...

One last note regarding references:

The route into XIV Treno isn't a 1:1 reference to IX; after exiting the Electrope Mine you grind down a derelict railway into the Treno Lowlands, referencing IX's South Gate cable car. It's not necessary to take the cable car to get from Quan's Dwelling to Treno in IX. Clearly, jamming references in wherever they can. Additionally, IX's Mist Continent had a similar population spread but in a different direction (IX's Mist Continent cities had to be on highlands due to the denser than air Mist making surface settlements hazardous; in XIV they need barriers to protect themselves from the perpetual thunderstorm and levin monsters, and are connected through railways rather than by airship).

On top of Queen Stella's gazebo, the Stellazio coins themselves are scattered across Treno, locked away in metal cages similar to those Queen Stella kept them in. There's no way to interact with them, but it's a fun little Easter Egg.

In addition to the bosses referencing Treno's item shop, most if not all of the trash mobs are enemies fought in random encounters during IX (using XIV models and levin glowups, of course).

Doctor Tuphut, Sphene's Milalla tutor who took the barrier technology back to Treno, is a clear reference to Garnet's tutor Doctor Tot from IX who similarly lived in Treno.

The VIII insert Doomtrain still retains a reference to it's Japanese naming through it's demonic roots. It's original name, Glasya Labolas (also used for the second boss of Syrcus Tower), is one of the 72 demons from the Lesser Key of Solomon. VIII references this by requiring 6 copies of 3 items (666) and the Solomon Ring to acquire it as a GF. The name of it's trial in XIV, Hell on Rails, is a subtle but clever nod.

... and now I have to do PvP this season up to Rank 15 because they put an MGSD G-Warrior as a minion reward and MGSD is my favorite Gunpla line (Strike Noir / Vidar when Bandai?). God damn it.

[Cleretic]

A lot of this comes from how Azem's symbol (Sol) showed up when Queen Eternal started to invoke the Key's power, but it's very important to remember that we ultimately still know nothing about the artifact's creation and original owner. It sounds like something Azem would make, and if anyone could make something like that it would be the Ancients (Ascians), but we also know that Azem was sundered and would have no reason to make such a thing beforehand. It's able to defy known laws regarding travel across the reflections, but in such a way that remains unreliable to everyone other than Calyx... who has Ascian backers, so it's clear he knows more than we do at the moment. If anything the Key functions like Halmarut's recently revealed power to punch small holes in reality on a grander scale.

Yeah, the thing that always holds with me about the key that a lot of people seem to dismiss is that the Ancients and Ascians would have no use for this thing. There were no shards to make portals to in Azem's day, so they can't have made it, and the Ascians can already do this, so why would they need it? 'The key reflected Azem's symbol when we used the crystal' is pretty thin evidence of anything (how do we know it wouldn't do the same if we pulled out Pashtarot's crystal, or the PCT job crystal?), but people take it to a conclusion that just doesn't make any sense.

Also, one more little thing in the references that I feel like you--and probably others--will get a kick out of:

The internal name for Doomtrain/Glasya Labolas in the Japanese version of FFVIII is Devil Thomas. Which is not only hilarious, but also clears up some conceptual ambiguity about it: FFVIII Doomtrain isn't a ghost train, it's a demon train. XIV Doomtrain is pretty clearly demonic (and has an actual backstory besides), but the visuals in VIII were much more ambiguous, and thanks to the name change the Lesser Key of Solomon references didn't quite carry internationally.

[Geriel]

We know that Azem created a series of concepts (fourteen of them, to be precise) meant to ease the burden of travel. Perhaps the Key is a modified version of one of those crystals. Or perhaps another one. Perhaps it was Azem's answer to the Final Days, as we know they were working on something.

[mallleable]

I don't trust The Key, especially after Miayli's words of caution. I don't think Azem made The Key, but I do think they may have been in possession of it at some point. If that's the case, then I think what happened with them in the past is repeating itself now with the Warrior of Light.

Some speculation

Miayli told us that info about The Key is back in Alexandria, and so I think we're gonna learn about where the Millala are originally from before settling the South Sea Isles, and where they got The Key, and that will be the setting for 8.0.

[Iscah]

We know that Azem created a series of concepts (fourteen of them, to be precise) meant to ease the burden of travel.

Where was that said? I don't recall it.

[Cleretic]

Where was that said? I don't recall it.

It was in the fifth Tales from the Dawn, the one that was Ancient fanservice because either Emet or Hyth won that one poll. We don't know anything about any of those concepts, though; we don't even get information about the fourteenth one put forward in that story. Nor do I think that the Key could possibly be one of them, because...

I don't trust The Key, especially after Miayli's words of caution. I don't think Azem made The Key, but I do think they may have been in possession of it at some point. If that's the case, then I think what happened with them in the past is repeating itself now with the Warrior of Light.

I don't think the Key and Azem could have even existed concurrently, at least not in a way that is in any way relevant or worthwhile to us. Because the shards didn't exist when they did, so a means to travel between them would have been worthless. Real 'can opener invented before the can' energy, only somehow dumber.


Also, an interesting thing worth recalling: back when Azem's symbol appeared, we were assuming that 'the Key' was the entire apparatus, both the crystal and the chalice it was held in; back then a huge root for the theory that the Ancients made it was that it spirals and they're the only civilization that really does spirals. But, now we know that's wrong: 7.3 confirmed for us that the Key is just the crystal, and the chalice was some kind of additional system added on by Preservation; to this day we don't have a great idea what the chalice is doing, save that--again, going by Preservation's track record--it seems to be working.

Given that knowledge, can we be on any level certain that the Key made the Azem symbol, and not the chalice?