about the swords of dalamud

[Catapult]

I wouldn't be so sure about that.

Take Boulder Downs, for example. There is something impaled into the centre of that formation, which is long and straight, suggesting they may have been impaled deep into the ground. It is likely the tip of one such "key".

While the coil may be occuring in various chambers related to Dalamud debris, it is highly plausible that these are partially in and around the spikes. It doesn't have to be one or the other.

[Royal]

Any chance there is a source for the 12 key discussion. That sounds very interesting, i'd love to read more.

[Myrhn]

Ragnarok isn't the big sword like thing that falls from the sky before bahamut got out?

[Jeykama]

Seems obvious to me that T2-4 takes place on one of the swords. Beating T1 activates a hexagonal elevator that descends to T2. T2 takes place atop the "crossguard" of one of the swords, just watch the intro video panning across it and looking up the hilt. After beating ADS you descent to a path leading inside the crossguard, making me believe T3 occurs within the crossguard itself. T4 is a 7-minute joyride down the blade on an elevator. The elevator descends to a stop at the hand (T5). How we end up in Thanalan going straight down? dunno.

However, T1-5 all take place in enormous caverns coated in corrupted crystals. I can't help but think that those caverns are cysts formed by the planet to contain the corruption (i.e. bahamut's parts + dalamud bits) within, and the bubbles we see above ground are incomplete formations of a cyst due to the respective object being only partially buried. Most of the swords appear to be featureless javelins that could have punctured the surface with very little initial trauma, leading to very little crystal malformation so we wouldn't even know something was underfoot.

[StarHate]

Well we know that Allagans were incredibly advanced, so it is possible that Ragnarok is their technological equivalent of the spell that Lou was trying to cast. Whereas he relied on raw magic and the aether, they constructed a giant machine that would emulate the effects and contain an otherwise uncontainable power. This would fit in with FF usual usage of Ragnarok (an object to hold great power (swords/ships/etc)) as well as the shared symbolism between the summoning of the 12 in the video and the technology.

Bahamut was released from Dalamud, but who put him there in the first place?