Lore: Soul Stones

[chaoelite]

What exactly are the soul stones that we need for jobs? What could they be made of that allow memories and such to be stored and passed on? Also are there plans to elaborate on the heroic souls held inside the stones? Maybe mini solo dungeons to give us lore or to access lost abilities.

[Enkidoh]

There was a really old thread on the subject in the old 1.0 forum (which is now archived, found here), but the general consensus arrived at was that the Soul Crystals are exactly what it says on the tin - they're literal crystals that contain the memories (read, skills) of past practitioners of that particular Job.

Jobs are disciplines that fell out of use or have been tightly controlled, even outlawed, and given the difficulty in training in such a role, and thus the Soul Crystal serves as a convenient short cut to becoming a master in it without having to go through all the rigmarole of starting from scratch (hence why it piggybacks on an existing class - just pop on the Soul Crystal and boom, you're now a PLD or a WHM or any other Job). Of course DRK may feature a totally different method, but I guess we'll find out soon enough.

[Wolfandre]

It's kind of for that reason that you see some NPCs with certain abilities that you cannot get on your job: soul stones are kind of cheating. The NPCs devoted their life to their craft and have developed their skilles under their profession. You devoted your life to adventuring and want to do some of the things they can do, so you cheat and get your predecessors to do the training for you, but at a diminished rate.

As such, you are probably the first adventurer to obtain that particular soul stone and maybe even the first person to use soul stones to cheat like that. So you may develop unique abilities to your job through adventuring *ahem* level cap increase *ahem* that would be imbued in your stone. When you eventually pass it along, you would likely pass along those abilities too. It's a never ending cycle of cheating.

This makes your soul stone kind of unique, in that it is not held by a formal member of that job and will likely never again contain the same abilities as a different one of the same job.

I learned to cut my wild tangents short and keep my theory-crafting to a minimum in general question threads, so that's my heavily heavily reduxed version. :P

[Baithin]

I generally see soul stones as a big fat reference to Final Fantasy X-2 and I love it. They're basically dresspheres when it comes to the lore behind them (except that memories/souls contained in them haven't yet had any sort of "controlling/influencing" impact on our characters... yet). Technically the dress-up aspect of it is even there when you take into account our gear sets. =P

[TinyRedLeaf]

The concept of storing knowledge in crystals, and subsequently learning abilities from them, isn't unique to FFXIV. This was actually quite common in Final Fantasy Tactics, for example, to the extent that it was even referenced in the game's preamble:

Sword in hand, a warrior clutches stone to breast
In sword etched he his fading memories
In stone, his tempered skill
By sword attested, by stone revealed
Their tale can now be told.

Crystals literally play a multi-faceted role in the Final Fantasy franchise. They could be the source of magic, a type of fuel and, in some cases, USB memory sticks not unlike Allagan tomestones.

And because of their use as "shortcuts" to learning a job in FFXIV, I've always felt that the "jobs" we currently know are really no more than pale imitations of what they had been in the past.

Consider this: The way we use "jobs" in the Seventh Astral Era is through a mix of class kills and a handful of job skills acquired from the stones. I doubt that an Allagan summoner of yore mixes modern arcanima with his or her magic, for example.

It also means that there may have been a lot more to the original jobs that are forever lost to time, that we now try to emulate through modern skills that are functionally equivalent to those of the job.

And I suspect that the dark knight will be explained as a "job" that exists only in modern Eorzea. It has no historical precedent, making it therefore unnecessary to "restore" it through the use of a soul crystal. From a lore perspective, it would also mean that learning the job would entail starting from scratch, from the very basics of harnessing one's rage and dark energies, to perform the role.

As for why we haven't actually "seen" a dark knight, it's probably because it's more exclusive than the typical war and magic disciplines, which have their respective guilds all across Eorzea.

So, I suspect the dark knight will be FFXIV's equivalent of a Dungeons & Dragons (3rd edition) prestige class.

[myahele]

Not sure how relevant this is but in the Monk questline it was mentioned that once person dies their aether goes back to the lifestream. However there are some whose aether remains (especially if they die gruesomely or have unfinished business) and become crystals (soul stones?) Or ghosts.

It's possi that a strong willed individual could leave traces of themself as soul crystals. This is most evident with A towa cant.

[chaoelite]

@TinyRedLeaf it is possible they are a job originating in ishgard so the 2.0 players will not have seen since could not go to ishgard.
@Balthin interesting i did not play X-2 but that might be something they are building on for future release
@Wolfandre that is an awesome thought tho we do not know the level of our predecesors but since we do hold the stone we belong to the stone now too lol
@Enkidoh thanks for the link a bit of info but still many questions it leaves

I hope to hear more theories and maybe here something from the lore team i do think when i did the dragoon quest line on my cat i recall the soul crystal chose when you were ready to learn the move so its really hard to figure out how they work exactly but thank you all that have replied so far ^.^

[DoctaruRavenbe]

it was also common in FF3 and FF5. Shards of crystals imparting the knowledge and skills of a legendary job.

[LittleChris]

I always considered that it was a similar concept to 3 and 5 also (which is what X-2 based dresspheres on anyway). The idea that a Warrior of Light can switch between all these different powers is a concept that has been used a lot.

[Morningstar1337]

So, I suspect the dark knight will be FFXIV's equivalent of a Dungeons & Dragons (3rd edition) prestige class.

IDK The Jobs that need classes seem closer to prestige classes IMO (In that they are better than the base class, requires knowledge in the base class to unlock and are more specialized [having less cross-class abilities])