Arenvald - Garlean half-breed?

[Cilia]

It doesn't have a proper source, but...

"Ceruleum is an energy source in Final Fantasy XIV. Ceruleum is a refined form of Aether, obtained by draining elemental Crystals of their energy, usually in processing factories. It is a powerful yet highly unstable source of energy, mainly used by Garlean Empire to power Magitek engines."

Final Fantasy Wiki - Ceruleum

So yeah, ceruleum is basically liquid aether extracted from crystals.

[Anonymoose]

It doesn't have a proper source, but...

That's the part that makes me hesitant to just run with it before I find something quotable. The general Final Fantasy wiki has a larger, less narrowly-focused editor base, and I notice that little details often fall through the cracks (as would be rightly expected). Unfortunately, it results in some mistaken assumptions, at times. Without citations, I can't rightly tell if it's somewhere I'm mistaken (also not an uncommon occurrence) or something that wasn't taken as intended that I might be able to fix, so I just leave it alone.

Even the statement quoted there implies that crystals can be (and are) mined and brought to refineries to be drained to create ceruleum. Standalone, this idea implies that Eorzea is overflowing with resources to manufacture the stuff, especially with all the corrupted crystals dotting the landscape post-Calamity. Instead, as we know, there's only a comparatively small swath of it in Northern Thanalan that is hotly contested (and even that ceruleum has a "raw" and "refined" form). The concepts don't play well together without something to be cited, imho.

I can't recall seeing ceruleum / crystal linked officially (just ceruleum and aether-based), but I'm going to keep an eye out again just to be safe.

[Cilia]

I can't recall seeing ceruleum / crystal linked officially (just ceruleum and aether-based), but I'm going to keep an eye out again just to be safe.

Either way, the only information I can find on ceruleum in-game comes from the Immortal Flames commanders stationed at Camp Bluefog and the Ceruleum Processing Plant.

Edelstein (Ceruleum Processing Plant): "This facility was built to extract and refine the vast deposits of ceruleum that lie beneath the earth. ...The Garleans are heavily dependent upon ceruleum for their machina."
Cracked Fist (Camp Bluefog): "Lest you wonder, the name Bluefog is taken from the bluish haze that accompanies the extraction of that selfsame ceruleum."

Implicitly, ceruleum is to crystals as gasoline is to coal. We know it's deep underground, has to be extracted and refined, can be used to power machines, and is highly volatile. Like gasoline, it has to be refined from a liquid extracted from the earth, and doing so emits pollution. It's used for magitek - no airship could work without magic, and all Garlean tech is magitek - so it also has some aetheric properties to it. Dumping impure ceruleum into the shields surrounding the Praetorium in Castrum Meridianum was also key to Operation Archon, suggesting impure ceruleum is the aetheric equivalent to crude oil.

Might be more info in the Operation Archon battle plans, but I don't feel like combing through the cutscenes to find a line or two of dialogue in there right now.

Whether or not it can be extracted directly from crystals, well... who knows. I'd say it's possible (what with deaspected crystals). Most in-game crystals are a light blue, while corrupted crystals are yellowish... it might be that the impure ceruleum that can be extracted from corrupted crystals isn't suitable for refinement, or whatever the end product of "corrupted impure ceruleum" refinement is isn't energy or cost efficient.

Too many unknowns. Oh, if only I could tinker with such things in real life...

[Kaiser-Ace]

Whether or not it can be extracted directly from crystals, well... who knows. I'd say it's possible (what with deaspected crystals). Most in-game crystals are a light blue, while corrupted crystals are yellowish... it might be that the impure ceruleum that can be extracted from corrupted crystals isn't suitable for refinement, or whatever the end product of "corrupted impure ceruleum" refinement is isn't energy or cost efficient.

Too many unknowns. Oh, if only I could tinker with such things in real life...

Could it be possible that the energy given off by Corrupted Crystals is similar to Nuclear Radiation? That being it's not that it doesn't produce energy just that it's too unstable and dangerous to play with at current tech levels in Eorzea. After all plenty of NPCs have stated how prolonged exposure to Corrupted Crystals is hazardous and even deadly, to the point that we can't even touch the ones we gather from the burning wall.

[Cilia]

Could it be possible that the energy given off by Corrupted Crystals is similar to Nuclear Radiation?

Well we've used corrupted crystals in the past; both Garuda and Leviathan required a considerable stock of corrupted crystals to best, so they clearly have some aetheric charge to them. What makes them "corrupted" if I remember right is that while they lean towards one element they also have other elemental aether in them - an ice crystal with wind aether, for instance. It's incredibly dangerous stuff either way, since a small cache was able to nullify Garuda's vortex barrier, a larger cache weaken Leviathan sufficiently to enable us to survive his Tidal Wave on the high seas, and it requires special equipment to gather and handle.

That said, assuming ceruleum can be extracted from corrupted crystals, it almost certainly can't be refined due to sheer volatility. Regular ceruleum is highly reactive; "corrupted" ceruleum would probably be even moreso, so unless someone found a way to stabilize it trying to refine "corrupted" impure ceruleum would probably be impossible (you know, explosions).

... or it might come out just like regular impure ceruleum.

All just conjecture though, since there's no confirmation ceruleum can be extracted from crystals (just that it's naturally occurring underground a la crude oil -> gasoline refinement).

[TheRoomPet]

He ends up having a plot in Stormblood

[Chewy2nd]

I'm so glad Arenvald got brought to the forefront in Stormblood, it's like a little reward for the players who paid attention to the side story stuff.

[KageTokage]

I hope he manages to stick around in the long run, because he's raising an awful lot of death flags to me.

The fact that the other guy we hadn't seen in forever ended up biting the dust shortly after in SB makes me especially worried.

[Lukha]

I hope he manages to stick around in the long run, because he's raising an awful lot of death flags to me.

The fact that the other guy we hadn't seen in forever ended up biting the dust shortly after in SB makes me especially worried.

It would be too much to bring back TWO old faces just to kill both of them like that, though? SE wouldn't want to get that predictable. I hope...

[Ametrine]

Meffrid's character was the gut-punch to show how brutal our new enemies were.

Arenwald is more to show us an example of how people are dealing with and getting past the trauma that resulted from said enemy's cruelty. He's the example to show good people can still bounce back from awful things (technically he was this during ARR, too.)

While I really wouldn't put it past SE to get us attached to this guy just to fire us up if something bad happens to them, they've used that idea too many times now.