Relationship between Bahamut and Midgardsomr?

[Nalien]

Huh, okay, fair. And I didn't mean it moved much, just from somewhere not directly lake-adjacent. I thought some areas shrank from the calamity pushing stuff closer together, justifying the smaller maps in 2.0? Or are chunks just totally removed?

Mostly I think chunks have been removed/blocked, rather than things getting smaller. You can actually overlap the current maps with the old ones fairly well, just a fair amount of the areas on old maps have gone, though some new parts have opened up as well.

Even if areas had been pushed together though, Silvertears used to be much larger than it is. Prior to the crash of the Agrius it was a multi-tiered lake much larger than it currently is, the crash drained it of much of its water according to the Sightseeing Log. Given how Crystal Tower seems to involve a fair amount of lava in the Labyrinth and water in the Tower-proper (and if you look at the model furnishing it seems the Labyrinth supports a small lake around the Tower), I wouldn't be surprised if it was basically in a shallow part of Silvertear Falls.

Xandes Calamity may have caused more movement, since the earth was said to basically swallow the Tower whole, though given the fact that Bahamut seems to have directed Darnus to crash Dalamud into Allagan Ruins, I'm not thinking Eorzea has much in the way of tectonic activity. Stuff sunk, then Bahamuts Calamity resulted in a lot of it being unearthed again, I don't think places shifted location all that much (except the odd Twelve Stone, though I think that was more out of the developers wanting to put them all in 2.0 but not having the right zones to do so).

[RickiFake02]

...[

ACTIVITY TIME: SPOT THE BAHAMUT
(For what it's worth, I believe the white one in the top-left to be Nidhogg - we're down to six)

Based on the benchmark and the Nidhogg fight at the end of it, I think it's more like the bottom one in that picture, with the front facing horns.

[Alberel]

Based on the benchmark and the Nidhogg fight at the end of it, I think it's more like the bottom one in that picture, with the front facing horns.

There's currently no evidence that the dragon at the end of the benchmark is definitely Nidhogg. We only see it open one eye in the video but in all the concept art of that particular dragon we see it with two eyes. The white one is the only one shown to have a missing eye in the concept art. It's a little confusing to be honest. Either 'could' be Nidhogg depending on interpretation but the white one makes the most sense to me.

[DarthSanguine]

There's currently no evidence that the dragon at the end of the benchmark is definitely Nidhogg. We only see it open one eye in the video but in all the concept art of that particular dragon we see it with two eyes. The white one is the only one shown to have a missing eye in the concept art. It's a little confusing to be honest. Either 'could' be Nidhogg depending on interpretation but the white one makes the most sense to me.

Um, in case you haven't noticed, the white one has been shown to have both eyes in concept art as well. The left eye (which is missing in one concept) is clearly visible in the concept art of all 8 Dragons. The black dragon on the other hand, we have seen an in-game model of, and it is clearly missing the right eye - even though the concept art of all the Dragons, shows it's right eye. Now either the 8 Dragons concept art has been mirrored, or we need to just completely disregard all concept art in this case.

[Alberel]

Um, in case you haven't noticed, the white one has been shown to have both eyes in concept art as well. The left eye (which is missing in one concept) is clearly visible in the concept art of all 8 Dragons. The black dragon on the other hand, we have seen an in-game model of, and it is clearly missing the right eye - even though the concept art of all the Dragons, shows it's right eye. Now either the 8 Dragons concept art has been mirrored, or we need to just completely disregard all concept art in this case.

Actually in the concept art of all eight the white dragon has a dark grey/black socket where its eye should be. Most of them have white or yellow in their eyes which makes it easy to tell they do indeed have eyes, but the white one and a couple of others are ambiguous.

Having an eye socket does not mean he has an eye. It's not like he's going to wear an eye patch. It's also entirely possible more than one dragon is missing an eye!

The other concept piece is very explicit in showing the white dragon's missing eye anyway. That same piece is also the one primarily used in the marketing posters at events as well which suggests he's the main antagonist (they've always primarily featured the antagonist in the marketing images for each release). There's also the issue of SE revealing a major storyline fight in a pre-release trailer... that would be a bit of a stupid move in my opinion and I find it more likely the dragon in the benchmark is a minor boss fight at most. Recall the 2.0 benchmark culminated in the Tam Tara boss which was a very early boss fight in the 2.0 story.

[Nalien]

There's also the issue of SE revealing a major storyline fight in a pre-release trailer...

Eh? The Launch Trailer was spoilerific. Granted this is a Benchmark, but still, it's not like SE hasn't shown us the finale of the story in promotional material before. Just as we saw Ifrit through to Garuda, Ultima Weapon and even the start of the Gaius fight in Praetorium in that trailer, I wouldn't put it past them putting the finale to 3.0 in Heavensward promotional material. It's not even like 3.0 will be the entirety of Heavenswards story, it will be the tip of the iceberg, just like ARR.

Bottom line, both of these two Dragons seem important to 3.0, they're both actually featured on the inside of the CE case (the exact two images we've recently seen, too). The Benchmark Dragon clearly, though when they did the unboxing Whitey was obscured by the disk. The Benchmark Dragon also features on a few of the other promotional artworks. It's not very clear here (though you can see his horns), but if you look at the unboxing there is a point where you can clearly see more of the image. It isn't even all that surprising that two Celestial Dragons are in Heavensward, didn't Middy already tell us that two are currently in Eorzea? Nidhogg obviously, but now we have a face to put to the second.

Bottom line for me is, we have the ingame model for one and he is missing an eye, so until an ingame model for Whitey shows up (with both eyes) I'd say they're both missing an eye. The artwork for the Benchmark Dragon though, has him visibly seething with rancor which is pretty much the only description we have of Nidhogg, aside from extrapolating what colour he is from the Drachen Set, which again matches the Benchmark Dragon rather than Whitey. Most of what we've been told about Nidhogg just doesn't match up with the white Dragon, but it does perfectly with the Benchmark one. I don't even see this as something Ishgard could have lied about, most of what I've learned of Nidhogg came from the Dragoon questline rather than fanatic Ishgardians. An Azure Dragoon being overcome by Nidhoggs rage, through the Eye, is all the proof I need that Nidhogg is extremely pissed off. That matches the artwork for the Benchmark Dragon, the artwork for Whitey instead has what looks like a fairly peaceful meeting between "Nidhogg" and Estinien. That really doesn't seem likely to me.

[Belhi]

This actually reminds me that Aymeric's right hand whos name escapes me at the moment, mentions that there are two Wyrmkings active. She says something along the lines of it doesn't matter which of the two is responsible for the Dragonsong.

I'm guessing these two are those two she mentioned. Considering a Dragonsong compels Dragons to answer, I wonder if we could see two factions within dragonkind in this. I can see potentially a split forming in both ishgard and the dragons.

[WyrahFhurrst]

We're going to be seeing far more than just Nidhogg and Hraesvelgr (the white dragon) as factions. We'll end up dealing with all of the six surviving children of Midgardsormr, including Tiamat. That's coming from Yoshi during one of the Pax interviews.

[Belhi]

We're going to be seeing far more than just Nidhogg and Hraesvelgr (the white dragon) as factions. We'll end up dealing with all of the six surviving children of Midgardsormr, including Tiamat. That's coming from Yoshi during one of the Pax interviews.

We will certainly be learning about them and maybe dealing with them but they may just act as neutral parties. Also its possible that more than Bahamut has died and even if all the others are still alive, its possible they aren't in Eorzea anymore. After all Bahamut's brood was on a completely different continent. Others of the seven may have moved to other places in the world as well.

[Malevicton]

It's been a long time since I watched through the coil cutscenes, but I was under the impression that Bahamut is gone for good, in much the same manner that we are able to permanently kill the otherwise-immortal Ascians. That is, we killed not just his physical incarnation, but destroyed the actual spirit/essence of Bahamut, preventing him from being "recycled" into the aether (for lack of better word). Am I just misremembering how that went down?