End of the Allagan Empire, spoilers!

[Aristes]

Hello,

While getting close to the end of Heavensward, I'm at the point where we first visit Azys Lla and I find myself wondering what happened to the allangans.

More specifically what happened to the people in particular. From ARR, we are all familiar with the general allagan tale of the mighty empire that fell and all the details surrounding the Crystal Tower that I won't go into here. However, what has me curious is given some great calamitous event took place, everything remains in place except for the people.

The structures are in place and unharmed, the technology seems to have held up extremely well, all organic life forms except for people seem to survive, however all the people are gone. I was thinking perhaps a virus or some genetic degradation but that's getting a bit too fanciful.

Anyways it was probably mentioned in a bit of text I missed but let me know your thoughts.

[Anonymoose]

More specifically what happened to the people in particular. <...> The structures are in place and unharmed, the technology seems to have held up extremely well, all organic life forms except for people seem to survive, however all the people are gone.

The Allagan Empire was enormous; I'm not even sure we know it's full extent. We know at least it covered nearly all of Eorzea (Aldenard + Vylbrand) and much of Ilsabard (now Garlean-held), as well. When your empire is that big, the chances that something will survive relatively intact are pretty high, but plenty of it has been obliterated. What of their civilization isn't simply dust and rubble mostly looks like the ruins you see in Mor Dhona, Southern Thanalan, and Cartenau.

Crystal Tower went into a slumbering stasis as the Empire fell; Dalamud and Azys Lla went mostly untouched.

Many of the mobs we've dealt with were woken from stasis, as well, though it's clear that some engineered species were able to survive.

What happened to the people though?

The Empire was enormous, but the people had grown lazy and complacent. The Crystal Tower provided their needs for energy, and technology replaced every human obligation from work to warfare. Innovation stagnated, and the Empire waned. Desperate to see it restored to its former glory as revolt after revolt broke out, Amon resurrected the first emperor, Xande.

Returned from the dead, Xande was absolutely intent on completing his life's work - the completion of the Empire - at any cost. Consorting with the Darkness, he harnessed the Void itself and made a pact with the Cloud of Darkness, performing sacrifices (of clones) in exchange for control over voidsent and use of the pure destructive power of the Void. Weaponizing it in the corporeal realm, however, required far more energy than Crystal Tower could ever provide, so once Meracydia was taken, Dalamud was sent into the heavens to harness the suns energy, with the captured Meracydian primal Bahamut at its core to handle the energy channeling (and likely some form of energy conversion). Technology from there became more and more depraved as the dragons were enslaved and, as the era collapsed, Eikons and Primals were summoned fought and bound.

But this escalation of technology and desperation and conflict was Ascian machination, and it culminated when Xande grew nihilistic with nothing left to accomplish, having been tainted irrevocably by his death. He decided to throw open the Voidgate completely and allow the Cloud of Darkness to consume this world. To accomplish this, he tried to discharge all of Dalamud's energy into the Crystal Tower, but the tower couldn't handle it and the energy from both sources was sent directly into the ground, setting off a chain of massive, cataclysmic earthquakes.

Imagine the consequences of that disaster happening to that civilization.

What awaits the people who survive the quakes themselves? The energy networks fail, the machines they depend on for everything die. No machines to grow food, police order, manage infrastructure... People starve and kill one another for what few resources remain. The survivors disperse and rebuild as best they can, and new cultures arise after the dark age of the umbral era, but most specific technological knowledge is lost and, over time, what wreckage wasn't buried in the shifting of the earthquakes is buried by natural decay. People move on and start over.

Eventually, these civilizations would enjoy the Fourth Astral Era, but cause the Calamity of Ice. We know almost nothing about this time period. Those who survive the Age of Endless Frost, however, would rediscover aetherial manipulation and the Fifth Astral Era would be an age of magic (Amdapor, Nym, Mhach) until the War of the Magi brought it all down in a great flood, and then the few survives from that would give rise to the Sixth Astral Era and the path to the civilizations we know today. Some of these survivors are clearly descended from the Allag, though in many the genetics have diffused over time.

Have some of the Allag survived in some form? Or their direct descendants? Ehhh... Please Look Forward To It™

[Echofalls]

With a topic like this you're bound to attract two people, myself... and a certain Miqo'te friend of mine. He and I share a simillar view on that... end to CT.Let's wait to see how long it takes him to arrive...

All Allagan tech was built to last, as we've seen, though all the Nodes are in somewhat of a state after being reactivated after 5,000 years.

[Whiteroom]

I thought someone said they ran into a node up there broadcasting an emergancy message(have yet to run across it myself). Azys is a kind of reasearch facility. So it was likely abandoned once the empire collapsed. Annonymoose will probably have a better answer once he edits though.

[myahele]

I do believe *some* like Xande and his CT lackey manage to put themselves in some sort of stasis, but the rest did not have that luxury of foresight.

I believe that the rest of the pure-blooded Allagans that managed to survive probably interbred with the other populations. Afterall, if Doga and Une are an indicator, the Allag were just a sub clan of Hyurs.

At the very least we know some Doga/Une clones survive: Aetherochemical Research facilitiy's THM/CNJ clones

Also, there's atleast 1 suviving Allagan (Noah) who's possesing that Miqo'te female in Rev. Toll .... we sure could use his help.... and G'raha Tia's memories. Otherwise, none exists when it comes to main story

[Dererk]

Its not that the people disappeared.

They just divided and started over.

The whole empire was in the mid of a rebellion its clear that for most of the nations it conquered that afterwards they wanted nothing to do with it after it fell.

So it's not that the people disappeared they just started over.

[Aristes]

Thank you for the responses everyone, especially annonymoose. So from what I gather nothing truly special happened to the people which makes sense, especially considering the miqote you meet during the CT arc. I really enjoy the allagan lore, always interesting to me.

[Fenral]

Aw, he called for me.

Rather than open a debate on whether or not CT is even canon with what we know now, I'll just confirm that Moose's extrapolations on events after the fall are essentially correct from what we know so far, but remain extrapolations.

We know the Allagans didn't simply call it quits after the fall: one member of the royal line survived to hear her people's cries, and she made plans. For the moment we can assume she was merely a gentle idealist who refused to acknowledge the role that same idealism played in the fall of her civilization, but the fact remains that she had just enough tech to seize control of a certain someone's life millennia after all passed-down knowledge and oral tradition were lost. That something like that can be a singular isolated event with no repercussions whatsoever... is a hard pill to swallow, but it's all we have so far.

[Zohar_Lahar]

I wonder what happened to the personnel on Azys Lla when the Fourth Umbral Era began. Maybe they went into that Habisphere structure in the east.

[Frederick22]

I wonder what happened to the personnel on Azys Lla when the Fourth Umbral Era began. Maybe they went into that Habisphere structure in the east.

That is a dungeon, the fractal continum. Did you finish the story?