Question About Dun Scaith and Scathach

[Soge01]

Why is Scathach portrayed as an antagonist and her castle a dungeon in FFXIV? Isn't Scathach supposed to be a master of martial arts and trainer of warriors within Dun Scaith, her impenetrable fortess/castle?

[LuckiGoLucki]

I've never heard of this.... As far as I'm aware Scathach is the Voidsent Shadow Queen, who was imprisoned in the Void Ark to help keep it running. Diabolos freed her from the Void Ark and they, along with Ferdidad (spelling?) went to Dun Scaith.

EDIT: Oooh you are talking about real life history....well I think the developers/writers for the story like to take examples and people from real life and input them into the game. So yea...

[cheolsu]

yeah, and cu chulainn is supposed to be a giant caterpillar final fantasy takes the names from real life, but they're something else in game

[TinyRedLeaf]

final fantasy takes the names from real life, but they're something else in game

Indeed. I mean, if we're going to be "literal" about sources, Ifrit would be an Arabian djinn, Shiva would be a Hindu god (yes, god, not goddess) and Bismarck would be a man or a dreadnought, and not a flying whale.

[Cilia]

The names of things in-game rather rarely reflect their real-life inspiration, so Scathach doesn't have to reflect her mythic counterpart.

The only thing I can call to mind that references the real-world myth is Ravana, who like in Hindu myth, couldn't be defeated by a god(dess) - it took us, a mortal, to do what a (fake) deity could not.

[Soge01]

Thabk you for the help everyone. Now I know Scathach and Dun Scaith were just an indirect reference. It's actuall really interesting how that works. ^^

[Zetsumei_Tsunarashi]

Lore Spoilers

Voidsent according to FFXIV lore were once ordinary denizens of one of the reflections of the source which was overwhelmed by darkness and as a result became voidsent. While it's not specifically stated in the lore, it's possible that Scathach in life, was more closely aligned with the Scathach described in OP. I personally believe, for example, that the statues around the arena of the Diabolos Hollow fight are statues of what Diabolos looked like in human form.

[Shadotterdan]

Indeed. I mean, if we're going to be "literal" about sources, Ifrit would be an Arabian djinn, Shiva would be a Hindu god (yes, god, not goddess) and Bismarck would be a man or a dreadnought, and not a flying whale.

I've heard before that in the making of FF3, Shiva was actually supposed to be Shiver, but Katakana doesn't always cooperate and that's why a blue ice goddess is named Shiva

[StarDrake]

Like Zetsumei said,

there's been a fairly heavy implication that the "Irish heroes", as we would know them and as they're all being sourced for the Mhach raids and the upper echelons of the voidsent in general, were once heroic figures more like their real-life legends in the process of trying to stop the Rejoining on their world. The problem is, as the lore book states, their use of auracite changed them; by the time they had "won", they were no longer recognizable as the heroes they had been or we would know.

I've been wondering if we might get a glimpse of the heroes as they were before their decay, or if even one of the old heroes somehow escaped the fate of his fellows and is fighting a doomed war to stop the others (Diarmuid Ua Duibhne, maybe? Or Fionn Mac Cumhaill, or Fergus Mac Roich?), but that's honestly just potholing. They could go there, but it also feels like, for now at least, the Voidsent "story" is wrapped. There's a decent chance we'll run into some of them again, or run into new ones, but what happened is clear and the immediate threat from the Thirteenth has been dealt with.

For a little more background, a lot of the above spoiler stuff is the result of the legacy of previous Final Fantasy games - it all got started with "Cuchulainn" (or Queklain for you PS1 vets) being one of the Lucavi in Final Fantasy Tactics, and there at least it seems like the name was nearly drawn out of a hat. The Lucavi demon of that game has essentially nothing to do with the various Ulster Cycle myths of Setanta Cu Chulainn, and none of the other Lucavi reference any cycle of Irish myth (they're largely drawn from Judeo-Christian apocrypha). What's going on in XIV seems to be an attempt to take that seemingly out-of-place character and build a wider mythology around its current state, leading to the spoilered situation above.

I would imagine this also seems more curious these days because the heroes of Irish-Celtic mythology have been getting quite a bit more exposure in recent years both in the Anglosphere and in Japan, especially in Fate/Grand Order, the hugely successful mobile game that's become the new flagship product of the Fate franchise. Pretty much all of the Ulster Cycle characters in XIV to date (save Ferdiad, funnily enough) have appeared in F/GO, and they tend to be a lot truer-to-the-text due to Fate's premise of summoning "Heroic Spirits" to assist with various escapades.

I suspect this actually informed XIV's Scathach to some degree - F/GO's Scathach has become virtually iconic (it's been publicly acknowledged she's pushed more gacha purchases than any other F/GO character) and the various XIV design teams probably wanted to make sure there was some distance between their Scathach and the one who has risen to meteoric popularity lately (and, in fact, literally alongside Heavensward's run). Thus, the design of "our" Scathach being somewhere between Kingdom Hearts and Tim Burton, as opposed to the mysterious warrior witch of legend.

[Sunspawn]

What I'd like is rather than the "heroes of another world gone wrong" angle, the voidsent be kind of like The Dread from the Riftwar series - initially speculated to be simply denizens of a lower reality (that is, denizens strong and terrifying enough to appall even the god-tier dragon riders from the past of the reality the books are set in).