End of an Era; am I ret-conning my own recollections?

[Elladie]

I decided to indulge in some nostalgia and had an evening watching some of the trailers for ARR and even some cutscenes from 1.x. It made me realise that I'm not really sure what is actual memories and what's been changed by subsequent events, so I'm hoping some of the Loremasters can help me out ...

Did anyone in Eorzea know about Elder Primal Bahamut and his imprisonment in the Allaghan moon before Carteneau? Did anyone suspect? Am I misremembering that Nael van Darnus let the cat out of the bag a bit during Rivenroad? And how did it happen that he was somehow able to 'commune' with his 'god' or was he just being a crazy guy?

Did Cid believe that the Meteor project was just a matter of dropping the moon on the poor Eorzeans or did anything he say suggest he suspected more? Did Louisoix suspect more? I feel like they both had at least an idea - Louisoix particularly - but I don't know if I'm just twisting my own memories of that time.

Also - not completely tangential - what had Atomos to do with any of it?!

[Anonymoose]

Did anyone in Eorzea know about Elder Primal Bahamut and his imprisonment in the Allaghan moon before Carteneau? Did anyone suspect? Am I misremembering that Nael van Darnus let the cat out of the bag a bit during Rivenroad?

Not really. By the end, it's assumed (by the lore book) that Nael probably had a good grasp on what was up and that the game was trying to keep us in the dark by having Nael directly worship the moon itself, "Almighty Dalamud". However, it was more of a shock than not that Bahamut burst out of the Wonder Ball.

The big hint during Rivenroad was that Nael used Megaflare.

And how did it happen that he was somehow able to 'commune' with his 'god' or was he just being a crazy guy?

Eula Darnus was about 10 when Garlemald started taking a keener interest in Allagan relics dug up in their (often new) territories. House Darnus, who considered themselves the inheritors of Allagan knowledge and the rightful stewards of the secrets therein, was all but assuredly tapped for this. If she was convincingly going to pass for her fallen brother, she likely assumed his mantle around the time of the fall of Ala Mhigo (age 17) or a little after, but seems to definitely have done so by the Battle of Silvertear Skies (age 22), when the Meteor Project (designed out of some twisted loyalty to her brother and house) started picking up steam.

An object known as the "Lunar Transmitter" (basically the same Dalamud-controlling tech as Crystal Tower) was able to communicate with the lesser moon, so her goal was to use it to drop the thing on Eorzea and annihilate everything in one fell swoop - the primals, the tribes that summoned them, heathen nations that refused Garlean order, etc.

The lunar transmitter was designed to transfer energy using Bahamut as a transistor. Some the hell how, their fiddling with it allowed Bahamut to temper them through it. From that point on, Nael (and perhaps Midas himself) were claimed by Bahamut and warped by him. The desire to drop a moon on Eorzea became entwined with bringing God (tempering makes you believe the temperer is the One True God) back to purify the land. After all, there's not much difference between Nael's goal of annihilating everything in Eorzea and Bahamut's goal of burning everything in revenge for his imprisonment.

The first lunar transmitter was destroyed in 1562 when Midas accidentally triggered the full energy transmission and Teraflared himself off the face of the planet along with the entire city he was working from. The Empire deemed Dalamud uncontrollable and put the project aside until the Emperor became desperate due to Gaius's failures, his impending death, and Nael's assurances that (s)he could control Dalamud after all by building a new transmitter in Eorzea.

Even before (s)he gets it working, (s)he starts giving off hints that something is wrong as (s)he gets more zealous, including being a pureblood Garlean and working magicks at the Bowl of Embers. But as soon as the second transmitter is working and (s)he has a new conduit to Bahamut, (s)he receives another dose of "blessing" and gets even nuttier.

Did Cid believe that the Meteor project was just a matter of dropping the moon on the poor Eorzeans or did anything he say suggest he suspected more?

At first. As the moon grew red and drew closer and closer, it became more and more apparent that it was most definitely not a rock, and rumours started to swirl that it was an "ancient sin" cast into the heavens by the Allagan Empire.

Also - not completely tangential - what had Atomos to do with any of it?!

The worlds are kind of superimposed over each other to a degree. The membrane between Hydaelyn and the void is in constant flux, and the more unstable the aether, the more likely a tear can be made. Some tears are natural, some are man-made. Either way, when a tear large enough for Atomos to get through opens, it's pretty much the first in line to plow through and start chowing down on our precious aether.

As Dalamud wreaked havoc on the aetheral rivers, the aetheryte network went haywire. Atomos would break through a recent tear and essentially use the aetheryte itself as a straw, widening the rift and allowing dozens of voidsent through along with it.

[Elladie]

I see Moose post EDIT INCOMING and I clap excitedly!

[Shadotterdan]

I would like to add that Atomos might also draw cues from it's XI incarnation in which it appears seemingly as a conduit between worlds that are about to be destroyed and other worlds. Since Atomos in XI was more of an inter-dimensional enemy (from the series wide void as opposed to the 13th shard) it could even very well be the same phenomenon.

[Enkidoh]

A curious addendum to Professor Moose's excellent explanation is that it appears prior to the Calamity occurring, Bahamut's existence was in fact known on some level, whether through ancient stories or cultural memories or through some other means by the general public - in 1.0 the first Job quest for PLD featured this curious exclamation from Captain Jenlyns, the captain of the Sultansworn of Ul'dah:



Even more curious, is the line was retained for the exact same quest in ARR as well. So, how did Jenlyns know of Bahamut? Foreshadowing not only what was really inside Dalamud, recalling cultural memes of the real Bahamut killed by the Allagans in Meracydia? It always puzzled me why Jenlyns said that, although it could have just been a sly bit of hinting how the Calamity was going to unfold by Ferne.

[Anonymoose]

although it could have just been a sly bit of hinting how the Calamity was going to unfold by Ferne.

If I remember correctly, it was this - there was another one, as well:

The newfangled doodah before you was built by Immortal Flames scholarlies. It can teleport you to any corner of the city quicker than you can say “Bahamut's backside”...and all for the bargain price of 500 gil! [IF DECLINED:] Bahamut can't live on good wishes and a smile, so why should I? Beggars can walk.

German once used "Since the accident in the mines, the Bahamut is loose at Frondale's Phrontistery" in a Tanaka-era MSQ, but I think it was just a nod to series past at the time.

Also, I completely forgot about it until now, but there was also that quest where Nael started kidnapping people potentially with information on primals trying to twist it into an advantage. The VIIth nabbed up an Ishgardian theologian that claimed there were ancient beliefs of dragons believing in a god amongst their kind. I'd originally had a theory that it was the XIVth who kidnapped him, they spirited him away to Aurum Vale because Nael had Castrum Novum and who in their right mind would look for anything in Aurum Vale, and that the information they gleaned was enough for Gaius to finally turn on him ... but it didn't turn out quite so complex in the end, lol.

[Elladie]

I'm not sure if I'm mis-remembering this as well - or even possibly making it up - but wasn't it suggested by Ferne or someone that the name Dalamud was a corruption over time of the name Bahamut? In which case, perhaps it was widely known at some point in the past exactly what the 'moon' was?

[Anonymoose]

wasn't it suggested by Ferne <...> that the name Dalamud was a corruption over time of the name Bahamut?

Indeed, "Dalamud" mimics a natural warping of "Bahamut" over the ages.

Unless you play in Japanese. They went off on their own for that one.

In which case, perhaps it was widely known at some point in the past exactly what the 'moon' was?

In the Third Astral Era, that was probably so. Felling Bahamut would probably have been a massive PR victory for the Empire. Putting dragons on heraldry and fashioning Dreadwyrm attire might have been taken as a projection of dominance; finally having conquered the oldest and smartest lifeforms in the world.

But recall that in the time after Allag fell, the pursuit of higher learning and education beyond good, hard, honest work that pleased the gods was shunned. For many, it was a dark age without universities or printing presses. And then even once such things were embraced more openly in the Fifth and Sixth eras, you'd still have had three world-rocking disasters between Bahamut's capture and the 1572nd Year of the Sixth Astral Era.

Ferne is a fan of linguistics, and English (on which Eorzean is based) is a strange, tricky, organic, and interesting language that's been warped many ways that could inspire a fantasy word like Dalamud. Perhaps T becomes D in oral transmission. Perhaps a man secretly takes the forbidding fruits of learning and makes a copy of a book by hand, but makes a mistake - a letter is mis-read, mis-drawn, malformed. Perhaps ink fades or smudges or is rubbed off as tomes are stored, read, and sit around for ages. B becomes D. h becomes l.

I'm reminded of the word "nuncle" that was mistaken for a typo in early Heavensward. Long ago, English shared the Germanic sound "mein" for "my". Mine uncle became my nuncle. This one little transformation-via-mistake happened all the damn time. An otch became a notch. An ewt (from eft) became a newt. We're still doing this one in English TODAY. But that's a whole nother topic.

There are lots of ways a word can go awry over the years. Perhaps, if we could look back in time, we could see a snapshot of the transformation. For example, we might see a Fifth Astral Era scholar read aloud to a group of pupils a book hand-copied by a monk, confidently teaching the dangers of hubris with the parable of the Allagans and the consequences of the great sin, Dahamud. For them, Dahamud is every bit as accurate as Dalamud was for us.

Yet once the tales drifted too far and Bahamut was forgotten, replaced by Dalamud, loyal hound of the goddess Menphina, it would have been all but impossible to glean the truth.

[Miyha]

Unrelated but as another linguistics nerd I just wanted to point out how happy it made me to read a linguistics "rant" written by Moose. :P

[Elladie]

I particularly enjoyed Moose's linguistics exposition also. And he's absolutely right. You can start off with something very dark - say the Black Death for example (or Bahamut's war against the Allaghan) - that gets turned into a equally dark and creepy song. "Ring o ring o roses, a pocket full of posies (because the perfume of the flowers was supposed to be a protection against the evil miasma of the disease); Atishoo, atishoo (oh god, i got sick); We all fall down (several hundreds of thousands of folk died during the Black Death). How many mothers singing that with their kids actually realise what it refers to? And in this case we get the Dread Wyrm becoming a jovial curse whose significance is also completely forgotten ...

Edit: that Aymeric dance thing is utterly hypnotic