Thread: Revelations from Patch 4.3

About Shadowhunter:

I can see him permanently kill lower Ascians but Overlords? I think that he might just kill their hosts otherwise it would feel a bit off since it either took us a great sacrifice or a big amount of aether to do that. I know that not all Ascians are of the same rank but shouldnt Elidibus kinda worry a bit if someone else next to the WoL is starting to kill red masked Ascians?

Re the above...

Hence my incredulity that it would involve anything permanent. Had the Allagan devised such techniques, we would likely know of it by now. I think Gaius is probably just killing the hosts with his little posse. The precedent set by the WoL and later Thordan re Igeyorhm probably has Elidibus intrigued, though he doesn't seem to be the fearful type. I suspect he will be the most powerful Ascian we've seen to date. I would not be surprised if he has not begun investing in some counter-measures. Remember, after all, that he says to Varis that he is not too concerned if some of his black robed brethren are slaughtered and would not stop him. Perhaps he is already aware of what Gaius has been up to.

The last point I will make is that the overlords possess great power. As shown with Nabriales and Moenbryda, this extends to great physical strength, but more importantly, they possesses a devastatingly powerful arcane arsenal. Nabriales, and Igeyorhm/Lahabrea (and then the Ascian Prime), would not struggle even a little to crush a mortal foe who was not the WoL. It has long been my suspicion that the WoL has a much stronger concentration of "echo" powers than anyone else with the Echo (although there are probably some others who come close), upon which the Blessing of Light is then added on top. This is why they can withstand such beings, as well as eikons, void lords (think Forgall and his death magic), and such. Even the lesser Ascians, like the one in the SMN quest, can pose a significant threat, and the one in question only balked when you became attuned with Bahamut's aether traces, which in itself is a significant power. I'm also not entirely convinced the Blessing of Light was suppressed, so much as Midgardsormr made you think it was, to get you to rely more on your own abilities and wits, but this is an aside as my view is that the concentration of Echo in the WoL is really the source of his power, with the BoL as a cherry on top. What I am getting at here is that Gaius & co would need some impressive abilities to best an overlord, if that is indeed what the red masks represent; alternatively, he would need some means of breaking their connection to their "host", which is what I actually suspect is at play. Any number of things could then be the tool, but it's anyone's guess as to what. Lastly, I will hazard a guess that to witness their full power, we will have to see them in their "true" form, as all other forms we've seen are akin to avatars.

Shadowhunter:

I'm not going to say he's not Gaius. That is the most likely conclusion that can be reached given the (veritable mountain of) evidence supporting it, and what I am running with until we get explicit confirmation or denial.

I'm just saying it's possible he's not Gaius. How? Well... there are endless possibilities and "What if?"s that can be raised to answer all those. The most probable conclusion is that he is Gaius, but the possibility he's not, however slight, lingers.

How has he been killing Overlords? How did he get from Eorzea to the Burn? Unknown, but I suspect those questions will be answered in time. He may just be killing the hosts; they need to use their Dark Crystals to return to the interstitial world between dimensions; if they're stopped from using them as Thordan did that's not an out, and if there is a way to prevent the possession of a living person they're no more invincible than the black masks.

Perhaps totally-not-Gaius will be our in to Garlemald... but given Gaius is a disgraced and presumed dead legatus, I doubt he has much power there anymore. That he's hunting Ascians is a good thing, though.

Yotsuyu / MSQ

The whole thing just feels like an unmitigated tragedy; like we should have been able to stop it, but couldn't. Asahi's designs became pretty apparent during the Echo flashback through Yotsuyu's father, and considering the Warrior of Light (a.k.a. the Eikon Slayer) was there and she still summoned anyway I can't help but feel like she wanted us to kill her. MSQ was pretty damn emotionally draining. Not quite 3.3, but close.

Took me an extra day to finish MSQ because I ended up iLevel gated. A six month break will do that. I'll sleep on my thoughts and organize them into something coherent tomorrow. Until then:

Originally Posted by Cilia

Yotsuyu / MSQ

Oddly enough, I feel better about her than I do a lot of past tragedies we've gotten. Not in the "it didn't feel tragic" sense, but in that it didn't feel blatantly manipulative, as the story made efforts to acknowledge the viability of other outcomes, then gave us a clear look inside her head on the way to the outcome we actually got.

I also feel like it was the sort of event that could have some extra payoff down the line, though hopefully nothing that would give her tragedy some positive "purpose."

With respect to that ...

That is a very good point. I think all he would need to do then is to break the connection to their host somehow, as I mentioned in my post. It's a much more confined aim than actually killing an overlord, which may be outwith the scope of his abilities. I mean Thancred's possession goes to show how subtle it can be. I am guessing some of the lesser ones have become less than subtle about their presence in Garlean borders, given Elidibus's words to Varis.

Originally Posted by Cilia

Perhaps totally-not-Gaius will be our in to Garlemald... but given Gaius is a disgraced and presumed dead legatus, I doubt he has much power there anymore.

Yeah, this is what I suspect too. In the extreme, if the Emperor were to perish, he could use that to seize power, and may even find some support in so doing, but the fact that Alphinaud is headed to Garlemald might suggest they have other plans in mind. The Emperor seems to be skeptical of Elidibus, so perhaps it won't take much to convince him to change course... if it's not too late. IMO, Gaius is being set up as the NPC to guide us to Garlemald, more than anything else and he won't be marching in and taking the reins. Maxima will probably be our connection to the Populares.

re: Shadowhunter

Is it possible he possess' the Heart of Sabik still? He could have took it from the remains of the Ultima Weapon, given that it is an ancient relic of unknown origin, perhaps it can hold Ascian souls, like the Eyes of the first brood

Originally Posted by ObsidianFire

The biggest fallout of "killing an Ascian" is not if the Ascian is actually dead. It's that they are not in whatever host they possessed and can no longer manipulate a situation from that host. The most damage the Ascians managed to do against the Scions stems from the fact that the Scions had no reason not to trust Thancred with all their information. The odds of them manipulating situations elsewhere from possessed hosts no one knows are Ascians is very high (Suishi of the Violet Tides is a good example). The big problem is, so far we've never seen anyone figure out how to tell if people are actually possessed by Ascians... but you'd probably need to be able to do that if you're specifically hunting Ascians...

I think one could identify them thanks to the black crystal. Thancred was wearing one and they need it to bind them to their hosts. Even Minfilia seems to have such a crystal but a white one. (I hope I remember that correctly)

Ten character filler to let me edit in my post.

Originally Posted by Cilia

MSQ

Asahi goaded her into incarnating as Tsukuyomi as predicted (I figured out what was in the crates well before then)

I found it amusing that he also had the crates set out in the open in Castrum Fluminis during their first meeting this patch, where he revealed his parents. That didn't trigger Yotsuyu yet, though, so he took the crates back.

I'm imagining an alternate what-if scenario where Yotsuyu refused to give into her despair, so Asahi keeps following her everywhere and needling her, except he keeps getting interrupted by the big Garlean magitek transport also following them around carrying all these crates of crystals just in case.

Originally Posted by Cilia

I figured there must have been a reason they focused on the white mask in the closing scene, and given no Ascian is known to use a white mask there must have been something special about it.

Technically Unukalhai.

Of course, Unukalhai's mask looks nothing like the usual Ascian mask, so your point stands.

I did find it odd that Shadowhunter keeps Gaius's mask on his belt, next to the Ascian masks he keeps as trophies. To what purpose? (Speaking from a Watsonian point of view, I mean. I know the Doylist reason is to let us viewers know that This Is Gaius.)

Originally Posted by ObsidianFire

That said, given that Gaius was the one who was running the place, I don't think it's too far fetched to suppose he knew of other ways to get out of there. As far as opportunities to fake your death go, it's a really good one to take advantage of. It's not like people are going to look for you if they know you're dead.

I'm rather curious why Gaius felt the need to fake his death even from his own legion. (Or did he? It's not like we talked to many XIVth legionnaires after the destruction of the Ultima Weapon.)

The remnants of the XIVth legion are obviously still around, and based on the RDM questline they're still nominally in charge of Castrum Meridianum, so Gaius would have had to escape from there without the knowledge of his own troops, if he wanted to fake his death. Presumably the chaos of the Praetorium's destruction would help, but said destruction happened right on top of Gaius, so that might cancel the advantage.

I'm also curious why Gaius chose here and now to show himself as Shadowhunter. He must have had some way of obtaining information (especially since his spymaster Nero is now working with us), since he was obviously waiting in the middle of the Burn (a huge desolate region with nothing of interest and much danger) at exactly the same time and place as the airship with Alphinaud to get shot down and attacked by the Royal Guard. This was obviously planned, but how is the question.