Dalamud

[Iscah]

Given how far Othard is from Aldenard (three months of sea travel at least)

Off on a tangent, but.... three months. We were travelling on Carvallain's ship for three months (or even, let's say its a particularly fast ship, one month) and that time just doesn't exist from a player perspective. Very strange when I stop to think about it. How much character interaction should have happened during that time?

[Brightamethyst]

Which raises a whole bunch of other questions as well. Let's assume it took three months to get to Kugane the first time at level 60. Once there getting back was easy because of aetherytes and telelporting, but what about everyone else? After Doma was there a few months worth of waiting around on Hien and Co. sailing to Eorzea before all the stuff went down in Ala Mihgo?

This game is really bad about showing the passage of time between story events. There's a big disconnect between us seeing everything happening in quick succession and logic saying that it must be days or weeks in between.

[ObsidianFire]

Actually, my mistake, kinda. It takes the fastest trading vessels with favorable weather two months to get from Vylbrand to Doma. It's a bit of a throwaway line in the geography section of the lore book. The other distance mentioned is that it takes at least two weeks to get from Old Sharlayan to Vylbrand if the weather stays good. Slower vessels will obviously take longer.

None of that info makes it into the game as far as I can tell. I'm pretty sure the story team really isn't thinking about things like travel time though. It's hard to clue most people in to character development that could happen off-screen, so it's better to just let people RP whether it happens or not.

[Enkidoh]

Carvallain's ship the Misery was fitted secretly with magitek (cereleum) engines though - the sails were mostly just for show (and possibly to lure opponents into a false sense of superiority thinking they have no wind to move). This was revealed in the cutscenes leading into Sirensong Sea - Alphinaud tells Carvallain to turn on his engines and the pirate glares bemusedly to him with a "How did you know?" look - either way the beacon on Sirensong Sea seemed to intefere with the engines as they cut out (this would also explain why one of the wrecked vessels in Sirensong Sea was clearly a Garlean airship).

So I wonder whether Sirensong Sea was actually interfering with travel between Eorzea and the Far East - with that no longer an issue it's only natural that suddennly vessels would find their journey times slashed (it would certainly explain Hien and Yugiri's sudden and fortuitous appearance at the Battle of Ala Mhigo in any event).

[ObsidianFire]

The Sirensong Sea is directly south of Thavnair and is the the halfway point to Hingashi. The island we end up on is treated by everyone on the Misery as being something very abnormal. So I doubt it's adding more to the travel time on a regular basis.

Technically, the Misery's cereleum engines are illegal. Carvallain and other privater captains are supposed to turn all Garlean Tech they seize over to the Maelstrom. Carvallain apparently hasn't been doing that. It would explain a lot of why he's able to raid Garlean ships with high success rates though. He's probably not making too much use of them in Eorzean waters as that would make his travel times too fast. He's probably stealing the cereleum to power them from the Garleans; getting ahold of cereleum in Eorzea isn't that easy as the only place that produces it is in Thanalan. And the Ironworks and the Airship companies get most of it. It also would require a lot of cereleum. The amount of cereleum needed to get from Eorzea to Hingashi is one of the reasons the Scions aren't traveling by airship. Sea travel would take even longer and require more fuel. I took Carvallain's reaction to Aslisae telling him to turn them on as resigning himself to the Scions having a lot of blackmail material on him by then...

Two months, by the way, is a good estimate of how long it would take in the age of fast sailing ships to sail from the Western Coast of Europe to Japan if Africa ended at the Equator instead of jutting out like it does.

[Jonnycbad]

7th calamity isn't space, I would say it's non-elemental. Non-elemental is a recurring theme in FF games and is usually the "element" associated with things like Meteor, Flare, and Bahamut. http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Non-elemental

[ObsidianFire]

The problem with Bahamut being non-elemental is that the Lore Book reveals Bahamut in FFXIV does have a specific element. Bahamut, when he was alive, was associated with the dawn/rising sun. He retained that association when he was summoned as a primal. He is a fire aspected primal, although the fire is more along the lines of solar fire then a mundane one.

Bahamut being aspected to solar aether is why he was even put in Dalamud. He's basically a magnet for solar aether which Dalamud collects and funnels to the Crystal Tower to power the Allagan Empire. Or at least, it did until the 4th Umbral Calamity. As far as I can tell, Bahamut/Dalamud didn't stop collecting solar aether once that happened. They simply never were ordered to release that energy until the Lunar Transmitter activation at Bozja Citadel.

[Jonnycbad]

Is Nidhogg considered "fire aspected"? I mean I know he's fire because he has fire based attacks, but I wonder if it's more like umbral fire (as he has a bunch of "dark" based fire attacks and purple flames too. An would Hraesvelgar be 'non-aspected' since he has a bunch of Light/Holy attacks?

[ObsidianFire]

There's a big difference between Bahamut, the dragon, and Bahamut, the primal. Tiamat, Bahamut's consort and the person who summoned Bahamut, the primal, goes so far to say that the two are completely different. The severity of the difference is even why she's stayed in Azyz Lla this entire time.

Dragons have their own aether aspects that works differently from anything else as a result of them being aliens to Hydalyn, the planet. The main difference is whether they have more wind or earth aether or an even mix of both as that determines what type of dragon they end up being. The closer dragons get to being descended from Migardsormr, the more non-normal their forms and aether seem to get. As Midgadrsormr's children, Bahamut, Nidhogg, Hrasvelgr, etc. probably have some of the most non-normal aether of anything living. The "normal" rules of aether apply to them very loosely.

[Theodric]

If any shards from Dalamud happened to fall within Gyr Abania then there's a good chance that they were dismantled and recycled for parts by the Garleans stationed there.