I made a lore explanation video for the Blessing of Light

[Cleretic]

https://youtu.be/8oxf8lhQduk

Hello! My last video about the Ascians was fairly well-received (and its problems reported were learning experiences), so on request from someone over on the FFXIV subredddit, I covered the Blessing of Light!

I figured that's a pretty important thing to go over in the leadup to Endwalker, because there's very little said about what's actually a pretty important underpinning of the game's story. So, good to go over everything we've got, so that we don't accidentally make things up! Nothing against making things up, but we've gotta keep track of what originated there versus in the text.

[ItMe]

Yooo~
After your last one I waited until I had an hour to watch this, and was surprised when it was only 20 minutes (so I watched it a few times to fully digest it haha).

I... never realized how much nuance there was behind the "Blessing" of light so this taught me a lot. Lot of good info here I didn't even know I wanted (like all your info on the WoL and the "are they tempered" issue).

Excellent vid, thanks for sharing it~
I'm forwarding it straight to my FC.



Also, I'm curious, when getting together info for these videos how do you do research?

[Cleretic]

Yooo~
Also, I'm curious, when getting together info for these videos how do you do research?

A lot of it comes from just already being pretty deep on the lore, so I know where a lot of these details already are in a more general sense, I just have to review that stuff for the specifics. I often check websites to get a skeleton of things; the Final Fantasy Fandom wiki and Gamerescape tend to give decent cliff's notes, and then it's a matter of finding their sources. This video was a little harder than the Ascian video in that sense, because the Ascian details are typically very clustered; all the Igeyorhm stuff is around all of the Igeyorhm scenes, for example.

With the Blessing video, though, that's harder. You have the Hydaelyn-centric scenes in ARR and the Antitower, yeah, but important stuff is also raised in stuff like the 5.2 MSQ and Ifrit's summoning, that wouldn't necessarily occur to you. When it comes to other languages I've got some friends who generally remember and bring up stuff like 'Midgardsormr is way less mean in Japanese', so I could generally recall and ask about that.

So a lot of my actual research comes from talking about the stuff with people who know that subject better than me. The Novice Network is a surprisingly good angle for it; I can call out there if I'm struggling to figure out exactly where something was said, and usually get someone who knows it well enough. The Warriors of Darkness scenes are a great example of that one; I knew generally-speaking that it was mentioned Ardbert killed Ascians prior to Shadowbringers, but someone in the Novice Network was able to mention specifically which patch.

What can also be very helpful, weirdly, are people who think they know what they're talking about. Someone trying to prove an especially absurd 'WoL is tempered' variant is actually the one that pointed me to the Ifrit scene, mostly because they misremembered it. A theory doesn't come from complete nowhere, so it's useful to dig through a claim to find what they think is the proof.

The hard part, in all honesty, is the Encyclopedia Eorzea. I'm Australian, so I can't actually get copies of it; only the Japanese version gets shipped here. But I do have an incomplete PDF lying around that lets me check a few things, and a lot of the more out-of-nowhere things you hear tend to come from there. I can often hit some dead-ends because of the fact I can't check it directly, though; I remember hearing at some point that Ramuh is speculated to be an interpretation of Rhalgr, for example, but I can never find the passage that supposedly says that.

[Vyrerus]

Liked this video better than the last, probably because it was a bit shorter...(says the guy who does 60~100 minute LP recordings...).

Do take note though, that the WoL does use the Blessing of Light in their battle with Hades. When Hades uses Life in Captivity, we break out of the chains to the words, "The Light within Her Champions grows faint..." with the ATE labelled, "Unleash Light." "Draw upon the strength of the Light within you!"

Hades wonders if the Warden's Light won free, but then promptly curses the Blessing.

It stands in starker contrast when compared to the fight against Elidibus. When we are cast into the Rift in shackles, we break out of the chains with what's labelled, "Will of Defiance." No Light to be seen anywhere.

[ItMe]

The hard part, in all honesty, is the Encyclopedia Eorzea. [...] I can't check it directly, though; I remember hearing at some point that Ramuh is speculated to be an interpretation of Rhalgr, for example, but I can never find the passage that supposedly says that.

Maybe this'll help ; )
If my photos suck lemme know and I'll try retaking them (especially since the fancy font in the first one is a pain to read even when looking straight at the book itself)

[Cleretic]

Maybe this'll help ; )
If my photos suck lemme know and I'll try retaking them (especially since the fancy font in the first one is a pain to read even when looking straight at the book itself)

Oh wow, thank you so much! I've felt so awkward around this assertion, because I was certain it wasn't from nowhere and I think it's a really neat and realistic wrinkle in how gods are depicted, but if anyone ever asked for confirmation of it all I really had was 'so I'm pretty sure it's in the Encyclopedia Eorzea somewhere, but I don't own it, so I can't tell you where'.