Season 2 Storyline (another 10 years) [discussion]

[Cleretic]

Maybe, after ten years, we'll finally get to go to Gelmorra.

...nah, on second thought, we're not gonna go there that early.

[Vyrerus]

Maybe, after ten years, we'll finally get to go to Gelmorra.

...nah, on second thought, we're not gonna go there that early.

We've already been there.

All of the architecture and ruins below the Shroud are Gelmorran. Tam Tara Deepcroft, the Mun Tuy Bean place, the ruins up to the east of the Ixali logging camp, PoTD(even comes with Hero of Gelmorra title), Thousand Maw of Totorak, and a couple of inaccessible areas hinted at in 1.0. All ruins, all Gelmorra.

They came out of the ground after learning to commune with the Elementals and founded Gridania.

I mean, I guess if we got a time traveling expansion we could go to Gelmorra when it was a full on subterranean city still teeming with activity. /shrug

[Iscah]

I mean, I guess if we got a time traveling expansion we could go to Gelmorra when it was a full on subterranean city still teeming with activity. /shrug

We're told that the Duskwights are still living in caves somewhere in their generic lore, but actual worldbuilding doesn't seem to want to touch it.

I want to see a modern-day Gelmorra. A city built around vast caverns and twining passages, illuminated with crystals and decorated with elaborate cave formations.

Imagine something in the deep river-caves of Qitana, or a more cheerful version of Dzemael Darkhold.

I will keep on hoping we get to see it.

[Cleretic]

We've already been there.

All of the architecture and ruins below the Shroud are Gelmorran. Tam Tara Deepcroft, the Mun Tuy Bean place, the ruins up to the east of the Ixali logging camp, PoTD(even comes with Hero of Gelmorra title), Thousand Maw of Totorak, and a couple of inaccessible areas hinted at in 1.0. All ruins, all Gelmorra.

They came out of the ground after learning to commune with the Elementals and founded Gridania.

I mean, I guess if we got a time traveling expansion we could go to Gelmorra when it was a full on subterranean city still teeming with activity. /shrug

To be a bit more direct and less tongue-in-cheek: Gelmorra's a weird one among plot threads, in that we've had sort of the 'beginning teasers' but never any sort of payoff to it.

In 1.0, Gelmorra was clearly being set up as a major element; they had three dungeons (Tam-Tara and Toto-Rak, the Mun-Tuy Cellars were a dungeon then too), there were a bunch of ruins scattered around the Shroud, the endgame currencies were from there, both the history of the Shroud and the history of an entire race is rooted in it. Chances are, they wanted to make it the same sort of story presence that Allag ended up being in the live game, this constant shadowed presence of those who came before. I do think Allag was better suited for that role as an aside, because the intended endgame of 1.0 would've been heavily skewed towards the Shroud, which would kinda suck for anyone who started anywhere else.

But it leaves Gelmorra in a weird spot in the live game, because unlike a lot of the 1.0 setup they threw away like the mystery of Silvertear, Gelmorra couldn't be completely brushed away; there was just too much of it. So as a result we're sort of left with a conspicuous amount of setup for a setting element that has no payoff. A lot of setup for 'this is a place that was real, these are the people that lived there, these are the still-relevant societal issues that stem from this time and place', and then... nothing. Ever. I did a whole video on PotD's lore, and the fact it was Gelmorran (well, a quarter of it was) is basically incidental to the story present about the whole place.

Sure, if there's a time-travel expansion, visiting Gelmorra in its prime would be neat (although I'd expect a time travel expansion to go to the Third or Fifth Astral Eras, not early Sixth), but if that's the only thing you think can be done with it... well, I can tell you're not a desperate and frustrated Duskwight roleplayer, at the very least. There's indication there might still be a Gelmorran population somewhere down there, for one, which certainly has potential. On top of that... while we've been to Gelmorran structures, it's never been because of Gelmorra. We know next to nothing about their actual society, art, techniques, history (beyond 'was there, kinda sucked, then people left', which sounds to me like history written by a Gridanian who wants to marginalize that part of history), anything. And I dunno about you, but 'underground society that thrived despite all above-ground nature literally wanting to murder them' sounds like a really neat setting, especially when you mix in the kinda suspicious history about the Padjali and the not-total migration above ground, which seems to me like something fishy happened.

For all the times we've been there, we've never had an actual Gelmorran story. We've overdue for one!

EDIT: Iscah gets it! It'd be a beautiful setting if they actually took a swing at it outside of the ARR constraints.

[Vyrerus]

cheek in tongue

I mean, I don't have anything against seeing Gelmorra, but it really does only apply to the Shroud and one specific time period. There's not a lot to work with there, in overall story terms, and people who didn't play 1.0 and don't play Duskwights aren't invested. Maybe we'll find the plothread of subterranean civilization visited/lifted with less stone work and more sci-fi in Endwalker in Labyrinthos for under Sharlayan.

I had a Duskwight character for a while that I named a Dark Souls reference. He's an alt back up for my LP character now, though. We at least know that the Mun Tuy Beans were a Gelmorran staple, since the big thing about them is that they need no sunlight to grow and are described as Duskwight food (That everyone loves).

[Cleretic]

I mean, I don't have anything against seeing Gelmorra, but it really does only apply to the Shroud and one specific time period. There's not a lot to work with there, in overall story terms, and people who didn't play 1.0 and don't play Duskwights aren't invested. Maybe we'll find the plothread of subterranean civilization visited/lifted with less stone work and more sci-fi in Endwalker in Labyrinthos for under Sharlayan.

I had a Duskwight character for a while that I named a Dark Souls reference. He's an alt back up for my LP character now, though. We at least know that the Mun Tuy Beans were a Gelmorran staple, since the big thing about them is that they need no sunlight to grow and are described as Duskwight food (That everyone loves).

The thing that gives me hope of 'maybe we'll actually go to Gelmorra now' is more that, once Endwalker's big far-reaching story wraps, that sounds like a perfect chance to loop back home and do some 'housekeeping story', spend some time in the settings of previous expansions. We're actually due for at least one focused around Gridania; remember that Stormblood and Shadowbringers got patches about Ul'Dah and Limsa respectively. And when they do that... honestly, the Shroud's got a lot of weird stuff, but it's all interconnected: Amdapor, Gelmorra, the Padjali, and the Elementals.

Gelmorra may be a bit too in-the-weeds to be the proper core of a story about all of that, but it would make for a very good stage; the birthplace of the Padjali, and the home of both the descendants of Amdapor's destruction and the closest there ever was to actual opposition to the Elementals' whims. If you did a 'Versus the Elementals' trial or dungeon, it would perfectly fit to set it in a Gelmorran site.

[Yuella]

Meracydia in 7.x will set up dragonstar and omegastar nicely for 8.x and beyond

[Veloran]

Yoshi P mentioning that we'd be thinking "We're going THAT far?" kind of suggests me that we'll be going to another continent entirely in 7.x.

I really don't know why anybody is thinking this refers to physical distance. I would very much believe this is talking about doing something very extreme and unprecedented with the storyline, something that people can't fathom them actually doing or introducing.

Theorizing what this might be, I'd like to talk about the Endwalker vinyl MV for a moment. First watching it I was left thinking it was a very basic music video for the song, but like I'm sure others have noticed it has some weird hidden symbolism. Firstly, with the fact that it has Yotsuyu.




And secondly, that it has Emet-Selch and his signature wave.



Along with these two dead characters, we have the main girl, who I take to be a stand-in for WoL. Now in the video we first have her walking away with the very distinctive blue sparkles of death.



And at the end walking off into the light, the same light WoL is walking from in the cinematic trailer.




Now, this is wild theory territory here, but I'm going to suggest that all of this is symbolizing nothing less than WoL's own death. That the "THAT far?" we're going to go to is having the player's own character die at the end of the story, in an MMO. From there the next expansion will open with all players being forced to create entirely new alts to play though the new MSQ with. An ARRR if you will.

"The rumored return of a certain fellow is planned for 6.1 onwards." Yoshi-p from most recent live letter.

The question is probably who is this certain fellow?

I'm like 99% sure he was talking about Hildibrand.

[Vyrerus]

WoL Dies Theory

If they were to do that, I imagine it would go something like, we were never a real person to begin with. Just some sort of simulacra or primal-like entity, so when we die, maybe the light is resetting or piloting one of the gods to undo/redo things, and after that we rebirth ourselves as someone real?

Like a Pinocchio story, except we are our own Geppetto? Or in Final Fantasy terms, X into X-2, where Yuna gets a real Tidus out of the deal. Kinda like, idk, the Fayth recreated a man named Shuyin as Tidus to see the events of FFX to their conclusion... perhaps Hydaelyn recreated Azem?

It seems farfetched because of the idea of shard souls and rejoining of the soul, but how hard would it really be to create shard souls tied to a source soul, all sundered but aligned?

[Veloran]

If they were to do that, I imagine it would go something like, we were never a real person to begin with. Just some sort of simulacra or primal-like entity, so when we die, maybe the light is resetting or piloting one of the gods to undo/redo things, and after that we rebirth ourselves as someone real?

Like a Pinocchio story, except we are our own Geppetto? Or in Final Fantasy terms, X into X-2, where Yuna gets a real Tidus out of the deal. Kinda like, idk, the Fayth recreated a man named Shuyin as Tidus to see the events of FFX to their conclusion... perhaps Hydaelyn recreated Azem?

It seems farfetched because of the idea of shard souls and rejoining of the soul, but how hard would it really be to create shard souls tied to a source soul, all sundered but aligned?

But why would it be like that? As it is, if WoL were to die the next PC should simply be WoL's reincarnation. It's a very obvious narrative thread that allows players to feel like it's still them. I'm not outing Primaltheory on it's own, but with this it's a pretty left-field idea.