Rewritten MSQ - Garlemald and EW

[whitemoonflower]

This was a really enjoyable read—a potential direction I found refreshingly interesting to consider. The paths you paved for Meteion and Hermes suited them instead of being rushed into villain roles. Those who gave their lives to help the WoL reach Hydaelyn were carefully considered: passing on meaningfully (Urianger) in ways that suited them (Sadu) and gave us further insight into who they were “behind the cutscenes” (Matoya). As for the Loporrits, I’d hope they’d choose to live on and discover a true sense of purpose (and pudding). Thank you for sharing.

[Theodric]

It'd be pretty bizarre for Garlemald to be declared a 'bad country' for having few women in positions of power if the various matriarchal societies in game are not also declared as such.

[Foxowl]

I do have one or two clarifying questions to OP— namely about this Grand Duchess Svetlana you’ve created.

Is Svetlana Garlean? And more specifically a member of the Galvus family? Because I’m pretty sure every Garlean other than Cid (and Midas which is a Greek name) have Latin/Roman names. Svetlana is a Russian name, and while certain aesthetics of the Empire are Russian, wouldn’t it make more sense for her to have a Roman name, especially if she’s a member of the royal family.

[Theodric]

Yeah, no worries. I think some sites have made room for new stuff by getting rid of older interviews since there's a few I remember reading that I haven't been able to find despite knowing exactly what phrase to put into a search engine in order to get them to appear. I set out to bookmark some for a while but there's honestly so many that it became too much work. Especially when accounting for different language variants.

[Rulakir]

I feel some people are forgetting the whole "time aspect" when judging Venats actions.

I haven't forgotten, I think it's a terrible justification. "She had to commit genocide because time travel!" No, absolutely not. She's not going to be spared judgement due to a plot contrivance that, IMO, not only ruined EW but retroactively the rest of the game.

Personally, and this is my own taste, I would've removed timetravel entirely and have had instead use our Echo to peer into the past to find out all of this. Also, having the sundered Ascians show up to help us out -- I wouldn't blame you if you forgot about them, it seems like the writers did too. Venat, I think, works plenty well as a 'villain with good intentions' in the game as is without the narrative propping her up, but her motivations could've been elaborated on instead of being a weird confused mess of a generic 'she loves you!' support blob.

This is essentially my critique too. The only issue with Venat is the game doesn't address her as the ideologue she is. Frankly, all things could remain the same if Hydaelyn tempered. EW actually makes a lot of sense if that's the case. Otherwise, you'd just need to have the characters act accordingly, especially as Venat embodies ideologies the Scions have fought against and condemned in the past. Conversely, you could lean into them being hypocrites and have it be called out that they don't have an issue with villainous actions when they benefit from them. It'd be nice to see the moral paragon Scions knocked down a peg or two and be forced to reflect upon their own cherished values.

[aveyond-dreams]

With the death of Hydaelyn and Zodiark we literally lose nothing. We still have the travelers ward, people will still summon primals in desperate times, nothing really changes with their death other than the remaining ascians can do whatever they want to do but thats more from the death of the unsundered. The void wasn't really pushed on us rapidly since we've been dealing with it and it's denizens for years on the back burner in every expansion. We've only had 1 patch and we dont know if we're going to go into the void or somewhere else, could be we deal with the void by 6.5 (as side content or msq) or could be we completely go in 7.0 but one patch is not enough to even make such a guess. You can still use religion as a plot point since you don't have to narrow it down to just hydaelyn or zodiark. I wouldn't even consider hydaelyn central to any religion since she's not really worshiped, the twelve are but not her.

We don't need to have two new entities that are on the scale of H&Z to take their place to just go adventuring and its better not to since if you need a new overarching villain you can just make them fit anywhere in the world and be in the background and can stop using them at anytime without going to the same scale as endwalker. Shadowbringers isn't that spread out in scope compared to HW and ARR since its basically the arr map anyways, SB and EW are the most spread out expansions we have unless they're saying SHB is spread out because its on the first instead of the source which in that case still doesn't make it spread out. And unlike WoW the ff14 writing team is actually good at what they do.

I think we’ll just have to agree to disagree on this one, I fundamentally do not like the idea of a fantasy world left bereft of the forces that once dominated it. I do not think using religion as a plot point moving forward is worth the player’s time because at this point the player is aware of most in-game mysteries – except for whatever is going on with the Twelve.

All I know is that despite a large number of logically sound voices calling for a grounded, fresh new start to Season 2, this was not accomplished in patch 6.1. I have very little confidence in an arc that begins in the Void or worse yet with the scions – whose status as untouchable comfort characters is actively hindering how emotionally involved they can make this story.

The hard pivot away from the more mature style of writing this game enjoyed prior to Endwalker is something that I significantly struggle with. To repeat what I have expressed in other threads, it wasn’t slice of life and fluff that’s sold me this game and got me to fall in love with it long term, it was a combination of gameplay factors and more effective and cohesive storytelling. Endwalker at times felt more like a Persona game than a Final Fantasy game, and not even FFVIII with its Garden schools felt as bad as some of what I endured in Endwalker’s story.

I will address other comments in my next post to mark the start of a new page.

[aveyond-dreams]

Thank you all for your input! I will address some of your comments in this post:

As for the Loporrits, I’d hope they’d choose to live on and discover a true sense of purpose (and pudding). Thank you for sharing.

After rereading the ending that I gave to the Loporrits...I will agree with you in that I do hope that some chose to stay awake and not rejoin their new adopted mother, Meteion, so soon. When I was thinking of what to do with them, as obscure a reference as this might be, I was looking back to Buju from Dawn of Mana. In the ending of that game, Buju longingly looks at his owner, Ritzia, as she sinks into the depths of the Mana Tree before transforming into the Goddess of Mana. I think to myself, given the choice, wouldn’t a creature like this want to be reunited with his owner? Wouldn’t therefore the Loporrits, essentially children, want to be reunited with the figure that they have accepted as their mother?

Other inspiration for the way in which I wrote them includes the story of Hachiko – though the Loporrits in my rewrite were subjected to a far crueller fate. Hachiko’s owner did not abandon him deliberately, but the Hydaelyn of my rewrite did despite these creatures perpetually longing for her return. They would immediately believe Meteion to be the goddess having finally come back for them, and Meteion would be both enamoured by such cute creatures yet internally torn at the thought of deceiving them. Eventually, they would come to realize that Meteion had lied to them but because of how much love she showed them, they come to look at her as everything they wished Hydaelyn was.

Is Svetlana Garlean? And more specifically a member of the Galvus family? Because I’m pretty sure every Garlean other than Cid (and Midas which is a Greek name) have Latin/Roman names. Svetlana is a Russian name, and while certain aesthetics of the Empire are Russian, wouldn’t it make more sense for her to have a Roman name, especially if she’s a member of the royal family.

When it comes to Svetlana, there was a lot of extra exposition that I refrained from including for the sake of brevity. In summary, she is the youngest daughter of one of Solus’s sons (though not the original crown prince, which was Varis’s father.) Her rank of “Grand Duchess” would be given to the daughters of a prince, but not those of the crown prince, otherwise she would be a princess. When it comes to her name, I admit that my preference for the Russian over the Roman aesthetic influenced my decision to name her Svetlana, along with my general interest in the history of figures like the Tsar’s family, and the families of those who went on to rule Russia afterwards.

She is in her early twenties, and by this point has received an extensive education and military training. During her early years, she watched as the Imperial Senate acted together in order to inflict great torment on already struggling provinces and how they “silenced” dissenting nobles, including her older siblings. In order to protect herself from such a perilous situation, she devised a plan to become so beloved amongst the Garlean people and the provinces that it would be unthinkable to harm her – anyone who did so would be branded a destroyer of the icon of beauty and mercy/charity. Similar to Garlemald’s cult of Emperor worship, people would also flock to her side for these reasons. Though admittedly feigning it at first, she came to grow closer to the people in the subjugated provinces and developed an interest in their wellbeing.

Svetlana would have acted as a war nurse and treated Al-Sid’s wounds despite his position as a rebel combatant – and internally she would wonder to herself whether she did such a thing out of kindness or calculating and manipulating potential enemies in order to turn them into allies. From there their relationship would develop romantically, and so on. Al-Sid’s hot blooded and impassioned temperament would contrast with Svetlana’s more shrewd and cooler demeanour, though they ultimately want what is best for the people under their care. Her pregnancy was an accident she did not account for, despite the measures she took to prevent one, but it ultimately worked out in her favor and in favor of a lasting peace between Rozarria and Garlemald.

In addition to Celes from FFVI, I suppose other figures that I drew inspiration from whether deliberately or subconsciously include: Duchess Georgiana of Devonshire (an ancestor of Princess Diana), Kaiserin Elizabeth/”Sisi”, Hildegard Mariendorf (Legend of the Galactic Heroes), and Svetlana Alliluyeva – whose life story I learned of in a documentary I watched earlier this year and felt great sorrow for all she endured. In retrospect, I feel remorse for having put a character of the same name through such an ordeal in my writing and wish that I could have done a better job. If nothing else, I would like to think that at the end of my rewrite that the new Empress Svetlana went on to rule for many years with Thancred to keep her company as her bodyguard, and were able to find lasting happiness together.

Speaking of copy-paste from other FF Universes, Landis would have been a better use of another country in Ilsabard other than Rozzaria. The problem with it in regards to the OP's story though is that it was a republic.

I picked Rozarria because I thought Al-Cid was cool whenever he came on screen in FFXII. Contrasting inner Garlemald with the Mediterranean seemed like a good idea, and I like the name because it definitely rolls off the tongue better than...Landis. I wanted to see Spain/Italy in the game so I put it in, simple as that. Liberating yet another republic or turning another former monarchy into one seemed like a boring idea, and Al-Cid certainly wouldn’t be the type to just let the scions roll in and do whatever they want with his country.

I struggle to think of any relevant characters to draw from Landis besides Noah van Gabranth, which would have admittedly made for a very interesting dynamic should I have brought him back to rule as a military dictator over the region with the scions forced to accept his form of government or else be branded his enemies. However, I wouldn’t have been able to effectively tie a character like that up with Svetlana in the way that I did with Al-Cid because the whole, “Do I love this person or am I secretly manipulating them?” dilemma wouldn’t have played a factor in the storytelling. The Noah of FFXIV is too intelligent and would have seen through Svetlana’s machinations.

From his perspective, the Grand Duchess and her popularity would have been a serious problem...he may have pressed the issue of a marriage alliance with her but then subjected her to the same treatment as the Duchess Georgiana did in the movie, overpowering and manipulating her in turn to break her and bend her to his will. I’m not sure if I want this man to have the ending of becoming the emperor of Garlemald...The writing surrounding him would make him an unpopular if not downright hated character, ironically playing right into Svetlana’s hands in that no one who harms or moves against her will come away clean.

If there is one thing I'd like to have seen it would be Venat involving herself with some being like Lavos or Jenova (or in XIV terms, related to the High Seraph) - something eager to devour or end their star, capable of approaching her, whispering to her and perhaps acting as the catalyst for her behavioural changes and inducing her ideological predisposition. Maybe something like IV: The After Years's Creator, which instilled in her notions as to how things in the world must evolve in order to avoid the fates of other worlds, so working a bit with the theme of the Dead Ends but without trying to cast it as inevitable. You could tie into this the Echo powers of a seeress, where she has visions of possible futures, which this entity is capable of tapping into and manipulating, and layer on acting as the primal's heart as further warping her and committing her to her path, which is where I thought they were headed with the whole 'heart' thing. This sort of entity I mentioned could then set up a future antagonist/storyline, later on exploring the cosmic destruction it unleashed on multiple worlds but on a slower, more organic scale, and later in the story arc.

I'd echo Skyborne's point on the sundered Ascians, and I'd also liked to have seen both divinities preserved in some fashion in the being into which Meteion will form, and not just Hydaelyn, as a being incorporating both light and darkness, which could perhaps have been a lesson drawn from these thousands of years of experience and modified into the concept with the sanction and blessing of what remained of the Convocation and those ancients liberated from Zodiark.

Your post brings up a lot of interesting points, and I’d like to start with the Lavos/Jenova aspect. Admittedly this didn’t come across as well as I would have liked to in my post, but in riding Midgardsormr to beyond the stars and escape the WoL’s final blow...Hydaelyn would have gone on to another planet to re-establish herself as a “supreme goddess” and inflict widespread chaos again all for the sake her vanity. Effectively, she would have been Jenova. I will however concede that there is greater value in having the source of her personality change be an external force that could linger on after her defeat – paving the way for future storytelling. Perhaps in Venat’s case, it turned her into the fallen angel of FFXIV’s world, while if it affected a different person they would become a gluttonous space parasite that consumes whole worlds, etc.

In regards to the remaining Ascians, I must confess that I had completely forgotten them as I was writing and regret not having included them in the rewrite. There are a number of different ways to have gone about that, from having them be part of the Telophoroi to having them act as Zodiark’s last line of defense on the moon, before being cut down by Zenos...and forcefully possessing some of the remaining party members in order to assist in the fight against their former god. Another option would be for them to be absent from the story, in hiding, until they witness the last phase of the WoL’s battle against Hydaelyn on the moon. They would then ferry the WoL’s body back to Meteion, and impart onto her the last of their essences in order to give her dominion over darkness as well.

[whitemoonflower]

After rereading the ending that I gave to the Loporrits...I will agree with you in that I do hope that some chose to stay awake and not rejoin their new adopted mother, Meteion, so soon. When I was thinking of what to do with them, as obscure a reference as this might be, I was looking back to Buju from Dawn of Mana. In the ending of that game, Buju longingly looks at his owner, Ritzia, as she sinks into the depths of the Mana Tree before transforming into the Goddess of Mana. I think to myself, given the choice, wouldn’t a creature like this want to be reunited with his owner? Wouldn’t therefore the Loporrits, essentially children, want to be reunited with the figure that they have accepted as their mother?

Other inspiration for the way in which I wrote them includes the story of Hachiko – though the Loporrits in my rewrite were subjected to a far crueller fate. Hachiko’s owner did not abandon him deliberately, but the Hydaelyn of my rewrite did despite these creatures perpetually longing for her return. They would immediately believe Meteion to be the goddess having finally come back for them, and Meteion would be both enamoured by such cute creatures yet internally torn at the thought of deceiving them. Eventually, they would come to realize that Meteion had lied to them but because of how much love she showed them, they come to look at her as everything they wished Hydaelyn was.

Perhaps they'd come to wonder more about the world she loved the same way she loved them: dearly, selflessly, and with a warmth that strikingly contrasted if not entirely dissipated the cold rejection that once followed them like a shadow across the face of the moon. Either way, I much prefer the purpose you gave them. Being abandoned in their creator's vain insanity, mistaking another for her, and then being unconditionally accepted by that same one who later comes to bear the rightful, intended form would grant them much more depth than being mere "moonship-piloting fail-safe bunnies".

I also appreciate how you changed the WoL's battle with Zodiark into something more than what felt like a minor detour. The journey to face him contrasted with the journey to face Hydaelyn would've been something to remember. The souls within him refusing to aid Zenos and even encouraging/helping the WoL would've been a thoughtful touch as well—something to mark their realization, coming to terms, acceptance, and passing on peacefully. They'd all been through so much, yet only a few received a proper send-off.

[Lauront]

Another option would be for them to be absent from the story, in hiding, until they witness the last phase of the WoL’s battle against Hydaelyn on the moon. They would then ferry the WoL’s body back to Meteion, and impart onto her the last of their essences in order to give her dominion over darkness as well.

Yes, something like that is exactly what I have in mind.

[Theodric]

Well, that made for an enjoyable read! I like pretty much everything that you proposed and I think such a direction would have truly done justice for the Ancients and the Garleans alike. It also captured a lot of what pulled me into the setting back in the days of ARR and HW.

My only suggestion would be to perhaps have Regula's blade play a part in the confrontation with Varis. Mostly to give some pay off to the scrapped thread that was Regula's dying words. Upon seeing the blade, the part of Varis that managed to resist would be emboldened or some such. A little cliche, perhaps, but it'd be a good way to tie off the loose end and maybe later have a follow up where it is revealed that Regula had a son who survived the chaos consuming Garlemald and vows to become a good soldier.