Godbrand Manderville [EW patch 6.25 spoilers]

[Tetsujin13]

Hey good people,

After the reveal of daddy Godbert Manderville's ancestor Godbrand Manderville, the creator of the original manderville weapons, I decided to check the name out.

Just a warning, this can only be passed as mere speculation as we only have his name to go by.

The name Godbrand is a typical norse male name and is derived from Guð-brandr, which means God Sword.

Most famous person by this name in norse history was called Dale-Gudbrand, who was described to be the most powerful man in a certain valley in east of Norway in around the year 1000. Today, this valley is called Gudbrandsdalen and is translated to Godbrand Valley in english.

At that time, christianity was making its way into Norway, converting people from believing in the Norse gods by putting them to the sword if they didn't convert to christianity.

Dale-Gudbrand gathered farmers in the region to fight back, but the christian king had issued a meeting to speak with Dale-Gudbrand and his followers.

In the meeting, a passage in the Saga of Olav the Holy One describes the meeting as such:

"King Olav had arranged a meeting with the farmers early next morning, at the same time an idol of Thor would be carried out. When the meeting ended, Dale-Gudbrand asked the king where his god was.

At the same time, the sun had risen, the king replied: "There comes my God with great light".

When the farmers turned around to see the sunrise, a man hit the idol of Thor with great might that it splintered and out came mice, lizards and worms. After seeing this, Dale-Gudbrand and the farmers converted to christianity."

To draw some parallells, it might be interesting if Godbrand Manderville lived in the second umbral or astral era (or maby even before during the time of industrialization), where people had just discovered magic and religions started forming.

Maby the first people to populate the source, held their faith in the Twelve, but after the rise of magic, corrupted religious groups forced the people of the Twelve to convert or be killed and puppeteered themselves into power (probably with the help of the Ascians).

And perhaps Godbrand then received knowledge or maby even inherited from the Twelve about how to infuse their aether and memories into weapons, to fight back.

How these were clumsily displaced is obviously play for the gallery hinting that they are still around.

FFV contains lore from which FFXIV easily could fill in some significant story gaps.
Where the legendary weapons might be sealed away and hidden to prevent such weapons from ever being misused by a certain wandering duelist (or perhaps he's the one guarding them!).

This would certainly be an awesome story to experience in some kind of time travel arc back to the second umbral era (maby by finding a legendary weapon and peering back in time through the weapons memory).
And I hope that FFXIV will have more norse inspired story, art and music as well

[Cleretic]

You realize that to be from the Second Astral Era Godbrand would've had to have somewhere around seven thousand years ago, right? I know Godbert isn't the world's most reliable narrator, but he didn't talk as if Godbrand was THAT old. I hear it more that he's a few generations back. Also, the name 'Godbrand' is clearly more meant to carry in the general pattern of both Godbert and Hildibrand, and Hildibrand's name essentially being 'battle sword' hasn't come anywhere even remotely close to prescient.

I'm not against speculation and prediction, but I think the important first step to them is to recognize the kind of story you're trying to predict; trying to chart the future of a legal drama using hard sci-fi logic doesn't get you anywhere but 'lost'. Similarly, I think first and foremost when predicting where the current relic weapon storyline is going, you have to remember that it's a comedy questline where a key part of the first step was for an old man to strip naked and do squats. Your predictions need to be CONSIDERABLY more ridiculously stupid than they are right now to have even the faintest hope of being accurate.

[Tetsujin13]

Well, obviously the names are inherited the other way around. Godbert and Hildebrand are inspired by Godbrand's name and not the other way around.

Also, has the story of the Hildebrand questline actually been based on comedy or is the story and its characters being comical.
The red thread of the story doesn't need to be comical in itself. You can have a very serious plot and it will be easy to make it comical.

Also, all the sealed weapons in FFV were also not required to have to complete the game, and was more an achievement to get them all. And Gilgamesh was also the guardian there.

But yes, as I wrote earlier, this is pure speculation.
But I'm having fun with it, so it's ok ;-)

[Alleluia]

I think you're definitely a layer too deep with this, but I am glad you're having fun with it. lol And who knows? The devs have cited more obscure legends for sources before.