Revelations from Encyclopaedia Eorzea III

[Denishia]

Mobile Eden halted and put into stasis mode at Nabaath Areng was one of those "I never made that mental connection but it makes perfect sense and can't believe wasn't obvious".

Maybe it's because I adore "For Want of Nail" style Alternative Universes as long as they aren't too shoddily written, but I am enjoying various tidbits about Pre-Flood Norvrandt as I knew that I would. One of the elements sticking out to me is the population origins for several migrations matching up to Eorzea- that the Galdjent were once again a mostly piratical seafaring folk from the northern sea that settled previously in Kholusia's island as well as Voeburt surprised me, though that the Mysteel were outsiders with vaguely nodding to Meracydian origins and that the Elves were claiming first settlement of 'Eorzea' from a centralized location did not.

The Qitari quest lines already told me that the Ronkan Emperor was Ronso- but it has not clarified if said Emperor was male/what the succession rules were. Which I do find interesting as a question because of the Queenship of the Hrothgar. That the Empire fell 3,000 years ago seems a bit long, but it does make clearer their role as the counterpart to Allag, solely in the status of great distant fallen Empire.

Alas the Garleans couldn't have received the Galdjent's magic-nullifying tattoo knowledge instead of the poison pill of Allagan magitek- though I am most curious about the clans and particularly the Cedarfords, the newly recognized clan without electorate powers (was that about to change?). Probably because the power imbalance was 2-3, unless the royal clan also has an electorate vote, which I'm going to assume so. Very German. And are we to assume an Ishgardian-like class divide in the split between which refugee groups fled to Eulmore versus the Crystarium?

Perhaps the biggest shocker? Tolthewil's character. The elven nation had virtually no info and what little it was didn't paint a glowing picture, so that they were the often cruel and controlling tyrants after Ronka's fall wasn't surprising. But Tolthewil and his knights in the Grand Cosmos seemed obvious as the sly nod to Thordan and the Heaven's Ward and Tolthewil the likeness of what Thordan XIV looked like in his youth (which helped to explain Aymeric a tiny bit more). Okay, so the blond hair coupled with Haldrath's blonde hair makes it obvious that he's the counterpart to Thordan I. But! Honorable nice guy that fights against injustice, genuinely good king. Whodathunk.

[Denishia]

It's from one of the side stories on the Lodestone.

The story focuses mainly on the Cid And Nero relationship, and I think kind of understates the whole bits about Bozja and Midas Garlond.

Ah, thank you! I'd forgotten that one!

[Iscah]

The flurry of discussion on the "postulated proto-alphabet" proposed in EE3 suddenly surfacing as real text in new footage from Dawntrail has me taking a closer look at the alphabets (page 52) instead of just skimming past, and I've realised that they had a serious checking oversight with the Vrandtine lower-case alphabet, because everything besides the first row and column is just a repeat of the Eorzean alphabet.

Vrandtine text annoys me in any case. It's maybe the equivalent of English written in fancy calligraphy font, but nobody has thought about how people would actually write a script like this. It feels overly complicated for the sake of it.

[Anonymoose]

It's maybe the equivalent of English written in fancy calligraphy font, but nobody has thought about how people would actually write a script like this.

When I imagine it, I imagine English letters formed with a stroke order like kanji. I can get most of them down to a reasonable amount of input time, I think.

But with regard to the visual asset, I agree, it looks like perhaps someone did the top row, and then the left column, and then took a break, and then forgot it wasn't finished...

[Iscah]

I think the proto-alphabet has actually been used for the Loporrits (their "On Air" sign from the tribal quests, the 'n' is visibly the proto-n and not the Eorzean-n) and the Twelve alliance raids as well.

That would make sense. I'll have to double-check against the Twelve's monument later.

Still, that makes the choice of making it a mere prediction (later shown to be improbably accurate) extra odd, because it would be very straightforward to attribute the third alphabet to having been observed in text of Loporrit origin.

[Cleretic]

That would make sense. I'll have to double-check against the Twelve's monument later.

I just checked, nothing in the Omphalos has any visible text on it.

[Iscah]

Pulling on a thread...

I just checked, nothing in the Omphalos has any visible text on it.

I discovered this after I went to check; it shows how things can stick in your mind wrong. "Text from the Omphalos monument" was important and discussed in the story, but there isn't actually physical text on it to be read.

So the next step was to run Thaleia for the week and go "oh, Thaliak's arena shift phase is actually full of scribbles!" and excitedly take screenshots... only to see I've been beaten to it.

Not sure about the monument, I haven't gone back to look at it yet, but this is from one of the FanFest panels where they were talking about the script in the background of Thaliak's fight.

Which panel was that from? I missed it entirely.

(Tangent while I'm reminded: did we ever get those Q&A responses that they had to skim over when they ran out of time at the NA lore panel?)

Anyway, yes those quotes are in the background of Thaliak's arena shift but they're not really prominent - most of the text is just various mathematical-equation-looking bits of text, using what seems to be basically the Eorzean numbers you can see on things like the Cactpot tickets, but with slight tweaks similar to what has been done to the Eorzean letters to produce this "proto-alphabet".

Curiously, amid the maths, they seem to be using Menphina's symbol like an algebra element. I suspect at least some of the text may also turn up elsewhere associated with the Loporrits, who would be needing to do stuff with the moon in their calculations? And I do recall previously poking at text I found in the Loporrits' MSQ scenes but it seemed to all be numbers. I don't recall it looking that elaborate though.

In the meanwhile, I mentioned elsewhere that I hadn't yet figured out where this text had been found in the game, and someone pointed out that it can be found on maps for Elpis and Pandaemonium areas. So that solves a puzzle, although leaves me a little low-key confused/surprised because I would have assumed we were drawing the maps ourselves since things only get mapped once we get there. But anyway.

[Iscah]

...

Wrong thread; this is for EE3. The alphabet discussion sits across both but I went this side to whinge about proofreading errors.

Fan Fest is over here ---> https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...anuary-2024%29

[Denishia]

thanks- will say on protoscript I'd want a comparison of how much Sanskrit has changed versus the Phoenician or Chinese scripts. The version for the First does feel like it was it trying to evoke a Gothic script/Blackletter vibe, which does take some adjustment to read when used to Roman style that became the modern norm.

[Yuella]

Is Anogg's bio blotted out on purpose?