Solution 9 - Unfounded Speculation!

[Ayche]

You can also detach technology from factions. Ceruleum is more interesting if it is merely a basis for technological progress rather than "the thing that makes the evil faction tick". And this feels like an apparent plot point that is going to happen in Dawntrail, there are people who are not the old evil empire faction trying to do stuff with that.
Same applies to all the other form of technology seen here and there in the game's setting. If you wanna get really abstract and reductionist, everything just boils down to aether anyway. Everything ends up being just "a way to burn aether to boil water."

[kaynide]

Is there a really hard/fine combed overview of what we see in the images given? I’ve seen some bits, but a general just-the-facts list?

Like:

1) Uses “ancient” texts
2) Has puzzling signage, like “soul supply”
3) Purple neon “main” coloration, cyberpunk aesthetic, blue screens
4) We never actually see the sky in any of the given pictures.
5) There are icons in the pictures of (what appears to be) a charging battery, a chocobo, and some other mundane signage like “nexus bar”.
6) There are a pair of eyes where it says “dancer” to the right. It looks like miqo’te, but can’t confirm.
7) at the Fan Fest, YoshiP said they removed some parts to keep S9 spoiler free. What was removed? People?

Pic for reference:Here

Ok, so speculation:

What was removed from the images? If people, what is so different or “spoiler-y” about them that they needed removing? Are the people different or important in some way (aka same as Garleans, or some other “new” kinda people like the Genome in ff9)


Big big speculation:

Solution 9 was created by the Ancients as a place for the souls “brought back” to be revived; the people living here are all constructs that have to recharge their “souls” from time to time, because the the Ancient souls never came.

[DPZ2]

What was removed from the images?

Scale, probably. And robed figures wearing masks.

Or not. If it was "Ancient Central" you'd have expected the Ascians to have spent more time there than in that ugly temple in ARR.

[Cleretic]

Or not. If it was "Ancient Central" you'd have expected the Ascians to have spent more time there than in that ugly temple in ARR.

Look, when you're sent to GM Jail, it's not up to you when you can leave.

[Cilia]

If it was "Ancient Central" you'd have expected the Ascians to have spent more time there than in that ugly temple in ARR.

Probably the biggest knock against the idea it's a surviving cloister of Ancients... if there were such a thing I have a hard time believing the Ascians wouldn't have found them and at least attempted to convert them to the cause, and given we know the lion's share of them would sooner die than live in a world without "paradise"...

Still not sure what it is, but I can tell you what it probably isn't.

[Yuella]

and given we know the lion's share of them would sooner die than live in a world without "paradise"...

Still not sure what it is, but I can tell you what it probably isn't.

They could find a new paradise in Solution 9. They could decide that they needed to move forward instead of trying to reclaim the past. Solution 9's lightning aether could protect them from the Ascians' detection etc etc.

[MikkoAkure]

They could find a new paradise in Solution 9. They could decide that they needed to move forward instead of trying to reclaim the past. Solution 9's lightning aether could protect them from the Ascians' detection etc etc.

Considering they were ghosts who freely traipsed around the moon and multiple worlds and have been around for 12,000 years, I don't think there's anything they didn't know. Emet-Selch knew about Vrtra's "secret" underwater treasure hoard after all.

I think the use of the Ancient script is interesting and there's a connection somewhere, but I don't for a second believe that they are Ancients themselves. WE are descendants of the Ancients and are moving forward instead of trying to reclaim the past and that whole story beat has been done already so I doubt they'd retread it.

[Iscah]

Wild guess: it's the home base for the moblins, who have to fit in somewhere and don't look like they're from the jungle or the wild west. (Unless they've got some kind of more steampunk base out there.)

They seem like a strange thing to have produced now as a separate group now, though, because those designs were already used for the Idyllshire goblins.

[Denishia]

Gunning for the most anticlimactic reason for Solution Nine at the moment. Just what a civilization designs when the aether is overwhelmingly electric. That there’s no Shards involved and it’s a lot younger than anyone, including my previous guess, has suggested. Not even an earlier Astral Era. Everything text or quasi glyph-based is red herrings. Going to set low - and thus reasonable- expectations. Because at this point a nonAscian/Ancient/Shard/Alien connection would be subverted expectations.