Solution 9 - Unfounded Speculation!

[Cleretic]

The Dawntrail promotional website doesn't give us a whole lot of new story info (except about the field operations, which I'm EXTREMELY excited about but that's not related to this), but it does give us a description of the actual storyline of the Arcadion.

Here at the Arcadion, you'll find a grand spectacle unlike any other. The realm's greatest fighters pit fist against fist and magick against magick, putting their lives on the line as crowds howl and clamor, each clash more visceral than the last. Step into the arena if you dare, and either rise to become champion, or fall forever in ignominy.

It's a tournament arc! A straight-up no-nonsense tournament arc, too, no extra weirdness like Omega's. At least, that we know of at this point. Which, incidentally, does start explaining those billboards; we're not looking at viruses, or sigils. We're looking at fighter promo art.

Still no clear evidence that the Arcadion is in Solution Nine, but we're still in 'where else could it be' territory.

[MikkoAkure]

FFXIV's official Instagram is posting sections of Solution Nine artwork piece by piece and someone on Reddit pasted them together to show the picture we have so far.

Anything anyone can glean from this? I notice a bunch of viera but I'm not sure if that means anything.

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=htt...c1qq9tc4d1.png
https://www.instagram.com/p/C7wEdHbxHot/

[Cleretic]

FFXIV's official Instagram is posting sections of Solution Nine artwork piece by piece and someone on Reddit pasted them together to show the picture we have so far.

Anything anyone can glean from this? I notice a bunch of viera but I'm not sure if that means anything.

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=htt...c1qq9tc4d1.png
https://www.instagram.com/p/C7wEdHbxHot/

Definitely unclear how much any of this means, but I can see every playable race except miqo'te, roegadyn and hrothgar here; the viera are obvious, you can make out the horns of both xaela and raen, the person below the southmost tree is too small to be anything but a lalafel, and there's some exaggeratedly pointy ears that definitely read as how you'd draw 'this is clearly an elezen' from a distance.

So, sadly a net cast too wide to read much into, but it might be worth noting that au ra and elezen weren't visible in Tulliyolal, while elezen were.

[MikkoAkure]

Definitely unclear how much any of this means, but I can see every playable race except miqo'te, roegadyn and hrothgar here; the viera are obvious, you can make out the horns of both xaela and raen, the person below the southmost tree is too small to be anything but a lalafel, and there's some exaggeratedly pointy ears that definitely read as how you'd draw 'this is clearly an elezen' from a distance.

So, sadly a net cast too wide to read much into, but it might be worth noting that au ra and elezen weren't visible in Tulliyolal, while elezen were.

I spotted at least one and maybe three or four total miqo'te in the picture, you can see their ears and the one that's turned around has their tail clipping through their cloak.

A previous Solution Nine artwork also showed what seemed to be a miqo'te's eyes in a holographic advertisement.

[Alleluia]

FFXIV's official Instagram is posting sections of Solution Nine artwork piece by piece and someone on Reddit pasted them together to show the picture we have so far.

Anything anyone can glean from this? I notice a bunch of viera but I'm not sure if that means anything.

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=htt...c1qq9tc4d1.png
https://www.instagram.com/p/C7wEdHbxHot/

I notice lots of robes/cloaks on the people below. Prolly just to save on time on the art, but also might be a hint at tie to the ancients? Also viper!Meteor (?) in the right is now sporting a very cyberpunky undercut.

My off the wall speculation is that this city is somehow tied to that city across the sea we heard about in Glamaurot. The name like "Archadion" sounds very ancienty to me. Also there's the tech level and the seeming proto-alphabet.

Also, I think it might be a VR city, literally data stored inside the tower above Heritage Found, which is a server kept powered by all the leven.

[WhiteArchmage]

I don't think we can glean much from the artwork considering we had similar for Radz-at-Han and, I believe, Eulmore before expansion drop... because they're the endgame hubs and the artwork is meant to represent adventurers hanging out together in said hub.

[Ayche]

Yeah I am starting to become completely unsoundly convinced that Solution 9 is just Tron, it is cyberspace.

[kaynide]

Wild Speculation #3421:

So, an Ascian is a spirit that can inhabit any body they choose as a vessel, yeah?

So, what if it chooses an inanimate object as a vessel. Or an interconnected city?

“Zeus” == Master Control Program from Tron, and is running the city, possibly going HAL.

Arena battles to the death because hey, death releases aether and a city’s gotta eat!

[Cleretic]

Wild Speculation #3421:

So, an Ascian is a spirit that can inhabit any body they choose as a vessel, yeah?

So, what if it chooses an inanimate object as a vessel. Or an interconnected city?

“Zeus” == Master Control Program from Tron, and is running the city, possibly going HAL.

Arena battles to the death because hey, death releases aether and a city’s gotta eat!

I don't think this is plausible, but I would say this is the most interesting pitch I've heard for an Ascian related to Arcadion/Solution Nine, by far. (Also I would pitch Deudalaphon as the one doing this, because there'd be a fun echo with their historical role being the head of architecture.)

I still think a lot of Solution Nine theories are struggling with both overcomplexifying their angle by taking other people's theories as fact, and with the actual position of Solution Nine in the game. Like, we need to build into every single theory about Solution Nine that it's the secondary city of the expansion; it's the Eulmore or Radz-at-Han. That means that not only won't it dominate the story (because Tulliyolal still needs its half of it), but it also needs to still exist afterwards. In fact, it needs to exist in an even more functional state than it first appears in, because the vendor NPCs become available after the MSQ ends, not before.