Solution 9 - Unfounded Speculation!

[Holy_Miasma]

I also wanna point out, some of the glyph symbols in the artwork very much resemble the glypy symbols found in certain Allagan themed dungeons, like the twinning and fractial. Maybe someone continued where the Allagans stopped, Or maybe not all of them disappeared after all.

[Sensui]

It reminded me of the underground world in FF11s seekers of alduin.. been a while. But was where we battled hades and stuff.

[Nayukhuut]

My personal wish would have been a group of Ancients who somehow remembered who they were after the Sundering and decided to build back their city with tech rather than Creation Magic since they had been diminished. That or maybe an Ascian pet project at rebuilding their society in the new world. That is about as likely as a snowstorm in the Sahara though.

Elsewise I have heard everything from it being a nod to Terra in FF9, to it being connected to Azem or Ultima, to it being survivors from a rejoining of another Shard. I have heard that it could be a splinter of Allag as well that just didn't fall when the rest. When I say "I heard", it is just fan speculation I hear about the nets. No one has any concrete info. I just wanted to be clear.

Given the name of the city (Zidane's ability), Zidane's nature, and the fact that there was a sign mentioning souls in the very city, I would at least say that the city has something to do with an ancient species either from the Source, one of the Shards, or even space, who came here and are trying to maintain themselves.

No matter what, it was the first thing I have seen them present from Dawntrail that made me sit up and actually feel some interest, so I can't wait to find out what it is about.

[Yuella]

I don't want Solution 9 to be Ancient / Azem related. It should be just a direct FFIX reference: an alien civilization embedding itself to North Tural in an attempt to save themselves. Their bodies are not suitable for the planet so they created artificial bodies (genomes) to transfer their souls into.

Although I can see it being Azem's solution in saving the world from the Final Days, creating a city surrounded by a shield of heavy aether-rich buildings

[MikkoAkure]

If it weren't for the use of the proto-Eorzean alphabet I'd have suggested they could be from the future and pulled a Crystarium on us on a bigger scale.

I looked around at what we have available and in what looks to be Shaaloani there's a bar sign that says "BAR" very clearly on it in modern Eorzean. So it is strange that they use the Eorzean alphabet in the New World while the more connected Hingashi uses their own, separate writing system but that also means that Solution Nine is completely and utterly separate from the rest of the New World as if there wasn't any doubt before. That said, the signs also have what appears to me like it could be a different writing script as well, but it's the same thing repeated on both "Employment" and "Soul Supply".

Some things I'm curious about are why there's a dungeon where Solution Nine architecture looks blown up:
https://lds-img.finalfantasyxiv.com/...660.1634253356

Maybe a Eulmore situation where they're our enemies before they become our allies and hub at the end of the expansion?

Maybe some army who doesn't like them being there invades them and we chase after?


There's also this previous artwork that looks like a ceruleum tank and by the GPU fans, this is definitely a part of Solution Nine:
https://lds-img.finalfantasyxiv.com/...660.1634253356

Maybe this is the "Soul Supply"? Maybe the Niners are mining souls out of the lifestream/ceruleum for some purpose? The city looks to be powered by lightning aether so they could be using ceruleum for other things.


My spitball guess and I've been batting pretty low on guesses lately, is that due to time dilation between shards shenanigans and/or the Ascians being dead/distracted, one of the shards made leaps and bounds in technology without evil ghosts breaking things to prevent that. At some point they realize the whole shards theory and with their technology they ported over a beachhead of sorts, but didn't quite have the Exarch's abilities of living person transference and so they have a system set up to make bodies and then inject souls into them. From what I can tell, the Void uses modern Eorzean script, at least on the maps, but the others could have kept the proto script around if they had no big societal collapses.

[MikkoAkure]

The only thing that gives me pause is why they would be so careful to scrub the entire environment of props and avoid letting us see any of the NPCs (with the exception of a few faces from the adverts) if that were the case.

Tuliyollal is also missing NPCs. I think it's more of just a WIP thing than anything else. The Crystarium and Sharlayan previews did the same thing.

[Cleretic]

I think the important thing to remember about Solution Nine is exactly where the zone sits in terms of 'content type': It's the secondary city. It's definitely connected to Heritage Found, and we'll probably first visit them very early; perhaps in that 'pick between two mini-branches' part of the questline, same as we did with Eulmore and Radz-at-Han. I think more Radz than Eulmore, because I believe before ShB's release they were already making it pretty subtextually clear that Eulmore's Up To Some Stuff in a way they're just not with Solution Nine. This also means that, while it's probably going to face a change of some kind to explain why we don't have full access to its services at first, it is going to... y'know, still be there afterwards, and is highly unlikely to overshadow the rest of what we've seen, which is of a very different vibe.

I'm guessing that we'll be seeing an overall conflict of 'traditionalism versus modernity' in Dawntrail--likely not a literal conflict, since it's been made very clear that Tural's all cool with each other, more just everyone having to grapple with that question in their own way. And to aid that whole thing, Solution Nine's situation will be largely 'self-made'; not elevated by some externality like shard travel, but developing entirely by its own propulsion and will.

Basically: I think it's FFXIV Wakanda.

[diamondedge83]

I think the name Heritage Found is probably important too. There are two distinct civilizations in the same place, but what if they aren't? Heritage Found makes it seem like there were a people there that left, and their decendants found their way back and built their new civilization at the same site. Mikko's thought that they could be from the future isn't so far fetched, their alphabet being the proto version could just mean that they kept it alive and didn't deviate like Eorzea. Perhaps they're even from a different timeline's future as well. I wouldn't mind some Chrono Cross stuff going on. Cleritic's idea of it being Wakanda (more like Esthar from FFVIII, same idea) is just as likely. This is my favorite part while waiting for the next expansion; we're probably all wrong, but everyone's ideas are just as good (sometimes better) than what it will actually be.

[Darkpaw]

Baseless Speculation: It's Rowena's hometown.