Solution 9 - Unfounded Speculation!

[Cleretic]

My guess is that we're looking at some kind of barge rather than a port or something, so technically Solution Nine's location doesn't really exclude it. It's not like North America is a completely dry slab of land, either; you've got the great lakes that could plausibly make for a situation like this. This might be a Shaaloani thing, since that's apparently got a big lake.

[Fenral]

I thought that might be the case before they announced the CE/preorder and started playing FF9 on a work trip a few weeks ago, maybe I'll make an effort to finish before June 28 to see if it reveals any epiphanies to me about Dawntrail... I'm trying not to let my speculation go any wilder because it'll be here so soon anyway, we'll all know what's up with this weird cyberpunk city and their silly soul supply in a few months. But it couldn't hurt.

FF9 is kind of an acid trip, and if they take the cues they could from it then the back half of Dawntrail will be a catastrophic cosmological shakeup with far-reaching consequences. Or it will have almost nothing to do with it aside from a few locales and musical cues until we get some kind of big unrelated thing in the post-game story. (Here's a casual reminder that G'raha started out using Zidane's hair model.) There's always some missing piece we won't get until the patch actually drops (like Amon in Endwalker).

[Taliriah]

Couple of ideas regarding solution 9:
- One of the surviving reflection evolved into a technologically advanced civilization and decided to invade the source. (it could happen for any number of reasons - it could be a combination of ascians not being around to keep them in check or creating calamities over there, and time passing much faster there relative to the source etc.)
- It comes from the future somehow by the way of time travel (replaying EW recently, I was thinking about how Hythlodaeus mentioned that we might meet again in this life or the next - assuming that there is anything to it, the only way the WoL in their current incarnation might meet reincarnations of Hythlodaeus and Emet-Selch is if they time travel from the future)

[Cleretic]

There's always some missing piece we won't get until the patch actually drops (like Amon in Endwalker).

Still kicking myself for not saying more often that the pre-Endwalker theory of 'Amon is Emet-Selch' doesn't make sense because the personalities and M.O.s don't line up at all, and a far closer match would be Fandaniel.

I didn't say it much because it felt absurd that an alliance raid midboss based on a forgettable FFIII character could possibly be relevant.

[Fenral]

I didn't say it much because it felt absurd that an alliance raid midboss based on a forgettable FFIII character could possibly be relevant.

Not sure if you were around for it, but you'd be amazed at how far people went to debunk "The Crystal Exarch is G'raha Tia" back in the day, so it's probably for the best.

[Cleretic]

Not sure if you were around for it, but you'd be amazed at how far people went to debunk "The Crystal Exarch is G'raha Tia" back in the day, so it's probably for the best.

I was around but not active in the way I am now. Up-to-date and semi-regularly roleplaying, but so distant from the game's community that I had to learn second-hand that we were getting Nier raids. I don't think I had any feelings or theories whatsoever about the Exarch at the time.

I remember that I also heard about the 'Zodiark and Hydaelyn are primals' trailer-reveal second-hand, and my response was essentially 'why am I supposed to care'. Which I just think is funny, because I've kind of wrapped all the way around to hitting that same response from the other direction now; my response to a big reveal isn't 'why should I care' because I don't, my response is 'why should I care' because I want to and think that starting with the intended emotional response, even if I don't have it, is helpful.

[jadeharley]

Assuming this trend continues, Dawntrail should have FFV references and story beats. We already have Krile stepping up to be a more important role, her namesake being from FFV. The main story element that I think they'd use is two worlds once separated remerging into one, but of course that's nothing new for FFXIV.

I think sol9 is definitely heavily inspired by the ff9 stuff, but there's also FFV's ronka ruins. Ronka (in the first) is *also* heavily inspired by mesoamerica, and ties directly into y'shtola's arc (finding a way back to her furry boyfriend).

[Sylvain]

Is it possible Solution Nine will have some link to the Ancients / Ascians? Yes, but I don't want it to on account of their story arc having concluded and going back to them (or their proxies) for MSQ content would kind of defeat the purpose of having done so.

I mean, it is very possible, so far the main ideas are :
- 9th solution of the ancient, whatever this implies.
- Civilization surviving an old rejoining, the one of lightning.
- Just any old asciens involvement like Garlemald, Allag and who knows what.

Like, I feel it can't just be "somehow there's that super advanced civilization living *just here* that didn't care to invade/interact with the rest of the world with their super techy tech.

The fact they use the regular alphabet implies that they aren't aliens. Or if they are, they integrated with a post sundered civilization but at this point, what would be the motivation?

I feel like there will be asciens involvement, it just won't be so directly tied to Zordiark / Hydealin as they are no more. But if it has anything to do with the sundering, indirectly, it is asciens involvement.

[Iscah]

Like, I feel it can't just be "somehow there's that super advanced civilization living *just here* that didn't care to invade/interact with the rest of the world with their super techy tech.

I think it's poor logic to leap from "they have advanced technology" to "owning advanced technology should make them desire to do a specific thing with that technology".

Additionally, I've said before, it could easily be the case that this technology is built around the specifics of existing in a highly lightning-aether-charged environment and simply won't function if taken elsewhere.

[Cleretic]

A pretty solid theory I've seen on Twitter for that red sign in the Arcadeon that people were fixated on: What if it's the Armodullahan from FFIX?





It's got the right claws and horns, and if you approach it from that angle then the weird mass of lines in the middle can read as a pretty decent approximation of its face maybe biting down on something.

Of course, the Armodullahan's a pretty 'nothing' boss from FFIX, so if that's true then it's also a guarantee that it's a 'middle of the first tier' filler fight, like Catastrophe or the Hippokampos. ...which, in turn, means that we can intuit jack squat about its actual story, because the Armodullahan's hardly a stretch to fit in to an FFIX-inspired expansion with a high-tech corner of it.