Scholar's Identity Transformation

[Connor]

I still feel like they just wanted to bring in Seraph as fanservice into the game, for fans from other games with Seraph in it, and didn't know where else to put it but to the pet healing job, when creating Shadowbringers. And then things escalated. ^^;

To be fair though, Seraph has existed since long before Shadowbringers, since I think Heavensward was when job-specific LB3’s were introduced (i.e Scholar’s Angel Feathers).

It’s also worth mentioning that it’s made very clear several times through Scholar’s lore that the ‘faeries’ we see are actually two aspects of another entity (Lily, which I’ve always assumed is literally Seraph). Based on their general form (winged humanoids with fancy glowing wings), I wouldn’t say it’s much of a stretch that if you take an Angel and make it into smaller copies of itself, they’d look more like fairies than angels. Like, the fairies essentially are just ‘small angels’, and you squish two together you get a normal sized Angel (Seraph).

Plus, there’s no actual evidence for it, but considering Scholars summoned their ‘fairies’ with the intent of calling a being that would restore and strengthen those around it, I always assumed the original ‘fairies’ they summoned probably were more ‘angelic’ than ‘fairy’ (beings of light flying down from the heavens bringing healing and HP shields lol). Especially since they’re characterised as essentially ‘granting salvation’ to the otherwise too weak Nymian Military. Just a shame they got wiped out by Black Magic Cooties lol

How the hell that leads to ‘you literally become an Angel ’ is something I’ll never understand though lol. I think Seraph itself is something that’s always been intended as part of Scholar’s ‘lore’, as it were. But things like Seraphism just completely throws away literally everything they’ve tried to build before it (which unfortunately is kind of the ‘design philosophy for every job this expansion lol). Like, there is a huge gulf between ‘military tacticians that designed a means of summoning an angelic and/or fairy like aetherial construct, and a guy literally turning into an Angel before everyone’s very eyes lol. Scholars are Jesus is now ffxiv canon I guess?


Finally, why the hell did Scholars need to summon anything if they could just turn themselves into actual angels lol…