Demons, Heaven, Hell and parallel universes

[No_Nick_Needed]

Considering that since the launch of the game, we learned that everything believed to be demons early on, are actually the darkness corrupted denizens of the Thirteenth, courtesy to the Ascians messing up the first attempted rejoining, we can pretty safely conclude that we haven't met any actual demons yet. But do they exist in the world of FF14?

Apart from the reflections, which appear to be more akin to localized pocket dimensions, do actual parallel dimensions/universes/planes of existence exist? Like actual heaven(s) and hell(s) for example?

We know that the Eorzean creation myth with the Twelve isn't true, but does that mean it's all made up, or that it mixed the former Ancients together with actually existing stuff?

With the crossover events we got plenty of hints of some parallel dimensions, but with little enough information that they might just be one of the reflections... but there were more crossover events, than there are unexplored reflections left.
Between the 7 lost to rejoinings, the Thirteenth, the First and now the one Alexandria is from, there are only 3 unknown relfections left, after all.

There is of course the possibility, that those crossover worlds aren't parallel dimensions at all, but are rather regular planets in the same universe, that just got temporarily connected over a distance and which we could just fly to, with the Ragnarok, if we learned of their location.

[Cleretic]

We know that the Eorzean creation myth with the Twelve isn't true, but does that mean it's all made up, or that it mixed the former Ancients together with actually existing stuff?

I'll remind you that in this context, the main thing that was proven true by Myths of the Realm was the existence of the seven heavens... and crucially, not the seven hells, which appear to be purely theoretical. We also learned that the seven heavens are not afterlives, though, and are entirely the domain of the Twelve and their direct creations (or extensions, in the case of Dalamud).

For Abrahamic religion-derived demons to exist, there would need to be an Abrahamic religion-derived hell, and probably by extension Abrahamic religion-derived cosmology--something to make them, essentially. And those, putting it as simply as possible, don't exist here; there are no demons. The closest you could get, in both aesthetic and origin, are the voidsent--not only are they very clearly demonic with at least some of their taxonomy derived from those origins, they actually do have origins in, to grossly simplify, godlike figures screwing up and making them.

Other than that the closest you can get is, like, Ifrit (also from an Abrahamic origin, as it happens). But if you're counting Ifrit as a demon, what are you even asking for, really?

EDIT: I don't even completely follow how you're dragging in parallel universes here, but to clarify, FFXIV follows the Dissidia multiverse model as best anyone can tell; the other Final Fantasy universes exist off in their own universes, with the Interdimensional Rift between them, and FFXIV's own mini-multiverse of the shards exists as a mostly-internal network. This is how Omega's storyline behaved, this is how Gilgamesh's presence behaved, this is how the FFXII, XV and both XI collab events behaved, and to the best of anyone's reckoning so far is how the XI alliance raids behave. The Nier raids are a little ambiguous, but it's essentially ambiguity on if they came from a further afield part of FFXIV's universe or from one in that greater multiverse.

[fulminating]

As the player character was a guest in the omniphallus, I don’t think that it can be used as definitive proof for or against the existence of the hells - rhalgr and naldthal used attacks called hell of lightning/hell’s trial so there’s also that to consider.

[Vyrerus]

So we've actually reached the point in XIV's story where to add new stuff, it has to come from somewhere else. Mainly because they took Endwalker as an opportunity to shoot their own universe in the foot. this was done to place more importance and focus on Etheirys going forward. A real, have our cake and eat it too, sort of moment. They wanted this epic universe spanning be all end all boss moment, but they realized they still had most of Etheirys unexplored, so they made the universe dead (at least in one direction, because that's how 3 dimensional space works but anyway...).

So now we're where we are, with exploring the unexplored places on Etheirys, but the writers feeling the need to have world shaking stakes, and those have to come from somewhere else, because otherwise they're intentionally creating huge plot holes for the past storyline.

So the most current story is pulling those stakes from shards across the dimensional gap, but the rift can lead to any other dimension or time anyway, and that's how Soreel Ja is having fever dreams of Vana'diel.

Because there is no strict ruleset for the interdimensional rift in XIV's universe, the writers have given themselves carte blanche to do whatever the hell they want with it. Meaning if they really wanted to, they could have had us set foot on the real Vana'diel by stepping through a convenient rift. That's how we got the Nier crossover event, afterall. How a continuity that comes from "real world" Earth timeline story winds up on The First.

So the answer to OP's question is that, yeah, they could have actual demons, Heaven, or Hell if they really wanted to have it. But it would be whatever the writer imagines it to be that fits into the convenient content formula and typing for the WoL to beat up. It also wouldn't have the strongest meaning or connection to XIV's universe, because it'd be from completely outside of it.

To answer OP's question in another way, there doesn't seem to be any actual God entity in XIV's universe nor any Satan analogue. Comparisons to be made with characters we've been given, surely, and also the idea that The Ancient Ascians had a concept for God and then made it a reality, thereby making themselves Gods in a sense, but nothing that's as incomprehensible as say... The Zohar entity from Xenogears. No Wave Existences and Miang Protocols here, fam.

[Cleretic]

I've realized that there's probably a worthwhile question to ask, because without it, the OP's opening questions don't really make enough sense to have a satisfying conclusive answer:

If you want demons and hell, why aren't voidsent and the Thirteenth enough?

Because FFXIV is not rooted enough in real-world theological and mythological concepts to actually just do something like 'these are demons', they make their own local versions and occasionally import some names. Remember that our equivalent of the Greek pantheon is a bunch of bureaucratic fops living in a metropolis who happened to have more power than they had responsibility; for the most part they don't just give us 'this is X thing from Y mythology'. And voidsent are pretty clearly our equivalent of demons, with the Thirteenth as our equivalent of hell. Things are a little askew--they're grape flavored instead of cherry flavored, and the whole 'eternal punishment' thing is more aimed at them than others--but they fit the vast majority of the bill.

If the OP is asking the question they're asking, clearly what they want from 'demons and hell' isn't covered by voidsent fitting that vast majority of the bill. So, why? What is it they want, that voidsent aren't providing? Because without that answer we're just gonna be wildly stabbing in random directions in hopes that we're getting close to a satisfactory answer.

[Vyrerus]

I've realized that there's probably a worthwhile question to ask, because without it, the OP's opening questions don't really make enough sense to have a satisfying conclusive answer:

If you want demons and hell, why aren't voidsent and the Thirteenth enough?

I can only guess at OP's desires, but to me I would say that it would be insanely interesting if a supernatural order actually presented itself at this point within the FFXIV cosmology.

As it stands, they robbed the setting of nearly all of its mysteries, and the afterlife is confirmed to be part of a planetary process that can be physically observed. You lose a lot of wonder when death on Etheirys basically entails just chilling in a semi-hostile blue planet center until you get reborn. The showing and doing of going into the Aitiascope down into the Aetherial Sea in our physical bodies on top of that is the sort of genie they can't put back in the bottle.

It robbed from lore that came before it with regards to how life and death work in the setting and resulted in mild undercuts to a lot of, "And they're dead and gone forever." / their spirit came back to aid us sort of things.

But imagine for instance that an actual God entity presented itself to the setting as being above and beyond the weird cycle of Etheirys. I have no idea about how they'd write it, nor what such an entity would consider good, nor do I know what such an entity's "fallen angels" would be like.

But if it did come about, it'd have us scratching our heads once more and asking a million questions.

And for what it's worth, I've been perfectly OK with XIV's versions of angels and demons and gods. I like the bacon necktie. It's fun to think about still, even if its most recent happenings are not to taste.

TL;DR - The desire for divinities to feel mysterious and unknowable and their dark counterparts to have a similar feeling.

[PorxiesRCute]

People keep saying they "killed the mystery" of the world but personally I like learning things about the cosmology of a world. I think it is cool and fun.

And there are still plenty of things we don't know. What about other planets -- Meteion only visited a finite number of worlds and could not have seen them all; for example, what about Ultima the High Seraph, where did she come from and what is she?

What about the other reflections we haven't seen? Hell, what about the rest of the Ninth? What's going on there?

What came *before* the Ancients? Were they always immortal? Was their world always a "perfect paradise"? What life came before them?

Aside from Allag, they've only scratched the surface on the bygone civilizations on the Source. And there's still half a world we have yet to see.

[Vyrerus]

People keep saying they "killed the mystery" of the world

Until we see otherwise we won't know about the universe. The in game direction is that it's all dead, even though that can't be true logistically speaking. But the issue is they don't want us thinking about it much beyond the promised "cosmic exploration." (Pretty sure it's gonna be Island Sanctuary in space)

Mysteries surrounding Reflections aren't a new mystery, hence there's no novelty in wondering about it. It's been on all our minds for years at this point.

What came before The Ascians could be interesting, but the knowledge that it will result in The Ascians inevitably would curtail enthusiasm, so it's something of a non-starter. (Plus the writers would have to set in concrete what sort of society lead to a perfection-adjacent society, and that'd be like opening a huge can of worms/would be really easy to fumble)

Because we are dealing with fiction, civilizations prior that have not yet been introduced will simultaneously insert new plot holes. As in, if they introduce... oh idk, let's make something up. Let's say they introduce a civilization that predates Allag or came right after Allag, and it wasn't quite as good but it was still pretty marvelous... We'll call them the Porxians. Anything they did will be just as important as anything they didn't do, and the mainstay of their Porxian civilization will have to be isolated to whatever 6 region map their expansion entails. Barring the topic not getting its own expansion, the lore surrounding the Porxians would have to explain why no one has ever heard of, mentioned, seen, or had reason to talk about them until the point of their introduction in our story.

This is actually what makes Shard civilizations so easy to write into the story, or really anything from the Interdimensional Rift. Inserting entire societies into a setting is not an easy feat, and explanations as to why they didn't come in sooner are usually extremely weak. Having a no rules dimensional barrier/passage is like a godsend to a writer in a setting like this. Isolationism and difficulty of traversal only go so far, after all, and when we've got civilizations capable of space travel even in Allag's day just sitting right beneath our pristine magical forest, it doesn't get any easier to hand wave away.

As for the, "half the world still to see" you really just mean Meracydia and the land beneath the Garlean cloud cover which has already been said to be typically impassable mountain ranges. I'm sounding like a broken record at this point, but the mystery there is also not new, and even once they finally turn us in that direction, the explanations as to why it didn't feature in our story yet will be weak, and the plausibility of its Source related portions being deeply meaningful to the setting will also not hold water.

I mean, the entire premise of the mystery in those regions is literally just, "You don't know what's there, for sure!" And the thing is, neither do the writers! And any mystery that is there is already hamstrung by the established setting and all that came before. (i.e. There is no escaping The Ascians on The Planet of The Ascians)

[Cleretic]

I can only guess at OP's desires, but to me I would say that it would be insanely interesting if a supernatural order actually presented itself at this point within the FFXIV cosmology.

As it stands, they robbed the setting of nearly all of its mysteries, and the afterlife is confirmed to be part of a planetary process that can be physically observed. You lose a lot of wonder when death on Etheirys basically entails just chilling in a semi-hostile blue planet center until you get reborn. The showing and doing of going into the Aitiascope down into the Aetherial Sea in our physical bodies on top of that is the sort of genie they can't put back in the bottle.

Okay, then what you're asking for isn't 'demons' (which the OP does seem focused specifically on for whatever reason, which is why I was asking), it's just new mysteries at all. And specifically you seem to want more cosmological or existential mysteries, big questions to speculate about the answer to, an unknowable monster to eventually fight, but not too soon or else the mystery is over. Dawntrail's currently dealing with smaller mysteries, more personal and societal, so you're not feeling fulfilled because those levels don't interest you.

In fact, I'd honestly suspect that if we got demons, you wouldn't be happy, because demons are actually very quantifiable and predictable as an enemy. You want a mystery, and demons would remain a mystery for maybe one patch before we get a fairly obvious answer, and you're unsatisfied by the lack of mystery again. You want, like, an alien invasion, an eldritch horror, or some form of Ascians 2.

[PorxiesRCute]

[character limit]

So then... what exactly do you want?

Should they introduce a bunch of big existential questions and then never answer them? Should this game just be Lost?