Occult Crescent speculation

[Cleretic]

While I'm extremely excited about all of 7.2, I feel like the Occult Crescent is the stuff that's REALLY throwing out the hooks for the proper long-term Lore Nerds, so I felt like it might be good to have a thread for this!

So, first of all, a bit of a collation of details I've gathered from the special site and the live letters:

1. The actual landscape includes buildings that clearly match Nym, Mhach, and Amdapor's architectures.
2. Accordingly, its music is actually a medley of their dungeon/raid themes: A Tonberry's Tears, The Scars of Battle, and Teardrops in the Rain. But interestingly, there's another inclusion in it: Far From Home, which is Skalla's theme, the unlucky fourth victim of the War of the Magi. I haven't seen architecture I'd call Skallic, but that might be because of inexperience.
3. The 'Phantom Jobs' we get in the Occult Crescent are a mix of jobs we do and don't have; in the first live letter Yoshi-P actually talked about how some of these jobs might not be viable to make as full jobs (they've tried to crack Chemist at least twice before), so this is a chance to play in the space without hitting that problem.
4. In the second live letter Yoshi-P mentioned the Phantoms Jobs of jobs we do have, like Monk, are ancient forms of the job. So by logic, the other Phantom Jobs like Time Mage are jobs that did exist, but got lost over time.
5. The end raid instance of the first Occult Crescent zone is the Forked Tower; from the screenshots it's a little hard to tell if it's Nymian, Amdapori, or possibly both, but I feel like I can comfortably rule out Mhach. Fights that look to take place inside seem to include both some Demon Wall-looking figures, and a Sin Eater-looking guy.
6. All of the outside-XIV inspirations that have been mentioned for this, including the Phantom Job icons, are from Final Fantasy V.
7. It's a Ketenramm story, and there's a scene of him opening some kind of stone chest or coffin with us, possibly inside Forked Tower. Sure enough, FFV's Forked Tower did have treasures at the end of it: the ultimate Black and White Magics, Flare and Holy.

So with all of that, my own theory on this one:

The Occult Crescent is from the Fifth Astral Era, and got unstuck in time somehow; this lines up with FFV's city of Mirage. In FFV's story, the world got split into two a thousand years ago, and the city of Mirage was stuck in a weird state of flux that froze it until the worlds got re-fused. The Occult Crescent probably isn't exactly that, though, because that'd cause VERY odd questions regarding shards and Rejoinings.

All these locations are very close together and by all appearances intact; Nym's corner looks a little waterlogged, but that's it. This makes me feel like it might be from before the war; I can't imagine these three (four?) would all be neighbors without blowing each other to bits during the war. We don't actually know the inciting incident of the War of the Magi; maybe this joint colony disappeared and everyone blamed each other?

[Anonymoose]

Assuming it's not a mirage of some sort itself, if we need an "unstuck in time" mechanic there's always Ozma black holes... lol

Triple bonus score if they tell us the other 8 city names for no reason at all.

[Vallavia]

All these locations are very close together and by all appearances intact; Nym's corner looks a little waterlogged, but that's it. This makes me feel like it might be from before the war; I can't imagine these three (four?) would all be neighbors without blowing each other to bits during the war. We don't actually know the inciting incident of the War of the Magi; maybe this joint colony disappeared and everyone blamed each other?

I thought this was pretty funny, but it does also seem exactly like an Ascian doomsday plot to stir up (at least) three nations of extraordinarily powerful mages to trigger an apocalypse. And there is precedent with Eureka...

[Cleretic]

I thought this was pretty funny, but it does also seem exactly like an Ascian doomsday plot to stir up (at least) three nations of extraordinarily powerful mages to trigger an apocalypse. And there is precedent with Eureka...

In fairness, while Eureka was the Ascians' fault, they didn't cause it; it disappearing was an emergency countermeasure to stop an Ascian.

And I do have a constant pet theory that it was Proto-Ozma that brought it back, but I don't expect it to actually be accurate.

[mallleable]

Assuming it's not a mirage of some sort itself, if we need an "unstuck in time" mechanic there's always Ozma black holes... lol

Triple bonus score if they tell us the other 8 city names for no reason at all.

The bubbles in the sky could be literal time bubbles or Ozma shaped bite marks in reality. Pick your poison.

[Vallavia]

In fairness, while Eureka was the Ascians' fault, they didn't cause it; it disappearing was an emergency countermeasure to stop an Ascian.

And I do have a constant pet theory that it was Proto-Ozma that brought it back, but I don't expect it to actually be accurate.

Sorry, I meant more that there's precedent for "there is an existing mechanism that can cause pieces of reality to be unceremoniously teleported across the planet", not that Eureka was done by an Ascian. Though even that might be mooted with the advent of dimensional fusion which opens all kinds of possibilities.

I think with the other discussions of Ozma holes and time dilation it's more likely that the Occult Crescent wasn't always in its current physical configuration. If I were to hazard a completely unfounded guess, I'd say that some party (probably Mhach, given Ozma has this power already) tried to use some applied magic on all these places at once (perhaps originating from the Forked Tower) which ended up failing spectacularly and instead sucking everybody and everything including the casters into a wormhole that dumped them in the modern Occult Crescent.

[Cleretic]

Sorry, I meant more that there's precedent for "there is an existing mechanism that can cause pieces of reality to be unceremoniously teleported across the planet", not that Eureka was done by an Ascian. Though even that might be mooted with the advent of dimensional fusion which opens all kinds of possibilities.

I think with the other discussions of Ozma holes and time dilation it's more likely that the Occult Crescent wasn't always in its current physical configuration. If I were to hazard a completely unfounded guess, I'd say that some party (probably Mhach, given Ozma has this power already) tried to use some applied magic on all these places at once (perhaps originating from the Forked Tower) which ended up failing spectacularly and instead sucking everybody and everything including the casters into a wormhole that dumped them in the modern Occult Crescent.

I can see this, although not literally Ozma. Partly because Ozma's an FFIX thing and we're squarely in FFV Time, but also because I don't think Mhach's Ozma has enough juice for this; it did a pretty bad job sucking up one city, and Crescent looks bigger than that.

FFV does have an angle, though: Exdeath sucking locations into the Void, where he summons a big black orb and that entire part of the map's just gone. Dissidia interpreted that by way of having 'time bubbles' depicting some of those locations floating around the FFV stage, and it's not... a world away from the bubbles in the Occult Crescent? And certainly, the thing in the coffin/chest from the trailer looks pretty void-ular.

My new theory is that we're going up against Enuo, the original guy that tried to control the Void from FFV. He was only a boss in the Advance version, which I'd normally be disinclined to factor in... except they've already referenced Cannoneer, so we're good!

[Anonymoose]

Considering that Eureka came in, claimed Ozma as its own, and dubbed the Weeping City boss a "preliminary attempt", if they did end up wanting to go that route, there's probably some wiggle room.

"Oh, uhhh ... Mhach's efforts just got better later".

[Vallavia]

Considering that Eureka came in, claimed Ozma as its own, and dubbed the Weeping City boss a "preliminary attempt", if they did end up wanting to go that route, there's probably some wiggle room.

"Oh, uhhh ... Mhach's efforts just got better later".

This was kind of what I was operating on; while it may or may not be Our Friend, Ozma™ I think there are certainly open avenues and existing connections adjacent to it that could point that direction. Plus, even with the FFV connections, Dawntrail Season 2 was for all intents and purposes FFIX-2, so I think at least a wink and a nudge to Ozma would be in order. And, as stated, the "this previously explored backstory point was expanded on offscreen and we had no way of knowing" isn't an uncommon handwave in this game (Ultima, the Ultima Weapon, Corvos, others)

[Cleretic]

Considering that Eureka came in, claimed Ozma as its own, and dubbed the Weeping City boss a "preliminary attempt", if they did end up wanting to go that route, there's probably some wiggle room.

"Oh, uhhh ... Mhach's efforts just got better later".

My read on Ozma was broadly that Proto-Ozma was the original, probably made by someone who owned the primal Eureka before Mhach (there's a line around Eureka Orthos that might be referring to it), and Mhach's Ozma is their attempt to make their own without Eureka.

So I don't think Mhach's efforts got better, I think Mhach's efforts got worse.