Occult Crescent speculation

[mallleable]

Some more kinda wild speculation

While there are sources that state that the 6th calamity was caused by The Elementals who were upset with everyone's misuse of the world's aether, it seem like that info is shaky. So I think we can assume that one of the 5AA super powers, more likely Amdapor developed magicks or a weapon which aspected to water as The Tenth was drowned out that caused the flood. Like how Mhach started augmented their power with The Void, I think Amdapor would utilize another plain of existence: The Aetherial Sea, and their first, and only use of a weaponized Life Stream caused the calamity. And this power is locked away in the Occult Crescent.

[Cleretic]

Some more kinda wild speculation

While there are sources that state that the 6th calamity was caused by The Elementals who were upset with everyone's misuse of the world's aether, it seem like that info is shaky. So I think we can assume that one of the 5AA super powers, more likely Amdapor developed magicks or a weapon which aspected to water as The Tenth was drowned out that caused the flood. Like how Mhach started augmented their power with The Void, I think Amdapor would utilize another plain of existence: The Aetherial Sea, and their first, and only use of a weaponized Life Stream caused the calamity. And this power is locked away in the Occult Crescent.

So, here's the thing about that: what your first sentence claims is 'shaky' is even shakier than you think!

There aren't current sources that say the Fifth Calamity was caused by the Elementals: the only source for that was the 1.0 White Mage storyline, which was conspicuously the only job storyline that they replaced come A Realm Reborn. Ever since then, the writing has been consistent that the Calamity was essentially caused by the war itself draining the land dry, to such a level that the end result was inevitable; if there was a spark setting off the flood itself, it's always considered far less important than the conditions that led to it in the first place.

What is interesting, though, is that according to the Encyclopedia Eorzea the fact that it was a flood was known, and was unanimously agreed on by every source in every city-state. ...including seers in at least one case, which gives some interesting context to the Oracle phantom job. We also know that the final shot of the war before 'oh crap, flood's coming' was Diabolos hitting Amdapor; I have no idea if that's relevant or what that means, but it feels notable.

[Calysto]

Do we know which civilization Nyunkrepf was from ?
I think the lore was kinda scarce (exploration entry and that guy in sharlayan telling us they founded them), and I can't remember if there was something about it.

[mallleable]

A rather loaded question

Was the Exdeath character that Omega made us fight inspired by a person from the 5AA? (making a distinction between FFV's Exdeath, and the Exdeath simulation from the Omega raid series)

[Kranel_San]

It seems the Forked Tower: Blood, has been cleared. Although it appears there are no lore revelations or details to be shared about it.

Would love if someone could confirm.

[Cleretic]

The Forked Tower was cleared like, a week ago. It took longer than several Ultimates largely for organizational reasons; with Savage raids or Ultimates you can just keep trying, wipe after wipe, but with the Forked Tower you have to organize re-entry every single time, which is especially difficult with instances being busy right now.

That said, there's interesting stuff in the notes from the bosses, which you can find online.

Two of the bosses--the Demon Tablet and Marble Dragon--are Amdapori constructs. There's note that the Marble Dragon is too accurate to have been done without reference, suggesting that the creator must have been to Dravania to study them first-hand.

The 'Dead Stars'--Nereid Triton and Phobos--are tasked with managing the weather of the Crescent. Unclear what happens now that they're dead.

And the Magitaur is a voidsent, showing that this isn't entirely the Amdapor Show. Most interesting to me is that it mentions him wielding four weapons from the War of the Magi: the rune axe, sage's staff, assassin's dagger, and holy lance. Now, this is interesting because they're four of the twelve Sealed Weapons from FFV.

Finally, the 'treasure' at the top of the Forked Tower is an archive of texts in a language nobody can understand. Naturally, we don't have any idea what that entails, save that it's probably about the Fifth Astral Era.

I think most interesting of all, though, is the absence: this is only one half of FFV's Forked Tower dungeon, this is the physical tower. The other half is the magic tower that we're getting later, whose final boss is Omniscient. If you've played FFV you should already see where this is going, but if not:



That's what Archive's robe is based on.

A rather loaded question

Was the Exdeath character that Omega made us fight inspired by a person from the 5AA? (making a distinction between FFV's Exdeath, and the Exdeath simulation from the Omega raid series)

I'm not gonna answer this in spoiler tags, because while the answer is long, in this context it's mostly just a very long 'no'.

Basically, there's two trains of logic you have to consider with Omega's bosses. The first is what the Ironworks go off on initially, that it's lifting these figures from literature and is very bad at reading: in this case, the in-universe version of FFXIV is from an epic poem that's not only fictional, but Omega also interpreted literally when it probably wasn't intended that way. So basically, Exdeath is like the FFXIV world's version of Beowulf (or probably more likely Grendel; we don't get much insight on the poem).

But then there's the notion that FFXIV Omega is the actual Final Fantasy crossover figure Omega, and that these aren't inaccurate interpretations of historic or fictional figures, but are Omega recreating figures it actually encountered through the rift, which it plausibly could've fallen into in pursuit of Midgardsormr. Sure enough, Omega debuted in V and made appearances in versions of I and VI, so that completely tracks, and explains why Omega's recreations are inaccurate to FFXIV's record, but are accurate to those games. It also explains Kefka, who outright doesn't appear in any in-FFXIV text, historical or fictional.

In short: neither take really syncs up to the Fifth Astral.

[mallleable]

The Forked Tower was cleared like, a week ago. It took longer than several Ultimates largely for organizational reasons; with Savage raids or Ultimates you can just keep trying, wipe after wipe, but with the Forked Tower you have to organize re-entry every single time, which is especially difficult with instances being busy right now.

That said, there's interesting stuff in the notes from the bosses, which you can find online.

Two of the bosses--the Demon Tablet and Marble Dragon--are Amdapori constructs. There's note that the Marble Dragon is too accurate to have been done without reference, suggesting that the creator must have been to Dravania to study them first-hand.

The 'Dead Stars'--Nereid Triton and Phobos--are tasked with managing the weather of the Crescent. Unclear what happens now that they're dead.

And the Magitaur is a voidsent, showing that this isn't entirely the Amdapor Show. Most interesting to me is that it mentions him wielding four weapons from the War of the Magi: the rune axe, sage's staff, assassin's dagger, and holy lance. Now, this is interesting because they're four of the twelve Sealed Weapons from FFV.

Finally, the 'treasure' at the top of the Forked Tower is an archive of texts in a language nobody can understand. Naturally, we don't have any idea what that entails, save that it's probably about the Fifth Astral Era.

I think most interesting of all, though, is the absence: this is only one half of FFV's Forked Tower dungeon, this is the physical tower. The other half is the magic tower that we're getting later, whose final boss is Omniscient. If you've played FFV you should already see where this is going, but if not:



That's what Archive's robe is based on.

Forked Tower boss notes speculation

Dravania is not the only place with dragons on Etheirys. The Marbled Dragon could be referenced from a Meracydian dragon. It's outfitted with what appears to be weaponry on its wings, and it does have a ring-like device around its neck. Allag has weaponized dragons before. There are mobs towards the end that appear to be platypuses. Maybe The Architect had been to or is from Meracydia.

Also it is kind of odd that there is a lot of Amdapori stuff tied to the Forked Tower. The entrance thingy where everyone places the ciphers, and is causing everyone a headache does feature Amdapori architecture. It could have been built with any other style, but they went with Amdapor.

And yeah, Archive is totally Omniscient coded! But I don't think he's going to be a boss. I think he's just an ally The Architect is allowing the Warrior of Light to have for our time on the island. We as the 'deserved' were able to undo the barrier that had sealed him a way. Maybe he was a threat back then, but now he's just a little guy. Maybe there's some dangerous memories in his head that breaks free, and we have to fight that.

[Iscah]

I don't have much to add, but I thought the faerie being named Iris was an interesting choice -- it carries on the usual format of faeries having flower names, but also has an association with eyes, in a plot (and character) based around concealment.

[Kranel_San]

I didn't see anyone bringing this up so I'll take this chance to say that the Architect of the island could be a powerful Ascian or an Ancient who managed to survive the Final days, but was fascinated with the cultures and civilizations of the fifth era that he decided to preserve it on this little island.

The reason behind me saying this is primarily due to the color scheme of the chains and seal binding the Cloister Demon (From the Calamity Bound CE), which are reminiscent of Ancient/Amaruotean magic over anything else we've ever seen during the course of the game. Furthermore, the seal also has a shell-like glyph, which is similar to how Azem crystal's summoning circle shows a glyph upon itself.

Overall, this could explain how the Architect managed to live for thousands of years ever since the War of the Magi at least. It could also explain that he had sufficient time to learn each culture and civilization to such a fascinating degree while also staying low, because someone of such capabilities and feats should surely become a legendary figure in history or folktales, calamity or not.

[mallleable]

Wild speculation

Looking the epitaph at the end of The Forked Tower from clear videos, and thinking it could contain information about a Holy type magic just like it's FFV counterpart. But it's not FFV's version of Holy, it's FFVII's, a magic that stops threats to the planet. There is a kind of flowing illustration on it which could be related to the flood, and there are 7 spokes on the epitaph. Maybe the planet is actually alive, and the flood was a kind of immune system response. Maybe the people of the 5AA knew the planet was alive in some capacity, and that's where the 'prophecies' came from. Maybe the epitaph is an attempt to document the flood that washed away the 5AA civilizations for the purposes of recreating at will with out needing a world war to wreck havoc on the ambient aether. Which begs the question: what's in the other tower, considering Flare is just a level 50 BLM spell, Ultima?