Occult Crescent speculation

[Kranel_San]

Man, reading this thread made realize how screwed up the MSQ is.

Imagine if 7.0 was basically just Occult Crescent?

[unlimitedBLACK]

In-game description for Ozma:

Originally created by the mages of Mhach as means of protecting their home from what they believed was an unavoidable uprising of voidsent, the magicked spheroid was eventually employed during the War of the Magi to devour the cities of their enemies and send them into a state of dimensional compression.

Caption for the image of the pyramid in the Weeping City of Mhach on page 196, EE3:

Two nightmarish beings were said to guard the Nullstone at its apex: Ozma, an enigmatic sphere of terrible power, and Calofisteri, a mighty sorceress who achieved a twisted form of eternal life by imbibing the blood of voidsent.

Proto Ozma doesn't appear to have an in-game description...

Demi-Ozma flavor text:

Call into battle Demi-Ozma─the round mound of spellbound.

After concluding that Ozma of the Weeping City was but a preliminary attempt to weave an aether-based simulacrum of the Eurekan phenomenon Proto Ozma, the Students of Baldesion endeavored to apply similar magicks in the creation of what they dubbed “Demi-Ozma,” hoping to learn what makes the entity tick.

Ozma and Proto Ozma don't have Triple Triad cards, so that's not a source of information either.

So... based on what's here, Mhach created Ozma as a weapon to COUNTER voidsent, presumably before Mhach started to weaponize voidsent as their preferred tools in the War of the Magi. And the Nullstone, as a contingency against the rebellion of said tools, was guarded by Ozma (a construct meant to trap voidsent) and Calofisteri (a sorceress who ritualistically consumed voidsent blood to become immortal). So while Ozma was originally AND ultimately an anti-voidsent construct, it was apparently deployed to "devour the cities of [Mhach's] enemies and send them into a state of dimensional compression" at some point in Mhach's campaign.

Meanwhile, what we're told in Eureka is that the primal Eureka created Proto Ozma, in addition to the other Eurekan weapons held in the Baldesion Arsenal, which were gathered by Galuf and his students in order to contain the threat of them. Which gives the implication that Proto Ozma is just another Eurekan weapon (albeit a pretty powerful one), and the Mhachi Ozma is a copy of it, (and Demi-Ozma is a neutered version created BY THE STUDENTS to figure out how Ozma works). This, in turn, tells us that while Galuf and the Students turned the Isle of Val into a prison for the primal Eureka, they still had to go out and collect Shin-Zantetsuken, Orlasrach & Munderg, the Lance of Virtue, and Proto Ozma from SOMEWHERE ELSE before bringing them all back to be contained with Eureka on Val.

The detail that Ozma ate cities certainly comports with all of the Fifth Astral Era architecture we're seeing in the South Horn. If it turns out the Occult Crescent has some kind of backdoor into Ozma's compressed dimension, that might explain why it's trapped so many folks who stumble into the place.

Given what we learn about Eureka during Eureka Orthos (that it was utilized and not necessarily created by the Allagans, who used it to create weapons like Zantetsuken and Excalibur) and what we can infer about how the Mhachi learned so much about voidsent in the first place (that they might have stumbled upon an Allagan repository that covered Xande's deal with the Cloud of Darkness and thus got a jumpstart into summoning voidsent for fun and profit), it seems reasonable to assume that the Allagans might have been the ones who had Proto Ozma in the first place.

Which, in turn, leads me to think that Mhach must have encountered Proto Ozma at some point in order to be able to copy it in the first place.

So, the theory I'm getting at here is this:

1. During the 5AE, Mhach discovers one of the Eurekan research facilities, containing information on Xande's pact with the Cloud of Darkness and also contains Proto Ozma.
2. The Mhachi develop a hypothesis that Xande's deal with the Cloud of Darkness is probably what led to the collapse of Allag and the disappearance of the Crystal Tower, so they know that the voidsent are dangerous and develop countermeasures against them... and here's Proto Ozma as a construct that can black hole targets into an inescapable dimensional space, which is great for (YOU GUESSED IT) sealing away voidsent.
3. Once the Mhachi feel secure that they can prevent the voidsent from betraying them (with their creation of Ozma) they start summoning voidsent in earnest to use for conquest.
4. When the Mhachi innovate the Nullstone as a more final countermeasure (rather than containing the voidsent within Ozma's black hole, they can just nuke the voidsent entirely) then Ozma gets repurposed as a weapon against the other city-states, but then gets placed as one of the two measures protecting the Nullstone, which is now a vulnerability for Mhach ITSELF given how much they've come to rely on summoning voidsent for power.
5. ... which is why the Void Ark is still powered by imprisoned voidsent being used as batteries, even when the Mhachi realized that the flood waters were rising. They straight up never put together that their overuse of voidsent was one of the reasons WHY the Calamity of Water was coming, so they just ran with it until they couldn't any longer.
6. Later on, in the 6AE, Galuf and the Students locate Proto Ozma within a Mhachi ruin and take it to the Arsenal for safekeeping, until Emmerololth shows up to start causing problems on purpose.

TL;DR: so yeah, it all comes back to the Allagans, probably.

[Cleretic]

Man, reading this thread made realize how screwed up the MSQ is.

Imagine if 7.0 was basically just Occult Crescent?

If it were, I'd be a lot less interested in both the Occult Crescent, and the MSQ. And not just because I like Dawntrail: the Occult Crescent would be AWFUL as an MSQ.

Like Eureka, Occult Crescent's central pitch is 'explore a weird zone'. I love a weird zone, and FFXIV has actually used them very well for finales as well as side content. But they'd make a terrible central concept for an expansion, because by themselves they're only driven by curiosity; there's no narrative drive, there's no character journeys, there's no concrete reason we should go there. Weird zone finales like Ultima Thule or Living Memory work because we almost always turn up there in pursuit of a specific person to stop a specific thing, and the game's spent five less-weird zones laying down the characters and stakes.

I've GMed and pitched a decent share of RP scenarios, and without exception, the ones that got the least immediate buy-in were the 'explore a weird zone' pitches. Because most people aren't driven by curiosity, they want a good answer for 'why', and a place like the Occult Crescent deliberately isn't forthcoming about that.

This, in turn, tells us that while Galuf and the Students turned the Isle of Val into a prison for the primal Eureka, they still had to go out and collect Shin-Zantetsuken, Orlasrach & Munderg, the Lance of Virtue, and Proto Ozma from SOMEWHERE ELSE before bringing them all back to be contained with Eureka on Val.

For what it's worth in relation to this specific subject: Art and Owain, the split first bosses of the BArsenal, use attacks from Scathach and Diabolos. It's admittedly tenuous evidence, but it suggests to me that Mhach had more extended contact with the primal Eureka. That only raises further questions, though; if Mhach had Eureka, why weren't they using it? And if they lost Eureka, who took it?

I'm not 100% convinced we're looking at a Eureka story here, though, our evidence is deeply tangential at best. And I'd kinda like a 5AA/War of the Magi story where Mhach wasn't the antagonist, but I can't deny the overwhelming pattern of previous stories.

[unlimitedBLACK]

For what it's worth in relation to this specific subject: Art and Owain, the split first bosses of the BArsenal, use attacks from Scathach and Diabolos. It's admittedly tenuous evidence, but it suggests to me that Mhach had more extended contact with the primal Eureka. That only raises further questions, though; if Mhach had Eureka, why weren't they using it? And if they lost Eureka, who took it?

I didn't recall that detail about Art and Owain... though I agree it's tenuous evidence, it's still something.

I'm not 100% convinced we're looking at a Eureka story here, though, our evidence is deeply tangential at best. And I'd kinda like a 5AA/War of the Magi story where Mhach wasn't the antagonist, but I can't deny the overwhelming pattern of previous stories.

I think it might be worth pointing out that Stormblood's field operation pulled on a LOT of different threads (the Ascians being interested in the primal Eureka, the fate of Team Galuf and the Isle of Val, G'raha Tia's interest in Allag and the Forbidden Land legend linking back into the Crystal Tower raids, the presence of Proto Ozma, as well as all the latent FF5/FF11 references throughout the place). Later, something that happened in ShB's field operation was that we learned a little bit MORE about Allag and Eureka just from being told how Save the Queen was an auracite weapon, and that Allag turned to using Eureka for weapons development because of the rarity of acquiring auracite. Eureka Orthos added another dimension to this by establishing that there were various Eurekan facilities aside from just Orthos itself, aside from also demonstrating more strongly the danger of the Eurekan weapons through the tale of Artorius and Excalibur... which I mention because while Eureka Orthos isn't a field operation like the Forbidden Land and Bozja, it came in the patch series for Endwalker, which didn't HAVE a field operation, in the same sense that Bozja took precedence over a deep dungeon in Shadowbringers.

So ever since Stormblood, some piece of patch content has breadcrumbed us more information about Eureka, directly or otherwise.

So while I agree that Occult Crescent probably isn't a Eureka story per se, the notion that we might unravel more of the mystery surrounding Eureka by learning more about Ozma seems like it would fit with that pattern.

[Vallavia]

I'm not 100% convinced we're looking at a Eureka story here, though, our evidence is deeply tangential at best. And I'd kinda like a 5AA/War of the Magi story where Mhach wasn't the antagonist, but I can't deny the overwhelming pattern of previous stories.

To one of your earlier points, it does seem pretty conspicuous that we still don't know what incited the war in the first place, particularly given how much we've dug up about the three major players in the conflict already (and some of Skalla to boot). I still think it's overwhelmingly likely to be an Ascian intervention, all the writing for deliberately causing an Umbral Calamity is on the wall, but focusing on the 'human' element of it could be an interesting angle: perhaps Mhach pursued such aggressive armament in the first place because they were preparing to face a completely different existential threat greater and more terrifying than any other individual city-state, and the Ascians stoked paranoia about their growing arsenal among the other eleven Eorzean city-states at the time to provoke the conflict (and then went on to prolong the war as long as possible to drain the star of five elements).

[jadeharley]

In-game description for Ozma:
Originally created by the mages of Mhach as means of protecting their home from what they believed was an unavoidable uprising of voidsent, the magicked spheroid was eventually employed during the War of the Magi to devour the cities of their enemies and send them into a state of dimensional compression.

Do you have a source for this? I can't seem to find it. "dimensional compression" directly implies rejoining-like phenomena (the term seems to only be used twice: once when referring to scholars who mysteriously disappeared along with the isle of val, and once when referring to Heritage Found)

My guess for ST is also ozma-related. Excitingly, it seems like what we're getting is a direct-ish "sequel" to eureka.

[Cleretic]

Resurrecting this because the Occult Crescent is out now, and has a lot to unpack! Which I know at least for me is a reason for silence for a while; there's a lot to digest.

First of all, hitting the actual story. I'm not 100% done yet (still waiting for Calamity Bound), but here's what I've got.

So, the Occult Crescent is essentially a big weird Museum of the Fifth Astral Era, made by most-likely-Archive to preserve what they were before they blew each other up. Reasonably this probably happened after Bitoso hit Nym but before the entire place got dunked in a flood, but we don't have a clear timeline. However, there might be more to things than just Archive.

However, this does mean that we're not exactly looking at a settlement of any kind: everything was essentially constructed to illustrate what the civilizations of the 5AA were doing and capable of, using their own techniques, but we're not seeing whole groups.

As for the stuff we've learned about the 5AA so far:

So, the major discovery is another civilization: Karnak! Karnak's named after the city from FFV that had the Fire Crystal, but what we have mostly suggests that they were roughly Mesopotamian in terms of aesthetic, with turbans and ziggurats. For what it's worth, when I combine 'FFV' and 'turbans' I land on Mystic Knight, who aren't currently present anywhere in the game. They were also a magical civilization, but interestingly, Archive at least in English places Karnak outside of the 5AA's 'twelve city-states'. I wouldn't be confident about that without looking at other languages, though. The Occult Record seems to hint that Karnak worshipped Nald'thal, and more as a god of the forge than modern perceptions of 'the god of commerce'; more Hephaestus rather than Plutus.

Someone has actually suggested to me that 'the twelve city-states' might actually be a grouping more than a numbering, similar to Norse mythology's 'nine realms'; if you actually count the realms in Norse myth there's more than nine. In that case we might not actually be looking at a set-in-stone, concrete group of twelve.

As for the civilizations we already knew about, we don't get a lot of clear info, but of what we do have, Skalla's probably the biggest one: Treasure Tortoise of all sources confirms that they had 'mighty mages', but wasn't really specific beyond that. From there, I'd actually put forward that our best intel are the Phantom Jobs: so far, we have twelve.

• Knight
• Monk
• Thief
• Samurai
• Berserker
• Ranger
• Time Mage
• Chemist
• Geomancer
• Bard
• Oracle
• Cannoneer

I feel like it's probably fair to narrow Skalla's input on this down to the explicit magic jobs: Time Mage, Geomancer, Oracle, and maybe Chemist. Twelve jobs would reliably sync up to 'the twelve city-states' (if there were indeed twelve), but none of them explicitly sync up with anything we already know about the 5AA civs, so who can say.

[Zero-ELEC]

*snip*

I believe that in other languages it's more explicit that

Karnak is actually one of the twelve city-states of the Fifth Astral

and it's just one of those loc kerfuffles that we get occasionally.

What's really interesting to me is that phantom knight is "knight" and not "paladin"; now this might be because it's intentionally using the name used in FFV's localisation, but I believe they're named the same in Japanese, with both being ナイト. Which might not mean anything or it might mean that this phantom knight job has some sort of continuity with modern paladins but changed names over time?

What also interests me is the fact that samurai and geomancers were seemingly present in the Fifth Astral, meaning that there maybe was already cultural crosspolination with the Far East of the time. I wonder what the makeup of those civilisations were at the time?

[mallleable]

Thoughts

Why is the voice that only we can hear (assumed to be The Architect) referring to the Warrior of Light as 'deserved?' What do we or did we deserve? Makes me think The Architect knows something about our character.

Some speculation

While the characters are referring to the island as a 'museum' of sorts, I don't think that's it's purpose. The War of the Magi was an escalating magical arms race that ended in calamity so I think the Occult Crescent could be some kind of long term fantasy nuclear weapons/waste disposal site. Consider the illusory magicks that were used to conceal the island, and anyone who does manage to land would be greeted by ferocious wildlife, and visages of fallen civilizations. Museums want to preserve knowledge so that it may be accessible to others, but this place does not want to be found. This is not a place of honor. I think that the Warrior of Light was allowed onto the island because The Architect knows we are uncorruptable, and are meant, and will be able to destroy what ever ultimate magicks might be stored there.

[Cleretic]

What also interests me is the fact that samurai and geomancers were seemingly present in the Fifth Astral, meaning that there maybe was already cultural crosspolination with the Far East of the time. I wonder what the makeup of those civilisations were at the time?

Samurai isn't super weird, because we do know that Hingashi was around but fairly uneventful in the Fifth Astral Era. So was Bozja and Doma, although Doma probably not in a recognizable form, so it's not especially surprising to see imports from there.

If anything the weirdest to me might be Cannoneer, but that might just be because it feels like there should be a footprint left from people doing that. Surely we should be able to find the cannons, right!?