altanirynsi - Tumblr blog

[altanirynsi]

He is so relatable

[altanirynsi]

my heart wants gwen to be a whm but my fucking mental illness insists the wol has to be a melee/tank main bc of Lore and Realism or something idk. anyway healer mains how we beating people up in 1v1s

[altanirynsi]

There | Altan Irynsi, NPC | FFXIV Gpose

"No need to look so stiff, darling. You just have a little something riiiiiiiiight... there."

[altanirynsi]

A Broken Peace | Altan Irynsi, NPC | FFXIV Gpose

"I like him. I think I'll keep him."

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Soul Keeper | Altan Irynsi | FFXIV Gpose

"Were you expecting pearly gates?"

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Disesteem | Altan Irynsi | FFXIV Gpose

dis·​es·​teem - to hold in low regard; think unfavorably of.

ie. I saw these VFX and instantly went "YES"

[altanirynsi]

Phantom | Altan Irynsi | FFXIV Gpose

"No soul has seen his face and lived to tell the tale..."

[altanirynsi]

I just wanna take pretty thirst trap pics of my lizard and instead I gotta do TAXES ugh

So anyway I took some low effort pics but this one's prolly my fave?

[altanirynsi]

This is the information they are trying to keep from you by banning tiktok

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[altanirynsi]

One thing that I think also gets overlooked is... the Ascians, at minimum, are tempered. If not the majority of the Zodiark-worshipping Ascians.

If you talk to Emet-Selch periodically during ShB, in the crystal tower, he'll literally tell you that yourself. And I only caught it during my 2nd play through of ShB when I thought to talk to the NPCs that time, because it just... doesn't really come up during the regular MSQ cutscenes and dialogue, to my knowledge.

The Ascians are tempered. They are literally doing what tempered souls do.

one thing i like to do when i'm feeling too unbothered and chill and normal is read venat discourse on twitter. makes me insane every single time it comes up. "she placed herself as a god above the ancients and judged that they had no right to live" "she was taking the only path available to her to stop meteion and defeat the final days because it needed to be a race that could handle dynamis" wrong wrong wrong! learn to read!

venat was stopping a planned mass sacrifice of non-ancient life by the only means available to her. that is the primary motivation for the sundering. shadowbringers says this to you, very very clearly. hythlodaeus in "a greater purpose," 5.0 (this is when you're chilling at the DMV together):

The Convocation of Fourteen─well, it was Thirteen at the time─endeavored to create a will for our star. They would repair the fundamental laws of order and halt the spread of destruction. But creation on such a scale required an immense source of power... Of those of us who still lived, nearly half offered up their lives in the name of salvation. And from their sacrifice, Zodiark was born. Just as we had hoped, He reached forth and halted the march of oblivion. ...Yet oh how the star had suffered. So many species lost. The land was blighted, the waters poisoned, and even the wind had ceased to blow. Once more did our people give of themselves to Zodiark. Another half of our race sacrificed to cleanse the world; to ensure that trees and grasses and myriad tiny lives would sprout and grow and flourish. The cycle of life had begun anew, and we reconsidered the means by which we might protect it. The Convocation decided thus: we would nurture our world until it was bursting with vitality. Then, when the time was right, we would offer some portion of its living energy to Zodiark... In return, He would restore to us those brethren whose souls had fed His strength, and together we would resume our role as stewards. There were, however, those who disagreed with this plan. They argued that enough had been sacrificed to Zodiark─that this new world should belong to the lives newly born. These dissidents surrendered their life energies in the creation of Hydaelyn, an incarnation of their opposing belief. And for the first time in history, our people stood divided... Know you, then, how this conflict ended?

Hythlodaeus is very clear: Following the first 50% sacrifice to Zodiark, the land was dying and there had been a mass die-off. A second 50% sacrifice (so 25% of the pre-Zodiark Ancient population) resolved that, cleansing the world and restoring nature and non-Ancient life. Afterwards, the Convocation planned a third sacrifice: they would "nurture [the] world until it was bursting with vitality," the "trees and grasses and myriad tiny lives" he describes earlier, and then sacrifice some considerable amount of that life to restore the Ancients comprising Zodiark.

People pretend that there's a lot more ambiguity on this point than there is, but it's quite clear that when he says "myriad tiny lives," he is saying something that encompasses the modern peoples of Eorzea or their very near ancestors (it's only been about 12,000 years since the Sundering. For comparison early modern humans emerged about 300,000 years ago, and there's no suggestion I'm aware of that evolution even exists on Etheirys anyhow). There's a couple very strong pieces of evidence for this:

First, anything that exists on multiple shards must have existed pre-Sundering, since there's close to no multidimensional travel (barring Ascians and the Exarch). Thus, all the player races, which we know exist on each shard so far, as well as, say, the Amalj'aa, the Kobolds, the Sahagin, and the Qiqirn, all must have existed before the Sundering since we also see them on the First.

Second, the phrasing of "trees and grasses and myriad tiny lives" positions "lives" as a category that encompasses everything that isn't trees and grasses. We can surmise that when he describes the Hydaelyn faction standing for "lives newly born" he's again describing basically everything that isn't plants. this again includes the spoken races of the current game or their ancestors; they are a clear part of what was at stake in the sacrifice.

Third, if that doesn't persuade you that Hythlodaeus is talking about lives like yours, consider that you've just spent the last few quests exploring the city full of giant ancient magic people going "wow! you're so small and childlike! what a miniscule living being you are!" When Hythlodaeus gives this speech about "myriad tiny lives," he is a literal enormous giant sitting next to you, a very tiny living being from his perspective.

This sacrifice, which Hythlodaeus explains to you in the DMV, is the crux of the matter and the root of Venat's choice. The time loop, her knowledge of Meteion, the debate over the right solution to the final days—all of that is secondary. She explicitly is unsure up until you meet her in the Aitiascope whether the time loop is stable and real and applies to you.

The essential issue is the fact that the Ancients are supposed to be stewards of the star, and now they are going to engage in mass sacrifice of lives that Venat knows are people like her and her peers (mostly this is thanks to being a humanist who believes in the sanctity and dignity of life but she also has the confirmation of your post-sundering, totally humanlike existence). Just a quarter of the Ancients' original number remain, their society is in tatters, and what's left is in the process of actively betraying every ideal they ever claimed to hold by slaughtering the life they allegedly guide and care for (which they know to be ensouled!) to undo the great and noble sacrifice of their loved ones.

but venat's faction is weak. it's her and like 13 sorta-important people she knows plus maybe some unnamed others. they lack the numbers or the raw ability to make something that can defeat zodiark, and will need instead to lean on venat's abilities.

her morals do not allow her to stand by as the convocation plans a mass sacrifice of "lesser" life. her circumstances do not give her the time or ability to win them over through rhetoric or decisively defeat them with force. nor can she actually destroy zodiark, because then the final days would simply resume. nor, I assume, is she interested in straight up slaughtering what remains of the ancients until the convocation's plan becomes impractical, assuming she is even strong enough to do so with just the twelve and the watcher's ancient selves for backup. there is no longer an option on the table which does not involve great pain. left to choose between unacceptable options, she chooses the one route which seems able to protect the vitality of the world and uphold the ancients' mission of shepherding all life upon the star towards flourishing: the sundering.

[altanirynsi]

this exchange really stuck out to me. vauthry literally said "who cares about preserving the future" to the guy who has literally been preparing for a century to preserve a future that he wasn't even planning to experience AND who was sent to the first by the ironswork survivors who would not get to see that future either. im normal im normal im norm

[altanirynsi]

*kills you & resurrects u* *kills you & resurrects u* *kills you & resurrects u* *kills you & re

[altanirynsi]

The Elpis experience

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bye bye, endwalker! a photo tour before dawntrail makes its entrance

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i will shatter this silly little battlefield into dust. in a heartbeat. into dust.

[altanirynsi]

Me, racing to pick up the dark knight quest line ASAP and stalling the main story for 20 levels: lol yeah

Ishgardian main story npcs: we don't trust you, stranger. You might be a heretic.

Me, level 52 dragoon, wearing a complete set of Wyrm Mail armor: Excuse me?!