#.:Ysayle's Shards:.

[disciple-of-frost]

Putting this discussion under the cut because I CAN'T NOT talk about this NPC we meet in Dawntrail!

I am unwell!

This is 100% Ysayle's shard from this reflection yes????

Also I do not recall anyone using specific pronouns for them so I hereby decree Shale is nonbinary. And even if it turns out that Shale does use "she" she can still be she/they.

[shivasdarknight]

#wolqotd #wolquestion more like ancient question but how does venat get to meet your azem/ancient? and if it's the case, how does she (and/or remaining convocation peers) eventually appoint them as the next azem in line?

THIS IS A FUN QUESTION especially since this ties in with Charon and their relationships - ex and otherwise.

So, quick establishing info: Charon was the younger sibling of Hermes. They looked a lot like him, they were trans masc + genderfluid, Exclusively went by they/them, and a...very opinionated person. They were briefly seeing Emet-Selch and Hythlodeus, at some point. Briefly. They're exes.

When Venat met Charon, they were still with those two. So, one of the partners of her coworker. At this time, they were very much so like their brother: quiet, kinda depressive, spitting image of him with the dark, dull blue hair and startling green eyes. Venat - the very outgoing woman that she is - was quick to try and interact with them since I mean...she figures it's just polite to do so since they were the partner of her coworker.

She could also quickly tell that they weren't happy in that relationship. Mostly out of curiosity, she offered to take Charon on as an apprentice since it was a job that would allow Charon the freedom of travel that they didn't have. I still haven't figured out what it was, but let's be honest it was probably something lower ranking to do with experimental magic.

Once away from Amaurot and allowed space to breathe, the conflict became very clear: they were exactly like their brother in that they were deeply uncomfortable with the structure of their society and how it impacted those who were less fortunate - except unlike Hermes, this was mostly aimed at folks who weren't a good fit. Like those with lesser aether, or with issues with magic, or I don't know - someone disabled like them.

The ancient society screams ableism and I'm dying on this hill.

Anyways, once they're not as suffocated by that they start to really flourish under Venat? They talk a lot about their discomfort with their partners and how complacent they are with the state of things, how they just don't seem to care and all. Those two can't put themselves in someone else's shoes and see that there's something fundamentally wrong. Venat is one of the few people who sits down with them to walk them through their issues. So is it really any surprise that not only does Charon really begin to enjoy their travels with her, but really start to admire her?

This is around the time that Charon starts bleaching their hair, because they want to match with Venat - which yeah, Venat finds that really endearing. Charon grows more and more distant with their partners until it gets to where they dump them altogether. As Charon begins to grow more into themself, they get a hell of a lot more bold and outspoken and it brings out this petty streak of theirs.

Deeply petty.

Venat's choice to retire is both so she can be of help to a greater freedom than Azem would be, but also because she wanted to spend time with her partner, Khione. The two were hoping to have children, but unfortunately Khione was infertile.

Charon partly takes on the title of Azem to allow Venat that free time since they deeply disagreed with the whole. Dying when your job is finished thing, because they thought that was fucking dreary and disturbing. But also it's fucking funny being Azem because now they have to work with Emet, which.

I mean they hated it. They were constantly coming back home to Hermes to vent about how it felt like things were being undermined because of the fact that they were exes - yet he was the senior Convocation Member thus they couldn't say shit!

Their wanderlust was part of what made them a good choice for Azem, but their bullheadedness and their habit to take matters into their own hands resulted in them constantly getting in trouble with the Convocation. Lahabrea, especially, could not stand them. About the only one they got along with was Themis, and that's because he's Venat's younger brother in this.

The Convocation also didn't take too kindly to Charon hooking up with Venat and Khione. Partly because they thought Venat was kind of being selfish by not passing on, but also because they were just very hypercritical of anything Charon did. The further they got into the Convocation, the more obnoxious they got. And this continued into the Final Days.

About their only supporter was Hermes when he joined, and they actually advocated his appointment so that they'd have back up. They just weren't anticipating that he'd join on with the Zodiark project, and that resulted in them abandoning the Convocation to help Venat and her allies with the Hydaelyn project. They were to be the Heart of Hydaelyn, but they died before they could do so.

So yeah, it went from "partner of a coworker" to "apprentice" to "successor" to "lover" to "accomplice". Venat and Charon have a really interesting relationship, and this extends into Hydaelyn and all of Charon's incarnations - especially now that they've reincarnated into Surkukteni.

[cyazurai]

Dawntrail spoiler contemplations below.

Okay, so, playing through Dawntrail the first time, and the second time as well, when I reached the Backroom and met Shale... she reminds me of Ysayle.

Not a whole lot, not overtly, but the pale, light hair, light blue eyes, and general face shape.

I'm probably the only one. But with everything, I wonder if maybe, since she's from Alexandria, she's a shard of Ysayle's. Or, if she was born inside the dome, perhaps she's actually Ysayle reborn.

I know I'm wrong, because characters can look similar without being shards or anything, but this is wishful thinking because Ysayle was such a cool character and Shale is also a super cool character, and I just think it would be neat if they were related in some way.

[elizabethrobertajones]

So I've been thinking about Fransi way too much, on account of now levelling up what was a side character in Frog's journey and becoming completely invested in a tiny rude farmer :)

Obviously the suggestion that your reaper avatar is your shard is incompatible with the suggestion Golbez (original flavour) is your shard from the 13th, both of which are now supported choices for the player to make and leave you rationalising the other option. And I picked the harder one since saying Golbez is your shard just means your pacted voidsent is some other guy.

I've been turning that over in my head, wondering what else he could be if not that.

Then it hit me that of course we know a handful of people with the echo so it's easy to quickly assign one of them to Golbez and maybe even just knowing them would be enough to manifest some weird shit.

Like, there's the ambiguity of if this was a past life for you or Estinien or just Your Weird New Bond with the dragoon job stone is what manifests Haldrath out of our dragoon stone in the level 50 Dragoon quest - I lean to it being our past life but it is pretty vague on account of the lore being so unknown to us at the time that we have no framework for this, vs like, even in SB patches when we learn about Tenzen we're sort of putting the dots together a bit more thanks to the Dotharl that this is a definite in-world mechanic. Although I'll always be mad everyone's so mean to Ysayle, who may absolutely not be Shiva's reincarnation but up until that point we shouldn't have been mean to her because we did know reincarnation was how souls worked in this universe, it just seemed to be very fringey to KNOW who you had been. And she still has a strong bond to Shiva regardless of not being her because of her echo memory of her. She may have made a Primalsona of her based on her expectations but at the end of the day I think they'd made a connection.

So there's fully a ton of reasons to think we could have reacted to Golbez's memory so dramatically, especially if he was a shard of someone we knew.

Then I was like, so who is that. Who is the best possible person for it to be.

Of course the whole theme of the story with him and Zero and the Thirteenth falling from a ton of mistrust and in fighting and manufactured war, and the crux of what may have saved them (well probably not but it created a What If) was Zero not daring to reach out. The whole story was about empathy and friendship.

THE most obvious soul to me to have been the shard of the person lumbering around in Golbez's armour trying to rally a dying world (while the Azem soul shard was off working a farm, oblivious) is the 13th shard of Krile with her hyper-empathy and friendship based echo.

[glacierbash]

Endwalker spoilers!! Thinking about Ysayleverelle!!

So I already have decided that post atiascope, iverelle gets a blue eye after basically capturing a smidge of shiva’s Aether, after she protects the party from Amon. But. What if I let her and Ysayle talk one final time. And it’s not some beautiful closure, but it’s iverelle pissed off and railing against the world, crying about how it just isn’t fair, and Ysayle just softly agree. This, “I don’t care about the next life, I deserved you in this one, a chance with you is the one thing I wanted and it’s not right that after EVERYTHING I have gone through, I couldn’t have even gotten that.”

And maybe Ysayle tries to mention the other shards, how they existed thirteen and one times over, how there’s still five, six other worlds where their souls might’ve met, and Iverelle just gets angrier, because she doesn’t CARE about the other shards, she doesn’t care about the other fragments of Azem and whoever Ysayle once was, SHE is the only iverelle that’ll ever live and it’s not fair that SHE had her first, and perhaps true, love taken from her.

It’s this absolutely selfish meltdown, where Iverelle just finally talks about what she wanted, and it was just to be happy with the woman who changed her for the better, the woman who told her, “you are more than just a weapon, a tool to be used, you’re a person,” when Iverelle needed to hear it most. She’s grieving the loss of a future, and the death of who she might’ve been. She’s angry about emet-selch and his light-Aether schemes changing her, she’s angry about azem not helping Hermes, she’s angry about Venat not being able to avert the final days, she’s angry about how so much of her life was dictated by people she’ll never meet, because of a soul she didn’t ask for, and how the one time she wanted something for herself it was doomed from the start.

There’s nothing Ysayle can say to that, of course, so she just holds her face, as Iverelle starts to cry. The scions are calling Iverelle on, but she’s just. Breaking. And the eye changing is less Iverelle catching a piece of shiva, but rather Ysayle offering a tiny piece of herself. There are no more words spoken, before Ysayle is gone—and that’s it. Iverelle spends her last goodbye angry, and missed her chance. But Ysayle doesn’t blame her; iverelle is just left blaming herself.

[autumnslance]

You ever think that technically Shiva and by proxy Ysayle blessed Ryne/Gaia with a small present of a shard of eternal ice? Which was turned into a pendant that helped Gaia remember. When you remember that it was implied that Ysayle was manipulated onto her doomed path by Ascians this feels like more than coincidence? Shiva or Ysayle helping to save Gaia from a Ascian…

I tend to think that because Eden Shiva, like the others, is spun from WoL's memories, that perhaps that thought, consciously or subconsciously, of Ysayle's manipulation by the Ascians, of her life and story being cut short when she had just learned the truth and her friends having nothing left of her when she was lost, might have had an influence WoL didn't even realize, manifesting in ways that ended up saving Gaia. Hedging our own bets without realizing it, just doing something, anything, to prevent repeated tragedy and have something to recall this time.

Ysayle's story and how she affected WoL being the catalyst, so less direct but still extremely important in the end, even before we were aware of what was actually happening with Eden.

Also makes for an interesting link, from the story of original Shiva, to primal Shiva and Ysayle, and having to summon those aspects based on very painful memories around the Dragonsong War and being the culmination of our elemental summonings, why the lyrics and singing of "Return to Oblivion" are so desperate; we didn't get it in the actual dialogue like so many wanted, but there's a lot of Refulgence rooted in WoL's grief and fear of history repeating again with a new Shiva.

Which is why I ended up writing an entire story on why summoning the aspect of ice was so hard for my WoL.

[mentorcrown]

okay i have slept on it and now have somewhat coherent thoughts about the dawntrail msq... less mad than i was when i first finished the game lmao

tl;dr overall it was an okay expansion. not a great one but not bad either. im looking forward to seeing where the game takes us

in terms of where id rate it in my personal scale-- where my personal scale does not indicate i hate an expansion, just that i dont enjoy it as much as other ones-- its below stormblood but above heavensward.

personal scale now: shadowbringers > endwalker > stormblood while zenos is on screen > rest of stormblood > dawntrail > heavensward while ysayle is on screen > ARR > rest of heavensward)

rest is under a read more because it contains blatant spoilers for the MSQ

things i loved

i loved all the ff9 references. ff9 is my most beloved game

i love you wuk lamat. i love you koana. i love you erenville.

the dungeon/trial design is top notch. lots of fights in endwalker feel very flat and not at all challenging. not this time. everything was great. it was engaging. parts were difficult in a good way. loved how even it was basically the same mechanics we've seen before, it was presented in interesting ways

dragons?? in MY dawntrail??? more likely than you think aka mission status sick cutscene

gripes(??)

the pacing was off. some parts felt completely unnecessary. especially the weird cowboy bandit thing ill be honest i could not have cared less than i did. i think that entire map could have been better spent focusing on the nomadic cat tribe(s).

first half of the story was stellar i loved that. it was a bit too expositiony in parts but i still loved every part of the first half (desert story not included). (this was at least partly because by my wife is an anthropologist and was fangirling the entire time)

second half was weak as fuck. i dont know why they needed to rehash the same thing we've seen the past 2 expansions. we did not another emet-selch archetype. i feel like the entire S9 stuff could have been handled so much better than it was.

the theories that people had pre-release about how s9 was likely a hidden city that did trade with the rest of tural. and that one of the brothers were likely working with them to destabilize tural; that story would have been so much better. they still could have had it be a shard idc. they could have kept the azem stuff too. i just did not care one little bit to have emet-selch/amaurot 2.0.

hated the "we have to save the world but lets fuck around as much as possible while our friends hold open the gate" plot sooo much. i get why we did it but holy hell the pacing shift from 'this is world ending' to whatever the hell was going on in the golden city was like Why.

did find the krile parents and erenville mother thing soft though. even if i am still livid about how they dangled erenvilles mother in front of him several times. the poor guy

i dont care about the scions. i DONT CARE about the scions. STOP SHOWING ME the scions. why are these old people not retired yet. rehash the scions. give me a new main cast. the twins and graha can stay.

[swtorramblings]

Heavensward spoilers, I think.

From the journals of Valerie Yndera, Soul Hunter:

A memory from some time ago, during the last days of the war with the dragons. Shards of my soul called me to join the fight, but we all know now that our cause was unjust, and cost too many. Including a young orphan named Osaulie that could have been saved.

I had to ask, did he reach out to her? Or anyone? Knowing she was an orphan? Knowing that she had no one and nothing? Did anyone ever even ask her why she was a thief, one so young, or did everyone simply assume that she was to blame for her hardships?

No, I didn't ask her, either. I could have attempted to track her down, I have abilities and allies that would have made this easy enough. But I didn't. I was busy, it's true, the land needed both a hero and, eventually, a peacemaker. But who was her hero when she needed one?

One failure among many. Haurchefant. Ysayle. So many whose names I don't know and never can. Perhaps if we had just listened, the war might have ended in time to save many of them, including this young woman who only wanted to escape the life it had forced on her.

[primalruination]

📂

Nehra has a small tattoo of an ice shard on their inner wrist in honor of Ysayle.

[thescions]

begonia! for a muse of your choosing!!

Botanical Headcanons | Accepting

begonia : how cautious is your muse ? are they prone to noticing red flags , or paranoid to the point of untrusting most everyone ? why or why not ?

On this blog, we support an Ysayle-didn't-die AU. Instead, Ysayle's broken faith means she is unable to summon Shiva again, but ultimately was saved by Hraesvelgr and didn't burst into shards upon helping the Scions reach Azys Lla. She then was nursed back to health and looked after by Vidofnir and maintained a 'consultant' position between Ishgard and the Dravanians...for a time.

So!

Post-Heavensward Ysayle would be far more cautious when it came to trusting others. Despite her reputation as Lady Iceheart, Ysayle always had a bit of a soft spot for those seemingly in need. She wanted to desperately be the Person that her younger self had needed, and therefore welcomed nearly anyone spurned by Ishgard into their ranks.

But upon learning the truth of her visions and of Shiva, Ysayle could not go back to who she was. Already relatively guarded as the leader of the heretics, there are few whom she would easily confide in out of paranoia of ulterior motives. This would get to the point where Ysayle would have to leave Coerthas as a whole.

Perhaps she could be persuaded to one day join the Scions (post-Endwalker perhaps?), but it is more likely she would join those who sought to make peace with the beastman tribes. She'd likely end up in Gridania, entreating first with the Moogles of the Twelveswood at the behest of their Moghome kin. For awhile, she would only ever seem fully comfortable around those of similar tribes...and the Warrior of Light, of course.

[disciple-of-frost]

.:Reworking the 8th:.

So Shiva in FFXIII is split into two beings right, Stiria and Nix. I initially had it so that Ishi’s Shard on that world was Snow, but thinking back it makes waaaay more sense for the Shiva sisters to be both Ishita and Ysayle’s shards. Ishi’s being Stiria and Ysayle being Nix.

[corgibardballads]

I absolutely love our dragon dad. I loved him the second we met him. But the lore between us and Midgardsormr is also interesting because it has changed context over time but also is so vague that I think we can interpret things the way we want until the writers fully figure out what they want to do. But I really hope he isn't gone gone. Every time we get any dragon lore I always expect to see a tiny Midgardsormr pop up again and sit on our shoulder just like old times. Replaying our first meeting is interesting because I feel like a lot of it has either changed or perhaps been given knew meaning over time.

I appreciate that dragons are almost eternal, super powerful, and depicted as flawed as the Greek gods because lets be honest... this is the worst take possible lol. Even Ysayle shares this take which is so interesting. Punishing the son for the sins of the father is 0/10. "This man just killed someone! He also has a one year old son. Clearly he is equally guilty and must also be killed!"

This is kinda interesting these days because it's kinda both? On the one hand we are the shard of Azem and we learned in Shb and EW that Hydaelyn's blessing only affects protecting your aether but has nothing to do with our inherent strength and unique abilities. So presumably we can attribute our uniqueness to being a shard rather than Hydaelyn's blessing. On top of that we learn in the EW quest where we inhabit another soldier's body that our ability to find things in the right place at the right time is also inherent to us (it seemed to imply we are unique as a whole rather than just our soul specifically). On the other hand we were technically chosen by Hydaelyn because meeting Venat in Elpis let her know which incarnation of us to specifically look out for and guide us. Anyway, just a cool continuation of how the lore grows.

So I kinda wonder about this... Venat says her magic simply guards one's aether from being altered or corrupted. Midgardsormr wouldn't have that power when he entered into his covenant with us and blocked our connection to Hydaelyn. So the primals we fought should have been a threat to us, but they weren't. I surmise that we may inherently have aether protection independent of Venat's magic. Considering what we know about Azem's role, or I guess how little we know, it seems logical to me that with everything they would be exposed too it's likely all Azems develop some sort of magic to protect their aether. And from that I would infer that we inherit it as a trait rather than being reliant on Hydaelyn's magic and that our connection to Hydaelyn is mostly about guidance to prevent Ascian plots. Granted this is speculation, but I feel it seems logical given what very little information we have.

As a dragoon this was written for me specifically to enjoy. But really I always felt that our LB3 was just momentarily fusing our aether with Midgardsormrs to abso-fucking-lutely wreck someone.

I was wondering about this bit too. If he fedon Hydaelyn's essence to regenerate and she is gone. It's possible that Midgardsormr's only connection to this world now if our covenant with him. It's possible that when we die, if he isn't able to regenerate enough to at least have his tiny form, he could just straight up die with us. Now they could change this later, but I think it's kinda cool if it stays that way.

Haha yeah. Yep crazy. Hey can we keep a little bird perch in here? Like no reason homie, just in case a lil guy wants to have a lil sit.

[katarh-mest]

6.4 new ship dropped

All right, fellow degenerates of XIV, what is the Zero / Estonian ship gonna be called? EstiniZeo? Zerostinien? The Disrobed Duo?

Also I now have a crack hypothesis that Zero is Ysayle's long lost void soul shard, making it the first time I'm honestly willing to ship Estinien with anyone other that Aymeric. (And while I thought Estinien/Aymeric was fun, I always preferred Aymeric/Lucia for my own reasons.)

[fleurdelanuit13]

Bsky Lylaverse tag directory

I use a variety of hashtags for my lore posts on Bluesky 🦋, so here's a non-exhaustive list of tags and what they involve:

General:

#🌙🌌 - Melinoë's soul, including their shards' souls

#🌙🐆 - Melinoë shards not of Lyla's main timeline

#🌙🐈‍⬛ - Moon Keeper stuff

#🌙✨ - Lyla's magic

#🌙🎆 - Lyla's disciplines

#🌙🖤 - Lyla's deathwork

#🌙💖 - Lyla's love life (related: 💓 and 💗)

#🌺🧚🏽‍♀️ - Serena stuff

#🌙😼 - misc stuff

Places:

#🌙🌳 - Black Shroud

#🌙❄️ - Ishgard

#🌙⏳ - Ul'dah

#🌙🐚 - Sharlayan

#🌙🌂 - Solution Nine, Alexandria

Referencing Lyla & others would be like:

#🌙🍃 - Lyla & Zhai'a

#🌙🪷 - Lyla & Kan-E

#🕸️🍂 - Lyla & Xenia (the current Great Gourd)

#🌙🧊 - Lyla & Estinien

and so on

Emojis by person:

Lyla 🌙 (or 🕸️ for her with Xenia)

Kan-E-Senna 🪷

Zhai'a Nelhah 🍃

Xenia the Great Gourd 🍂

Estinien 🧊

Aymeric 🥐

Ysayle 🍧

Y'shtola 💎

G'raha 🔮

Runar 💐

Urianger 🦉

Zero 🫀

Tahla 📑

Ranaa 💫

Sadu ☄️

Cirina 🐑

Koana 🔍

Maelstrom Secretariat 🍹

[wyrmwinds]

Ava falling for Foulques with the initial interest being his interest in her skills (which she had felt were unjustly ignored) and her chasing after Ysayle to find afters following her broken state after having to kill Bahamut vs Adra's various romantic and sexual entanglements because vi is hopelessly empty inside and wants to fill virself with the love of others because she can't love herself. Ava really is Adra's shard.

[meteorstormxiv]

Personal Lore & Changes from canon (WIP)

None of my Warriors of Light were Azem. If they were an ancient that were a random one who had only a passing connection to the Convocation, being an associate of Azem. (Magnai may, or may not be a shard of Azem)

Ratatoskr and Haldrath were lovers.

Duskwights have their own small settlements on par with Little Ala Mhigo in Thanalan. Little Gelmorra in Coerthas/Black Shroud.

Haurchefant, Ysayle, Foulques, and the Duskwights from the Dancer quests all have different fates. The former three either did not die or come back. The Dancer quest Duskwights were able to form their own community.

The Twelve are genuine gods. The ones we fought were Venat's followers who took on the forms of the Twelve to help bolster humanity. Souls do in fact go to either the Seven heavens or hells if they either do not wish to return to the lifestream or are deemed unworthy (Thordan and his Ward are all denied reentry into the lifestream).