#FFXIV: A Text Archive

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MSQ 1.0 [Ul'dah] — Close to Home

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⚫ Close to Home

📖 Description — Lv. 1 Momodi, the proprietress of the Quicksand, wants you to perform three tasks that will help you learn the fundamentals of adventuring.

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Momodi "Before you go chargin' off to find your fortune, I've a few basic tasks I'd like you to perform so as to help you get to know the place.

First of all, I want you to visit the aetheryte plaza. To get there, head west from here till you reach Emerald Avenue, then look to the north. You should see a giant, floatin' crystal called an aetheryte.

If it weren't for aetherytes, travelin' around Eorzea would be a damn sight more troublesome than it is. 'Course, you still need to attune with 'em before you can use 'em, so be sure to do that with the one in the plaza. You ever attuned with an aetheryte before, FN? If not, just lay your hand on the thing and you'll see what I mean.

* If playing Gladiator starting class: "When you've done that, I want you to pay a visit to the Gladiators' Guild, over at the Coliseum."

Assumin' that [sword/scepter/those hora] ain't just for show, you might consider trainin' there.

And finally, I want you to visit the Sapphire Avenue Exchange, over on the Steps of Thal.

Goods from all across Eorzea and beyond turn up there every day. You'll have no trouble findin' armor, weapons, or anythin' else a fledglin' adventurer like yourself might need.

You might say that everythin's for sale here in Ul'dah—as long as you've got the gil. Just make sure as you don't pay more than you ought, FN.

There's plenty as won't scruple to swindle unsuspectin' foreigners like yourself, 'specially if they think no one's lookin' out for their best interests.

Which is why I'm givin' you this letter. When you visit the exchange, find a gentleman named Seseroga and give it to him. He'll be happy to tell you about the markets once he's read it."

Momodi "In short, then: visit the aetheryte plaza, the Gladiators' Guild, and the Sapphire Avenue Exchange. Simple.

Oh, but before you go, a word of advice: while there're more than a few unsavory characters out there who'll try to take advantage of you, there are also some with honest-to-goodness problems who you should consider offerin' a helpin' hand to.

A lot of folk are lured to this city by the promise of wealth and power. What many of 'em fail to realize is that instead of chasin' after gil the moment they get here, they ought to be makin' friends.

Let it be known that you're willin' to give as much as you get, and opportunities will come your way.

Speakin' of which, you should speak with the Smith over yonder—those lads always have some good advice for up-and-comin' adventurers. Otherwise, that's about it from me. It's past time you got goin'. Oh, and let me know when you've finished, will you? That way, I won't spend my days worryin' that you're down to your smallclothes without a gil to your name."

Quest Accepted

* Note: At this point, other player characters become visible to you, and the instance no longer bars you from the rest of the city.

💬 What the Smith has to say (new player guidance) 💬 Flavor text inside the quicksand (post-tutorial) 💬 Flavor text in Ul'dah - Steps of Nald from East to West

🟠Sidequest: Due Diligence — Wymond

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◾* Attune yourself to the aetheryte found inside the city.

* Walking along the wide, curved street, though your attention may be drawn aside by shouting merchants, it is hard to miss the recessed entrance to the aetheryte. It glows vibrant and blue in the center of its dim underground plaza.

* Reaching out to it, a beam of blue light sings between you and the crystal. You can feel your aether synchronizing with it, until you're sure a sort of equilibrium has been reached. It's then that a voice calls out behind you.

Nenebaru "Hail, adventurer! Might you have come at the behest of Miss Momodi of the Quicksand?

* You nod.

Nenebaru "Excellent. Which brings us to the matter of the attunement fee—that will be one hundred thousand gil, if you please, [sir/madam].

* You step back with a start. He is dressed in the Brass Blades' uniform, after all...

Nenebaru "...AHAHAHAHAHA! Apologies, but I do so relish the opportunity to make that jest. The look on your face was absolutely priceless! Ah, but the fact that you were so easily deceived suggests to me that you are unfamiliar with the use of aetherytes. Allow me to explain.

These crystalline agglomerations tap into aetherial energies, and are primarily used as a means to travel swiftly from one place to another.

Perchance you have heard of Return and Teleport? Well, these transportation spells make direct use of the aetherytes and their connection to the flow of aether.

Given that there is an aetheryte in almost every corner of Eorzea, any adventurer with a mind to explore the realm will wish to seek out and attune himself to each and every one!

But even if you have no intention of wandering beyond the sultanate's borders, it would be prudent for you to attune yourself to any aetherytes you encounter from now on.

I pray you found that informative. Should you wish to learn more about aetherytes or transportation magic, I should be happy to answer your questions."

💬 Flavor text: More about Aetheryte 💬 Flavor text in Ul'dah - Steps of Nald - Emerald Avenue and Westward

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back —— next◾* Visit your class's guild. [Gladiator] [Pugilist] [Thaumaturge]

💬 Flavor text in Ul'dah - Steps of Thal

[mirukimary]

FFXIV Swap piece for @pyrothevoid

[canmom]

The themes of NieR Reincarnation

A post about the recurring elements of Drakenier and the use of branching timelines as a storytelling device. I'll be discussing spoilers for basically every DoD/NieR game.

Records

A somewhat understated recurring motif of the Drakengard/NieR series is the idea of stories or memories of humanity being stored in some massive archive.

It's an idea that first entered the series in NieR Gestalt/Replicant. Early drafts of the game focused on the idea of a world built out of stories and fairytale characters, and while most of this was cut, some remained in the Forest of Myth area.

Following NieR's obsessive love of hopping between different game genres, the story here is delivered through prose/text adventure segments. There is a sense that this area of the game exists as prose, with the characters slightly aware of narration - narration which absorbs the characters until you find a way to escape. Eventually you find out - it's rather cryptic in the actual game, but spelled out explicitly in Grimoire NieR - that it's a huge computer system storing records of the deceased humanity.

In your second visit to the area, the story focuses more on distant history, that all these stories are fragments of memory of the lost pre-apocalpytic world. You encounter a Gestalt (human soul extracted from body) that is eating the memories stored in the tree, and kill it, and for Nier and co., this is enough - but for the player, you really don't know half of what is going on.

In the story The Lost World, which was adapted for the additional Ending E added in the Replicant remake, Kainé returns to the Forest of Myth and finds the computer system expanding. She fights clones of herself before eventually speaking to a mysterious administrator and descending into a virtual world that seems like a corrupted version of her memories. But she's able to connect to her memories of NieR, Emil and Grimoire Weiss, and through that connection cause a kind of timeline collapse effect that allows her to resurrect Nier. Terms from DoD3 such as 'singularity' come back again.

In NieR Automata, the idea of the legacy of humanity becomes increasingly central. While the androids believe they are reclaiming Earth for humanity, the Machine Lifeforms' motivation is in large part driven by their efforts to pore over the records of humanity and learn how to evolve their condition, even by blind imitation. Many of the different Machine Lifeforms you encounter are shaped by their interpretations of human society. The motif of human buildings recreated in white blocks recurs at certain points.

In the final sequence of the game, you climb a tower, and inside it visit simulacra of locations from the Replicant/Gestalt. You learn that the machines have infiltrated the androids' network and downloaded basically all the information the androids have, including all their records of humanity. When the machines' 'Ark' is launched into space, it carries their memories and consciousness in data form.

The YoRHa: Dark Apocalypse raid series in FFXIV continues this idea of obsessive, blind reconstruction. The machines you fight here are now all the more explicitly connected to the apocalyptic shit in DoD; they have also been frantically creating duplicates of YoRHa android 2P, the Bunker and so on in corrupted form. Although the story here has mostly other interests, it's another recurrence of the idea of trying to recreate things that were lost.

Along with this idea of the archive comes the idea of preservation of that archive. Whether by accident or deliberate attack, the survival of the archive is not guaranteed.

This is all absolutely central to what Reincarnation is about.

Branches

The Drakenier series has played around with branching narratives pretty much from the start. It's somewhat infamous for it in fact - did you know that NieR is actually a spinoff of ending E of Drakengard, the one where you appear over Tokyo and have to do a rhythm game? Yeah, so...

Most games are fairly cagey (ha ha) about the mechanics of these branches. Indeed, although we speak of branches, the structure of these games is not really a branching one like a visual novel. The branches and 'endings' are usually unlocked sequentially.

Drakengard/Drag-on Dragoon (DoD1) is probably the closest you get to a traditional branching structure. You can unlock routes in certain missions by fulfilling certain conditions. The exact logic of these branches is not really explained - you can go back to a point before you recruit a party member and get a different branch where they're present for example. That said, it's not like a visual novel where you can be 'on' one branch or another - you can always jump to any level from any timeline.

This oddness of the branches is also lampshaded a little more in DoD3, the game that is most explicit about the nature of the branching timeline. DoD3 is, from the player perspective, a linear game. After you complete the first 'ending', you unlock new levels that appear at earlier points in the timeline, and diverging branches appear. In the later branches, the logic of the world is starting to break down. Party members who you'd recruit later in the story are in your party much earlier, in some cases suffering from amnesia, the implication being that it's an effect of the Flower's corruption.

The game is intermittently narrated by a character called Accord, an android 'Recorder' whose job is to document all the different versions of the story for an unknown party. Accord isn't supposed to intervene in the story, though she occasionally talks to protagonist Zero, and in the final D route, she decides to break the rules and save Zero. Otherwise, she's responsible for 'sealing' branches where it seems the world cannot be saved.

This is Accord:

The final cutscene of DoD3, available only after you beat the ludicrously difficult rhythm game that is the 'final song', shows a bunch of other Accords appearing and talking about what a mess this all is.

Accord's other role in the game is to sell weapons. Another series tradition running back to DoD1 is the 'Weapon Stories'. In each game, you can collect weapons, which can be upgraded through a series of four stages. Each stage unlocks another part of a story. These stories tend to be quite brief - each entry is at most a short paragraph. They also, particularly in the DoD games, tend to be comically grimdark.

DoD 3 came out after NieR Replicant/Gestalt, but in every game since then, there have been cryptic mentions of Accord. In Automata she's mentioned in a note as a weapons seller; in the updated version of Replicant she is mentioned as visiting Nier's village while the party is away on her adventures, and you see a documention that mentions the 'Accord Corporation' supplying magic weapons.

OK, so, put a pin in that, we'll come back to her later.

The side material commits further to the branching idea. The original Drakengard is established to follow from the DoD3 Story Side novel, while Branch A gives rise to the Shi ni Itaru Aka manga and the DoD 1.3 novel. The YoRHa stage plays spawned alternative versions, namely YoRHa version 1.3a and Shōjo YoRha version 1.1a, with the gender of the casts flipped. YoRHa 1.3a also has Accord in it. The anime NieR Automata ver. 1.1a also presents an increasingly diverging version of the events of the game - notably, Adam turns into a multi-armed monster.

DoD2, something of the black sheep of the franchise, was originally written to follow DoD1 ending A; later it was retconned to belong to its own branch. Just 'cause.

With me so far? ...no? Yeah, that's fair. You can read about all the details I've gathered so far here, but in short, there are lots of timeline branches, and multiple versions of several stories with small or large divergences.

Reincarnation

NieR Re[in]carnation is a gacha game that's been running for the last three years, and is going to be shut down at the end of April. At the time it came out, it was acknowledge for having unusually nice graphics for a mobile game, but rather desultory, grindy, repetitive gameplay. Which remained true throughout the game's life, so I can't exactly recommend playing Reincarnation, especially at this point.

But! I would definitely say it's worth your time to dig up the story on Youtube/Accord's Library if you're into NieR stuff. I won't be going into all the ins and outs of the story and how it all fits together in this post, but I am gonna talk about how it's structured.

NieR Reincarnation places you in a vast stone city called the Cage, calling to mind the environments in Ico. At the outset, you play as a young girl travelling with a weird ghost-like creature called Mama, tasked with restoring the memories stored in objects called 'dark scarecrows' which are being subverted and corrupted by black birds which form into various monsters.

Within each chapter of NieR Reincarnation, you get a short story in four parts, presented in a kind of cutout style, which are the four segments of a weapon story. You collect the weapon and the character.

The Cage is shaped by the content of the weapon stories somehow bleeding into the simulated setting. A character's memories can be used to restore the stories to their proper course. It is possible to interfere in small ways with the worlds of the stories.

The corruption of the stories tends to involve subverting characterisation to make them crueller, more prone to random violence etc. - or points when a character could be threatened in a narratively unsatisfying way. For example, a peace-loving runaway prince could be turned into a warlike king.

Over the course of the first arc, you discover that the girl you are playing is actually a monster who has taken the form of a human girl and, regretting it, wants to give her her embodiment back. The second half of the arc has you playing the girl trying to reunite with her monster friend; at the end, you get her own backstory as a victim of brutal prejudice. After all is said and done, both characters transform into weapons, which Mama picks up and hides away.

The second arc, The Sun and the Moon, deals with a brother and sister from present-day Tokyo. Both of them have been transported into the Cage by more of the weird ghost thingies, to participate in a strange ritual that is allegedly going to restore the Cage. The rules are highly mystical - a significant sacrifice is needed.

In the most recent arc, The People and The World, the characters all emerge from their stories as the Cage becomes increasingly corrupted. We finally get the long awaited point where these characters can interact with each other, and advance the stories from a series of tragic vignettes to something more. At the same time, we get a lot more allusions to other games in the series - from the Lunar Tear room where Emil memorialised Kainé and later 9S memorialises 2B, to a brief appearance Devola and Popola.

There's even a nod to Yoko Taro's other terminated gacha game, SINoALICE, which is going to be made into a movie oddly enough. There's a wry nod to the game being shut down.

And in the most recent chapters we find out that the Cage is actually a server on the moon containing records of humanity - 10H from A Much Too Silent Sea is one of the main characters. 'Mama' is actually the Pod tasked with overseeing the archive, and wiping 10H's memories whenever she learns too much - though it seems at some point 10H learned the truth and affirmed that she'd protect the archive anyway and they stopped wiping her memory.

Over the course of the chapter, 10H helps the gang make their escape from the moon through the androids network, to Earth. But when they get to Earth, they find themselves in a strange white city more resembling the Cage.

We'll finally get some answers, maybe, later this month. Anyway...

So, these records come from multiple diverging timelines, and they take the form of weapon stories. You have a unity of the ideas of character - weapon - memory - world. A record is simultaneously a tragic series of events, a person who can manifest inside the Cage itself, a simulated world which other people can visit, and a weapon.

In addition to the main storyline chapters and 'character stories', each character is associated with two additional 'EX' storylines, termed Dark Memories and Recollections of Dusk. Each one is a much more substantial narrative than most in the game.

Some of these EX stories clearly take place in different timelines to the first ones we encounter. Akeha's story, for example, takes place after her death in the original version. For the brother and sister from the Sun and the Moon arc, originally from present-day Tokyo, their Dark Memories take place in the backstory to NieR Gestalt/Replicant - the period where humanity is dying out to White Chlorination Syndrome and fighting monsters called the Legion. In this one, before the siblings could be torn apart by family drama and resentment, the apocalypse happens. Both of them end up coming into their own as heroic fighters. In the finale arc, the characters learn a bit about these alter egos, and it's made very explicit that this is a different timeline.

The monster Levania's Dark Memory is especially weird. It's the story of a salaryman who plays a monster called Levania in an MMORPG. His MMO character inspires him to live more bravely in the real world, and his life seems to be improving, but he is murdered by a jealous coworker. He wishes for reincarnation as he dies - classic isekai stuff. But the connection to the Levania you encounter in the main story is far from clear. Are all versions of Levania derived essentially from this man's tulpa?

The nature of the 'enemies' attacking the Cage is still not yet clear. They take the form of black birds. The birds are given a small amount of dialogue and characterisation, and they seem to not be malicious, just confused. The girl from the first arc in particular tends to interact with them sympathetically. However, they seem to be connected with the mysterious 'God' who was trying to destroy the world in DoD1, and the Angels and Flower of DoD3.

The birds are able to gathe together to manifest much larger monsters, the largest being giant elk and fish called Cursed Gods. During the finale arc, one of these becomes something that resembles the Mother Angel from DoD1 - and yes, there is a rhythm game - though mercifully a pretty easy one.

In the same arc, the character Yurie, an AI city overlord with grandiose ambitions and a loathing of imperfection attempts to download the entire history of humanity from the Cage and become a more perfect being. She succeeds, only to find the answers disappointing...

This is perhaps the closest thing we ever get to an explicit statement of what all these stories and histories add up to, but despite all this, the throughline is very strongly that these stories are essential to preserve. NieR characters exist in small groups, and it is their intense connections to these others, their treasured memories of travelling together, that motivate them to fight to preserve that thing, even if the results are destructive.

Similar themes emerge for example in Noelle's Recollection of Dusk story, which sees her travelling to preserve a place valued by her sister in crystal. And they also connect to the theme of sacrifice - the recurring ending device where the player must delete their save data in order to help someone (something echoed in Hina and Yuzuki at the altar of the sun and moon, or Levania and Fio). It's perhaps fair to say that nothing is more valued in the world of Nier than memories of a treasured person.

What about Accord? She has in fact made a brief cameo in Reincarnation already...

It seems incredibly likely that Accord originates from the Cage, and the accumulation of weapon stories is accomplished by androids like her. Definitely in the fandom there's a lot of excitement for the idea that Accord - something of a fan favourite - will show up at Reincarnation's ending.

So mystery solved, the Cage exists in the world of NieR Automata on the moon server? Not so fast - there are various discrepancies which seem to suggest that the world of the Cage exists in a separate branch than the one we see in Automata. For example, the androids are aware that the humans are dead and what remains on the moon is a huge archive of their memories; the humans seem to have survived much longer; 2B and 9S seem to have died in different circumstances. There are other oddities which fans have compiled.

And yet, despite being a divergent timeline with a much older point of divergence, some things seem to be fixed. There is still a YoRHa, still a 10H deceived about being on the moon, still a 2B and 9S.

One popular fan theory is that Reincarnation belongs to the NieR Automata anime (ver1.1a), since Adam turns into a monster there similar to the ones in Reincarnation. The black birds are reasoned to be the Machine Lifeforms, since we know they come from Earth. I'm not 100% sure of this, but maybe?

Anyway, that's basically the gist of it.

A story told through permutations

In many fictional series with a shared universe, there is an effort to maintain a consistent shared universe, so all the different events can fit into a timeline with understandable cause and effect and characters living out their lives. Even when this proves impossibly unwieldy, as in comic books or Star Wars, the attempt is made.

NieR does not really take this approach. The creators leave many details of the world, such as place names, incredibly vague - the focus is always on telling an emotional story with characters. There is, as we've seen, an almost gleeful willingness to declare another new timeline.

There is also a certain aspect of repetition, or more kindly reiteration - the same core character dynamic revisited and retold in various forms. (2B9S gets the worst of it). A character is something like a principle or ideal, and each story shines another light on that 'core'. In the earlier storylines of Reincarnation, it became quite frustrating because it seemed like e.g. the character event stories were just rehashing the same idea rather than advance the story.

However, the more accustomed I get to this style of storyline, the more I think this kinda works. It is of course quite similar to the ideas proposed towards the end of Homestuck, or to time loop stories - the idea of varying the contingent circumstances to try to better illustrate the core characterisations and dynamics.

Yoko Taro has talked about how he constructs stories from a very simple idea, typically a moment of high emotional impact at the climax, and then works backwards to figure out what sort of story could lead into that. In Reincarnation, each character gets fairly limited time to establish themselves, so they tend to be defined in terms of a pretty narrow high concept.

For example, Akeha is an assassin in a vague historical Japanese setting; her introductory story sees her decide for the first time to disobey her lord after she finds another person who has been treated as instrumentally as her. Most Akeha stories focus on her assassinations, her relationship to her retainer, and what she sacrifices to perform the duty. Only her Dark Memory lets us see an Akeha who has escaped that life - it's a simple story about preparing food, but that's given meaning by all the other Akeha stories.

Hina and Yuzuki are defined by the same traits in their flashy scifi Dark Memory stories as in the more mundane ones - Yuzuki the quiet outcast, Hina the self-sacrificing star. Fio is defined by kindness in the context of abjection, seeing the good in monsters. Levania stories are about the desire for escape and transformation. Argo is always a shitty dad who only feels alive while climbing mountains.

The staticness of these characters seems on some level to be the point - in that we are told in Hina and Yuzuki's story that the mechanism of the Cage is to sort characters into 'Light' and 'Dark' natures, and push them to inevitable conflict, even if they try to break free. In the final arc, the characters seem to finally approach some resolution as they leave their contexts behind. Given the themes of Automata in rejecting an inevitable tragic fate, similar movement may be at work. There's an ambiguity - the need to hold on to even tragic histories, vs the wish to not be confined to them. (Perhaps it's significant that it's called the Cage...)

With so many balls in the air and so many mysteries still unanswered, it's hard to figure out how Reincarnation can deliver a satisfying resolution in just one remaining chapter, but the final arc has been really cooking so who knows! But I'm also coming to appreciate it as a kind of broader lens to notice all these recurring elements and tie them together.

Stories about alternate timelines and branching narratives are very common nowadays, particularly as a tool for revisiting a nostalgic franchise. Something something effect of the fan wiki era. So I can't exactly say NieR is doing something completely unique, but I do think there is something to its fragmented, collage-like approach to putting together story elements. There's something quite honest about it - an ability to say 'these details aren't important'.

Yoko Taro always talks about himself as an entertainer rather than an artist. And probably it is true that a lot of this eemerged from an iterative design process rather than being the plan from the beginning (the first draft of NieR envisioned it as something closer to what SINoALICE ended up being, about a world of fairytale characters; NieR Automata began life as backstory for an idol project). There's definitely a strong sense that it's being improvised. And yet despite that, it does feel like it is cohering into some sort of picture, that there is an artistic throughline to all this.

Or perhaps that's just the effect of getting way too invested in something. I won't deny that NieR brings out the fan in me.

Anyway Accord had better show up next month. Guys. You've been teasing us for so long...

[luxenvulpies]

[Missing-Link] CBT1 Info

Since the closed beta began, there has been a lot of activity with testers posting images, videos, and details (and some streaming). I've compiled some for easier browsing:

Character customization

Body types A and B

Character creation

Earring (whose?)

Some customization

Maku's drip

More drip

FFXIV Black Mage but green

FFXVI Jill Warrick

Purchasable outfits named after Final Fantasy jobs (each cost 2k jewels you know the ones)

UI

Equipment menu

Vertical and horizontal resolution with seamless transition

Gameplay

Dive to the Heart tutorial (stained glass may be a spoiler)

More Dive to the Heart

Meeting other players in the hub area

Timed battles (apparently may not be all fights)

Timed battle footage (not enough info on who or what is the opponent)

Buzz Lightyear and Sulley piece usage

Charged attacks

Ranged Keyblade

Grand Chests that contains a piece

GPS and walking on buildings with no care in the world

Losing all health & reviving

Raid battle completion

Raid battle completion screens

Piece enhancement screens :worry:

Donald piece screen (JP)

Prince Phillip piece screen (JP)

Mickey piece screen (JP)

Sora piece screen (JP)

Defeating area bosses grant coins to exchange for accessories. Accessories are enhanced with a chance of failure. Using enhancement records will increase stats.

Ireland

Auto gameplay result screen (JP): AP gained, defeated enemies, times activated(?), recovery spots used, treasure chests obtained, pieces obtained

Elemental wheel (no, this was not stolen from another game, so stop that nonsense)

Gacha

Winnie the Pooh

Some pull rates (subject to change!)

2 banners

Sora, Riku, Kairi Pieces

Story (spoilers!!)

JP intro (not sure if the English version is dubbed No dub, yet anyway)

Scala ad Caelum logo appearing (not really a spoiler)

Posting any text here will spoil it - just click the link

Other

Scala ad Caelum logo

Beta data size (~1.9GB)

Guide Moogle (Cute, kupo!)

Astral Plane battle music

AimmsBear's experience thread

Key_Cast's thread on game mechanics and some lore

Summary of Nomura's visit to the Artnia Cafe in Japan with reports from those who attended (via lottery)

Streamers/Video Archives

[leeadamsmusic3630] Multiple videos with specific features

[Dive Hearts] Game records/growth log, UI editor

Our Stuff

Post on spreadsheets with data from the closed beta

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[sir-adamus]

okay i had this whole thing wrong, i thought the Machine Lifeform rocket from the end of Automata just somehow wound up in the FFXIV universe and crash-landed on the First

actually playing the Dark Apocalypse raids and reading through flavour text i can say with reasonable certainty that that ain't what happened

the ship buried beneath the recreation of the Bunker is explicitly labeled as the Alien Ship, suggesting it's a recreation of the Alien Ship that was buried under the city in Automata

we're never really given a timeline for how long any of these recreated locations (the ship, the bunker or the factory) have been there, however it's implied to have been really recent (especially as the Machine Lifeform tech can build incredibly quickly, as we saw with the Tower in Automata) and the Seed of Destruction is the core of all this

Konogg found it after a landslide killed Anogg, just at the bottom of an underground chasm, but by the present it's within that buried Alien Ship. we also know it's not a real Seed of Destruction - yes it looks like one, same texture, Angelic script appearing on it when it activates, but a) the Angelic script appears more as a screen projection that glowing inscriptions like in Drakengard and b) i read ahead at Konogg's messages post-final raid in the Portable Archive, and those reveal that the purpose of the 'white spheres' is to duplicate Machine Lifeforms for invasion of other worlds (and 2B and 9S backed up their consciousnesses into them to try and prevent this)

so the Seed was shot out into the multiverse and happened to arrive on the First, lying dormant until Konogg found it and accidentally activated it, recreating Anogg from his memories before going to work, recreating both machine lifeforms and android data (as well as systems and the data stored on them, like 21O's backup consciousness)

the Seeds looking almost identical to the real Seeds of Destruction from Drakengard is a little odd, but the NieR timeline shows that the androids of Earth have some measure of understanding of the world that the Red Dragon (Angelus) and the White Giant (the Grotesquerie Queen) came from (and Accord's organisation has a comprehensive record given their time traveling), so it wouldn't be unsurprising that the Machine network somehow got hold of this information and based these spheres off the Seeds (and given that the Logic Virus is implied to be an extension of the Red Eyes that would infect humans, that this ultimately leads to a Grotesquerie being born isn't unsurprising, the Watchers just exerting their will through new means)

this does of course raise a few questions. 1) what timeline does this happen in? an alternate branch to the main Automata, which would explain why 2B still thinks Command is active if her copied data comes from a timeline where this happened pre-End of YoRHa? or was the copied consciousness data into the spheres from earlier backups because 2B and 9S were unable or didn't have the time to prepare up-to-date backups in a post-End of YoRHa world? and 2) what other universes did these Seeds get sent to, and how badly did it end for them?

[fictional-library-tournament]

Prelims round 2, poll 1

Propaganda

Junior Woodchucks Guidebook, Guardians of the Lost Library by Don Rosa:

"The Junior Woodchucks Guidebook?", you no doubt ask. "Isn't that just a book? A single book does not a library make?" And yes, it is just a book - and at the same time, no, it absolutely is a library. The library, actually. This tiny book is the actual, literal lost library of Alexandria, and contains all its lost wisdom and lore (except, sadly, the plays and poetry) preserved and expanded through the ages as various keepers cared for the library, preserved it by constantly transcribing and transferring it into the newest media and adding more and more content along the way - for instance, Marco Polo added all the books he brought back from China - until eventually, the library came to Duckburg, where it was collected in one single, huge volume - which a bit later became the very first "Junior Woodchucks Guidebook" - with some added modern knowledge and an entire organization dedicated to it's continued safekeeping. So, yeah - Junior Woodchucks Guidebook = Library of Alexandria + more

Endless Athenaeum, Critical Role – Campaign 1: Vox Machina:

The endless library of Ioun, the amazing goddess of knowledge from Critical Role!

Noumenon, Final Fantasy XIV:

This multi storied library is FFXIV equivalent of the Library of Alexandria. Organised by mini robots called mammets, largest repository of written works in all of Hydaelyn and has its own restricted section that would make many people's toes curl from what lay inside.

Kiersau Abbey Library, Pentiment:

You know how libraries these days are places for more than just books? This was one of these 500 years before it was cool. Here you can find old heretical texts, hot nun goss, secret passages, gay sex, delicious symbolism that represents the crumbling of an oppressive religious institution and increased education for the masses... what more could you ask for?

Neo-Gotham Public Library, Batman Beyond:

Mad Stan thinks libraries are just contributing to information overload, and the constant stream of All The Things is hurting people. Terry argues that it's not the information itself that's harmful, but rather the way of processing it, and that's the thing that needs to be addressed - not blowing up all the libraries.

Vault of Knowledge, Sky: Children of the Light:

It's ancient. It's magical. Its employees are all ghosts. There's so much information here and all translations have been lost

[shizucheese]

There are two wolves inside of me. One loves ghost stories and horror podcasts and other spooky shit, with the Magnus Archives, Old Gods of Appalachia and Malevolent as her very easy top 3 podcasts. The other is a big scawdy bitch baby who froze up the first (and only) time she tried to play a Silent Hill game (like 11 years ago) and spent way too much time hiding in the van while playing Phasmophobia on stream. So obviously we're starting Silent Hill 2 tonight, live on stream, and there's no van for me to hide in this time! Horror game-specific redeems are back on the menu on the Twitch side of things, including a handful of new sound effect-related ones, if you wanna be part of the reason I potentially lose my shit tonight!

Catch me on Twitch and YouTube every Sunday starting at 4:30 Central and every Tuesday and Wednesday starting at 7:30 Central, as well as on Fridays, starting at 8:00 Central, for Friday Night Writes! Get me to 50 subs and we’ll do a trial series or savage raid tier of the community’s choice MINE! Also, buy me a Cocoa? I'm on Ko-fi now! All money raised through Twitch and Ko-Fi donations goes back into the channel! You can also commission me for editing if you're a writer!

Also be sure to join the Pantry Discord to join in on community and hijinks!

[rihlltalk]

✨ The Obligatory Pinned Post ✨

[ twitter | AO3 ] Pose by vermillion ❈ on The Glamour Dresser.

Hello hello! I'm Liyah, and welcome to my FFXIV sideblog!

I write fics and create gposes featuring my Warrior of Light, Zha'senah Rihll, and her brother, X'chai Rihll; you can read about them here. I'm also a big wolgraha shipper, so you'll also see works involving Zha'senah and her relationship with G'raha Tia (and also sometimes Thancred, I also enjoy wolcred from time to time).

While this blog is primarily a personal archive of my work, I also reblog fics and art and gposes and memes from other FFXIV creators as well. (I interact from @a-twinkleinthesky - if you see that blog in your notifs, hi!)

MASTERLIST (updated periodically):

Cross: A young Miqo'te runs away from home and explores Eorzea. Fortunately for him, his solitary wanderings are short-lived. (Pre-ARR. Character backstory. Found family.)

NAVIGATION:

#say chat for personal text posts

#my writing for fics and drabbles I've written

#my gposes for gposes I've made

This blog is not spoiler-free, but spoilers have been tagged appropriately. Dawntrail content is tagged as #dawntrail spoilers. Spoilers for previous expansions have been tagged as well, with Shadowbringers and Endwalker content tagged as #shadowbringers spoilers and #endwalker spoilers, respectively.

[1000-rat-corpses]

after many miserable days i have written 5300 words of my self-indulgent FFXIV vampire viera OC

entailing why he has to run away from the shroud when a job he takes on goes south, which leads to him ending up at the free company he's at now :o

nowhere near my best writing bc i just converted thoughtstream bullet points to readable text lol

[caffsy]

FFXIV Write #25 – Perpetuity

With the recessed ceiling lights shining bright, it was a lot less grim to navigate the enormous facility than it had been before she had found the security console before. Yusi needed to take notes on everything she could see – the metalwork bindings, the detail of the lighting, the shapes and various patterns of the engravings.

Any single one of these details, if the components within machinery were understood or the geological-looking patterns turned out to be more than just aesthetically designed, could further the understanding of her people. The problems therein were twofold – Yusi’s own lack of understanding, for how could one seek to understand the masterpieces of those who came earlier if they were only journeymen in the current field of knowing. The secondary issue was just how remote Sector Phi was – it was at least a week’s travel north to the closest civilisation and the aether-starved atmosphere would likely make ruin of any artefacts that were brought back.

That this building had stood, even dormant, for such a long time proved testament to the sheer difference in knowledge of civilisations. On the one hand, the grand empire of Allag which had spanned continents, and the other held pitifully small Kha tribe, which could be walked edge-to-edge within a bell. To really face – to be within a part of – the insurmountable wall of knowing itself was enough to drive a person to despair, but Yusi chose not to.

She had parchment, ink, and a quill stashed somewhere within her backpack and would note down everything she could. Maybe it would have been more convenient if she had brought a codex – a piece of technology that could record text and speech to be displayed or played back – but such things were all being used to store the clan’s archives and purchasing more would come at an extortionate price.

The very thought was crossing her mind as a familiar sight, similar to the security room wherein Yusi had caused the flood which had wiped out most of Sector Phi. Only the dangerous stuff, she hoped. It was a room enshrouded in darkness and a cold that instantly piqued her interest. She meandered in, adding its details to the little song she was using as a memory aid, and stumbled across another console. With the light from outside, she could read the text on the panels but it all seemed garbled eorzean – like someone had taken the same letters but ascribed different sounds to them. She might have been able to figure out the code, but she found something far more noteworthy.

A codex had been left on the desk, precisely the same as the ones used within her clan except that a panel on the back, one that normally sat so flush with the construction that nobody – not even Yusi herself – had even noticed it could be removed. Within the panel another familiar object. A tomestone, a small removable stick of electronics that acted as storage within the device.

“These codices contained tomestones all along?” She murmured to herself, and looked around at the darkened room. Her eyes had been acclimatising to the darkness and she could now see within; the racks upon racks of codices which all must have contained a lifetime of knowledge.

Maybe she had a way of bringing back more than written accounts of her journey.

[peeporoons-notes]

back —— next

MSQ 1.1 [Ul'dah] — Close to Home [GLD]

————————————

◾ * Visit the Gladiators' Guild.

Lulutsu "Welcome to the Gladiators' Guild, friend! Tell me, are you new to the thrills of mortal combat? Well, whether you are or not, you are new to us!

If you would take your place in these hallowed halls, you must be willing and ready to undergo the most rigorous training. You must endure cuts and bruises beyond counting, and like as not far worse.

A daunting prospect, I concede—but there is no other way if you mean to take to the bloodsands one day. And why wouldn't you? The Coliseum is only the most celebrated place of public entertainment in all of Ul'dah!

Where else could a poor man amass a fortune so vast as to one day allow him to claim a seat on the Syndicate?

Ahhh...there's not an Ul'dahn alive who isn't inspired by the rise of the self-made man.

And there is no truer embodiment of this than the gladiator who wins riches and fame with his sword.

Throughout its long and storied history, this guild has nurtured countless champions.

Our training methods are second to none, and our members ever strive to develop new techniques.

If you desire true glory—to fight and triumph, 'midst the roar of ten thousand voices—then this is where you belong, adventurer.

...Think of it. Think of your legacy. And if your soul stirs...join us."

💬 Gladiators' Guild flavor text TBA 🔵 Way of the Gladiator TBA

[evilpenguinrika]

Summary:

It was a downright circus trying to prevent Lana from murdering the twins and to keep the twins from continuing to goad Lana. The only kid they didn’t have to worry about was Leo–who was still burying his nose into his grimoire in an attempt to read the texts. Or, I have FFXIV brain rot again so have a Hosie&Hosie fankids/FFXIV AU

just some hosie family fluff stuff in the world of final fantasy xiv bc i am Weak

[peeporoon]

FFXIV: A Text Archive

Check out this thing I've been making! The process is pretty slow (I've only just finished putting down the Ul'dahn starter cutscenes and tutorial) but I love how it is turning out.

In theory, I'll eventually have the whole game in text format-- including - Visual descriptions and ALT-text screenshots for cohesion - Gender neutral versions of particularly gendered dialogue segments - Dialogue choice trees built in via hyperlink - All side quests, job quests, tribal quests, and flavor text

[deadstardesire]

abt

simk / '99 / they

this is my ffxiv art account!

i am slowly moving my archive from twitter over to tumblr, you can expect to see that for the next while.

current status: just starting post-hvw patch quests

current jobs/classes:

healers: whm 60, sch 60, ast 60

melee dps: drg 50

ranged phys dps: brd 60, mch 30

magic dps: smn 60, blm 45

tags:

my draws - for my art

marche - for my main wol

txt - for other original posts

all the art that i upload has image descriptions in the alt text.

please do not send or tag any spoilers past what i have played

i am a pretty private person so i may not respond to asks/dms/replies, but nonetheless, thank you for stopping by, and i hope you enjoy!

[smallest-turtle]

Bow

She took it with her, just in case.

She did not want to go to that guild, but she took it, just in case.

She knew she was a good archer. She did not want to have to think about the reasons for that. Still, she took it, just in case.

For Mihko’a it was different. He would have learned it regardless of the Castrum in the valley below them, regardless of the Garleans waging war, regardless of the moon beginning to fall.

For Deidre it was not so.

She wanted to be new.

[bjy-on-ao3]

Worked a bit more on Kinktober stuff after knocking out three chapters last night. Managed to work out another two this evening! That puts me at 12/31 chapters for this Kinktober complete! (Technically the first chapter is the kink/prompt list and there will be 32 chapters total.) Both of the characters for this evening are both repeats - the first few for this challenge. Though given I’ve only chosen about 15 characters total (There MAY or may not be one or two more, as a couple I haven’t chosen a character yet, but they could just be repeats), some repeats are to be expected and most characters make two appearances (In the case of a couple that make three though, so bear with me).

Since I’ve already done some tag teasing, I’ll give another recap of the characters who have chapters written for them thus far. I may have jumped ahead in the days for one of them because the prompt was nagging at me and I couldn’t waste the inspiration. So, so far I have chapters written out involving:

Asmodeus (SWD?: OM!)

Lucifer (SWD?: OM!)

Beelzebub  (SWD?: OM!)

Belphegor  (SWD?: OM!)

Simeon  (SWD?: OM!)   

Izaya Orihara (DRRR!!)

Shizuo Heiwajima (DRRR!!)

Thancred (FFXIV)

The Admiral (MHW) These aren’t in the order they will be posted, of course, just so folks are aware. Thus far we’ve got some more fluffy and sensual, and then some that are just filthy PWP outside of the prompt. Only ten more days until I get to start posting them and I am still super excited about it! I hadn’t actually looked at the total word count between the chapters written so far before now, but plugging it all into a word counter page, it seems we’re just a bit over 9.25K words! If the other chapters follow as far as average length/etc (and I don’t get carried away on some), this should mean an end length of around 23-24K words in the total work.