#alexandria ffxiv

[tritoch]

i've seen a lot of people complain about the dawntrail final dungeon for being a thing that we have basically already done and i understand and in many ways agree with that complaint but i do think it varies from the usual in ways that are actually pretty compelling.

spoilers for dawntrail follow, natch.

like okay in amaurot and the dead ends and the lunar subterrane (okay this is definitely a well CBU3 has gone to too many times), the premise is the fights you're engaging in are all kind of historical. behold, the dooms of amaurot. tremble before ra-la, a real sphinx that actually existed once somewhere. face durante, just as golbez faced him in real life.

and accordingly, because all the fighting is supposed to match the energy of the dungeons, these are moments of panic and peril. the world is ending. the worlds are ending. the kingdom is on fire. there's a solemn villain voiceover to really drive the point home (we just wanted to play...on da amaurotine playground...). amaurot is falling and look how sad it is. every world died and look how painful it was. my best buddy golbez died and it was really sad. everything is Fucked Up.

what's really fun about alexandria by contrast, particularly in the first part, is that things are fine, actually! sphene's here (well, "heah"), and we love her, and she smiles because we smile and we smile for her :). oh no alexandria is falling and it's so sad and noble because of everyone's chivalric sacrifices :( oh yay we're rebuilding from the ashes :)

it's a beautiful, tragic, noble story. and the whole time no one's talking to you, not like normal. sphene's kind of reciting the lyrics to memory from cats listlessly but everyone in her memories is talking to each other, not to you. none of them are interacting with you. you're not fighting alongside her against her enemies or taking down conjured horrors from the past.

no, the whole time you're being reminded of one very specific fact.

You're foreign. You're not from here. This is not for you. This is not yours. This peace was not yours and never will be. This grief, this hope. You chose otherwise. You were offered the chance to be Alexandrian. You rejected it. Stay over there. Stay out. You are not wanted here.

in what i personally choose to interpret as a bit of dark comedy, when things start breaking down, it's literally one of the only words you still understand.

ultimately what distinguishes alexandria from amaurot or the dead ends (intentional "this is why i'm sad" slideshows made specifically for the warrior of light to experience) or the lunar subterrane (accidental memory recreation) is that you are choosing to invade sphene's memories. you are doing a cool little backdoor heist at the luxor casino by causing chaos all over the strip before you crawl through the vents to get to the mainframe or whatever.

but in the context of dawntrail, alexandria is the invading power, the rapacious techno-dystopia that intends to carry out forever wars so it can use the literal souls of its enemies to power its treat machines and which not so coincidentally spawned in north america. and alexandria has literally invaded both tuliyollal and yyasulani at this point. so the conceit of the memory guardians helps make clear the hegemonic logic at play. you are a foreign entity. you are not a subject of the state. your life has no value. you must be removed.

or, if removal proves impossible, exterminated.

[capriccio-ffxiv]

Big rambly thoughts / speculation post.

I only JUST cleared the level 99 trial (I am in Job Search Hell and don't have a lot of free time) and have yet to actually enter the final zone, but, have a wild headcanon:

The original Sphene was a Hermes shard.

This is PURE headcanon, by the way, I have 0 canon evidence, but I do have a lot of incidental evidence/themes that fit, and I am Choosing to Go There.

Completely unable to accept death to the point of it being pathological

When confronted with "Honey you gotta let it go," reaction is instead to try to kill everyone

Green

The pattern was also true of Amon. Well, we don't know if he was green, I guess. But "unable to accept death" and "I will start murdering everyone and every thing rather than let people take the thing I love away from me, no matter how bad that would be for the universe, and if the thing is taken from me anyway then I'm just gonna kill EVERYTHING."

Further thoughts: This being a memory simulacrum of the original Sphene, her actual soul was probably slated to be used up a long time ago. (I may be contradicted on this shortly? Please don't tell me anything until I've said I've cleared the rest of the MSQ...) That's perfectly fine for Ascian purposes, & Emet-Selch may well have just quietly plucked that soul up and tucked it away for use later if/when their Fandanial got his ass perma-killed. Even better, if it was put through the memory tumbler, there'd be no pesky mortal memories to cloud up this new Fandaniel. Further thought: the entire thing as a prototype for future Ascian creation, given that Fandaniel was likely unstable from the get-go, and he probably wasn't the first one whose mortal memories caused Problems. Also for retrieving Ancient memories from the Aetherial Sea, which we know is possible thanks to Athena.

Even if she is using her original soul (doubtful), the above would *still* stand, because the process used to create her would have still cleared that soul of memories entirely, leaving it as basically "just" a power source.

Tbh Pandemonium actually primed us for A LOT of these concepts -- the Erich we meet in the Sea specifically is a random memory-less soul that Athena glued his memories to (and Athena was using his actual soul via Claudian as fuel for her attempts at true soul creation). ... we are EXTREMELY lucky that Sphene never met Athena. Holy crap, Athena would have been even more dangerous with the kind of tech and research Alexandria had done.

I'm also getting FF7 Shinra / Midgar vibes from some of Alexandria vis a vis the souls as power source & literally sucking up the lifestream of the planet to sustain a specific lifestyle.

[memoriavivens]

Small point of confusion

In the Arcadion raids, Brute Bomber’s feral soul is that of a Bomb. Bombs, however, are established in the lore to be a type of voidsent, and as we recently spent an entire patch series talking about, voidsent are simply transfigured people. Further, we know Alexandria has performed extensive research into the difference between human and beast souls, as mentioned t during that one section where they are explaining the function of the regulators. So, shouldn’t they know that a Bomb is actually a person instead of a beast, or at least closer to the former? (I forget whether voidsent souls are actually different from normal ones, but I would assume so) And if they do know, then how come this guy is using a person for his feral soul?

[memoriavivens]

This person was clearly wearing their regulator!

Wait a minute...

[anneapocalypse]

I'll be interested to see what further developments happen in the patches with Alexandria, but so far I think Wuk Lamat is handling the situation very delicately, and very smartly.

Alexandria is, undeniably, an invading force in Xak Tural. It's a foreign nation that has moved onto Turali land and claimed that land and its people under its own sovereignty, with the intent to harvest a resource from it at the direct expense of its people. This is, obviously, wrong, and needs an answer.

Wuk Lamat as the Vow of Resolve has, with the help of her allies, already achieved something pretty significant and challenging here: she has defeated the invading government (Sphene and Zoraal Ja) without directly declaring war on Alexandria's people (most of whom probably had little to no say in the invasion). Her diplomacy during her initial introduction to Alexandria has probably gone a long way here; she has not given the people any more reason than absolutely necessary to believe she is a threat to them.

Declaring the very young Gulool Ja Alexandria's new king feels undeniably weird in more ways than one, but I think that politically it's probably the smartest thing Wuk Lamat could have done.

Her goal, as it's always been, is to maintain peace for her people. A good number of her people are now directly entangled with Alexandria. A rebellion against Tuliyollal rule by the Alexandrians is a direct threat to her people, particularly the ones living in Heritage Found. Even with Sphene gone, Alexandria is still possessed of substantial military power and weapons technology that could conceivably be commandeered either by existing military personnel (because even an army of robots requires some level of manpower to maintain) or by a civilian militia were one to arise. Bottom line: even with the head cut off, Alexandria still poses a threat to the safety and sovereignty of Tuliyollal. And even if the Dawnservants could be reasonably certain their own forces could overpower the Alexandrians--which they conceivably could based on sheer numbers--there would still be a bunch of their own people caught in the crossfire.

Furthermore, the defeat of Sphene and the shutting down of Living Memory means that the end of regulators and spare souls is coming. (The new raid series suggests too that the Warrior of Light may have a hand in ending the use of souls.) This is going to be highly disruptive to the Alexandrian way of life, and probably really fucking scary to a people who have become reliant on this technology. There are bound to be objections. While it's unclear to me at this time how many people knew what Sphene was actually doing, it's not inconceivable that more could find out, and that someone might seek to put her plans in motion once again in order to preserve the soul economy.

This is, in short, a pretty precarious situation politically, and a lesser Dawnservant would already be looking at a city teetering on the edge of revolt.

So, how do we convince the Alexandrians we aren't a threat to them in the short term, while we figure out how we're going to handle this in the long term?

Well, a good first step is probably to give them their king. Alexandria is, at least in name, a monarchy. By the rules of that system, Gulool Ja is a rightful heir to the throne. By allowing him to claim that birthright, you make a show of respecting Alexandrian "sovereignty." You also declare him family--he's your nephew, after all. Now you have a familial connection, the stuff of which royal alliances are made. And of course, the new king is just a child. He's going to need advisors, a regent, and a lot of guidance. You can have a hand in that.

Sure, the Alexandrians are going to notice your influence over their ruler and might still have feelings about that. It's not a perfect solution. But by the same token, snatching their one living heir away from them and openly declaring them under your rule now is probably going to go over a lot worse.

Like I think the game kind of downplays this being a calculated choice, especially since Wuk Lamat doesn't come across as a calculating person. But if we were to observe this scenario in any other fantasy setting... that's how you install a puppet king. I don't especially like to use that term in this case, because I think Wuk Lamat genuinely cares about her nephew and isn't simply using him to maintain power. Nonetheless, it is an undeniably political move, and one that benefits Tuliyollal.

It's likely the Alexandrian people are here to stay--thanks to the dimensional compression, they're in the unique situation where the land they live on is both theirs and not theirs, and that is a problem, but forced relocation also isn't a great solution.

Judging by Wuk Lamat's goals, ethos and the example of her father, I think her hope is probably to bring Alexandria under the banner of Tuliyollal without having to shed blood for it, not least the blood of her own people who would be caught in the crossfire. She understands now that sometimes there's no more room for diplomacy and you have to fight your enemies head on, but if there's a chance she can do this peacefully, through diplomacy, then she's going to try, because that's who she is. She also probably understands that most Alexandrians had no choice in this, and a show of good faith might go a long way toward earning their trust as they adapt to the loss of their queen and the changes that will inevitably follow.

It's a bad situation without a doubt, and one that's already been very destructive to the people of Xak Tural. Gulool Ja Ja sought to unite rather than to conquer. I think Wuk Lamat's hope is to do the same, for the practical purpose of limiting further damage as much as possible.

[45liza109]

Sphene

[actual-haise]

ALEXANDRIA NÚMERO 1 CAMPEÃO PENTA ☝️🥇🏆🇧🇷🇧🇷🇧🇷

[memoriavivens]

It was certainly a strange experience. To be honest, the perpetual lightning storm caught his attention more than the electrope technology. But it was just sort of an alien landscape all around. Not “evil” like others seem to think, just alien. When he learned a bit more he actually developed an appreciation for the things the Alexandrians can do with electrope. As for the thirty-year bubble? It has tragic consequences, yeah, but he’s rather used to tragedy, so it didn’t hurt him too deeply.

8/14/24

dawntrail spoilers

What was your wol(oc)'s initial feelings about heritage found and what had happened there?

[starrysnowdrop]

Glamtober 2024

#16: Cyberpunk

Hali absolutely adores the fashion and architectural design elements of Alexandria, including the bright pink, blue, and purple lights against the black stone of the electrope, which she sees mirrored in her outfit that she found in Solution Nine. She is fully aware that the beauty of the high technology, however, obscures the horror of how Alexandrian society truly functions.

[maeljade]

Hey Tumblr, I got a question for the folks that have beaten Dawntrail and Stormblood Dark Knight.

How do we feel about these two? Would the world that Myste wished to build BE Living Memory and Alexandria? A world where you never have to say goodbye and never feel the sadness of parting, because the memories of the departed are deleted.

Yet also a world where people can meet their loved ones again and say what they wanted and spend an eternity together, because Living Memory is designed to support such reunions.

The dead are forever beyond our reach, and we have no choice but to accept the inevitability that everyone we know and love will join them in time ... or do we? Distraught by his failure to see Gallien's final wish fulfilled before his passing, Myste muses on the possibility of a world where time and death hold no power over us. A world you could share. You need only ask. But we know better. - Dark Knight Questlog: "We can never go home"

[xivrefsheets]

Sphene reference sheet for a ko-fi supporter!

Hi-res download can be found here

Commission info here

[memoriavivens]

Yeah, it’s decidedly frustrating how… puritanical people can get about this.

love to be an ancients hater and see the discussion on how unethical regulators are shift into the sanctity of souls as the sole makeup of a person broooo i could not care less+your views are disputed by the story so far+L take+go home

[memoriavivens]

Something I noticed in Dawntrail

Felt like sharing this observation right now- it’s definitely spoilers for the second half of the expansion, so I’m hopefully going to make the cut-off work and also, don’t read the tags. Alright then!

So this is about Alexandria, specifically their technology- their military technology is actually much worse than it seems at first. Like their ships for instance- Vrtra destroys them by just flying into them, and while he is a First Brood Wyrm you’d expect more from an army attempting to conquer the world. Even Midgardsormr had to actually try when fighting the Garleans. This is particularly damning because that seems to have been their whole fleet he destroyed- their numbers are terrible. And it seems that their robots also fall rather easily- we see the gunslingers in Shaaloani take out some with dueling pistols. Even Zoraal Ja’s whole thing with the beast souls never actually wins them any fights- him using a single beats soul in his fight with Gulool Ja Ja was clearly superfluous, he had already overcome the slight edge his father had through the regulator. Even their guns fail to kill any non-civilians that we see. Anyway my point is that Alexandrian technology is nowhere near as good as it initially seems- well, actually just their military technology. Their civilian stuff, however, is absolutely revolutionary! Regulators, obviously, a medical miracle even if they have questionable secondary functions. The flying motorcycles might be their military’s best asset, but those are repurposed civilian vehicles. They’ve got lab-grown meat that, if Wuk Lamat is any judge, tastes better than the meat of real animals! The farming machines they made for the Turali people they assimilated, drones people can control and basically use as a remote full body, seemingly a great deal of medicine, they’ve produced all kinds of wonders! I probably got some details wrong in there, but basically the point is that Alexandria is way better at peace than war- and their citizens clearly know it, given their general distaste for Zoraal Ja and his invasion. And as it happens, so does Sphene, but that’s a whole thing I want to discuss separately. Anyway, all this to say that Alexandria is positioned to do incredibly well, maybe even become a dominant world power, as long as they avoid major war- making it all the more tragic that forces entirely beyond the control of any of them are forcing them to the very extreme of war.

[sirensongsea]

couch.mp4

[hythlodaes]

i don’t know how much understanding emile would have for the endless, tbh. everything about it feels so cruel to him—taking away people’s memories to spare them pain, taking living people to keep the dead propped up and half-alive in a daydream.

so much about his loss has shaped him into who he is, and though he’d love to see his father again, he would never give up the memory of him. he lives on in emile, who fights to make him proud and honor him in all that he does….

[memoriavivens]

See, there actually is a connection between Alexander and Alexandria!

I forgot to tell you about truly the best side quest of dawntrail