#ffxiv Garlemald

[candycryptids]

Glamtober Day 8- Ilsaberd Full prompt list [here]

Contemplative train rides in the heavy snow. Chuu’s good at what she’s doing here. Proud of it, even. She has underlings interns. And yet. Even buried in her own projects, there drifts an ominous feeling of Something about to go catastrophically wrong. And if her colleagues won’t listen…… perhaps it’s time to seek out a change of scenery.

Editing for the Trains screens done by my very talented husband @dustedbooksandreadingnooks💖

shader in full body is [Neneko Gameplay Vanilla Enhanced] Chuu is wearing: Indagator's Goggles of Crafting Indagator's Coat of Crafting (Jet Black) Replica Sky Pirate's Gauntlets of Maiming (Ash Grey) Wake Doctors Bottoms (Not visible but they're there!) Rebel Boots Cactuar Earring

[icicleteeth]

Seeing them out here is like seeing flowers growing in the cracks of harsh concrete

(For Kayla 💛)

[picaroroboto]

WRT the Garlemald portion of EW: I'm sure that for a lot of FFXIV's history players have been wondering what it would be like to reach Garlemald proper in-game, and daydreaming of epic battles, maybe a sense of "conquering the conquerers"

And it is so, so genius of EW to not give you that.

You don't get any glory or revenge in defeating the evil empire, they already self-destructed on their own. You can't really revel in it. If you're feeling particularly vindictive you might look at the rubble and silently think "Serves you right!" or "Good riddance to bad rubbish." but no matter how much you may have hated the Empire in the past it's hard not to pity what's left.

See, the thing about Garlemald is that in their prejudice and conquest they treated everyone who isn't them as subhuman. But in the end you are all human beings, and so are they. The Empire isn't a nameless, faceless evil, it's a war machine created by the beliefs of humans who saw other humans as inhuman. By helping the survivors you are not only doing the right thing, the human thing to do, you are also disproving their prejudice in the process by reminding them that you're all human. (I'm using the word "human" in abstract sense here, not to refer just to the Hyuran race of FFXIV, but all the races of sentient beings, all deserving of rights, respect, etc.)

I'm trying to shine a light on the significance of this part of the story because it seems like some people have conflicted feelings about helping citizens of a facist former empire, but it would be sheer Reading Comprehension Stat: None to assume that that means FFXIV is condoning their ideology. In fact, it would be antithetical to FFXIV's optimistic, pro-humanity, love-and-peace, a-better-world-is-possible -type philosophy if we instead left the survivors to starve.

[qwertyprophecy]

Sketches from Garlemald, digitally coloured

[magitekconveyor]

At long last! Who The Fuck Is Aulus mal Asina The Powerpoint Presentation: The Tumblr Post.

This was a long labor of love, combing over every piece of lore I could find in-game and in the Encyclopedia Eorzea. I initially made this because whenever I mentioned Aulus, I inevitably got met with "who?", so I thought I would have one place that contained all his lore and how it relates to MSQ as a whole.

For ease of access, here is the twitch link. It goes to a clip from 2018 Fanfest where they discuss Aulus. If you listen veeeeery carefully after he says "He's dead", you can hear a faint "Noooooooo!" in the audience. That...was me. I was actually there for that question and let me tell you I've never had so many heads whip around to stare at me all at once.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy and have learned something new about my favorite FFXIV character.

Edit: Coming back since this is gaining a bit of traction to add, if you like what you see here, please check out my friend's FFXIV fangame Indagator , where you can either romance or betray Aulus. It builds off of a lot of the info from above and masterfully expands on it. Mind the tags.

[remma-demma]

Thinking about people not liking what happened at the end of dawntrail like… hmm.

Did you not remember the stuff with the Yok Huy. Nobody is gone if you remember them. The phrase that’s been with us for nearly the entire game, “For those we have lost….” Emet Selch entrusting us not only with the legacy of humanity in general but specifically with the memories of the Ancients and Elpis.

Just because people are gone doesn’t mean they aren’t still with us.

But the people of Neo-Alexandria are kept from that. They can’t remember anyone they’ve lost because their memories were stolen and locked away in an eternal purgatory, unable to move on or be reincarnated. The quest where you go to the graves in Heritage Found was a big moment where I was like. Huh. This fucking sucks actually.

The endless are just computer simulations, and they exist because Sphene can’t bear to let them go. Can’t even let her living citizens mourn or carry on legacies.

And that’s not even mentioning the fact that she needs the souls of innocent *living* people to power this all.

I think it’s a really good metaphor for the digital age, becoming disconnected from our irl communities, uploading your entire life on social media. Profiles of loved ones who have passed on. AI chat bots providing temporary comfort but no real human connection. All of that technology requiring enough energy to slowly but surely contribute to the destruction of our planet.

It all seems pretty clear to me as an allegory but like, I guess some people just didn’t make that connection? Or maybe they just don’t think about all the AI stuff in the same way I do.

[4threset]

Endwalker Menus

[peculiarmarsu]

My page illustration for @ff14untamedzine , featuring Emperor's Rose.

The Garlemald part of Endwalker was possibly my favourite of the expansion. I wanted to portrait one potential danger looming in the blizzards, preying the unfortunate people seeking shelter.

[fatedroses]

Lucius and Titus yae Galvus

aka the 8'2" standard bearer puppy of a man and the 6'0" stoic machinist younger brother, or the sons of emet who are his spitting images in two different ways.

[miqojak]

Y'all ever think about just how much Garlean architecture looks like that of Amaurot's?

Y'all every just think about how much Emet Selch missed his home, and his friends? How his heart must have hurt so badly, even after all that time?

Y'all ever think about how many times he must have tried to re-capture the essence of it - just to feel something? Just to evoke their memory? Even if no one in the world knew but him?

Y'all ever think about the depths of loneliness and insanity that chasing this morbid dream must have led to over unknowable - unfathomable - lengths of time? And how, amidst this growing insanity and obsession, he still clung to hope - even in a twisted form? He still evoked their memory everywhere he went. He left monuments in his wake that none would ever recognize but himself; vestiges of a civilization long devoured by time, and a pair of warring gods.

Remember us, he said, because that's what he'd spent eons trying to do.

Anyways, the day I was looking for a spot to take screenshots in Garlemald, I was struck by the architecture of an empire that fell - not unlike how his own people eventually fell - and these thoughts, and thought I'd take some screenshots and be sad about them.

[kyotospartyart]

Garleans (and spoilers?)

[candycryptids]

“I haven’t been here in so long, what happened to this place…? Go update your scan of the area!”

Decided to do Minion-related screenshots! My ocs tend to have at least ONE minion that accompanies them places.. so.. why not!

Under the cut for a couple other filters I thought were neat + character rambles

So the Magitek Bit is the one bit of Garlean tech Chuu’s kept around from her Garlemald days; she’s modified it to be an all in one assistant, recording (shitty) audio, visual capture, and area scanning. Usually it’s used like a walking log entry, but it’s also used to record experiments so there’s an easy playback to see what went wrong (and it does often go wrong)

[finalfantabee]

This is basically what happened in Garlemald, right?

[nabaath-areng]

“I just don’t get what your problem is! First you’re angry that I'm here, and then you get angry when I leave, despite the fact that you're the one who told me to. Did I just dream up that we’d gotten past that and learned how to be civil with— H-huh?!”

(Theirs is a rocky and confusing road.)

Bonus aftermath:

[sirensongsea]

"Thank you for sharing your story, anonymous caller from Radz-at-Han! Now, onto tonight's episode of Voices from Beyond the Veil - Alien Abductions and You!"

[aethris-art]

I saw one of those "draw your comfort characters like this" posts on twitter, and decided to draw 3 dudes who all make me uncomfortable for different reasons. Original image under the cut