#ffxiv ratatoskr

[meltylove97]

thoughts on dragons

[estinininininen]

Varshahn:

Estinien:

Varshahn:

Estinien: . . . So, those are dragon scales.

Varshahn: yeah what about it HUH

Estinien: Did y'all . . . ?

Varshahn: . . . imprison or kill a dragon to get them like SOME countries would? No.

Estinien:

Estinien: ok cool

Varshahn: cool

Estinien: Good.

Varshahn: Good.

Estinien is then kidnapped by the Thavnair alchemists, complaining loudly the whole way, and no one knows if he's putting up with it cause Scion duties and this is just how he plays nice - he bitched all the way to Hraesvelgr, after all - or if he genuinely just forgot he could jump

Meanwhile, in the meghaduta

Vrtra: hey Ahewann cancel DEFCON 1, this guy is cool. Total softy. Also kind of a dumbass. Of course I'll be glad to help clean up, I'm not going to make the maids clean up dragon piss. Ahem. Did I ever tell you about my brother Nidhogg? Yeah, the one I've avoided answering for a thousand years. Uh, well, yeah the dramatic asshole who went off the deep end, yes. Him. Too be fair it was about our sister, Ratatoskr - yeah, oh I'm actually really glad you remember what I said about her! She was a lot like . . . No, it's fine to interrupt, I got lost in memories for a second there. Ummmm, yes, I suppose it has influenced why I . . . hestitate telling everyone I'm the satrap. But Nidhogg took it way too far, yeah. He used to be a cool big brother, I swear. Knew how to get under everyone's skin, didn't put up with bullshit, but let kids climb all over him if it made them happy. Whenever I visited he was always swarmed by his own kids and all his niblings, and teaching them how to hunt and defend themselves against morta - Oh, but that was a couple Astral eras ago, sorry. Turns out Tiamat and Hraesvelgr weren't joking - yeah my other sister, Tiamat, the one who went into battle recently with this guy against, uh, yeah, the corrupted image of another brother of ours. Bahamut, yeah - yeah. The one who almost destroyed a continent, yes. Hraesvelgr? Hraesvelgr's our other brother who lived with Nidhogg for a long time - yyyyeah yeah you heard right, last time they met Nidhogg did call his dead mortal wife a whore and tore Hrae's wing off. Anyway! Anyway they were right, this guy really is like if you sucked all the filling out of a Nidhogg donut and tried to squish it into an Elezen. Yeah, sorry, that is the closest I can get to describing dragon aether stuff. Is he . . . yeah he's the guy who technically killed Nidhogg and spent his whole life training to kill dragons but like I just said, Nidhogg smooshed the two of them together. He's all but a dragon walking around in a mortal meat suit and seems mostly just embarassed by it. Kiiiinda looking forward to messing with his head more, honestly. Let's get the curtain ready. Ahewann, why do you look so scared?

[iamnotshazam]

in ffxiv, dragons can sense other dragons, and mortals can train themselves to "see" and feel other mortals' aether. there must only ever be a few people at a time in all of coerthas, much less inside ishgard, that can do both, and well. those who might, dragoons and blood-changed heretics, have until recently spent their lives racing towards death or dragonhood. no one knew . . .

which is why estinien is. a bit surprised. a little unnerved. when he wakes up in ishgard after the final steps of faith and something is . . . different about everyone in the city. it's very slight and takes him a long time to even try to describe. like there's a breath of dragon's aether just slightly layered in between their eyes and their mortal soul, but in ways not physical. it's neither mortal aether nor dragon aether. and it's so stretched and thin it should break and yet it's inexplicably strong.

it should not be familiar to him in his mortal shell but it is. nidhogg's memories and estinien's own acknowledgement of the truth of the war (that they do not deserve her) both pull against making the assumption but eventually he has to admit-

ishgard is steeped in ratatoskr's aether.

it gathers strongest in teachers and bards and parents nurturing children. it croons grief, and yes, anger, over the dragoon training grounds but also rejoiced when they drove back dragons that would kill the dragonets children of the nest city. it settles into warm bellies with the bite of fresh bread and twines around thumbs as if amazed. it keens hardest at betrayal and abandoned children. if an orphan in the brume is very tired and lonely or afraid as they fall asleep, they might hear a moment of a lullaby from a voice that isn't real, in a language that doesn't exist on hydaelyn or the dragonstar, but they understand all the same. it delights over the choir in st reymanaud's cathedral and dances over the air let out from the pipe organ. it coils around the soft skin of the elderly on a deathbed and gives what comfort it can for a people doomed to mortality. it is awestruck with every live birth, so painful, so triumphant, so weirdly . . . mammalian.

it is not really her. more like the echo of an echo. nidhogg expected the ascians to try some terrible scheme with her memory, as they had with tiamat and bahamut, but they didn't. perhaps the villains knew the first brood would never fall for that again. no matter how badly he missed her he knew she wouldn't want her life extended unnaturally if her eyes and body were gone. yet midgardsormr and his brood are not mortal, and something of choice remains for them after death. to dissipate into the aetherial sea? or, like midgardsormr resting in the lake, to linger for some watchful purpose after death?

estinien books it the hell out of ishgard with a lot of flowers. he's got a lot of graves to see, and he doesnt plan on stopping until he reaches sohr khai

[capriccio-ffxiv]

With the fall of the old order of Ishgard and the followers of Nidhogg both, I feel as though I can, at last, embrace my heritage in full. I am Elezen, and I am of Ratatoskr's brood. These things are not in opposition, but in harmony.

[madbrake]

Finished Ratatoskr!

Ratatoskr was one of the tricker members of the first brood to draw since there are only two images of her officially associated with ffxiv and two of those are very stylized. I added design notes and thoughts below the cut for anyone curious. They're nothing too crazy since a lot of her design is very similar to other members of the first brood, but I did think about her a lot while working on this piece and wanted to share where I pulled a few elements.

As a base, I gave Ratatoskr the spikier build of Nidhogg and Tiamat based on those images but with some modifications to to match her image in the first brood concept art:

As a result, she has fewer horns and spikes than Tiamat or Nidhogg. The spines along her back are thinner than her siblings’ also to match the concept art and to make her feel a little closer to Midgardsormr.

I also wanted to keep the thick frill(?) of reverse scale plating around her neck from her concept art because it reminded me of Vishap’s more literal neck frill. I liked the idea that some descendants of the first brood might have incorporated elements of her form into their own evolutions. It didn't end up appearing as prominent in my drawing because I had a little trouble wrestling with proportions and the neck bend, but it's there! In pervious drafts I gave her frill identical to Vishap's but I had a little trouble getting it to feel like it fit her design so I stuck with thick scales instead.

Her head shape was based directly on the two stylized images of her from the game. I really enjoyed the strong shape of these. It felt almost shark-like to :

I don’t usually include other characters or props to my first brood drawings, but I wanted to add the moogles after thinking about Ratatoskr’s history, her dungeon, and her Encyclopedia Eorzea entry which describes her as a bearer of dragon songs and one of the friendlier dragons. I like the think the moogles loved to complement her songs with their own instruments. Working on this piece as a whole made me really appreciate Ratatoskr and legacy all the more and I'm eternally sad that we'll (likely) never get to meet her in game. I think she would have been a wonderful friend. Her design is a little non-standard for a child of Midgardsormer in small ways, but I feel like she was probably a little non-standard as a traveler, songstress, and friend to man.

Lastly I want to give a little shoutout to the site Tales from Dragonstar which was put together by @/ahzuvi-txt and which made my reference hunt a ton easier. It has a lot of wonderful information about the dragons of Eorzea. It's also got an interesting guide to dragon language that I want to dig into soon. I definitely recommend checking it out!

Thanks for reading! Bahamut will be my next and final first brood piece to cap this series off. :)

[the-manderville-mambo]

Speaking of how boss music with lyrics is a great way to add characterization, I'm reminded of my personal headcanon regarding Dragonsong's singer. Officially it's supposed to be Hydaelyn, but tbh it would make more sense (to me at least) for it to be Ratatoskr singing it, especially after going through Endwalker

Firstly, Ratatoskr was noted for being a singer. Several of her descendants are mentioned as succeeding her legacy in the same way (that one PvP mount). Secondly, the word choice within the song doesn't match up with another one that's sung from Hydaelyn's PoV: Answers. Where Answers has "my children," Dragonsong has "children of the land." It doesn't make as much sense for Hydaelyn to say something like that, but if we consider that the people who once dwelled in the Churning Mists were known as landlords, in comparison to the dragons being called skylords, it would make far more sense for it to be said by a dragon

Thirdly, it would have greater emotional impact for Dragonsong to be Ratatoskr's spirit lamenting this thousand-year war and wondering why mortals would do such a thing, why they would betray her so, than for it to be Hydaelyn doing so when she has a far greater understanding of mortals (compared to something as alien as a dragon). Especially given that Dragonsong is a track more closely associated with Nidhogg and Hraesvelgr, Ratatoskr's two closest siblings, than with Hydaelyn or even Midgardsormr. You hear a vocal-less version at Zenith, where Hraesvelgr lives, and the full version during the Final Steps of Faith, the culmination of the Dragonsong War and the final confrontation with Nidhogg. Midgardsormr, meanwhile, has his own personal theme (Primogenitor) and Hydaelyn is notably absent from most of HW's story

[dovalore]

midgardsormr and the first beans

[goethial]

Ratatoskr commission for a client over twt!

[calowlmitygoddess]

Last year around easter i was going trought heavensward and falling in love for real with the game, i made that first doodle of the wyrms present in the expansion, and somehow it became one of my most popular posts across my socials.

So obviously since then i've been dying to redo it, now with more dragons (and an oc) since im now fully caught up

[trustinsighters]

In the farthest reaches of the Churning Mists rests a beautiful palace, once Ratatoskr’s abode. Following her passing, dragons renamed it Sohr Khai, meaning "grieving apology," now a remnant of a forgotten era of peace, adorned with human-crafted carvings of the wyrm.

Dragons are believed to preserve history through their songs. Ratatoskr was known for creating beautiful songs until mortals' betrayal silenced her forever.

[cute-sweet-corgo]

Made alt Au Ratatoskr dragon theme <:)

[sheekns]

Nidhogg from Final Fantasy XIV. I wanted to do a full card with color pencils and test a couple of things :)

[avirael]

Ratatoskr

[lunarosewood23]

"Never underestimate the power of song, of a voice. For when one cries out, many more can and often will rise to join in its chorus."

THANK YOU SO MUCH @joshua-beeking FOR THIS GORGEOUS ART OF RAVEN AND RATATOSKR!!!! I am legit still in absolute awe over this gorgeous piece!! He did an absolutely beautiful job with the piece and he is a very sweet human. If you want a commission from him, his comms are open (his prices are here!)

Some nifty little lore bits under the cut for crossover chaos. Warning, XIV spoilers under the cut

Ratatoskr is the Eikon of Sound in crossover chaos. Most of the time her Dominants are bards, but in Raven's case she weaves elemental magic into her songs in the form of Eikonic music, which she mixes lyrics and melodies from both in Valisthea and back home in Eorzea. FE: Wind magic she mixes the melody from XIV!Garuda with the lyrics of XVI!Garuda. (Her voice channels the magic while her staff channels the elemental power)

The meteor shower "weather" condition is a reference to several things in XIV, between it being the logo of FFXIV, a reference to the Seventh Umbral Calamity, the Final Days, the very fact that she isn't from there, and that the fire of the meteors is a reference to the fact that Clive Rosfield is her shard.

While not planned, the fact that there are six meteors here tickles me bc this is the exact number of people who fall into Valisthea.

The light in her hand is meant to be a reference to how the first Dominant she befriended in Valisthea is Dion Lesage, who she calls oath brother basically on sight and she adopts him, his partner and his dragoons as her own.

Raven is basically what happens when you take Songstress from X-2 and mix it with elemental magic. I have a slide in her powerpoint with her lyrics, including Leviathan, though that's probably gonna get updated with whatever happens in The Rising Tide DLC

[capriccio-ffxiv]

If Midgardsormr got a humanoid simulacrum like Vtra does he would pick a min height fem-ra and I will die on this hill

Reasons:

* he likes being smol

* he laid those eggs guys

* canonically dragons are like "what's a gender" and he probably has less of a clue than any of his kids

* horns & tail & scales still familiar & good

his voice would be exactly the same tho

[madbrake]

Finished pencils for Ratatoskr. :)

She's been tricky to draw because there are very few images of her but I think I'm pretty happy with this direction. I'm going to add some notes on my design decisions when I post the finished piece.