#mhachi

[ffxiv-langs]

Evolution of "Mhach", "Belah'dia", "Ul'dah", and "Eorzea" through Mhachi, Belah'dian, Ul'dahn, and Eorzean

Mhachi "Mhach" (ṽax) -> Belah'dian "Mwa" -> Ul'dahn "Kwa" Eorzean loans native name as "Mwak" (gen. "Mwaki" independent derivation, original "Mhaing" not attested) The genitive is regularized to "Mwani" in Belah'dian and "Kwani" in Ul'dahn.

Reconstructed Mhachi form "belɔhe dax" to Belah'dian "belaa dja" spelled belah'dia, genitive in early Belah'dian was beluenti, and did not regularize like other demonyms formed with the genitive case. the use of the <h> in the orthography is due to historical h in Mhachi lengthening vowels. In Ul'dahn it is often called "Bela'dah", but in Eorzean the original name was loaned back, hence "Beradia" and "Berwenti". However, note that "Belwenti" is used in the modern day (as is Eorzean "Berwenti") as a term for those of Ul'dah who are not Lalafell. As a funky creole/interlang thing, Eorzean's phonotactics is simple yet loosely defined. While most of the Ul'dahn vocabulary lacks sonority plateaus, clusters especially with the rhotic <r> are more common in words from other sources, such as Eorzea {iorsia} and Aldenard {ardenard}. A lot of words also preserve aspects of earlier spellings, such as the <l> and <r> being written separately in "Aldenard". "Ul" is a loan from Dunesfolk Lalafellin, which had begun to lose the rhythmic system of the classical Lalafellin language, largely retaining it in names and in some residual reduplication rules. "dah" (phonetically: daa) is the phonetic evolution of "dia", in fact, so is "dih" in Sil'dih. In Eorzean, the name is spelled Uldah and pronounced "urdaa".

"Eorzea" {iorsia} as a word has a complicated origin in Eorzean, and cannot be directly traced to Ul'dahn origin and is likely an amalgamation of multiple terms for the land. However, it is definitely influenced by Ul'dahn {joroz} (whence {iorus} would be expected). These come, much more straightforwardly, from Belah'dian jorza, from Mhachi nhorza, from Allagan nórθ, from the Amaurotine formation noɬθ, whence also ultimately Norvrandt. The Mhachi/Belah'dian branch and the Voeburtic branch on the First (the origin of much of Norvrandtic's vocabulary, serving a similar role to Ul'dahn on the Source) are the only languages where noɬθ was not replaced (in fact, it was extremely uncommon in Allagan as well; some speculate it to be a term introduced by Emet-Selch directly as was the case for some Garlean terminology, namely the middle-name titles.)

[tallbluelady]

■ -  Bedroom/house/living quarters headcanon

... Uh. Wait. I may not have shared this detail yet...

After she marries Emet-Selch, Aoife lives in a magic cottage. A bit of a fusion of the Tardis (bigger on the inside), Baba Yaga's hut, and Howl's Moving Castle. Most of the time it's trundling along the borders of Mhach, but it'll make forays into Mhach proper if Selch needs some sort of artifact.

Aoife's room in particular is very pink because it reminds her of the field of flowers she and her sister would go to as children.

Thanks for the ask!

[seaseren]

What if...baby Dion... was a Riku...

[unionizedwizard]

one of my favorite (minor?) things about g'raha tia's characterization is that he Doesn't know what a wizard *is*. Like historically he plainly has no idea about the history of magic and how it works (fair, he was not a mage before and his studies have relatively little to do with magic. phd specializing you know how it is). Which is what the absolutely baffling, "blink at him in confusion"-style line he says (as the Exarch!) in post-SHB ("I am not a skilled mage, just making use of the crystal tower's boundless aether reserves") implies. He seems to labor (still!!) under the impression that the *actual* great mages of the past (or present) just Did That all by themselves and without relying on extra sources of aether, Because They Were Just That Good, which of course is patently untrue especially if you play magic classes yourself. The Mhachi raids and the BLM quests both establish that black magic was refined by great sorcerers of eld mages who were extremely skilled......... at finding new ways to exploit aether: 1) summoning and enslaving voidsent and 2) siphoning aether from the environment (with the consequences that we know). All the great feats of magic in history have been supplemented with concentrated aether from one source or another, no matter how clever or skilled the mages might have been otherwise! Actually, like 50% of the feat seems to be about figuring out new ways to acquire sufficient stores of concentrated aether (and this is a highly conservative estimate). But somehow this doesn't register to him, and because he "merely inherited and perfected" the summoning spell from his ironworks comrades and "merely inherited" the crystal tower's command, he doesn't "count" as a "real mage" in his own mind....... impostor syndrome king & #biased narrator alert

[anneapocalypse]

Heavensward was a while ago and I remember almost nothing about the Sky Pirate raid storyline at this point, but reading Encyclopedia Eorzea I'm enjoying all the lore about the Void Ark from the Fifth Astral Era, and also realizing that the striking similarity in color scheme between the Void and Void-related things, and Heritage Found and electrope-related things, is probably not at accidental.

The Alexandrians are not the first people to prey upon the people of another reflection and attempt to harvest them as a resource. The Mhachi of the Source did something not entirely dissimilar, summoning voidsent across the rift and making thralls of them to fuel more and more powerful spellcraft. The Void Ark, intended as an escape from the impending Calamity of Water, was powered by voidsent thralls sealed within its hull.

And as we now understand, voidsent are people. People dramatically changed by the flood of Darkness that laid waste to their world, but people all the same.

[or-fi-s]

Wing-it TF for bobjoestevebill

She learned this old Mhachi trick to become beautiful and powerful! Conjurers hate her!

Posted using PostyBirb

[misedejem]

I really did just log in today mainly to put my Elezen in fun seasonal outfits and not much else

It’s his nameday so I had to give him a little bit of appreciation, in the form of getting him a deeply OOC new outfit :3

Mise’s all saints wake glam from last year has evolved into her pvp glam, so I think instead of embracing the edge today I’m going to give her cat ears in seal rock :3

[amons-hat-enthusiast]

Roevember 2024: Day 2 - Roots

To stand upon the place your ancestors built... It can take your breath away...

For some context here - Set'ia is a mage of Mhachi ancestry

[lizzy-calaxio]

Which jobs are canon to Lizzy? Did she get trained by the Canon npcs? What are her thoughts on her teachers?

Lizzy's canon jobs are BLM, DRK, GNB, SCH, NIN, SAM, and PCT

She doesn't learn any of them through the canon NPCs, her teachers are: - a mhachi mage that's somehow still alive (Black mage) - Feo Ul (Dark Knight) - GNB.....I haven't worked out yet - She's a self taught Scholar - yugiri teaches her ninja - Shio Shinju teaches her SAM - Krile teaches her PCT

She's fond of all of her teachers, and dating a couple of them

[mimble-sparklepudding]

White Magick.

The mages of Amdapor devised the arcane art of white magick during the Fifth Astral Era to counter the destructive black magick of Mhachi sorcerers in the infamous War of the Magi. Focusing upon spells of restoration and purification, the practice of white magic led to great advances in Amdapori society. 

[the-wardens-torch]

My last entry was a bit of a downer, but after a conversation with @the-evil-pizza... I decided to cheer myself up by compiling the best of Fal's "men's thighs in slutty shorts" glams from over the years.

The one he's wearing on WAR here has always been my default tank glam... I think its my fave because its the fashion equivalent of a reverse mullet; business from the back, but party from the front. The DRG and WAR ones are built entirely round the fact that I noticed that the Mhachi Slaying and Fending leg gear covers most of the legs... except a cheeky little strip that makes it look like you're wearing sexy thigh-high stockings and shorts if you pair them with a mid-thigh pair of boots for them to peek out of. Also I want to call out SE for turning tha Thavnairian tights into booty shorts on male sprites like fucking cowards, but the thing is... I love the booty shorts even more.

[ffxivxd]

Calofisteri was once a Mhachi mage who transformed into the voidsent you see by combining the power of an aether-infused crystal with the ritual consumption of voidsent blood. This form not only granted her immense power but also immortality.

[ffxiv-langs]

Grammar of Allaganic Languages Pt.1

Allaganic languages are predominantly SVO, although Allagan itself had free word order and was predominantly SOV (while Amaurotine had free word order and placed the topic first (usually with verb-object bonding, so often SOV but also OVS; this later evolved into the Aldenardic passive voice) An exception is Ishgardian, where VOS constructions are permitted with the preposition on. This is a loaned grammatical feature from Dravani (and in fact, so is the particle itself, though its function differs). However, SVO remains the primary word order. Additionally, the Lalafellin languages use strictly SOV.

2. Most Allaganic languages place adjectives (including numerals, negatives, and nouns in the genitive case) after the head, but place them before when forming compound words. This is reflected in the Eorzean word atari, "to do nothing", from a compound of ata + uri. In Nymian, adjectives always precede nouns. 3. Most Allaganic languages have prepositions. However, Nymian shifted, in many cases, to postpositions as its adjective order also switched.

4. The way of marking yes/no questions varies from language to language - in Mhachi and descendants, as well as Hyuran (and thus ultimately Eorzean), a particle is placed at the end of the sentence. In Elezen, it's placed after the verb (except in Padjali, where it's placed at the beginning of the sentence). In Roegadynic, you switch from SVO to VSO. In Garlean, no change is made to the sentence at all, except a change in tone. In the original Allagan, the verb is moved to the front of the sentence (the origin of Roegadynic's word order thing). 5. Auxiliaries are consistently on the other side of a verb compared to its modifiers in Allaganic languages - in most languages including Eorzean, the order is "should go quickly", but in Nymian and Koboldic it's "quickly go should".

[xiv-wolfram]

WolfBahn Ship Summary - Part 1

Prequel

I realized the comics are... a lot. So I decided to make a short summary of my Wolfram x Raubahn ship. As I started to write I realized it was also... a lot. So clearly WolfBahn is simply... a lot. Eh, this is still way less to read than the comics, enjoy.

Warnings - imperfect neurodivergent protagonist, voidsent, domestic argument that turned a teeny tiny bit physical

Ul'dah

Wolfram Vought and Raubahn Aldynn met 15 years before A Realm Reborn at ages 25/29 in Thanalan. Wolfram (A recently reformed bandit, Gyr Abanian refugee, and the future Warrior of Light) wanted gladiator training as he was accustomed to a rapier. Raubahn, a gladiator (for the guild, not a prisoner), just thought he was trying to pick him up after a tourney. They ended up talking and hit it off almost instantly, bonding over being from the same country, shared interests, and good ol' fashioned Garlean hatred. After hours of walking around Ul'dah conversing, Rau had given up on his assumption that Wolf was interested in him romantically but was happy to have a new friend. Demisexual Wolfram just needed a bit of time to get to know him and surprised Raubahn with a kiss after they had talked all night. Wolfram decided to stay in Ul'dah, but not as a gladiator. He became a cook at the Quicksand.

They fell in love unnaturally quickly and lived together happily for 2 years. Raubahn appreciated Wolf's sincerity, sense of humor, and being non-judgemental and supportive. He even enjoyed his empathic abilities. Wolfram loved how the gladiator could keep him grounded, admired his heroic nature, that he helped him calm down during panic attacks, and generally made him feel safe (the dude has trauma™). They were great friends as well as partners. Wolfram taught Raubahn how to cook. Raubahn taught Wolfram more fighting techniques. They enjoyed sparring and fighting monsters. Exploring together. They’d a whole future planned out. Wolfram was going to propose they be eternally bonded, but couldn't in good conscience until he told Raubahn about his past. One night, after a horrible nightmare, he confessed. 

6 years prior, the Decurio who led the small group of Garleans occupying his village requested Wolfram’s young sister’s hand in marriage in exchange for going easier on the family’s inn. He overheard his parents considering the offer. Wolf had been secretly studying his grandmother’s tomes on void magic and in his anger summoned a hellhound. Something went wrong and the voidsent that arrived was far more powerful than he could control. It possessed him and forced him to watch as it transformed, using his body to not only kill the Garleans but his whole village, including his family. His Mhachi grandmother did a ritual to bind it before her death, saying it was still within him and he would have to control his emotions to keep it imprisoned. (He didn't mention to Rau that the voidsent often talked to him.) Wolf then fled to The Black Shroud and became a bandit while adjusting to his new reality.

Raubahn was shocked but kept his poker face and asked for some details. Wolf admitted to killing several other bandits who he thought were a threat but insisted he only robbed rich travelers. After a few years, he had gotten control over the hellhound and wanted a more stable life, so he moved to Ul’dah. He said he was so glad when he met Raubahn because the gladiator was able to calm him down when the voidsent was causing him to panic and so clearly a good person that maybe he could help Wolf become good too.

Raubahn was horrified at his partner's actions and the fact that he'd lied and put him in danger for the entirety of their relationship, but even more so that Wolfram refused to accept responsibility for his own decisions and insisted on blaming the Garleans. As if all that wasn’t bad enough, he had robbed and murdered people he didn’t need to. Rau questioned if Wolf actually cared for him or if it was a selfish love born from wanting to be taught ‘goodness’. Wolfram seemed to have changed now - but could Raubahn ever be sure? Could he ever trust the man who would do those things and refuse to accept the guilt for them? The conversation got away from them both. Wolfram was defensive, panicked, and pushy. Raubahn was angry at Wolf’s insistence on his innocence, downplaying what he did. The gladiator tried to walk out, Wolf tried to stop him, Rau shoved him away then left, telling him if he ever saw him again he’d have him arrested. Raubahn quickly calmed down and returned to apologize but Wolf had already gone. They wouldn't speak for many years.

The Shroud

Wolfram traveled back to the Black Shroud and quickly acknowledged to himself that Raubahn had been right about everything. He would have immediately apologized and accepted the guilt, but he was terrified of going to jail if Rau made good on his threat. In part, because it didn’t sound like a pleasant experience, but also because he could be made to fight in the Bloodsands and was worried about what would happen if he lost control of the hellhound in a crowded coliseum in the middle of a large city. After a month-long bender (in which he realized alcohol would quiet the voidsent’s voice) Wolfram decided to join the Conjurer's Guild to learn to heal and become a better person on his own. Raubahn was right about that too - it had been selfish to expect the love of someone to fix him. Besides, white magic would become useful for something he had to take care of if he ever made it back to Gyr Abania.

Red Magic

After 6 years Wolfram heard that Raubahn had bought the Coliseum, joined the Syndicate, and reformed the Immortal Flames. The conjurer gathered the courage to head to Thanalan to offer his services to the Flames - hopefully winning Raubahn's forgiveness. On the way, he ran into a fellow Gyr Abanian named X'Rhun Tia. The miqo'te had a unique fighting style that combined magic with a rapier. They got along well and X’Rhun offered to train Wolfram in red magic. Wolf couldn't pass up the opportunity, deciding he'd been a fool to believe he could return to Ul'dah anyway.

Calamity

For the next 3 years, Wolfram trained with X’Rhun, quickly mastering Red Magic and helping his friend find more apprentices to teach. Then came the 7th Umbral Calamity. Wolfram was away in Kugane at the time but once word reached that the Eorzean Alliance would be fighting Garleans at Carteneu he teleported himself to the South Shroud and rushed to make it to the battle in time. He was almost there when the moon cracked open. Wolf couldn’t help but watch as fire rained from the sky. Once it was over, he saw from afar that Raubahn had survived. He couldn’t bring himself to approach the General, but knowing he was safe was enough. Wolfram quickly started aiding the injured soldiers. He healed many before the Echo visions of the dying overwhelmed him.

The next 5 years were spent in well-masked anxiety - assuming that the voidsent had gained the ability to show Wolfram nightmares while he was awake. Something he didn’t tell a soul. Helping victims of the calamity as a member of the Adventurer’s Guild was a nice distraction. He didn’t make much gil but it was enough to buy a small apartment in Limsa Lominsa. In all that time Wolf kept tabs on Raubahn (easily, he was famous after all). Wolfram's love never faded, but he learned to live with the pain and focus on helping others as a way to make amends for his past. He was so resolved to not even date that it often worried his best friend and roommate Rhun. 

Raubahn had been busy in those 13 years, but everyone knows his story. He adopted his son Pipin. He became a wealthy politician and military commander. He did *try* dating, but didn't find anyone he could see a future with. As his political power rose so did the rumors. Simply dancing with his friend Merlwyb at an event had sparked gossip and accusations of collusion. He gave up on public relationships completely after joining the Syndicate for fear of what the Monetarists would do to any partner of his. The General did have a few casual lovers who respected his need for discretion but his focus was on leading the city he’d come to truly call home. Raubahn often found himself wondering if Wolfram was still alive but couldn't track the former bandit down due to his penchant for using an alias.

Part 2 - A Realm Reborn

[pointyhatspointyears]

Silly question, but does Yasumi have a second name? And is her heritage Dunesfolk or Plainsfolk?

Curious why you'd ask, Mimble. Hmmm~~

Well short answer is not really. Granny Yasu doesn't follow traditional lalafellin naming conventions because she probably wasn't a lalafell to begin with and Yasumi is only one of the names that aren't her original name but people saw fit to call her (Hingan wife used it once to describe how she made her feel, so she kept it.)

Longer answer re: her heritage is a bit of an oc lore dump.

She was born an Amdapori child (probably a hyur) with a name now lost to time. Her soul was used among many others' to power the guardian golems that would counter the Mhachi attack and she was consequently sealed in the same prison as Diabolos after the war. For the first 500 years or so that as they waged their own war in their own void bubble, he called her Kuribu (though it wasn't her own name so much as the amalgamation of all the Amdapori souls sacrificed to animate that particular guardian.) For the following 1000 years and as their initial animosity slowly turned into a sort of mutual empathy and then mentorship, he gave her a new name, Oriax, as well as the power that came with it and partial command over his legion.

Later when she was released from the void back into this realm she found she had taken on the features of what were once her people's enemies, the Mhachi Dunesfolk, carrying residual knowledge of their void magic passed onto her by Diabolos as well as her original Amdapori white and summoning magic.

No one was there to give her a lalafellin name, but Matoya did give her a proper Sharlayan name just so she could get her into academia, which she eventually despised and has long since done away with, the only remnants of which can be found scribbled in the margins under less-than-flattering doodles of certain Sharlayan individuals or cited in the footnotes of some books in the Gubal library..

[anneapocalypse]

What is "the occult" in FFXIV?

Ever since I first laid eyes on the EE3 bit about Urianger's parents I have been noodling on one thing in particular. Encyclopedia Eorzea volume 3 refers to "the occult" as Urianger's parents' field of study (and the reason they were so absent from his life). Every since that discovery, I have been curious what that actually means. What is "the occult" in a universe where magic is real, measurable, and a highly legitimate and prestigious field of study?

So, where else is "the occult" referenced in the game?

Thanks to this invaluable searchable transcript, I've found a few other references in MSQ.

The first use of the term "occult" in MSQ that I've found is way back in the Gridania starter quests when some Ixali "Occultists" are trying to summon Garuda at the Guardian Tree. In isolation I'd take this one with a grain of salt since it's very early in ARR, but I think it's consistent with other usages. The description for Whorleater Extreme also uses the term, referencing "the occult knowledge of the Ascians," so from the start there is an association of the occult with Ascian magicks and specifically with summoning.

The only other mention in MSQ comes from Alphinaud in Endwalker, where he and Krile are giving us the tour of Sharlayan, and specifically Phenomenon:

Alphinaud: As the center of what would later become the Studium, it was established to promote the study of aetherological phenomena, hence the name. Alphinaud: Though with aether being a fundamental aspect of nature, its scope expanded to include every conceivable facet of life and even the universe itself. Alphinaud: And then, in the four hundred and thirty-second year of the Sixth Astral Era, Phenomenon was decreed complete and the Studium officially opened as a place of learning. Alphinaud: With a long and storied history, it is without question the world's leading authority in aetherology, the arcane, the occult, astromancy, and countless other fields, standing proud as─ Alisaie and Krile: ...Sharlayan's foremost educational institute!

Okay, so "the occult" clearly falls within the general field of aetherological phenomena and magic, though that we could have guessed already. Something that catches my eye is how in more than one place, "occult" is contrasted with or referenced as distinct from "arcane." This is the case in Alphinaud's speech above, as well as in the Blue Mage quest "Everybody Was Fukumen Fighting," wherein Bluehood says, "No occult tricks or arcane incantations can contend with the all-surpassing might of blue wizardry!"

In the Loporrit Allied Society quests, we also get this odd little quest "Hare-Raising Thrills," in which we're asked to make "Occult Paraphernalia" for a Loporrit called Thrillingway. Depending on crafting job, dialogue with Keepingway will elaborate thus:

"It seems he requires a pair of shears─but not just any pair. No, he desires blades sharp enough to carve fur clean off!"

"He wants a sturdy coil of rope suitable for binding all four limbs of…a 'friend,' allegedly."

"Seems he wants a highly acidic gel for some dubious purpose I did not have the heart to inquire about. Honestly, I think it's best if we don't know."

Which. I mean. Okay. lol. Do what you will with that.

But probably most illuminating is the use of the word "occult" in a couple of Red Mage quests, and in the Sky Pirate raid quests.

In "The Weeping City," Cait Sith says, "Thus did the Mhachi magi construct an occult device that would more securely bind the voidsent to their will..."

And in the Red Mage quests "With Heart and Steel" and "Traced in Blood" we have, respectively:

"The tomes with passages pertaining to the voidsent Lilith are all forbidden occult works..."

and

"...the secrets behind Lambard's occult transformation."

In both contexts, "occult" seems to be connected to voidsent, specifically to Lilith in the case of the Red Mage quests.

And this ties back to the references in ARR as well, since from the beginning Ascians have been connected with the Void, even before we knew what the Void actually was. So it's safe to say at this point, I think, that "occult" can refer to magicks connected to the Void and to Ascians.

There's just one more reference I found that flummoxed me a bit, and that's this description of the Arcanist class, which refers to arcanist weapons as "occult grimoires." I found it odd initially because in most other contexts "occult" seems to refer to magicks seen as illicit, as opposed to the socially acceptable "arcane." But it does make a kind of sense, given that it is from Arcanist that we get Summoner. If summoning of primals is occult, then by extension so is summoning in the arcanist sense, even if it's not truly the same thing. This would seem to be the exception to "arcane" and "occult" being distinct categories, which leads me to believe that the distinction is more cultural than ontological.

So I think from the above, we can consider "occult" to be a fairly broad term that may be used in several distinct but overlapping senses:

Magic related to the summoning of primals.

Magic related to the Void, voidsent, and Ascians.

Magic which is taboo, forbidden, or otherwise outside of that which is socially accepted.

As a footnote, I think this is particularly interesting in the context of Urianger being introduced as our resident expert on primals, despite the fact that that's... really not specifically his field of study but merely adjacent to it. Urianger's primary interest is prophecy, and certainly plenty of prophecy seems to reference primals and Ascians and that's where we see him doing a lot of his research, but it's not the same field, merely overlapping.

Without more information we can't know for certain what his parents were actually studying. Maybe they were interested in primals, or Ascians, or the Void. Maybe they were studying Void-related magics. It's also possibly they were simply arcanists particularly interested in the summoner side and we shouldn't read much more than that into the reference to "the occult." Who knows.

But nonetheless, several of these interpretations would mean that in a way, Urianger has followed in their footsteps despite their making apparently little effort to guide him that way, which I find to be an interesting angle to his character and also profoundly sad in its own way--not that he found his own interests in those areas, but that the Augurelts had a child so naturally inclined toward their own interests and still took so little interest in him.