Unsolved Mysteries Of Vana'diel

Dynamis Dangruf Wadi let's go.

I doubt they have the resources, but if new dynamis zones were to unlock I’d love for them to be for newer expansions like TAU, WOTG, and Adoulin.

Dynamis - Yorcia Weald.

Of the newer zones, I wish they'd give us a real event in Rakaznar Inner Court. The Vagary fights and August in the Turris are nice, but something that takes us to one of the coolest zones in game, daily, would be superb.

They really didn't do much with this zone. I was wandering through here the other day looking for Brygens and had totally forgotten how big the zone is. There's even 1 island in there that I think is literally impossible to reach (even though it has monsters on it) at I-11/12 on map #2.

That would be a nice rival for Dynamis - Yuhtunga/Yhoator Jungle

You can walk on air around that island on both sides. The floor is just invisible.

Them's fightin' words.

SoA was supposed to have another chapter where, iirc, you get to properly meet August and fight through Tartarus. I always assumed Ra'Kaznar Inner Court was meant to be used in whatever content they were planning for that zone.

It seemed like they pulled the plug on that chapter though when they saw that FFXIV ARR's launch wasn't going up in flames. It's really a shame too, it seemed like the SoA storyline was a passion project on the part of Yaeko Sato (CoP writer), so she had to cobble an ending together for the 5th chapter. Still turned out great IMO, but that's more a testament to her skill as a writer than anything else.

Were the original Ultima and Omega the weapons that the Zilart used to defend themselves from the terrestrial avatars?

Something that occurred to me: the NPC that gives you entry items for Delve, the Anomaly Expert, has a mannequin head. Was that ever explained?

It's basically an other world entity controlling a mannequin to deal with you.

The HTBF NPCs are the same. All mannequins.

It's tangentially related to the simulacra that you have the old man snap together for Skirmish access. If you notice, they're grey statues/mannequins.

I'm guessing there was some sort of idea that didn't get fully fleshed out about giving bodies, essentially, over to entities from Tartarus.

All in all, though, it's just one of those unsettling details so there's no need to explain how an Adoulinian citizen that lorewise is too afraid to go into the jungle for the last five decades / too old could still know precisely what Delve is and how to access it, since it's like a dimensional fissure involving yet more Naakuals (which are monsters from Tartarus).

The Zilart were planning to open the gate of the gods, they were a united people all across the world with no real enemies. Their technology was incredibly advanced, to the point the avatars were not even a threat to them and their plans.

The Kuluu are Zilart, that were infected with darkness and became outcasts because they lost their telepathic powers to hear each others thoughts.

The Avatars were opposed to what the Zilart were doing.

Bahamut lead an attack on the Zilart capital, even though he knew he could not stop them. Implying it was a distraction.

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Because the Kuluu were outcasts they became allies to the Avatars (at least the tribe in the northlands), and they played a pivotal role in their downfall.

There are 8 Dawn maidens, they are shown to have elements in their outfits and in the cutscenes for Divine Might. Fire, Ice, Wind, Light, Dark, Water, Earth and Thunder.

Are the Dawn Maidens actually the avatars, playing a covert role to manipulate the Zilart from within.

Is Yve'noile actually someone else in an earthly body, Altana?




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The avatars probably infected the Kuluu in the first place as Dawn Maidens within their capital city, knowing they would become outcasts and used them as pawns against their own people to destroy the Zilart plans. Once they were free from the telepathy all Zilart shared and forced from the capital cities, they were easy to manipulate in their dreams by Diabolos to do their bidding. Which is what happened to the ones in the northlands.

The Kuluu were manipulated to bring down their own people. They were actually just useful idiots, because originally they shared the Zilart dream themselves.

Makes a lot more sense why they learned to hate Altana and then became Tonberry, twisted by that hatred.

What happened to the other Kuluu that were in Sarutabaruta? Considering the Taru were guided back to Sarutabaruta by Grav'iton (leader of the Kuluu in her ethereal form), and their similar size to tonberry it's possible the Taru are decedents of the Sarutabaruta tribe of Kuluu after they were changed.

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In the hall of the gods there are 8 dawn maiden statues (more proof they are actually avatars?) and Altana and Promathia, two are missing heads (Odin and Alexander?, the two without protocrystals)

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In the cut-scene for Divine Might, the Dawn Maidens say:












People sometimes ask what happened to the Zilart (some are in Sea still, they eventually evolved into beings of light. The Quasilum.). The 5 races are the Zilart, they were changed by the crystals when all the power was leaked around them.

The race that closest resembles the Zilart, are the most technologically advanced of the 5.

The new races are only specifically in the main areas surrounding the mother crystals, every other great empire are human/zilart looking empires. Adoulin, Aht Urgan (the most technologically advanced), Far East etc (other races are there, but they are obviously immigrants who came much later from the mainlands)

You could possibly make an argument if you overthink it, that the reason the darkness is said to still be needed to be kept in the races (instead of just going back to the mother crystal, or drawn out), is actually to make sure they do not revert back into the Zilart and potentially become a united people again and cause problems for the Avatars / Altana in the future.

Basically, a difficult people kept in a divided and controllable form for the common good by the avatars / altana.

Zilart had the best story by far, before it all went a bit Pete Tong.

Why women are not allowed to have heterossexual romance in the FFXI storylines?

There's no Biggs and Wedge right?

Was there ever ones in the DATs, unused? Or references to them?

Not sure what you're talking about, since the only romantic relationships I can even think of in the storylines are Lilisette's and Iroha's parents... Trion and Curilla I think... Lehko Habhoka and literally every other mithra though I don't think that was about romance exactly. Star Sibyl and Karuha-Baruha I guess. Okay there's actually quite a few, and not one of them isn't heterosexual. Even the male-presenting-but-presumably-genderless galka get paired up outside their race so they can meet that norm.

Do you mean specifically the main character? Because that one's pretty obvious, the non-player lead always had to be a spunky girl sidekick to appeal to the at least presumably mostly male player base, and it would require twice the work for no gain at all to have a secondary... whatever male archetype would appeal to female MMO fans character, in addition or as an optional replacement for those main non-player characters.

I don't think so, but it might be there somewhere and nobody noticed it.



Because it's a male dominated game and just as with idol culture in Japan the female characters are aimed at the player in some way or another. The player is often the romantic interest to the female main character of the story.

However there is a romance in the original game, Raogrimm and Cornelia. It's the foundation of the entire base story and shadow lord. In the expansions Lehko had a romance with Romaa Mihgo and they spend a lot of time on that, Nanaa Mihgo is the resulting child of that. Also to a lesser extent Tenzen and Kagero are married, and Iroha is their daughter I guess.


This is one of the best romance stories in the game, everything Karuha did was for the star sibyl. He even traveled to another dimension to try save her there after losing her in his, at the cost of his own life.



@11 minutes

Going back through the Abyssea storyline I realized something awful. Due to the face that the crags and crystal line were completely lost, there is no way to get to sea or go back, other than through our dimension hopping. That means that Abyssea Prishe is likely stuck there. Given that she is probably still immortal...

It's a running theme with the game.

Prishe in Aby was trapped in the paradox, to live there forever.

Lilisette ceases to exist in our timeline, and goes over to the destroyed husk of Vana'diel in the other to try help the people there.

Iroha suffers a similar fate to Prishe at the end of Rhapsodies, maybe worse.

Yes, it came up in that official crossover XI had with Granblue.
https://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/56561/ffxi-crossover-event-with-granblue-fantasy

Really intererting to see your summaries now that they're written here so succinctly. Say, is there a storyline within FFXI where a character has tremendous survivor's guilt? Is there even an event that would warrant it? ....I haven't done Bastok or Windy (shadow reign questline) so I could be missing out on some stories...

Are you sure about Iroha? If I recall in the final fight she uses an attack she learned while in FFXIV.

As I recall in one of the San d'Oria past quests, one of the Young Griffons is killed, and there's quite a bit of soul searching/rift that forms because of it between Excenmille and Rahal. That's the closest thing my brain brings up related to survivors and guilt.

Bastok's Shadowreign era questline revolves around the Mythril Musketeers and Zeid, and their efforts to keep the president safe. Zeid's whole past is explained, and he does carry an immense guilt complex, as he was actually a notorious serial killer who was brought to heel and salvation by Captain Klara Bester. This complicates matters when demon possession enters into the scenario, and Klara is possessed.

Windurst's Shadowreign era revolves around the Mithran mercenaries but does have a Tarutaru backdrop in Lilith-world Karuha-Baruha seeking to save the worthless fake seer Star Sibyl. There is a plucky pair of Mithran mercenaries that you do a few of the quests with, and one of them does die, and this is a tremendously sad part. I don't think survivor guilt is played up around it, but iirc the sentiment that the other should have died instead is brought up. But the story pivots towards Romaa Mihgo falling for Lehko and Karuha's revelation, the summoning Fenrir and the introduction of the current Mithran Chieftainess and the sinning Mithra who brings her the Bow of Light that she fires, blinding herself, but putting a cap in a rampaging Fenrir's ***.

All of the nation Shadowreign quests are worth doing. Very HQ story telling.

Okay, this is less lore and more geography, I think, but I only just really noticed this and now it's bugging me.

What's the deal with Drogaroga's Spine in Meriphataud Mountains?

It's an exposed crystal line arching over the landscape, when everywhere else they're buried, so that's already pretty odd, but on its own that would just be a curiosity. But the thing is, it runs, like, east-by-southeast across the zone, only barely meandering a bit south as it crosses the zone.

Shouldn't that be running straight southeast, maybe south-by-southeast, to link up with the crag in Tahrongi? You can see the northernmost bit of the line angling down that way, before it suddenly just takes a hard turn and veers off across the zone. If you assume that there isn't some huge gap between the two zones - which, given that you exit a narrow pass in one and enter a narrow pass in the other, with similar terrain, seems like a pretty safe bet here - then you can trace the crystal line's initial heading, and find that it pretty much points straight to the crag.

So, what? Did the yagudo manage to redirect the whole thing somehow? Was there some kind of overriding reason that it needed to avoid the southern half of the zone? Where is it doubling back through to get back on track?

The Crystal Line and its exact workings are a mystery. We have no idea how it was constructed, nor its precise build or make up(other than its outer shell is all an advanced form of Cermet).

What we do know is that the Crystal Line goes from each Mother Crystal Ark to Delkfutt's Tower. But it also runs to other Zilart structures in order to provide them with power. The Zilart used the Crystal Line to power almost all of their civilization, and there is evidence of areas where they ran it for that purpose as well.

There are many zones which part of it can be seen in, but some where it cannot be seen at all. Others still where there are teleport points/crystals and Zilart/Crystal Line like structures, but not much else.

Then remember too, that the Protocrystals are of Zilart make, and feature Headstones of Zilart make near them.

With all that in mind, and also in mind that it was all built over 10,000 years prior to the present day of our setting, and it should become clear.

Dragaroga's Spine could very well be the crystal line conduit that goes straight to Tahrongi Canyon's Ark, but we just can't actually see every inch of it, as it is largely subterranean in spite of all that is visible. No telling how it bends underground. Look over at Konschtat Highlands and its Ark. The Crystal Line feed from it goes east into the mountains, and seems to completely circumvent Pashow Marshlands, save for going through Beadeaux.

But if how it twists and bends being out of sight doesn't satisfy your itch, then look at the island of Zepwell. The region of Kuzotz. The Altepa Desert. Beneath the ruins of the Galka's civilization sits a Zilartian shrine featuring holographic projectors that display recordings of the Dawn Maidens. It can still be powered up when you have the Headstone Crystal Fragments, because it is still fed by the Crystal Line.

Recall, too, that the Magicite missions from the Rank 4 to 5 mission had you travel to the Beastmen strongholds of Beadeaux, Davoi, and Castle Oztroja.

In each of these missions you inevitably go underground to chambers leading into subterannean caves where there are broken portions of the Crystal Line which have leaked Mother Crystal energy with residual Emptiness into those caves. This energy pooled and crystallized into Magicite, and was able to be used to revive The Shadowlord. It's covered in that black goop like all other Crystal Line breaks (observable in the ruins under Altepa too) because that's solidified/liquified Emptiness that traveled along with the Crystal's energy.

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TL;DR - The Crystal Line juts straight north from Tahrongi Canyon's Mea Crag, and goes underground. It then twists and snakes around the harsh landscape of Midartia snaking through the basement of Castle Oztroja up into Meriphataud Mountains on its way to Qufim.

No. She isn't a fake seer. She originally saw that Windurst would fall by the beastmen, and her reading of the future is why Karaha went all in on learning to summon Fenrir.

The Star Sibyl can see the future of her people, by reading the stars at the full moon fountain and using the moon bauble around her neck (which is the bauble Grav'iton, the leader of the Kuluu had in her staff. The Taru are the descendants of the Kuluu at Saru).

The Full Moon Fountain is where Fenrir resides and the great Star Tree is fed by its waters. In WoTG, Windurst is about to be destroyed by overwhelming beastmen forces just as Tavnazia was, so Karaha-Baruha (and his other timeline self) summon Fenrir to wipe them out. He knows this is a death sentence at the time, but does it anyway (he just doesn't understand how he will die)

They succeed and wipe out the beastmen army **, but Fenrir is so powerful that the summoners souls are absorbed into him, this leads to Fenrir losing control of his mind (3 souls cannot exist in one body and just leads to madness) and there is a risk of the leader of the Yagudo taking control of him as a weapon to destroy Windurst and all the other cities now.

They kill Fenrir with a bow made from the original Magicite, it was made by the blonde Mithra in the icelands expedition in the original cut-scene where the shadow lord was born and Cornelia died. One of the only earthly weapons that could kill him.

Fenrir is immortal, so when he is killed he just loses his earthly summoned body and returns to the full moon fountain. He can't though because his soul was merged with the other two, so the full moon fountain is lifeless and the star tree is slowly dying (the Star Sibyl keeps this from the people of Windurst in our time before the player starts the nation missions). In Windurst rank 1-10 missions you see a ghoul stuck in limbo haunting the Star Sibyl, this is the malformed soul of the 2(3) beings unable to pass on or return (it haunts her, because he loved her and because the moon bauble is the key to fixing the problem).

The taru children playing in Karaha-Baruhas house accidentally merge their 2(3) souls into the Joker Cardian, and this gives them control of the Cardian in the real world to fix the problem.

At the end of the windurst missions, the star sibyl and joker (who sometimes speaks as Karaha-Baruha and other times speaks as Fenrir) separate the 2(3) souls from the zombie/ghoul using the power in the moon bauble and in doing so they drain its power. Fenrir returns to the full moon fountain, Karaha-Baruha's soul returns to the mother crystal. The full moon fountain becomes the domain of Fenrir again, the Star Tree is fed by his power and Windurst gains his protection again.

She cannot use the moon bauble to see the future anymore, since its power was drained but she saved Windurst during WoTG and its future. She originally saw Windurst was going to fall, which lead to Karaha-Baruha doing what he did to wipe out the beastmen and she gave up the moon bauble to save Fenrirs soul so it could return to the full moon fountain.

**Originally in the past, Windurst fell anyway because Karuha didn't have enough time to prepare to summon Fenrir and Windurst was overwhelemed. The Shadow lord knew the great power of the Taru was in their mastery of magic, so he created magic resistant armor for his troops there. This is why Cait (the hand of Altana, the avatar she created to change the past) brings Lehko back from death, he brings far more of the Mithra in as allies to the Taru on the frontline (when no other race could spare anyone to help them) as well as getting the bow. They are powerful demi-human fighters and they held the line against the beastmen and demons long enough for Karuha to mentally prepare for the summoning. This is why there are Mithra in Windurst today, the Star Sibyl gave them Windurst Woods as their home due to their role in saving the city.

The chieftainess of the MIthra in Windurst woods is blind, she sits surrounded by her guards in Windurst Woods. In WoTG she is who fired the bow that killed Fenrir when he was out of control, and in doing so the power of the bow blinded her.

So the Mithra not only held the line long enough for Karuha to summon Fenrir, but they also stopped Fenrir being used against them and everyone else.

In the original timeline Windurst falling when the Shadow Lord sent the majority of his forces against them was the start of the destruction of all of the races, so due to the actions of the Mithra in Windurst (a seemingly unimportant and militarily unimpressive race of pirates and savages, who didn't even have a powerful homeland city) and making sure it didn't fall they in effect saved everyone.

If you go back to Meri mountains in the past you'll see there has been massive damage done there, there are ruptures all around in the ground with big chasms. Either explosions or earth quakes moved things around.

Yes, she is a fake seer. The Kuluu never did the moon readings in the past either. Fenrir is the one that does the moon readings. It's explicitly stated in Windurst missions that Star Sibyl cannot actually see the future.

It is then explicitly shown in CoP when Fenrir does a moon reading for the Kuluu about The Keeper of the Apocalypse. Wherein Fenrir speaks the line, "Even my readings could not have foreseen this crossing of destinies."

The Moon Bauble is merely what let her call Fenrir to the fountain to do the reading(for her). Same as when you make one to use to fight Fenrir in game. She doesn't have any actual innate power to her.