TW: brief imagery of suicide.
Mission: Into the Beast’s Maw (Wings of the Goddess)
-Our strike team readies to enter Castle Zvahl from beneath. The diversionary siege begins, with Dark Kindred and Elvaan fighting outside Castle Zvahl.
-A demon, Count Bifrons, sees our strike team heading into the castle. He sees what we’re planning.
-Ragelise notices how few demons are attacking us, even considering the diversion. Something’s wrong.
-Found Portia’s cell!
Count Bifrons emerges to guard her.
-Ragelise starts hearing reports from the siege team and the rest of the castle strike team. No enemies in the castle. Not even the Shadow Lord is still here.
-Scene change to the battle outside. The titanic Shadow Lord leaps onto the battlefield. He obliterates the Elvaan with huge sweeping blasts of dark magic.
-The Elvaan retreat. It’s a slaughter. The Allied plan to distract and strike is completely countered.
-This is AWFUL. Ragelise is hearing screams on the comms, and he’s not out there helping because Lilith lured him in with Portia as bait.
-Suddenly, the skies open onto a purple vortex/storm. This is the moment that Larzos told us.
-Both Ragelise’s and Portia’s purple wounds react to the stormy sky, causing them to scream in agony.
Both collapse, wounded.
-A voice calls out from the stormy purple sky.
???: “…What is thy wish?”
-Ragelise starts to answer the question but doesn’t. I wonder if he answered it in his mind, like with the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. Maybe the wish just popped in there. The storm goes away.
-Haudrale the Spitewarden appears. “Hmm. Still not enough.” Whatever sort of ritual he was trying for, this didn’t complete it.
-Haudrale wants to take Portia back to Lilith. Sir Ragelise is having none of that.
-Portia cries out, stops the fight before it starts. “Don’t hurt them! Leave them be!”
PORTIA, YOU BADASS! She doesn’t know much about Lilith’s plans, but knows she’s key somehow. And now sees that cooperating won’t stop Team Lilith from hurting her loved ones and friends.
PORTIA: “Thank you… for everything…”
SHE’S ABOUT TO DO IT, HOLY FUCKING SHIT
-Just before she plunges in the knife, a demon crashes through the ceiling in a panic.
???: “Bereft of love and honor, a woman’s life holds no meaning…”
FHHAHJAKLHAHHA IT’S NOILLURIE THE HYPER DRAMATIC SAMURAI WOMAN IN LOVE WITH RAGELISE
“Keeping safe from harm that which fills one’s heart with joy… Naught instills greater passion!”
The demon she just trounced is about to let forth a killing blast of magic while she’s not looking…
MAYAKOV LEAPS IN TO LAND THE FINAL BLOW BEFORE THE DEMON CAN KILL NOILLURIE
AND AS HE SLAMS DOWN ON THE DEMON, HE GETS THE FULL ROSE UTENA TREATMENT THIS IS THE BESSSST
-Haudrale charges Ragelise, determined not to let us escape. And Noillerie meets him head on.
GOD I LOVE YOU, YOU WEIRD AND WONDERFUL SAMURAI. Haudrale flees.
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Mission: The Hunter Ensnared (Wings of the Goddess)
-The failed strike force of Operation Snowstorm regroups outside the castle. Dead litter the field.
-Defeated Allied troops trudge out of Xarcabard. Ragelise has Portia back, but what a price.
-A spear of dark magic lances above Castle Zvahl.
-Lilith watches the battlefield. Possible futures float up from the fallen soldiers.
“Feast, Atomos. Feast till your belly is sated. The weak and feeble have no place on the playing board.”
-Scene change to Cait Sith inside Atomos. She begs that he stop devouring our future.
CAVERNOUS MAW: “You who awakened Atomos… would revoke what… you yourself set in motion?”
Cait Sith initially wanted to make the future even brighter than our own, but it only got worse. Classic time traveler mistake.
-Cait Sith sees Atomos as blasphemous, fighting the future that Altana wills, but Atomos is more amoral than that. He devours. “Hereafter in Northern land, with past forgotten, shall distant future merge.”
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Mission: Flight of the Lion (Wings of the Goddess)
-We regroup in Jeuno. The Allied general, Cousseraux, tears into Ragelise for abandoning his post on a whim, and I can’t really blame him tbh.
-Ragelise’s Ironcrest Hawks have been obliterated. Windurst and Bastok took immeasurable damage.
-It’s not just the general tearing into him. The survivors too.
“Traitor.”
“Fools we were to have placed our trust in you.”
“Were it not for you, the Ironcrest Hawks would still… they’d still…”
-This is brutal. Sir Ragelise is discharged from the knights, and the Allied Forces of Altana.
-On his way out, he tries to warn everyone that the Beastman Confederate has more than just tactics and strength. That dark magic is some new piece. But they don’t listen.
-Portia meets him outside. Even in exile, she wishes to stay by his side.
-Ragelise intends to continue his fight, even alone.
RAGELISE: “More power… Only by acquiring more power shall my ambition [to destroy that otherworldy entity we saw in Castle Zvahl] be fulfilled.” DO NOT GO TO THE DARK SIDE
-Lilisette, Cait Sith and I see those two leave. We intend to follow them to Castle Zvahl. If Portia and Ragelise fall into enemy hands, Cait Sith says we’d be fucked.
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Mission: Fall of the Hawk (Wings of the Goddess)
-I enter Castle Zvahl and get a cutscene of Lady Lilith face-to-face with Portia and Ragelise. She’s reminiscing about her childhood growing up with them.
“Especially well do I recall the day I turned fifteen summers old and became a woman grown, when I assumed the mantle of Vana’diel’s custodian.”
-Her mother, Portia, gave her a hair ornament then that she might never lose sight of her purpose or let her rage dwindle.
-They directly ask Lilith how to get their hands on the power of that entity.
“When the Harbinger cometh, the Maiden of the Dusk shall descend.
With wings to bear in crimson steeped, On high the world she tends.”
-Portia heard something similar growing up. But the second line was different.
“With wings divine in radiance blessed, The eternal night is end.”
-Two prophecies from two different futures.
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Mission: Darkness Descends (Wings of the Goddess)
-I wind my way through Castle Zvahl to the Throne Room. Team Lilith is here with Portia and Ragelise.
-Lilith believes her future is the true future, not “the fraudulent, ‘bright’ future whence you came.”
-In our future, the Allies marched on Xarcabard, sieged Castle Zvahl, and defeated the Shadow Lord.
-Lilith calls this a dream, a fairy tale. “Only in a dream could a ragtag, pathetic excuse for a military alliance hope to overcome the Shadow Lord. Your kind might try for a thousand years and not once succeed.”
This reminds me of “The Silver Chair.” Probably my favorite section in all the Narnia books. The Emerald Queen captures the heroes in her subterranean realm. She uses hypnotic magic to convince them that the sunny world they remember is just a silly, childlike dream.
Lilith says that the future we remember is just an illusion fabricated by Cait Sith at Altana’s behest.
-Cait Sith says the truth. The Beastman Confederate defeated the Allies. An Age of Darkness and Beastman tyranny. Some survivors grew stronger in secret to fight the Shadow Lord. Lilith is their chosen custodian. LILITH WAS RIGHT!
-But to gain enough power to fight the Shadow Lord, they forged a pact with the Dark Divinity. Odin. Introduced in “Treasures of Aht Urhgan,” back now as Lilith’s power source.
LILITH: “The end justifies the means. We chose to accept the gift of immortality, that we might ever continue our struggle in this unending conflict.”
THIS IS FUCKING AMAAAAAZZING. I’ll still fight her, but I feel weird telling her “Sure, you faced extinction, but you should have used nicer methods to fight back against your oppressors.”
-Altana was so distraught by the turn of events that she wept and wished, creating the Cait Siths. They wanted to improve the world for Altana, creating a new future while Atomos devoured the real history.
LILITH: “Our Vana’diel is the sole true future. Yours is but a sham that owes its existence to the selfish whim of an irresponsible deity. By right, it shouldn’t even exist.”
This reminds me of Supernatural’s “The French Mistake.” Fnz naq Qrna fnj n jbeyq bs crnpr, jvgubhg pbafgnag fgevsr naq cnva, orpnhfr vg jnfa'g erny gb gurz - naq orpnhfr gurl sryg boyvtngvbaf gb gubfr va gurve bja jbeyq - gurl yrsg.
-Still, Cait Sith insists that we’re no less real than Lilith. Our memories aren’t lies. They happened.
LILITH: “We haven’t the patience – nor the blind conviction – to await salvation by some petty deity. We mean to reclaim the future with our own hands.”
This is admirable. Team Lilith is the version of us that dirtied themselves to survive extinction.
-Odin’s on the way. Lilith gave that purple wound to Portia and Ragelise to protect them against Odin’s burning Astral Wind. It also amplifies the strongest emotions – grief, rage, rancor… love.”
-Odin charges forth from Lilith’s summoning circle. His wake knocks us non-Odinites out.
-Ragelise and Portia kneel before Odin.
RAGELISE: “I come before you a man ostracized by his own, bereft of a place whereto I might return. Fate has decreed that I must fight unto death. I beseech you, Dark Divinity! Grant me power equal to the Shadow Lord, that I might sate my rage!”
NOOO RAGELISE, SHIT SHIT SHIT HE’S JOINING THE DARK SIDE
-Odin summons a tornado of purple flame around Ragelise. The pact is sealed.
LILITH: “I’m so proud of you, Father… Am I not the daughter you had always envisioned? Superior in every conceivable way to that undersized, dim-witted slip of a girl?”
-Lilisette and I are teleported deeper into the Castle’s throne room. Haudrale and Aquila are here.
-We take them out. I’m sad; I like them.
Aquila’s dying words to Haudrale: “Have you ever wondered… what the two of us are like… in their world?” I’d love to see their pre-Spitewarden versions.
-Back outside the throne room, Odin finalizes his pact and joyfully returns to his underworld. Portia signed on too. We already see dark etchings crawl across their faces. Lilith’s new Spitewardens.
But she says she needs one more and summons something from the belching maw of Atomos.
HAHAHAHAH HOLY SHIT THIS IS MINDBLOWING! SHE SUMMONED ME
SHE SUMMONED CORRUPTED, SPITEWARDEN DETOLILLA
LILITH: “I had wanted Detolilla for myself from the moment I first laid eyes on her. And when a woman desires something, she will stop at nothing until her heart is sated.”
…Look, I had shipped Detolilla and Lion, but I could see a kind of Wesley/Lilah relationship.
Joking aside, this is a nightmare for Lilisette. Her family and friends have been ripped away by Lilith.
JESUS HOLY JESUS I FORGOT THAT THIS IS MORE THAN JUST EMOTIONAL HURT
NOW WITH BOTH OF HER PARENTS SIGNED ONTO TEAM LILITH, LILISETTE DISINTEGRATES, THE FRAGMENTS OF HER EXISTENCE SWALLOWED UP BY ATOMOS
LILITH: “Ohohohoho! Did I not warn you that the future would choose me?”
-Cait Sith teleports us away from this nightmare. Lilith’s pieces are assembled, her team complete.
“Father, Mother. We are a family united once more, each of us there for one another in needful times. Unlike the compassionless kingdom that saw fit to cast you out, here you shall never be met with abandonment.”
-Lilith’s last mission: to purge the world of me and Cait Sith, those who would carry out Altana’s will.
RAGELISE: “It shall be done.”
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I need a minute.
I can’t believe the game went there. A quick list of what the fuck just happened:
-The main expansion protagonist, Lilisette, killed off.
-Her parents, two other protagonists, make a pact with the underworld and join the antagonist
-The world we know is just short of an illusion.
Throughout this session, I expected things to go in a less bleak direction. Ragelise would say no to Odin! (lol nope.) Portia wouldn’t join him! (lol nope.) Lilith’s future would be shown as a sham! (lol nope.) Altana would intervene against Lilith! (lol nope.)
This is FFXI’s best storytelling. FFXI’s “The Empire Strikes Back.” Now, it’s timey-wimey, so there’s a good chance some of this will be undone in the end, but I don’t care. FF is firing on all cylinders.
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Next time: Trying to not get obliterated from the streams of time?
