Starting “A Crystalline Prophecy”
-The first add-on pack will be “A Crystalline Prophecy.” I got the intro cutscene for it when I first entered Jeuno, 79 sessions ago.
http://coldrungaming.blogspot.com/2017/03/ffxi-pa...
I barely remember it, so after re-reading it, here are some brief notes:
1)A crystal appeared in the sky.
2)The crystal terrifies Star Sibyl (a Tarutaru wise woman). “No!! The horror! The pain! Love! Love will be the ruin of us all!!”
3)Everyone in Jeuno immediately forgot the crystal after it went away, except for Aldo (leader of the Tenshodo) and his sister Verena.
4)Time stopped, and a child version of Aldo talked to me. He asked me to bring him three “seedspalls,” solidified versions of the crystal’s light that fell to earth.
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Mission: The Echo Awakens (A Crystalline Prophecy)
-I go around the world, gathering the Seedspalls that Young Aldo asked me for.
YOUNG ALDO: “Long ago, there was a song. Born from the mouths of the ancient gods themselves. A dreadful, terrible song that, if sung to its conclusion, would mean the end of the world.”
-He recites the same song we’ve heard many times before, about the crystal that began the world.
-Young Aldo thinks that a final forbidden verse has spilled over to Vana’diel. If left unchecked, it’ll open the door to Paradise and unravel Vana’diel. (Wasn’t this the basic plot of two expansions already?)
-So how do we stop this song from destroying the? Young Aldo thinks we should look for more fallen crystal fragments for answers.
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Mission: Gatherer of Light (A Crystalline Prophecy)
-I gather three more Seedspalls. It’s a boring, grindy process requiring me to farm rare key items.
-Young Aldo gleans that the song has another verse, an undiscovered response to the lay of destruction.
-A bunch of angry mandragoras (little plant things) appear.
SEED MANDRAGORA: “Who do you think you are to defy the will of the Seed Crystal? To defy your own fate?”
-I defeat a swarm of those little dudes.
SEED MANDRAGORA: “The Seed Crystal, its echo… they did not arise from nothingness. They were drawn to this world by a song. A song that rings out ceaselessly from within a mother’s heart.”
-Adult Aldo arrives on scene.
YOUNG ALDO: “Finally we meet… Uncle.” Aha! This kid is the son of Adult Aldo’s sister, Emeline. He’s shocked she’s still alive.
-I’ve seen Emeline before, living under a different name in Selbina. She has major memory loss. There’s some resonance between Emeline and this apocalyptic seed crystal.
-Young Aldo tells us to go to Fei’Yinto stop the Seed Crystal.
ADULT ALDO: “What the--? Cursed brat! Seed Crystals and ancient songs!? This is all patently absurd.”
Lololol right there with ya buddy. Also, I don’t trust Young Aldo. He has a creepy tone.
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Mission: Those Who Lurk in Shadows (A Crystalline Prophecy)
-I head to Fei’Yin. Young Aldo tells me Emeline held captive nearby. 50% chance he’s betraying me.
-More seed collection around Fei’Yin on a 30 minute timer. I barely finish in time and head to Emeline.
-Four enemies surround an unconscious Emeline. Seed Orc, Yagudo, Quadav, and Goblin.
“We are the servants of the Seed Crystal. Enlightened by the ancient echo, we have traveled long and far to this sacred land.”
Altana’s love for the lost gods birthed us, and these dudes want us to return to nothingness. Is this apocalyptic Seed Crystal from Altana?
-The four go down.
“The Seed Crystal has returned to this world. The song this woman sings with her heart, though she realizes it not.” Emeline doesn’t know what she’s doing, luring this death crystal.
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Mission: Remember Me In Your Dreams (A Crystalline Prophecy)
-I head to the Hall of the Gods, with the huge statues of Promathia and Altana facing off. She’s here.
-She seems to be singing a powerful magical song.
Aldo calls out to her, and she wakes up. Stops singing, and starts to fade. Huh??
YOUNG ALDO: “It’s no use, Uncle. Where she is now, no words can reach her. Mother’s dreaming, you see. Lost in a waking dream, just like me.”
The Seed Crystal speaks to Young Aldo and his mom in their dreams. Both remember nothing upon waking. “Only in her dreams does she remember a past too painful to face with waking eyes.”
-So Emeline’s pain is subconsciously calling the Seed Crystal. Do I have to kill her? I hope not.
-They’re apparently at the top of Delkfutt’s Tower.
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Mission: Banishing the Echo (A Crystalline Prophecy)
[Later edit: Welcome to one of the worst quests in the game. Not quite at “dark knight unlock” levels, but close.]
-When I arrive in Delkfutt’s Tower I have to collect yet another twelve crystal seed fragments. One from each floor in Delkfutt’s Tower.
The catch: it level caps me at 30. Most enemies here are higher than that, so this is a purely stealth mission. I swap to red mage to use invisible and sneak. It sucks. If I die on floor five, I restart at floor one, run through floor two, three, four, five, and push on.
And each seed fragment on each floor is usually surrounded by a few enemies. If I take off invisible to pick up the item while they’re looking at me, I die. I have to be super patient and wait until all of them turn away, remove invis, pick up the item, and go invis once more.
Look away. Come on, look away. Please? *checks watch* COME ON.
And even if I’m super patient, one of them can turn around and see me randomly, and I’m fucked. Gotta run up through the whole tower again.
-It takes a helluva long time, but I do it. Phew. Reached the top of the tower.
-Emeline is here. Still half-asleep. Aldo yells that the war is over, there’s nothing to fear! So the fear she has is some sort of post-traumatic stress from the Crystal War. She wakes up.
-Unfortunately, “Young Aldo” wakes too. “I’m afraid there’s only room for one Aldo here.”
He’s got glowy demon eyes. I KNEW I SHOULDN’T HAVE TRUSTED HIM.
-He starts to sing the next verse.
“Innocent blood spills forth onto the plains of Vana’diel.
The world shudders as she is thrust into chaos and despair.
Neither power nor destiny can bring an end to what has already begun.”
Never mind. Young Aldo was possessed by this Seed Crystal. It emerges from him.
“The prophecy will be fulfilled. The light of this world, extinguished.”
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Mission: Ode to Life Bestowing (A Crystalline Prophecy)
“Come, my children. Embrace your return to the void that birthed you.”
An evil crystal. OooOooOO!!
-FUCK FUCK FUCK. The boss immediately teleported me inside his character model. I got stuck. I couldn’t move, couldn’t cast, couldn’t do anything. I bugged out and died to lots of aoe spells.
Which means – joy! – I have to redo the entire fucking pre-quest, stealthing through all twelve of the tower’s floors again. (I may have raged a bit in linkshell Discord.)
This time, got my friend Avarii to help me take it down. Apparently, dying to the Seed Crystal used to be common. His name for having to redo this freaking tower quest is the “walk of shame.” XD
“You truly believe you can escape your destiny?! This is the will of the crystal! That which gives life, may take it away.”
Aldo’s heard enough. “You’re nothing but a twisted shadow. A perverse echo born of my sister’s nightmare… a nightmare whose time has long since passed.”
-The Seed Crystal rises to the sky and starts doing its apocalyptic explody thing. Everyone sees it.
-lol pretty funny image of an Elvaan fighting with an orc. They both stop and look together up at the exploding crystal. Scenes like that around the world.
-But it peters out and returns to Delkfutt’s Tower. “They cannot be extinguished by the likes of – but how? This… this is the power of the antiphon? This is the lifeforce… of Altana’s children?”
[Later edit: I think this is a bit “Last of the Time Lords.” The “countersong” the Seed Crystal worried about was really the combined will to live of the people of Vana’diel. Or something. Idk.]
-The crystal fades. I’m not sure where it came from in the first place, but my best understanding after talking to my linkshell is that it was some stray mothercrystal doing evil shit that Emeline’s pain summoned her.
-Emeline’s reunion with her brother Aldo is short-lived. This is her dream projection, and she’ll forget this reunion when she wakes. The Crystal War’s trauma does not go away. Even the dream projection of Young Aldo, finally not possessed, joins the group hug.
EMELINE: “Farewell, Aldo…”
-Nice little closing montage of the people of Vana’diel coming together to look at the sky or whatever.
So. That was a thing. The quests themselves were a mix of tedious and grindy. The story was fine enough, but also felt kind of derivative. We’ve seen the “apocalypse caused by a song” thing in both “Rise of the Zilart” and “Chains of Promathia” iirc, and this felt a bit random.
I might have simply misunderstood this, so any clarification on what the hell just happened is welcome!
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Next time: A MOOGLE KUPO D’ETAT!!! I started it a while back, and am super excited to continue.
