---
The Fire-bird Down Below
-The third Lord arrives, the GORGEOUS fire-bird Suzaku. She’s next up to get her soul unburdened of its aramitama.
I’m a sucker for phoenix art. This is no exception.
-Suzaku is tied closely to Tenzen. Makes sense, given their relationship in FFXI.
-Byakko and Genbu were both chill. Suzaku is… not.
SUZAKU: “You are not even a pale shadow of his glory! There was but one man fit to wear the mantle of hero, and he has long since passed from this world…”
She’s angry that I’m even pretending to Tenzen’s role.
-Our fight will take place in her “place of mourning,” the 8-player trial of Hells’ Kier.
-It’s interesting how the aramitama version of the auspices has a humanoid element. When the fight starts and she gives in, she gains a humanoid-style clothing. Byakko became part-human and Soroban and Genbu did too.
-Her aramitama gives her the illusion that Ququshu is Tenzen, and she responds to my attacks as such.
-It becomes clear that Suzaku didn’t simply admire Tenzen. She loved him.
“You gave me the strength to rise from the ashes!”
-Four feathers start on the platform that she raises into phoenixes. We have to kill them in a specific place or they keep rising.
“Trust in me, my love – I will protect you, I promise!”
-Another new mechanic has everyone stand in a circle with an arrow inside. The arrow’s direction changes frequently, and each player must change the direction they face appropriately.
“I never showed you my true form, did I…?”
-She then transforms into a fully humanoid, red-haired being standing astride a firebird.
-The background also changes. It looks like there are notepad pages streaming across the sky, like journal entries. Perhaps they emphasize how she’s bearing her innermost thoughts in this fight.
I can’t get over the colors and beauty in this whole fight, especially this phase.
-One final mechanic splits the ground into four sections, each with a character. [Non-rhetorical question: are any of y’all familiar enough with Japanese to say what these mean?]
A phoenix flies around the outside of the circle, exploding each section it reaches.
-Defeating Suzaku cools her aramitama and reveals the truth to her.
SUZAKU: “For the first time in centuries, I can reflect on my time with the man I so deeply loved without being driven to tears.”
-She’s spent hundreds of years grieving Tenzen, only now reaching a stage of acceptance.
-We get another of these gorgeously-framed flashbacks.
-Suzaku was born with a form similar to that of a legendary firebird said to confer immortality to mortals. Men hunted her for this power. She spent her life on the run, a mere means to an end.
-Then she met Tenzen. “To him, I was so much more… and he would become everything to me.”
-They traveled the lands together with the rest of the Four Lords. I don’t think we’ve actually seen the fourth Lord yet, Seiryu. He doesn’t appear in these flashbacks.
-They were shunned and feared, but Tenzen only cared about helping others.
-Eventually they tried battling the wild auspice Koryo.
This is the first time we see Koryo – she looks like a giant, shadowy horse. Koryo was far older and more powerful and defeated the Lords.
-But Tenzen had one last trick, a powerful technique. He defeated Koryo while sacrificing himself.
SUZAKU: “Had I been the Firebird of legend… had I been possessed of the power of immortality! Had I been able to rescue him from death’s obsidian abyss…”
-The worst irony for her is that she eventually gained this power of rebirth. She even thinks her bottomless grief for her beloved made it so.
-Now, while Suzaku cannot save Tenzen, she can save those he died for preventing Koryo’s rise.
-It’s clear to me she loved him romantically. I’m not sure whether Tenzen reciprocated romantic love. I kind of think he didn’t since she said in the fight that she never showed Tenzen her “true form.”
(The bird/human mechanics don’t bother me. She has a humanoid form, and anyway we’ve seen Shiva and Hraesvelgr’s love. TenZaku wouldn’t be a stretch at all in the context of XIV.)
-Random aside: You can talk to NPCs before turning in a quest for some flavor text. Byakko shared a rumor. He heard that in the West, lalafells are hunted for sport? XD
-So that’s done. Suzaku is calmed, her aramitama overcome. She’s finally accepted Tenzen’s loss.
-Soroban has been training this whole time. Genbu calls him over… and a fiery tortoise shell spins through the air.
TATARU: “It’s a firebird! No, it’s an airship!”
GENBU: “No, genre-savvy urchin, for it is, in fact, Soroban!” LOLOL
-The training transformed him into a giant, super-powered tortoise. He’s become a vessel for a great tortoise kami. Not necessarily a temporary change.
-The final lord to help is Seiryu. This Suzaku story just came out about a week ago with patch 4.4 and I’ve gone as far as I can. Whenever the story continues with new patch content. I’ll be there!
---
Savage Modes (mechanic unlock)
-A magitek terminal appears in Rhalgr’s Reach, heralding the Garlond Ironworks’ new “Savage Initiative.” “…for we must be savage on stress!” To start, the terminal plays relaxing music. The FF theme, that rising and falling scale.
TERMINAL: “Prolonged exposure may overstimulate the imagination, leading to the augmentation of one’s memory. It is recommended that you enjoy the song in moderation.”
OKAY THAT’S REALLY COOL. The “Savage” modes in FFXIV are the hard-mode versions of fights. This terminal unlocked this mode because it relaxed me so much that it lets my imagination soar. The hard-mode raid fights are me imagining if various fights happened in more elaborate and brutal ways lolol.
The savagely soothing terminal.
I mean, I don’t love actually doing hard-mode stuff and will probably never touch it, but this kind of lore backing for the existence of hard-mode fights is delightfully creative.
---
Fractal Continuum hard mode (side dungeon)
I recently unlocked the Fractal Continuum’s hard mode. It’s a four-player dungeon, that Allagan museum and zoo. The plot in the hard-mode follows an Ixali pilot who found his way here, thinking it was a legendary paradise.
He was sort of right. This was the place where the Ixali were created to serve the Allagans, a horrifying revelation that they manage to take in stride.
The reason I mention it here is two particularly cool boss fights.
1) The Ultima Warrior. Statues of the Warring Triad (contained nearby) surround the Warrior, and she draws on their power throughout the fight.
I’m so excited for those three trials!
2) The Ultima Beast is the final boss. This was a boss in FFII’s expansion, and more appropriately to the setting, was an FFVI boss on the Floating Continent.
Made me happy to see her here.
---
Next time: the first Omega raid.
