---
The Color of Her Hair
-X’rhun will continue training me and Arya. ants to give Arya and me a more structured training regimen. This will be his legacy, his way to help Ala Mhigo.
-He sends us to practice on goblin mechs near Idyllshire. Arya’s black magic is fine; she needs to improve her white magic.
-I take out my share of goblin robots and return to X’rhun. Arya hasn’t come back. Hm.
-We find Arya kneeling amidst fallen mechs, exhausted but victorious.
-Suddenly, a wave of black/red magic washes over her, like we saw surrounding Lambard. Like with Lambard, her hair turns red.
”Your life energies… your souls… I must feed!”
And like Lambard, some vampiric needs accompany all this.
-We knock her out. Hopefully she’ll be okay when she wakes up.
-We head back to town. She wakes up. Her hair is blond again.
-Lambard spent years giving himself that sort of power. How tf did it naturally happen to Arya?
---
Traced in Blood
-X’rhun and I will research this in Gyr Abania at an old red mage ziggurat. Arya will stay behind. Casting even the smallest spell can reignite her hunger.
-The ziggurat served as a red mage library of sorts. Lots of old scrolls and tablets around the ruins.
-One such tablet describes a rite to make a pact with a voidsent and ingest its blood for power. That must be what Lambard did.
-The practice started back with ancient Mhachi sorcerers from before the Sixth Umbral Calamity.
-We already know that red mages draw energy from their own souls. Drawing energy from the souls of someone else, a voidsent, can uncap their limited power. I see the appeal.
-The tablet describes a potion that sates the hunger for aether for those who went through this ritual. X’rhun and I gather the ingredients and bring the potion back to Arya.
-It works. Sort of. It replenishes her aether, dealing with the symptoms, but not the underlying cause.
-We still don’t know how she became like Lambard. The logistics make it unlikely that Lambard injected her with voidsent blood. Something else is afoot.
---
Nightkin
-X’rhun remembers a book Lambard talked about that can help. A ritualistic murderer in Ishgard wrote this book, “Nightkin,” 100 years ago.
-We track a copy to the Great Gubal Library. I’ve been here before as a dungeon, and the version I go through for this quest is a scaled down version of the last section.
-The last boss is tricky. It takes me a few tries to get her pattern down without letting X’rhun die.
-She drops “Nightkin” on defeat. It’s an uplifting read:
“I am the descendant of demons; a scion of tainted blood. It is for my brethren born into darkness – for the Nightkin – that I pen these words.”
The game’s strongly hinting that Arya is a Nightkin. Maybe that’s even WHY Lambard captured her in the first place. We’ve just been assuming she was picked randomly to be a mindless thrall.
-So. 100 years ago, this murderer devoured a bunch of magical texts. Red magic, ancient Mhachi summoning rituals, the works. He was able to command so much power because he descended from a Mhachi arhmagus who had ingested the lifeblood of “the voidsent queen Lilith.”
YAAAAY LILITH! I loved her as a villain in FFXI.
-Her energies passed down to the archmagus’ heirs. The Nightkin are those heirs, “a clan of aether-drinking spellcasters… born into darkness.”
-Lambard was a Nightkin. Arya probably is too.
My next question: Lambard had to scratch and claw for this power over 30 years. Arya just kind of stumbled into it. How? Why is she so innately powerful?
[Later edit: IT JUST HIT ME! FFXI Lilith was a redhead. Maybe that’s why the sign of this vampiric power activating turns Arya’s and Lambard’s hair red in XIV.
Lilith was an alternate-timeline version of the glorious and heroic dancer, Lilisette. I wonder if they’ll try something similar here in XIV, making Lilith some alternate version of Arya. If she IS Lilith somehow, that could explain why the power comes so naturally to her.
There’s little in-game that hints at this. It’s just a meta-thing I’m keeping in mind.]
-The book’s author was from the Calowise family. Lambard was Lambard Calowise. Calowise is also a name from Arya’s mother’s side.
AHA! This also explains why Arya is so strong with black magick and has trouble with white magick.
-So how do we solve this and cure Arya of this blood curse so she can get back to red maging healthily?
-The first Calowise brought Lilith into our world by providing a host for her to possess. He bargained with her for power.
X’RHUN: “Once the archmagus had partaken of her essence, however, he entrapped her inside a heavily glyphed box. Her material form thus captured, Lilith was unable to return to her shadowy realm.”
He did this because when Lilith leaves this realm, her power here dilutes. Ergo, we find and banish Lilith and Arya’s problems go away.
---
Child of Lilith
-Arya dreamed about the “Nightkin” author. Ishgardian knights arrested him and took away a big black coffin too. The coffin is a Mhachi container, probably for Lilith. Off to Ishgard.
-The Ishgardians find records of that arrest. The coffin freaked out the arresting knights, who they threw it into a ravine.
-Some dig-work later, and we find it the coffin. Arya cracks it open… and there she is.
-Lilith looks pretty cool! A regal, red-haired serpent woman.
LILITH: “A thousand years scheming cometh to fruition! Yield unto me thy vessel, child. Thou shalt be host to mine immortal glory!”
-Lilith was working on a long-game escape plan. It all culminated with Lambard (unwittingly) finish Lilith’s plan, kidnapping Arya as her vessel.
-Arya hears Lilith’s whispers. “Come. Deny not thy destiny. Thy life was molded by my hand.”
There’s some mind-control magic at play. Arya walks forward. There’s a flash of light, and both Arya and Lilith disappear.
-X’rhun’s freaked and determine. Lilith needs to complete a full ritual to possess Arya. There’s still time.
-There’s an ongoing theme of control. Arya became a red mage to control her own destiny, to forge new memories. Lilith wants to bind her to a long-planned past.
---
With Heart and Steel
-Ul’dah’s thaumaturges are the successors to Mhach’s magick. They might help us find Arya and teach us about Lilith.
-The black mage receptionist recognizes me. I love that when the game acknowledges past experience.
YAYAKE (black mage): “The tomes with passages pertaining to the voidsent Lilith are all forbidden occult works – abhorrent volumes chained to the shelves in our deepest archives, never again to see the light of day. I’ll just pop back there and grab one or two.”
I forgot how much I adore the bouncy Lalafell thaumaturges.
-Lilith’s main power is to enslave a person’s will with a whisper. Lambard channeled that through his sigils to turn people into mindless puppets.
-Possessing a host like Arya will return her to full strength. That would be bad.
-The ritual will take place where Lilith was first bound, the ruins of ancient Mhach.
-Lilith is not too tough a fight. Some fire to dodge, explosions to avert, etc.
-Arya’s still unconscious afterwards. We see inside her mind, where she knows Lilith has trapped her.
LILITH: “Yesss… Accept thy fate, child. Mine own form was destroyed, but within thy vessel has my soul taken refuge.”
Shit. Lilith’s still alive. If Arya gives in, Lilith gets reborn.
-Arya begins to despair… then remembers me and X’rhun. The new life she made.
OH HELL YES SHE CONJURES A RED MAGE’S RAPIER OUT OF PURE IMAGINATION
-She wakes, Lilith defeated… maybe? That was fast. We didn’t see any battle within her mind. I’m not so sure Lilith’s really gone.
[Later edit: Never mind. Maybe that single act of will from Arya was enough to blow the remnants of Lilith away.]
-Where does Arya go from here? Her power drew on Lilith’s blood. But Arya seems happy anyway.
ARYA: “This way I get to study magic from scratch, and know that all my achievements will truly be mine!” I really like her.
-We part for now. X’rhun will go off on his merry way for Ala Mhigo and Arya has fundamentals of magick to brush up on. I’m sure I’ll see him again in the next expansion.
-My reward for completing the 60-70 red mage questline is an AWESOME set of gear!
Real classic red mage duds.
---
Next time: starting on the Stormblood patch content.
