Note: I completed the first quest, “Sky Pirates,” way back in part 66. Everything after that, starting with the Void Ark raid itself, is new.
http://coldrungaming.blogspot.com/2018/06/ffxiv-p...
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Sky Pirates
-There’s a new quest about sky pirates. A bit of XII in XIV.
-A supply ship got hijacked. I find the ship and approach the sky pirates when another approaches them, a sky pirate named Redbill Leofard.
-The other three sky pirates who see him back down quickly.
“You take on the mantle of sky pirate, you agree to a certain code of conduct. And codes ain’t worth much if folk go around breakin’ em.”
-holy shit he shoots all three dead immediately. Quick Draw McGraw over here.
-Redbill Leofard asks for my help with an adventure. I especially like his crewmate, Stacia.
We meets a rival pirate named Radlia on his airship. Again, AWESOME character design on these pirates.
Radlia captains a rival crew, the Talons. Both are after a mysterious ghost ship in the Sea of Clouds, likely rife with booty. I’m betting it’s actually an Allagan relic of some kind.
-Aha! I just unlocked the 24-player Heavensward raid, “The Void Ark.”
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The Void Ark
-The first thing that hits me is that the ship is massive! It dwarfs Leofard’s airship.
-The coloring is all dark purple. Something about the ship reminds me of the ship in Alien. The ground looks all... I dunno, biological?
-The first boss is a giant manta called Cetus.
-The second boss is a pair, Sawtooth and Irminsul. Sawtooth is a plant demon with three venus flytrap heads. Irminsul is… a big tree? They’re tethered together.
Sawtooth sometimes snaps at players and adds, and for everyone he eats, Irminsul gets stronger.
-Moving through the dungeon, things start to get creepy. (Creepier.) Coffins are strung up all over.
-The third boss is Cuchulainn, though he looks more like Ursula. Tentacles all over.
Still maintains that XII Cuchulainn theme, with poison and corruption and general grossness.
-The final boss is Echidna from FFIII. (They’re really going drawing heavily on FFIII!) She’s literally three snake-people mashed together, a really strange creature.
-Afterward, Leofard and his crew join me and celebrate. They found chests full of booty. Victory, clearly this is the end of the story.
-…when a demon pops out and starts casting stuff on the titanic coffin hanging here. HI DIABOLOS!
-And Cait Sith arrives! He hurries us away, off the Void Ark to Leofard’s ship.
-The Void Ark opens its bay doors and blasts a giant purple trench across as it streak away.
-The bottom of the ship opens, and the huge coffin falls. Cait Sith refers to it as the “Queen’s Coffin.” Diabolos shepherds it through the portal.
-We return to the Sea of Clouds to regroup. Alas, Radlia and her Talons kidnapped Utata, Leofard’s engineer. She gets Leofard’s Void Ark tracker as ransom.
“I must insist that you address me by my proper name: Cait Sith. I will not respond to ‘puss’ or ‘cat,’ and most decidedly not ‘furball.’” KITTTYYYYY
-Back at Redbill HQ, Cait Sith tells his story. He’s 1,500 years old, born ages ago in the ancient city of Mhach. They were masters of destructive magic. It all ended in the War of the Magi and the Sixth Umbral Calamity, a great flood.
(I heard some of this in the red mage story. The red mages originated in Mhach.)
-Cait Sith was the familiar of High Voidmage Cessari.
-The Mhachi constructed the Void Ark to save their people from the flood Cessari foresaw. They powered the ship with energy from thousands of enslaved voidsent. This was the source of most Mhachi magic.
THAT’S what those was in those coffins! God, these ancient civilizations sucked. First the Allagans conquered the dragons, now the Mhachi with the demons.
-And of course, they demons aboard the Void Ark broke loose.
-The voidmages entombed a voidsent ruler at the heart of the Ark: Scathach, the shadow queen. She must be in the coffin Diabolos took.
-This was all 1500 years ago. What woke the voidsent up?
CAIT SITH: “One day, a voidsent that had taken the shape of a bat flew into the ship.” It grew stronger and stronger, breaking all the voidsent out.
-Diabolos opened up a portal to the void. We gotta help Cait Sith reseal Queen Scathach.
Scene change to the Talon ship. Radlia’s plotting to seize the Void Ark as a weapon.
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The Weeping City
-Utata might have a lead on finding Diabolos, so Cait Sith and I go find her.
OMG SHE IMMEDIATELY SEES CAIT SITH AND HUGS HIM TIGHT
UTATA: “My apologies, Cait Sith. You had the misfortune to enter my field of view just as I felt the intense desire to squeeze something warm and furry.”
-Utata’s has crafted a copy of the stolen Void Ark tracker, but it’s better than we thought. It tracks Diabolos’ aetheric energy, not the Void Ark itself.
-A Talon crewman interrupts us. He needs our help… saving Captain Radlia. She followed her tracker, expecting to reach the Void Ark.
-It took her instead to Diabolos’ front door. Mhach itself.
-lol Cait Sith’s swear, “By Shatotto’s black heart!” In XIV lore, Shantotto is now Shatotto, an ancient Mhachian mage.
-Diabolos wants an artifact called the Nullstone. Mhachi sorcerers forged pacts with their voidsent and used the Nullstone to send them back to the void when betrayed.
CAIT SITH: “When it came to the glory of Mhach, the ends justified the means.” The Allagans agreed. The Garleans, too.
Diabolos is after the Nullstone to make sure nothing can threaten Queen Scathach.
-My friend and I head into the next 24-player raid, “The Weeping City of Mhach.”
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The Weeping City of Mhach
-TW: arachnophobia. Gur svefg obff vf n ulcre perrcl fcvqre jbzna.
https://i.imgur.com/OXMYV2Z.png
-I really dig this city! A unique architectural style, suffused with blue-green fire. A huge pyramid sits at the middle.
-The second boss, Forgall, has an undead-theme, turning players into zombies. The saddest part are the adds she summons.
They’re fallen Talons, slain members of Radlia’s crew.
-The third boss is especially cool, and the first FFIX boss I recognize: Ozma.
Its main mechanic is based on different shapes. It has a set of attacks to deal with as a sphere, another as a cube, another as a pyramid.
I die a lot. Just like FFIX!
-After Ozma, it’s into the heart of the Mhachian pyramid itself. The final boss is Calofisteri from FFV.
-She’s got a hair thing going. Her tendrils turn into a variety of flavors of deadly blades.
-Calofisteri’s signature green orb in this case is the Nullsphere.
???: “Mwahahaha! You’ve left me such an inviting trail of destruction to follow!” It’s Ferdiad, a voidsent we faced in an earlier dungeon. He’s holding Radlia hostage in exchange for the Nullstone.
-Leofard’s an old hand at this whole hostage exchange thing though. He pulls the old “who, her? I don’t care about her, just kill her” thing, and it somehow works.
-Cait Sith uses the distraction to convert the Nullsphere into a weapon and drive off Ferdiad.
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Next time: the conclusion of the Shadows of Mhach raids.
