TW: discussion of fat representation.
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Emergent Splendor
-I fear Alphinaud’s fake artist scheme is about to be discovered. Chai-Nuzz doesn’t like his art.
Honestly, I don’t know why. He’s got legit game as an artist! But Chai-Nuzz thinks it’s too realistic, not flowery or opulent enough.
The criticism is cut short by screams from the floor above. Jongleurs announce that Lord Vauthry has caught a villain. Are we about to see an ascension?
-Lord Vauthry is an inhumanly fat man. The wonder of this room is that there are sin eaters EVERYWHERE. He’s relaxing on a sin eater lion, and sin eater women chill all around.
Like courtiers. This is intensely disturbing.
-OH SHIT IT’S KAI-SHIRR, THE BLUE HAIRED MYSTAL WE HELPED GET INTO THE CITY! He’s bleeding in the middle of the floor. His fraud was discovered.
VAUTHRY: “Those who have naught to give and live only to take are a blight upon our society!”
-Vauthry ordered Kai-Shirr to throw himself from the balcony, and now mocks him for his terror and for begging for his life. What a jackwagon.
-Vauthry is offering an alternative to the window. “Sin eaters are part of Eulmore society, but they must be fed with aether. Living aether.”
I now remember something like this from the trailer and now get the context. Kai-Shirr carved his own flesh to feed the sin eaters… or tried. He couldn’t go through with it.
-So Lord Vauthry rules by absolute tyranny, offering this paradise only to those who obey him fully.
-Then the worst part happens. The free citizens in attendance… politely clap. WHAT THE FRESH HELL.
-It’s just so surreal! As this is going on, one sin eater lovingly strokes a lion sin eater and two others cuddle.
-Vauthry is upset with Alphinaud for questioning him, but Alphinaud couldn’t care less. As Vauthry rants at him, Alphinaud turns and heals Kai-Shirr.
ALPHINAUD: “What you need is a mirror, not a painting. It will capture the horror I see before me far better than I ever could.”
I want to be all “SICK BURRRRN!” And part of me is cheering. But again, a game that lacks any fat rep and then breaks out this grotesquely fat monstrosity gets a raised eyebrow. It blunts my joy.
Sorry, I’ll drop this for now.
-It takes a minute for Alphinaud’s defiance to sink in. Vauthry probably hasn’t been insulted in decades. Then, he throws a tantrum. Rolling on the floor, screaming, slamming the ground with his hands.
“I’ll enslave their minds! I’ll torment them, torture them! I’ll tear out their hearts!”
We’re not done with him by a long shot.
-Outside the city. I think our work is done here for now. Back to the Crystarium.
-Kai-Shirr will stay nearby. He wants to find his own purpose. Will he help turn Gatetown around?
-…Wow. This is unexpected. Lord and Lady Chai came outside the city to find us. Dulia saw his painting, the one that her husband said was too realistic and not impressive enough.
“Now, I’ve had many a beautiful and striking picture painted for me, but there was something about your work… It was as if you had caught the very essence of our love, and rendered it naked upon the canvas. It was bold, unflinching… and I adored it.”
She wants us to rejoin, will fight to smooth things over with Lord Vauthry.
-I’m smiling from ear to ear. I worried that all the fat characters would be uncaring villains, and this DEFINITELY helps. She’s still not redeemed exactly. After all, she’s not leaving the city or her luxury.
But it’s a start. This is an unexpected layer. A subtle, poetic, warm side. I love it.
-Dulia-Chai will even help arrange things so we can pass unnoticed, whenever we return.
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The Lightwardens
-Alisaie, Alphinaud, and I regroup with the Crystal Exarch in the Crystarium.
-The Exarch has discovered a weakness in the sin eaters. They serve the strongest of their kind, Lightwardens. Only a handful exist. If we take out the Lightwardens, what happens to the sin eaters?
-Eulmore will likely fight us on any anti-sin eater action. They rely on the sin eaters. I don’t think they actually help the city, but Vauthry relies on their threat for his power.
-The Crystal Exarch taps his staff to turn the room into a planetarium. History lesson time. Greatly appreciated, since I’m easily confused.
-In the past, a single star was divided into fourteen worlds: the Source and its thirteen shards. Physically separate, but connected. The shards are especially connected to the Source.
-When one element ascends in a shard, excess energy trickles to the Source. For example, if a shard is overwhelmed by ice, the Source would get a ton of blizzards.
-Take it too far, and the barrier between worlds cracks. All the aether flows from the overwhelmed shard into the First, destroying the shard in the process.
In the ice example, the shard overwhelmed by ice is destroyed, and the Source might get an immensely damaging ice storm or ice age even.
THAT’S WHAT AN UMBRAL CALAMITY IS! This clears up so many questions.
Wait, so did the Empire only summon Bahamut because it was influenced to do so because one of the shards was overwhelmed by fire? What about the War of the Magi, which was about white and black magic? Those aren’t really elements.
-We’ve had seven calamities. Seven shards down.
-The planetarium illustrates this with shards being overwhelmed by color. One purple, one red, yellow, blue, light blue, crimson. Maybe… dark, fire, lightning, water, air, blood?
I must’ve missed one, and my guess at the crimson element is a stretch.
The Light-drowned First Shard is very close to a rejoining. The Lightwardens radiate aether, speeding up this process.
Just as ARR was Primalfest, this is gonna be LightwardenFest.
-The twins have been unable to make much headway against the Lightwardens. They’re about to tell me why when Lyna, the viera guard, lets us know that the village of Holminster Switch is under sin eater attack.
Sounds like we got our first dungeon of the expansion coming up.
-I reach the village outskirts. Lyna tells me that a Lightwarden leads the attack.
-Then, the problem with fighting Lighwardens: defeating them releases a massive amount of light inside them into the nearest living being, converting them into a new Warden.
-The Crystal Exarch doesn’t seem worried. A plan?
-Oooooh! This is the first time I’ll be able to use XIV’s new “Trust” system, adapted from FFXI.
NPCs can join me in a party for main story quest duties. Excited to try this out.
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Random Stuff Around Eorzea
-Two great player names in Mr Banana and Holy Turtle.
-Was doing a small group instance with friends. We MAY have pulled more dogs than was prudent:
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Next time: the first Shadowbringers dungeon.
