Summary: Diamond Weapon and the end of the Sorrow of Werlyt storyline. A chicken-filled hellscape.
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This continues the plot from Emerald Weapon I last saw in December, 2020: http://coldrungaming.blogspot.com/2020/12/ffxiv-p...
Duty in the Sky with Diamond
-Updating me is… M’naago! I’m glad to see her again from Stormblood.
-The Werlyt Revolutionaries are petitioning Ala Mhigo for aid. They’ve elected Gaius to lead them.
-The
irony of this is not lost on Gaius. First he conquers Werlyt for the
Empire, now he’s leading the effort to free them from the Empire.
-Allie
(one of the surviving orphans) left us to save her remaining brother.
Shit. I don’t see good things happening. Will she be sacrificed to
Diamond?
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Meanwhile, in the VIIIth Legion HQ…
-We switch to the worst asshole ever, Valens van Varro, welcoming back Allie.
-She brought him all the data needed to get Diamond up and running.
-She’ll
pilot Diamond, but drives a hard bargain. She wants her brother freed,
the kids freed, and Werlyt’s people granted full imperial citizenship.
-I
thought she planned to free Werlyt by turning Diamond weapon against
Valens, but maybe this is the best freedom she can envision/hope for.
-She
reads Valens like a BOOK. Valens TRULY wants to become emperor, to
attack the capitol. This will help him, and it’s enough to convince him
to accept her deal.
ALLIE, to herself: “This is the moment I’ve
been waiting for. I know this isn’t what Father would’ve wanted, but
it’s the only way. Please, forgive me.” I’m confident she’s got a trick
up her sleeve.
-Scene change to Allie inside Diamond Weapon, powering it up.
Then: “The Diamond Weapon is mine! Your tyranny ends here, Valens!”
…That’s your plan? She gets off a blast or two before Valens shuts the thing down remotely. That plan sucked lol.
-This
is ROUGH TO WATCH. She’s just sitting in the pilot seat inside Diamond,
waiting to be basically tortured, PRAYING for something good to happen.
-And it does. Her tears fall on the command console, and it
activates. Something about her tear gave the synthetic auracite system a
sample to draw on for Oversoul.
Wait. No. “Overmind.” Was Overmind a prior thing?
-OHHHH GET FUCKING WRECKED VALENS!!! Diamond blasts him away.
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Back to Ququshu…
-Reports reach us of the
Diamond Weapon destroying the VIIIth Legion but starting to go wild. We
sail off to fight it with the G-Warrior in-tow.
Or as it’s called now, the “G-Savior” since its goal is to save Allie.
I
like the different forms we see it take, from the bulky mid-air form to
the more nimble and animalistic form on the platform.
-ALLIE’S ALIVE! That’s a pleasant surprise. Very much worse for wear. Ququshu takes her back to rest.
-But the scene stays with Gaius at the ruin of Diamond.
-And Valens approaches. I guess that titanic laser blast to his face just, like, knocked the wind out of him. Unless he’s a spirit or memory.
-The core question now: where’s Alfonse?
-Well. Fuck. It sounds like Valens pre-merged Alfonse into Diamond Weapon. That’s likely what souped its power up when Allie was desperate.
GAIUS: “That such atrocities should continue unabated is proof of the rot that has spread throughout the Empire.”
I get that Gaius has this idealized version of the Empire, but almost everything I’ve seen beyond small anecdotes show that a rot-less Empire never existed.
-HOLY SHIIIIT GAIUS BREAKS OUT A FIERY GUNBLADE FOR A DEVASTATING HIT HJDFLSHF!!! Can I get him as a Trust NPC PLZZZZ??
-Thankfully, Valens survives long enough for Diamond Weapon (hi Alfonse!) to grab this utter asshole.
AND AN ARMY OF PHANTOMS HE TORTURED APPEARS IN FRONT OF HIM AS HE DIES, YESSSS
-There’s a beautiful goodbye here between Gaius and Alfonse, his son. Diamond Weapon deactivates as the sun sets.
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Forever By Your Side
-Gaius returns to town. Allie’s catatonic from the trauma of Alfonse’s loss. And, well, everything.
-Alfonse’s final wish was the rebuilding of Werlyt. This is the final stage of Gaius’ arc, to rebuild what he helped to destroy.
-The kids that were most recently tormented by Valens are brought here.
They’re (reasonably) terrified of Gaius, seeing the gem in his head.
And then he speaks, sharing the story of the five orphans from before and their fight to free Werlyt. They’re become legend.
It’s
not like this is a just or fair outcome. The just or fair outcome would
be them not being tortured and oppressed in the first place. But this
feels like the best outcome they could’ve hoped for by this point.
-Okay
this is AMAZING. Gaius takes a gift from Diamond Weapon – its memory
banks – and releases it. A swarm of holographic images and memories
appear. Happier memories of the orphans first meeting their “Father,”
Gaius.
These memories spark the chance for Allie to say goodbye to her siblings.
It
reminds me of one of my favorite books, Stephen King’s “It.” A
character was catatonic from the trauma of the final conflict until a
joyful and visceral memory helped bring her out of it.
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Fowl Demands [Hatching-Tide 2021]
-The Easter event is back, with all its beautiful egg puns in tow.
-The main issue this year is that some chickens are being stingy. So I stare into their COLD DEAD EYES to read their demands.
This is amazing.
-It’s
just a delightful little quest. There’s a FATE where I have to gather
up some eggs from protective chickens while dodging ALLLL the aoes, and
that’s about it.
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Random Stuff Around Eorzea
The G-Warrior statue now decorating my room, a reward from the Werlyt quests.
Chicken-suited Ququshu and confused af Alpha.
-Some great player names I’ve seen recently:
Cream Filled
Chunky Dunker
Sugarcrisp Crunch
Studious Muffin
Zach Fair
Joe Joestar
Johnny Blaze
Lizzy Mcguire
Littleheals Hippie
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Next time: the 5.5 main story quest.
