Unsolved Mysteries Of Vana'diel

Not so much anything to do with lore... just game mechanics.

Alzadaal Undersea Ruins and that b'stard door.

"You must move closer" why?! Game obviously knows I'm targeting the door. Just fking open it?

Also why can't you invite from inside the ruins (if player is outside) and vice versa?
There actually may be a good reason for this I not know. :p

I suspect the door was to make it harder for the player to escape monsters. At least I can't think of any other reason for it. All staging point doors are like that

There is this little thing I have been wondering for a very long time. How exactly does a bald Hume wear and hairpin? Does he put it on his ear? Or he would glue it on top of his shinny bald head with some goblin glue?

Do you still call it a hairpin when you have no hair? Maybe a baldpin? Hairlesspin?

What are Nidhogg scales used for?!?

He just moves it down south.


https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Winged_Balance

Sorry for the insane bump as a response to this buried comment, but I recently got an Ultimania for a project I'm working on, and it has some notes on this topic.

All of what I'm about to say is based on what little I've translated. The original Zilart were literally pieces of Promathia's body before the great crystal (true crystal?) was shattered. From what I can understand of the explanation, the emptiness in them is so mild, they have the whisper of the soul. In fact, the surviving Zilart in Al'Taieu saw this truth when their city was kicked into the higher dimension. So, all of the Zilart instinctively went to the Chamber of Eventide and merged with the aggregation of Emptiness there. Promathia's will took over, and the Zilartian people no longer saw themselves as separate entities from one another. So, the fragment of Promathia we fight at the end of CoP was literally all of the melded Zilart who survived the Meltdown. Kinda dark.

This kinda tracks with what Diabolos was saying about the Promathian part of people being the thing that makes them people.

Also, the way the Ultimania describes Promathia and Altana is much more abstract, more like platonic forms rather than gods with personality. This makes the difficulties in accessing Altana in RoV make a lot more sense.

At the rate Vice is going, he's gonna publish his own lore book, and be correcting me on lore xD <3

I encountered an interesting note in the Ultimania.

Why did the Kuluu become tonberries? In Rise of the Zilart, Graviton explains that it was because of the meltdown. The excess energy from the crystals mutated the creatures of Vana'diel. But in Chains of Promathia, Diabolos explains the Kuluu became the Tonberry as a result of having their emptiness purged.

The Ultimania states that both of these factors were involved in the making of the Tonberry. The Crystal's energy began mutating the races (Hence, the enlightened races and the Beastmen seen in modern Vana'diel). But because the Kuluu also had their emptiness purged from them (the part of a creature that makes it a person, whether that be enlightened race or beastmen), when they began mutating, they lost the humanity that characterizes the other races.

Nothing that couldn't be pieced together from the in-game cutscenes, but I thought the explanation was interesting nonetheless.

Yeah, I went and checked the promathia spoiler section on the jp wiki and it also includes that information about the zilart and promathia's body, crediting the ultimania.
The wiki also says the ultimania confirms Yve'noile as the zilartian princess, but on a more interesting note, it says that when Eald'narche is dying and he silently mouths something, that he's actually calling out to his big sister.
Also, apparently, if you actually clear promathia's story before ever killing Kam, Esha'ntarl has a line that basically spells out that Yve'noile was their sister. But almost no one does it in that order.

That should exist in the dats then so it should be pretty easy to confirm. What zone would that cutscene be in?

If I'm reading the wiki correctly, it should be during https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Promathia_Mission_8-4
"Once you've completed the previous cutscenes, head to Ru'Lude Gardens and approach the Palace for a cutscene."
That part. So Ru'lude.

These are the lines according to the jp wiki
Mildaurion : 明星の巫女
ならば
彼女の愛する弟たちに宛てて、なにかを
残していることでしょう。
Mildaurion : 私はそれを探し、
カムラナート様に呼びかけてみます。
あの方ならば、私の言葉を聞いて
くださいましょう。

I think I found the line in question

JP:
<thing type="DialogTableEntry">
<field name="index">12997</field>
<field name="text">明星の巫女ならば
彼女の愛する弟たちに宛てて、なにかを
残していることでしょう。≺Prompt≻
</field>
</thing>

EN:
<thing type="DialogTableEntry">
<field name="index">12997</field>
<field name="text">Surely the Dawn Maiden has bequeathed something of value to her younger kin.≺Prompt≻
</field>
</thing>



I think I found other related dialog shortly later depending on ROTZ progress:
<thing type="DialogTableEntry">
<field name="index">12999</field>
<field name="text">I shall continue to watch over the world that you and your companions have fought so valiantly to protect.≺Prompt≻
</field>
</thing>

<thing type="DialogTableEntry">
<field name="index">13002</field>
<field name="text">I will continue to monitor their actions as I watch over the world that you and your companions have fought so valiantly to protect.≺Prompt≻
</field>
</thing>

I've been replaying tVR and have gotten to the last mission. Before the question, I have to say; localization on tVR felt legitimately bad. The cutscenes before the Garazu-Horeizu fight just does not make sense.

Where is Chaos from?

Garazu states Chaos lived in paradise with the Zilart. A catastrophe took place which led to modern Vana'diel. But the Zilart didn't exist in Paradise, not as a race of people anyway.

1. Does that mean Chaos was a dragon before the meltdown who lived in Sea?

2. Or does this mean Chaos lived as a dragon before the sundering of the true crystal, in the age of the gods?

While both explanations make sense, explanation 2 would be weird. The Terrestrial Avatars typically are not warm to the idea of restoring the pre-sundered world. But the fact that the translation doesn't specify is disappointing.

One thing I dislike about a long running game, is you get different writers and less oversight as it goes on.

You also notice the changes in the real world and what is and is not acceptable change the lore of the game, in a way that doesn't even make any sense.

The original story was that each race was transformed by a specific mother crystal, because the DNA of the Zilart was overwritten by the the fallout from each mother crystal after the explosion. The Mithra look like Mithra because the darkness from the mother crystal represented by Ark Angel Mithra, was fused into them (ark angel M is shown in cut-scenes before any mithra existed at all), and so it created a static race linked to that mother crystal.

Mithra (etc) do not evolve, they are reborn over and over. That was the point, the Zilart were so dangerous because they evolved powers and became one race that threatened the avatars / paradise. You even see that with the OG races, when the kullu had their darkess removed they become Tonberry, the Zilart in Sea become the Qualisium cause they kept on evolving.

When a person of the 5 races died, their soul / darkness returned to the mother crystal (not galka) of their race to be reborn again and again, they do not evolve.

Then they made it so that a person can actually return to any of the mother crystals ?? (even though that makes no sense at all, and is proven to be nonsense by the galka not being able to return to their mother crystal cause it's in Sea, and that being why they are reborn in the way they are)

Also how does interbreeding even work in later expansions (lilisette), when the 5 races don't work that way. Literally impossible by the games own original lore, they only did it cause of changes in society as it went on (which you can see by them pandering and adding a gay character with wotg).

I've seen people talk about the Mothercrystals corresponding to the 5 races, but are there any in-game sources for this? In RotZ, Yve'noile states that the protocrystals were responsible for the races becoming what they are, and that the AAs also warped the same way the 5 races were, from their original appearance.

Mothercrystal geography isn't too favorable to the idea either. Why would the Mithra come from the northern Mothercrystal while they come from Olzhirya, the southern continent?

Lilisette wasn't the first half-hume/half-elvaan. That was Enid Ironheart. And SE introduced her back in like 2005 or something.

Lilisette looks pretty typical for an Elvaan, maybe not quite as tall as you'd expect but I don't think she's a full adult yet so she could still be growing. So, maybe interbreeding doesn't create cross-breeds, you just get a full-blooded member of one of the involved races?

I mean, look at Windurst. They've only ever had the one catboy in stock there, and he's long gone, but just look at all those kittens walking around. So either a large chunk of the Mithra population is booking trips back to the motherland just to get knocked up and then head home, or there's some cross-pollination going on there and it results in something indistinguishable from authentic 100% Mithra offspring.

(Well, that or Windurst has a serious human trafficking problem that nobody talks about, which to be fair is something I'd totally believe of them.)

Any time the dude's on screen the Mithra ladies spend 100% of the time fighting over him!

I wouldn't be surprised if there's a Strategic National Secret Catman Reserve under Heavens Tower to keep the dudes out of sight and deliberately not talked about to prevent all of Windurstian society immediately coming to a screeching halt.

Maybe if they weren't such walking stereotypes etc