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The first time I played through ffxv I was suffering from chronic migraines and headaches so when Noctis was having his I just thought it was funny they made him so relatable and went "damn me too man" everytime he complained about his headaches. Turnes out his headaches were in fact caused by an ancient god trying to talk to him and he was not supposed to be highly relatable or whatever

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This is one time where a sidequest - the Endwalker CUL/ALC in this case - should count for everyone regardless.

Mervynbread for everyone!

Please for the love of Etheirys...

DEBROYE WHAT DID WE LEARN AND SUFFER TOGETHER FOR???

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wildflowers

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Don't forget the part where Tataru blackmailed one of the pirate lords of Limsa Lominsa to get us a ride to Kugane, due to that aforementioned time in the Forgotten Knight and also among the nobility of Ishgard, learning all sorts of fun secrets.

But yeah. Many times when we see a Lalafell NPC, they're either scarily competent in matters of business and/or politics, or they're talking about their sex life in the raunchiest ways. Many have wrinkles, gray hair, and facial hair for the men to indicate advanced age.

(There are younger characters, and not a lot of difference for the in game models, though the Ancient minion mentions it's about the size of a Lalafell child. If the NPC is a youth/kid, the game is quick to state it...and then treats them like any other young person of any other race.)

Meanwhile their counterparts in the First are hard drinking, hard working folks, often innovative engineers and brutal warriors. One of the (offscreen) Dwarves in the NieR raid story is a pregnant woman who loses her baby, the source of her husband's grieved rage.

The setting treats Lalafell/Dwarves like they do any other group of people. They just went with a chibified, anime cute appearance for them. It's very much a "don't be fooled by appearances" situation.

To me Lalafall are adults and are no different than say if you ran into a Chibi version of your favorite anime character. Just cause they are small and cute looking doesn't change their age. FFXIV has been reinforcing this idea since at least ARR with Momodi often gossiping with you about the men she's taken to bed and often offering to introduce you (if you're a female avatar) or flirting with you near openly (if you're a male avatar), many others being drunken despots and the most dangerous enemies being the Monetarists which outside of Godbert and maybe one unnamed Hyur and Roe are made up entirely of Lalafell who, if you weren't the Warrior of Light, would sell your life for a corn chip or half a coin of gil more than they're already making. The Missing Member and Sanguine Sirens have a prominent lalafell waitress who is smitten with an oblivious cat boy chef but is just as sailor mouthed, short tempered and phallic severing as the rest of her crew.

Tataru Taru, Owner of the Tatadale Tarudome. Maybe cute and soft spoken but your legend wouldn't of gotten or started anywhere if she didn't go to a bar shortly after you defeated Ifrit and began drukenly ranting about how you beat the Lord of the Inferno. She is smart enough to eavesdrop on the comings and goings from the Forgotten Knight to pick up information for us as our Ishgardian spy network, working her charm and assumed cuteness to her favor by doing song and dances in the Forgotten Knight while we're out saving the World again to do just that. By the time Stormblood rolls up, she has enough moxie and cunning to undermind Lolorito's ENTIRE Kugane operation, get her hands on fabled auspice treasured goods to recover from Alphinaud's misstep, and still have enough to keep the Rising Stones running as clean as a whistle while we're off in the First. Not only that but between seeing to our unconscious Scion's needs. She is still quietly aiding the Eorzean Alliance and Eastern Defense Alliance in running supplies during the stalemate in Ghimlyt Dark. Funding the whole rumor operation that puts Varis and Elidibus at bay. AND still has coin left over to learn, construct, and pilot an airship for our return. When all is said and done in Endwalker, she is setting up her own business in the Old Sharlayan port and we aid in expanded her reach through various treaties and the mishaps of the goings on in the between time. She is without a doubt the strongest Scion who can hold her liquor and go toe-to-toe with the sharpest most cutthroat minds in Etheirys. Do not let the Pink fool you. Its a warning sign like a poison dart frog.

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Hello FFXIV tumblr!

I’m looking, as ever, for active FFXIV posting blogs. Doesn’t matter if it’s all you post or just some of what you post!

I’m looking especially for people who write within the FFXIV universe, and especially especially for people who might be open to role play with my non-WoL and WoL (or even some selected Canon) characters! I also am always looking for those who gpose and do other creative things too.

All follows come from my main/personal/multifandom blog (@werehounded), which this one is a side blog to.

Feel free to like or reply or reblog, anything you fancy, and I’ll give you a follow!

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Junelezen 2025: Farewell

What kind of world did you leave behind, Warrior of Light?

0. Farewell: Technically actually the end of WolShtola 2025, but the story begins here.

Beginning Our journey begins

The Light Within Consequences of life, as Zoissette deals with her health conditions.

The Plains of La Noscea A nostalgic return to La Noscea is not without its problems. Despite all this time, there are still brigands to deal with.

The Order of Saint Thea Zoissette tells the new adventurer a little bit of her past, and is asked to become a traveling companion

Fire and Ice Zoissette meets the other half of the adventuring party, and finds that the two's temperaments are very much not alike.

Out of Control Adventuring is hard.

Birth and Death of the Day A few stories are told, of those who have gone before, of those who are remembered.

Time and Water Flow Zoissette teaches the others how to fish. It is a day dedicated to the memory of her closest companion.

Leaving the Island Remembering how she arrived, even as they leave

On a Boat Zoissette reflects on the journey thus far.

Wind and Flow As they travel, Zoissette's health condition flares up once more. Fortunately, there is always someone there to help.

A Dark Cloud The journey is not without its difficulties.

One Little Airship Ride Two artifacts, one final journey.

Thunder and Lightning The group runs across a truly monstrous beast, but where there is trouble, you will always find the helpers.

The Calm After the Storm Another new face for the small group as Iwa Suwa joins them.

That Spark of Recognition A brief moment in that hell of ice, as Zoissette runs across a memory of foes from yesteryear long gone by.

Campfire A glimpse at all the other possibilities, unreachable but knowable.

A Bit of a Rush More trouble, but also, a new friend, as Zoissette's health problem flares up at a nearly unfortunate moment.

Great Aetherial Desert The quiet before

Salt of the Earth Meeting old friends in Mor Dhona.

Up the Mountain Alisaie does not understand what Zoissette is doing, but trusts her enough to accept it.

A Solid Team Zula. Lewenzi. Iwa Suwa. Jasenka. Truly an exceptional light party.

Stumbling in the Dark Finding the way, no matter the circumstance.

In the Middle of the Chaos Zoissette reflects on how often she was there, in the middle of the fray, making a stand for what was right.

Life Goes On and On The new adventurers have learned much, and Zoissette has almost reached her destination. A heartfelt goodbye is had.

Cycles One journey ends. Others begin, and Zoissette is now ready to take her final steps.

Changing of the Guard An old friend, unexpected but not unwanted, is waiting to see Zoissette off.

The Hope of the Future There's a lesson in all of this.

Endings It's taken a lot to get this far. It will take everything to go the rest of the way.

Free

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Things that happen in Dawntrail that sound like shitposts:

You are invited to meddle in the affairs of a major political power. These events with extremely serious ramifications for global politics include gardening, animal herding, mountain climbing, and a bake-off.

Night City travels diagonally through time and fuses with a small town in Arizona.

An uplifting Hollywood movie pop-gospel song about unity plays over a montage of you and your friends building a bomb.

You down a suspiciously beaver-themed energy drink and briefly go super saiyan.

The temporally anomalous catboy dad deepthroats two scoops of nothing-flavored ice cream in an attempt to ease the tension at his work friend's family reunion. Somehow, this actually achieves the desired effect.

An AI-generated ghost attempts to burn all of the world's people and resources to extend the life of their metaverse Disneyland for other AI-generated ghosts. In response, you proceed to fight a robotic biblically-accurate angel inside their mind palace.

Dead baby cave.

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having thoughts about the dark knight questline in Final Fantasy 14 again.

The Darkness in your Heart comes to you and says "You don't have to put up with this." it says "Life is hard and it hurts and the things you do to survive weigh on you. Good. They should. This is *hard* don't pretend like it isn't." The Darkness in your Heart comes to you and says "We give up so much to protect what we care about. Let us care about Ourselves. Let *me* care about *you*. Let me *protect* you." it says "I love you. I love you. I love you. I forgive you. I forgive you. I forgive you."

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That's also what I don't get about Wuk Lamat hate. The complaint that she was overused. Like the narrative didn't set up that we were going to be going through the New World and aiding her in the rite of succession. Doesn't mean we weren't ever going to be a candidate for the throne we had no stake in. She sought us out and fought beside us and brought us to aid in her claim. At what point in the succession where she was central and there to help in the first place was she suppose to just fuck off and do nothing around a corner or off screen. Did they want her to just have her hand and send us out to complete the trials or something? Of course she'd of been around for like 92% of it all. And after she did rule the throne besides Koana. It was described that he would be better managing the logistics and negotiations for when Alexandria occupied the air space. While she went to meet with Zoraal Ja and Sphene personally. Which was her job as Vow of Resolve. Fighting a sudden war on two fronts. And then she promises Sphene the Eternal to see her people through to a future they can be happy with so of course she's there for Post stuff. And when we were in Shaaloni she was away doing meetings and figuring out the future of her rule before Zoraal Ja barged in.

People made a story she is actually instrumental and essential to is like watching if people had gotten mad at Estinien being around for 92% of the Heavensward he was.

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i wonder who the Azem shard on the Ninth is/was

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Feel free to reblog to have more people to vote. Feel free to explain why you voted the way you did. DO NOT SENT ANON HATE FOR HOW PEOPLE VOTED.

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Community has a hang up about a certain topic. Here's a poll about it. Entirely anonymous with I think an option for every side of it. Except the side who want to see Teledji and Lolorito's heads on a pike. But thats a poll for another day.

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Depending on how you understand time travel working in the FFXIV universe there is a case to be made that the WoL created Hydaelyn.

There's a lot we don't know about Venat, a lot that is open to headcanon and theorizing about what exactly she's doing offscreen in critical parts of the timeline that she don't see. But if you wanted to, I think you could make the case that by telling her the future, the Warrior of Light sets Venat on her path to becoming Hydaelyn and perhaps convinces her that there is no way to prevent the future from unfolding as described--whether that's true or not, and who can really say if it is?

If you wanted to take it a step further, you could even argue that Elidibus, the heart of Zodiark, in his final act sends the Warrior of Light back in time as an act of self-preservation--to ensure that history unfolds such that Zodiark comes into existence.

Two things are true of primals as we understand them for most of the game's story:

They are created through the faith of their devotees. Their adherents create them, not the other way around.

Many display a self-preservative nature that is inherently destructive, both in drawing aether from any and all surrounding sources and in tempering their adherents to sustain their existence.

The WoL's (and subsequently Venat's) belief that Hydaelyn must come into being creates Hydaelyn, and Hydaelyn by Her blessing shapes the WoL into a person who believes She must come into being. Elidibus's belief that Zodiark must come into being creates Zodiark, and Zodiark shapes Elidibus into the person who believes that Zodiark must come into being. These things can be philosophically true whether or not either cycle involves tempering in the literal sense we know it.

I'm not necessarily saying this is true or an intended reading, but I think it's a viable and interesting interpretation to play with.

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Shadowbringers, Endwalker, and the Branching Timeline Model

Or, how the Warrior of Light might have saved the Ancients from the Final Days (but will never know)

I made a short post awhile back posing a philosophical interpretation of Endwalker's time travel plot, on which @starcunning replied with an interesting question:

How do we square this with the Eighth Umbral Calamity timeline where WOL dies before ever going to Elpis? The loop is never closed in that future, but the worldstate is still sundered.

And as this ties into something I've thought about a lot, I started to write a response but realized it should probably be its own post, so here we are!

Let's talk about the branching timeline model and what it means for Shadowbringers and Endwalker.

On my first playthrough of Endwalker, it did kind of immediately bug me that the time travel mechanic appeared (at least at first glance) to work differently than what we saw in Shadowbringers. I've thought about it a lot since then, and in particular Elidibus's words to the WoL before he sends them back, and I think that it's not necessarily inconsistent after all. Is what I'm about to lay out the intended reading? I have no idea. Like the previous post, it's just a reading that I think is both viable and interesting to play with.

So first of all, that the time traveling Crystal Tower scheme in Shadowbringers worked at all seems to pretty definitively indicate that temporal paradoxes do not occur in this universe; instead, what we seem to have is a branching timeline. At the point when G'raha Tia is sent back in time across the rift, the timeline diverges. The branch we travel is the one where G'raha is successful, and the Eighth Umbral Calamity never occurs. But since the Eighth Umbral Calamity never occurs in this branch, G'raha is never sent back in time--in fact, he can't be, because we wake up the young G'raha sleeping in the Crystal Tower generations before he would be sent back. In our timeline this loop is already not closed, and never can be.

Urianger even seems concerned about this in his conversation with the Exarch in the Echo flashback, saying, "Yet howsoever history be rewritten, thy present self was shaped by events which followed the Calamity. Should said catastrophe be averted, the very skein of thine existence will unravel. Surely thou hast foreseen this..." And G'raha assures him he's aware of the consequences... but still seems to believe the plan will work, so it's hard to say exactly what he means here, as nothing he says about "an offering and not an edict" or the Warrior of Light as their "unbroken thread" actually explains why the plan would still work even without closing the loop.

But in any case, that doesn't actually happen! The Exarch continues to exist after the First is saved and the Calamity averted--and he seems just as surprised at this as anyone else.

Y'shtola: And with that triumph, the future from which you came will no longer come to pass... Yet, here you still stand. Crystal Exarch: ...So I do. I wonder if that other age continues onward somehow, cut adrift from time's flow? Or have I simply etched myself a place upon this new block of history? Crystal Exarch: Either way, this is an unexpected development.

So, it's evident here that a contradictory past and future are able to coexist in this universe. How, we don't know for sure. G'raha himself is the first to propose something like a branching timeline model and I think that's the simplest way to conceptualize it so I'm going to go with that. Based on that model, we assume that the timeline in which the Eighth Umbral Calamity occurs persists, though we do not experience that branch.

In Endwalker, Elidibus sends the Warrior of Light back in time to Elpis to discover the truth of the Final Days. Before they depart, he gives them this warning:

Yet even should you manage to interact with others, you will be unable to effect meaningful change. For the reality you wish to save─the reality to which you must return─exists as a result of the Final Days. You cannot reshape the past to undo the tragedies of the present. Cannot unmake the sorrow and suffering fated to come.

I've spent a long time thinking about the meaning of Elidibus's words here--in particular "You cannot reshape the past to undo the tragedies of the present." Does he mean "You cannot" as in "it is impossible; you will be unable to even if you try"? Because based on what happened in Shadowbringers, that seems to be false. Or does he mean "You must not, because if you alter the past, your own present will not come to pass"?

I was initially leaning toward the latter, and so I was shocked when the Warrior of Light made the choice to tell Venat and the others the whole story. It certainly seemed like it flew in the face of Elidibus's warning--though that is, let's be real, very Azem of us.

It is useful here, I think, to compare the Warrior of Light's journey through time to G'raha Tia's. G'raha traveled back in time with full intent to change the future by changing the past; he wanted to undo the future from which he had come. He also never intended to return, and so if we apply the branching timeline model, G'raha remained in the new branch he created.

The Warrior of Light, on the other hand, does not intend to change the past, at least not at first. They are simply seeking knowledge with which they can return to their time and stop the Final Days from destroying their world.

Why, then, does the WoL decide to tell all to the Ancients? I think that depends on your WoL, and it also depends on how they interpret Elidibus's words--whether as a caution, or a mere statement of fact.

I think one possible interpretation--and it's the one I think I prefer for my character, but certainly not the only one--is that the WoL tells their story with full knowledge that this may change the past such that their future, their timeline, their world never comes to be, because given even the chance to save the countless lives lost in the Final Days of the ancients, they cannot in good conscious refuse to at least try--Elidibus's warning be damned.

But of course, it doesn't work, right? Among the Ancients, only Venat retains her memories of what happened with Meteion, and the Warrior of Light returns to their future, and the Final Days of Amaurot occur, and Venat either cannot or does not prevent it with the knowledge she has.

And yet, if we apply the branching timeline model... this is the only thing that could have happened, from the Warrior of Light's point of view. As Elidibus says, "For the reality you wish to save─the reality to which you must return─exists as a result of the Final Days." Where G'raha Tia remained in the new branch he created and was thus able to see the changes he had wrought, the Warrior of Light returns to their own time, and thus their own branch. Thus, if we interpret Elidibus's words in light of Shadowbringers, what he means is that you cannot change the past in the timeline to which you must return.

The possibility remains, however, that the Warrior of Light's actions caused a new fork in the timeline. It is possible that Venat did act with the knowledge she possessed, and was able to effect some change. Perhaps she was able to stop the Final Days before Zodiark was summoned. It is very possible that the Warrior of Light created a new timeline where the world was never sundered.

Because they return to their own branch of the future, however, they could never know that, and thus we can never know that.

So now, I return to starcunning's question. If we apply the branching timeline model, then the idea I proposed in my previous post can still be true--but only in one branch. By traveling to Elpis, meeting Venat, and leaving her with foreknowledge of the future, the WoL's actions create (at least) two possible Venats: one who changes that future, and one who does not (whether through inaction or trying and failing).

The branch where the Sundering occurs will later split into two more branches: one where the WoL dies before traveling back to Elpis, and one where they live to do so. Since both of those branches exist simultaneously, at least one WoL will always travel back to Elpis, where there is only one timeline because it hasn't yet forked. So Elpis will always receive a visit from the WoL who lived, even though there is also a branch where the WoL died.

I will also say, however, that my previous post was more of a philosophical musing on the game's themes around primals and gods than a hard interpretation I am arguing for over all possible others. I myself don't necessarily think that Venat wouldn't have created Hydaelyn without a visit from the WoL. I don't think it's possible for us to know that for sure, because we don't see a world in which that didn't occur and we also spend limited time with Venat, leaving much of her character open to interpretation and speculation. It is possible to imagine a third branch of the Elpis timeline in which the WoL never visited. Perhaps the Final Days play out the same way they do in canon, or perhaps something else happens entirely. If you really want to go there, perhaps if the WoL doesn't visit, they never catch Meteion, and she never delivers her message to Hermes at all, and perhaps that alters the timeline in some other way we haven't even imagined. Who knows! Sounds like a fun thing to write a fic about.

As for the branching timeline model, there's a lot to explore about time travel in this universe, and various ways to interpret what we see, and I haven't even brought up Alexander! I think the branching model works best for reconciling the various examples of time travel we see in the game, and I think that model opens up a lot of interesting possibilities to explore. This is just one of them!

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C'oretta's constant companion is Violet, her "piggy" that she rescued from a smuggling operation while on a job with the Stone Torches soon after joining the Adventurer's Guild. The others were shocked that the (outside Coliseum regulation oops) animal fighting ring had this particular creature among their cages. C'oretta just thought she was adorable.

Violet is very intelligent, and very protective of her catgirl. It's not unusual for people who upset or anger the miqo'te to find themselves suddenly beaned by warm pebbles dropped out of nowhere. She also seems to have not grown up very much in the last few years, remaining in a compact "piggy" form. How much of that is her own magic or how long it takes her kind to grow to adulthood is unknown.

No one's quite sure if C'oretta actually knows that Violet's a behemoth or not. She never seems to see the magic her "pet" does.

Violet has a few stories of her own, and of course features in many of C'oretta's. She even has a tag on this blog.

(And yeah, as people reached Elpis, I had quite a few pings telling me I needed to do a certain PunchyCat relevant sidequest there!)

8/29/25

does your wol(oc) have a signature companion/minion? What is their story?

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Dark Autumn won the Aiming hairpiece on her last trip to San d'Oria.

ynow what we need

roegadyn appreciation hours

show them off!