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Estinien: When have I done anything rash or irresponsible?

Aymeric: I keep a list. It's alphabetized.

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More things I had forgotten from the ARR patches: how Alphinaud basically accuses Aymeric to his face of manipulating the Scions on behalf of the Holy See for their own ends, and Aymeric just calmly looks him in the eye and is like, Wise up, kid. You and I want the same things here. It's such good foreshadowing for the fact that Alphinaud really is not as politically savvy as he thinks he is. But it's also such a great character moment for Aymeric, who is seasoned in politics and knows when to speak and when to keep his mouth shut and how to gracefully work around the obstacles laid in his path. By his measured response to Alphinaud (whom he undoubtedly recognizes as a precocious teenager shooting his mouth off thinking he's being clever), and his amiable response when Alphinaud relents and apologizes, not only does he preserve the arrangement with the Scions but he comes out looking like the magnanimous one in that situation, with the other party contrite and eager to demonstrate their cooperation.

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Quick correction for your (excellent!) meta post on Aymeric's mom: according to the wiki, Thordan was the youngest of five, not seven.

Updated, thank you kindly!

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Currently digging a deep, deep hole about Aymeric's mom and I'm dragging you all with me.(Heavensward spoilers ahead if you're not there yet. There will also be Scholasticate questline spoilers, and I highly recommend that you do those too for some good Ishgard lore, especially if you did the ARR Hildibrand quests)

So other than the fact that she slept with Thordan before marriage and gave birth to Aymeric, we know little and less about the woman. I've seen people come up with hc images of her (and I love them btw) but we have nothing confirmed. For this post, I'm going to call her Amie (AM=Aymeric's Mom + Elezen "-ie" name ending for female Elezen) because I would feel weird constantly calling her Aymeric's Mom.

So first, let's talk Thordan. He's the youngest of 5 brothers, and his house was allied with the Durendaire family. If the Halonic Church takes after Catholicism, chances are that Thordan is just a name he picked while he was ruling similar to popes IRL. At the time we met him in Heavensward, he would have been 74 years old. Aymeric at the time of Heavensward is 32, so Thordan would have been around 41-42 years old when he slept with Amie. This man clawed his way up the theocracy, doing everything in his power to gain favor and attention, using all sorts of connections he built from his family's connections and his own from when he would have attended the Scholasticate.

This meant that he would have had to appear clean as a whistle, and probably wouldn't have gotten out too far, so chances are that he wasn't exactly searching for women. So where did Amie come from?

Now let's talk the Scholasticate. If you were in a noble or otherwise well-connected house, you were most likely here. Highborn would graduate and move along to become part of the clergy or writers or musicians or artists of what have you. They would become people of culture. Especially those who would become seminarians, they had access to real power and influence. People like Father Choisseau could use that to their advantage, and who better to use that on than an orphan girl from the Brume?

These orphans would have been locked away, waiting for the day they could reveal the truth of everything to the next Archbishop, so chances are that Amie and Thordan would have crossed paths before she graduated from the Scholasticate. And chances are that Choisseau would have taken every opportunity to keep a pregnancy like that hidden, lest a scandal about the Scholasticate got out to the public. Again, Thordan's probably in his early 40's at this point, so chances are that he's gotten to a stage of influence where making him look bad would make you worse off.

So now there's this baby. There's this orphan in the scholasticate who is about to graduate after having just given birth to a bastard child. What a time for her to be taken to the Holy Body of Decency and locked away for good. What a time to hide away a baby, a person that would be quite useless to the process of the expurgators purpose, and give it to another friend of the Durendaire family- the Borels.

We also don't know for sure what happens to the expurgators and watchmen other than that the Scholasticate reveals their existence to all and sundry. Most likely, they would have been released from their prison and be re-admitted into society with their names restored. This could mean that Amie was released and simply became a no-name in a new Ishgardian society. Who knows how much she would want to be involved in Aymeric's life considering everything? Most likely, she would be in her 50s and just trying to settle.

Wherever she is, I hope she's all right.

TLDR; My theory is that Aymeric's mom was an expurgator and got locked away into the deepest darkest secret of Ishgard as a result just after giving birth.

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FFXIV fans this is your daily reminder that if Estinien has even a tiny fraction of Nidhogg's memories he knows a hell of a lot more than he's letting on.

Nidhogg remembers at least three Umbral Calamities, and probably four or five. Safe to assume he defended Coerthas from Allag, and that he heard Vrtra looking for Azdaja and the primal-ification of Bahamut through dragon song. The DRG 80 quest states Nidhogg considered himself guardian of the star after Midgardsormr. At his prime, Nidhogg may have even known or been trying to learn his father's abilities - the changing form, the crystals, possibly even the ability to speak with Hydaelyn. Theory time: Hydaelyn may have even rejected him for being a dragon supremacist.

Estinien's shortcomings (if you don't have another silly explanation for them) have to do with mortal knowledge and interactions, like niceties, coin, and bluffing immigration officers. He asks for the Scions to explains things because they have discovered stuff nobody knew before this, or they were using vocabulary he doesn't know.

In Shadowbringers the idea of Ascians doesn't phase him, but the different shards and time travel nonsense throw him for a bit of a loop, coincidentally things Nidhogg wouldn't know. He is very tense at the idea of the WOL seeing his memories, and leaves immediately, but after telling you he shares Nidhogg's memories in 5.5 he chills out and hangs around more. Like he saw the writing on the wall about joining the Scions and covered his own ass in case of an Echo vision.

In Endwalker the reason I think he said "At least I will not pretend to understand this talk of ancient primals or the Final Days" and the like is because he has to constantly sort out if what Nidhogg knew was correct. He is remarkably chill staring up at Hydaelyn like "ya bitch let's go let's fight God." What Hydaelyn said to Estinien about hate becoming love is ambiguous enough it could also apply to Nidhogg.

And you are still the only person he has directly told he shares some memories with Nidhogg. He is deliberately not sharing this with people. He doesn't want to be Nidhogg. Most of the information is pointless outside of Coerthas in the 7th astral era. He makes an exception when he is the only one who knows something important - there's a Great Wyrm behind the curtain, how to motivate depressed dragons, the Eyes of Nidhogg are active again better find them, Omega? wait the thing that chased Midgardsormr? if not me better make sure someone handles it, oh shit Zenos is standing back up that's not Zenos anymore-

Then he just wants to have a drink and some dried squid and chill out. Not get interrogated about past kingdoms, or have his brain and eyes poked at when he dies ( . . . if he's even mortal anymore.)

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He is risen

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this is honestly the funniest final fantasy 14 image i have ever seen

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I've posted a new chapter to Not as a Scion because for some reason I keep finding gaps that I should have addressed years ago.

It's a new chapter 20. Enjoy!

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...wait wh--

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Our GNB tank was on call with a client during our minilvl levi clear

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On the one hand, I'll probably be here until this webbed site burns down.

On the other hand, I don't trust the possibility of a merger between tumblr and midjourney. I did the opt-out, but I'm not sure what data has already been sold, so...

Going forward, I will no longer be posting any fic, art, or gposes directly to Tumblr.

I will still do my sporadic ffxiv reblog of any memes or analyses I see and maybe still make memes of my own. Beyond that, I probably won't be doing anything else here unless this gets resolved.

As for events like FFXIVWrite or Junelezen, I intend to post for these on my new cohost.

Of course, anything that is written for FFXIVWrite is also crossposted to my Ao3. That isn't changing. I will be posting a new long fic soon, so I will still probably post alerts of any updates in here as well as on Cohost.

I'll still be here, and tbh with the way I've been treating this tumblr, I doubt much will really change.

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drew some very serious emotes for me n my friend's ffxiv server

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The way Final Fantasy 14 explores the themes and lore of its deities and other bosses through the song lyrics in their boss music is very underrated tbh. It's one of the best aspects of the game to me, yet I don't see it praised as much as other things.

And there's such variety, too. Menphina's theme is an upbeat song that explores how the world's cat people find safety and comfort in worshipping the moon. Sophia's theme is a sad parable that shows how the goddess' idea of balance is harsh and inhumane. Lakshmi spends her song trying to seduce you into accepting her ideology of blissful sloth. Shiva mourns her own plight. Suzaku sings of lost love. Athena sings about how she is the shit and she's gonna kill you.

It's all just really great.

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Had a chat with a friend of mine concerning the contemporary FFXIV community. They've experienced quite the influx of rude and uncooperative players on their server. Now, I can't speak for mine because I've only kept my sub alive to log in every month to keep an FC up until the leader decides to return, but I wonder if more people have experienced the same my friend has.