#You are the warrior of light

[roegadynroost]

FFXIVwrite 2023 - 26 Last

You could feel the light everywhere. Behind your eyes, in your brain, pumping painfully through your veins. It pulsed like fire, burning like frostbite a horrid sting cloying in every fiber of your being.

You've come so far, fought so hard, and yet it had all been for naught. 

The Ascian, Emet-Selch taunted and mocked you still. 

"The gulf between us is a reflection of the disparity between the world as it was...and what it has become."

You wanted to stand, you wanted to fight, but you couldn't. The light was too much. It choked you, it drowned you. You could hear your friends take stand, but you could not, you'd bee brought to your knees. It was too heavy.

"You are a mistake." The Ascian chided "For we who have known perfection, the shattered Source and these shards are ghastly mockeries of the true world. The ephemeral lives you exalt are pale imitations, utterly devoid of meaning."

You'd given it all and for what? You would all die here, on this light flooded reflection. You could not fight. 

How could you let them down now, when your all come so far?

The voices were damped as if you were in water, you could not hear, you could not see, not taste. All that there was, was the light. It surged in you, pushing to get free.

"Why waste your final moments in futile defiance?" Where you moving closer? You could almost make out the Ascian, you could almost hear him. "Weary wanderer─you've no fight left to fight! No life left to live!"

Too much, it was too much, it was in your throat, coating your tongue, you gagged.

There was a commotion around you, but you couldn't make it out.

And then just like that, it stopped. 

You pushed yourself up onto your elbows, squinting into the white abyss. The light was still there but something was holding it back. The fog of the unforgiving resplendence had lifted.

"If you had the strength to take another step, could you do it?" Ardbert, it it was Ardbert beside you, your eyes were wide as you looked at him. He was so clear you could swear you could touch him if you just reached out. He peered ahead, unblinking, unflinching in the light. "Could you save our worlds?" he asked.

"You know I could!" You gritted out desperately, hopefully.

Finally the man, no longer a shade, looked at you. In his hand he held out his axe, his intense eyes peering down at you through the glaring incandescent. A plea there, for you to save his world. This was it, this was why he'd been denied his final rest.

"Take it. We fight as one!" Ardbert's voice echoed into the aether. You could feel him as he joined with you, the aether felt strong, it felt familiar. You could feel your strength return to you. You could feel the light shrink as it paled to your own radiance.

"This world is not yours to end. This is our future. Our story." The words fell from your lips, like unto your own, but it was not you alone. Ardbert had granted you a boon and you would not see it squandered. 

You would fight, as you always did. 

To the end. 

To your last breath.

[demaparbat-hp]

Here I am, pushing the Jian Li (Akai Kotou! Zuko) = Jinshi (The Apothecary Diaries) agenda.

[tritoch]

the warrior of light as a game-breaking force of violence

there's a moment, relatively early in dawntrail, that establishes succinctly how out of place the warrior of light (as the savior of eorzea and main character of four successive final fantasy game plots) is in what is essentially the story of fresh new final fantasy protagonist wuk lamat. and it sets up quite nicely how the framework of fantasy video game conflict pulls the warrior of light forever towards violence as the expansion goes on.

spoilers through 7.0 follow

consider wuk lamat's kidnapping and rescue. bakool ja ja holds his blade to wuk lamat's throat, taunting you. his lackeys line up against your party in neat little ranks suspiciously reminiscent of a classic final fantasy encounter screen.

and it simply does not matter to the warrior of light. you stride right through their combat setup because you are beyond that by now. the warrior of light has absolutely no respect for the "we are about to do ATB combat" lineup. the camera even jumps the line for you in one continuous rotating shot, crossing the axis of action as though to emphasize through the disruption of visual convention how far outside the game's boundaries you are.

this is how far you are above the problems of dawntrail's first half. you cannot even be bound by the normal rules of cinematography and video game combat. everyone else here lined up for a good old-fashioned scrap and the warrior of light said haha nope actually. i'm going to stroll through here like a god of war astride this tiny battlefield. your henchmen cannot even raise a hand to me. i don't even have to engage in violence directly anymore. my mere presence is enough.

in fact, not only can bakool ja ja's henchmen not raise a hand to you, he's not even worthy of your direct intervention. he kidnaps wuk lamat and steals her keystones and frees valigarmanda and kidnaps hunmu rruk and none of it warrants the warrior of light so much as raising a finger. he's wuk lamat's recurring villain, that's not your problem. you're just here to take in the scenery.

zoraal ja spends his whole life aspiring to be thought of as his father's equal and a worthy successor to the dawnservant as the "resilient son." all it takes for gulool ja ja to acknowledge you as a warrior on his level is like a five minute sparring match. the acknowledgement from gulool ja ja that zoraal ja hungered for his whole life and would eventually go full cyborg supervillain to get via regicide is something the warrior of light receives casually in a throwaway line after their level 93 solo duty on the way to more important plot conversations.

it really seems for a second, in the first half of dawntrail, like you are strong enough and the problems simple enough for this to be a clean and easy adventure. bakool ja ja? power of friendship'd. mamook? successfully reintegrated, no worries about the crimes against humanity. rite of succession? handily won. nothing can stop you. even duty finder queue times have been conquered: you can do all your duties with trusts now.

all of which only makes it better when the second half has sphene ask you and wuk lamat directly: could your strength have been enough to save alexandria? could you have found a different way?

i know some people get very annoyed we don't intervene in the gulool ja ja fight. now personally i think if you see arthur and mordred squaring up it's rude to intervene, but beyond that, it simply wouldn't have mattered. by the time zoraal ja's forces arrived in tuliyollal, alexandria and tural were already on a collision course and doomed to conflict. your hands alone could never have averted this conflict. sphene was always bound to do what she did—and certainly a gulool ja ja without his reason would not be any more inclined to peace than wuk lamat and koana were.

there's a great little moment just before living memory where estinien, champion at reading the room, is like "okay so if thancred and i stay here that frees up you up, aibou, to do what you do best and save the world and have epic fights. woo!!!" and immediately afterwards you basically have to apologize to alisaie because part of the sort of unspoken premise of this whole trip in the first place was that you were, finally, not going to plunge into mortal peril to save the world. you were finally going to take it easy. you were finally done with that. and she has to sort of ruefully be like nah it's fine bro. i was trying to get you to take it easy and not do insane risky world-saving violence. but y'know these things (interdimensional invasions) happen.

by the time you reach the very last trial, all pretense that the warrior of light could have ever been beyond these problems has vanished. you were, very emphatically, not strong enough to hold onto all that was dear without sacrifice. gulool ja ja and otis and cahciua died. yyasulani was irreversibly changed, physically colonized and culturally decimated by another dimension. you systematically shut down each part of living memory, and all its friendly, charming, loving ghosts, with your own hands. with your own clicks.

not even the vaunted strength of the warrior of light is enough to overcome sphene's inexorable logic of conflict. and so, in the end, she plucks you out of the crowd and says, explicitly for reasons of your strength, that you are going to have to do a boss fight now. you are going to have to kill her and you are going to have to do it in a proper 8-on-1 trial, and she forces you to affirmatively state that you understand you're going to kill her.

did you think you were above it all? did you think you could get away from here with your weapon undrawn, with your hands clean? that for you and you alone the logic of conflict comes undone? wrong. wrong. wrong.

your strength cannot redeem you, says sphene. your friends cannot make these sacrifices for you. if you would play the hero then you must play the hero. no half-measures.

back to the duty finder with ye.

[kiivg]

.please please please please please pl.

[picaroroboto]

everything post-Endwalker hinges on the idea that even after saving the world and being released from their duty as Warrior of Light the WoL will seek adventure for it's own sake. They're still doing the same things they always do but this time purely because they want to.

And I don't think that change would have been possible without Zenos.

The final confrontation with him at the end of Endwalker, his questions spurring the WoL to think about why they do what they do, or the duel that serves to show them how fun it can be to fight without the weight of the world on your back. It's crazy to think that for all of the harm he caused the positive consequence of Zenos's actions was inspiring his friend to live freely.

[the-random-tyler]

POV your new painter and his assistant have finally arrived

[t-5secondsart]

now that the "what sage would the lu boys be" polls are over, i thought it would be fun to draw the chain as the ancient sages from totk!

[alackofghosts]

spring ii

(text from this fool's old heart by chloé williams)

[dawntrailing]

WARRIOR OF LIGHT (VIPER)

[majoralynx]

CONGRATULATIONS TO @i-love-zelda-16 AND WARRIORS ON THE MARRIAGE!!!🎉🎉🥳🎉🎈🎉🎊🎈🎉🎈🎉🎊🎉🎉🎊🎉🎈🎈🥳

This whole thing makes me giggle so much I had to draw something for it 🫶🫶 did it in a few hours and I gotta say i really like it LOL

[sweeteastart]

Ravioli day 5 four days later for raviolishipweek by @breannasfluff

I finished this 25 panel hell of a comic. It's resolution is a bit quick but i don't think I'm impartial after spending days on it

[garden-of-thoughts-fruit-of-lips]

When recognizing a mistake, don't you instinctively strive for improvement? Similarly, when life knocks someone down, don't they inherently seek to rise stronger than before?

Our inner light is the greatest source of guidance. Is it not fitting that celebrities are called stars, shining bright? When we close our eyes, darkness fades, revealing our own radiant potential. Didn't the dragon's tail sweep away a third of the stars and hurled them to earth, reminding us God's Word is our eternal illumination?

Please pick a color to read. Or read them all 📚

Revelation 18:1

Revelation 21:23

Ezekiel 43:2

Genesis 2:1

Genesis 1:26

John 1:4

John 1:5

Revelation 12:1

Romans 12:2

Revelation 22:5

John 8:12

John 5:35

Isaiah 60:2

Psalms 36:9

Psalms 119:105

Matthew 5:16

Proverbs 4:18

Proverbs 6:23

2 Corinthians 4:4

Revelation 12:4

2 Corinthians 11:14

[tritoch]

i know a lot of people (very understandably) dislike the paladin job quests in ffxiv, particularly HW, but i do think it's fun that, now that the pre-ShB MSQ revamp is complete, paladins now have a very cool and thematic in-game storyline that happens without a word being spoken: the development of passage of arms.

none of the below is directly stated in the script, but imo it's a fairly obvious gloss on what the game presents, if you assume a paladin warrior of light. spoilers for all expansions through the end of 6.X.

in the new version of steps of faith, as vishap breaks through each ward protecting ishgard from attack, lucia mounts a final desperate effort to hold him back, with a very familiar looking animation:

but even lucia can't hold back vishap's flame alone, so the temple knights surge forward to assist her. their efforts make the shield visually more powerful and larger. the temple knights here band together in defense of ishgard, and their knightly resolve to protect their home is the difference between victory and defeat.

lucia and the knights do ultimately succeed in defending the last ward, as you have to defeat vishap before their shield falls or you lose.

later in heavensward, obviously, we will get ffxiv's most famous (failed) attempt at blocking something with a shield.

this moment can be read as fairly impactful on the warrior of light's development; as i've noted elsewhere, after the trauma of watching haurchefant bleed out in their arms at level 57, at level 58 paladins learn to channel their magic into healing (and it's called "clemency," or mercy. mercy for whom? who was guilty?), and as someone pointed out on that post, at level 58 dark knights used to get "sole survivor", letting them heal in response to a marked target's death.

for a time, you literally carry haurchefant's shield with you, and 3.3 very much literalizes in genre fashion the idea that even when you are standing alone, your fallen friends stand with you. you don't need to call any allies to stand at your side and raise their shields with you because they are already there, in spirit.

stormblood marks a pretty important turning point in the warrior of light as a combatant, in my opinion, and the text makes this clear in several ways. first, in pretty much all your jobs, you've now far exceeded your trainers and are pioneering new techniques. this is no less true of paladin, which for 60-70 abandons any trainers at all for you to show off your peerless skills in a tournament.

second, stormblood is straight up a story about you getting stronger. at level 61, zenos kicks your ass. at level 70, you kick his ass. why? because you fought and got stronger and developed incredible new techniques and became a one-man army.

for a lot of classes, this story lines up nicely with the big rotation changes or flashy new finishers on the way from 60 to 70. SMN is now busting out bahamut and casting akh morn; RDM gets verflare and verholy; DRG starts harnessing nidhogg's power directly through dragon sight and nastrond.

the tanks are divided in two: warriors and gunbreakers get huge damaging upgrades at 70 in the form of inner release and continuation, each of which lets them hit the same button many times for lots of damage and satisfying animations. paladin and dark knight get more protective abilities; dark knight gets the blackest night, and there's been plenty said about that already by pretty much everyone.

paladins get passage of arms. instead of a relentless new attack (and you get requiescat at 68, which is a way bigger deal for your dps rotation), your big reveal at 70 for zenos in your fight in ala mhigo is a superior way to protect your party, a shield that lets you stand for your allies so they never have to fall for you again. it's lucia's same shield, except you need no allies' shields to reinforce you, proof of your martial prowess and your ability to transcend limits, and perhaps in truth a reminder that you never really stand alone.

in many respects passage of arms should really feel like a paladin signature move to you now if you are playing it at this point, because you should be popping it in pretty much every fight (you are using your mits, right...?). basically every FFXIV fight has at least one big AOE with downtime that warrants passage of arms usage, usually after the mid-fight add phase with slowly filling bar. since that AOE usually drops during downtime, there's no reason not to pop passage of arms (which otherwise restricts your movement and actions), and even on normal, sometimes every little bit counts on a damage check even if it means dropping DPS (thinking here of harrowing hell P10N on release, which was...less consistent for a lot of roulette parties than you might hope).

so from 70 onward, passage of arms is in a sense a paladin warrior of light's signature move, and certainly the one a player gets to most actually enjoy (since if you're using it, you're by necessity not doing anything besides moving your camera and admiring your sick animation). it doesn't have any competition in terms of spectacle until confiteor, and those you're usually throwing out in the middle of movement.

it's such a signature, in fact, that the only other person shown using your one-person version of passage of arms is your greatest admirer, who studied your legend for over a century.

and it's when he fails (should've popped arm's length, bud) that the warrior of light decides they can't let their friends fall for them, and sends them away with the transporter beacon. this is all wrong: you were meant to die for them, not the other way around. yours is the shield that stands between your allies and defeat. it is you who will win this passage of arms and break your opponents lance. and you do.

and then later, when they need to quickly establish zero's domain as a place of fallen grandeur, the home of someone who once believed in heroes but is now a cool and cynical vampire hunter d, what do they use? a decayed statue of someone in the paladin endwalker gear doing the passage of arms animation, of course.

from a visible instantiation of knighthood as a joint effort to defend what is sacred, to a tribute to the fallen friends whose memories stand by you and animate you, to a symbol of the wol's power as emulated by their allies or darkly mirrored in other shards.

not bad for a mit button you hit once per fight and otherwise never think about!

[destiny-islanders]

a beginning (comic version!)

animatic version here!

[zylphiacrowley]

Well okay then! I guess I should've expected that result lol. So now for the follow up nuance (no polls tho since there's a few questions here):

If your WoL has canonically killed people:

Have they taken pleasure in any of their kills?

Do they only kill people when they deem that they must or have they ever gone out of their way to do so?

If your WoL has not canonically killed anyone:

How do you work with the storyline of XIV (e.g. someone else is always there to deliver the killing blow/they just have the Kiryu Kazuma-like ability to maim people so bad that it puts them out of commission forever without actually straight up ending their life/canon is merely a guideline/something else entirely)

[battleonthebigbridge]

(Immune to charm)