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blackestnight · 1 year

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ffxiv and magic traditions: a very self-indulgent and nonsensical “““essay“““

as a joke i said “haha what if i went off and described each of my oc’s magical abilities but in terms of pathfinder’s magic traditions,” but then no one stopped me, so it’s no longer a joke. anyway.

this will come as a shock, i’m sure, but i play a lot of tabletop rpgs, especially pathfinder 2e. as much as i love ffxiv’s armory system as a mechanic (getting to take multiple classes! one one character! with no penalties! it’s fantastic!) the inherent mechanical limits on each class as a result just…bore me, frankly, from a worldbuilding standpoint; i much prefer the inherent flexibility of ttrpgs, where even two characters with identical classes and ancestries can play entirely differently. hence i like to draw inspiration from ttrpgs when doing my own worldbuilding for my ffxiv characters.

some necessary background: when i say “magic traditions” i’m referring to pf2’s four traditions: arcane, divine, primal, and occult—you might also hear these referred to as “spell lists.” these are separate from the eight schools of magic that you see in a lot of ttrpgs (including pf2 and 5e), such as evocation, divination, necromancy, abjuration, etc. put simply, the school of magic dictates what a spell does, but the caster’s magic tradition dictates where the power to cast it comes from, which will make more sense in a second if it doesn’t already.

also, obligatory because-this-is-the-internet disclaimer: these are my personal headcanons and class interpretations, applied for my own worldbuilding purposes to my own interpretation of the game world, i am not trying to dictate how you should play the game or write your story, you do you, etc.

with that out of the way: HERE WE GO

i’m starting with haruki mostly because he…actually doesn’t do much magic in the way of spellcasting, but he definitely has magical abilities, being a not-quite-dragoon. (i like to call him “waterbender with a pointy stick.”) instead of drawing upon the power of his ~inner dragon~ (he doesn’t have one), his supernatural abilities are a blessing from the auspice seiryu, which makes him a classic example of a divine caster. the most common divine casters in a lot of systems would be clerics, but it really just means that a character’s magical abilities are given as blessings from some sort of divine entity. on his own, haruki is not capable of breathing underwater or summoning tidal waves, but he possesses the power to do those things because the power is on loan from seiryu. it’s also important to note that just because he has power from seiryu doesn’t mean he worships seiryu; it’s pretty standard fare in the pathfinder universe for characters to receive divine blessings unasked-for, and sometimes unwanted (this is, like, the entire premise of the oracle class, and i’d argue also fits pretty perfectly with the oracles of light and darkness in ffxiv as well, but that’s a subject for another post).

i’m lumping adelaine and sjanna together because, not only do they practice the same magic tradition, they both practiced multiple traditions over the course of their respective lives. addie, who was enrolled in the conjurer’s guild while growing up in the black shroud, and sjanna, who was raised a servant of the green word in golmore jungle, both started their journeys as magical practitioners of the primal tradition. not to be confused with ffxiv’s primals, the summoned entities, primal magic is drawn from nature and a connection to the natural world—druids would be the iconic primal casters in most game systems. the line between primal and divine casting can get a little fuzzy sometimes, especially once you get into things like the elementals (who are sentient nature spirits worshipped in their own rights), but i ultimately lumped addie and sjanna into the primal tradition because conjury, from what we’ve seen, is about drawing aether from the land itself (and the elementals are depicted as “voices of the land”). the green word as it appears in ffxiv, similarly, is close to the green faith as it appears in pathfinder: a code that demands respect, reverence, and preservation of the natural world. addie learned magic as a conjurer who drew power from the land around her, and sjanna learned magic as a keeper of the wood who revered the green word. later in life, addie (who had suffered emotional and medical abuse under the conjurers’ guild) and sjanna (who committed anathema to the green word by deliberately causing harm to the wood) stopped being practitioners of primal magic, although addie left it behind willingly while sjanna had her power stripped from her.

so both of them instead re-trained in the arcane magic tradition. arcane magic is like, your stereotypical locked-in-a-tower wizard who spends all their time poring over spellbooks—they make a study of magic and use logic and rationality to categorize and control magic. ffxiv’s arcanists are also (fittingly) a good example of arcane magic as it appears in pathfinder. the arcane tradition relies upon casting spells from constructs, like magical diagrams or matrices, which can be physical (like the arcanist’s grimoire, in addie’s case, as she goes on to become a scholar) or a mental construct (which sjanna prefers, being more of a staff-wielder than a book-toter). it’s also worth noting that, in the case of pathfinder (and as i’m using it here), arcane magic draws mostly on the caster’s reserves, rather than drawing on power from an external source like divine and primal magic. addie learned arcane magic as a means of retaining her power without giving up her agency to an elemental tradition that had harmed her; sjanna took it up to reclaim abilities that had been taken from her, but this time under her own power. i just think it’s neat.

and last but not least: hanami. if you’re wondering why she hasn’t come up before now, it’s because i am cracking open a refreshing cold can of my bullshit (drk theorycrafting). settle in.

“but cyan,” you say, “isn’t hanami’s whole thing that she keeps insisting she is not a damn mage?” yes it is. however, hanami is a filthy fucking liar. hanami, as a dark knight, is a practitioner of the occult magic tradition.

occult magic is definitely the least-understood of the four magic traditions, both in the in-universe pathfinder flavor text and on a meta level by the players. the word occult probably brings to mind, like, a circle of hooded figures with candles and weird rituals to summon some horrible tentacled creature from whatever great beyond, but per in-universe texts on occult magic, these practitioners are benefiting more from sheer dumb luck than an actual understanding of occult magic, which is best demonstrated by the iconic occult casters of pathfinder: bards.

occult magic draws its power from the concept of a shared narrative. practitioners at their finest use magic to invoke symbols commonly understood by its beneficiaries (or victims) that, in turn, causes some secondary effect—usually an emotional reaction (you see a lot of mental spells on the occult spell list). in the case of a bard, they will most typically use song, but dark knights as written in ffxiv do the exact same thing. per the lv 30 unlock quest, dark knights are fueled by fear, pain, and rage (and, as we oh-so-memorably learn in the 50-60 questline, all of these are superceded by love, kupo), but the flavor text of several of the drk abilities (back in ye olden days when we actually got flavor text) also include references to emotional manipulation. per enyclopedia eorzea’s description of Unleash (the starting aoe skill): “Releasing his pain and rage upon nearby foes, the dark knight manifests an inky black circle of spikes on the ground around him. All those caught in its thorns are struck by unreasoning terror, and an irresistible need to claw away at its source.” also from EE1, under the section dedicated to Dark Arts (the conceptual magical practice, not the skill, may she rest in peace): “Fueled by the darkness from within, the dark knight employs these techniques to lend an arcane edge to the blows of her greatsword. Though known for their disdain for shields, the fighting style of the earliest dark knights was nevertheless built upon mundane swordplay, and it was not until several centuries later that one of their order first unlocked the secrets of the dark arts.”

we know from the very start of the class questline that dark knights are something of a folktale to ishgardians; the npc who starts the unlock quest talks about dark arts practitioners, and even later in the lv 63 quest, an npc named Lowdy (you know, the waitress who poisoned you back in falcon’s nest like 3 patches ago) explicitly mentions being told stories about dark knights as a child. (based on the relevant npcs’ social stations, it probably varies whether the mythical dark knights are presented as folk heroes or bogeymen.) “but cyan,” you say, “can you get to the fucking point?”

yes i can. my theory—once again, i direct you to the ‘this is me playing in a sandbox’ disclaimer—is that the original dark knights didn’t use dark arts or magic because there was no narrative surrounding them. the first dark knights, being the founders of the discipline, didn’t have the benefit of a ready-made reputation to go with the greatsword and the heavy armor: by the modern day, when the warrior of light and sidurgu and fray take up the mantle, dark knight evokes a very specific image that instills fear, and pain, and rage—which they then harness for their own ends. dark knights use the shared narrative of ‘big fucking scary knight with big fucking scary forbidden magic’ to actually do that magic: the belief and the fear is the source of their power.

also just, one of these days i will go off about dark knights and akasa/dynamis, but this is already long and i’m already getting off-track, let me just put a pin in that.

so hanami, as an occult caster, uses Unleash and summons a big circle of spikes in the ground. scary! that image, which is pretty universally interpreted as threatening, achieves the effect of inducing terror in anyone caught in those spikes, because the magic is powered by the narrative of “big honkin’ thorns made of pure darkness = danger.” on the flipside, the dark knight also draws power from love—the specific example we see is the love a knight bears for their charge. (additional side-rant that folks like @starswornoaths and @autumnslance could do better than me: better paladin story than the paladin story.) what is The Blackest Night skill, if not a manifestation of that story of devotion and adoration?

…this definitely got off track and if you’re still here you get a medal. the medal is metaphorical though. ty for enjoying my rambling, if you’re interested in more information about the pathfinder magic traditions, i pulled a lot of the stuff above from the Secrets of Magic sourcebook, which contains a ton of cool worldbuilding about magic, including stuff about the traditions, the eight magic schools, and the four magical essences that i didn’t even get into here because they’re not immediately relevant, but they are cool. also: if this was fun enough that you want to incorporate the magical traditions into your own worldbuilding, obviously you can because i’m not a cop, but also tell me about it!!! show me your divine red mages or your arcane paladins or whatever cool and funky stuff you wanna do!!! talk multiclassing to me!!!

thank you for reading bye!!!

#final fantasy xiv #journal #oc: hanami hagane #oc: haruki hagane #oc: sjanna eldfalk #oc: adelaine anselout #worldbuilding #YEETS THIS INTO THE ABYSS

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