A series of blog posts with an eye for detail.<<< First | <<Previous | Next >>————————————————————————————————————————————
The tale of Heavensward is thus: Once upon a time, there was peace in the lands of Coerthas and Dravania. Some shiteheads made it that the consequences of this calamity resound to this day. The moogles might have been around back then, but they would have been too drunk and/or hungover to do anything about it.
I hope it is no surprise that Moghome was home to moogles. Some cajoling was required to get them to drop out of stealth, followed up by a series of chores to... do their chores. Their words, not mine. The Moghome mooglekin were keen on their kousin Kuplo Kopp, and by proxy, us; they just needed time to get the horn of Hraesvelgr summoning decobwebbed. I did not mind, for all of my frustrations got lost in the moogles' fluff and I got to hear of Kan-E-Senna scrubbing floors as a chore of her own. Her leadership had been a sore point even before her inaction in face of Teledji's brazen slander. Hers and Merlwyb's; for Twelve's sake, we were celebrating a victory won by not justifing cowardice by the mantra of "it's their internal affairs"!
To summon Hraesvelgr, all we'd need to do is toot our own horn at Zenith, the viridian structure ominously dominating one half of the sightlines at the Churning Mists. The other half was overlooked by a violent floating island that may or may not have been responsible for the region's specialty "Umbral Static" weather. Toots are easy, but the journey was long. The dragons sent by Nidhogg to provide mid-trip entertainment was nary an issue, but the howling winds required a short nap by the finish line — we could not toot the horn as we pleased until it had subsided.
Once more, Heavensward pulled that trick of revealing Dominique's face in a cutscene. Our hero cannot teleport food through a closed helmet, I suppose, and there might have even been a degree of comfort with this odd fellowship we had gathered. Estinien, Ysayle, and Alphinaud alike had shown some new depths over these travails. Estinien had a more insightful side to him than I had expected from his violent introduction, Ysayle had a softness to her and a shared love of moogle fur, and Alphinaud had learned the arts of making a fire without a handy servant to fetch the firewood. It was a pleasant, quiet moment, but one I had learned heralds doom in the stories of this game.
When day broke, a mighty toot summoned the mightier Hraesvelgr, conspiciously bereft of eye and patience. We had tooted in peace and we were granted it. It was a peace only distinguishable from its opposite by a lack of dying men, delivered through gritted teeth snarling a piece of the wyrm's mind in dragonspeech.
There was a tale of past and present. Once, there were King Thordan and twelve knights. They had a critical shortage of immortality and morality. They only cared to fix the former by feasting on the eyes of the great wyrmess Ratatoskr, as divinity is stored in the eyeballs. Consequences were set to befall the gallant knights in the form of a burninating Nidhogg, but the wretches emerged mostly unburninated and in the possession of one extra draconic eye by the powers of the consumed pair. This is the dragons' truth. Whether or not it is true matters little.
There was a question I should have opened: Why had the dragons not already razed Ishgard? Were the Ishgardians too competent? That premise rings hollow. If anything, they are as strong as they had ever been, their curses of "heretic" freshy backed with gunpowder and magery. The dragons would have had an easier time nipping the bluebloods in the bud. The answer does lie in that blue blood. The consumption of a dragon had left a mark not only on the knights, but on their progeny. All now bear a measure of Ratatoskr's blood, which can be mingled with the blood of other dragons to transform aposate into dragon. "An eternal requiem sung for his murdered sister" says Estinien. I say it was a breeding program. Ysayle... doesn't say much anymore.
I had my suspicions, and the wyrm confirmed them: the primals are a shadow of a being given form by faith and aether. Shiva isn't Saint Shiva. Hraesvelgr would know. He still feels her soul. It's the one thing that gives him peace. I wish Dominique could have hugged Ysayle here. I never expected to say it; you can read the contempt I spat at her in previous entries as proof. The woman had her sense of hope and sense of self shattered in seconds. What was there to do but provide comfort?
Kill Nidhogg. This is Dominique's creed, after all. Was violence the best answer? No, but it was the kind of answer that a Warrior's can provide and it was hardly for lack of trying. The purple island in the distance was the beast's lair, covered in aetheric storms. We needed a Cid. We got Biggs and Wedge instead, who had conveniently created the airship equivalent of a single-seater jet plane as a side project. More conveniently, it needed tuneups so Dominique had the time to resolve the most convenient plot beat of all: Nanamo's not-death.
I will mumble through the details so I have room for my opinions, not that they deserve the courtesy. This is the short of it: Nanamo got the Juliette treatment courtesy of Lolorito, who saw the machinations of Teledji as bad business. She's back up and running. The Crystal Braves coup was fine up until Lolorito parted ways with Ilberd over professional differences, at which point Dominique came in and broke their backs. Raubahn gets to be a general again, the Braves are disbanded by Alphinaud's formality of a decree, and what's left of the heroic ones is working on finding us the still-missing Scions. There is no abdication, because Ul'dah needs to be stable on account of the Garleans making another flagship, ready to invade Eorzea. Lolorito lives. MY REPUBLIC OF UL'DAH WAS STOLEN. LOLORITO LIVES. DOMINIQUE COULD HAVE KILLED HIM BUT HE LIVES.
THAT SNIVELING, DOUBLE CROSSING INSULT TO SONS OF WHORES WADDLES AWAY SCOT-FREE. THERE IS NO SATISFYING RESOLUTION. NO JUSTICE. The hobby of writing the occasional story in my spare time has cursed me with the awareness of plot beats, and this one reeks of a rushed cauterization of loose story threads that the writers didn't know what to make of. Things are back to status bloody quo. My notes, written in the moment, feature a lot of all caps and the phrase "How terribly unsatisfying." I was more annoyed at the storytelling than the dastardly villains who brought it about. This is a deadly sin in this artform. It has been a day since, and some annoyance persists. I also find myself glaring at Dominique over that bout of inaction.
"You could have killed him." I hiss. "Kill him, kill that stupid cone hat friend of his, make things right. No jury would convict you."
There is silence, of course. Dominique does not speak to me outside of journal entries. Then, a sound in my head. "Hypocrite." I can't see if our hero's lips moved, what with the helmet.
"You killed those Temple Knights. They had it coming. Do not tell me this maggot is better."
"He isn't. Slaying him wouldn't fix anything."
"It would be justice."
"And then what?"
"An Ul'dah free of the worst of its parasites. A better place, is it not?"
"It'd be war."
"We would win."
"Oh, so this pointless scrap's just and fine, but the dragons, noo, you're lamenting lost peace, are you? You tell off Ysayle for thinking war's gonna be all just and fine, nobody innocent's gonna suffer and—"
And then I advocate for the exact same, do I not, dear readers? Dominique's the one who had to work through complicated emotions, and now it seems to be my turn.
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OPEN QUESTIONSA question answered? After all this time? Eh. Maybe. I am short on characters, so I'll be short myself.
WHAT BECAME OF THE OTHER SCIONS? We have what's left of the Braves looking for them now.
WHAT IS THE NATURE OF A PRIMAL? A shadow of a being that once lived. Possibly more. I think we now know what the primals are, but I still feel that there are questions here. I will need to think on which questions these are.
WHAT HAPPENED TO HRAESVELGR'S EYE? It's conspicuously missing and eyeballs are conspicuously important to dragons.
CRACKPOT THEORIESIt's about time for my Bahamut madness to return.
Bahamut (the primal) was also an Ascian plot. Hraesvelgr remembers his summoning. He spoke of the dragons' desperation in a way that made them look... pliable. Who's to say the masked freaks didn't slide into the DMs the same way they do now? The big guy was a part of two Rejoinings now, so you can't say he didn't help them.
The dragons are going to summon Bahamut again. I see Nidhogg's Aery is a level 55 mission and there's a lot more plot that's supposed to happen even after we enter that dungeon. I see a plotline forming where the war turns against the dragons and they grow desperate. All you need is one of those ringwraiths at the wrong place...
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I do not think that the Ul'dah plot was good writing but it gave me things to think about all the same. I hope you liked my thoroughly stirred opinions. I will link no socials. Hraesvelgr told me it's a bad idea.
