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Calamity and the Battle of Carteneau Lore

Encyclopedia Eorzea Wrote:As the Circle of Knowing completed preparations for the summoning, they beseeched adventurers to serve as its guiding light. These adventurers embarked on a pilgrimage to kneel before the marks of the Twelve and summong the power of the gods. The Grand Companies did their part by leading the residents of the city-states in fervent prayer to their patron gods as well. In this time of impending darkness, it was said that the entire realm gathered to entreat the heavens with one voice, an Eorzea united by the litanies of its people. As adventurers and smallfolk alike proceeded according to Archon Louisoix's plan, the Garlean Empire stirred.

Encyclopedia Eorzea Wrote:The armies of the Eorzean Alliance assembled in northern Thanalan, proceeding as one north to Mor Dhona before pushing into the plains from the west. The remnants of the VIIth legion placed themselves in formations on the eastern edge of the plains, while a detachment from Castrum Centri would assault the Grand Companies from the rear. The commanders of the Eorzean Alliance countered the offensive by dispatching adventurers to keep the Castrum Centri cohorts at bay while their frontlines advanced toward the Imperial host.

Both sides had made their first move, and the Battle of Carteneau had begun. As the main infantry of the Eorzean Alliance spread out to meet the imperial forces head-on, Archon Louisoix soon arrived and commenced his summoning of the Twelve from a promontory overlooking the battlefield. Here, he would endeavor to focus their divine powers on Dalamud.

The vanguards of both armies clashed as the tide of battle ebbed and flowed in favor of the Aliance, then the Imperials, and back again. The Garlean, however, would soon completely overturn the odds when they deployed the next phase of their strategy: ten score magitek knights, each aboard their own reaper-class magitek battle armor. The offensive prowess of these newly developed war machines was overwhelming, and the Alliance's tentative hold on the front line began to falter.

For the Eorzean Alliance, this was the first large-scale operation to combine the efforts of so many different forces. Commanders struggled to properly coordinate the movements of each unit, ad hoc members of the Grand Companies such as the pirate factions of Limsa Lominsa and the Ala Mhigans serving among the Immortal Flames employed tactics that differed from, and often conflicted with, one another. In that sense, it could be said that the vast army which faced off the VIIth legion in Carteneau was little more than a haphazard assemblage of units charging aimlessly forward with but a common purpose to bind them. The confusion increased tenfold when the magitek knights and their reapers descended upon the Eorzean factions - whatever orders had been handed down meaningless now, as every man fought for himself. The Alliance's numbers far exceeded that of the dwindled imperial legion, yet the lack of a cohesive strategy meant the full power of their forces was never brought to bear. The Garleans, while fewer in number, had at their disposal an array of advanced technology and years of conditioning under a strict military regimen. Once the reapers had been deployed, the VIIth legion swiftly gained the upper hand.

As this chaotic juncture, the adventurers proved the Alliance's salvation. Those who were sent to dispatch the legion's diversionary force at Castrum Centri made their belated debut and quickly joined the fray. They were no strangers to the maneuverings of magitek weaponry, and reinvigorated the Eorzean side by forcefully advancing upon the legion's reapers. Through the adventurers' efforts, the imperials were pushed back, allowing the Eorzean Alliance to claw its way forward once more.

Encyclopedia Eorzea Wrote:None on the battlefield were prepared for that which brought the hostilities to an end. Upon quitting the firmament and entering the skies above Carteneau, the red moon cracked, and from within the iron sphere emerged an ancient primal the likes of which Eorzea had never seen.

According to post-Calamity research by the Archons of the Circle of Knowing, the primal that the Allagans enslaved within Dalamud was none other than the dreadwyrm Bahamut, last summoned some five millennia prior by a horde of dragons on the southern continent of Meracydia when their motherland was invaded by the Allagan Empire. The vessel broken and Bahamut released from his shackles, the colossal wyrm took wing to inflict his millennia of rage upon the realm. The elder primal tore away from Carteneau and rained a fiery hell upon the land. In the end, there was truth in Nael van Darnus's incoherent ramblings addressed to the moon. The legatus was aware of the monstrosity housed within Dalamud, and was heeding Bahamut's plea to be freed from his prison.

Both the molten shards that rained down from Dalamud and the searing flames which spewed forth from the dreadwyrm's maw were indiscriminate in their paths, and war became an afterthought as friend and foe alike fled the battlefield in terror. As the men of both armies ran for their lives, Louisoix Leveilleur kept silent vigil over Carteneau, unwavering in his effort to summon forth the power of the Twelve.

Though Louisoix may have failed in his attempt to repel Dalamud back into the heavens, he would not allow Eorzea to bear the brunt of Bahamut's rampage, toiling on borrowed time to seal the elder primal away where he could raze the realm no more. Wielding the legendary staff Tupsimati, he drew from the great reservoirs of aether flowing forth from the land, channeling its strength together with the overwhelming prayers of the people. The power of the Twelve manifested itself in complex runes in the sky in the most powerful sealing enchantment attempted in Eorzean history. The stone marks of the deities that were being nourished by the prayers of the Circle of Knowing were engulfed in pillars of light, becoming glowing spears that pierced the dreadwyrm, binding him in place as the runes confined him in a new prison. The plains of Carteneau were bathed in the light of the Twelve, and it appeared that the ritual was complete.

Despite the fact that all eyes were fixated upon the summoning of the Twelve, there appear to be no witnesses who can recall with certainty what happened after the elder primal was enveloped in the gods' light. It is said that Archon Louisoix's powerful spell combined with the vast emanations of aether had warped the memories of all who survived, an effect which lingered long after the Calamity. What is known for certain is that by the time the light of the Twelve had dissipated, Bahamut was no more. At the same token, the faces of Eorzea's heroes - the adventurers by whose deeds Archon Louisoix's incantation came to pass - were lost to history. So it was that Eorzea plunged into the Seventh Umbral Era.

In Louisoix's Wake Wrote:It was long after Louisoix had taken ship and vanished over the horizon that the fateful day came. Alphinaud and Alisaie were crowded into the Studiumâ€™s observatory, along with their professors and a throng of fellow students. The assembled sages and would-be scholars huddled around the base of the giant telescope, each taking their turn to gaze upon the looming spectacle of the red moon, Dalamud.

â€œDalamud has shattered!â€ Alisaie cried out, pressing her face closer to the telescopeâ€™s eyepiece so that it dug into her cheek. The view provided by the deviceâ€™s array of magnifying lenses was distorted and indistinct, but the fate of the satellite was unmistakableâ€”she could see its crimson-fringed silhouette breaking apart in the skies over Carteneau.

â€œShattered!? What...before it struck the ground!?â€
â€œHow is that possible!?â€
Excited murmurs and hastily formed theories erupted from teacher and pupil alike.

â€œHeâ€™s done it! Grandfather has saved Eorzea!â€ Alisaie turned to find her brotherâ€™s face, her eyes glistening with tears of joy and relief. For some time now, Archon Urianger had been kind enough to relay to them brief reports of Louisoixâ€™s efforts in those chaos-stricken faraway lands. It was he who had informed them of their grandfatherâ€™s presence at the Carteneau Flats, and of the battle that still raged like as not beneath that blood-red sky.

Shouldering aside his madly grinning sibling, Alphinaud squinted through the ocular lens. Though the air was thick with billowing clouds of smoke and ash, he was forced to agree with Alisaieâ€™s assessmentâ€”Dalamud was no more.

But something is awry... Alphinaud continued to scrutinize the distant scene. The red moonâ€™s bloody glow had been replaced by an equally unsettling incandescent rain, as if the heavens themselves were weeping tears of light. Terribly, terribly awry...

Dalamudâ€™s spectacular demise gave rise to a tidal wave of aetheric energy which rendered linkshells all but useless for a period of many days. During this time, the Leveilleur siblings were left to stew upon the wonders they had viewed from afar. Then, after weeks without word, a letter from Urianger arrived.

The Archonâ€™s elegant script described horrors the twins could scarce bare to picture. From the cracked husk of the red moon had emerged a dragon primal immense beyond imaginingâ€”an incarnation of wrath and raging flame that had laid waste to the land for malms in every direction. Undeterred, Louisoix had persisted with his plan to call forth the power of the Twelve, and thus, it seemed, was the abomination banished. Eorzea had been saved.