Goodfellow

I'm late to the party, but I've got Y and you can find me at 3110-5659-3391.

I'm usually on during at least a few of those hours. I can't really bring any friends, but feel free to search Lolotaru Lalataru.

Throughout the cutscenes, Hydaelyn is not just referred to as a world, but as a planet. My question then is this: is Hydaelyn a part of any sort of stellar system like our own solar system with other planetary bodies (not just Hydaelyn's own moons)? And if so, are there details of that system and its component celestial bodies anywhere in the lore?

((At the word "scholar," Lolotaru's eyes grow wide. Compelled, his right hand gets to writing.)) "Gripping the axe tightly, the Morbol bearing down on her position, Pentunia growled through her grin, 'I thought I'd find you here, you old bastard!'"

In keeping with current RPC vogue, I've got a question about the Elementals. I didn't want to derail the fine discussion thread about their nature, though, so I'm resurrecting this thread. I didn't play 1.0, nor have I done all Gridania's quests or the whole CNJ/WHM line, so maybe this is all answered in there somewhere. So do the Elementals ever evidence themselves individually or are they collective beings? And if they do appear as individuals, do they have names? Would a SL dealing with one Hearer and their Elemental buddy have legs? Thanks!

So, you're saying (and I'm being convinced that) the Elementals are more akin to nature spirits in Shinto or African animist religions than to any pantheon of gods, right?

I don't have any screenshots, but I'm pretty sure I regularly hear NPCs refer to hell. Usually as an exclamation, but my take has always been that there is some sort of cosmological-theological conception of hell that more or less matches our own and that the Void is a much more immediate threat and not simply a destination for the wicked.

Excellent and thanks!

I came across this old post and immediately remembered this thread. It is relevant. http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/61229-Eorzean-Literature?p=980121&viewfull=1#post980121 Via Fernehalwas:

Great! Well, I figured a more tangential relationship to the "main tribe" might be best given my inconsistent playtime with alts. I'll try to PM you some more details of what I'm thinking of later and you can help me figure out the logistics of where we might all intersect.

Congratulations, boss!

So I was looking at one of my unplayed, placeholder alts. Namely, my Drake Sun Seeker, and I decided that I didn't really need him to be part of the U and that I was really starting to get interested in the K. Now, as an alt he doesn't get a lot of play just yet and there are more than a couple of things in his backstory as I've worked it out so far that likely clash with a great deal of the established Hipparion fanon, so I wouldn't want to work him into the main tribe (sept?) in any defining or crucial way (maybe even establishing him as part of an offshoot), but I would like to tie him to what you've created in some meaningful way. The relevant authorities can carry on the discussion with me here or via PM. Thanks!

I'm not a performer, I'd just like to say that this seems very cool of you and I hope you and your girlfriend have a good time.

Really? Not just the buyouts?

Fantastic! I'll start slot 4 off with 75k gil.

That's a good point. Maybe souls exist apart from the aether cycle. Everything else lore-wise is so heavy on the aether that I may have just been making an undue assumption or filling in the blanks incorrectly.

Thanks for the input. Firstly, it was actually the soul that I assumed did not return to the Lifestream, but instead moved to "Thal's realm," unless that is a euphemism for the Lifestream. And yes, the 50/50 split was arbitrary. I just was throwing some numbers together to help myself visualize and organize my thoughts. And maybe the aether loss is insignificant in the short term, but I'm being really speculative and saying that if it does work in a manner akin to what I'm proposing, be it in a hundred, thousand, or million years, it will exhaust itself and collapse. Of course, if the aether does "renew" in some form, then the loss attributable to the planet's natural life cycle could very well be negligible and thus would be a non-issue, as you posited. It's probably underdeveloped and we clearly don't have all the pertinent information, it's just something that occurred to me from the information I had gathered and I wanted to know what the community thought about it.

It's that time again! More questions! Now, we're likely veering off into the undeveloped (or underdeveloped, at least) and speculatory, but let's do it. I'm much more up on the lore these days, but one thing I'm still having trouble with is the relationship between the aether and religion. Bear with me as I lead you nose-first through my thought process here. I feel like I remember (during the explanation of the aetherytes, maybe) that physical bodies come from aether and eventually return to aether (magical decomposition?) and as such we can temporarily jump in and out of the Lifestream to teleport/return. And maybe I'm making this up, but I think there are implications that our souls are also aether-based, but then they move on to the afterlife, i.e. Thal's realm. We also know from the threat of the Primals that the aether/Lifestream is finite, or at least doesn't renew quickly enough to keep up with the drain of the Primals. So if we are composed of aether and only 50% of that aether (our bodies, not our souls) returns to the Lifestream after we die, doesn't that imply that the whole system of life and death on Hydaelyn is unsustainable? Or am I missing or misinterpreting something? Short version: People in Hydaelyn are bodies (physical aether) + souls (non-physical aether), but only our bodies (physical aether) returns to the Lifestream when we die. So doesn't that produce a sort of terminal aether half-life which will eventually exhaust the Lifestream, regardless of the Primals?

Ha! Those look great! I never played the original Tactics myself, but I did play Advance and Grimoire of the Rift. Slightly different art style, I know, but I would certainly be interested in seeing Lolo done in your style. Keep up the good work!

^This. I'm keeping an eye on the thread and hoping to jump when the opportunity presents itself (and I'm sure I'm not alone in such). Although, I'm not really into any of the gear I've got right now, so maybe now's not quite the time.

But sprites, while elementals, aren't the Elementals of the Gridanians/Twelveswood, are they? Are the Elementals more sort of formless representations? And I'm still interested in Teuto's question. Also, how do y'all tend to treat summons IC? Specifically with regards to proximity. For example, could a scholar send Selene off to run some errands? Or an arcanist give Carbuncle a letter to deliver? Might a summoner send Ifrit home to have dinner ready before she gets there? The mind boggles.

Yeah, that all sounds reasonable. But if pretty much everything else in the lore relates to crystals and aether, I wonder if/how the elementals do as well. Maybe we'll get something in a lore-dump someday.

I might not know this simply because I've not spent a great deal of time in Gridania, but who exactly are these elementals that they're always going on about? They're not beastmen or Primals (at least, I don't think), so are they some other type of aetheric manifestation or simply nature spirits or something else?

Ah, I see. Thanks!

So I've seen a couple of references around here to a gem in reference to summoning Carbuncle. Have I just completely overlooked that so far in my arcanist's story or have I not made it to that information somehow? If true, then there's an IC assumption that anyone with a Carbuncle tailing them has one of these gems? Topaz or Emerald, I assume. If so, it doesn't break anything for me, I'll just need to make a minor adjustment to Lolotaru.