Valence

Personally I don't believe the Dark Arts as used by the dark knights are really to be found anywhere else since it took them centuries to actually discover those arts... Matter of interpretation I guess.

Lots of jobs in the lore often thread on the trope of a dark and dangerous power put to the service of Good. The Dark Arts for the dark knight, the Inner Beat for the warrior, the Black Magic for the black mage, etc. The MSQ talks a lot about the struggle against one's own dark side born out of one's own emotions. It's kinda sith in itself yeah, except as long as the dark knight keeps it in check and under control, then it's all good. Spoilers ahead: So, all in all, while the story is a lot about a self discovery of one's inner dark side, it still takes root in the same journey that Fray had to go through, like many ishardian dark knights before him.

There is a subtle difference at play. - Dark Knights are an ishgardian cultural thing, the counterpart of temple knights abusing their powers, among other things. They are the batmans of the city, protecting the people left out and the common man. - However, Ishgard has not always been closed to the outside, and has even re opened its doors recently. The NPC quest giver (Sidurgu) for the 50-60 questline is actually an Aura that has lived there for quite some time.

I'm not contesting any plot holes mentioned above or anything, quite the contrary, but I want to point out that the wall is maybe primarily designed to keep Eorzeans out of the Empire's territory, not the other way around. When you build a wall, it's not necessarily closed at the other side, quite the contrary in fact. Maybe that wall is facing eorzea, while all the stairs, elevators, machinery, encampments and military barracks are behind it, exposed to Ala-Migho (which is supposed to be, you know, conquered territory under garlean control and whatnot...). We don't know how many they were exactly to storm that wall, and what were the circumstances surrounding the imperial garrison active there, especially considering the truce was still holding since the Black Wolf failed.

In negociations that's actually the worst thing you can do. You don't bring up a sore subject for you if it's not been specifically brought up someone else. The only thing he managed to was to make everyone awkward, and could potentially have brought up a sore subject that could have gone in the way of everything else. If someone brings it up, then yes, you apologize and move on. Maybe Aymeric is just young and still inexperienced.

Garlemald is huge and most legions are actually busy with their own duties stationned in all its regions as far as I know. But they sure probably can afford to send more than the first time. That's what this specific line seemed to hint at to my eyes.

Allagan and Magitek are hardly correlated, or not as much as we would like to think. While it's true that the discovery of Allagan tech by the late emperor made is so that the Garlemald Republic suddenly made huge technological leaps, and that we see old allagan constructs like the Death Claws being revived and put back in business, we have to keep in mind that Garleans actually proved unable to understand the underlying principles of any allagan tech they stumbled upon. The invention of Magitek is of their own doing and fueled by the apparition of the ceruleum engine, and ceruleum is a way cruder energy source than what the Allagans were capable of. Most of the allagan tech actually revolved around advanced circuitry, AI, and aetherochemical energy (the core of their tech, which hints at an understanding of the underlying physical principles behind aether itself, turned as a chemistry of sort). It's like comparing fossil fuel to the power of the atom (or even more advanced physics you fancy).

Yes I can definitely see the forum as being totally compromised.

It's worth pointing out that the Bibliothecs follow a certain ideal of non interference. It means that they consider Sharlayan to be a strict studium after knowledge of all kinds, but that they should refrain first and foremost to partake in foreign affairs. They consider that their knowledge cannot be used to get any influence over the world. They are there to study and watch, no matter what, if the world shines, or burns, they will still be there, learning, taking notes, and watching. They are after knowledge for the sake of knowledge. This is incidentally why they loathe every kind of attempt to spread Sharlayan knowledge out of their borders, or to foreigners. That being said, I always got the understanding from the quests that it's not so much the whole Sharlayan forum and nation that want Leveva dead, and goes that far as sending assassins after her family, but more the faction of the bibliothecs. The political party. They swayed the forum opinion on how to deal with foreigners sure, and made the whole nation close itself from the outside. But I never believed that the forum actually went so far as to condone assassination and such things. Maybe I'm misunderstanding though, but it seems a bit too simple and weird to see the whole Sharlayan going that far.

GMT?! Don't hesitate to hit me up!

Is this explicitly stated somewhere or is it implied? Because I have been under the implication that it is true but is it explicitly stated somewhere? I'm pretty sure they mention it rather factually in the MSQ with Ysaile the first time they go meet her in the Akh-Akfa Amphitheater.

There is a huge difference between a tomato pie and a pizza to my eyes though. That's not what I'm saying though, I'm aware of coffee's age... I'm pointing out that the way you are gonna depict a real life import in the game will totally decide if it's rubbish or brilliant. RL rip offs are very hard and finicky things to do right. Especially when they are still used as modern conveniences in a modern culture. If you don't translate them back in their historical context, they remain used as a modern RL culture, but in Eorzea. And it doesn't ring true at all. I don't think I'm being wrong in assuming that coffee - as a coffee ignorant person overall - wasn't exactly consumed the same back in the time it appeared in the Middle East, and that the culture of coffee back then, was anything even remotely close. Historical flavor, yes. Not a problem of timeline.

Which anime is that where the boy discovers he can shapeshift in a white tiger already? Bungou Stray Dogs or something? Is that supposed to be similar here? There is nothing in lore right now that supports shapeshifting as far as I know, except this handful of things: 1) Transforming into a dragon. This is specifically tied to ishgardians whose ancestors share a bit of the blood of Great Wyrms. If they drink dragon blood, they can transform into dragons more or less permanently as far as I'm aware. 2) Transforming into a voidsent. This is where you get tainted by Voidsent shit and your flesh gets slowly corrupted to the point of transforming yourself into one of them. You slowly lose your mind and your aether slowly dries and twists into a husk driven by its lust for aether. This is different from being possessed by a voidsent without a physical form that is using your body as its vessel. 3) Turning into a primal avatar, like Ysaile or Thordan for example. This is totally reversible, especially when you run out of crystals, as you may know that primals must eat a constant, colossal amount of crystals to sustain themselves or else they wither. The more powerful they are, the more colossal that amount is. Alternatively, they can also feed directly from the planet aether (cf Alexander), or artificial aetherochemical generators/tanks (xf Bahamut and the Warring Triad).

Well; at least one guy tried to eat Coblyns so... I think some people might have had more of a problem with the 'historical flavor' rather than the technological issues, but... Honestly, it's a matter of tastes. It's Eorzea, still. It seems to mix stuff from all RL - and less RL - eras so... Having icecream made with ice crystal shards? At the Costa Del Sol? Sounds pretty mild to me. It's also threading a lot on something that can be cringe worthy for many people, also. The game lore always takes great care into transforming their RL inspirations into the setting and into proper Eorzean styled foods, stuff, etc. Even when it's a blatant ripoff where they have the laziest writing, like for seasonal events (Heavensturn, Starlight, etc... well at least they changed the names to give them meaning in the setting). It's always a matter of how far you are willing to go into... what I would call an uncanny valley where contemporary RL stuff blends so much with the ffxiv setting that it starts to just break every kind of suspension of disbelief possible. When you start to see people taking their coffee to wake up at morning, take another one before going to work in their eorzean cubicles after a ride in some kind of bus towed by chocobos... Only to take their lunchbreak at the local fastfood when they have burgers and french fries and icecream and whatnot... Mh, I might be wrong but it doesn't seem to me that a lot of foods in the lore are contemporary food. Most of them seem to be classic cuisine or old cuisine as far as I can tell? Or just made up stuff.

To be more precise, I didn't find it especially a hard stretch to conclude there is indeed seasons in Eorzea/Hydaelyn considering all the references we get of winter, spring, summer, etc. Or just seasons. I forgot about that specific quote on the heat wave they get in the Shroud, but otherwise I'm more specifically looking for possible info on what seasons do on most regions. The only thing so far I have been able to gather is that winters in snowy Coerthas are extremely cold and bitter, but then again, we are already speaking about a region climate that got completely fucked up by the Calamity. Again, to speak more simply, I'm interested in hints or description of what it can be in other seasons. Is the Shroud snowy in winter? Are a lot of its trees deciduous and so the forest gets a lot less thick? How does Thanalan look in winter? Are summers in La Noscea full of storms and thunder like a tropical islandic climate, or are they closer to a homogenous equatorial thing? Well, I'm well aware that not much has probably ever been written on the matter by the lore team considering how hard it is to track (and maybe there is actually nothing and i'm tracking a chimera), so I'm obviously not expecting something that detailed. But you get the picture.

Do we have accounts of the actual impact of natural seasons on all the lands in Eorzea? I'm not referring to calamity stuff like what happened in Coerthas. Does the Shroud gets snowy in winter? That kind of things. It's somewhat harder to find than I imagined, even with the lore finder (considering the amount of results to parse through...).

The Raen and Xaela tend to really loathe each other. The former sees the latter as nothing more than barbarians, while the latter see the former as people that forsake their ancestral traditions and tongue. While I indeed don't see a lot of people immediately mistrusting Xaelas in everyday roleplay, the thing I also keep in mind is that except for a Raen character, there is actually very little reason for other races to be wary of them since most of them actually shouldn't even know who those are. The only mistrust I could see is not from actually being informed about Xaelas (like the Raen are), but the usual mistrust Eorzeans offer to foreigners and alien races.

Maybe I'm thinking too much in terms of "electricity and conductance" where neutrality actually means isolation. And thus, a certain mild immunity, or more exactly, a heightened resistance.

To add a bit on what Sounsyy said, oppposite elements don't really interact with each other. They actually are totally neutral to each other, while they have different kinds of interactions with all the others. For example, your Earth can be boosted by Fire, and can also create Ice. It is also a disabler of Lightning. While it's not strictly speaking lore canon, if we translate it to biological effects, one can imagine that if your character gets into very hot areas, or in contact with flames, that it would in turn reinforce strongly his Earth aspected disorder. That Earth aspected disorder might favor colds, hypothermia and that kind of nasty ailments (favoring Ice). Since it also neutralize lightning, we could imagine that it could have a very negative effect on the neural system and nerves, maybe numbing limbs, etc. Being an opposite of Wind, it could also mean that your character's body might be mildly immune to Wind aspected effects.

Not much, but this might help a little.

All nobles have houses! Minor or major. If you want to see more houses, you can go directly check the Scholasticate quests as we don't continue to deal with always the same big four houses that we see in the MSQ (Durendaire, Fortemps, Haillenarte and Dzemael). There is a few interestingly spicy minor houses with creepy or tragic backgrounds, among others. We have one prime example of NPC that actually left Ishgard to travel all the way to Sharlayan in order to study here: Jannequinard, from the Astrologian class quests. He is the son of a noble, wealthy family. Mind that Jannequinard got back from Sharlayan twenty years ago, which more or less coincides with the time when Sharlayans abandoned their colony in the Dravanian Hinterlands. Interestingly enough, Jannequinard family is rather conservative and his uncle for example despises sharlayan astrology. He says himself not to encourage him further and let his dreams that: dreams. But they don't forbid him to do whatever he wants, because he's not first in line of succession. In short, he's part of those indolent second, third sons, or even less well positioned offspring without much legacy that are left to live in their family's allowance.

If you really want to dabble in your classic blue magic FF trope, I'm afraid we don't really have anything in lore right now as far as I know. But as suggested above you can wait for the next fanfest and see if the next revealed job for 4.0 will be blue mage. That way if it's the case, then you might have a safer framework to work with, even if you will still lack most of the specific history, classquests and lore specifically tied to the class in Eorzea. For that, you will unfortunately have to wait for 4.0, if blue mage is confirmed that is. However as you say, summoners tend to learn their spells and magicks when directly or indirectly confronting primals, or primal essences. That's not exactly blue magic as they don't learn it by being hit though, and their learning is limited to primals only, not your average everyday (or less everyday) creature of Eorzea. A summoner could totally mimic Ifrit hellfire, since we know for certain that at least the WoL can mimic Bahamut's Deathflare and Painflare when they get frustrated that the Elder Primal is too much to chew when it comes to directly summon him. We also know that Tristan, the antagonist of the SMN quests, replicates Ifrit various abilities. Since we know that lesser primals like Ifrit, Garuda and Titan can be summoned as gimped versions of themselves (Egis), I don't think it's too much of a stretch to conclude that their abilities should not be a huge deal to learn for summoners. It becomes way harder with bigger primals that you can't directly summon, being too powerful for that and out of reach (for now). Then you have the unconventional Allagan road I think. We know for example that Ultilma Weapon was able to directly syphon primals and store their energies, spells and abilities in its aetherochemical tanks and advanced computers. And cast them at will, as shown in the assault on the Praetorium when facing Gaius in control of the Ultima. Well, that's super advanced prototype allagan tech though, so... It might not be the most accessible thing ever, but that's a possible mechanic lore wise.

I find the scholasticate quests the best sidequests ever, personally (not that the bar was very high though). It's the only one that serves us so much lore in a more composed, neutral, and less black and white fashion (it still is though). It told us so much about ishgardian lore and current climate and changes... And it actually has meat besides ping pong quests to kill x mobs because of silly reasons. I want more of those.

I would tend to argue that voidblood or void corruption tends to actually dampen a lot true feelings, emotions until the bearer turns more and more into something feral and driven by needs rather than the former. And we know that Dark Arts are fed by strong emotions they use as a (deadly) fuel. Don't take it as lore though, just my reasoning on the matter.

I initially thought the same but... It does actually. There is a lot more back and forth between characters. Lots of witty (or dumb) lines. Especially the triangle in the Death Star at the end.