LMFAOOOOO

What a fucking BANGER

ffxiv fandom the past couple weeks: hold up lahabrea fucked?!

ffxiv fandom now: everyone suddenly wants to fuck lahabrea

The 6.0 release:

we don't know who this "Athena" is but she had to have had questionable taste 😒😬

Today:

NVM WE GET IT, NICE JOB ATHENA

i was rewatching the pandaemonium cutscenes because i missed themis and the way fiver turned to stare at erich after dracula said that is so fucking funny

FINAL FANTASY XIV ➸ THEMIS [1/?]

I’m still thinking about this post and though I still don’t have a solid theory about who would win, I do have Thoughts that I just need to air out.

Emet Selch and Solas are both incredibly ruthless characters, but in different ways:

It’s been a hot minute since I played DA:Inquisition so I’m not really up on what Solas/Fen’harel can or cannot do canonically and what could be inferred as to power level as to what he could also possibly do if he wanted to, but:

Emet-Selch reaches into death, and hauls one soul back out and re-clothes them in flesh… and clothes too after a moment. Instantly, completely and without apparent effort. Not a shade, not a reanimation, but the whole entire person. And does it in the time it takes to snap his fingers.

Amaurot. I don’t see Fen’harel recreating entire cities from memory, do you?

Emet-Selch is canonically so dense with aether, the Lifestream can’t sweep him away. Even after you kill him (using white auracite to keep him from boomeranging through the rift), forcing him into “true death” as it were, the dude retains himself intact and whole, as we see when:

Azem screams for help in the rift that Elidibus exiles them into, he responds by manifesting back on the physical plane and hauling them back out. And being sassy about it.

When Azem is once more backed into the metaphorical wall with no way forward and Gondor-calls for aid, Emet-Selch once more manifests (this time along with Hythlodaeus, which begs the question if our new old friend is also more powerful than he intimates he is or whether Emet-Selch’s desire for reunion is so strong that he can keep them together) and once more performs as the battery for an act of creation/reality adjustment. While dead.

Honestly, the boy doesn’t seem to understand that the laws of reality-as-we-know-it really ought to apply to him. Emet-Selch can make and un-make at whim and the fact that he mostly doesn’t does not appear to be a lack of power but a lack of compelling reason.

All of this.

Yeah, thing is, we don’t have a full understanding of Solas’s power yet. He was “recovering” throughout most of DAI. I suspect we’ll get a clear demonstration in DA4.

But right now? Emet takes the magical cake.

I do subscribe to the theory, however, that in Seat of Sacrifice, the faceless Emet that pops in to save us from the rift is a temp!shade that Emet wove into the Azem crystal; as Y'shtola put it, a “provision” to assist in ending Elidibus’s suffering. I’m not sure if Emet was able to control the shade from the aetherial sea, or it was simply “programmed” to act as he would, but either way, that too takes CONSIDERABLE power and skill.

Also subscribing to the idea that Hythlodaeus maintains his form in the aetherial sea bc Emet WILLS it so. He wants his b/f/bestie by his side in death.

“the boy doesn’t seem to understand that the laws of reality-as-we-know-it really ought to apply to him”

You got that shit right 😆 There’s a reason Hyth called him “the most powerful mage” he’d ever known.

I thought about the “temp!shade” idea for a bit while I powered through a whole bunch of crafting this afternoon and I don’t buy it, not really?

Pardon me while I counter-offer :P

What we know about the crystals is that they encapsulate the memories of the Convocation, specifically memories of the Seat they filled and what their duties were. It’s how they were used to Ascend the correct sundered so they could be reSeated again, at a fraction of their original power, yes, but with the knowledge of aetheric manipulation beyond the ken of mortal man and the drive to fulfill their function going forward. Even being split into fragments of themselves does not, apparently, discharge their duty.

I can’t find the clip but I distinctly recall it being mentioned that the personal memories were not recorded, that the individual behind the mask was to all intents and purposes irrelevant. The crystals were to hold sacrosanct the Seat itself, not the many that sat in it over time. Any personal information that came across wasn’t the point of things. It’s not like Amon really knew what it was to be Hermes I don’t think, beyond how it related to his life under Xande - the drive to create with no ethical human outlet for it - but yeah, digression. I cannot see why Emet-Selch would impose a personal memory of himself into a crystal that wasn’t his, strong enough to generate a visual image at the very least, with enough imbued aether to have a self will, a shade somehow cognizant enough to be able to make a decision on a course of action in the instant that shade was called forth? And the vast requirement of aether to back that decision up?

Moving past that for a moment and into other interesting questions, would that not fuck with Azem’s crystal? If we (the royal we) were figure out how to use it to Ascend ourselves somehow, to give us back the purpose of the Fourteenth in all its inescapable, horrific glory, would we suddenly also have a substantial inhalation of the purpose of the Third as well? Or even just Hades’ burning desire to save his friends at all costs, through all obstacles?

I think I could get behind the idea that Emet-Selch had some sort of fail-safe somewhere, and even a fail-safe tailored for Elidibus, but I don’t think that hijacking Azem’s crystal was it, beyond rigging it to set off an alarm bell in Emet-Selch’s ear under certain circumstances (like desperate cries for help from the heart). That seems like too much hand waving (heh. didja get it? hand waving? bah, i am unappreciated) and wishful vagueness to say that there was a self-willed hologram tucked into that little piece of orange candy, ready to spring forth like Athena.

It’s much more Emet-Selch to kick around in death and yell from the peanut-gallery.

________________ And Y’shtola does NOT know everything. I am starting to get annoyed every time it turns out she’s smugly right; does the girl read the script ahead of time? ffs, lets have Thancred with the flash of insight for once! I want Y’shtola to be tragically wrong at least once, with terrible consequences for that hubris, a la Alphinaud.

Maybe in 7.0 I’ll get my wish.

My friend, your rebuttal has given me something of an epiphany this fine (horrible bc it’s Monday) morning.

Rather than it being a pre-programmed shade, as I first assumed, it’s likely that yes, as you say, the incantation called Emet from the aetherial sea to come help against Elidibus.

But why then, was he shrouded and faceless? Why did he not speak to us, or to Elidibus himself?

It’s occurred to me that a few factors may be involved:

1) Emet has his memories restored at this point, and knows that we are still quite a ways from unraveling the truth of the Final Days; he needs to wait for us to meet him in Elpis

2) We’re legit in a climactic battle against the former heart of the very first primal, and the poor dude has a massive case of amnesia; no time for chit-chat.

3) It isn’t until Hydaelyn imbues the Azem crystal with her own magic that it becomes capable of restoring Emet Selch in his entirety, and actually give him life. He outright says that he “will not suffer himself to live again by Hydaelyn’s magic” (ok grumpy stop being a sore loser). Perhaps when he was summoned before at the Seat of Sacrifice, our crystal could only pull so much of him across? His aether is DENSE. And as a result, he could not linger.

All of these, I feel, are possibilities. The shade thing is still possible as well, but I agree: Y'shtola needn’t be right about everything.

yay epiphanies! boo Monday.

We didn’t really need to call Emet-Selch back in the flesh in order to gain his help, honestly. Elidibus simply called his hundreds of warriors of light across the rift and used the power of the burning desire in their souls to vanquish darkness to empower himself. Bodies not in the least required, which he smugly pointed out to the Exarch.

We, in turn, called for the soul of Emet-Selch in superior counter-argument. He doesn’t appear to be really, physically there, hence the wispyness and that his avatar is the default Amaurotian frame. Maybe he subscribes to the Prime Directive? Don’t interfere unless its plot relevant?

This is now seriously off track from the original question, but consider this as well:

Elidibus reformed himself from the heart of Zodiark because the Emissary was needed, to return harmony and balance to the divided arguments of his people. (That implies that at some power level (all power levels? only the strongest, most aetherically dense?) the soul is intact inside of Zodiark, power slaved to fuel the primal but the person is still there and still has some free will.) So when Venat and her followers summoned Hydaelyn and split the world and its new God, did they succeed because Zodiark was not whole? Because his very Heart, the core of his Purpose, was wandering around, focused elsewhere?

Did Venat choose that moment to sunder the world, knowing this was a moment that she might actually succeed in yanking the rug out from under the feet of Darkness Literally Incarnate? A weak point to drive a shattering chisel into?

Does Elidibus blame himself for it, all this time? Is this why he started forgetting what he could not bear to face anymore?

I will bet you dollars to doughnuts that we’re going to find out at least some of seeds of this stuff at the bottom of Pandaemonium. We have two of the three unsundered with us as best we can tell, and it wouldn’t take much to have a reason for The Third Seat to show up, if the current Lahabrea of the timeline is going completely nuts in grief somewhere at the bottom, attempting to pull his dead wife out of the Lifestream (which would definitely fall under the purview of the Third to prevent).

Chiclet and I are just completely derailing this post and honestly I’m not mad about it (it’s my post I’ll do what I want)

I am frothing to get more Pandae lore. I want to get to know more about Themis, about who he is as a person, because what we mostly know about him is that he was incredibly committed to the Convocation + Etheirys (as most of the ancients were), he’s intelligent and gentle (based on our meeting in Elpis), and he can be an absolutely vicious fighter when he has reason to. We know that most of his motivation as Elidibus was simply based on willpower and duty, as his memories deteriorated into nothing but. I’m eager to see what kind of motivations keep him at our side throughout Pandaemonium (i.e, how close is he to Azem, how did Azem know we would show up, etc etc)

Also, the Erichthonios theory: is he going to become our Lahabrea? Or does our Lahabrea lose Erich to the Sundering and that drives him even further into grief and madness? It’s clear that Erich’s father is doing what he’s doing out of loss. We’re meant to think that maybe Lahabrea never cared for his family, but I’m not buying it. The man wouldn’t be experimenting with resurrection concepts if he was totally fine with his wife’s death.

And yes, that a very good point about Emet Selch. As the keeper of the aetherial sea, will he intervene? Or will he stay on the sidelines and let Themis handle the situation? If he does show up, surely he will not meet us again, bc that would interrupt the continuity of his losing his memory of us due to Kairos.

tl;dr: I love Themis and Erich so much and I miss them and want to hang out some more and probably cry over them bc Ishikawa.

my bullet points on this are:

Erichthonios will become our Lahabrea. It’s meta, but there’s no reason to have the first Warden we meet become a travelling companion if he’s not important to us, and we’re likely not going to meet his dad until the last raid series. The red hair and eyes? The fiery, fighting passion, lacking only sheer power (which Themis provides)?

Bet you a sandwich his dad’s real name is Hephaestus or some derivative.

Venat must have told Azem everything. It has to be tied in to why the Fourteenth abdicated but didn’t support Zodiark or join Venat’s group to make Hydaelyn. They had to stay separate from their best friends so that events would unfold “properly”. I can only imagine that conversation. It’s a dangling plot point that makes me want to scratch it, honestly.

Good point about Emet-Selch not interacting with us again. I mean, we could just hide in the background I guess and hope he doesn’t look? It’s a question for sure. Maybe Emet-Selch isn’t involved at the bottom of Pandaemonium? Gah. But I like that theory! How did the unsundered STAY unsundered? Another mystery point.

Agreed that Elpis’ Lahabrea is not indifferent to his family, but it’s either something like Fourchenault’s arc or that Lahabrea simply prioritizes his lover over his child. When you’re Ancient, I can see offspring that are a few hundred years old becoming less important over time than the one soul you’ve dedicated your immortality to.

The timeline does NOT appear to work properly I don’t think, but I swear to my favorite god of the Twelve that the First Beast of the Final Days is going to be at the bottom of Pandaemonium and we’re gonna meet it. Grief enough to cut through the aether and hear the song of the Meteaia, the First Abomination? Delicious.

Themis will promise us something there, or we will make him promise and that is what is going to carry him all the way to the Seat of Sacrifice where we will relieve him of it.

OH MY GOD I CAN’T WAIT TO FIND OUT.

…this is such a stupid game.

Oh fren I've been waiting for the Lahabrea=Hesphaestus reveal

Some are speculating that Azem has the gift of foresight, and that's how they knew to send Themis to Pandae and let him know to meet us there; I'm not 100% sure where I stand in that theory, but I'm also not sure how I feel about "Venat told Azem everything and that's how they know", bc how exactly does Venat know we're at Pandaemonium? Is she hiding in the bushes somewhere watching us? Does SHE have the gift of foresight?

I do believe Venat tells Azem of the Final Days/Sundering/WoL etc, I'm just wondering how much she knows about our activities after the events of the Elpis questline.

Erich becoming our Lahabrea would be the most likely scenario I feel, narratively speaking, bc yes, endearing him so much to us has to lead SOMEWHERE, and what better way to further break our hearts than have him become LARRYBREAD, THE THORNIEST THORN IN THANCRED'S SIDE but no really, Lahabrea really did a number on our rogue tank. Erich is such a gentle and loyal person, with a noticeable touch of insecurity. I can see the Sundering driving him to a degree of madness, but at the same time, I could also see "Hephaestus" Lahabrea being the one to go absolutely MADLAD if he lost not only Athena, but his son as well. (I'm holding out hope here that Erich's father actually does love him, as you say, Fourchenault-style)

The bottom of Pandae housing the first Blasphemy is something that never even occurred to me and now I can't stop thinking about it?!

For the events of Pandae to lead directly to the first Final Days would be awesome and terrible 😭