[edit: This is a repost as my previous post on this didn't meet the submission guidelines for the format of the title. My apologies.]
ARR SPOILERS AHEAD! If you haven't played through the Crystal Tower questline, you'll probably get more out of it if you play it rather than read this. Besides, in the next patch you'll have to play the Crystal Tower questline to progress the Shadowbringers MSQ.
That said, please keep this thread free of Shadowbringers spoilers if possible! My intention is for this thread to be a place where people can quickly recap the Crystal Tower storyline/timeline before heading into Shadowbringers.
I'm going to be presenting this in mostly in-game chronological order, because during the actual questline itself you learn it in bits and pieces throughout and I want to basically clean it up and make it easier to read.
So, without further ado - the story of the Crystal Tower.
In Allagan times, The Crystal Tower was not only a symbol of Allagan pride and served as a beacon of hope, but more importantly it produced energy for the Allagan empire. Parents would take their children to it in order to show them how it played a large role in bringing prosperity to the empire.
The questline itself doesn't go into how it was built, but we do learn that Emperor Xande was the one to bring it to this state. He resided within Syrcus Tower, which was the actual 'tower' part of the structure. (To even get into Syrcus Tower, you had to navigate the Labyrinth of the Ancients below, after getting past the four energy barriers protecting the entrance to the Labyrinth.)
Xande's ultimate goal was to bring all the world under Allagan rule. He didn't get a chance to carry this out, however, as he died before seeing it realised.
That's the official history, at least. But it turned out there was more to it.
It turned out that some time after he died, a technologist named Amon wanted to restore Allagan civilization to its former glory, which had by then stagnated. He was able to successfully clone Emperor Xande and two of his descendants, Unei and Doga.
Having failed to conquer the world the first time but now having a second chance at it, Xande realised that he needed more power to do so. To that end, he turned the Crystal Tower into a research facility in order to make a pact with the forces of darkness. The pact was thus: By allowing voidsent to freely enter Eorzea through a gate within the Crystal Tower, Xande was allowed control of the energy offered by the Cloud of Darkness, a being which wants to devour the world.
Using that energy and [Heavensward spoilers] the captured primal of the great dragon Bahamut, long dead but reborn in primal form by his grief-stricken mate Tiamat, the Allagans created the false moon of Dalamud and sent it into the heavens in order that it might supply even more energy.
Unei and Doga, along with others who could see what Xande was trying to do, took up the sword against him. Seeing this and despairing, Xande leashed out in frustration and ordered that the power stored within Dalamud be emptied into Syrcus Tower at once, so that the Cloud of Darkness could engulf the world.
As it turned out, the Tower wasn't built to handle that much energy at once, and the surrounding area was flooded with the energy, triggering the Fourth Umbral Calamity, an immense earthquake which was enough to cause the Tower itself to sink into the earth.
In the wake of the Calamity, the Crystal Tower had vanished, and the people who had somehow managed to survive despaired at seeing the pride and hope of the Allagan civilization gone, and prayed that the Crystal Tower would at some point again be a beacon of hope to people everywhere.
That would have been the end for Xande, but the technologist Amon - the one who had cloned Xande and who was by then his closest aide - managed to halt the flow of time within the Tower as the Tower itself sunk into the earth. Everybody in the tower - Xande included - fell into a deep slumber, until such time as the Tower re-emerged.
Which it did, five millennia later, when Dalamud was summoned back to Earth by Meteor, unleashing Bahamut and triggering the Seventh Umbral Calamity. At that point, Xande reawakened.
Five years later, some busybody who people would refer to as the "Warrior of Light" manages to save the world by defeating the Ultima Weapon. Nero tol Scaeva, having had to suffer the indignity of having his dreams of conquest defeated and his allegiance to the Garlean Empire thus nullified, sets his eyes on the Crystal Tower and Xande's pact with darkness, in the hope that he might be able to use this to his own benefit. However, he himself can't get through the Tower's defenses, so he puts on a disguise and successfully talks the WoL into meeting up with the Sons of Saint Coinach, who are investigating the Crystal Tower.
The WoL is tasked with getting the materials needed to get past the energy barriers defending the Tower, and during this they find another person who has been studying it, too: G'raha Tia, who - unbeknownst to himself - is descended from Allagan royalty. G'raha has been observing the WoL's efforts and wants a part of the action.
The clones of Unei and Doga - who apparently are still alive after all this time - have been watching, too. (I guess the clones can't die?) After the WoL successfully gets past the energy barriers and negotiates the dangers of the Labyrinth of the Ancients, they reveal themselves and open the door to Syrcus Tower, which are designed to only be able to be opened by Allagan royalty.
It turns out that Unei and Doga haven't given up on their mission to stop Xande, because Xande himself hasn't stopped either. He's still trying to take over the world despite the fact that the glory of Allag is by now a long-distant memory.
Unei and Doga brief the party on on this and the history of the Crystal Tower. Rammbroes - the leader of the party - declares a change in plans and that the Crystal Tower needs to be sealed for good, to prevent any further calamities from occurring. He also asks the WoL to go in and defeat anything that resides inside, including Emperor Xande. They manage to do this.
With Xande thus defeated, Unei and Doga have one final task - to annul the contract that Xande made with the Cloud of Darkness, which they believe should be made possible by the fact that they are of royal lineage. However, the Cloud of Darkness won't allow the contract to be annulled that easily and drags Unei and Doga through a portal into the World of Darkness, along with Nero, who has been tagging along as the WoL does their thing because he wants to know how to control this darkness himself. His readings from within Syrcus Tower had confirmed his suspicions that this power is even greater than that of the Ultima Weapon, and seeing his dreams about to vanish again, he attempted to save Unei and Doga and ended up getting dragged into the World of Darkness too, after which the portal closed.
With Unei and Doga gone and the portal having vanished, there was no way to annul the contract that allowed the voidsent to enter Eorzea, and the Cloud of Darkness was too strong for them. Thus, Cid and his team endeavour to open another portal to the World of Darkness. After doing so, the WoL enters while Cid stays behind to keep the gate open. G'raha Tia also enters the portal, as he wants to know more about his "Allagan Eye", which apparently runs in his family.
Inside the World of Darkness, the WoL eventually meets with the Cloud of Darkness and manages to destabilise its form. The WoL meets up with Unei and Doga - the former being carried by Nero, as she's unconscious.
Nero's wounds have allowed the darkness to enter his body, and his aether is at dire risk of being corrupted while the covenant still lasts. Unei and Doga are spared this fate because the covenant only affected people who weren't part of the royal bloodline.
It turns out that G'raha is also spared this fate for the same reason - he's descended from Allagan royalty after all. Seeing this, Unei and Doga offer their blood to him so that he may control the Crystal Tower, and then Unei and Doga attempt to annul the covenant while everybody else makes a run for it to try to escape the World of Darkness before the covenant is broken and the portal closes.
Nero has trouble doing this thanks to the darkness in his body, and asks the others to go on ahead. After a moment during which G'raha hears a voice, they do so.
Eventually, the darkness in Nero's body seems to disappear, as Unei and Doga sever the covenant. Strength renewed, he makes a dive for the quickly-closing portal and is about to not make it when he sees Cid poking his head in and offering a hand, dragging him back to Eorzea.
During all this, G'raha was able to recall his lineage. It turned out that after the Fourth Umbral Calamity, only one member of Allag's royal line survived: a woman named Salina. Having heard the people's wishes and prayers that the Crystal Tower would once again be a beacon of hope to people everywhere, she used Allagan technology to entrust her blood and memories to the man who would become Graha's forebearer. The voice G'raha heard was that wish - that the Tower would be a beacon of hope for mankind.
And so G'raha decides that rather than seal the Tower up completely, he needs to embrace his destiny and thus restore the Tower to greatness. He realises, however, that the technological civilization isn't there yet, so G'raha once again wants to put the tower into a deep sleep - with him inside - with his plan being that he'll be there to guide them once the civilization with the means to open the gates comes around.
He walks away, and the doors to Syrcus Tower close...
...until presumably Shadowbringers, I guess! I haven't actually played the 4.5 MSQ yet - I wanted to make this thread before I did so, so that I knew exactly what was in ARR and what wasn't. I'm just about to play through the MSQ and I'm very interested to find out how it goes.
I'll leave you with a couple of lines from Biggs and Wedge:
Wedge: W-We'll catch up with Allag, just you wait! We'll cover all that lost ground before you even know it!
Biggs: Well said, Wedge! It'll only be a few years before we come knocking, G'raha. Then you're in for a rude awakening!
submitted by /u/Sophira
[link] [comments]
Continue reading...
ARR SPOILERS AHEAD! If you haven't played through the Crystal Tower questline, you'll probably get more out of it if you play it rather than read this. Besides, in the next patch you'll have to play the Crystal Tower questline to progress the Shadowbringers MSQ.
That said, please keep this thread free of Shadowbringers spoilers if possible! My intention is for this thread to be a place where people can quickly recap the Crystal Tower storyline/timeline before heading into Shadowbringers.
I'm going to be presenting this in mostly in-game chronological order, because during the actual questline itself you learn it in bits and pieces throughout and I want to basically clean it up and make it easier to read.
So, without further ado - the story of the Crystal Tower.
In Allagan times, The Crystal Tower was not only a symbol of Allagan pride and served as a beacon of hope, but more importantly it produced energy for the Allagan empire. Parents would take their children to it in order to show them how it played a large role in bringing prosperity to the empire.
The questline itself doesn't go into how it was built, but we do learn that Emperor Xande was the one to bring it to this state. He resided within Syrcus Tower, which was the actual 'tower' part of the structure. (To even get into Syrcus Tower, you had to navigate the Labyrinth of the Ancients below, after getting past the four energy barriers protecting the entrance to the Labyrinth.)
Xande's ultimate goal was to bring all the world under Allagan rule. He didn't get a chance to carry this out, however, as he died before seeing it realised.
That's the official history, at least. But it turned out there was more to it.
It turned out that some time after he died, a technologist named Amon wanted to restore Allagan civilization to its former glory, which had by then stagnated. He was able to successfully clone Emperor Xande and two of his descendants, Unei and Doga.
Having failed to conquer the world the first time but now having a second chance at it, Xande realised that he needed more power to do so. To that end, he turned the Crystal Tower into a research facility in order to make a pact with the forces of darkness. The pact was thus: By allowing voidsent to freely enter Eorzea through a gate within the Crystal Tower, Xande was allowed control of the energy offered by the Cloud of Darkness, a being which wants to devour the world.
Using that energy and [Heavensward spoilers] the captured primal of the great dragon Bahamut, long dead but reborn in primal form by his grief-stricken mate Tiamat, the Allagans created the false moon of Dalamud and sent it into the heavens in order that it might supply even more energy.
Unei and Doga, along with others who could see what Xande was trying to do, took up the sword against him. Seeing this and despairing, Xande leashed out in frustration and ordered that the power stored within Dalamud be emptied into Syrcus Tower at once, so that the Cloud of Darkness could engulf the world.
As it turned out, the Tower wasn't built to handle that much energy at once, and the surrounding area was flooded with the energy, triggering the Fourth Umbral Calamity, an immense earthquake which was enough to cause the Tower itself to sink into the earth.
In the wake of the Calamity, the Crystal Tower had vanished, and the people who had somehow managed to survive despaired at seeing the pride and hope of the Allagan civilization gone, and prayed that the Crystal Tower would at some point again be a beacon of hope to people everywhere.
That would have been the end for Xande, but the technologist Amon - the one who had cloned Xande and who was by then his closest aide - managed to halt the flow of time within the Tower as the Tower itself sunk into the earth. Everybody in the tower - Xande included - fell into a deep slumber, until such time as the Tower re-emerged.
Which it did, five millennia later, when Dalamud was summoned back to Earth by Meteor, unleashing Bahamut and triggering the Seventh Umbral Calamity. At that point, Xande reawakened.
Five years later, some busybody who people would refer to as the "Warrior of Light" manages to save the world by defeating the Ultima Weapon. Nero tol Scaeva, having had to suffer the indignity of having his dreams of conquest defeated and his allegiance to the Garlean Empire thus nullified, sets his eyes on the Crystal Tower and Xande's pact with darkness, in the hope that he might be able to use this to his own benefit. However, he himself can't get through the Tower's defenses, so he puts on a disguise and successfully talks the WoL into meeting up with the Sons of Saint Coinach, who are investigating the Crystal Tower.
The WoL is tasked with getting the materials needed to get past the energy barriers defending the Tower, and during this they find another person who has been studying it, too: G'raha Tia, who - unbeknownst to himself - is descended from Allagan royalty. G'raha has been observing the WoL's efforts and wants a part of the action.
The clones of Unei and Doga - who apparently are still alive after all this time - have been watching, too. (I guess the clones can't die?) After the WoL successfully gets past the energy barriers and negotiates the dangers of the Labyrinth of the Ancients, they reveal themselves and open the door to Syrcus Tower, which are designed to only be able to be opened by Allagan royalty.
It turns out that Unei and Doga haven't given up on their mission to stop Xande, because Xande himself hasn't stopped either. He's still trying to take over the world despite the fact that the glory of Allag is by now a long-distant memory.
Unei and Doga brief the party on on this and the history of the Crystal Tower. Rammbroes - the leader of the party - declares a change in plans and that the Crystal Tower needs to be sealed for good, to prevent any further calamities from occurring. He also asks the WoL to go in and defeat anything that resides inside, including Emperor Xande. They manage to do this.
With Xande thus defeated, Unei and Doga have one final task - to annul the contract that Xande made with the Cloud of Darkness, which they believe should be made possible by the fact that they are of royal lineage. However, the Cloud of Darkness won't allow the contract to be annulled that easily and drags Unei and Doga through a portal into the World of Darkness, along with Nero, who has been tagging along as the WoL does their thing because he wants to know how to control this darkness himself. His readings from within Syrcus Tower had confirmed his suspicions that this power is even greater than that of the Ultima Weapon, and seeing his dreams about to vanish again, he attempted to save Unei and Doga and ended up getting dragged into the World of Darkness too, after which the portal closed.
With Unei and Doga gone and the portal having vanished, there was no way to annul the contract that allowed the voidsent to enter Eorzea, and the Cloud of Darkness was too strong for them. Thus, Cid and his team endeavour to open another portal to the World of Darkness. After doing so, the WoL enters while Cid stays behind to keep the gate open. G'raha Tia also enters the portal, as he wants to know more about his "Allagan Eye", which apparently runs in his family.
Inside the World of Darkness, the WoL eventually meets with the Cloud of Darkness and manages to destabilise its form. The WoL meets up with Unei and Doga - the former being carried by Nero, as she's unconscious.
Nero's wounds have allowed the darkness to enter his body, and his aether is at dire risk of being corrupted while the covenant still lasts. Unei and Doga are spared this fate because the covenant only affected people who weren't part of the royal bloodline.
It turns out that G'raha is also spared this fate for the same reason - he's descended from Allagan royalty after all. Seeing this, Unei and Doga offer their blood to him so that he may control the Crystal Tower, and then Unei and Doga attempt to annul the covenant while everybody else makes a run for it to try to escape the World of Darkness before the covenant is broken and the portal closes.
Nero has trouble doing this thanks to the darkness in his body, and asks the others to go on ahead. After a moment during which G'raha hears a voice, they do so.
Eventually, the darkness in Nero's body seems to disappear, as Unei and Doga sever the covenant. Strength renewed, he makes a dive for the quickly-closing portal and is about to not make it when he sees Cid poking his head in and offering a hand, dragging him back to Eorzea.
During all this, G'raha was able to recall his lineage. It turned out that after the Fourth Umbral Calamity, only one member of Allag's royal line survived: a woman named Salina. Having heard the people's wishes and prayers that the Crystal Tower would once again be a beacon of hope to people everywhere, she used Allagan technology to entrust her blood and memories to the man who would become Graha's forebearer. The voice G'raha heard was that wish - that the Tower would be a beacon of hope for mankind.
And so G'raha decides that rather than seal the Tower up completely, he needs to embrace his destiny and thus restore the Tower to greatness. He realises, however, that the technological civilization isn't there yet, so G'raha once again wants to put the tower into a deep sleep - with him inside - with his plan being that he'll be there to guide them once the civilization with the means to open the gates comes around.
He walks away, and the doors to Syrcus Tower close...
...until presumably Shadowbringers, I guess! I haven't actually played the 4.5 MSQ yet - I wanted to make this thread before I did so, so that I knew exactly what was in ARR and what wasn't. I'm just about to play through the MSQ and I'm very interested to find out how it goes.
I'll leave you with a couple of lines from Biggs and Wedge:
Wedge: W-We'll catch up with Allag, just you wait! We'll cover all that lost ground before you even know it!
Biggs: Well said, Wedge! It'll only be a few years before we come knocking, G'raha. Then you're in for a rude awakening!
[link] [comments]
Continue reading...