Hello! I want to start by clarifying that I am NOT the one who wrote this analysis; credit goes to user u/MeowthTheStarry on X. This is part of a multi-page analysis covering the topics of Patch 7.5, but it also touches on many other themes and mysteries surrounding FFXIV. In this excerpt, we’ll be discussing Ultima, the High Seraph.
I will say this much as introduction to this section—to everyone I have discussed this with, they started seeing eyes everywhere around us in FFXIV, and with good reason because eyes are all around the place once you start noticing them. Some of them are positive, and others negative—but here we are going to talk of the real mastermind, the hand behind both the Final Days and the Sundering, or which is to say, the fall of mankind—Ultima, the High Seraph and authority of Light, and the mind behind the sundered’s creation.
https://preview.redd.it/kitpsocpsll...bp&s=f6daf12a9e07afa160f2165cdccb661b92535c25
Ultima, the devouring Mother of the sundered.
I already talked about Ultima earlier, when elaborating on Zodiark, because they are direct opposites in Ivalician cosmology. I have also talked about the in-game ties and visual and thematic connections present mostly in EnW to her direct intervention and influence on certain crucial players on the stage. I am going to elaborate a bit more on her, on her role and her methods now, but let us put this simply in one line—Act I was called the Hydaelyn and Zodiark saga, but Act II reveals that the truth is that this has always been the Ultima versus Zodiark saga. That is to say, the true entities behind Act I’s primals.
First of all, let us address the main protest regarding this claim—“but we already fought Ultima!” No, no we did not. In the figurine that was made of her incarnation in the Ivalice raids, it comes with a brief lore note, in which it is revealed that the Ultima we fight in the Necrohol of Mullonde is in fact a primal of her. Which means the real one is out there—sleep well. Now to the second question, where is the real one, then?
This is a question for which I can only speculate as of now, given visuals and themes. I suspect however, that the real Ultima was imprisoned by the Ancients or perhaps the original Convocation in a time that they might have forgotten themselves—and it is possible the forgetting was deliberate because Ultima spreads her influence through cognition hazards—and because FFXIV is built upon echoes of echoes and more echoes, Ultima’s idea of vengeance for the Ancients was to imprison them in an artificial Moon same as she might have been confined. You may also think of Bahamut being an echo of her as well, being imprisoned within Dalamud but still exerting a certain degree of influence from his prison, namely tempering Midas nan Garlond and Eula van Darnus. What we do know for sure thanks to Pandaemonium—and this is why Pandaemonium being the raid storyline for EnW is so crucial and deliberate—is that Athena found or was given the Heart of Sabik, which as we know is Lucavi-origin auracite, and Ultima corrupted her and began spreading her influence using Athena as a conduit. If you ask me, I doubt Athena herself was aware that Ultima was taking hold of her, but it would hardly be surprising because the insidiousness of Ultima’s corruption is that you are not even aware that your thoughts are no longer your own.
Let me explain a bit how Ultima works in this regard. Ultima’s corruption, as I mentioned before, works through cognition hazards—which means, the mere knowing of her existence on itself is a gateway for her corruption. And part of Pandaemonium’s relevance is that it is in this raid where we learn that tempering is, in fact, the consequence of Ultima’s influence—disguised, however, through different objects of faith and/or adoration. Athena’s adoration was to herself, Hegemone’s adoration was towards Athena, Hesperos’s was towards Lahabrea, you get the idea; Erichthonios himself was afflicted with it, as Athena reveals that she directly tampered with his soul to make him artificially drawn to her mother, so he would be less inclined to listen to his father and be more amenable to her grooming Eric as her tool and vessel. This is something that you can spot as well in Vauthry in ShB through the method of feeding his subjects Light through meol—surely you remember that he had the power to enthrall others touched by the Light, yes? Unsurprising, because Vauthry himself is our metanarrative microcosm of Ultima herself and her methods, with Hydaelyn in the higher step above Vauthry playing more or less the same role—I could go on a long ramble on how Innocence’s design is fundamentally similar to Hydaelyn’s, but that is beside the point. Let us leave it at, Athena is a parallel to Venat for self-explanatory reasons. But these still need a bit more elaboration to finally tie them both to Ultima.
https://preview.redd.it/rfc56b1ssll...bp&s=b7655394a8e64fdd3fe7ed9c18397334afc9e437
https://preview.redd.it/ua2vdpissll...bp&s=9735179c34bfd25577eacaf8a9ef079788cd78a9
https://preview.redd.it/fw60vb0tsll...bp&s=e15996a26d8b7e2b084c6afa1360db98f88f0854
Athena, the Mother attempting to steal away the Son from the Father. A narrative, symbolic parallel to Venat stealing the WoL from Hades, and ultimately, Ultima stealing mankind from Zodiark.
There is another thing that you must know about Ultima’s corruption—it is particularly dangerous to people who believe themselves righteous. She is the definition of Friedrich Nietzsche’s famous quote: “He who fights with monsters, should see to it that he does not become a monster himself. And if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes into you also.” (I could ramble a while about how much Nietzschean philosophy is in FFXIV, but to be fair there is a lot of philosophy in it.) But back to topic, let us put it this way—go for the classic association of ‘Light’ with ‘virtue’ and ‘Dark’ with ‘evil’; Ultima has power over self-perceived virtue, which means the more you believe yourself pure and untouchable by evil, the more susceptible you become to her influence. As a counterpoint, the more aware you are of your flaws, your sins and your personal shadows, the lesser the hold Ultima can exert upon you because these shadows belong to the sphere of Darkness and she has no power over it. Remember that earlier I spoke of the Scions’ holier-than-thou morality and in particular the (artificial) flawlessness of the catman and Venat? We will return to the Scions for the next point, but surely you have started noticing a pattern.
Before I elaborate on how Ultima engineered the fall of the Ancients from what one can piece together with what we have been given so far, I will mention two trademark symbols that signal her presence and/or influence—the first one is swords, it comes from her original appearance in FFT where her incarnation wielded twin blades, and other characters that influence her in FFXIV (like FFXV!Bahamut through the association of Hydaelyn) heavily feature swords in part because the Ultima Weapon blade has been a staple for the franchise for a while.
https://preview.redd.it/2vvdai5vsll...bp&s=9b9e15ad861729f6bcf172a3d87a4a5acad4e6ea
https://preview.redd.it/n4bo0aovsll...bp&s=4434b5155131a7d0e36530ee3b295acba76898a2
https://preview.redd.it/uh0hez4wsll...bp&s=04a357f5b226fc17fd8ac8eae6bc2c2f492cb3cd
The seal. (Swords pointing inwards.)
The second, and the most significant, is ink, as we see Pallas Athena when channeling Ultima’s power acquire octopus-like tentacles,because of her iconic line in FFXIV which is in fact not hers but taken from Tactics Ogre, specifically from necromancer Nybeth Obdilord who attempted to erase Death through his research: “Denizens of the abyss! From ink of blackest night, I summon you!” And here is where things get truly interesting—what if I were to tell you that ink is all over the damn place in EnW?
Ink is, I will also tell you, heavily associated with Sharlayan—which is a massive red flag as it is, coupled with other certain visuals and themes, and the point I will cover after this one. In the lecture in the Studium with the Scholarch, he uses ink to illustrate how tampering with memory works—it is like ink blots covering it, that are cleansed by the aetherial sea; then proceed to say that Sharlayan has memory manipulation methods but they would never use them for nefarious ends. Well, as they say: “excusatio non petita, accusatio manifesta”. But leaving Sharlayan aside for the moment, it is when the Final Days begin that ink makes its proper introduction… as the map of the Three Great Continent pales, and a blotch of ink covers Thavnair as if attempting to erase it. Fast-forward to Elpis, and when suddenly Meteion is struck by a sudden communication—“Greetings, can you hear me? Do not be alarmed. I mean you no harm. I wish only to hear your words, share your feelings and know your thoughts. May we please be friends?” I still remember streams on EnW’s release with chats freaking out about ‘aliens’, well, it was not exactly far off the mark—and she suffers the overflow of dynamis, and she starts crying black tears, or should I say, ink tears, as her eyes go completely black; fast-forward a bit more and in the infamous Venat walk cutscene, what you see her growing more and more covered in is not blood—it is actually ink. Fast-forward to Ultima Thule… well, the devil is in its very name, is it not? Same as the dead sun in which the Endsinger attempted to imprison every soul that it will never be born again—her Ultimatum. Never thought that the Endsinger’s design is actually rather… say, angelic in nature? Meteion’s own color, and Hydaelyn’s ‘Light’ for that matter as well—because Ultima has two signature colors, being cyan blue and pink, when in other instances the Light, or should I say, the true Light, is shown golden-colored.
https://preview.redd.it/jc13hdk0tll...bp&s=c1f3af307c6dbb799bc0dba4686662cebd320a9e
https://preview.redd.it/4cfv8911tll...bp&s=b5bfd5ef8fb48ef60d45c489c8cb38e70d3f5c7a
\"Light everlasting\" in Ultima's context is terrifyingly chilling, as authority of Light. The glowing blue eyes make it worse, as blue is the color that the eyes of the tempered glow with. And even worse? The Everlasting Light is the weather effect of the areas of the First under the Lightwardens' influence.
We have enough evidence, visual and motive-wise, of Ultima’s corruption of Venat/Hydaelyn. The logistics are what are relatively less clear, but what is a fact is that it was the WoL’s arrival to Elpis what triggered the concatenation of events leading to the Final Days and the Sundering—the Final Days because in his short story, Hermes reveals that he acted opposing his fellow kin inspired by the WoL’s resolve that they instilled in him when confiding with them (which is to say, we validated Hermes’s loathing for his fellow man); the Sundering because we planted the idea of it in Venat’s mind… and I underline, once again, that Ultima spreads her tentacles through cognition hazards. But more than that, Elpis is located just above Pandaemonium—and Pandaemonium had become Ultima’s feud through Athena for a long while. Who is to say that Ultima’s influence did not bleed through—because remember, Themis could sense something wrong in Elpis from down below—and first amplified Hermes’s scorn, leading to the creation of Meteion in his quest of seeking answers from on high (in all this, poor Meteion is just a tool, if you think about it) and therefore crafting the ‘moral justification’ (quote-unquote) of the Sundering as a supposed necessity? You know, the good old tactic of “need a motive, cause it yourself and place the blame on others”. And yes, the WoL in this whole thing is in fact the agent of Ultima, because, well, we do bear Hydaelyn’s mark upon us, and if Hydaelyn was corrupted… the rest follows on its own.
For starters, we have visual evidence that Hydaelyn and the Twelve were corrupted/influenced by a certain High Seraph who is /the/ authority of Holy/Light through Myths of the Realm and P12S. Images attached—the crest, you can find in Euphrosyne (Heaven of Ice) and Thaleia (Heaven of Water), Ice being the element closest to Light and Water being largely associated with Hydaelyn. So that alone means, that everything related to Hydaelyn is very likely the work of a higher power pulling the strings.
The seed, I would say was planted in Elpis alright—but the culmination of the ink covering Venat, I believe it is the result of another elaborated chain of events. If you think this is too complicated for being a thing, I assure you—Ultima’s machinations are as entangled as this in her home games. Remember that Lahabrea, highest authority in creation magicks and phantomology, was originally infected with Athena’s cognition hazard—actually Ultima’s—and he was forced to sunder himself to avoid her corruption, yes? But, in order to cleanse it from Hegemone, he needed his full brand, and he had to put this corruption back into himself—and I believe here lies the key. In order to come up with the concept of something like primal!Zodiark, certainly Lahabrea would have been in charge of its design… and he had put Ultima’s corruption back inside him, and again, her insidiousness comes from making your thoughts not your own and not even realizing it. As per the furballs’ account, tempering was not something that came from the Ancients’ creation magicks, in fact in the dungeon of Akadaemia Anyder we learn that the act of using one’s own life and soul as core for guardian entities—like the researcher that becomes Quetzalcoatl—known as Guardian Forces was stated to be a thing. But I suspect Ultima’s influence might have bled into primal!Zodiark’s design, with another catch—remember that Ultima’s whole shtick is “I am the only god” whereas Zodiark’s is “I am many as one”, and she has no hold over the force of Darkness. Tempering is present in primal!Zodiark’s influence, but it does not cloud the Ascians’ judgment and as Hades tells us in Japanese, it can be kept at bay through mental discipline. Let us put it like this—because primal!Zodiark is made of many wills united as one, and embodying Darkness, Ultima does not really have a hold upon those affected. However, we do know that Venat’s group stole primal!Zodiark’s blueprint to design Hydaelyn… and we are talking of an entity of Light made of one will alone. Meaning Ultima, the authority of Light, would have had a free pass to take over. If you ask me, I believe primal!Zodiark, like Meteion, was just a vehicle for the true goal—the Sundering, and the fall of mankind, because that is exactly what Ultima is all about.
https://preview.redd.it/dd0a3qi4tll...bp&s=27bf4e13acf0db323529447c2f7fb221a292fe57
Visual cues to Ultima Thule. If you look up you will see colors that allude to 'Darkness' as per main narrative's wiles. As EnW is so centered (surface-level) on the 'truths' and mysteries of the heavens above and threats from the beyond. But it is when you fly over and look down what lies at the core of this rot. Blinding Light beneath in a clusterfuck of broken shards.As Hades noted in Elpis, regarding Hermes's folly, paraphrased: \"You were so desperate seeking answers in the heavens, you spared no thought on those to be found in the earth you tread upon.\"
Spoilers for FFXVI ahead!!, but it is inevitable because I have to mention it as FFXVI is the product of CBU3’s mind, and on top of that it is built upon Azem and Hades and it is what happens when you marry FFXIII and Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and dress the child in FFXIV clothes. Ultima, a male entity in FFXVI, is the one who is behind the Mothercrystals of Valisthea, which are in fact fellow members of the Ultima race turned into crystal that work as syphons of aether that are causing the Blight to fuel Ultima’s ultimate spell, Raise, to revive his civilization. Ultima is the creator of mankind (self-styling himself a god) which he only made for his future vessel, Mythos (Clive) to be born and be strong enough to withstand the flow of aether required to cast Raise. The Mothercrystals of Valisthea, upon which the whole system of society is built, are in fact the very cause of the Blight devouring it—and, well, from the Ivalice raids, we know that Ultima’s intention was to get herself the WoL… or should I say, Azem, as her vessel. Perhaps now it is becoming clearer why the Pandaemonium raids featured Azem working together with Themis and Lahabrea to unravel the threat, yes? Aside from, you know, the narrative performing a subtle yet massively significant switch—Azem was working with Themis and Lahabrea, two of the three Unsundered. Hades is a given when it comes to Azem because Hades’s loyalty does not understand sides beyond whatever side Azem is fighting for; the narrative purpose of Pandaemonium is to wave at you and say, “hey, Azem and, by extension, you, was fighting this threat alongside the Unsundered, and the Convocation”. Not Venat—the Convocation. The more you piece things together, the more the story of Azem’s defection becomes the dissonant element, does it not?.
In FFT, in the stained glass of the Zodiac, it is true we have the Sun in the middle of it, in a circle of violet—nudge nudge wink wink, color references in FFXIV—but this has a trick because in Ivalician lore, Zodiark, who represents the mysterious thirteenth Zodiac sign of Ophiuchus, is symbolized by the Sun and the Moon, because yes, Zodiark is the authority of Dark, but he is the Dark from which the Light is born, the instant of Death and Rebirth of the old year into the new year. Furthermore, in all games of the Ivalice Alliance series where he is shown, Zodiark—who is one of the 'good' Lucavi so to speak, opposite direct to Ultima (in particular)—dwells deep beneath the earth, seeking solitude because of his tremendous power that can easily reduce everything around him into nothing, though by the same token he can also create everything from nothing afterwards.
Why this is an important distinction to make? It is due to the association of Zodiark with earth's depths and him being Light and Dark as one—this latter concept, Elidibus embodies, especially in his fight in P11. Zodiark is the Keeper of Precepts—he fashions the Laws of Nature and judges and punishes those who break them, and this is why the Seat of Elidibus is that of the supreme adjudicator of Ancient society, and his verdict is respected by the entire circle as final. In their dynamic, Elidibus is who determines the course of action after hearing and weighing every choice, and choosing impartially what is best. In the Zodiac wheel, then, the Seat of Elidibus, associated with Ophiuchus and Zodiark, represents the Land—we see the constellations in the sky because we are standing upon the earth beneath our feet, so to speak, and we see the skies turn from that point of view.
So what does Azem represent? Azem is the Sun, the star that is never visible in the night sky unlike the stars of the constellations that can only be seen in the dark—but it is the 'journey' of the Sun throughout the year across them that which Azem represents. The circle of Azem traces the wheel itself, the trajectory of the circle, so Azem, yes, they had a seat in the circle of the Convocation same as Elidibus, but in a symbolic reading the Sun is both set apart and intrinsically bound to the Zodiac constellations because it is the Sun what connects them into the wholeness of the full year and the turning of the seasons.
This is one of the reasons there is a play in-game related to Azem's truth and how Hades gives us the hint through Hyth's shade when he makes the comment that at the time of primal!Zodiark's summoning, the Convocation of Fourteen was of 'Thirteen'—this quirk, none of the other Ascians does, Elidibus still talks of the Convocation of Fourteen in 5.3 and in the Chrysalis there are fourteen seats. Odd, if Azem had been truly struck from memory, yes? But what if it was all a lie? What if the intention was to protect Azem's memory and their truth by hiding them and their true purpose away from the covetous gaze of the true enemy the Convocation faced? Azem, the unseen star in the night sky—the Fourteenth in full power, but reduced to Zero after, potentially, death, until new awakening. The trajectory of Azem forms a perfect circle—a zero, the number of infinite potential and possibility. Perhaps what Hades was telling us through his clever codespeak is that the Convocation of Thirteen was in truth 13 + 0, as Azem was dead. If Azem had defected, they would have had to pass their seat and their brand to a successor—however, we are told instead that the Convocation was reduced to Thirteen... and this was when the Convocation became the Ascians, "without shadow". The Sun is the source of light in nature that projects shadows—and they lost their Sun. Their 'renaming' is a sign of mourning for their lost brother... that after the Sundering and Elidibus and Lahabrea losing their memory, only Hades remembered.
https://preview.redd.it/rnmhks37tll...bp&s=9fefa068e8b533bef5e11eeba870bd5d6c7c9dcc
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Which leads me to a short note about Azem’s involvement in the Pandaemonium storyline and another revelation that is of utmost importance and it is often so glossed over because Themis mentions it in passing several times, meaning it was hardly a novelty for him—Azem was a seer, and apparently it was not an oddity that they would share their visions or prophecies with the Convocation. That alone should make you think ponder carefully about 7.5, but more than that… Ultima’s influence spreads through cognition hazards. What would have happened if Azem was corrupted at the selfsame instant they learned of the hand behind the scenes? What if they became a prisoner in their own flesh, and the only way to save their soul was through Death’s mercy of liberation—same as Haldrath was corrupted by Nidhogg’s eye and asked his friend to kill him, or Golbez was corrupted and Durante had to kill him, taking upon his name and mantle in memory afterwards? Reminds me of a certain someone who took upon himself Azem’s legacy and mantle: “As the bearer of Azem’s crystal, you must consider your duty to see at least that much. I certainly did.”
In any case. Did I mention that we have visuals that the sundered reality is encased within a barrier-shell of sorts? Who is, then, behind the painted skies—watching it as if it were a panopticon, not unlike the cameras following us everywhere around Solution Nine? Welcome aboard to the train of feeling watched as if you were a performer on a stage of a play someone else is writing, and start noticing the eyes all around you—the hand of Fate, the ‘script’ decreed by our jailer to be ‘sacred history’. Sounds familiar? You have heard this term before, I am certain of it.
Very exemplary exercise in projection—when it was you and the Ironworks folks who kicked the Laws of Creation and meddled with History itself in the process. Unless 'sacred history' is what the one pulling the strings decreed is to be the lie made a reality? When Hades asked the Exarch \"who are you?\", was the question truly aimed at the person in front of him—or at the one pulling the strings above him, connected to a tower absorbing everlasting Light?
TL;DR: Long story short—Ultima, as you saw her represented in her primal form, is the blinding radiance masking the darkest and most horrible of ruinations. And so we return to FNC and the first point of warning I gave you—the Light is not your friend. Quite the opposite, in fact. And it operates through lies and illusions, meant to shape your thoughts and your very own principles, and twist and rot them from the inside out… while you remain blissfully ignorant and convinced of your righteousness and virtue.
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I will say this much as introduction to this section—to everyone I have discussed this with, they started seeing eyes everywhere around us in FFXIV, and with good reason because eyes are all around the place once you start noticing them. Some of them are positive, and others negative—but here we are going to talk of the real mastermind, the hand behind both the Final Days and the Sundering, or which is to say, the fall of mankind—Ultima, the High Seraph and authority of Light, and the mind behind the sundered’s creation.
https://preview.redd.it/kitpsocpsll...bp&s=f6daf12a9e07afa160f2165cdccb661b92535c25
Ultima, the devouring Mother of the sundered.
I already talked about Ultima earlier, when elaborating on Zodiark, because they are direct opposites in Ivalician cosmology. I have also talked about the in-game ties and visual and thematic connections present mostly in EnW to her direct intervention and influence on certain crucial players on the stage. I am going to elaborate a bit more on her, on her role and her methods now, but let us put this simply in one line—Act I was called the Hydaelyn and Zodiark saga, but Act II reveals that the truth is that this has always been the Ultima versus Zodiark saga. That is to say, the true entities behind Act I’s primals.
First of all, let us address the main protest regarding this claim—“but we already fought Ultima!” No, no we did not. In the figurine that was made of her incarnation in the Ivalice raids, it comes with a brief lore note, in which it is revealed that the Ultima we fight in the Necrohol of Mullonde is in fact a primal of her. Which means the real one is out there—sleep well. Now to the second question, where is the real one, then?
This is a question for which I can only speculate as of now, given visuals and themes. I suspect however, that the real Ultima was imprisoned by the Ancients or perhaps the original Convocation in a time that they might have forgotten themselves—and it is possible the forgetting was deliberate because Ultima spreads her influence through cognition hazards—and because FFXIV is built upon echoes of echoes and more echoes, Ultima’s idea of vengeance for the Ancients was to imprison them in an artificial Moon same as she might have been confined. You may also think of Bahamut being an echo of her as well, being imprisoned within Dalamud but still exerting a certain degree of influence from his prison, namely tempering Midas nan Garlond and Eula van Darnus. What we do know for sure thanks to Pandaemonium—and this is why Pandaemonium being the raid storyline for EnW is so crucial and deliberate—is that Athena found or was given the Heart of Sabik, which as we know is Lucavi-origin auracite, and Ultima corrupted her and began spreading her influence using Athena as a conduit. If you ask me, I doubt Athena herself was aware that Ultima was taking hold of her, but it would hardly be surprising because the insidiousness of Ultima’s corruption is that you are not even aware that your thoughts are no longer your own.
Let me explain a bit how Ultima works in this regard. Ultima’s corruption, as I mentioned before, works through cognition hazards—which means, the mere knowing of her existence on itself is a gateway for her corruption. And part of Pandaemonium’s relevance is that it is in this raid where we learn that tempering is, in fact, the consequence of Ultima’s influence—disguised, however, through different objects of faith and/or adoration. Athena’s adoration was to herself, Hegemone’s adoration was towards Athena, Hesperos’s was towards Lahabrea, you get the idea; Erichthonios himself was afflicted with it, as Athena reveals that she directly tampered with his soul to make him artificially drawn to her mother, so he would be less inclined to listen to his father and be more amenable to her grooming Eric as her tool and vessel. This is something that you can spot as well in Vauthry in ShB through the method of feeding his subjects Light through meol—surely you remember that he had the power to enthrall others touched by the Light, yes? Unsurprising, because Vauthry himself is our metanarrative microcosm of Ultima herself and her methods, with Hydaelyn in the higher step above Vauthry playing more or less the same role—I could go on a long ramble on how Innocence’s design is fundamentally similar to Hydaelyn’s, but that is beside the point. Let us leave it at, Athena is a parallel to Venat for self-explanatory reasons. But these still need a bit more elaboration to finally tie them both to Ultima.
https://preview.redd.it/rfc56b1ssll...bp&s=b7655394a8e64fdd3fe7ed9c18397334afc9e437
https://preview.redd.it/ua2vdpissll...bp&s=9735179c34bfd25577eacaf8a9ef079788cd78a9
https://preview.redd.it/fw60vb0tsll...bp&s=e15996a26d8b7e2b084c6afa1360db98f88f0854
Athena, the Mother attempting to steal away the Son from the Father. A narrative, symbolic parallel to Venat stealing the WoL from Hades, and ultimately, Ultima stealing mankind from Zodiark.
There is another thing that you must know about Ultima’s corruption—it is particularly dangerous to people who believe themselves righteous. She is the definition of Friedrich Nietzsche’s famous quote: “He who fights with monsters, should see to it that he does not become a monster himself. And if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes into you also.” (I could ramble a while about how much Nietzschean philosophy is in FFXIV, but to be fair there is a lot of philosophy in it.) But back to topic, let us put it this way—go for the classic association of ‘Light’ with ‘virtue’ and ‘Dark’ with ‘evil’; Ultima has power over self-perceived virtue, which means the more you believe yourself pure and untouchable by evil, the more susceptible you become to her influence. As a counterpoint, the more aware you are of your flaws, your sins and your personal shadows, the lesser the hold Ultima can exert upon you because these shadows belong to the sphere of Darkness and she has no power over it. Remember that earlier I spoke of the Scions’ holier-than-thou morality and in particular the (artificial) flawlessness of the catman and Venat? We will return to the Scions for the next point, but surely you have started noticing a pattern.
Before I elaborate on how Ultima engineered the fall of the Ancients from what one can piece together with what we have been given so far, I will mention two trademark symbols that signal her presence and/or influence—the first one is swords, it comes from her original appearance in FFT where her incarnation wielded twin blades, and other characters that influence her in FFXIV (like FFXV!Bahamut through the association of Hydaelyn) heavily feature swords in part because the Ultima Weapon blade has been a staple for the franchise for a while.
https://preview.redd.it/2vvdai5vsll...bp&s=9b9e15ad861729f6bcf172a3d87a4a5acad4e6ea
https://preview.redd.it/n4bo0aovsll...bp&s=4434b5155131a7d0e36530ee3b295acba76898a2
https://preview.redd.it/uh0hez4wsll...bp&s=04a357f5b226fc17fd8ac8eae6bc2c2f492cb3cd
The seal. (Swords pointing inwards.)
The second, and the most significant, is ink, as we see Pallas Athena when channeling Ultima’s power acquire octopus-like tentacles,because of her iconic line in FFXIV which is in fact not hers but taken from Tactics Ogre, specifically from necromancer Nybeth Obdilord who attempted to erase Death through his research: “Denizens of the abyss! From ink of blackest night, I summon you!” And here is where things get truly interesting—what if I were to tell you that ink is all over the damn place in EnW?
Ink is, I will also tell you, heavily associated with Sharlayan—which is a massive red flag as it is, coupled with other certain visuals and themes, and the point I will cover after this one. In the lecture in the Studium with the Scholarch, he uses ink to illustrate how tampering with memory works—it is like ink blots covering it, that are cleansed by the aetherial sea; then proceed to say that Sharlayan has memory manipulation methods but they would never use them for nefarious ends. Well, as they say: “excusatio non petita, accusatio manifesta”. But leaving Sharlayan aside for the moment, it is when the Final Days begin that ink makes its proper introduction… as the map of the Three Great Continent pales, and a blotch of ink covers Thavnair as if attempting to erase it. Fast-forward to Elpis, and when suddenly Meteion is struck by a sudden communication—“Greetings, can you hear me? Do not be alarmed. I mean you no harm. I wish only to hear your words, share your feelings and know your thoughts. May we please be friends?” I still remember streams on EnW’s release with chats freaking out about ‘aliens’, well, it was not exactly far off the mark—and she suffers the overflow of dynamis, and she starts crying black tears, or should I say, ink tears, as her eyes go completely black; fast-forward a bit more and in the infamous Venat walk cutscene, what you see her growing more and more covered in is not blood—it is actually ink. Fast-forward to Ultima Thule… well, the devil is in its very name, is it not? Same as the dead sun in which the Endsinger attempted to imprison every soul that it will never be born again—her Ultimatum. Never thought that the Endsinger’s design is actually rather… say, angelic in nature? Meteion’s own color, and Hydaelyn’s ‘Light’ for that matter as well—because Ultima has two signature colors, being cyan blue and pink, when in other instances the Light, or should I say, the true Light, is shown golden-colored.
https://preview.redd.it/jc13hdk0tll...bp&s=c1f3af307c6dbb799bc0dba4686662cebd320a9e
https://preview.redd.it/4cfv8911tll...bp&s=b5bfd5ef8fb48ef60d45c489c8cb38e70d3f5c7a
\"Light everlasting\" in Ultima's context is terrifyingly chilling, as authority of Light. The glowing blue eyes make it worse, as blue is the color that the eyes of the tempered glow with. And even worse? The Everlasting Light is the weather effect of the areas of the First under the Lightwardens' influence.
We have enough evidence, visual and motive-wise, of Ultima’s corruption of Venat/Hydaelyn. The logistics are what are relatively less clear, but what is a fact is that it was the WoL’s arrival to Elpis what triggered the concatenation of events leading to the Final Days and the Sundering—the Final Days because in his short story, Hermes reveals that he acted opposing his fellow kin inspired by the WoL’s resolve that they instilled in him when confiding with them (which is to say, we validated Hermes’s loathing for his fellow man); the Sundering because we planted the idea of it in Venat’s mind… and I underline, once again, that Ultima spreads her tentacles through cognition hazards. But more than that, Elpis is located just above Pandaemonium—and Pandaemonium had become Ultima’s feud through Athena for a long while. Who is to say that Ultima’s influence did not bleed through—because remember, Themis could sense something wrong in Elpis from down below—and first amplified Hermes’s scorn, leading to the creation of Meteion in his quest of seeking answers from on high (in all this, poor Meteion is just a tool, if you think about it) and therefore crafting the ‘moral justification’ (quote-unquote) of the Sundering as a supposed necessity? You know, the good old tactic of “need a motive, cause it yourself and place the blame on others”. And yes, the WoL in this whole thing is in fact the agent of Ultima, because, well, we do bear Hydaelyn’s mark upon us, and if Hydaelyn was corrupted… the rest follows on its own.
For starters, we have visual evidence that Hydaelyn and the Twelve were corrupted/influenced by a certain High Seraph who is /the/ authority of Holy/Light through Myths of the Realm and P12S. Images attached—the crest, you can find in Euphrosyne (Heaven of Ice) and Thaleia (Heaven of Water), Ice being the element closest to Light and Water being largely associated with Hydaelyn. So that alone means, that everything related to Hydaelyn is very likely the work of a higher power pulling the strings.
The seed, I would say was planted in Elpis alright—but the culmination of the ink covering Venat, I believe it is the result of another elaborated chain of events. If you think this is too complicated for being a thing, I assure you—Ultima’s machinations are as entangled as this in her home games. Remember that Lahabrea, highest authority in creation magicks and phantomology, was originally infected with Athena’s cognition hazard—actually Ultima’s—and he was forced to sunder himself to avoid her corruption, yes? But, in order to cleanse it from Hegemone, he needed his full brand, and he had to put this corruption back into himself—and I believe here lies the key. In order to come up with the concept of something like primal!Zodiark, certainly Lahabrea would have been in charge of its design… and he had put Ultima’s corruption back inside him, and again, her insidiousness comes from making your thoughts not your own and not even realizing it. As per the furballs’ account, tempering was not something that came from the Ancients’ creation magicks, in fact in the dungeon of Akadaemia Anyder we learn that the act of using one’s own life and soul as core for guardian entities—like the researcher that becomes Quetzalcoatl—known as Guardian Forces was stated to be a thing. But I suspect Ultima’s influence might have bled into primal!Zodiark’s design, with another catch—remember that Ultima’s whole shtick is “I am the only god” whereas Zodiark’s is “I am many as one”, and she has no hold over the force of Darkness. Tempering is present in primal!Zodiark’s influence, but it does not cloud the Ascians’ judgment and as Hades tells us in Japanese, it can be kept at bay through mental discipline. Let us put it like this—because primal!Zodiark is made of many wills united as one, and embodying Darkness, Ultima does not really have a hold upon those affected. However, we do know that Venat’s group stole primal!Zodiark’s blueprint to design Hydaelyn… and we are talking of an entity of Light made of one will alone. Meaning Ultima, the authority of Light, would have had a free pass to take over. If you ask me, I believe primal!Zodiark, like Meteion, was just a vehicle for the true goal—the Sundering, and the fall of mankind, because that is exactly what Ultima is all about.
https://preview.redd.it/dd0a3qi4tll...bp&s=27bf4e13acf0db323529447c2f7fb221a292fe57
Visual cues to Ultima Thule. If you look up you will see colors that allude to 'Darkness' as per main narrative's wiles. As EnW is so centered (surface-level) on the 'truths' and mysteries of the heavens above and threats from the beyond. But it is when you fly over and look down what lies at the core of this rot. Blinding Light beneath in a clusterfuck of broken shards.As Hades noted in Elpis, regarding Hermes's folly, paraphrased: \"You were so desperate seeking answers in the heavens, you spared no thought on those to be found in the earth you tread upon.\"
Spoilers for FFXVI ahead!!, but it is inevitable because I have to mention it as FFXVI is the product of CBU3’s mind, and on top of that it is built upon Azem and Hades and it is what happens when you marry FFXIII and Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and dress the child in FFXIV clothes. Ultima, a male entity in FFXVI, is the one who is behind the Mothercrystals of Valisthea, which are in fact fellow members of the Ultima race turned into crystal that work as syphons of aether that are causing the Blight to fuel Ultima’s ultimate spell, Raise, to revive his civilization. Ultima is the creator of mankind (self-styling himself a god) which he only made for his future vessel, Mythos (Clive) to be born and be strong enough to withstand the flow of aether required to cast Raise. The Mothercrystals of Valisthea, upon which the whole system of society is built, are in fact the very cause of the Blight devouring it—and, well, from the Ivalice raids, we know that Ultima’s intention was to get herself the WoL… or should I say, Azem, as her vessel. Perhaps now it is becoming clearer why the Pandaemonium raids featured Azem working together with Themis and Lahabrea to unravel the threat, yes? Aside from, you know, the narrative performing a subtle yet massively significant switch—Azem was working with Themis and Lahabrea, two of the three Unsundered. Hades is a given when it comes to Azem because Hades’s loyalty does not understand sides beyond whatever side Azem is fighting for; the narrative purpose of Pandaemonium is to wave at you and say, “hey, Azem and, by extension, you, was fighting this threat alongside the Unsundered, and the Convocation”. Not Venat—the Convocation. The more you piece things together, the more the story of Azem’s defection becomes the dissonant element, does it not?.
In FFT, in the stained glass of the Zodiac, it is true we have the Sun in the middle of it, in a circle of violet—nudge nudge wink wink, color references in FFXIV—but this has a trick because in Ivalician lore, Zodiark, who represents the mysterious thirteenth Zodiac sign of Ophiuchus, is symbolized by the Sun and the Moon, because yes, Zodiark is the authority of Dark, but he is the Dark from which the Light is born, the instant of Death and Rebirth of the old year into the new year. Furthermore, in all games of the Ivalice Alliance series where he is shown, Zodiark—who is one of the 'good' Lucavi so to speak, opposite direct to Ultima (in particular)—dwells deep beneath the earth, seeking solitude because of his tremendous power that can easily reduce everything around him into nothing, though by the same token he can also create everything from nothing afterwards.
Why this is an important distinction to make? It is due to the association of Zodiark with earth's depths and him being Light and Dark as one—this latter concept, Elidibus embodies, especially in his fight in P11. Zodiark is the Keeper of Precepts—he fashions the Laws of Nature and judges and punishes those who break them, and this is why the Seat of Elidibus is that of the supreme adjudicator of Ancient society, and his verdict is respected by the entire circle as final. In their dynamic, Elidibus is who determines the course of action after hearing and weighing every choice, and choosing impartially what is best. In the Zodiac wheel, then, the Seat of Elidibus, associated with Ophiuchus and Zodiark, represents the Land—we see the constellations in the sky because we are standing upon the earth beneath our feet, so to speak, and we see the skies turn from that point of view.
So what does Azem represent? Azem is the Sun, the star that is never visible in the night sky unlike the stars of the constellations that can only be seen in the dark—but it is the 'journey' of the Sun throughout the year across them that which Azem represents. The circle of Azem traces the wheel itself, the trajectory of the circle, so Azem, yes, they had a seat in the circle of the Convocation same as Elidibus, but in a symbolic reading the Sun is both set apart and intrinsically bound to the Zodiac constellations because it is the Sun what connects them into the wholeness of the full year and the turning of the seasons.
This is one of the reasons there is a play in-game related to Azem's truth and how Hades gives us the hint through Hyth's shade when he makes the comment that at the time of primal!Zodiark's summoning, the Convocation of Fourteen was of 'Thirteen'—this quirk, none of the other Ascians does, Elidibus still talks of the Convocation of Fourteen in 5.3 and in the Chrysalis there are fourteen seats. Odd, if Azem had been truly struck from memory, yes? But what if it was all a lie? What if the intention was to protect Azem's memory and their truth by hiding them and their true purpose away from the covetous gaze of the true enemy the Convocation faced? Azem, the unseen star in the night sky—the Fourteenth in full power, but reduced to Zero after, potentially, death, until new awakening. The trajectory of Azem forms a perfect circle—a zero, the number of infinite potential and possibility. Perhaps what Hades was telling us through his clever codespeak is that the Convocation of Thirteen was in truth 13 + 0, as Azem was dead. If Azem had defected, they would have had to pass their seat and their brand to a successor—however, we are told instead that the Convocation was reduced to Thirteen... and this was when the Convocation became the Ascians, "without shadow". The Sun is the source of light in nature that projects shadows—and they lost their Sun. Their 'renaming' is a sign of mourning for their lost brother... that after the Sundering and Elidibus and Lahabrea losing their memory, only Hades remembered.
https://preview.redd.it/rnmhks37tll...bp&s=9fefa068e8b533bef5e11eeba870bd5d6c7c9dcc
https://preview.redd.it/03shyjf7tll...bp&s=a9a4ee7fa1fef479f97d70f60b0cbb72c7789a37
Which leads me to a short note about Azem’s involvement in the Pandaemonium storyline and another revelation that is of utmost importance and it is often so glossed over because Themis mentions it in passing several times, meaning it was hardly a novelty for him—Azem was a seer, and apparently it was not an oddity that they would share their visions or prophecies with the Convocation. That alone should make you think ponder carefully about 7.5, but more than that… Ultima’s influence spreads through cognition hazards. What would have happened if Azem was corrupted at the selfsame instant they learned of the hand behind the scenes? What if they became a prisoner in their own flesh, and the only way to save their soul was through Death’s mercy of liberation—same as Haldrath was corrupted by Nidhogg’s eye and asked his friend to kill him, or Golbez was corrupted and Durante had to kill him, taking upon his name and mantle in memory afterwards? Reminds me of a certain someone who took upon himself Azem’s legacy and mantle: “As the bearer of Azem’s crystal, you must consider your duty to see at least that much. I certainly did.”
In any case. Did I mention that we have visuals that the sundered reality is encased within a barrier-shell of sorts? Who is, then, behind the painted skies—watching it as if it were a panopticon, not unlike the cameras following us everywhere around Solution Nine? Welcome aboard to the train of feeling watched as if you were a performer on a stage of a play someone else is writing, and start noticing the eyes all around you—the hand of Fate, the ‘script’ decreed by our jailer to be ‘sacred history’. Sounds familiar? You have heard this term before, I am certain of it.
Very exemplary exercise in projection—when it was you and the Ironworks folks who kicked the Laws of Creation and meddled with History itself in the process. Unless 'sacred history' is what the one pulling the strings decreed is to be the lie made a reality? When Hades asked the Exarch \"who are you?\", was the question truly aimed at the person in front of him—or at the one pulling the strings above him, connected to a tower absorbing everlasting Light?
TL;DR: Long story short—Ultima, as you saw her represented in her primal form, is the blinding radiance masking the darkest and most horrible of ruinations. And so we return to FNC and the first point of warning I gave you—the Light is not your friend. Quite the opposite, in fact. And it operates through lies and illusions, meant to shape your thoughts and your very own principles, and twist and rot them from the inside out… while you remain blissfully ignorant and convinced of your righteousness and virtue.
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