✶ imeeji: memory
Apr. 9th, 2021 01:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scattershot➤ Part 1
Continue on, if you would have your answers - but know this path leads only to despair. The light of truth was ever harsh and unforgiving.
The Second Coil of Bahamut
Summary
✶ Alisaie and the Warrior of Light stand on a barren cliff face, looking out over a series of floating islands and jagged orange crystals, and a massive chunk of something buried deep into the ground. The view is new to them: Alisaie discusses why they couldn't see it earlier, coming to the conclusion that a massive disturbance in the area's ambient aether must have hidden it from sight.
✶ Alisaie is determined to head into the broken ruins piercing the earth. She aims to do two things - turn off the machinery that is causing a creature known as 'Bahamut' to be regenerated, and rescue her grandfather, who she believes to be alive in the ruins. Spying an opening, the pair fight past golems and some extremely angry vegetation to make their way in, entering through a crack in the superstructure.
✶ They are met by a masked figure in full armor. Alisaie identifies the stranger as Nael van Darnus, otherwise known as 'The White Raven', the man behind something known as the Meteor Project. He claims to have renounced the name, telling them that the 'one true deity' Bahamut has renamed him Nael deus Darnus. He threatens them with death should they trespass further in his God's domain then disappears, falling down an open shaft.
✶ Of course the pair ignore this. Alisaie, however, is confused: Nael van Darnus should be dead. She warns the Warrior of Light that they must take care - there is no reasoning with the worshippers of a Primal. They press on deeper into the ruins.
✶ This place is weird - full of glowing, technological monoliths and crawling with monsters. Alisaie says these were created by the ancient Allagans to guard the imprisoned Bahamut.
✶ We go deeper still. An elevator platform unexpectedly drops the party into a platform floating in an inky void, dominated by a giant, flaming sphere Alisaie calls 'Dalamud': the very structure she and the Warrior of Light now stand inside. This is of course impossible. Darnus appears again and claims the place is his own grave - or that of the man he was before Bahamut had him in thrall - and that it will serve as the party's grave too.
✶ Darnus transforms into a vast, feminine-featured, harpy-like creature and tries to kill the Warrior of Light's party and Alisaie. Once defeated, the strange void and the angry moon vanish, leaving them back in the ruins of Dalamud.
✶ Darnus isn't quite dead and staggers toward them - it's now very obvious that her body is that of a woman's. Alisaie suspects Bahamut resurrected her in an aetherial body using the original's faulty memories at the point of death, and points out that he no longer seems to want to sustain her existence. Darnus denies she could be in thrall to a Primal, only to realize it may have been true. Alisaie wonders at how her thralldom could have been broken.
✶ Alisaie tries to get more information about something she refers to as 'the Calamity' and the fate of her grandfather out of Darnus. The dying shade says she will have her answers if she carries on down this path - but that she won't like what she finds there.
✶ Darnus is killed by a glowing spear of light as a disembodied voice taunts her. Alisaie recognizes it as her grandfather's, but clings to the hope that he will be restored to himself once Bahamut is destroyed. She and the Warrior of Light come to a glowing console, which she shuts off. Before they can leave, they are interrupted by the sudden appearance of Archon Louisoix, Alisaie's grandfather, who fires a bolt of magic at her, knocking her down.
✶ Louisoix tells the pair he will not allow them to sabotage the coils. When she argues, he moves to attack her again, but the Warrior of Light intercedes. Horrified, Alisaie realizes that this man cannot truly be her grandfather: she knows him better than this, and he would never speak or act so. He vanishes, leaving Alisaie heartbroken - but now more determined than ever to see Bahamut destroyed for good, thereby setting his soul free.
Notes
✶ The player-character Warrior of Light, who accompanies Alisaie, is seen as a humanoid shape made up of blinding white light surrounded by a rainbow corona, of indeterminate age, race and gender. None of their individual features are discernible, and though they can be seen to be speaking their voice cannot be made out.
✶ Though character names are used in the summary for the sake of comprehension, viewers watching the memory will find all names, aside from Alisaie's own and Nael van Darnus's cognomen "The White Raven", are inaudible, having been replaced by static.
✶ The names of locations and the Garlean and Allagan Empires are likewise inaudible.
✶ Nael van Darnus was canonically female - she was a Garlean woman who took the place of her brother after his own untimely death, hiding her gender from the Garlean military and from the world at large. Alisaie, of course, has no way of knowing any of this, and so can only assume that Bahamut used 'his' memories to bring 'him' back in an altered form.
Continue on, if you would have your answers - but know this path leads only to despair. The light of truth was ever harsh and unforgiving.
The Second Coil of Bahamut
Summary
✶ Alisaie and the Warrior of Light stand on a barren cliff face, looking out over a series of floating islands and jagged orange crystals, and a massive chunk of something buried deep into the ground. The view is new to them: Alisaie discusses why they couldn't see it earlier, coming to the conclusion that a massive disturbance in the area's ambient aether must have hidden it from sight.
✶ Alisaie is determined to head into the broken ruins piercing the earth. She aims to do two things - turn off the machinery that is causing a creature known as 'Bahamut' to be regenerated, and rescue her grandfather, who she believes to be alive in the ruins. Spying an opening, the pair fight past golems and some extremely angry vegetation to make their way in, entering through a crack in the superstructure.
✶ They are met by a masked figure in full armor. Alisaie identifies the stranger as Nael van Darnus, otherwise known as 'The White Raven', the man behind something known as the Meteor Project. He claims to have renounced the name, telling them that the 'one true deity' Bahamut has renamed him Nael deus Darnus. He threatens them with death should they trespass further in his God's domain then disappears, falling down an open shaft.
✶ Of course the pair ignore this. Alisaie, however, is confused: Nael van Darnus should be dead. She warns the Warrior of Light that they must take care - there is no reasoning with the worshippers of a Primal. They press on deeper into the ruins.
✶ This place is weird - full of glowing, technological monoliths and crawling with monsters. Alisaie says these were created by the ancient Allagans to guard the imprisoned Bahamut.
✶ We go deeper still. An elevator platform unexpectedly drops the party into a platform floating in an inky void, dominated by a giant, flaming sphere Alisaie calls 'Dalamud': the very structure she and the Warrior of Light now stand inside. This is of course impossible. Darnus appears again and claims the place is his own grave - or that of the man he was before Bahamut had him in thrall - and that it will serve as the party's grave too.
✶ Darnus transforms into a vast, feminine-featured, harpy-like creature and tries to kill the Warrior of Light's party and Alisaie. Once defeated, the strange void and the angry moon vanish, leaving them back in the ruins of Dalamud.
✶ Darnus isn't quite dead and staggers toward them - it's now very obvious that her body is that of a woman's. Alisaie suspects Bahamut resurrected her in an aetherial body using the original's faulty memories at the point of death, and points out that he no longer seems to want to sustain her existence. Darnus denies she could be in thrall to a Primal, only to realize it may have been true. Alisaie wonders at how her thralldom could have been broken.
✶ Alisaie tries to get more information about something she refers to as 'the Calamity' and the fate of her grandfather out of Darnus. The dying shade says she will have her answers if she carries on down this path - but that she won't like what she finds there.
✶ Darnus is killed by a glowing spear of light as a disembodied voice taunts her. Alisaie recognizes it as her grandfather's, but clings to the hope that he will be restored to himself once Bahamut is destroyed. She and the Warrior of Light come to a glowing console, which she shuts off. Before they can leave, they are interrupted by the sudden appearance of Archon Louisoix, Alisaie's grandfather, who fires a bolt of magic at her, knocking her down.
✶ Louisoix tells the pair he will not allow them to sabotage the coils. When she argues, he moves to attack her again, but the Warrior of Light intercedes. Horrified, Alisaie realizes that this man cannot truly be her grandfather: she knows him better than this, and he would never speak or act so. He vanishes, leaving Alisaie heartbroken - but now more determined than ever to see Bahamut destroyed for good, thereby setting his soul free.
Notes
✶ The player-character Warrior of Light, who accompanies Alisaie, is seen as a humanoid shape made up of blinding white light surrounded by a rainbow corona, of indeterminate age, race and gender. None of their individual features are discernible, and though they can be seen to be speaking their voice cannot be made out.
✶ Though character names are used in the summary for the sake of comprehension, viewers watching the memory will find all names, aside from Alisaie's own and Nael van Darnus's cognomen "The White Raven", are inaudible, having been replaced by static.
✶ The names of locations and the Garlean and Allagan Empires are likewise inaudible.
✶ Nael van Darnus was canonically female - she was a Garlean woman who took the place of her brother after his own untimely death, hiding her gender from the Garlean military and from the world at large. Alisaie, of course, has no way of knowing any of this, and so can only assume that Bahamut used 'his' memories to bring 'him' back in an altered form.