Fray.

Fray.

Elftober Day 3: High Up (The low or even un-railed ledges in lower Ishgard and Empyreum have always fascinated me. How many "accidental" deaths must they cause...)

White Diamond by Kelly Kirstein.

putting bg3 point and click voicelines together to sound like a conversation has brought me great joy, so. here's gale, karlach, shadowheart, and astarion doing a terrible job of sneaking around

i love heavensward: a series of bulletin points

your last ally in all the city-states is an elf who would unironically lick the sweat from your armpits in front of the entire congregation. he begs his dad to let you couch surf. one of his brothers admits to your face that he wished you would die

two members of the swiss guard arrest your children so you punch them in the neck until the judge says you're free to go. the pope personally calls you to apologize for the trouble

ilberd tries and fails to hotbox you to death

a hot elf wife takes you on vacation to a nest full of cool bugs

anytime there's a serious moment estinien challenges the tone of the scene by pulling a giant novelty eyeball out of his pants which is played 100% straight every single time. not a single soul questions this or reacts in surprise

the prettiest elf in the world gets arrested trying to yell at his dad

Occupy The Vatican Right Fucking Now!!!!

the pope stances on the deck of an airship and flies away into the sunset after his eunuch traumatizes you

the emperor of garlemald shows up to call you a dipshit, leaves, and then you don't see him personally again for 1.5 expansion packs

we summon a naked catgirl and the first thing tataru does is give her a pair of louboutins and put a bow on her little kitty tail. she is the most deadly serious person in the entire organization

you take a quick detour to visit the angriest woman who's ever lived who calls you and everyone you're with a pointless dumbfuck moron shit idiot (affectionate). then she gives you a gun she invented that sharlayan banned for being too cool

theres a flying allagan war crimes factory full of broken robots who think you're stupid. an entire legion of garleans are abandoned here to form a feral colony with the escaped lab animals. the robots make fun of them

the dad of all the dragons on the whole planet calls you his favorite in front of his real child who he hasnt talked to in 4000 years

an evil wizard tries to get revenge on you for killing his cousin but the pope loads his soul into a bong and takes the fattest rip. the next time you meet him you mostly learn about how much his wife bullied him

estinien picks up a second eyeball. surprise development!: there is an angry dragon ghost living in the eyeballs

thancred gets punched in the face

you watch two dragon brothers fight because one called the other's dead wife a foul and trifling hoe

you save your friend through the power of friendship, and littering. as soon as he feels better he jumps out of a window and doesnt talk to you for two years

the guy from the box art wont stop trying to kill you because he is actually john videogames: astral traveler

after 15 hours of wondering what happened to all the scions and learning just the ones you've been able to FIND were flung into the afterlife, you discover lyse and papalymo are fine. they werent even hurt. they have been playing desert dress up with the ala mhigans while youve been freezing your pussy off trying to end a multigenerational religious war with the dragons and depose a corrupt head of state. they tried to send one letter and then gave up

the consequences of littering catch up with you. in eorzea, the fine is $Giant Dragon

okay here is my weird take about what emet-selch might have done regarding zenos and whatever "experiment" was going on

Joke answer: he's a dragon stuffed into a human body

serious answer: it's the same as the joke answer but longer and explained in an incoherent way.

i think we've been given hints about what the fuck was going on with Varis's Large Adult Son even after endwalker, but i need to reference other things to do that, so let's break it down:

-We have been given more insight into how Memories and Souls work and interact in this setting, especially after Dawntrail. We know that it's possible to implant memories onto a soul that didn't originally have them, and it works fine if you have the technology to do this

-Emet-Selch's whole job involved souls and the lifestream

-We've seen Athena also bring back ancients, in a temporary way, by reconstituting soul stuff and grabbing the memories for those ancients, since souls and memories are essentially different kinds of aether. if you've played FFVII at all, you already know this. one would assume that Emet-Selch would manage reconstituting souls a lot better

-there are some memories that are so powerful that they are blasted or etched into your soul, which is why some faded memories can stick around from past lives

-We know that Emet-Selch was seriously thinking of a way to bring the ancients back without rejoinings, and this was probably attempted via his literal large adult sons and their descendants.

-dragon's souls, as far as we know, are unsundered.

-fitting with the Sephiroth and Jenvoa parallel, they are also canonically aliens

about Zenos:

-the devs have said that he was "born wrong" and that's why he's like that. this seems different than "born evil" because Lyse assumes that this wasn't the case, and that's not the normal philosophy for the game. characters have been wrong before, but if he was experimented on, this is likely referencing Sephiroth, who was also born wrong on purpose, as a joke, via tampering in the womb

-people in the world still have vague, ephemeral memories of the ancients, but Zenos is different. Zenos has upsettingly visceral memories of the final days but he also views the world like the ancients do, particularly regarding accomplishing your life's purpose and then dying right after as a positive thing. this is why his actions at the end of stormblood do not read as suicidal to not just me, but the characters. they're really confused about why he does this! Zenos acting the way he does seems to be the answer to why the ancients tried to emphasize a more communal existence, because what happens when the most powerful motherfucker on earth is also a prince in an extremely hierarchical society? you get Zenos

-However, Zenos also follows the rule of beasts and is much more beastlike, similar to dragons. Dragons aren't evil, but they have extremely different cultures and views than humans, because they're functionally immortal and don't need to reproduce. they are power manifest, and can easily take over an ecosystem. Midgardsomr's covenant with Hydaelyn most likely prevents this, but the point is that dragons are pure power, and that's what they respect the most. like Zenos, although being raised as he was probably made this even worse

-Zenos seems pretty dysphoric, but it doesn't seem to be directed at any gender. he's stated that he doesn't care about his name one way or the other, and that he only wants his body back from Elidibus because of how powerful it is. he otherwise doesn't seem to care about normal human experiences, like human food or sex, or just companionship in general with other humans. as far as food goes, he's the only villain to do this, as the writers tend to get into what foods the characters like in the lore books, even the villains. you can't really say that this is just the product of being a royal or someone in power. even Thordan has a favorite food, and even Varis had a childhood friend, who we've actually met.

-both in The Hunt Begins and in general, Zenos actively wants to be able to use and manipulate aether. this is odd, since Garleans are constantly told that magic is evil and bad, but Zenos goes out of his way to try to do this, including piercing himself with a crystal where the aether exchange could kill him. this could be because his great grandfather is a sorcerer of eld. it could be because dragons not being able to use magic would feel extremely unnatural to him. why not both?

-He seems. REALLY excited when he transforms into Shinryu. like, weirdly excited. i get it, it would probably own being a dragon, and you could say that he was just really excited about fighting the wol the first time, but this has happened twice now, and every time he almost sounds like Susano with how excited he is. it's a total fucking mood shift. also in his last fight he still keeps the Shinryu attacks. since it's in a place that's ruled by emotions, one has to assume that he's attached to them

-He literally has a horde (of weapons)? i know we don't see a lot of FFXIV dragons do this, but Vrtra has a horde that he uses as a bank. what's up with that.

-He doesn't really have a coda yet, and while i don't think he's going to be brought back, or that he NEEDS to be brought back, the wol seems like they're just starting to be comfortable with thinking about what Zenos's deal is with enough time and distance

-how d. how did he know that dragons can just lay eggs like that. yeah he could have READ about it but like. how did he figure out how to do that in the fight. and why. why did he just doooo thaaaat.

IN CONCLUSION i think that in a bid to try to bring ancients back into the world through unnatural means, Emet-Selch took the closest recently dead unsundered soul he could find at the time (a dragon's), imprinted some of his memories onto it (as one would do when making the convocation crystals) and put that shit in a baby. thanks.