Heavensward Lore Tours: The Fractal Continuum

Welcome to another FFXIV Lore Tour! Rather than offering you another mechanical dungeon guide, I'll be running through the various duties of the game whilst giving them the Ethys treatment verbatim. Every inch of the game is full of meaning and opportunity and although not every reference made could be stretched to a several-minute lecture, I think this will prove a great format to cover the smaller constituent details of the XIV universe.
This video extensively contains my own commentary and editing and is intended for educational purposes.

[@PatMacMusic]

Hey Ethys, I love your lore tours, as I am also somewhat of a history buff, i will say i like how you brought more Eorzean lore into this video, i like how it relates to our lore, but eorzean lore fascinates me in this game. Keep it up, awesome work

[@TOOKHimmel]

The last boss room reminds me of the mini dalamud in T11. We know in Azys Lla, the allagan researched on controlling the primals. Bahamut was the primal entrapped in dalamud. The last boss room could be some sort of prototype dalamud.

[@ZetsubouGamble]

Awesome tour. Love the videos. I'd definitely like to see a lore tour of Alexander and ARF. I think I saw you running around on Tonberry the other day. Keep up the good work!

[@KMFDM_Kid2000]

Great fun to watch and learn. Library would be the obvious choice. A bit on The Singularity while it might be short, and a little's been covered in your Primal video, I'd love to see a correlation between what we see in game to what's known about Arthurian legend (and perhaps the bits that can be shown to be historical?). Throw in some comparison to FF7 just for a fun time.

[@steelbreese72]

thanks for the tour. i suggest a lore tour of the fight with king thordan and his knights. maybe explaining the inspiration from them. beyond the ff7 summon.

[@kazaboo486]

I always figured they put in the Minotaur boss as a lil nod to Sacred and Minotaur from FFIII as well as the Greek legend, which I love. Hoping you do one for each of the new dungeons, particularly Sohm Al and Aery. I love your videos, the lore geek in me is in it's element :D

[@Zephalier13968]

Ethys! I love your stuff, really. Metaphysics series is my favorite. Of the new and old dungeons, Anor Londo (The Vault) is by far my favorite :D

[@ninzard]

Great video, as always, Ethys and I'm happy to hear you'll be doing more ^^ Just one thing I noted for this one, though. You call the boss "some kind of griffin", but I got the strong impression it was supposed to be a winged sphinx, a being which I usually associate with guardians of knowledge and secrets. Originally, they were just placed in front of tombs as far as I know, but there is something tomb-like about a museum from and ancient near-forgotton civilization I suppose. Or maybe I'm just trying to read too much into this :D

[@DracoSuave]

Little bit of information: Fractal continuum is actually a scientific term relating to hydrodynamics. It specifically has to do with fluid mechanics through fractures in materials.

[@Tigerhawk01]

A while back they said they had plans for the Goblins and Moogles likely beast tribe quests. It's also safe to assume will get Gnath and Vanu tribe quests. Perhaps a mix of Gnath and Moogle then Vanu and Goblin either way will likely get one or a pair of them in the next major patch.

[@henrywesterman493]

Hey! You mentioned my comment on Ravana from your last video! :D I can agree it's potentially just a reskin of the boss in terms of look... but with potential original Ixali creatures in the tanks, confirmation that so many of the monsters we're fighting throughout the game being of Allagan manufacturing (lamia, chimera, potentially the cyclops being of similar powers to the second boss) and references there to other areas (see the model of the Crystal Tower in one of the earlier rooms)... I dunno. After revealing the origins of the surface moogles' worship of Good King Moggle Mog XII as a potentially real figure who helped some mooogles escape from the Churning Mists, I can't help but wonder how many other primals may have very simple origins twisted by faith/religious reverence (like Leviathan).

[@YumiGoblin]

I'd love to see the library, it's such a cool place

[@cheesepuffsthings]

Minotaur Happy-Dance is best dance.

[@QuantumJump451]

Hey Ethys, I'd love to see you do the Aery, if only because I think it will be hilarious watching you talk about Gyascutus

[@redoctane13]

(concerning the Garleans) My personal theory on it is that they were a created race, which could explain why (thus far) they are the only sentient life we've found unable to use magic. Could've been grunt workers, could've been grunt soldiers. When you're a society that has magic and technology intermingled to that extent, it would make sense to have safeguards in place so they couldn't rise up against you. Also we have at the best least Cid and Nero as examples for the Garleans being very technically adept, could be literally hardwired into them. I wager as we get into stormblood we'll find out more about this, It may be a bit of a stretch, but at the very least i think it has some potential.

[@aqj2014]

I'm tempted to say the garlean signifiers and a few other mage classes can use magic, but they may be conscripts, so..,

[@redoctane13]

they arent garlean though :x pure blooded garleans can't use magic or even sense aether.

[@aqj2014]

Illogicbomb then how the hell did they make magitek? technology powered by magic!

[@l3onprid3]

Nice bravestar reference with the mirror knight

[@Kantohammer]

I think I remember the summoner questline talking about the Mirrorknights coming from the Allagans as well, but I don't remember all the details.

[@plaguerson]

Ever make a lore tour for "The Vault"? Would love that.

[@Zeik188]

Honestly, I thought Phantom Ray was created by the Alagon's in Ravana's image. I don't know much about how Primal functioned in ages long past, but I figure he'd would've been around (Ravana). Maybe they just made it in his image?

[@zygot3060]

Did you ever do one on Tam-Tara Deepcroft? I know you talked a lot about it on State of the Realm, however I have been unable to find it. I know it's old, but I really wanna know what about it really grabbed your attention so much.

[@EthysAsher]

zygot3060 I did talk about Tam-Tara HM a fair bit in the first Umbral Zone entry; I'm not sure how much more there is to say about it but I'm definitely up for revisiting more ARR dungeons.

[@WhiteLycanXII]

One might argue that the redundancy 'fractal continuum' is a fractal continuum in and of itself. But that's where the madness begins. I hate the the first boss of this dungeon btw.

[@lewis24685]

I would like to see a lore tour of the Aether research facilty

[@crodo123]

your inventory is full..... sir... your inventory...

[@Aaronrod518]

Dusk vigil

[@Burningskull13]

Always possible that some Allagans survived their calamity and became the Garleans at some point right?

[@Burningskull13]

The Sabti (sp) look a little like Ifrit. So maybe they were a beast race that worshipped ifrit before the amal ja

[@lucaturilli777]

I've been putting off saying it for awhile now, but since you mentioned it...some of FF XIV's enemies look like reskins from FFXIII. Models, animations and all. Hell, Ultros literally looks like he was ripped out of XIII-2 and thrown in here.

[@EthysAsher]

lucaturilli777 yeah a lot of people were pointing out in 2.0 the number of recommissioned FFXI assets as well and I can understand why it bothers some people but ehh I think when you're working on a project of this size and scope it's understandable to want to tap into those older resources. Besides, it's really just taking the fans perhaps a bit too literally when they say they want to see characters from previous games.

[@lucaturilli777]

Ethys Asher Oh, I don't think its a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination. The designs in of themselves are still good, and as long as they look and feel like they belong in the game, I don't really have a problem with it. Like you said, it probably saves a bit of time on their part as opposed to making models and animations from scratch.

[@Goujiki]

Speaking of Alexander Gordias, Don't you think Goblins are freaking hilarious? lol... And I have a theory about that cat on Quickthinx Alltalks head :O... cait... sith? :O

[@amolinya]

That'll teach you to ignore your phone, ethys :p (talking bout the 90k)

[@qtscorpkid]

i want to see the mini coil its the final one in the story

[@RyuNoZero]

I personally would like to see something from the Aery, because I think it's almost a rip off from Xenoblade's Prison Island.

[@ridleyroid9060]

is that bard...casting?

[@espional7598]

In Heavensward bards and machinists each had an ability (Wanderer's Minuet and Gauss Barrel, which of course were repurposed later) gave them something like +20% damage but added cast times. This was about as popular as you'd expect.

[@ridleyroid9060]

@@espional7598 sounds awful