This post is part two of my Dawntrail pre-release analysis, looking at everything we have now as I write and using it to try and find some threads of what we can expect in the new expansion to Final Fantasy XIV. Last time, we talked about job changes, a more hard-science area of endeavor with potencies and numbers we can work from. This post is all story and theories, and we’re gonna get crazy out here for a minute.

Right off the bat, let’s jump into a big point to make, with spoilers for Final Fantasy IX to come. (There will also be XIV spoilers of all content to date, and discussion/speculation about stuff from the live letters, Fan Fests, and Media Tour we’ve had on this ride.)

The Inspiration of the Past

Endwalker and now Dawntrail have had a fun habit of drawing heavy inspiration from a past FF title and then using that as a jumping off point to their plot lines, major and minor. Endwalker was a Final Fantasy IV tale, both in terms of inspiration (the Dark Knight Warrior of Light becoming a Paladin, a journey to the Moon, saving your world) and literally (the full post-launch patch storyline was basically a retelling of the major plot beats of FFIV). Dawntrail, as of right now, is winking and nodding furiously at us about Final Fantasy IX – the pre-order bonus minion is the hero of that game, the Collector’s Edition minion is another character of the main cast of it, the collector’s mount is from FFIX, elements of the new content are named identically to things in FFIX, like how new city Solution Nine is also the name of a Trance from Zidane in that game – it is far from a coincidence. So the question to ask, then, is simple – what of Final Fantasy IX might make its way into Dawntrail?

The summary version of FFIX is this – a dying world planted its soul crystal at the heart of another world, alongside a tree, in hopes that they could return the souls of their dead to life in new bodies, using the new planet’s lifecycle to facilitate this process. The planet FFIX takes place on is that new planet, and most of the antagonists as well as our main character hail from the dying planet. This scheme processes the souls of the dying through the tree, turning them into Mist instead of granting them to the rightful soul crystal for reincarnation, which should, over time, allow the inhabitants of the old planet to subsume the new and to be reborn to live their new lives. The Mist that results from this shrouds the world, causing harm to those who live on the Mist Continent and ultimately turning them evil, but this Mist is also used to power airships and to create an army of limited-life Black Mages, who are weaponized by one of the antagonists in their journey to attempt to facilitate this planetary takeover.

Zidane, the protagonist of FFIX, is an inhabitant originally of the dead planet Terra. His limit break (called Trance in FFIX) is Solution Nine, an empowered form. He was created and intended to aid in the subjugation of Gaia, the living planet being consumed by Terra, but he has amnesia and lives a full and complete life on Gaia before being made aware of his true origin, at which point he works to help his friends from Gaia and defeat the forces that would see Terra win out and reincarnate the souls of their dead. Given that FFIX was the “cutesy, return-to-form” of Final Fantasy in the PS1 era, the story is surprisingly dark and substantial, using that chibi-fied 3D interpretation of the classic sprite graphics to mask and accent a story that is heavy with deep concepts and the idea of learning to find comfort in the temporary nature of the life we all get.

So what are the potential tie-ins, then?

Well, the most obvious so far is that something big is attempting to hide in Shaaloani, a zone of Xak Tural in the north, alongside Heritage Found, Solution Nine, and (presumably) our hidden sixth zone of the expansion – and the speculation in the community has turned to the idea that Shaaloani is hiding the Iifa Tree, the soul-filtering Mist maker that defined a large chunk of Final Fantasy IX’s story. Presumably, the Iifa Tree would make a hell of a dungeon, one that would fit with some of the dungeon concept art we’ve seen to date (if you squint hard enough, the purple-y dungeon art and the zone flow concept that was shown at JP Fan Fest both look pretty closely related and would be interesting in that way), and it would be a major MSQ moment to delve to the heart of the tree and see the soul-swapping operation directly. In many ways, much of the speculation about closeness to FFIX’s story feel like slam dunks, because the game is using names and symbolism in a very un-subtle way to point us there, just the same as how all the hints at FFIV in the same window pre-relase of Endwalker was to lampshade that we’d be playing an homage and nod to that title. But obviously we aren’t doing Terra and Gaia and our WoLs aren’t Zidane, so what’s the hook that ties it back into FFXIV lore and setting?

It’s (Probably) Ascians

We need to start this section with a clear and concise conversation about what exactly Endwalker “ended” in terms of the story of FFXIV. The explicit ending was to the story and saga of Hydaelyn and Zodiark, and on that metric, we have had a resounding success. Both elder primals are no more, their acolytes scattered to the winds to do with their lives as they will. We still, quite directly even, have Ascians that remain – some that are on our side (Gaia as Loghrif), some that live with status unknown (Pashtarot, Halmarut), and even two cases of mystery – Deudalaphon and Altima, whose masks were with Gaius for his Shadowhunter arc (although he does not have the knowledge at that time to have properly and permanently killed them) and Emmerololth (who was shown in ARR, but also established as dead during Eureka later into the game, but the Eureka death is canonically prior to their appearance in ARR, so…sus). Altima in particular stands out like a sore thumb in a lot of interesting ways – she is the “advocate of the arts (or aesthetics)” depending on the translation, and Allagan Tomestones of Aesthetics will be our first tomestone in Dawntrail (based on Media Tour and Live Letter 82). Her mask symbol in full is also a very close match to the red symbol seen in the sky of the concept art for the Arcadion raid series. Halmarut, as shared in Akadaemia Anyder in Shadowbringers, led the school of botany and botanical creations – which, if the Iifa Tree is indeed awaiting us in Shaaloani, would be a hell of a skillset to have.

But ultimately, what would the remaining unsundered even want? Zodiark is dead, and with it, their hope of bringing about the return of the souls of their sacrificed brethren. Or is it?

What if the Ascians are working through the Iifa Tree to bring back the souls of their dead by using it as a filter to bring back those they can still, potentially, save, replacing the souls of Etheirys today with those of the past? What if the perfected form of Halmarut’s study was this very tree? Even if the (theoretical and speculated) tree isn’t Ascian in origin, what if it serves to correct a wrong brought about by them?

The Role of Rejoining and Traversal Of The Shards

To date, we’ve only dealt with rejoinings and calamities from the Source side of the equation. We’ve seen a botched rejoining via the Thirteenth, and a topline item in the plot checklist is that Y’shtola wants to find a way to travel between shards, specifically to fulfill her promise to Runar in the First. It feels like this plot element has remained front and center throughout the time since Shadowbringers because it is the foundation for what can come next – it opens up a lot of possibilities if we aren’t having to constantly find new and underexplored landmasses on Etheirys, even if the game has done a good job of telling us that other places we haven’t seen exist instead of merely popping them into existence when an expansion draws near. My thought is this – our next major move is to see the impact of a rejoining in a new way – what if an actual part of another world joined to the Source in a very real, physical way?

This speculation has been rampant since JP Fan Fest, but there seems to be a strong crossover tie between the Second Umbral Calamity, the Calamity of Lightning, and the lightning-infused aesthetic of Heritage Found and Solution Nine. We know that the first attempt at a rejoining, the Thirteenth, was horribly botched and led to the Thirteenth being engulfed in Void without rejoining the shard. The Second Umbral Calamity, on the other hand, was a success, rejoining the Twelfth shard to the Source. But what if a rejoining could carry more than just elementally-aspected aether? What if it could carry…landmass, people, souls and fragments all joined to the Source as well? Maybe even in an isolated, time-locked way, this kind of rejoining would bring these things over and lock them in time, in their own little area, waiting for a key or trigger to unlock and unleash the joined civilization. In that context, maybe the Iifa Tree, if it indeed is there, is a way for this society to attempt to integrate or even take over the Source. If they’ve been effectively imprisoned in their own little weirdly joined landmass, perhaps they’d see anyone coming in or opening that defensive structure as an enemy and seek to retaliate, which would be a hell of a foundation for an Act 2 twist to lead us towards a finale. Perhaps also, by coming to understand the rejoining better and how these people came to Etheirys, we’d understand how to create means to travel between shards. Y’shtola is in Dawntrail, but so far she doesn’t seem to bear allegiance to either side of the Scion conflict, which is Thancred and Urianger against us, the twins, Krile, and Erenville – so there is perhaps a way for her to find a purpose in Tural outside of the battle of ascension to Dawnservant.

Intermission

So I started this draft prior to Live Letter 82, where we received the Dawntrail launch trailer, some additional zone screenshots, character bios leading into the content, and some other features previewed. It doesn’t necessarily change my theories too much, but I thought it would be helpful in the final draft here to insert a break and say, based on new observations from this info dump, I have new things to share that corroborate some of my theories and insert new threads that are worth picking at. So let’s link the trailer and then move on to discuss!

Shaaloani Into Heritage Found Will Be The Point That Final Fantasy IX Enters The Chat

Dawntrail clearly has a front-half and back-half narrative structure, not unlike that of Shadowbringers or even Endwalker. Up front, it seems clear that we’ll be on summer vacation, helping Wuk Lamat ascend the throne and dealing with the problems of the citizenry of Yak Tural, but by the halfway point, all signs will point to the actual main plot thread, actual antagonist, and make clear that the summer vacation was a ruse and deception. It’s been easy enough to speculate that with what we’ve had so far, and the team has no-so-subtly pointed at the idea that the base premise is a shield hiding a bigger plot, but the question has been what is the transition point, especially knowing that Solution Nine is going to be our tomestone-spending hub and thus is likely to get the Eulmore/Radz-at-Han treatment of being presented early in the story but not allowing us to attune to the aetheryte or go there freely until much later.

I think the launch trailer makes clear that Shaaloani is the point where we start that process. Shaaloani, for a zone that otherwise fits the Tural aesthetic incredibly well, has been kept very tightly under wraps, with it and Heritage Found both being treated akin to how Elpis was in Endwalker’s pre-release cycle – it’s here, we can show you some of it, but what’s the deal with it really? My theory is this – Shaaloani will unveil the Iifa Tree, show the literal thunderdome encasing the pieces of the Twelfth (or whatever they end up being) that comprise Heritage Found, Solution Nine, and the mystery sixth zone we all know is coming. I expect us mucking about at the Iifa Tree, perhaps as our level 95 or even 97 dungeon, marks the point at which we unleash the thunderdome’s inhabitants onto Tural, which sparks the invasion that seems to be hinted at in the launch trailer, seeing the inhabitants go crazy invading parts of Tural and attempting to conquer. This should give us our standard rationale that leads to doubling-back into an earlier zone to do some cleanup in a new, higher-level area before we push deeper into Xak Tural and the sixth zone.

Why is this my speculation? Shaaloani is the zone that has clearly been shown with train tracks, which, in the launch trailer, head straight into the thunderdome that we know from the overworld map holds Solution Nine and Heritage Found. Shaaloani also is the zone that had the big “SECRET” on it at EU Fan Fest and the way in which the devs are playing coy about that since then, even as we know that Solution Nine exists and the whole thunderdome visual has been clear since JP Fan Fest, indicates to me that something more is going on there (still betting on the tree). I think that us discovering the secret of the tree at that point also logically translates into the FFIX parallel, as much of FFIX’s real story kicks off at that point, leading to all the major revelations that form the bedrock of that game’s plot. Heritage Found was hard to put a precise idea on, but the newest screenshot from the Live Letter reveals an area that looks very much like Alexandria from FFIX, that I would even wager will be called that! The parallels of the two are lining up too well, although we do need to acknowledge something in our next bullet point…

The FFIX Crossover Probably Isn’t The Full Story

Well, obviously. But at the same time, I think the sixth zone is going to be something new and distinctive to FFXIV, and what will ultimately tie together the FFIX crossover elements and FFXIV is going to be some bridging element and characters that are FFXIV unique. This is a small point, since we can now pivot to discussing the biggest things I have in mind here…

The Sixth Zone Seems To Be The City of Gold

The whole thing about Tural is that the most persistent legend of it is the fabled City of Gold, which contains some unknown manner of treasures. Based on the preview of the launch trailer, it seems like a lot of theories about the City of Gold may very well prove to be correct – that it is not just a myth but indeed quite real, and likely either Ancient or Allagan in origin. There is some talk of a key and it seems that the city is locked to outsiders through a technological door that seems quite heavy. As a destination for the story, it makes logical sense in two ways – it seems likely that it would be located in Xak Tural alongside the techno marvels of Solution Nine with some crossover there, while it also is Tural’s greatest legend and proving its existence would be a surefire way to help ensure the ascension of its finder to the throne of Dawnservant. While I fully expect (and look forward to) the story having two distinct halves with differing tones and themes, I think that for Dawntrail to hit on the story front, everything needs to tie together eventually, and I believe that the sixth zone is the perfect opportunity to do exactly that. The City of Gold is perfect in every way for it – the revelation of the city itself, the conclusion (or start towards a conclusion in the patch cycle) of the Dawnservant ascension, the exploration of the nature of Xak Tural and the presence of Solution Nine and Heritage Found, and the ultimate purpose of the mysterious maiden (more on her in a moment). It also, based on the launch trailer, has some interesting character lore implications we could see unfold.

The FFXIV team loves their formula, and to their credit, it works. We know of two cities and five zones, so there must be a sixth zone to keep to template, and the one that makes the most sense is the City of Gold as a zone unto itself. There could be a curveball, sure, and it wouldn’t even be the first time – the Tempest and Ultima Thule were both very much curveballs that didn’t have a lot of setup until right at the eleventh hour of their respective stories, so the same could very well happen here. But I think that given what we have seen to date, the City makes sense as a zone because it should be larger, it has plot lead-in from what we already know, and the power its existing lore already has to unify the disparate plot threads we can see so far of Dawntrail is tremendous. That gives us two large remaining points I want to bring up today.

Who Is The Mysterious Maiden?

With the launch trailer and Live Letter we now have at least some sort of information about the lady present in the expansion key art – the Enigmatic Maiden, she is called (for now) on the promo site. Who is she?

Let me get my tinfoil hat on nice and tight…she’s an Ascian. Duh. Okay so obviously we don’t actually know yet, but it is a safe-ish guess based on a few factors. For one, her voiceover in the launch trailer has a certain air of knowing that matches our encounters with other Ascians – that she doesn’t just know of us, but knows us and has dealt with us, perhaps indirectly, in some way. In the English voiceover, she remarks about how we have kept our friends and loved ones safe “without sacrifice” which is a line that very much feels like a weighty comparison to how the Ancients sacrificed half their population two different times to empower Zodiark to protect them. Is she a villain or ally, though? Well, the Japanese voiceover is a totally different line, loosely translated as, “Finally my plan will come to fruition, as it is I who holds the key in my hands.” So…that’s sorta ominous, no? That seems to imply a villain arc of sorts, but at the same time, the softer tone of the delivery of the English line contrasts pretty sharply with the idea seemingly expressed in the Japanese line. Acians aren’t inherently against us, but our goals were not in alignment with theirs and we had to beat down the Ascians to bring them around. A character with mysterious origins and power skirting that line reeks of Ascian to me. Secondly, some have pointed out that her ornament on her belt is the symbol of Pashtarot, at least partially, and given that Pashtarot is in the “alive” column for Ascians, it makes a lot of sense. In fact, the idea of an Ascian finding a way around Zodiark to fulfill the same basic goal, resentful that we obtained our goals without sacrificing those we care about, is a powerfully good foundation for a story arc. It builds in a lot of existing lore and plot tension that would make introducing a new character substantially easier, giving the Maiden an existing thread to tie onto and branch off from. That’s pretty neat and good foundational storytelling!

My theory, half-baked as it is for the next 13 days, is that the Maiden is Pashtarot, that in their role preserving discipline and order will seek to find a way to maintain their mission and right the path in spite of Zodiark’s death, and that the way in which they will do that is through using an alternate means of returning the souls sacrificed to Zodiark to the Source – the Iifa Tree. Will it work? Well, the likely answer is no, given that the most likely fate of the Ancient souls trapped in sacrifice to Zodiark is that they faded into the lifestream with the death of the ancient primal, as we saw with Hythlodeus, but that may or may not stop Pashtarot from doing it anyways. Pashtarot’s constellation crystal had a quote ending in “To pray that we will one day meet again, beneath a blue sky,” which is, coincidentally, pretty damn close to the lyrics of the Dawntrail theme song. Now, against this theory is a couple of things – firstly, the same thing that befalls a lot of FFXIV theorycrafting on lore, which is that we spend too much time squinting and drawing conclusions about what certain sigils or signs look like from low-res or badly-angled shots of in-development content, and secondly, that Pashtarot has been seen in FFXIV previously during the Ascian roundtable scene in ARR – as a man. FFXIV has played with trans characters and representation before, most notably with Nael Van Darnus in ARR, and the Ascians that remain sundered could very easily assume new bodies and forms through their travels, so it could be handwaved away.

However, I think that we cannot discount at least some Ascian involvement in the expansion, because Yoshi P said in his interview with Jesse Cox that knowing the Convocation members would be a vital point of lore he would encourage players to refamiliarize with prior to the expansion, a hint that seems pretty substantial to me.

But I’ve talked a lot about Ascians here today, so there’s one last major thing to discuss that the launch trailer may have shed a lot of light on…

What Is The Deal With Krile Baldesion?

Krile as a character is interesting in that we know a lot about her but also not that much. Eureka fills in some story, but the short version is that she was adopted into the Baldesions by her grandfather Galuf, who was a Hyur in Sharlayan. Her parents are unknown as she lived in an orphanage until her adoption. She possesses the Echo, one of an increasingly smaller number of NPCs that do, so the nature of her birth and early life is mysterious.

Well, maybe not for long.

In what is clearly a flashback scene in the launch trailer, we see two lalafells entering the City of Gold (presumably), one of whom looks back wistfully, with tears in their eyes, as they cross the boundary into the city with the door closing behind them. We know Galuf adventured in Tural and that he ultimately took Krile in, but the order of events and process of arriving there remains very much unknown. I think the setup here is simple – Krile’s parents live, are in the City of Gold, and our major Scion moment of the expansion is going to be reuniting Krile with them. If they will be good people or villains, possessed in some way, remains to be seen, but I think that the last several FFXIV expansions have made much effort of setting up emotional moments to develop the main cast – G’raha Tia’s integration into the Scions, Thancred’s dad arc, Urianger’s reconcilation with Moenbryda’s parents, the Leveilleur twins learning the true intentions behind the behavior of their father, and Lyse participating in the liberation of Ala Mhigo – all of these are clear emotional plot beats that pay off longstanding stories within the lore of the game.

Krile has clearly lacked that big story moment that most of the Scions have had to this point, as her presence in the MSQ has been on the outer edges of it, rarely directly involved, as even her involvement in the Myths of the Realm quests slowly kind of faded out in terms of importance. But Krile is also the only Scion who is a direct reference to a character in prior FF games, and the story of the FFXIV version so far matches that of the Final Fantasy V Krile. In that game, Krile and Galuf come from another planet, are afflicted with a plot-convenient amnesia, and only later learn of their true nature, as Galuf dies and Krile assumes the Baldesion mantle as a warrior of light in that story. We’ve had much of the latter part of that story already, as Krile leads the Students of Baldesion and very much has taken a serious investment into her grandfather’s legacy, but we still don’t have the true origin of her character. I think Dawntrail would do well to integrate that story, to tie the FFV reference into it, but to vary it slightly – and parents locked away into the City of Gold, forced to give up their child to a traveling orphanage master – it makes a lot of sense.

Lastly, it deserves saying that the Japanese title for Dawntrail is “Golden Legacy,” and while that relates in a lot of ways to the story of Tural, the City of Gold itself, and other plot elements – Krile could, through this lens, be the Golden Legacy in her own right – a child born of the city, exiled from it to uphold the legacy and knowledge of the Baldesion name while trying to reconcile her own identity outside of that and find her true legacy. It fits with the character, fits with the idea of Dawntrail, and I think that it’s more than mere coincidence that Krile has been brought front and center into the cast for this expansion.

So, TL;DR of my thoughts/theories/conspiracies:

-Iifa Tree in Shaaloani doing soul swaps, straight out of FFIX
-City of Gold as the last zone
-Ascian involvement directly (Pashtarot, maybe Altima?) and indirectly (dealing with rejoinings and the fallout of Zodiark’s death)
-Two-half story structure dealing with the Dawnservant story and then moving into the lightning area and all of that story
-Krile’s story is going to be surprisingly substantial and make good on the rest of the tie-ins to FFV

Overall, this is all low stakes since the expansion launches very soon, but hey – speculation is fun and I am here for it!