Final Fantasy XIV: You’ve known the bosses from the new raid for years, you just don’t know it
Patch 6.1 brought the new Mythen Eorzeas raid to Final Fantasy XIV. It revolves around the 12 gods of Eorzea and their true identities. However, the solution to the riddle is very simple and was already revealed in the Shadowbringers addon.
One of the very first things new players are confronted with in FFXIV are the 12 Gods of Eorzea. After all, you have to choose one of these deities directly during character creation.
The gods of the Pantheos are assigned to one of the 6 elements and have different areas of responsibility, some of which lie in nature such as time, sun or harvest, but also in cultural aspects such as science, navigation or trade. There is:
- Halone, goddess of war
- Menphina, goddess of love
- Thaliak, god of rivers and knowledge
- Nymeia, goddess of the stars and destiny
- Llymlaen, goddess of the sea and navigation
- Oshon, god of mountains and wanderers
- Byregot, god of the arts
- Ralgr, god of destruction
- Azeyma, goddess of the sun
- Nald’Thal, twin gods of life, death and commerce
- Nophica, goddess of abundance and harvest
- Althyk, god of space and time
And while the players are confronted with the twelve at almost every step in the game, for example through prayers, items or even swear words, they were treated as simply mythological figures for a long time.
At least until the 12 gods gave us a kick in the latest raid.
Danger: Heavy spoilers for the Endwalker story follow.
A raid full of lore bombs
When it was announced about a year ago, the topic of the raid, the 12 gods of Eorzea, was received with a lot of interest. After two addons in which the 24-man raids were collaborations with other Square Enix games, i.e. Ivalice and Nier, “Mythen Eorzeas” finally came a “homemade” raid.
Everything in it was original FFXIV and it was immediately clear that some lore bombs would be dropped there. After all, the 12 gods have been around since the release of 1.0, the failed version of FFXIV.
Now you can enter the domain of the twelve, which exists in a reality parallel to the real world, and talk to the gods there and fight them as raid bosses.
At the center of the raid story is the question “Who are the twelve really?”. Right at the start of the quests, it is made clear that they are not primates, or at least not “normal” ones. They have not been summoned by anyone, nor do they have any desire to corrupt people to gain more followers.
So they are more like Hydaelyn in that aspect, who is considered a primae but doesn’t act like a classic primae.
Of course, countless speculations immediately broke out in the community as to who the gods could be. Based on some parallels and comments from NPC characters in the past, there was a tendency to push the Twelve in the direction of convocation.
For example, there is the obvious naming similarity between the goddess Azeyma and Azem, the original form of the player character. There are also similarities with the god Nald’Thal.
As the god of death and the underworld, his responsibilities clearly overlap with Emet-Selch, and even his form bears certain visual similarities to Hades, such as his robe and “wings”.
But while the 12 gods show individual influences and elements of convocation, I don’t think they are based on that. Emet-Selch is not Nald’Thal, any more than Fandaniel is Oschon.
To discover the true identities of the Twelve, we don’t have to look much further. They were already betrayed to us in the Shadowbringers addon, albeit in an extremely subtle way.
They are not the Convocation, but its opponents, the followers of Venat. The suspicion crept up on me when Emet-Selch talked about the “true identity of the Twelve” at the end of Endwalker.
The way he did it made it seem like they were individuals or personalities that existed before that Emet-Selch knew.
When director Yoshida said in an interview with Famitsu that the Mythen Eorzeas raid will close the loose ends of Amaurot, I looked at some old Shadowbringers cut scenes that further supported my guess.
The cut scene in Anamnesis Anyder, where you first learn about Venat, shows exactly 12 other people besides herself. We still know nothing at all about this extremely important group, even though they have played a key role in the history of the world.
While it’s not watertight proof, it’s a bit too much to be just a coincidence.
That the Twelve have a connection with Amaurot is beyond question. Even if Yoshida hadn’t commented on this, it’s clearly visible on the buildings in the domain of the gods. They bear the same elements as the buildings in Amaurot.
But the question arises: If the members of the Convocation, that is, the Ascians, and the Twelve are supposed to be the same persons, how could they exist as two different entities at the same time?
Since the world split, the Ascians have worked tirelessly to reunite, and until recently there was no reliable way to destroy them once and for all. This means that even if the warriors of light from the ages past managed to kill the Ascians, they just switched bodies and carried on.
According to their own statements, the twelve have always watched over the people and supported them in times of catastrophe. There are credible eyewitness reports that they were physically there. This clashes strongly with the theory that the members of the Convocation are said to be the true identities of the gods.
There is no reason for the Ascians to be “nice”.
But the most important point that speaks against it are the motives. After Hydaelyn’s world shattered, the Ascians committed themselves to bringing about reunification at all costs.
Not only did they start wars, they wiped out entire worlds and risked the deaths of billions.
However, the Twelve are consistently portrayed as positive and protective deities. It is said over and over again that during the cataclysms one or one of the gods showed the people the way to safety, such as Ralgr with the later inhabitants of Ala Mhigo.
The positive representation came not only from the legends of the people, but also directly from the first “live appearance” of the gods in the raid. In the cut scenes to the raid, Azeyma, Nald’Thal, Ralgr, and Byregot talk about the humans as their “children,” just like Hydaelyn.
They regret that they had to fight us and hurt us, but at the same time they show pride and joy that we are strong enough to defeat them.
This does not coincide at all with the goal of the Convocation to cleanse the planet and restore it to its original state.
So it stands to reason that the Twelve belonged to a faction that is not hostile to the new life on the planet. And that would be the followers of Venat who no longer wanted to make sacrifices.
I do not rule out that the Twelve are connected to the Convocation in one way or another. But something as direct as “Igeyorhm is Halone” seems too forced. There are too many inconsistencies for that.
What do you think the true identity of the Twelve is? Do you tend to count them as part of the convocation, or do you think they are someone else entirely? Tell us your theories in the comments.
By the way, there are more lore backgrounds from Endwalker here:
Final Fantasy XIV: Main NPCs in Endwalker are based on the most popular Final Fantasy game
Reference-mein-mmo.de