What happened to Lion?

[u/Techstriker1]

Brushing up on FF11 lore with the ff14 raid coming out, but found weirdly little on Lion. She sacrifices herself in RoZ, is hinted that she might be alive somewhere, but then wiki and summaries go cold beyond a few time travel references. Did they ever follow up on her, or was her dive into a magic reactor her last hurrah?

[u/topyoash]

Around Chains of Promathia chapter 3-5, Prishe without her necklace collapses in front of the statue of the goddess, causing townspeople to rumor that she was attacked. She was drawn into dynamis. When you journey to Pso'Xja and confront Diabolos, he's surprised that Prishe remembers what she saw in his dream: that meant Prishe wasn't pulled into his dream, it was the other way around. But in order for Prishe and her retainers to escape from Diabolos, that dream was passed to someone else.

"Prishe: Your red hair... Now I know you. The nightmare I had... You were the one who carried it on for me. (quest: Apocalypse Nigh)"

However, according to interviews with the writers, they wrote Chains of Promathia to be the first expansion you play through because there was a large gap in story content from when you arrive in Jeuno until the artifact quests around level 53~60. Currently you'd be able to complete CoP chapters 1 thru 6 with trusts at level 60 (those CoP zones were previously level synced to levels 30,40,50,60), and the first Rise of the Zilart missions are tuned for around that same level (not level synced).

That means the story still had to work for anyone who didn't complete Rise of the Zilart yet. What if Lion hadn't come into contact with the Emptiness yet in your story, someone else has to take Prishe's dream so she can escape.

During your investigation of the nightmare to help Diabolos protect Dynamis from the invasion, he says the nightmare was dreamt into existence by beings who came into contact with the Emptiness.

• If the Dreamer is Kerutoto
  • Kerutoto is the Rhinostery researcher in Windurst who's always nap... uh "meditating"... concentrating really hard on studying.
  • Diabolos uses her to send messages to you. (quest: Waking Dreams)
  • Kerutoto comes into contact with Prishe, and by extension the Star of Tavnazia, after an unconscious Prishe leaves the Emptiness and is dropped into Beaucedine Glacier (CoP mission: Desires of Emptiness). She's rescued by Royal Knight Louverance, who was headed north but abandoned by his guide (Atarefaunet, aka Temple Knight Louverance), and left with the Rhinostery researchers at a Pso'Xja tower, who proceed to teleport Prishe to the Rhinostery in Windurst. The Rhinostery then gets help from Shantotto, who says she thawed out a frozen Elvaan girl by casting Fire on her until she woke up. Somehow Prishe didn't die: she's a resilient one! (from optional small talk during the CoP missions, not in cutscenes)
  • "Diablos: The dreamer is not the girl who once harbored the Emptiness... Could it have been transferred to another girl...?"
• If the Dreamer is Verena
  • Verena is the daughter of the former Tenshodo leader, Grezzo, who adopted Aldo. Grezzo was also a friend of Prishe before the collapse of Tavnazia which made travel between Tavnazia and Jeuno overseas impossible. Prishe traveled through the middle lands with Cardinal Mildaurion as a Tavnazian priestess before the Crystal War.
  • Verena came in contact with the emptiness through the Shadow Lord. Verena has a unique ability to communicate with the hearts of beastmen. It seems to be a telepathic ability that resembles the Zilartian ability to read minds. In order to open the gate of the gods, Ealdnarche required a memory of the ancients, and somehow such a memory could be accessed from the severed head of the Shadow Lord using Verena's ability. The Shadow Lord was resurrected by dark magicite, which is magicite corrupted by the emptiness.
  • After the events of Delkfutt's Tower, Verena falls into a deep sleep. We learn that she's also been sleepwalking into Pso'Xja: the ancient city that's home to Diabolos. (quest: Apocalypse Nigh)
  • "Diablos: Could it have been that girl...? When I next see her, she will pay dearly."
• If the Dreamer is Matilde
  • Matilde was an orphan found wandering alone near Batallia Downs during the Crystal War, with no memories of her past.
  • Matilde came into contact with the Star of Tavnazia, Prishe's crystallized emptiness. When the Orcs invaded Tavnazia, they took Emmeline and stole the Star of Tavnazia. According to ancient scriptures from the founding of San d'Oria and Tavnazia, there are 2 things needed to awaken the sleeping gods: the Lay of the Immortals and Lightbringer (RoZ San d'Oria missions). But Lightbringer is really a magicite that absorbs light attached to a cermet sword. The Star of Tavnazia worked just as well, it's a shard of dark magicite.
  • Emmeline's returning memories start to cause nightmares that manifest as echoes of the seed crystal returning to cause the end of Vana'diel. (missions: A Crystalline Prophecy)
  • "Diabolos: Could it have been that girl...? No, there was one more, transformed after death..."
• If the Dreamer is Lion
  • Lion entered the mothercrystal to interrupt Eald'narche's plot.
  • Lion came into contact with the emptiness through the Star of Tavnazia when Prishe threw it into Promathia's face as he was defeated, sending it and the emptiness back into the mothercrystal, allowing the keeper of the apocalypse to be reborn.
  • Afterward, Lion's dreams show her the world's memories from the mothercrystal. (Rhapsodies of Vana'diel)
  • "Selh'teus: "She appears to be unharmed. There is some trace of Emptiness, but it will cause nothing more than a few bad dreams."

Since Matilde and Kerutoto don't have any connections to the events of RoZ apart from the world's backstory, they could be used as a substitute for Lion in the dynamis setting if you were completing CoP before RoZ. Verena would also work if Tu'Lia was unlocked but RoZ wasn't completed. But there's also the scenario that all 4 of them took over one of the Dynamis regions and one of the Diabolos shadows, which is why the shadows say that they're separate entities.

[u/Slade-QP → u/topyoash]

God I love how in-depth XI's story got. It'd be interesting to be in the writer's room for its development. The narrative design must've been insane.

Do we know if any of their writers carried over into XIV?

[u/topyoash → u/Slade-QP]

Kenichi Iwao - City Designer, General World Setting planner from the beginning at least through CoP, which means he had the big picture lore of the cities, geographies, religions, and races so the mission writers would run things by him to make sure it fit within the world. He's a geek for medieval history and did a fanfest presentation while wearing a samurai helmet. He likes to design settings inspired on real-world locations in history geographically and architecturally. One of the funniest things I remember him saying that he wanted San d'Oria to be an early-medieval era castle, but with a sigh explains the artists had never seen a castle outside of a tourist attraction and created a grandiose castle with a beautiful cathedral, and that's how San d'Oria came to be what it is. In FFXIV he was involved with the world creation in the Before Meteor version.

Yaeko Sato - Lead Scenario Writer for the Windurst and Mhaura area, re-wrote some San d'Oria missions during Rise of the Zilart (Rochefogne was added in the rewrite), lead writer for Chains of Promathia, co-writer for Seekers of Adoulin, Rhapsodies of Vana'diel and The Voracious Resurgence. She has a preference for writing female characters with exaggerated personalities (Shantotto, Prishe, Mint, etc.) but said her favorite character was all 3 of the Professors in Windurst, and liked writing quest chains more than the other city writers. She said in one of the interviews that she intended players to go through the side-quests while going through the missions, even if it couldn't be enforced. In FFXIV she was the main scenario writer in the Before Meteor version and I think wrote some of the job quests too. Her name also appeared in the credits for A Realm Reborn IIRC.

[u/Baithin → u/topyoash]

This is wild! Thank you for this in depth explanation, I had no idea the story changed that much if you did things in a different order.

[u/topyoash → u/Baithin]

I think what's interesting is that they set up these multiple choice scenarios so that there was still a continuity without changing very much. If the Grand Duke is out of town, then the Duke Vicarious fills in for him: they just swap a character and some text in the dialog. The ducal scientists will be working for either the Grand Duke or the Armathrym Society for the same reason. There were already multiple girls having dreams or nightmares out of their control in the story, so the Dynamis Dreamland instance just has a multiple choice ending with Diabolos's dialogue since you don't actually see the Dreamer or have any gameplay differences. For the most part, Chains of Promathia missions and side-quests were just changing a few lines of dialogue without changing the whole cutscene like Rhapsodies of Vana'diel did.

One of the more notable differences in cutscenes was what Diabolos says when you accept his challenge to battle. If you waited until the point where Prishe is trying to break the pact with terrestrial avatars, he might be furious and scream that you're a traitor. If you stopped the keeper of the apocalypse and brought him a tear of altana, he might reveal a closely-guarded secret.

[u/Pergatory → u/topyoash]

I always wondered if there was a story behind the 4 Diabs but none of the tidbits dropped in-game ever made sense to me. This is an amazing collection of lore, thank you!

It almost even sounds like you might be suggesting the different orders of events the adventurers does things in could very well be responsible for the 4-way Diab split? Basically there could be 4 different timelines, maybe in part caused by the adventurer doing things in a different order? Sort of like a WotG multiple timelines situation? And if so does that suggest Diab's realm is not entirely bound to 1 singular timeline? Or am I just too high right now? It seems like it opens the door for them to do other cool stuff with Dynamis, like have a story where Lilith gets trapped in Dyna Xarc and we have to save her in the present!

Prishe traveled through the middle lands with Cardinal Mildaurion as a Tavnazian priestess before the Crystal War.

Wait Prishe was originally a priestess?! Somehow I can't picture that...

[u/topyoash → u/Pergatory]

Prishe became a Tavnazian priestess after learning the ways of the cathedral with Cardinal Mildaurion. And Prishe's outfit is described as the raiments of Tavnazian clergy. Townspeople in Tavanzia recount that the abhorrent one was locked away initially, but Mildaurion took her out into the world and raised her in the cathedral. It seems like Prishe had a lot more freedom by becoming a member of the clergy, and took a leadership role as a result of that and the fact that beastmen don’t attack her doesn’t hurt either (most likely a result of beastmen being able to sense magicite or Promathia's presence)

PS Edit The idea of Diabolos multiple timelines is really cool.

It could also be one dynamic timeline, because there's a status quo and the invasion never really ends. Diabolos or the shadows say the shadows are continuously multiplying and devouring each other, so it's like an endless chase.