Five Figure Fanwork Exchange

Title: Final Fantasy XIV
Media: Video Game
Approximate Length: uhhhhhhhhh (for my requests, 60,000 words of script and lore writeup on DW for one, and around 25 hours of YT videos for the other)

FFXIV is a story-driven MMORPG where you (the Warrior of Light) and your ambiguously cult-y warrior-scholar allies (the Scions of the Seventh Dawn) fight evil empires, mind-controlling gods, and mysterious entities called Ascians, which manipulate events behind the scenes and occasionally possess your friends. But I'm not going to try and sell you on the main plot - just a couple of individual questlines: the Astrologian quests, and the Eden quests.

There's a full 60,000 word write-up of all relevant information for the Astrologian quests on my dreamwidth here, including the full script of all quests with retcons noted and explained. If you like charming, kind of dumb elves with PTSD and age gap, size difference M/F ships (or doomed teenage yaoi), give it a read! This is my favorite plotline in the entire game, and stands alone pretty well. All but two minorly-relevant quests ("Love, Astrologically" and "A Literary Delivery") can be played with the current free trial.

(These quests apply to the ships Leveva Byrde/Jannequinard de Durendaire, Rufin Byrde/Jannequinard de Durendaire, and Carvallain de Gorgagne & Jannequinard de Durendaire. Content warnings: PTSD, familial abuse, implied alcoholism, death of a loved one, mentions of arranged child marriage.)

The other plotline I'm going to try and sell you on takes a little bit more explaining, and cannot be experienced with just the free trial, but I have a bunch of YouTube videos, if that works.

The Ascians ("those without shadows") are mysterious robed and masked entities that look human but aren't, and manipulate events behind the scenes to cause chaos in the hopes of starting off apocalyptic events called "Calamities", "Rejoinings", or "Ardors". They worship a primordial god of Darkness called Zodiark (in opposition to the primordial god of Light the players serve, called Hydaelyn), and throughout the first several expansions of the game, they very occasionally show up to cackle evilly or rant about technobabble we don't pay much attention to. Here's a two part YouTube video of all relevant scenes from 2.0-4.56, 3 hours in all, or an incredibly brief summary below if that sounds like a lot and you just want the basics.

SUMMARY OF 2.0-4.56 ASCIAN LORE

In 2.0/A Realm Reborn, we meet Lahabrea, who has possessed our friend Thancred and is manipulating the big bad (Gaius van Baelsar, general of the invading Evil Empire of Garlemald) into causing a Rejoining. In a job sidequest we learn that only a select few Ascians, called Paragons, can possess living people. The others aren't strong enough to suppress someone's will, and instead possess corpses. There are allegedly three Paragons- Lahabrea, Elidibus, and a third we much later learn is called Emet-Selch - but it's worth pointing out that Elidibus is always seen wearing a corpse.

In 2.5, we get this scene with Lahabrea (being uppity), and Elidibus, the white-robed Emissary of Zodiark, reminding him of his place. (Yes, I ship them.)

Over the course of the game we learn how to kill these unkillable beings, and defeat Lahabrea in 3.0/Heavensward. Elidibus hangs around, trying to become our friend and talking about the importance of the balance between dark and light, but he very much still wants to destroy the world, so we don't bite. Still, sometimes he and his allies help us out, including a young Warrior of Light named Unukalhai, who is one of the two lone survivors of a previous Rejoining and whom Elidibus took under his wing. (These cataclysms, as it turns out, are combining our world with alternate realities - annihilating those worlds and causing heavy losses for our own.)

He sets various enemies against us to retain balance, then possesses the corpse of another Garlean big bad from 4.0, Zenos yae Galvus, and does politics, I guess? Meanwhile, Emet-Selch, who we learn secretly founded Garlemald as a tool for the Ascians, has decided to involve himself in the main story quest, which in 5.0/Shadowbringers takes us to another dimension, called the First.

5.0/Shadowbringers brings with it a lot of Ascian-related plot reveals, recontextualizing the Paragons as the tragically doomed heroes of a long-gone world. I can't say more than that without spoilers, but all main story cutscenes from 5.0-5.3 total just about 15 hours, which can be watched in this playlist (nothing past 5.3 is necessary: 5.3 is the official end of Shadowbringers and Elidibus' storyline). Alternately, you can also speedrun the Ascian lore with this short cutscene from about halfway through 5.0, then the final zone of 5.0 (about 1 hour of video footage and three short sidequests), then 5.2 and 5.3 in full (3 hrs total) - all you're missing from 5.1 is a single line of dialogue spoken by Ardbert, or someone who looks like him: "Hope...? Yes. So long as I yet live, I would see that feeble flame rekindled."

The Eden quests can be watched in full in these three videos, as well as the Savage version of the final fight, which has an additional fight and dialogue. Slightly less relevant to my requests but still fun to watch if you like these guys are the time-travel-to-12KYA Pandaemonium quests: 1, 2, 3, 4.

(These quests are relevant to my request for Loghrif/Mitron & Elidibus. CW: omnicide, dehumanization, corpse desecration, possession, memory loss/ego death, brainwashing, fantasy religious extremism, parental abuse.)