Altana And Promathia

Altana

Altana created the 5 races.

1. Mithra
2. Human
3. Elvaan
4. TaruTaru
5. Galka



Promathia

Created the Beastmen races.

01: Orcs
02: Quadrav
03: Yagudo
04: Goblin/Moblin/bugbear
05: Antica
06: Sahagin
07: Tonberry
08: Gigas
09: Demon
10: Mamool Ja
11: Troll
12: Lamiae
13: Qiqirn
14: Poroggo
15: Velkk
16: Meeble

So does this mean Adaberk is Blue or Purple?

Yes.

B-b-but Tonberry are mutated Kuluu, Poroggo are bewitched frogs magicked into being by a PETA Taru, and Lamiae are chimeras made by Empire alchemists...have I been lied to by anti-Promathia propagandists all these years?

I was thinking about this too. Those probably don't count towards the rings (and maybe Bugbears count separately) and there might be other beastmen we haven't seen yet across other continents. Or alternatively, Promathia might even get more rings based on the number that exist.

Either way, I wouldn't put it past the world-building and art teams to incorporate these things into their designs.
"We want to give Promathia a bunch of rings."
"How many rings?"
"I dunno. He's the god associated with the Beastmen, right? Let's give him one for each race."

Very little else of Vana'diel is just arbitrarily assembled, so I'd find it hard to believe that design choices like that were an accident.

Yo dawg, alls Altana did was destroy paradise so the world could be imperfect so Promathia could die cause they were bangin' hardcore.

Alls that did was create the Zilart where some of them became Kuluu who then had a war where the Kuluu caused The Meltdown.

Which caused Vana'diel to become idk, magical-radioactive for a few thousand years mutating the Kuluu directly into Tonberries. And all other people into the 5 different races.

Also, I was pretty sure those five prongs on Altana's purity ring were representative of the five mothercrystals.

Great shitpost though <3

... wait... it's been a while since I last completed Chains of Promathia, but wasn't the whole big secret plot twist there that, in fact, it was Promathia who created the playable races?

Also, aren't kindred (possibly all demons?) the work of Odin? And where do moogles fit into all of this? And technically mandragora count as beastmen: at least some are able to talk and reason, and they have something vaguely resembling a culture; if you're going to count lamiae and poroggo, you need to count the mandies.

For that matter, where did the zilart and kuluu come from? Were they just sort of there when Altana and Promathia moved in? Did one of those two create them, and if so which? One of each?

I think you can nitpick it (demons and tonberry) but from the over the top number of circles they added and how close the number is to the finished number of beastmen it does imply that was the idea, especially when you see Altana has the 5 back ornaments.

All that is was promathia's will.

Mutations and magics be damned, a circle anyway because they let it/wanted it to happen!

At the time that they made the Promathia design, they were probably well into making ToAU, which would cover Mamool, Troll, Lamiae*, Poroggo*, and Qiqirn. I have my doubts that anyone on the team knew what races of beastmen would be coming in WotG and beyond. I guess we can give them the benefit of the doubt that the idea for these newer tribes might have been floating around in concept art though.


I think I remember something about Mandragora being man-made but I can't think of where it would have been explained in game. Either something to do with Yoran-Oran's questlines or maybe Magh Bihu from VR. Could be wrong though.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Altana exists in all realities at once, she is one and everywhere. Promathia does not, there is a different version of him in each reality (hence Shinryu)

Altana created all the people of the 5 races and used them as vessels to hold a tiny amount of the emptiness inside them, the emptiness is what Promathia has to absorb to take his final form / Shinryu / complete emo.

Every time someone of the 5 races dies, they are sent back to their races mother crystal for them to be reborn at a later date, in a new body of a child. This means every mother crystal has large amount of emtiness around it, due to all the souls that have yet to be reborn. The acculated emptiness is the promyvions, the areas are built from memories of the peoples homelands and all the monsters in each prommy are based off the monsters found directly outside the mother crystals. Mutated and misremembered rabbits and sheep etc

Altana created the Zilart originally, the Kuluu are Zilart people born without the gift of telepathy and were shunned. The Zilart were creating a gate to the gods domain, and the terrestrial Avatars were against this because they would be turned into mindless beasts if they were successful. Bahamut tried to destroy them to stop them in a head on attack, Diabolos and the other avatars encouraged the Kuluu to turn on the Zilart and destroy the power station.

Bahamut ultimately failed, the kuluu are who took the Zilart down.

The Kuluu asked for the emptiness to be removed from their bodies by Diabolos? and he agreed but everything is supposed to have balance and without the dark they became corrupted and turned into Tonberry over many generations I believe.

I think it was actually Yve'noille that orchestrated the whole "purify the emptiness within" thing. The Chamber of Eventide within the Celestial Capital was the device she created and used to cleanse the original sins of Apathy, Arrogance, Envy, Cowardice, and Rage. This was implied to be the origin of the Ark Angels as they funneled their respective sins into themselves. Nag'molada went nuts when he learned that the Dawnmaiden herself was locked in the chamber and not free of the emptiness.

We had to climb our associated tower to regain our race's light at the end of CoP: Trust, Justice, Courage, Hope, and Compassion.

Re: Tonberry, Grav'iton describes the plot of the Kuluu to stop the opening of the Gate of the Gods and Tu'Lia by causing an explosive surge of energy through the Crystal Line to destroy the northern ark. This caused it to fall into the sea and messed up the Northlands. As a result of the explosion, the Kuluu were exposed to massive amounts of crystal energy that warped them into the Tonberry form we see in game.

You know, we have a history of vanadiel in terms of development. But we need a “lore of vanadiel” guide as well. I feel like I once read something out there. There’s so much random lore fact bouncing around in my head that I feel like I would have to put it down on paper to get it right.

What I do have memorized is that it all began with a stone…

https://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/56498/windurst-timeline-by-elmer-the-pointy/

So the in universe legends (and religion) of Vana'diel are that Altana created the Enlightened Races (the "Children of Altana") and a jealous Promathia created the Beastmen races to spite her and torment the Enlightened Races.

The big reveal at the end of CoP, besides Altana and Promathia actually being a loving wife and husband, was that it was nonsense and that all the races were children of both Altana and Promathia.

Of course, the truth beyond that as others in the thread have noted is that some beastmen are the results of experiments, both magical and alchemical. The Kindred aren't even actually beastmen and are indeed Odin's creations. And ultimately yes, if you take a step back and look at it, the two gods didn't directly make any of the races since Promathia has effectively been in a coma for the entirety of Vana'diel's existence and the races are basically all descended from beings mutated by the Zilartian planetary oopsie 10k years ago.

As for the Zilart, they predate Vana'diel. They existed in "paradise" but in a different form. I don't think SE has every told us what they used to look like. My personal guess is the Aerns, but that's just a guess and I can't back it up. Anyway, in Paradise, the Mothercrystal existed and held back the emptiness, and the gods existed and some other beings existed like the original Zilart and the "beasts" who would become the terrestrials. Some emptiness got in Promathia and started killing him, and Altana freaked out and shattered the mothercrystal into five, creating Vana'diel in order to save him. In the process the rest of the gods were forced into a sleep, hence "the sleeping gods", the zilart ended up loosing their memories of what they were and where they came from and ended up in human looking bodies, and some creatures absorbed a lot of the energy released by the shattering to become god like beings, the terrestrials.

The Zilart were a telepathic and immortal (and is not aging and dying of age; they could be killed) who built up a great civilization. In time however, some Zilart were born with emptiness inside of them. This cut them off from Zilartian telepathy and also made them mortal. They would grow old and die. The regular Zilart called these Zilart, Kuluu. So, Yve'noile didn't create the Chamber of Eventide, but she is the reason it exists. She's the Zilartian princess. The daughter of the king and sister to both Kam'lanaut and Eald'Narche. The identity of the princess bugged me for years, but they did confirm it was her in an interview a few years back. So Yve'noile was born a Kuluu. Her father could not accept this and built the Chamber of Eventide to remove her emptiness and turn her into a true Zilart. And it worked. The fundamental problem is that bits of Promathia's emptiness are in all mortal life on Vana'diel by design. It's what's keeping Promathia from truly dying. Vana'diel is essentially a crazy life support system his wife cooked up. Instead of finishing him off, it's all distributed to life on Vana'diel, which in turn makes that life grow old and die, well except the gods and remaining Zilart. The Chamber of Eventide shits on this and is what ultimately sets up the end of CoP where the accumulated emptiness leads to an angry and disoriented Promathia waking up and almost destroying Vana'diel.

Of course Eald'narche touched the mothercrystal, got the Zilartian memories of Paradise back in the process, spread those memories telepathically to all the Zilart and that led to their great plan that caused the aforementioned planetary oopsie as the Zilart figured Altana screwed them and decided to set things back the way they used to be by force with the terrestrials, the Kuluu, and some Zilart, including Yve'noile, opposing them.

I did not see this! Bedtime reading. Good job!

The home city of the Zilart was sent to the bottom of the sea and into another dimension, because of the explosion and the shield they used to protect against Bahamut. They continued to live there and eventually evolved into Quasilumin. Beings of pure light, although a handful of Zilart and Kuluu still exist in Vana today.



The Aerns possibly were the Kuluu that were still in the capital, since they kind of mirror what happened with the Tonberry and have similar jobs.

Something odd is that the sins of the races are mirrored in Al'Taieu, all the races in Vana have their racial sins from Promathia.

Cowardice, Apathy, Envy, Arrogance, Rage (the Ark Angels being the crystalized version of the emptiness sin from each mother crystal): and the people of vana act like jailers keeping those sins away from Promathia. So Mithra are effectively jailers of Envy etc If the emptiness is freed from them and returns to him he becomes absolute death.

The Sea NMs are called

Fortitude, Hope, Placidity, Faith, Prudence, Justice etc

Maybe Absolute Virtue was supposed to be a reverse version of Promathia, in this other dimension or some kind of broken version of him.

Absolute Virtue ~ Absolute Death

So Absolute Virtue would effectively be Promathia in his final form, but in a dimension where he was mirrored due to being cut off from the other 4 mother crystals.

Abyssea is another dimension again where Promathia existed, he absorbed most of the people of Vana there to near fulfill his destiny, becoming Shinryu in the process and very nearly became AD.

None of the people of Vana are lost when they die, their souls simply return to their races mother crystal to be reborn again in another baby. Or at the very least the emptiness is, this keeps it away from promathia in an endless cycle.

The Galka? Mother crystal being part of Al'taieu and sent to another dimension, effectively walled them off from their mother crystal. So they could no longer be reborn and their souls would cease to exist upon death. This meant that as each Galka died rage emptiness would return to Promathia. So Odin granted them an effective recreation upon death, to keep their emptiness intact.

So Galka are not reborn into a new body, they are in an endless cycle of recreation. The same Galka turned into a child over and over, with a wiped memory each time they die.

Is it ever explained why the Talekeeper keeps their memories each time?

I haven't done much of VR but Galka recreation supposedly plays a big part of it.

spoiler image

FFXI is so beautiful and rich in story, what a shame some other games with really mediocre stories are praised all over and because this game is more obscure it doesn't get shown around as much.

VR kinda re-wrote the mythos of the Galka a bit.

From CoP, we're meant to infer that the Galka's Mothercrystal, formerly found in the area that became what we know as Al'taieu, became severed from the Crystal Line due to the Kuluu's actions causing it to explode and fall into the northern sea. Literally sinking into the sea is why the area is inhabited by marine inspired enemies.

Galka are cut off from the whole cycle of returning to the Crystal that the other races are a part of.

In VR, however:

I much prefer the CoP version of things. Odin seems to mess everything up in this world.

Yeah, last month's VR missions explain how and why the Talekeeper exists.
On another note, the Zilart defense system sucked the entire capital inside the Al'taieu mothercrystal including the crystal itself. Hence, the Empyreal Paradox. Since the crystal now exists inside the crystal.

It is possible that whomever you're learning this from (I'm guessing Odin himself?) is just trying to make Odin look better and isn't telling the truth.

Otherwise if you're being told different truths because the writers lost track of the story, choose whichever headcanon works better for you. The CoP explanation does seem to fit the lore better.

This is a complex part, it's not overly clear and it gets told in diferent ways by different parts. Also there's a lot of meataphors thrown in there and it's not always easy to tell which parts we get told are metaphors and which are literal.

If I recall from Elmer The pointy's discussions on BG (where I participated aplenty) the situation was a bit different.

Originally The Gods (at least Altana and Promathia, but probably some of the avatars as well) used to live together with the Zilart in harmony and peace and rainbows and jellybeans in "paradise". And back then that was all that existed.
Then something happened that I don't remember and Altana decided to split that realm and create the physical reality we all know, then eventually the other races were created.
Zilarts wanted fuse things together again and return to that initial situation, living happily in that "paradise" together with the gods, for that they devised the "opening the gates of heaven" system.
It's not simply opening a door to another realm, it was something to entirely destroy the current reality and recreate the original place.

Also I think it's been stated already but the Kuluu weren't exactly a different "race" but just a tribe, a variant of Zilarts, one could say "defective" Zilarts, as they missed the whisper which was that mental link that connected all Zilarts together.



The other things we get told in latter expansions (that the Vana'diel we know is not the original one but a "variant" in the multiverse that has been created by changing the outcome of the war in which the original Lilith took part (WotG story), that there are a plentiful of different Vana'diels in the multiverse (RoV story), that Odin is the mastermind behind a lot of the events (he controls the armies of demons, they come from a different "space", and that is somehow connected to WotG, ToAU and SoA story) but that ultimately he's not "bad" and was doing all that Light Vs Darkness stuff as an attempt to distract the Cloud of Darkness (RoV).

But now we have all the additional story about Demons and Talekeepers and Galka and the Egg (TVR) and while fascinating that's creating some complicated plot devices, compared to the initial block of story (Basic, RotZ and CoP) which were all created together at the same time by the same set of writers.


I dunno, many of the Retcons introduced in ToAU, WotG and Abyssea didn't entirely made sense, or at least there were several unclear potential plotholes.
Then RoV came and, to my big surprise, managed to fix a lot of them by creating a further higher level story.
It all sorta worked if you ask me.
Now TVR arrived and while it's undeniably very interesting and fascinating (at least for my tastes) I wonder if they're reall gonna manage to make it fit in a good and not stretched/contrived way.
Bit too early to say, we'll be able to tell once the story is complete I guess.

This is what we learned from TVR recently.
It's cool but I'm not sure it makes complete sense (yet).
Originally the galka where a genderless race which did not reproduce through sex but just reincarnated.
Back then the writers didn't think on a possible reason for that (that's what the new writers try to explain with TVR after all).

But if we are to accept this truth then "originally" the galka did not reincarnate and used to live a "normal" life like all other races.
How the *** were they supposed to reproduce back then though?
I'm not saying there is no possible explanation, just that they haven't bothered to offer us one, yet.



Also about Abyssea, don't forget Shinryu was a fusion of Promathia that reabsorbed all the Emptyness + Bahamut.

I think RoV also gave us an explanation for the Emptyness, wasn't that connected to the Cloud of Darkness or am I mistaken?

RoV made the issue out to be that we were such a good hero that there was no darkness left in the world. The universe that Vana’diel exists in thrives off of a balance between light and darkness. Every time light and dark clashed, like in each expansion storyline, a “wind” was generated that kept the Cloud away.

We became so good at beating baddies in the future that it tipped the balance and the wind ceased, allowing the Cloud in to mess things up.

Phoenix. I know it's weird because Shinryu looks like a dragon. But yeah, Aby Promathia absorbed Selh'teus who was fused with Phoenix.

I'm pretty sure this is untrue. There were five mothercrystals, but they weren't related to specific races that only they could return to. People of the player races that die go to the nearest mothercrystal, not their "own" one.

The reasons behind Galka reincarnation weren't elaborated on before TVR.