Making Sense of The Seekers of Adoulin Expansion

[Souj]

Through these five chapters I am going to try and make sense of the story, characters, and settings as best I can. Each chapter will run through a relevant section in the story and cover mostly a single topic. They will be…

Chapter 1: The Past
Chapter 2: Ra’Kaznar
Chapter 3: Hades
Chapter 4: Immortality
Chapter 5: The Mobs of Tartarus/Ra’Kaznar


Chapter I: SETTING THE STAGE

To get as good a grasp on the story of Adoulin, we are going to start maybe a thousand years or so before the beginning of the game. Most of the information will be from the game itself and it will be treated as the Word of God. SE-related materials like developer interviews and Vana’diel Tribune are likewise treated as canon, but it’s highly important to remember that context is king and both the game and Tribune articles purposely include sources that don’t know the whole/correct truth.

I’ve also used fan-translated articles particularly from the user known as Elmer The Pointy from the Bluegartr website. Their track record and credentials are pretty well established. I will be speculating a lot, but I’ll make sure you know when. I am both looking for answers and hoping to supply them for many people, so if I’m wrong about something, feel free to let me know or discuss it in the comments. I do not claim to know more than most people about this games’ story. I’ve just spent a little too much time analyzing it. I’m going to assume you know the basic lore, and I’m going to skim over some big (but irrelevant) stuff in other expansions.

800-900 years ago, the Middle Lands (Mindartia and Quon) there’s not much going on. The Meltdown left much of it uninhabited. The Galka inhabit Kuzotz(Altepa), there are small bands of Hume spread throughout Quon, the Yagudo live in Mindartia, the Tarutaru are scraping by in Mindartia’s northern frozen wastelands.

Aradjiah, the continent to the east of the Middlelands, was likely a ruined mess of a place after Odin and Alexander’s clash caused mass destruction. The Aht Urhgan Empire would rise from its ashes.

The mithran homeland is in the southern continent of Olzhirya, but it wouldn’t be long before they spread themselves out across much of the world, being capable seafarers and excellent opportunists.

The eastern side of Ulbuka, the continent to the west of the Middlelands is mostly occupied by the Velkk beastmen, but also possibly some hume, and as I said just before, it seems evident that some mithra eventually made their way to Ulbuka as well, though It’s impossible to say who got there when for sure. Elvaan do show up eventually as well, but I believe they were the latecomers between the three, a small group of them immigrating from their homeland in the northern continent of Rhazowa.

Odin and Alexander’s clash is likely the cause of a celestial event that would mark the first year in the C.E. calander system used in modern day and the Zilart, Kuluu, and Olduum civilizations have long been lost and forgotten.

On the late side of the 100s, both the Tarutaru and the Elvaan emigrate from their homes into the Middlelands. They do this separately from each other from different places, and this is me speculating, but I believe it was the destruction of the Warld Tree by the orcs in Rhazowa that sparked this southern exodus.

A little later in the early 200s, after the Tarutaru reach Sarutabaruta, they rediscover Full Moon Fountain and learn magic, which has likely been lost with the Zilart/Kuluu. This is extremely important to note, because the Tarutaru use their monopoly on magic to run rampant in the Middlelands, meaning no Elvaan, Mithra, Hume, or Galka knew any magic before this point. This means none of the Rhazowa Elvaan knew magic either, nor very likely anyone else in Ulbuka.

When August Adoulin began his take over of Ulbuka, there were already people living on the continent. There is never a date given for his campaign, but if the Elvaan and Tarutaru did move to the Middlelands because of the World Tree burning, that would place August’s time before 150ish C.E. I’m getting a bit ahead of myself for people unfamiliar with the SoA expansion story, but August’s Orders are also telling, as with the 12 Orders, they are extremely lacking in magic, which would make sense if Magic hadn’t been rediscovered yet. There’s only one person in August’s Orders who could be considered any kind of “mage” but she’s referred to as an exorcist. There’s also a swordsman who uses the elements to empower his blade, though this is not rune magic, as that kind of swordsmanship wouldn’t be brought to Ulbuka until the 400s. The make-up of the 12 Orders is also where I surmise the Elvaan were late comers, for those wondering.

When August began his conquest, he had to beat out a lot of the locals and made allies of them. He would end up forging strong relationships with each of those leaders and they would become loyal to August and his cause. There were 12 of these leaders: The Orders of Adoulin (one of the twelve was August himself) and of each of those 12, they were all either Hume or Mithra with the exception of a single Elvaan. That might not seem important, but it’s an extremely specific choice made purposely by the developers of the game.

August Adoulin continued to expand into the wilderness of Ulbuka, running into resistance from strange creatures. Eventually, Adoulin and his 12 Orders would simply… not come back, all except for one who warned the nation of Adoulin to stop expansion into Ulbuka. The storyline says he just gave the warning and left, but considering there are books telling the truth of the subject, Morimar, the only surviving member of the Order, must have told someone what had happened.

The warning worked for a time. The nation of Adoulin adopted a form of rule that incorporated the 12 Orders: the lead Order being the ruling royal family of August’s bloodline, but it did eventually switch from a monarchy to more of a democracy, though the ruling family still seemed to hold the most sway.

By the mid 300’s Adoulin had a civil war. From 550-670, Adoulin had “The Great Expedition.” Lots of terrible things happen in this time period; lots of people die in the wilderness, earthquakes changed the entire landscape. Some say it was caused by the Curse of the Founder King (August) and eventually it got bad enough that the Great Expedition had to be ended and things soon stabilized once more. 200 years later, around where the game begins, the expeditions have begun once more, with most no longer believing in the Curse of the Founder King.

Eventually something strange would be discovered hidden deep within the wilderness of Ulbuka. Something unexplainable. A massive black structure built using unknown means and unknown materials from before August Adoulin’s time as king. This structure was called Ra’Kaznar, and it was a place of great and terrible things.

[Souj]

Chapter II: ROCK THE ‘KAZNAR


The wiki entry does well to describe what is known about Ra’Kaznar:

*Little is known about this bewildering edifice that stands amongst the recesses of Kamhir Drifts: not the materials used to erect its sturdy walls, not the identity of the sorcery that adds an uncanny sheen to the building's door, and certainly not why it was constructed. What has been empirically proven is that treading upon its interior is an invitation to death.*

There are three zones that make up Ra’Kaznar (RK): Outer RK, RK Inner Court, RK Turris.

Outer RK seems easy enough to navigate until you realize many of the doors are sealed shut. With the correct key, it’s potentially possible you could open and close them at will just like how we can use the elevators, but it’s not something we ever get. Outer RK also seems to have been damaged quite a bit by tree roots, the proof of struggle that pits this eldritch-like cube against the very nature of the wilderness of Ulbuka.

RK Inner Court shows just how massive RK is as a whole. It’s buried in the ground, surrounded by mountains. It’s hard to imagine anyone building such a gargantuan open room for seemingly no reason, which leads me to my first point of speculation about RK: Is it growing? Are its boundaries expanding on its own? Its walls pushing up against the mountains that keep most of its exterior hidden? Are these expansions what cause the earthquakes? I think good evidence of this is that every time the World Tree is weakened, that’s when the earthquakes start. The weaker it gets, the stronger and more often they occur.

RK Turris is the heart of the structure. The Throne Room. The gateway to Tartarus. Turris is Latin for tower, in particularly it refers to siege towers or even a citadel. Bonus: The Clash’s Rock the Casbah came to mind when thinking up a title for this chapter because it sounded like Kaznar, but coincidentally, I also found out Casbah can also means tower/citadel. That’s just bonus knowledge for you.

Ra’Kaznar traps the souls of the dead. Something about RK keeps the soul from going back to the mothercrystal. And as for Tartarus, Tartarus seems to make a person’s body stop aging. Were these two things meant to work in conjunction with each other somehow? An immortal body and immortal soul? Unclear.

If you only take what’s stated in the game to have happened during August’s expansion age, it would be incredibly short: August made friends with a big golden tiger thing. August pushed his way further into Ulbuka and ran into endless hordes of monsters. He and his people attack RK, but only one of them comes out. It’s stated that at some point, August had gone to Rhazowa and took a piece of the World Tree and planted it in Ulbuka, but this portion is given no context to anything else. And then later, Orcs burn the original tree down. How much later? Who knows. Could be a century, could be 10 minutes. So let me take a quite a few liberties here to speculate on how I think things could have played out.

**(Remember, much of this is actually speculation on my part, to try to make narrative sense.)**

As August pushed his way further into Ulbuka, he began running into the Umbril. These creatures poison the land they walk on. They gnaw on the flora, destroy the fauna, and corrupt the waters. Their numbers are sparse at first, but the further into the wilds they get, the more numerous they become.

Eventually, August encroaches on the territory of a golden tiger monster who’s quite aggressive because it’s been having to deal with the corrupting creatures. The two fight but eventually figure out they have a shared enemy. The golden tiger tells August of Ra’Kaznar and they go to scope it out thinking that together they can find the source and end it. They find out they can’t. There’s a never ending swarm of things coming out of RK and they can’t get close.

Now they’re stuck. They have an enemy they can’t beat. But one of August’s 12 is a descendant from the Elvaan that immigrated from Rhazowa and they speak of a great tree that can cure the land and make it stronger. So while everyone battles the encroaching dark forces, August takes a ship to Rhazowa and brings back his own World Tree to plant.

The World Tree grows quickly, and with it come the leafkin born from the tree. The roots of the tree breach RK itself- proof of just how mighty the World Tree was in its prime. The abominable creatures are heavily weakened thanks to the World Tree.

August and company push into RK, having dealt with any threat that stood in their way, though there were certainly casualties. And though they had breached the halls of RK, things didn’t get any easier. The Serpentine Labyrinth was difficult to navigate and they had to stand against the unholy denizens that called that place home for every step they took: undead, demons, infestations of insects, and oozing dark elemental creatures.

August’s forces would be whittled down little by little, painfully slow progress being made, but progress nonetheless, and soon August would reach the heart of the fortress and the reason for its existence, Tartarus.

**(End of speculation.)**

By the end of the Seekers of Adoulin expansion we actually know so little about Ra’Kaznar. The story answers remarkably little, with game design and cutscene art pulling all the weight. Like, it’s known that Hades didn’t create Tartarus, but he did find a way inside. Did he also find Ra’Kaznar? I do not believe Hades is the one that created Ra’Kaznar, but I won’t get into more about that until we cover Hades in more detail next chapter, so in the meantime, let’s look at our other options. These are my thoughts on the matter and certainly open for interpretation.

Those obviously not responsible are the Leafkin and the Velkk. One of the 5 “enlightened races,” Galka, Elvaan, Mithra, Tarutaru, and Hume are also a strong no from me personally, as the only civilization I saw coming close to the tech required for Ra’Kaznar were the creators of Alzadaal, and they only achieved what they had piggybacking off the Olduum- and not just the Olduum civilization, as pretty much all their tech came from one single person, Ramuul.

People love to say Odin because of the dark elemental vibe of the area and the demons and he’s dipped his fingers in many different expansions. But what demons are in RK exactly? Dvergr and Gargouille. Dvergr don’t really seem to be employed by Odin. Gargouille were certainly used by the Shadow Lord in the Crystal War alongside Odin’s rented demons, but they can also be found in Abyssea, where there is also no Odin connection. Nothing aside from those two things are Odin-relevant and it’s a very tenuous connection to begin with.

Balamor is probably SoA’s biggest unknown quantity. I honestly do not know where to go with him here. He’s left completely unexplained and unexplored, barely even touched in RoV. I would not be surprised to find he was a god-level entity, a true eldritch abomination and what we see is just a fragment of his whole self. Yet this is the least interesting option to explore, on top of it being so unlikely. Balamor doesn’t make his own props. He’s the guy who stands on the sideline watching until he gets bored then throws a nest of deadly snakes on the field. So if you don’t see me mention him much in this whole thing, it’s because while I do see him possibly orchestrating a few things, I don’t think he gets his hands dirty enough to warrant a deeper dive.

Zilart is another popular suggestion I saw online often. Why? Portals, some floors, and an apostrophe. The Zilart had no reason to be there. There is zero evidence of them being anywhere outside of the Middlelands because that is where the Mothercrystals were. Portals? The portals there are different than any known Zilart portals. Zilart portals were always flat on the ground on pads. Ra’Kaznar portals are on glass floors and also used upright like doorways- they also produce a sound more similar to the portals in Alzadaal. The glass floors? Ok, this one at least makes me think a moment, and I don’t have too much to say about it either, other than they’re pretty cool, right? Let’s use this similar architecture argument against itself: Zilart used cermet. That black stuff isn’t cermet. Zilart like smooth curvy shapes and Ra’Kaznar is sharp smooth angles. Zilart places use crystal iconography, none of which is present in RK. I can make out some crystalline shapes around the place if I try to, but mostly RK is diamonds and squares and rectangles. The Zilart show reverence to the mothercrystal, RK keeps souls away from it. As for the apostrophe, if Ra’Kaznar is Zilart, then so too must San ‘d Oria. And why isn’t Tartarus called Ta’rtarus?

Now, I need to make an important distinction here, because I came off really harsh about the Zilart not being responsible for Ra’Kaznar, and I 100% believe they didn’t. BUT I do think there’s a relation here, and that comes up with my most likely pick, and that’s a post-Zilart/Pre-Enlightened race such as the Olduum. My own thoughts point to Olduum being an offshoot of the Kuluu, but that’s a whole other thing in of itself.

This is my current thoughts on who built Ra’Kaznar, because I don’t think it was Hades, or at least he used technology founded from their tech, much like Alzadaal may have with the Olduum. Maybe there was some Zilart who were tired of hearing about Paradise, tired of the crystal worship, or maybe these were just some lower class Zilart tired of feeling oppressed, so they move on over to the western continent and just powered by pure spite, build this whole anti-Zilart society where even their architecture is literally as opposite from Zilart as it could be. Black, sharp lines, harsh red lights instead of the soft blue and white of the mother crystal, vast open rooms instead of enclosed halls, it just seems to me you couldn’t get any more opposite of Zilart if you tried, unless it turned out these people took the name Traliz or something.

I think Hades found evidence of this lost civilization and he made their technology work for him just as he did Tartarus. This is what August and the surviving members of his group walk into to confront the one responsible. Ra’Kaznar, the cube of spite and death.

August and his company march forward to meet their nemesis face to face…

[Souj]

Chapter III: HADES? MORE LIKE HEY DEEZ NUTS


“We’ll dance, we’ll kiss, we’ll schmooze, we’ll carry on, we’ll go home happy. Whaddya say? C’mon.” -Hades to August Adoulin, probably.

Hades and Tartarus are probably one of the most enigmatic things in the game that get actual screen time, aside from Balamor, but unlike Balamor, we might be able to sus out some more info from the other two. We don’t have many hard facts, so this is going to be very speculation heavy, but I’ll make sure you know what are game-stated facts and what aren’t.

Early in Ulbukan history, I believe it was the Elvaan who brought the now standard religion of the Eimert Church with them, a form of Altana-worship not completely dissimilar to the religion the Elvaan would bring to the Middlelands some time later.

I’m going to imagine that The One That Would Become Hades came over with a group of Elvaan from Rhazowa, perhaps he was the leader of the expedition who happened to be missionaries coming to Ulbuka to spread the word of Altana. Perhaps he was a part of the Rhazowan kingdom reaching out for trading partners. The speculation is endless. But good news, the next chunk of text has in-game sources straight from the mouth of Not-Yet-Hades’ most loyal follower, Teodor.

We learn Hades was originally human (not Hume, the game makes a clear distinction) with two stills in the cutscene that show him as Elvaan. Teodor tells us he was a man of power and ambition. His presence was described as divine and he commanded huge swaths of the populace. In his search to obtain the unattainable, he found the truth in how to shed his mortal shell and become something greater. This is when he began to refer to himself as Hades and discovered a realm beyond our own. An extra-dimensional space he called Tartarus.

It’s hard to say when Hades’ personal story began, but it was definitely before August Adoulin began his campaign in Ulbuka. Personally, I think he had a deep religious connection before coming to Ulbuka. Religion is the best way to “appear divine” and “command huge swaths of the populace.” It would also make Teodor’s quote of “he found the truth in how to shed his mortal shell and become something greater” more thematic.

That last quote by the way, is why I believe this original person was not possessed by a being named Hades even though it easily could be that way. He was the one to become the possessor, a free soul capable of possessing people when he “shed his mortal shell.”

But how did Hades get to that point? Let’s say Not Yet Hades fully believed in this Altana-worship religion and then he stumbles upon this ancient civilization who know about the Zilart and Kuluu and Paradise. Worse, what if this ancient civilization knew about Promathia? That kind of stuff would send anyone into a crisis of faith, as shown in the quote Hades told Teodor:

“All are lost, their spirits wandering endlessly through the darkness. I will help them transcend their suffering. I will give them death and all will become one.”

I think this dude discovered some stuff he was not equipped to deal with. Perhaps his religion had thought that when people die they go to heaven with Altana and then he learns our souls actually go to some crystals, worse, we are actually children of a god tainted by an all-devouring darkness.

With the discovery of this Truth and his name change, Hades decided to discard his earthly desires. A country and people of his own to rule over? None of that mattered any more. He figured out how to open a portal to Tartarus. “He stepped beyond all boundaries and discovered a realm beyond our own. Tartarus. An extra-dimensional space. Hades He became single-purposed.”

His mission was now one of mercy, at least from his perspective. The cycle of the mothercrystal and the pain and suffering that accompanied life all had to stop. His plan? Use the denizens of Tartarus to kill everyone and everything on the planet and use Ra’Kaznar to trap their souls and keep them from returning to the mothercrystal.

Hades did not create Tartarus, but he discovered a way to open a portal to it, and seemingly took control of its energies. Inside Tartarus were dangerous creatures and Hades, who did not enter the realm himself, sent Teodor in after infusing the man with some of Tartarus’ energy, which made him unable to die.

Either at the same time as this- or not- Hades also connects his soul to Teodor’s with a blood sigil so Hades cannot die unless the blood sigil is removed from Teodor.

Teodor was given nearly flawless immortality and then sent inside Tartarus on behalf of Hades, getting the various entities inside the realm to submit to Hades, either through convincing them to side with him or basically beating them into submission. There were those who wouldn’t submit to Hades’ rule even after a show of force so those creatures were imprisoned inside Tartarus, which included the six naakuals and the holy dragon Sajj’aka.

Teodor does not know how long he was in Tartarus, and he doesn’t describe it much other than the Rala Waterways reminding him of it. He was likely inside for a very long time. Years. Decades. Maybe even much much longer. The Tartarus energies kept him from aging. Even if he was killed, the powers Hades infused into Teodor would instantly revive him. He could go for millennia even. What was Hades doing during this time? Personally, I believe he was doing a lot of tinkering with souls and differing forms of immortality and preparing his army, the Cimmerian Adherents.

Cimmerians were a real life group of ancient nomadic people. Where FFXI got the name from was no doubt the reference of the Cimmerians in Homer’s Odyssey, where they were found at the edge of the world and live enshrouded in mist and darkness.

It looks to me like Hades would use his army to overrun the world. Ra’Kraznar would trap the souls of the dead to keep them from returning to the mother crystal and Tartarus would serve as a prison for those special ones who would be particularly tricky to deal with. Presumably this would have caused a massive imbalance which would have ultimately and permanently destroyed Vana’diel and break the cycle he viewed the world as being stuck in. No one can suffer if everyone’s dead, right?

At the head of this army was Hades himself, followed by the Xol Triumverate, a group of three beings, each holding one of Hades’ blood sigils: what Xol could mean, I’m not sure. A lot of people will immediately think “Xolotl,” the Aztec god of fire and thunder, (also a ff11 NM) but that’s not a good fit. Much more fitting is the word Xol from an African/Wolof term that means “heart.” It seemed a really odd pull though, so I tried to find another source, which I did- Destiny. But Destiny came out a year after Seekers of Adoulin initial launch, so they could have potentially came up with using the same word independently at roughly the same time, which is a super weird coincidence. My best guess is still Xol meaning heart, though. Triumvirate is a little easier, being a group of three men holding power. Now I just need a graphic T-shirt with the three Triumvirate on it in the style of a boyband called The Heart Holders.

The other two members of the Xol Triumvirate are Ashrakk and Dhokmak. I’ll go into detail on these two later, but for plot reasons, I’ll let you know that Ashrakk is associated with lightning and wind, while Dhokmak has a strong affinity with poison, and both are residents of Tartarus. Native to Tartarus? Unsure. We’ll take a crack at that later.

So, Hades is building his army when August Adoulin begins his campaign to unite Ulbuka under his name. It’s really hard to say how much time passed between Hades’ time and August’s, but considering Hades likely had control of most of the occupied regions of Ulbuka before his seclusion in the mountains, it must have been quite a large amount of time for the population to forget about him.

August starts his conquest, and pushes further into Ulbuka. He and his people defeat the Xol Triumvirate, August actually making friends with Teodor and gets him to turn on Hades, because apparently, while Hades was some great charismatic and persuasive dude, August was that, but better in every way. August then has one last confrontation with Hades in Ra’Kraznar/Tartarus, but not before freeing the 6 Naakual and Sajj’aka. August sends his last two remaining allies out of Tartarus- Morimar and Darrcuiln, the son of the golden tiger monster- with a message to his kingdom before he stays to keep Hades in a deadlock.

No one knows what the result of the battle between Hades and August Adoulin was, and the immortal properties of Tartarus makes it doubly difficult to do so, but that is not relevant to the rest of the story. Morimar and Darrcuiln escape Tartarus and Ra’Kraznar, following behind Sajj’aka and the 7 Naazkual (Teodor included) and Morimar tells the remaining royal family in the city the last words of August: to stop expansion into the wilderness. Morimar then hands the family August’s sword and disappears. And the rest is history.

But history is doomed to repeat itself.

[Souj]

Chapter IV: PEOPLE DIE WHEN THEY ARE KILLED. (but sometimes they don’t)



When August fought Hades, all the blood sigils had been removed, meaning Hades was mortal. So how exactly did Hades die, and how did he come back from death some 600 years later? Well, we Ra’Kaznar keeps the soul from returning to the mothercrystal, but does Hades need the place to keep his soul from returning to the mothercrystal or can he do it himself? If you were expecting an answer other than “I’m not sure,” I’m sorry, but you should be used to this by now.

But what I do feel comfortable telling you is that Hades did need a new body after then conflict with August, but it’s impossible to say why it took so many centuries for Hades to make his return, but eventually he did, and since we already covered Adoulin’s history in between Hades’ initial appearance and the current age, let’s pick up where we left off.

Remember a bit ago when I said it was lore-relevant to know Ashrakk was a force of lighting and wind? Well, about ten years prior to the start of the game, Melvien, Melvien’s father- who was the head of an Order- and two others were all killed by lightning in the wilds of Ulbuka. Well, 3 of them were killed. Melvien seemed to be as close to dead as possible until he made a sudden and miraculous recovery. After his recovery, someone close to Melvien noted his personality changed completely.

Hades then spends ten years in Melvien’s body, apparently doing his damndest to be the best head of finance for Adoulin he could. It seems weird that Hades would be fine with allowing Adoulin to thrive without any attempt to topple the whole thing, but then again, Melvien was pro-expansion, which is what would lead to Ra’Kaznar getting stronger, but pretending to be a glorified accountant for ten years seems to be… hard for some people to believe.

Melvien was so good at his job that without him, his entire Order started falling into chaos and it took multiple people just to do his job poorly. Why wasn’t Melvien purposely bad at his job, or try to sabotage the nation? Say it with me now… “We don’t know!” But I do have a couple theories for you.

**Theory A:** Hades has possessed Melvien’s body since the lightning strike and believes given enough time, Adoulin will eventually continue expanding and weaken the World Tree to the point of death without any heavy handed actions from himself, and since Hades doesn’t have to worry about time, he can be as patient as need be. He only finally takes action when the World Tree is about to be healed. Sure, Mevien could be bad at his job on purpose, but the stronger Adoulin is, the harder and faster the nation can expand and the faster the World Tree dies.

**Problem 1:** Hades seems to want to rule and be in power. Minister of finance and a member of the Order is pretty high up there, but Hades doesn’t seem to be someone who would settle for less, “he was a man of ambition,” Teodor said. Like, he seemed to quickly abandon ruling the people of Adoulin when he found a greater calling of wiping out all life on the planet- so actually, nevermind. Hades probably doesn’t care at all about ruling Adoulin. Problem solved.

**Problem 2:** The Curious Case of Melvien quest has the NPC stating that Hades acted like a completely different person after the lighting strike like it’s an oddity. I’m sorry, but he had very nearly died himself like the 3 others did- one of who was his own father, and he was then thrust in the position of leading one of the 12 Orders. I’d be surprised if someone didn’t change after all that.

**Problem 3:** Melvien had the tome that contained the information of how August died and who he had fought against. If Hades was Melvien, at least in control of Melvien, why would Hades need to research his own history? Melvien did appear to destroy pertinent information about the adversary August fought in Ra’Kaznar, but why only omit that? Why not burn the whole book?

**Theory B:** (very speculation heavy) Melvien was not truly possessed until after he died in Leafellia. This is what I think happened: Melvien and co were attacked by Ashrakk, and that is when Melvien was implanted with Hades’ soul. Now, maybe Melvien was supposed to die, leaving Hades fully in control of Melvien’s body, maybe not, but the results were that both Melvien’s and Hades’ soul inhabited Melvien’s body, and I believe that the Rala Waterway seal helped to suppress Hades inside Melvien. Still, Hades would be like a little parasite on Melvien’s mind, maybe whispering things, giving him thoughts and urges that were not Melvien’s own. Melvien might have thought he was losing his mind and going crazy. Hades’ memories would start leaking through and no matter how much Melvien tried to distract himself with his work, there was a name ever present in his mind: Hades.

Eventually Melvien would find a book that detailed August’s history and his final assault on Ra’Kaznar. The words left in the book seems so familiar to the strange memories in his mind, and when he comes upon the page that names the dark adversary that fought against August, Melvien finally understands what has happened to him. The name in the book? Hades.

Melvien is Hades. Hades is Melvien. A decade of two souls sharing the same body does not lead to a stable mind and at this point Melvien himself may even incorrectly believe he is and has always been Hades. He destroys the page naming Hades and then disappears, perhaps seeking out Ra’Kraznar. When Melvien finds out the World Tree is about to be healed, he goes out to Leafelia in an attempt to stop it- using guns. And while he is a skilled fighter, there’s nothing special about his techniques and he’s killed by Morimar. The next time we see Melvien’s body, it’s completely and 100% certain that it’s Hades in control.

Problems with this theory: it mostly a complete fabrication. Yeah, narratively there’s no plot holes or inconsistencies, but there is no proof to back it up.

**Theory C:** The lightening strike was a coincidence. Melvien learns about Hades after doing some history research and becomes a fanboy and once he learns how to bring Hades back, he does. Maybe Melvien is an ancestor of his. Maybe someone made fun of his hair color so he’s getting revenge by wanting to destroy the world. Melvien reversing the Rala seal himself as a normal mortal dude makes the most sense if it was made to keep bad spirit mojo out. This is my favorite theory and the one I think works best for the story we ended up getting, but unfortunately I also think this is the most unlikely.

**Problems:** The devs created an entire questline bringing attention to that lightening strike and calling attention to Melvien’s possession at its time. Honestly, Melvien learning of Hades and becoming a fanboy is so much more simple and cleaner for the story we ended up getting, and while that quest has things making sense on surface level, upon deeper inspection it’s just convoluted, which I guess convoluted plots does sounds very Final Fantasy.

The truth though, could literally be anything. It could be any of these theories, none of them, or even a mix of the three. It’s just impossible to say.

So anyway, backing away from the theories, after Melvien has his near death experience, ten years go by. Adoulin begins their expansion once again, and August curses the current heir of his Order and turns him into a leafkin. Now, the ease of which August does this tells me the Rala Waterways seal was never intended to keep August’s “curse” from reaching the nation, but the other things, malevolent beings such as Hades and Balamor perhaps, given how little they impacted the story until after the seal was destroyed/reversed.

Up until this point, the player character has actually done very little to impact the plot. It’s only once we meet Darccuiln and Sajj’aka that we’re given a direction to point at in fixing the tree. Ra’Kaznar isn’t even a concern to anyone except that we had to go in there earlier to find some of Sajj’aka’s broken scales so that he could fly again to reach the thing that would fix the World Tree.

I’m making things seem less important than they are, when if they hadn’t done anything, then the tree would have kept weakening and died. Already at this point in the story, earthquakes have been shaking the continent and have destroyed the seal protecting the Adoulin nation. Earthquakes and sabotage to be exact, because someone had to actually reverse the seal, not just break it, and since Balamor likes hanging out down there and we know he had a simple time of switching blood sigils with Teodor, Balamor is the strongest suspect of the sabotage.

So player character and Arceila discover the tree is dying and find the seed to heal it, but just as the healing ritual is about to take place, Melvien attacks to stop it, but is killed in the process. Melvien’s body is unceremoniously dumped in the cold wilderness, the tree is healed, and everything goes back to normal. Oh wait. The seal hasn’t been fixed.

Balamor shows up and decides there’s not enough chaos, so he inflicts a real curse on a lot of the populace while also pointing the player in the right direction to deal with it all, and that direction just so happens to be right toward Hades. We deal with all that complicated stuff like removing the blood sigils to make Hades mortal again and confront him. And when we beat Hades, his ego just can’t handle it. He surrenders his humanity and absorbs so much Tartarus energy it makes him into a monster.

Monster Hades is more powerful for sure, but he’s barely more than a beast capable of only a few words with an extremely one-track mind. We beat him anyway and he depowers back into his Melvien form, though he’s unconscious as the Tartarus storm he summoned starts sucking everything in. Arceila uses her heirloom left behind by August to summon the man himself out of Tartarus and August uses his Super Duper Special Attack to kill Hades (for good, I guess?) but Teodor knocks Hades out of the way and takes the hit instead.

Teodor’s perfect immortality doesn’t bat an eye at August’s attack by the way. It kills him, he gets up, and everyone just like, wtf Teodor, why? Teodor knows Hades was just using him. Teodor has betrayed Hades twice to stop him. No one really questions Teodor after the initial surprise. Like, is Teodor still literally forcibly compelled to not kill Hades? August just says “yo, if we don’t get rid of him for good now, he can just go right back to causing problems again.” To which Teodor says “that’s ok. I’ll be with him,” and August’s just okay with that. I guess he’s staying with them too, though I think the three of them all let themselves get sucked up into Tartarus and close it up behind them while everyone else escapes.

The story ends as Arciela takes the lead on the 12 Orders, her brother’s now able to freely change between human form and leafkin form, never-aging Morimar and Darrcuiln wandering the wilds, and everyone is trying to find a balance between expanding the nation but also not harming the wilderness and hurting the World Tree in the process. And that is the story of Seekers of Adoulin.

I’m pretty terrible at segways, but speaking of segways, let’s talk about immortality to round off this Hades section, as there appear to be a few different kinds in this story.

Longevity: Tartarus has the ability to make a person immortal in the sense that they completely stop aging. They can still be killed by non-aging means and they don’t revert to their prime. Whenever they gain this immortality is exactly the age they will forever be. This is shown with Morimar, Darrcuiln, and August. Simply stepping into the realm of Tartarus may be enough to gain this type of immortality, or they may have to soak in the surroundings a bit for some unknown amount of time.

Floating Soul: This is a bit specific to Ra’Kaznar, as it stops the soul from leaving, and it seems to take some sort of specific knowledge, but a soul can be placed back inside the deceased body, but the body cannot be too damaged: Morimar had died and his soul could be put back in and revived easily, but Darrcuiln, whose body was mangled far worse, could not simply be revived until his body was healed. This seems to be very similar to Hades’ form of immortality, except his soul can be put inside someone else’s body.

Death doesn’t stick: Teodor cannot die. It’s like his body is a miniature Ra’Kaznar, keeping his soul trapped inside his never-aging body. And his body can seemingly heal from any wound, though he still feels pain. Teodor is strongly vampire-coded, including giving his blood to heal the grievously injured body of Darrcuiln. FFXI already has their version of vampires called Vampyr though, which includes an NM literally named Count Dracula, so it’s not clear if they’re the same thing or not. Teodor’s kind of immortality is special in FFXI and the only thing there is to explain it is basically a line of text saying that Hades infused Teodor with the energies of Tartarus.

Respawn: Ashrakk and Dhokmak can both be killed, but when they are, the seem to respawn back inside either Tartarus or some in between dimension to await rebirth. I’m slanted toward the in-between dimension of [U] because the dialog from the mission you fight them in indicates the two are not in our world yet but they also aren’t in Tartarus. I had thought [U] was just an area for instanced fights, but this seems to have a story connection in this mission that it just straight up doesn’t any other time. Unfortunately, game mechanics make this specific situation a bit more complicated.

What’s interesting to note is that Hades did not give himself Teodor levels of immortality, which means that there must be a price associated with it that Hades did not want to pay. Or, alternatively, it was too late for Hades since he “discovered how to shed his mortal shell,” and so already didn’t have a body to make immortal and found being able to possess others a far better solution for him, then using the blood sigils to stop his current meat puppet from dying prematurely.

Blood Sigils: If you know Harry Potter, think of Hades as Voldemort and the Blood Sigils as horcruxes, except we don’t know what it costs Hades to put a Blood Sigil on someone and Hades puts the Blood Sigils on another person’s soul. While that Blood Sigil is active on another person, Hades’ body cannot be killed. Hades uses three separate people to put a Blood Sigil on, but since you have to get rid of all three to end Hades’ immortality, less than three must work too.

So we’re done with the story, made as much sense of it as we could, but I feel like there’s just a bit more to discover. Maybe we can learn something else we might have missed by taking a closer look at the Cimmerian Adherents. They always say you can learn a lot about someone by the company they keep, after all.

See you next time in the final chapter!

[Souj]

Chapter V: PEOPLE LIKE ECOLOGICAL SURVEYS, RIGHT?



Tartarus is a big unknown. Aside from concept art of cut content and Teodor’s brief comments about it, we literally know nothing about it. But just like how we know black holes exist, maybe there’s something we can learn by checking out the things around it, and we’ll start with the most powerful of Hades’ army.

**Xol Triumvirate:**

Teodor: He was just a normal dude, though he, Morimar and August is how we can know Tartarus can bestow immortality. This anti-aging process is likely gained automatically just through contact with the realm, as I really don’t see Hades giving August and Morimar that kind of boon, though you seem to be able to gain stronger forms of immortality with Tartarus’s energies if used correctly, such as the near-perfect immortality only Teodor has.

Ashrakk: Ashrakk is given the race identification of Macuil. They either wear a full suit of armor or they are a full suit of armor, and are masters of lighting and wind magic, though the most interesting thing about them is that their “wings” resemble corpselights.

Actually, as I made my way down this list of mobs, those wings are only part of the most interesting thing about them. There is actually no chance that Macuil such as Ashrakk and the Dvergr are not related. Marcuil have the exact same body shape as the dvergr, with metal corpselight wings over their shoulders instead of actual corpselights. The only difference is the head/horn shape. What this could possibly mean, I’m not sure. I’ll touch more on this later.

Dhokmak is of a race called plovid. He looks like an axolotl but also seems reminiscent of a Doomed in game. Doomed occur when a lot of dead corpses form together in an amalgamation that takes the shape of a toad. Is it a coincidence that Doomed and Plovid look like amphibians? Dhomak also seems to have a connection to the Acuexes. He’s a creature capable of spreading incredibly destructive poisons, he has acuexes during your fight with him, and acuexes have been spreading across Ulbuka and spout clouds of poisonous gasses.


**The Victims:**

A common sight in Ra’Kaznar are the fomor, both Shunned and Spurned. Fomor are easily created even in normal places in Vana’diel, though it tends to happen the most when intense emotions are involved-mostly hatred - or during extreme times of violence such as during the Crystal War. Souls of the deceased stick around and eventually become the shades known as fomor. But the fomor in Ra’Kaznar weren’t done naturally, they were created more similarly to the fomor in Dynamis, their souls physically trapped and unable to return to the mothercrystal even if they had wanted to.

Skeletons are reanimated dead, but the skeletons in Ra’Kaznar are specifically draugar who are undead enslaved to another’s will, such as with the lamia. The draugar here were once people who were considered to be deserters and legionless. They are now compelled to fill the ranks of Hades’ army.

The draugar, together with the fomor, that makes a lot of deserters, legionless, shunned, and spurned people who ended up dying in Ra’Kaznar. In other words, outcasts, both those willing and forced to be exiles. I think anyone who wandered out into the wilderness of Ulbuka and stumbled into Ra’Kaznar met quite an unfortunate fate, encountering any of the deadly creatures within would have left their souls trapped inside the construct. I feel a majority of the undead population in Ra’Kaznar came from soldiers during the civil war that occurred in 400ish C.E., but that’s pure speculation based on the fact there are Tarutaru and Galka fomor and those very likely didn’t arrive in Ulbuka until after August’s time.

Bhoots (ghosts) and hounds (undead dogs) are both just common types of apparitions found where people die. Nothing particularly interesting here.

Corses aren’t the usual undead, but I suppose it’s nothing groundbreaking for them to appear in Ra’Kaznar.

**Vana’diel-Native Wildlife:**

Bats- bats like dark, cave-like places, which Ra’Kaznar is. There’s also several holes in the roof that’s perfect for coming and going.

leeches - obdella, which is a suffix attached to many leech species in real life, if you were curious. Obfuscous Obdella (intentionally confusing leech). Leeches may likely be drawn in by all the dead bodies. I don’t really have any other reason for them to be in there.

Byrgen - Earth/dark elementals. Tartarus is, apparently aligned pretty well with the dark elemental energies. The earth hybridization is certainly something of note, though.


**Tartarus-Native Wildlife:**

Umbril- these dark elemental beings make up much of Hades army. There’s not too much else to them other than they are capable of phasing through physical objects at will.

Twitherwing + fluturinis - these are vermin. These things bite. They have spread across nearly every span of Ulbuka. They have bioluminescence, meaning the natural habitat they evolved in (Tartarus) is often dark.

Acuex - invasive, spread poison, prefer underground, which likely fits their typical environment of Tartarus, thus giving us another datapoint that Tartarus is likely largely subterranean.

These three creatures all point to confirm that much of Tartarus is likely dark and underground.

**Elvaan related:** these are creatures in Ra’Kaznar that all have links to the Elvaan in some way.

Vampyr- these guys have painted ears like Elvaan, so they are often believed to have come from the Elvaan. Further theorizing has them being much more common in the northern continent since one of them is established as a “Northern Lord.”

Gargouilles - Did you know San d’Orian cathedrals used to be adorned with gargoyles? There were plenty of Elvaan children spooked by tales told by their parents of the statues coming to life to take disobedient children away. When these monsters suddenly showed up during the Crystal War, the church dismantled all the gargoyles.

Being demons, people point to this as proof of Odin’s involvement in Ra’Kaznar, yet there are several in-game theories of what they are and none surmise they are pawns of the Shadow Lord/Odin. Some say they are born from nightmares, others say they were created from a union of imps, demons, and the earth. I find the latter a bit interesting considering the elementals present in Ra’Kaznar are dark/earth elementals. There’s another theory on these guys, but I’m covering it in another section.

Corpselights- they had originally been thought to have only existed in Elvaan mythology. When they showed up during the Crystal War the Elvaan particularly freaked out about it. Corpselights also have a connection to the Dvergr/Mucuil, as I pointed out earlier, but what that connection is, I don’t have a clue.

So if you include Haded himself, that is 5 things that are related specifically to the Elvaan. And when we include the World Tree itself, that’s another connection to Rhazowa. Are all these creatures things Hades had brought over from his homeland? Or perhaps… perhaps they’re things from Ra’Kaznar/Tartarus that Hades had brought to Rhazowa to assault the World Tree. The orcs may get all the credit, but do they deserve it? I’m just thinking out loud here.

**Automatons:** These are not natural beings, but (possibly) manufactured one.

Gargouilles - I’m back here with one last in-game theory about these guys. It mentions how they may be very similar to the Windurstian Cardians, which are manufactured automatons and magically powered. Are these things carved from stone then brought to life with magic or by the lost souls in Ra’Kaznar?

Ironclad- the only place non-NM Iron Giants are is in Ra’Kaznar, not to mention, aside from one exception in Horototo ruins, all the NM iron giants are in Abyssea. What are Iron Giants? No one’s really sure. Are they suits of armor powered by ghostly apparitions? Are they basically just puppets like the Zilartian dolls and pots? Are they suits of metal given a soul?

Dullahan
The wiki entry says… “While classified as undead for taxonomical purposes, reports state that not a trace of even a once-living entity can be found within the armor they adorn, prompting theorists to conjecture that either the armor itself is alive or it acts as the conduit by which some astral force manifests itself in the physical realm. Sounds like another case of transferring a soul into metal to me.

Are these cases of Hades experimenting with all those souls trapped in Ra’Kaznar? And just who is making all this metal stuff? Several items make mention of things being made of metal only found in Ra’Kaznar. Well, I think we already have our answer. Dvergr.

Dvergr- these guys are demons. They wear a lot of jewelry and have a very fancy chair they sit on. More damning is the circumstantial evidence. Dvergr are what are known as dwarves in Norse mythology, associated with the earth and metal works and greed. I also want to remind you of the Mucuil, who look like Dvergr in armor. So even more of a metallurgy connection, and reinforce the earth link with the gargouilles and elementals one more time.

There’s one more possible connection the Dvergr have, but I’m hesitant to share it as it’s a bit loose even for me (yeah, I teased this in the image, sue me.), and that’s the caturea. Metal armor, extremely similar body type with the slender build, lanky arms and legs with long claw-things, horn-like ornaments on their heads, and though they lack the corpselights, they have some shoulder protuberances, which if I wanted to just make something up, could contain corpselights inside!

That leaves our two last uncategorized creatures, Naraka and pixies, specifically Unseelie pixies, and yes that makes a huge difference. Like the Dvergr, the real world etymology is going to do a lot of the heavy lifting. Naraka is Sanskrit for the realm of hell but also refers to those hellish beings that reside there. Naraka in game are said to be extra-dimensional beings, and the vast majority of them are encountered in Voidwatch, which deals with creatures from other dimensions. Could they be from Tartarus? I have no proof one way or another.

I now present you with the last occupant of Ra’Kaznar: The Pixies.

In some real life mythology, pixies, aka fairies are grouped into two separate Courts. There is the Seelie Court and the Unseelie. (This is a gross simplification and there are many other courts, these are just the two largest most spoken of). Now, in the real life mythology, neither groups are good or evil per se, though at a glance it certainly looks that way. Seelie are the Summer court and are a bit more lawful and in pop culture are seen as “good.” Unseelie are the Winter court and are a bit more chaotic(I’d rather say guided by emotions rather than chaotic, but it’s basically the same thing if you think about it in regards to the more “lawful” court) and are generally seen as “bad guys.”

FFXI has these two different branches of pixies as well, the “good” ones commonly found in the Wings of the Goddess series expansion and the “bad” Unseelie. The light pixies are seen actively helping the player character while the Unseelie are always aggressive. The Unseelie are also present in many end-of-the-world locations. Abyssea, Reisenjima, Temenos(if you count Zilart war), Ra’Kaznar. What this means exactly is unknown, especially when we don’t even know why pixies as a whole just showed up during the Crystal War. Perhaps pixies in general are connected to the mothercrystals and were woken up at the same time the Zilart bros were. Perhaps pixies change depending on how strong the Mothercrystal’s light is, and Ra’Kaznar is pretty anti-crystal. Are Unseelie and Seelie two different creatures or are pixies like hourglasses, the sands shifting from one side to the other depending on the strength of the mothercrystal’s light?

And that’s a wrap on the denizens of Ra’Kaznar. It ultimately doesn’t tell us anything about Tartarus we didn’t know, and all of what I talked about could, in real life, be as simple as a dev thinking a mob looked cool in the area. Much of what I’m speculating could be correct, close, or way off the mark and we may never know. Perhaps there’s some lore released in some Japanese magazine article that dishes out some deep cuts in the lore that all the Japanese players know about that we don’t. Maybe there’s a translation error that created some bad lore on our side.

If you made it all the way to the end of this, thank you. I tried to be as impartial as I could, and I literally had to scrap about five other theories I had during my process of research and even far into editing, I was discovering new information that recontextualized things and forced me to rewrite sections of this. I dread that once I post this someone is going to point out some massive mistake I made early on that invalidates all my time I put into this, but if that’s what happens, it just means I didn’t do a good enough job researching. In the end, if you subscribe to my theories or not, I hope you found the canon information I supplied you useful and at least entertaining.

Yet there is one last thing I want to cover. As a show of good faith, and a reminder that nearly any theory could be made to “make sense,” and that ultimately all of my speculation is little more than educated guesses at the end of the day, I have one more theory to share that pertains to the Unseelie.

I don’t believe much of what I’m about to prattle on about, and for those who want to stay on the serious side of this, you can stop reading now, but I found numerous connections that, like much of what I’ve written so far, you could make an argument for anything if you try hard enough.

The Unseelie Court. Ra’Kaznar Inner Court.
Coincidence? Perhaps it was these Conniving Unseelie who built Ra’Kaznar. The Dullahan in rl mythology are also Unseelie Fae btw.

Where else do we see Unseelie pixies in ff11? In Witchfire Glen in Abyssea Grauberg taking the place of their Seelie versions from our timeline. Officious Unseelie can also be found in Reisenjima. Two places that are “near the end of the world.” Weird that the Iron giants are also mostly only found in Abyssea and Ra’Kraznar.

That makes two connections Ra’Kaznar shares with Abyssea. But Abyssea is the realm in which Promathia begins to devour the world. That’s not what’s happening in Ulbuka, nor is it what is happening in Iroha’s future where the Heart of Darkness is devouring everything… is it?

Are the Unseelie the antithesis of light and life? Hades shared much the same goal: the mothercrystals continue the cycle of life and rebirth. Its light is spread across the world. Hades wants to break that cycle. Do the Unseelie and Hades share a common goal or is it the Unseelie who are pulling Hades’ strings?

But why Abyssea? Why can iron giants(Hades’ tools), chariots(alzadaal tools) and detectors(Zilart tools) all be found in the same place in the Abyssea dimension where the light has been mostly drained from the mothercrystals by Promathia? Because of one person, Esha'ntarl.

In our universe she carries on her mission of stoping the end of the world, however there was one change made in the Abyssea universe: at birth, Esha'ntarl was a changeling switched from birth by the Unseelie. In rl mythology a Changling was a fairy who replaced a human baby. This happened to Esha’ntarl. They say the experiment to separate the emptiness from her was successful, but what if it wasn’t? What if Esha’ntarl was just switched with a fairy? And so Changling Esha’ntarl spent her 10k years working toward the goal. Since pixies are in Temenos, then that means we know they would have been around the Zilart some 10k years ago. So while our Esha'ntarl spent the time between the Meltdown and modern times, the changeling Esha'ntarl spent her time sabotaging the world, eventually succeeding by allowing Promathia to awaken.

And being around for 10k years, the Unseelie would have had plenty of time to create Ra’Kaznar. But why Ra’Kaznar? Why Tartarus? It’s always been odd that the Emptiness started its spread in the Far East, and RoV did a little bit of lore recreation and implied it might not have been the Emptiness that had started to spread, but the Heart of Darkness, but who’s to say that darkness didn’t originate from Tartarus? From Ulbuka? So it all comes together. The Unseelie are the masterminds behind everything.

But Ulbuka is to the west and the Far East is to the east you say? Well, we have to presume Vana’diel is a spherical planet. No one has seen a map of the western side of the Ulbukan continent just as no one has seen the map of the Far East. Who’s to say they aren’t right next to each other? It would make sense why so many of the creatures only found in Ulbuka are also found in Reisenjima.

Unseelie Supremacy.

[Shenrien]

holy yap