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she sounds like an ascian. she talks almost if she knew something about azem. but in general the electrope stuff just makes them sound like ascian in their prime and their ability to revive.

It's AI Sphene.

If the ‘key’ were to have a counterpart; should it be called “Hyadaelyn’s Foot?

I’m a long time fan! Love your videos keep it up!

That key would be the perfect tool for spreading enough chaos to start an umbral calamity. Wouldn't surprise me if the Ascians planted it on the south isles to be discovered.

I think the crystal that Hythlodaeus mentions in the Tales of Dawn is the Key, not the crown.

Maybe the original is in some type of stasis in the crown or being channeled and used for an alternate goal. Like minfilia getting used in shadowbringers.

Sphene is their shards version of Minfilia

After the absolute shit show of an MSQ that dawntrail was. Shadowbringers still reigns supreme over all expansions. Closely followed by Endwalker.

Always liked this cutscene a lot. Draws on a lot of established stuff and brings out plenty of the ugliness about the city-states that often went unmentioned. Stuff that would be given more serious resolution later on down the line, in the Alliance working more closely with the beast tribes and bringing their conflicts with them to an end. As reprehensible as it is, you can kinda get the sense why Varis would feel this was the only way to oppose the Ascians. To us, we'd dealt with an extremely burnt out Lahabrea and an Elidibus who'd mostly just been meddling in the background. It doesn't seem like it should be impossible for us as we are to deal with them. But then we have Emet, who is really just far more dangerous and powerful than either of them. And he's certainly not barking up entirely the wrong tree. It did take us one more rejoining, personally, to defeat Emet. It just came about in a way that Varis probably never could have imagined. I always wonder how Varis would have taken it to see both Emet out of the picture and the Alliance with a cure for tempering. I feel that is a lot more "talking the talk" of us keeping the peace and being able to deal with the Ascians on our own. But you also get the sense that he was a pretty twisted guy at this point, and probably would have fought to the bitter end the same as someone like Quintus. XIV has a lot of really standout villains, and Varis tends to get overshadowed a bit in the grand scheme of things, but I think this cutscene is him at his best. Still a little sad we never got that oft-discussed full Garlemald themed expansion that could have slotted in between Shadowbringers and Endwalker.

I still don't understand what Varis' big plan was. So he knows that the Source and the 13 shards were once one world, and he knows that all races were once one race (I guess the Ascians told him), and he knows that the Ascians want to rejoin the Shards with the Source via the calamities. And his plan to oppose the Ascians is...by doing the exact same thing they are doing??? Either I am missing something crucial here or there was a different plan of how the the story would've evolved but then it got changed into ShB->EW. Because whatever "Varis' big plan" was feels like a giant open plotline for me.

So… who thinks the name of the individual who gave Athena the Heart was named Sabik?

5:30 - I feel like once we cured tempering, we kind of glossed over the fact that a LOT of people were needlessly killed because we developed the cure a little too late for them, had they not just been imprisoned for a while or something rather than being immediately killed. I'm sort of surprised some character never called out the guilt that someone who executed those people would probably feel for having done so.... can you imagine you execute a group of tempered citizens and literally the very next day an excited elezen kid approaches you saying "hey we can cure them now, where are they being held again...?"

Maybe we'll have a little bit of answers with sphene extreme release

So gay!

You can also mention Kageyama, as he is a real piece of work. From the whole take over of kugane castle, to the tax evasion of Uldah, extortion of innocents in the blue mage questline, him implied plans for the Namazu, and the united tribes quests. Like man, that guy is awful.

Also think of how Zero might feature are return aswell

the crown could be one of the first regulators prototypes and some of the scientists messed up with her memories to create the sphene we know. but your thoughts i had the same, but i wrote it as feedback in game. but lets see what they make it out with this, if this is true. i speculated like some bad power hungry prime minister that manipulated the kings and queens for their own gain...of course this bad prime minister is an endless so he manipulate sphene to keep him alive under all costs.. but this was just my feedback that i wrote and speculation and not what the game MSQ could take way, sorry

maybe vanat is trolling use on 7.x LOL ...

We have seen Azem's mask before though. They had a black mask unlike others who had red masks.

Music a bit too loud Bro Imo for better understanding, checking other languages than English would be useful because of how much the English localisation changes entire sentences and nuances unlike French and German that are direct translations to Japanese

So, something popped out at me when I was rewatching ending cutscenes for the base expansion: Erenville mentions, "It remains to be seen how interdimensional fusion affected other reflections. Krile's parents spoke of the power's capacity for both good and evil. I cannot help but wonder how Sphene's deeds will be remembered by those they touched." I think they may have activated it in the gap of time between Zoraal Ja getting the Key and the fusion to the Source happening. Time dilation was TOTALLY a thing, as 30 years passed by in day (rough comparison), so more than enough time had passed, for them anyways, to attempt a fusion prior to the one with the Source. Also, where is Preservation???? And WHO is Preservation? Like I know generally who they are and what they do, but they gotta still be around, watching from the shadows......like Ascians. lol

When the crown is shown after the credits, it is pulsating. If you go back to cutscenes where we speak to Sphene you will nptice the crown is pulsating then too. The question is: does the crown pulsate in the presence of anyone or only the warrior of light who is a shard of Azem? This would be a crucial clue in uncovering the relationship between the queens' crown and Azem. Now to find a cutscene where the crown is pulsating at a time when the warrior of light is not present.

I am calling it right now: the crown is a data device with a secret backup of the benevolent queen which will eventually be restored.

As long as I am reunited with my queen somehow! Jk but I'm still cooking, its super interesting for sure

Your background music's a bit too loud I think..

I think there was some kind of mistranslation on the post. In the encyclopedia 3 there is a chart of all the reflections and which have been rejoined and which have not. including what the calamity was caused by. the ninth is solid. meaning it has not been rejoined. the one that was devastated by lighting is the 12th. it is much more likely they came from the 12th.

If its been over 400 years, maybe the OG soul of Sphene has been reborn already? On the 9th presumably if she died before the soul system was up and working.

I like to think that she's not dead but on the brink of death and the crown is keeping her alive in a form of stasis until a cure for her illness is found.

I think the crystal inside the Key is the one from that Hythlodaeus story, but I don't think the crown has any relation to Azem. We see four Ancient glyphs on the walls of the Millala museum- one of which matches the design (which they've never explained) on the Scion Traveler's Mask. I think that's Azem's, and it looks nothing like the crown. Though the crown could very well be another Ancient or Ascian glyph. In Alexandria (the dungeon), a background NPC says "They've done it! They've preserved the queen's..." I wonder if they had all they needed to create an Endless of the full Sphene, but suppressed her in favor of the re-creation of memory that we meet. Perhaps they could control it? Or they knew the real Sphene wouldn't have been on board with the whole genocide plan. Think of Otis, there were two Otis' existing concurrently, but the one in LM was a memory re-creation like Sphene, with the "real" soul in the robot. Could the real Sphene's soul be trapped in that crown, seeing everything around her, unable to do aught but watch?

Background music is too loud relative to your voice

I don’t think Azem would settle at being a ruler. But, they would help a just ruler that encourages “living life to the fullest” Now, if you told me zidane was an Azem shard, that would track. And a Zidane figure would help a stone queen…

The middle of Pashtarot's glyph. Flip it upside down. It's very close to the crown, it has the same teardrop shape in the center with the sides curling up and around.

I havent finished the entire video yet, so maybe this is mentioned. But at an encounter or conversation with Sphene, she makes a sudden personality change. Which made me wonder if Sphene isnt Sphene, but that her memories are used by someone else EDIT: This encounter mentioned at 7:44

Dunno know about azem, but that crown does seem reminiscent of an ancient or ascian mask. And ascians convincing people to use advanced tech to get them to make a calamity happen is pretty much their whole shtick.

Shot in the dark but figured I'd post this: If you look at the crown upside down, the top part that has now become the bottom, looking upward resembles the olden glyphs from ShB of how Hydaelin and Zodiark were drawn, same as their minions that were released. As of the moment, I am finding more design similarity with that than the sigils for the rest of the crown. The type of curvature and giant blobs just aren't there in the normal sigil designs. Under this assumption, if this is a visual representation of some form of Primal as what Hydaelin and Zodiark were, the question is what is the rest of the crown. The "new" top half "could" be interpreted as the Primal bottom visually fused to some other figure in that drawing style, some figure or person with a yellow diamond top and giant wings. The wings section oddly resemble Necron from ff9 moreso than the primals we know since they have traditional repeating patterns instead of weird mechanical curves like Necron. Funny enough, there is a character that is defeated earlier in ff9, Trance Kuja, and upon defeat, there is a location transfer with the new location being a giant yellow/golden beam of light in a city before Necron comes on the screen. If you go back to the final boss cutscene, when Sphene is defeated, there is a giant swirling golden light sky view similar to this transition, which could be a color reference as well as the Azem swirl on the artifact which was used to travel to other locations. Robot Sphene's data when dissolving actually looks like it's going upward instead of disappearing like after Sphene talks to Wuk Lamat, and the background being that golden view with the swirl does not even show up in the boss until after Endless Sphene has forced her way back in. That giant swirl that the cutscene purposely pans to is never explained. Her crown also glows during this time period. Necron's philosophy also would match Sphene from what I found. Necron's creation: "In Final Fantasy 20th Anniversary Ultimania - File 1: Character Book, Necron is described as, "a being awakened by Kuja's fear, despair, and hatred, which called out to it as he learned of his mortality, just as his ambitions were within reach"." Describes Sphene after the final fight, especially after talking to Graha earlier in the story. Even the concept art for Hill of Despair where Necron is fought has the similar design style of those blobs and swirls of the crown overall.

I said from the beginning that this is the 9th reflection, because it was played in ff9 just like the first reflection casually dropped THE warrior of light from ff1

Is it just me, or does her robot form resemble Ultima?

You need to watch the dollhouse TV series to understand living memory. Sphene is a doll. Her original memories and maybe soul are stored in that crown and we will need to acquire it eventually.

The crown was hinted to be a more advanced version of the regulators. This means the original Sphene memories are inside the crown and she can PERHAPS revive herself an infinite amount of times. I don't know if it was stated that Sphene herself needs soul to keep herself immortal. We know the regular citizens of Alexandria do need souls because death is a controlled concept in Alexandria; therefore, if anyone dies by a reason outside natural death, then that person will have a spare soul to revive themselves. I don't think that was the case with Sphene since she was an endless(an upgraded version)

I took Sphene being from the Twelfth Shard before its destruction from Lightning during the Second Umbral Calamity or Calamity of Lightning! The Ninth still exists as far as we know!

I kno its not exact one for one, but if you turn the Legacy Tattoo upside down, squish it a little and squint it does slightly look a little like the same shape as the crown, but not really lol

lol this new writing team is just gona f everything up. no confidence at all!

I'm not sure I vibe with the Sphene as a shard of Azem theory. I think the game went through great lengths to get us to compare and contrast Sphene with Wuk Lamat, even so much as giving them identical eyes. They even do a forceful case of "Look, shards of people are a thing!" (The trolley gang) right before introducing us to Sphene to put us in that mindset. And the next several hours are just her and Wuk Lamat realizing how similar yet different they are from one another.

i know i'm going full conspiracy, but isn't 7.0 also the expansion where we can have separate eye ware? and we potentially may or may not be getting a crown OR a mask? HUMMMMMMMM

I honestly don't think sphene is dead. That the crown has a back up of her in it.

2 other things I like that you kick and scream about the Azems mask thing when that is the most baseless thing about the crown and 2) goddamn the music is drowning you out dude, you're almost impossible to hear at some points

Something I've been insanely curious is the last 3rd of Alexandria, the dungeon Who else is talking beyond Sphene? I had imagined it could be any remaining members or Preservation, if they're still alive, but I really don't know, and wonder what everyone else thinks

Pashtarot - Conservator of Order and Collective Will Conserving order and collective will sounds a lot like what Sphene was doing. Keeping copies of people around in a world designed for them that never changes is pretty much the definition of "conserving order and collective will"

I prefer the theory that the crown is an experimental regulator from the time of the calamity that might store the original sphene's soul. In terms of character shards, Sphene feels way more like she'd share a soul with Wuk Lamat than Azem. In my mind, caring for people while being a wandering adventurer is pretty different to ruling a nation and caring for those people, it's pretty much the whole difference between Azem as the traveller and the rest of the convocation. And because we've had so much contact with ancients and ascians who magically reproduce their mask, it doesn't make sense to me that they also had physical versions that have just never come up before.