Eorzean WAR stories

The Leveilleurs are the closest thing to a dynasty in Old Sharlayan--they have a long history of producing powerful mages, which Ameliance surely knew. Also, if the size of that mansion tells us anything, they are absolutely filthy rich.

While she speaks a bit self-effacingly of needing the servants' help to learn how to be a lady of the house, it is known that Ameliance also comes from a powerful and influential family, so I have my doubts that she came into the marriage as naive and unskilled as she pretends. Ameliance is adept at the social graces befitting a lady of the house, but she also seems to easily adopt a more friendly and personable manner (a skill her husband lacks). Her disarming sweetness and sense of humor put outsiders like the WoL at ease, win trust, make her appear candid and uncalculating. And it's quite possible she feels genuine affection for her cantankerous husband. That said look how organically she frames their courtship. She just happened to be captivated by the richest and most unapproachable boy in school! Naturally! It was fate, of course! And he was so flustered around her! Tee hee!

From what we see in Endwalker, she basically runs the household as well as its finances. Which, I will note, she is also disarmingly glib about. Oh, she just decided to finance the Scions because the household was packing up to go to space to escape the apocalypse anyway. Can't take it with you, you know! Certainly not because it served as opportunity to re-establish her family's influence outside the motherland after the loss of the colony, all while supporting her beloved children and the one organization with the potential to forestall said apocalypse!

Though she has also studied magic, Ameliance's real passion seems to be philanthropy, particularly in the realm of education. In Encyclopedia Eorzea v.3, it's mentioned that her family operated "private institutions of learning" in the Dravanian colony, which served as a healthy source of income. Those institutions would have closed their doors at the time of the exodus, the same year the twins were born. But the planning of the exodus began five years before that, after the Garlean invasion of Ala Mhigo. Ameliance's family might not have been ruined by this, but they would have seen the writing on the wall. Ameliance would have been around 19-20 at this time. Timeline details get fuzzy here, as we don't know precisely the typical age for Studium admission (only that the twins are atypical), or, I don't think, when Ameliance and Fourchenault were married. (Though since we've been told Elezen don't reach full physical maturity until 20+ I doubt they'd have been married before that, though you never know with rich people.)

My point is, I think you could make a case that Ameliance, the daughter of a wealthy family about to lose a significant source of their income, secured a strategic marriage to a similarly wealthy man whose family fortune was in no immediate danger of collapsing, and who was likely to spend most of his time wrapped up in his own work, leaving Ameliance maximum latitude to run the household, manage the finances, raise her children as she saw fit, and carry on her own family's legacy in supporting education at home and abroad.

The Framework

The first thing about Merchant's Tale to reckon with is that it isn't current-day Corvos, which is to say that it isn't FFXIV's closest analogue to the Middle East. It's Corvos as depicted by a fictional collection of stories. Sound familiar?

The tale in question also suffers from having countless versions:

One aspect of the story is about as traditional as it gets in folklore. A young man winning the heart and hand of a woman:

If there's any doubt as to what's happening here, the reward for unlocking all thirteen routes of Merchant's Tale is an eye mask that looks like sleepwear. Something you'd wear to bed.

And, of course, there's both the genie and the flying carpet(s) which call to mind Disney's Aladdin, based on Aladdin, a tale that originates in a certain collection of folktales. I'm not including the picture of the genie here, you've all seen it, but we will revisit the carpet later.

FFXIV's Merchant's Tale appears to be based on, or heavily influenced by, One Thousand and One Nights, a collection of mostly Middle Eastern stories. I say mostly because some are mostly inventions added to the collection at later times by Westerners. The prime example of this is Aladdin; look that up if you'd like more details.

The majority of stories found within One Thousand & One Nights aren't very well known in the public zeitgeist, and we can probably attribute a great deal of that to vast gulfs in culture and sensibilities (old vs. modern). The most common and universal aspect of the collection, however, is the framing device: the stories contained in the collection are presented as stories told by Sahrzahd (commonly known as Scheherazade) to her husband the king starting on the night of their marriage. She regales him with these stories throughout the night, and ends mid-tale each time come sunrise; intrigued and possessed by the need to know how each story ends, the king always delays her execution (long story, you can look it up) until the next day.

You could say that these are bedtime stories she tells him, which makes the Comfortable Eye Mask reward rather fitting; by the end of the collection, the king withdraws the planned execution of Sahrzahd, having learned a great deal of wisdom from her stories, and spares her life. This brings the tales to the end and, presumably, a return to normalcy... and a normal sleep schedule. Which again, a fitting parallel for the reward: once you've experienced all the stories within Merchant's Tale, you too get to sleep.

It's a shame that Square Enix appears to have based so much of this content on One Thousand and One Nights. There are less well-known works rife with potential for creative storytelling (Shahnameh is right there, Yoshida) but it's clear that they went this route because it's familiar enough to a general audience and popular enough that it will generate excitement. In short, it's not as risky and more of a sure bet.

This is important context moving forward, though, as we'll see.

Firouzeh: Turquoise in Abundance

One of the things which struck me about Merchant's Tale, as far back as late 2025 when Creative Unit 3 began showing it off, was the abundance of turquoise. You see it everywhere: a sky blue or robin egg blue color which makes everything in the content pop.

For those who aren't aware: turquoise (firouzeh, in Farsi/Spanish) has the English name it does because the French got their pierre turqueise (Turkish Stone) from the Ottomans... who in turn got it from the Persians, who were mining it and using it extensively in many walks of life!

I never thought I'd see so much blue! I immediately got my hopes up that perhaps this meant that the content was geared a little bit more my way than usual, in terms of representation, than I was accustomed to expecting from the hodge-podge Orientalist melting-pot depictions we are accustomed to seeing from the West where all of the various MENA/SWANA cultures get jumbled up together into a nonsensical ball of disappointment. I was not disappointed.

No sooner does the Warrior of Light agree to accompany Y'nazqha the gleaner into this enchanted storybook than we get dropped into this gorgeous room, which is also bluer than I could dare hope or dream of.

Small side: Y'nazqha doesn't get the Story-Lover's gear treatment, but instead gets enchanted into the far more respectable Gemrise set from Dawntrail...

...which unfortunately does not offset Creative Unit 3 choosing to dress the tale's maiden in the oft-criticized Story-spinner's set:

It's not great, folks. There are so many culturally significant and appropriate and BEAUTIFUl dresses, outfits, and more for ladies from across countless cultures that Square Enix could be putting into the game.

Anyway, back to the blue. I ran into an immediate issue with my shaders, which -- to their credit -- Square did warn us about. I made some adjustments later, but you may see some slight differences in tone, hue, and warmth as a result between a number of these pictures. But the big takeaway is this: that interior is GORGEOUS. Somebody did the fuckin' work. In fact, they did so much goddamned work that two details immediately jumped at me.

First: the carpets have tassels and the seats are traditionally low to the floor, as is the furniture. Small asks, often lost in the wash when it comes to video games.

More importantly, however, I found myself asking, "Where is the samovar?" I could see the cup and pot on the table. I could see the kettle on the stove.

And that's when it clicked: the Middle East, Iran/Persia specifically, would not have had samovars at the time that this "ancient folklore" takes place. We only got them fairly recently, within the past few hundred years, from Russia. Square Enix paid enough attention to realize that there shouldn't be a samovar here.

Truly, they paid a good deal of attention throughout. The bazaar which you pass through? Carpets and rugs. Carpets and rugs galore. We're not done with carpets yet. Thankfully, none of these fly. I cannot stress enough just how much my family loves carpets, and all of the Iranians and Iranian-Americans with whom I'm familiar love carpets.

We'll touch more on aesthetic as we go, but it's time to discuss another important area in which the team paid attention to detail: language.

Farsi, Also Known as Persian

As it so happened, the first run I experienced with strangers took us down the bazaar and to the Anchorite at Corvos. This is a coastal beach section, and I'm not in a position to comment on the aesthetics here, having never had the opportunity to visit Iran; may I do so within my lifetime, inshallah! What surprised me, however, was the name of the final boss awaiting us at the end of that route.

Darya the Sea-Maid is presented as a mermaid with fairy-like wings, which is delightful enough on its own... but darya is Farsi for "ocean," and Farsi itself is a very poetic language. "Ocean, the Maid of the Sea" might sound repetitive to Western ears, but Darya khedmatkar-i darya has a certain charm to it that I cannot stop thinking about. It's lovely, truly.

Darya being a siren and being so focused on song & dance is also a delight, because song and prayer and our voices and our movement are so important in Iranian and Persian culture (I list both because there is a difference, we won't get into it here; may Iranians not of Persian background forgive me this trespass). We live, enthusiastically, and we enjoy and celebrate living.

While we're here, Darya also touches on faith and on fate. Something to keep in mind for later.

Finishing that first run was important, because Nazqha herself points out that the fiction we're exploring is not at all a one-to-one representation of true history:

But first: the importance of tea. Not only tea but tea with honey.

And a quick glance at a gorgeous courtyard, one of many:

If there was still any doubt that this is highly inspired by One Thousand and One Nights, specifically Galland's Arabian Nights, behold: an analogue for Ali Baba and his forty thieves.

I was to be disappointed by this mention of a "monstrous bird," because I was expecting the Simurgh to show up at some point. The central path through the valley, however, just brings you to the Rukhkh, also known as the Roc (yes, that Roc, the big bird, not the yellow one).

Majestic creature, the Roc.

And I don't know what these creatures are supposed to represent, Nazqha, but I'll tell you what their name means.

Shamshir, of course, is Farsi for "sword." These are "sword-arms." What a cheeky pun and a clever throwaway reference to how these sugar gliders in-game strike at you.

Past the cute little animals is the central path's boss, which... again, Orientalist, not great, we should criticize this too.

There's no Farsi in use here, but I will note that "Fang of the Lion" yet again features that poetic sense and would work very well when translated. Roughly speaking, would it be Dandan-i Shir? Hmmm. Where have I seen Dandan before recently...

Surely nowhere of import. Moving on!

The swordmaster may not be dressed appropriately and we don't get their actual name, but she does speak with a certain cadence typical of this kind of folklore.

Small aside: this swordmaster is of the Unyielding Blade tradition of Corvos, an ancient school which was snuffed out by the Garleans when they invaded as conquerors. Nazqha rightly points this out and it's a subtle reminder that the game does have things to say on the subject of colonial-imperialism:

That was run number two. Run number three for me was the leftmost path, which leads to a palace. On the way there, though, you encounter an apple orchard and some... strange flora. Why is this thing named "Bandari Weed?" Bandari means "of the port," with bandar meaning port. This is typically a reference to southern region of modern day Iran which faces the sea.

As for fauna, this game really wants you to internalize that this is the monstrous rukh (Roc) and not the noble Simurgh.

The palace is gorgeous, by the way. Remember all that talk about firouzeh/turquoise?

As we've seen from promotional material, there's grapes aplenty here. But did you know there's honey, too?

This is a reference to wildflower honey. Asal is delicious in all its forms, folks! And Nazqha agrees!

I'm not gonna dwell on the interior of the palace, folks. It's gaudy, it's filled with riches, it's the sort of Orientalist depiction used to fuel European fantasies about the exotic.

What I want to get to is this lady, the boss of the left path. Put aside her Orientalist depiction for now and pay attention to her name:

Pari is a difficult concept to explain. The closest I can come is if you crossed a fairy with an angel and ended up with a winged wicked little gremlin of mischief. They're supernatural beings loaded with enchantments. You can think of the jinn as the Arabic answer to the Iranian & Persian mythology's pari. We're talking old mythology here, Zoroastrian and older, far outdating Islam.

Speaking of this pari, we've heard of her before in the description of the Mogstation's Magicked Carpet mount:

Summon forth your magicked carpet. Fantasy will set you free. Finally.

It is said an ancient king of Corvos, upon conquering a tribe of faeries, bid the faerie queen weave her magicks to forge an object the likes mankind had never seen. The queen was executed shortly after presenting the king with a flying carpet. This is not that carpet, but at least no one was slain in its creation.

I'm not going to dwell on the fight itself much. It's neat that she's depicted as lazy, preferring to make her enchanted servants do most of the work, and and it's neat that this reflects as "the boss moves very slowly except when it's time for her mechanics," but the servants in question are all flying carpets. Sigh.

That said, though, mashallah, someone took the time to actually stare at a Persian rug. Look at this beauty:

And in case we need confirmation that this pari was indeed the same fairy:

The left path doesn't hold much more for us in terms of language, but there is a specific path which can be taken that leads to a bird's nest. A wind sprite attempts to steal the babies' food, and if you intervene... Mama arrives in time to save you from the sprite's wrath. Could this be a subtle nod to the Simurgh? I ask because the bird later comes to your rescue during one version of the pari fight.

Curiously, these sprites are listed as "Capricious Chambermaid" in dialogue. Ensorcelled women, perhaps? Who knows.

That brings us, more or less, to the final hidden route and the secret boss of Merchant's Tale: the Deadly Dandan.

Okay, putting aside that this creature was summoned as a primal against the Garlean Empire and later become the inspiration for the Sapphire Weapon...

For generations have the seafaring peoples of Corvos passed down the legend of this wicked wavekin, embodiment of all things great and terrible. Yet so tremendous was its perceived power that it was once summoned as a primal in a desperate bid to defeat the Garlean Empire.

I mean, look at it...

This thing's name is The Deadly Tooth. Someone did their fuckin' homework again, because while dandan means "tooth," dahan means "mouth," and so we have a slight stealth pun in this thing being not only the Deadly Tooth but... Listen, if you read it as dahan-dahan, then this thing is the Deadly Mouth-Mouth and it's got two giant mouths right fuckin' there. This tickled me pink!

Defeating the hidden boss takes you to an ancient coastal village.

I cannot stress enough how much we love our carpets and the talented people who make them.

Anyway, I've hit image cap again, but the important takeaway is that you return the pictured plate to the maiden of the tale. She shares with you her story, that her first beloved returned home to strike down this fell beast and save her & her village from its presence, but that he failed, and she lost him, her family, and more. The return of this keepsake touches her heart in a way that no other prizes won throughout Merchant's Tale ever could.

There's a lot more that I could say about this content. I've finished the Advanced version and gotten to see the pretty interior courtyard to which you're treated for the purposes of opening your loot chests. I've yet to tackle the Criterion or Criterion Savage versions. There are so many details to notice on each subsequent run of the Variant Dungeon.

Yes, there's a lot of Orientalism at work. Folks will notice that I didn't cover the genie of the lamp at all, and that I've skipped past a lot of other things either in the interest of time or because others have covered them better.

But I really do believe that Creative Unit 3 put some genuine research, thought, and work into this. They deserve to be encouraged for doing so even as we criticize them for their failings with regards to the gear and other aspects.

PART ONE: PSYCHONEKROSIS IS A GIANT METAPHOR ABOUT THE INHERENT DANGERS OF PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING

OK. This tier, it turned out that I was speculating in the right direction! The psychonekrosis disease that the talent are trying to figure out/mitigate/cure is a nod to how easily it is for pro wrestling to injure you to the point of death. Remember, the bumps are very real. And pro wrestlers don't wear helmets. If you're a foobaw guy you probably already know where this is going.

Brute Bomber's story is basically the realest goddamn shit I've ever seen in a raid storyline. Hector embodies the backstory of many IRL wrestlers, right down to the "feeling indebted to and thankful towards a horrible man" B-plot.

I spent most of AAC Light-Heavyweight joking that Brute Bomber was Drew McIntyre because he had an explosive personality and really rad "chest hair".

After AAC Cruiserweight? I amend that statement to say Hector is an homage to wrestlers who died. A tribute to the Chrises Benoit and Eddies Guerrero and Owens Hart and all their contemporaries in all the federations.

Let me tell you the story of Chris Benoit. I think it will help explain what I mean.

Preface: I'm not doing much hardcore research for this, so I invite you to go and look into this for nitty-gritty details. Remember that IRL pro-wrestling always has that sheen of kayfabe so things that you hear may definitely be embellished or just plain wrong depending on your source. I may get some details wrong but this is the cliff's notes to explain the reference.

In the early 2000s, WWE got found out for passing around anabolic steroids to all the talent like they were candy. Back then, the talent were worked like dogs because Vince McMahon is a piece of shit. You're hurt? Shoot up some steroids and crush a few painkillers and get back out there, because hurt guys don't wrestle and guys who don't wrestle don't make money.

A lot of wrestlers through the 90s and early 2000s passed away in weird circumstances, and usually a dependence on anabolic steroids and painkillers and an unfortunate overdose was blamed on it.

When Canadian professional wrestler Chris Benoit was found dead alongside his wife and young son at his house in Georgia, he was working for WWE and had a fairly good fanbase. His buddy Eddie Guerrero had passed away from a drugs overdose not too long before this and it was known that it messed Chris up pretty bad. He had become a less-reliable guy recently, and his friends did take notice and tried to assist in their way, but it all appeared to have ended in a horrible accident.

Vince McMahon, who I truly believe The President of Arcadion is heavily based on, was the kind of guy who treated life as #EverythingIsContent, but also, pro wrestling fans are loyal folks who've bought in.... anyway, Benoit and his family were found dead on a taping day and Vince immediately turned the night's show into an impromptu and truly heartbreaking memorial.

Because, damn it, everyone knew that Benoit and his wife were having a rough patch because of Eddie's death and his anger about it, but he loved his family and especially loved his kids. This HAD to have been an accidental tragedy, right?

Unfortunately, it wasn't. You see, it's highly likely that Chris Benoit, who made his career off of dangerous headfirst bumps and wicked chair shots around the head and neck and piledrivers and all those shenanigans, was suffering from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) at the time of his death. This is a neurological condition that develops from repeated or sustained head injuries.

Per Wikipedia, CTE symptoms can include "behavioral problems, mood problems, and problems with thinking. The disease often gets worse over time and can result in dementia."

Chris Benoit, unfortunately, had probably done one too many chair shots, was in an industry that at the time didn't give a single solitary fuck about the actual health of the talent, and was likely seeing things. He murdered his wife and kid, and then himself. WWE tried to blame it on the steroids and denounced CTE for years. It is only recently that WWE has adjusted what moves they will allow to be performed and by whom to minimize CTE risk. But it is a risk that will always be present.

Perhaps most ghoulishly (because Vince McMahon is literally one of the worst people to ever have lived. I will always reiterate that that man was and still is a massive piece of shit trashbag human), once it had come out that Chris Benoit actually did a murder, he was pretty much extricated from the active history of WWE. I believe it was the day after the memorial that word reached WWE that this was a Foul Play scenario.

As time went on and the general public learned more about CTE, the narrative around what Benoit did changed slightly. Yes, he absolutely murdered and if he had survived he should have been taken to task for it. But the more we learn about CTE and brain injuries the more it becomes clear that Benoit was probably experiencing full-on CTE and didn't know it and couldn't cope with his symptoms and lashed out.

Does Chris Benoit's story remind you of anything? Can you see the parallels between CTE and psychonekrosis and how when wrestling is the only thing you've got you just go at it until it literally kills you? And you leave behind horrified friends (and/or kittens) who are stunned at not only what you did to yourself but others?

Once it's been made obvious that you're actually dead, your broadcast is cut and the narrative gets changed and what happened to you is just another piece of #Content for the federation to show off and recontextualize to sell a few more shirts. Or they cut you out entirely and claim you were never there.

Hector "Brute Bomber" Highlandername is a magnificent tribute to wrestlers like Chris Benoit. Whoever is writing this raid knows their rasslin' lore.

(See The Third Pro-Wrestling Explainer for more on that, once I write it.)

PART TWO: SHOOTS AND WORKS AND WORKEY SHOOTS AND SHOOTEY WORKS AND HOW WE DON'T ALWAYS KNOW WHICH IS WHICH

Ok. So a shoot is real-life stuff that affects kayfabe, and a work is the kayfabe storyline. These can also be used as verbs. If you hang around wrestling fandom long enough you'll hear some person be all like "HAHAH LMAO YOU ALL GOT WORKED INTO A SHOOT" which is analogous to "it ain't real, bro."

This is a little subjective here, so bear with me. Wrestling is, on its face, dumb as fuck. Literally the stupidest damn thing in the universe if you think about it for more than 30 seconds. Most of the time, all of the rivalry isn't real and the talent are working together. (Remember Phil and Andrew from the first Explainer?)

There are times, however, where things that happen in real life can affect the storyline. Sometimes it's just random things, like that one time at a PLE where Natalya came down with the flu the day of so she and Rhea Ripley went out and did like a 90-second squash match and the other matches had to be extended for time; sometimes it's because a Chris Benoit happens. But the show has to continue; all of this is live and television time has been bought and there are audience members who sold their left kidney for the good seats (don't get me started on ticket-price-greed in entertainment right now). Sometimes, the shoot gets made into a work.

Now, in professional wrestling, the idea is that we the audience are given only as much information about shoot stuff as the talent want to disclose (eg Rhea and Nattie both went on social media to explain their short match the next day, as it wasn't supposed to go down like that) — otherwise we get the work. The kayfabe. The persona (despite the explanation, Rhea's squash of Nattie helped her persona gain reputation, as Nattie is a veteran of the biz and Rhea is relatively new).

As Honey B. has demonstrated in the raid storyline, this can be used to one's advantage. The fandom can make HUGE changes in how storylines play out.

And we as the fans have to buy into this whole idea. Sometimes we won't know that a terrible thing has happened until after it's been shot into a work, and then the federation has to backtrack.

That's what's going on with Hector and that's how the President is muddying the waters with everything and is seemingly able to "get away" with it all. Because the nature of the spectacle allows for this.

PART THREE: A VAGUELY UNHINGED SHORT LIST OF WHAT IN MY OPINION ARE THE SICK AF REFERENCES IN THIS RAID TIER ALONE

This has nothing to do with Pro Wrestling per se but Dancing Green in DE is Springhis Khan. MULTILINGUAL DISCO REFERENCES. I am not familiar enough with German disco hits to know if all his raid moves are disco song names or what, but goddamn. Sugar Riot is an homage to Degeneration X (DX), a stable from the mid-90s to mid 2000s, composed of a very disruptive HHH and Shawn Michaels and some other goons. You know that thing people do where they do an X at their crotch and go SUCK IT? Yeah, DX went around spray painting things to be annoying and it's just one of the things people remember.

Brute Abombinator does a Powerslam on the Warriors of Light And I Giggle Every Goddamn Time. That's a pro wrestling move that hurts, and it's also a raid mechanic that hurts. I love this series so much.

Honey B's Twitch Presence -- or the Alexandrian equivalent thereof -- is something that is very common today in pro wrestling. Many pro wrestlers are also gamers and therefore interact with their fans through gaming infrastructure like livestreams or co-ops. (Randy Orton played a LOT of Elden Ring while he was recovering from a spinal fusion surgery.)

Also, you should know if you don't already that Masayoshi Soken composed a new entrance theme for Canadian Pro Wrestler What Fights Mostly In Japan Kenny Omega. And you bet your ass there were Omegascape motifs all up in that shit. GIVE KENNY A VOICE ROLE IN THE THIRD TIER YOSHI-P WE NEED THIS AND IT'S ALL RIGHT THERE.