Imaginings

The Scions of the Seventh Dawn -almost all of them lol Here is what they look like almost completely finished! They will be this circle for the stickers anyway, but there will be more for the print version c:

The main border is a play on the frame around Tupsimati, found in the Waking Sands, and the tile patterns are the eye symbol some scions have as tattoos, and tiny mother crystals for the interior circle. The tile/rocks motif hearkens back to the Rising Stones base of operations.

starting a collection

Just some guy, kind of the weirdest thing is that they know the WoL

Just Some Guy, but like. There is something distinctly off about them, like maybe they have been living in the wilderness alone for 15 years, who knows, but like. They do the job!

An expert in the field. Makes sense, you probably run into those saving the world and whatnot.

A world-renown expert in the field. Still makes sense, but wow you were not expecting that for your silly problem.

A world-renown person. Like, everyone’s heard of Cid Garlond by this point, what do you mean you have him on speed dial.

A world leader. You thought the Elder Seedseer never left Gridania except in times of crisis, but ok!

A dragon, quite possibly of the first brood or otherwise quite old. This feels like overkill.

Something you weren’t even expecting to be sentient, like the plushy chocobo and its robotic friend. Extremely weird.

A literal cryptid or person you thought was entirely mythical. Sure, this might as well happen.

You never meet ‘the guy’, because apparently ‘the guy’ lives in a different world/dimension. Somehow still gives excellent and applicable advice.

I keep seeing commentary going around about the Scions definitely disbanding at the end of Endwalker. Based on the line in Alphinaud's letter writing voiceover:

"We are disbanding the Scions of the Seventh Dawn."

What people seem to miss, or willfully ignore, or completely forget, is the actual final line of that voiceover, after Tataru calls him to the foyer:

"At least...that is what the story will be."

As they collect the entire order in the main room, Urianger puts it best:

"Meanwhile, we shall return to our erstwhile ways. Retreating from plain sight to take our place in the shadows once more."

("erstwhile" means former or previous)

Tataru is going to stay in the Rising Stones, as she says:

"Someone has to keep the Rising Stones in proper order, and even a super-secret organization requires a super-secret base of operations."

Ephemie also mentions it, while reminiscing of her initial time as a Crystal Brave:

"'Tis a shame the Scions are disbanding─even if only in name."

Y'shtola spoke to Lyse, and used quotes around the word as she divulged to the secret to our former comrade:

"I took the opportunity to explain our plans to “disband,” and she understood our reasoning immediately. Once a Scion, always a Scion, it would seem."

Estinien also can mention it based on dialogue options when discussing future plans with the main Scion allies:

"You talk as if the Scions' dissolution was more than mere pretense. There may be fewer calls to action, but we should be compensated as before."

It's also funny to me that straightforward Estinien is perhaps the one having trouble maintaining the ruse, as in the "patch quests "Buried Memory" quest when talking to Zero and Varshahn, he says:

"But we Scions─former Scions, begging your pardon─have a habit of not leaving well enough alone."

And there's a few other examples among the members, core and secondary, as they converse in the Stones that last time, or afterward around the world.

So the devs aren't "backtracking" or otherwise "forgetting", nor are the Scions of the Seventh Dawn actually defunct. They returned to the (poor) secrecy they had pre- and during ARR (as even back then people knew of them), in order to let Eorzea stand on its own feet, take a break, and keep an eye on things from the side.

...At least that's the plan, and most of the secondary crew seems to be sticking to it. But the core group, being made up of main characters for the last decade, have some trouble keeping their noses out of trouble, and tend to call on each other's expertise at any reasonable excuse.

It perhaps weakens the lie (if anyone believes it to begin with; imagine the conspiracy theories in the various newspapers), but also...they've been friends and colleagues for years. They went to the end of reality and returned together. Is it any wonder they (perhaps overly) rely on one another?

Master Louisoix looms so large over all the Scions, and I feel like it's really given nearly all of them a complex where they feel like they have to be willing to sacrifice themselves should the need arise--and they're all just waiting for that moment that happened to Louisoix, that realization that there is no other choice. It might be death, it might be something else, but they're all so ready to take the bullet, literal or figurative.

We see it with Moenbryda, who says that she finally understands the choice he made seconds before she gives her life to defeat an Ascian. We see it with Yda and Papalymo, Thancred and Y'shtola, and finally Minfilia as one by one they stay behind, urging the others to go on, until only the Warrior of Light is left. We see it again with Papalymo when he gives his life to contain the primal summoned by the Griffon. We see it with Minfilia's willingness not only to hand herself over to Hydaelyn to be her voice, but to travel to a far-off star, maybe never to return, to help save a world she has never seen. We see it in Urianger acting alone to spare his friends the burden he carries for what he believes to be necessary actions. Even Alphinaud basically doesn't allow himself to be just a teenage boy and over and over keeps trying to take the world on his shoulders because he believes it's what he's supposed to do as Louisoix's grandson. Lyse in Stormblood is so ready and eager for revolution but over and over again we see the true cost of war and of resistance to overwhelming imperial power, and we are confronted with the question of what level of sacrifice is fair to ask of people who have already suffered so much and are just trying to survive.

They made the Scions live through those initial moments of believing that WoL had sacrificed themself. They touched the edges of that pain.

But they survived. They came back. Barely.

And I think that may have made all of them take a moment to really think about what "sacrifice" means. What it does to those left behind. Because it's one thing to watch your friends fall one by one, waitibg for your turn. It's another to have fought. - to have *won* and then be confronted with the potential loss of a dear friend anyway. Not for something meaningful, or world-saving.

For a single mans adrenaline rush. After all theyd done. All theyd achieved, all the battles fought and times theyd beaten the odds... to be lost in a battle to distract one man from his ennui.

I think - I hope - that moment before the WoL returned, made all the Scions think about what it means to sacrifice yourself.

The fights where WoL's canonically alone, not calling in help, tend to be rough but also have some kind of limiter (Tsukuyomi never had to be a powerful summon, just had to happen at all; it's theorized Zenos's control of Shinryu may have made the primal less effective).

The thing about Shadowbringers is, it's not merely a story that flips the concepts of Light and Dark on their heads and makes us question what heroism and villainy are. It's a story that takes the concepts of fate and destiny and stomps them to death.

It begins with Ardbert back before Stormblood. The Warriors of Light, chosen by the Crystal, fated heroes of the First failed. Their triumph over the Ascians plotting against their world caused its destruction, and when faced with that horror, they fell. They turn into villains to try to save it.

And that fails, too! Doing everything they were supposed to do was the wrong thing, and doing everything they weren't supposed to do was the wrong thing. And in the end, their world is saved by Minfilia -- who is very pointedly not a Destined Hero. Even at the moment that she agrees to go to the First, she's an oracle. Her job is speaking. She does it anyway, and it works.

G'raha back in ARR, following the course of destiny laid out for him by Princess Salina, doing what his bloodline was fated to do, sealed himself inside the Crystal Tower so that it could one day be a beacon of hope. And it worked! When the tower was opened, it absolutely was the embodiment of all of the Eighth Umbral Era's hope. Because the world was dying. That was his destiny. To be the hope left trapped in Pandora's box.

The Ironworks sends him back in time explicitly to defy fate. To make sure that everything that was supposed to happen didn't. But even as he goes about it, G'raha still doesn't fully reject the notion of destiny. The Fated Hero has to be the one to save the First. A destined sacrifice has to be made to save the future.

Throughout Shadowbringers, we see events diverge more and more from how they were supposed to be. Whoever slays a Lightwarden is supposed to become one. Whoever kills Titania is supposed to become the new faery king. Vauthry is supposed to be the hope and salvation of the First. Destiny is being averted, the Eight Umbral Calamity is maybe being forestalled, but there's still this overarching sense of fate. The Warrior of Darkness, long awaited by the First, has come at last to set things right.

And then there's Ryne.

She is very literally the embodiment of destiny. Minfilia will return. That's the prophesy, and over and over again it is fulfilled. Until Ryne, who has never been allowed to fulfill her destiny, the first Fated Symbol of Hope kept in a cage, finally reaches Light's Edge and makes her choice. And what she tells Minfilia? "Coming together, providing for one another--that's the only way forward I can see. Since all our heroes are gone, we'll just have to make heroes of ourselves." That is an explicit rejection of the Great Destiny she was promised. We are our own hope. You and all our other great heroes are in the past. Together we have to rise to the occasion.

And with that choice her destiny ends. She ceases to be Minfilia. She no longer has the crystal eyes and blonde hair that marked every one of her past reincarnations. She becomes her own person. She's free of fate.

In some ways the importance of the moment gets buried behind the continuing quest to find and kill all the Lightwardens, but Ryne is the turning point of Shadowbringers.

After that moment, the fated Warrior of Darkness begins to noticeably break. The triumph over the final Lightwarden is fleeting. The noble sacrifice doesn't happen. Ryne intervenes when the Light overtakes you, and your destiny doesn't arrive. We spend all of the Tempest in a liminal state--neither the monster nor the hero but both, in a city that does and does not exist, witnessing scenes of the past that will become the future.

Ryne is the last to fall to Emet-Selch, and when she does, she's the only one who calls out to us. Not to Emet-Selch. She's not trying to argue with or fight him. He's not the real adversary to her. She wants us to fight against what is supposed to happen next.

Urianger is surrounded by clever things offering him worriless immortality.

Alphinaud is offered a chance to be known for his artistic vision instead of his calculation.

Y'shtola is offered a people who do not care where she came from, whom she could properly belong to.

Thancred is offered a do-over for his biggest regret, to make it right and attone by protecting a very literal facsimile of the girl he hurt.

Allisaie is offered the chance to put her great big heart into gentle comfort.

And the WoL is, of course, offered the chance to just let go.

Theoretically, each of them could've taken that offer. The first would've been doomed, but they'd live out the rest of its time in peace. A sort of Elysium for their heroics.

Obviously, the story doesn't work if they take it, but each of them, in that rejection, becomes something new. Urianger's is fairly obvious, but I think my favorite is Y'shtola's, actually. Up until that point, she's been catty, sure, but there's a level of reservation to it. It's a little bit between edgy and haughty. Aloof, maybe. A line that's been derided, in my experience, but I think really marks the shift in her mindset is her little Dommy Mommy moment. It's a little weird, sure, a touch out-of-pocket. It's also intimate, biting, but not vitriolic. She's sassy, but not picking a fight and not shaming the WoL. It's ACTUALLY playful, which up until that point she really hasn't been.

We know from Matoya that she's always been a little dour, a little grim, a little serious, a little combatative. We see that in her behavior throughout the story, as well. By the third act of Shadowbringers, though, by "None of that sass, or I shall have to take you over my knee," she's letting loose. Not to mention, this accompanies a shift in her magic, as well, where it becomes less Conjurer Lite and more Legally-Distinct Black Mage.

This shift is necessary, putting her in the state to stand in front of the Forum by the time of the Endwalker trailer and not just defy and admonish them, but practically laugh at them.

venat was stopping a planned mass sacrifice of non-ancient life by the only means available to her. that is the primary motivation for the sundering. shadowbringers says this to you, very very clearly. hythlodaeus in "a greater purpose," 5.0 (this is when you're chilling at the DMV together):

The Convocation of Fourteen─well, it was Thirteen at the time─endeavored to create a will for our star. They would repair the fundamental laws of order and halt the spread of destruction. But creation on such a scale required an immense source of power... Of those of us who still lived, nearly half offered up their lives in the name of salvation. And from their sacrifice, Zodiark was born. Just as we had hoped, He reached forth and halted the march of oblivion. ...Yet oh how the star had suffered. So many species lost. The land was blighted, the waters poisoned, and even the wind had ceased to blow. Once more did our people give of themselves to Zodiark. Another half of our race sacrificed to cleanse the world; to ensure that trees and grasses and myriad tiny lives would sprout and grow and flourish. The cycle of life had begun anew, and we reconsidered the means by which we might protect it. The Convocation decided thus: we would nurture our world until it was bursting with vitality. Then, when the time was right, we would offer some portion of its living energy to Zodiark... In return, He would restore to us those brethren whose souls had fed His strength, and together we would resume our role as stewards. There were, however, those who disagreed with this plan. They argued that enough had been sacrificed to Zodiark─that this new world should belong to the lives newly born. These dissidents surrendered their life energies in the creation of Hydaelyn, an incarnation of their opposing belief. And for the first time in history, our people stood divided... Know you, then, how this conflict ended?

Hythlodaeus is very clear: Following the first 50% sacrifice to Zodiark, the land was dying and there had been a mass die-off. A second 50% sacrifice (so 25% of the pre-Zodiark Ancient population) resolved that, cleansing the world and restoring nature and non-Ancient life. Afterwards, the Convocation planned a third sacrifice: they would "nurture [the] world until it was bursting with vitality," the "trees and grasses and myriad tiny lives" he describes earlier, and then sacrifice some considerable amount of that life to restore the Ancients comprising Zodiark.

People pretend that there's a lot more ambiguity on this point than there is, but it's quite clear that when he says "myriad tiny lives," he is saying something that encompasses the modern peoples of Eorzea or their very near ancestors (it's only been about 12,000 years since the Sundering. For comparison early modern humans emerged about 300,000 years ago, and there's no suggestion I'm aware of that evolution even exists on Etheirys anyhow). There's a couple very strong pieces of evidence for this:

First, anything that exists on multiple shards must have existed pre-Sundering, since there's close to no multidimensional travel (barring Ascians and the Exarch). Thus, all the player races, which we know exist on each shard so far, as well as, say, the Amalj'aa, the Kobolds, the Sahagin, and the Qiqirn, all must have existed before the Sundering since we also see them on the First.

Second, the phrasing of "trees and grasses and myriad tiny lives" positions "lives" as a category that encompasses everything that isn't trees and grasses. We can surmise that when he describes the Hydaelyn faction standing for "lives newly born" he's again describing basically everything that isn't plants. this again includes the spoken races of the current game or their ancestors; they are a clear part of what was at stake in the sacrifice.

Third, if that doesn't persuade you that Hythlodaeus is talking about lives like yours, consider that you've just spent the last few quests exploring the city full of giant ancient magic people going "wow! you're so small and childlike! what a miniscule living being you are!" When Hythlodaeus gives this speech about "myriad tiny lives," he is a literal enormous giant sitting next to you, a very tiny living being from his perspective.

This sacrifice, which Hythlodaeus explains to you in the DMV, is the crux of the matter and the root of Venat's choice. The time loop, her knowledge of Meteion, the debate over the right solution to the final days—all of that is secondary. She explicitly is unsure up until you meet her in the Aitiascope whether the time loop is stable and real and applies to you.

The essential issue is the fact that the Ancients are supposed to be stewards of the star, and now they are going to engage in mass sacrifice of lives that Venat knows are people like her and her peers (mostly this is thanks to being a humanist who believes in the sanctity and dignity of life but she also has the confirmation of your post-sundering, totally humanlike existence). Just a quarter of the Ancients' original number remain, their society is in tatters, and what's left is in the process of actively betraying every ideal they ever claimed to hold by slaughtering the life they allegedly guide and care for (which they know to be ensouled!) to undo the great and noble sacrifice of their loved ones.

but venat's faction is weak. it's her and like 13 sorta-important people she knows plus maybe some unnamed others. they lack the numbers or the raw ability to make something that can defeat zodiark, and will need instead to lean on venat's abilities.

A/N: Really? I'm touched! I hope you have found lots of headcanons to read! ^-^ I'm sorry this is late btw - however you have given me the opportunity (excuse) to use the older Alphinaud & Alisaie that I made! I hope you don't mind that I put one song with all of them and then individual.

Note: Alphinaud & Alisaie are older here (in my HC they're mid 20s)

All Scions

Song: Sweet Caroline (So Good Version)- Tyson Fury

No matter what any of them are doing or wherever they are, they all sing along with the WoL. It's just a catchy tune, how could they not?

Singing normally: Y'shtola, Alphinaud

Singing with flair: Urianger, G'raha Tia

BUH BUH BUH: Alisaie, Estinien, Thancred

Song: My Immortal (Band Version) - Evanescence

she tried to ignore you

Guillermo Del Toro on AI "art"