#allag

“—look at me, I’m the allag prince and I think I know everything!”

“I lived in the crystal tower for over a hundred years, I know more than you!”

“I brought back summoning from half discarded texts and a soulstone!”

So it seems this is why he seemed so grotesque; the aether fundamentally changed him.

But of course, we can't forget the one who made this all possible.

I really don't worry about it, especially if we go with the idea of Gil being a typical gold-based currency just with a funny name.

It was also an Allagan thing, recycled by Eorzeans. And with trade with Eorzea being common, it does mostly work in the Source. Yanxia is Doma, more open to trade and outsiders than even Hingashi, and has been part of Garlemald besides - and the Empire has no issue taking Eorzean coin and probably has a similar Allagan-inspired currency that's equivalent, given how much else they base upon the old empire.

Mostly it IS a gameplay convenience even more than the languages so players don't also have to worry about the Gil to Koban exchange rate, but there's also nothing saying the WoL and Scions aren't dealing in Koban when in the East and the game just doesn't deal with that.

As for the First, that's just a mess of handwaving a world actively in the midst of apocalypse and maybe we'll get more details in the 3rd lorebook, but they seem to be having a "collapse the languages and currency down since the remaining population is so small" situation there, and everyone has to trade with one another for survival purposes; even the Viis, who start working with the Qitari and the Night's Blessed.

And while a barter system for the Viis on introduction (or even the Xaela of the Steppe) might seem to make sense, it also unnecessarily complicates and bogs down story and gameplay, so like a LOT of other things in the game, shorthands it to "they just take your coin."

Which I find more and more, people kind of forget, especially when criticizing how "fast and easy" something resolves, that in the scope of the game, pretty much everything is shorthanded to keep gameplay and story moving along, from conversations to rest periods to equipment acquisition to scenes we don't see play out between NPCs and to the vast majority of gameplay mechanics where they intersect with character actions and interactions.

FFXIV tries real hard to make some gameplay part of the world and story, like teleportation. Or they make bland excuses on why we can wander around the 3 city-states post-Banquet, or why the WoL isn't given a shock collar too in Tertium, or can keep visiting unique locations for specific storypoints like Ultima Thule and Elpis. And if we were playing a traditional standalone, single-player FF game, those situations would be written and played out differently.

But sometimes a lore lampshade is just a lampshade, and not all game mechanics are actually lore, but ways for players to fill in the gaps when it comes to Roleplay and Fanfiction.

EDIT: And here's a post from some other folks, with some sources, that barter wasn't as widespread as people think, most places - even remote and sparsely populated - had regular commerce, and currency of some form was far more common and far-reaching than might be assumed.

The GALL of this man, Amon thought to himself as he stared at his red-masked visitor. What does he MEAN, “my methods leave something to be desired”?

Yet even as he boggled at the man’s presumption— “I have come to claim you”, honestly—he could not help but feel morbidly curious. ‘Twas a bold soul indeed who would question his methodology to his face. He could not remember the last time anyone in the imperial court had done so. 

Which, he supposed, did mean the stranger was paying attention, and not just having a lark. And he had been unable to deny Amon’s results, which had to count for something.

“...As fortune would have it,” the man continued, in a tone Amon immediately recognized as dripping with guile, “the seat of Fandaniel—your rightful seat—lies vacant and waiting. Take your place amongst your peers, rather than die a pointless death amidst the ashes of your doomed nation.”

Amon remained uncharacteristically silent as he considered the words, unmoving on his seat, fingers steepled in front of his masked face. Such claims were extraordinary, and to any other individual, they would stretch the limits of credulity to the breaking point. A whole civilization that not only existed aeons before Allag, but had surpassed it in every respect? The star itself shattered into fourteen pieces that must needs be reunited? Amon himself, living a previous life, as a previous man—but a more whole, complete version of him? Surely this was all too much to be seriously entertained.

But still, he was given pause. 

The way the stranger had apparated into the room in a dark swirl of magic was certainly a mark in his favor. These “Ascians”, as he had identified himself, must be people of respectable power.

But for another thing, Amon could not disagree with his forecast of Allag’s demise. He had recognized the decay that was setting into the empire. It was, in fact, that very thing which had prompted him to do the unthinkable: to resurrect Xande, their greatest emperor, that he might steer them to better things.

It chafed him that the people spoke of it with the same irreverence as an unusually impressive parlor trick.

It destroyed him that Xande’s own post-death perspective confirmed his very worst fears.

This was all for nothing. 

It seemed not just that the Emperor could lose the war, but perhaps, he did not wish to win it.

Yet it took more than that to earn Amon’s attention. Anyone with half their wits—which excluded most of his countrymen, he assumed—could see the writing on the wall. Allag would not be the first great people to crumble, and presumably, neither would they be the last. Such pointless cycles littered history and required no soothsayer to predict.

Amon may well have laughed the stranger out of his laboratory, were it not for the dreams.

Those dreams were hazy, fragmented things, but they had haunted him as long as he could remember. They featured… a garden? No, a testing ground. Somehow both. It was beautiful. It was vapid. It was peaceful. It was a nightmare. It plucked at the mystery of creation itself, and yet there were no answers in it. He was himself, and yet he was not. He was surrounded by masked faces he did not recognize, whom he somehow knew. And there was a sense of something in the stars above—something grave, something hopeful, something existentially important. But he knew not what. None of it made sense to him. Every dream saw him disoriented and confused, a question in his mind he could not shake, reverberating louder and louder within him as the dream went on: “Why…? Why? Why? WHY??” until he woke up with a desire to scream.

But of course, it was just a vexing dream.

Unless it wasn’t.

The mask the Ascian wore was not like the masks he saw there. …But neither, he supposed, was it so very different. If there was any truth to his words…

A satisfied smile curled upon the visitor’s lips as he sensed Amon’s reluctant intrigue.

—

Within a fortnight, Allag’s foremost technologist disappeared from the empire—though no one really noticed, as his clone took his place. He found himself in a dark, formless space between worlds, adrift on an isle which floated in the nothingness. He had no inkling such a place existed before today, and it set his mind spinning to consider the ramifications. He no longer doubted the Ascian, at least not about this part. 

Shadowy robed figures surrounded him. Most of them were formerly men like himself, he was told. People who had realized that their feeble existence was but a pale, warped imitation of what could be. Of what should be. Above them towered a deific statue, imposing, haloed, and wrought from dark metal. He knew precious little about this “Zodiark”. He had been assured all would become clear in due course.

Amon looked down at the carved red stone in his hands. It was etched with a celestial design. Fandaniel. He turned the word over in his mind, trying to get used to it. As unfamiliar as the language was, he clung to what Emet-Selch had taught him it meant: pursuer of extant phenomena. He could live with that. Or die with that, whichever this counted as doing.

“Now,” Emet-Selch told him, jarring him out of his thoughts. “Focus on that stone. This process will suffer no distractions.”

“Your wish is my command,” Amon replied with a flourish, hoping it managed to cover for his slowly rising panic. He rebuked himself inwardly for his cowardice. After all, ‘twas not as if he had anything to lose at this point.

He could not see, but rather felt, the Ascian roll his eyes. “Are you ready to begin?”

“No time like the present,” he answered. Even if this were to be his end, he must admit it was a fascinating way to go.

Emet-Selch paused incredulously at the man who wore an outward nonchalance hardly befitting someone on the cusp of shedding his mortal frame. He extended his hand towards him, and then announced, “I advise you brace yourself. This will hurt.”

Amon barely had time to second-guess his decision before he felt a veritable explosion in his skull. The pain was like nothing he ever felt. It dropped him to his knees. A language he did not know—he could not even make out words—resonated in his mind, as he felt his very essence being crushed, stretched, extracted. The last sound Amon’s corporeal form would ever make was a protracted, piteous cry of agony.

And then it was over.

He stood there, a tangible soul without body, staring agape at his own crumpled corpse on the ground. The stone. He was meant to be focusing…

The memories contained in it all flooded him at once. 

Ever had he been a man of science, but it was one thing to learn information, and another to just know it. He reeled from all that he suddenly understood. Those masked figures around him—he did not know most of them. But of course he wouldn’t. They were not of The Fourteen. The Fourteen? Yes, of course. Emet-Selch had introduced himself already, but even apart from that, he knew him. He recognized that self-congratulatory smirk that he saw on his face even now.

And those two others in red masks—one wearing black robes, the other in white. “By the Emperor,” Amon gasped. My, what an absurdly weak oath that sounded like anymore. “Lahabrea. Elidibus.”

The former Ascian gave no reaction he could discern, but the latter offered a nearly imperceptible smile. “Welcome back, Fandaniel,” he replied.

He could not remember anything prior to swearing his oath of office. Well, that, and his life as Amon. That was fine. He had been warned of as much prior to accepting the Ascians’ offer. But he wracked his newfound knowledge for context for his dreams—something, anything to confirm that this was not a colossal mistake. A testing ground that was a garden… ah, of course. Elpis. He knew that place. He had worked there. He was overseer there.

He was Hermes.

He staggered under the weight of the realization. How could it—but he was. He was. This was his soul. It was all true. It was all real.

He resisted the unseemly urge to cry at these newfound memories, although it briefly occurred to him to wonder if, in this form, tears would even flow. He dug through his own mind like his now-past-self had once dug through tomes of research, relieved that at last he could untangle the mystery that had stalked him nearly every night. He would be able to understand. He would…

He…

He felt his gut twist at the yawning void where he expected answers to be.

The stone held no memories of that time, but he had not expected it to. That was not the problem. But that confusion? That dissonance? That primal scream of “why”?

Those were not Amon’s.

They were Hermes’s.

Darkness take me, he thought, swearing by a deity he only just now understood.

Date: XX - X - XXXX. Met prospective new patron today. First impressions: Direct. Well-spoken. Vain, but not overly narcissistic. Confident in his power, if insecure in his mortality. As equally well-versed in the intricacies of court politics and noble society as he is in matters of war and conquest. Intelligent enough to avoid the traps laid out before him by Amon and his ilk, but not quite so much that he can see the noose already tightening about his neck. Quite attractive in profile, if only from his right side; such a terrible shame about his left. Most importantly, the man is possessed of a favorable temperament and more than enough material wealth to suit my needs. Construction of Arachnion proceeds apace, and he is more than willing to divert funds toward its completion so long as he receives of the fruit of my labor; a simple promise, all too easily fulfilled. Yes, he will serve me rather nicely.