I do love me a good villain speech, of course. The gambit of telling the heroes some notion of their plans, and pushing their beliefs, is especially important for setting up a story like Evercold's, and getting the Godless World Saga going in this next phase of FFXIV's development.
But I really enjoyed the aura-by-proxy my WoL got after Halmarut's initial introduction and wish we could have gotten more scenes like that.
And we could yet get more! The devs could reframe the confidence of the scenes we've had already as mere bluster.
"Calyx, you're shaking."
The squirrel mascot's arm judders wildly, and the other finally swings around to grip it.
"I...An error. A memory leak, essentially. I keep seeing her face, that instant before I escaped into this body. When you announced that the Fourth's Winterer would be a direct threat to her friends, the way she looked at us was eerily similar. It seems the memory of that moment-"
"It wasn't only your memory. I was the subject of that ire and-" Halmarut shakes her head, hugging her own shaking shoulders. Her lip trembles. "How did she get here? Something about her reminds me of the very Solstice I have prophesied and feared these long millennia. A natural process that forces those too long removed from the lifestream back into its flow, flattening them into the weave. A kind of...natural predator for immortals."
"That sounds rather superstitious for you."
"Repetition brings greater certainty to a claim, does it not? Well, she has killed an ascian: Elidibus. And she has killed an ascian: Emet-selch. And she has killed an ascian: Igeyorhm. And Mitron. And Fandaniel. And Nabriales. And Lahabrea." She shakes her head, raising her hands near it almost as if fending off bees. "She is not always the one who strikes the blow. But that is, if anything, worse. Because after thousands and thousands of years surviving wars and cataclysms of our own making and the very tears in the fabric of creation, we're all being forcibly returned to the flow and a single mortal is in attendance to all our deaths. Like-"
"Like a grim reaper," Calyx says hollowly. "No wonder I couldn't overpower her with the fear of death. No wonder she can and does go everywhere. She is Death."
-
It's subtle but I actually kind of love the fact that Halmarut very intentionally distracts you - similar to a magician misdirecting the gaze for a magic trick - when she makes her exit. As if she doesn't trust you not to somehow cancel her teleport and destroy her like you've already destroyed many of her peers. I like having a villain who talks a big game but is, in fact, terrified of WoL. Because after this many expansions "terrified" is how any ascian ought to feel when encountering the one who has killed - ended - more than half their number, including the three super-ascian Unsundered, who were each functionally sporting the power of thirteen modern ascians in one body.
