It didn't really come out as I would have liked but I'm glad I finished it.
The text is from the song "What Angel Wakes Me" from the Titania fight in ffxiv, written by Masayoshi Soken.
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(i've alluded to this in shorter posts before but i think it's been long enough since endwalker that i can put vague spoilers for it on the timeline. which is another way of saying:)
spoilers for endwalker follow.
you might be familiar with nymeia lilies from one of many ARR quests. an eorzean flower commonly used for funerals or in memorials, nymeia lilies appear in the bard questline, the cutter's cry unlock quest, and several optional side quests as key items. they are also found as gardening items with some minor crafting uses. they are associated, naturally, with nymeia the spinner.
all quest dialogue and item descriptions from ffxiv.gamerescape.com
many people might also be familiar with them from the optional post-heavensward "tales of the dragonsong war" questline that revisits many heavensward locations. there, the text confirms the bouquet that estinien is holding in the end of 3.3 and that he left on azys lla is indeed a bouquet of nymeia lilies.
from the 3.3 quest "a litany of peace"
from the 3.3 sidequest "the burdens we bear"
(you might also be thinking, as I did: hey, weren't they also in moenbryda's funeral? and if you did think that, i have to tell you we were both wrong. those were moon daisies.)
endwalker, in keeping with its tendency to pull in elements from across xiv's expansions, references the nymeia lily in a side quest capstone in elpis. it's one of those quests that comes from the two questlines you need to start to unlock flight, the ones where they put a screencap of the cutscene in the side quest box so you know "oh hey it's one of those side quests where they have an actual plotline."
the quest revisits the lykaones from the MSQ, those rampaging creations you had to put down alongside hermes for being too aggressive. this time, instead of the lykaones, you're dealing with the creations they killed, which need to be returned to the environment, aether-wise.
their cultural context means the denizens of elpis don't quite know what to make of the loss of life:
the warrior of light not only explains the concept of a memorial for the deceased to them, but can directly name-drop the nymeia lily. the comments prompt one of the researchers to consider making a bouquet of flowers to make an offering to the dead.
the resulting flowers she makes are...okay well they're not quite nymeia lilies. but the intended association is very explicit! while the krinos is visibly different, the krinos and both versions of the nymeia lily are all six-petaled flowers
the elpis researchers are all very moved by the resulting ceremony they devise, and the overseer who accompanied you explicitly suggests they'll make a historical note of it and potentially change their practices going forward. since elpis pre-dates everything else in the game, and the krinos is explicitly said to be a predecessor to the modern lily, the implications are pretty clear. i kind of wish this stuff was more foregrounded in MSQ, tbh; the idea that the people of elpis don't even have funerals is a pretty useful look into how deeply culturally distinct they are from present day eorzeans.
so there you have it. the practice of offering flowers to the departed arguably has no historical origin in ffxiv, but exists as the result of a bootstrap paradox in the warrior of light's time loop. given the way the quest plays out, you can even make a case the wol might have influenced the appearance of the nymeia lily! nymeia lilies are pretty cool and more fans should know them.
and, well, if you're willing to read some endwalker alliance raid spoilers, things go a little further...
as early as endwalker release, people cottoned on to the fact that something was slightly weird about maira and alkaios, the researchers you're accompanying. there's that zone in elpis called "the twelve wonders," for starters, and the characters have some familiar traits. maira and alkaios are a younger sister and older brother, alkaios is a time mage, and maira is associated with the nymeia lilies through the krinoi. of the twelve, althyk is associated with time, and althyk and nymeia are siblings. this alone was enough to raise some eyebrows.
the second alliance raid, euphrosyne, reinforced these associations by giving nymeia a line exactly identical to something maira says in the quest before methods of mourning, "unleash the beast".
and of course, thaleia confirmed the relationship of the ancients to the twelve, and deryk's recitation of their original selves alludes pretty clearly to maira and alkaios. deryk's dialogue even changes if you did the full side quest line (shown in green here).
so there you have it. maira, the ancient who would become nymeia, inspired by the warrior of light, initiates the custom of offering flowers to the departed, which may be why eorzea has nymeia lilies today.
and...okay this is really reaching, and there's no real evidence for it. but althyk and alkaios have a little more in common, sonically, than maira and nymeia. and you can be the first person to ever say the name nymeia to maira...so while there's nothing to say that the warrior of light is responsible, via time loop, for helping nymeia name herself, it's not impossible! which is pretty wild!
Screenshots of Deryk's descriptions of the Ancients that the Twelve were based on. I have included alt text on all images for ease of use.
At present, we have definitive evidence of two of the Twelve's names as Ancients: Althyk (Alkaios) and Nymeia (Maira). They appear in the quest chain that starts with "An Expected Guest." If you finish this quest chain, Althyk and Nymeia will comment on recognizing your Warrior of Light.
Pictomancer's Pilgrimage
Paper Menphina: My Trail to the Heavens
Hey guys, so, uhh, didn't think that would actually happen, I was internally bracing for disappointment since I never even got chosen for one of those 1000 screenshot thingies, buuuut how about this!
>>VOTE NOW!!<<
I would really appreciate if you could spare me a Cute or a Fun vote u-u (i don't really know which one applies most so i'd be thankful for anything) but honestly, I already won just by having my sweet darling Paper Menphina acknowledged by big FFXIV themselves next to all of these amazing artists <3 I will take so many pictures of my dilapidated RL Paper Menphina in front of Digital Paper Menphina at Fanfest...! My girl made it big *-*!!!
Let's have some Notes Below the Cut because I love talking about the things I make
So, I just want to start this off saying that in-universe this piece is intended as an admittance to blasphemy - Fuck the Gods, they're stupid, I made my own - and I just want you to know that that's what Paper Menphina is about to me.
Anyways, after struggling two years-ish to even just finish 3 out of 12, something possessed me to power through all of them in two weeks, including Actual Dalamud, Thalaos and Perykos, Nophica's Racist Kids, the Monkey and the Horse. That's the Power of a Deadline for you. I hope you're proud of me because I was in fact not even struggling that hard, I just fail to execute without pressure. Isn't that fun.
To get myself some head start I initially planned to do something to do with Paper Menphina meets Trails of the Heaven for the Art Contest before it was even officially announced, at first I was thinking about doing an actual Paper Diorama but with at most the Euphrosyne Gods to save myself some work - but then I realized No.
So I did this instead. It did help that the Twelve are our longest Companions so they fit the theme perfectly... but just in case nobody got that I also drew companions from each Alliance Raid just to be sure. I guess I also knew most people wouldn't draw companions as niche as Unei and Doga and I wanted to honor our other B-Side Alliance Raid NPCs at least a little bit this way.
Llymi was by far the hardest one to get right, not even her serpents but just her, I needed almost 4 attempts when I got the others down in ~2 at most - but I think it shows, she's by far my favorite
I included sketches of Halmi and Calyx because they walked all this Trail to my Heaven I already had those ready and at the end of the day I am in fact lazy efficient.
I thought about including G'raha and Krile in particular, but tbh it felt weird giving them 'screenspace' when I already struggled to cram Unei and Doga in there. With that in mind I do question my choices to give sketches of the Twelve that much real estate (looking at the almost 1-to-1 thaliak in the lower left there)
The Sketch Menphina in the upper right corner is the actual first Paper Menphina I've ever drawn just copy-pasted right in there. I hope you'll understand why I didn't include Chain Chomp Dalamud, yes all of this is supposed to be a Paper Mario reference, don't tell SE
I also hope you appreciate that the Sketch of Nophica behind Llymi's trident is glaring at the Sketch of Halone who couldn't care less about it (it doesn't actually look like she's looking in that direction, but she sure does in my heart)
I think I could have done better on the spacing/proportions of everything... I think it looks really good on here when you see it up close, but on the line up next to all the other submission, it feels a little lost :/ I could have made all of them a little bigger, which would also have helped with some of the gaps in-between them. Some of them (Oschon) also lean a little too much for my liking which is :///
I also should have gone a little bit harder on the elemental deco, especially the Earth stuff on the lower right. I was just too scared that it might hide my Implication of 2P... also, that's supposed to be the Red Girl Smile but as Emil, i thought that was funny
Actual Anogg and Konogg, btw :))) #AnoggForGhostsOfDesire #GetInTheEvaKonogg. It did hurt me physically that I didn't have the time to draw a bigger/better EVA. I did watch all of eva last week-ish btw, thoughts/evercold speculation are maybe coming soon.
Also, I nailed Ramza in a way I didn't with Alma...
Also, I drew Leofard. Guys, I drew Leofard. Look, It's Leofard. Anyways, back to forgetting that Heavensward exists.
I do remember stopping to gauge "where my eye is drawn to" like they tell you to do and stuff - but well, right now it's drawn to that "4 feet apart, they're not gay"-Gap between Oschon and Byregot and it really stands out to me now. Why didn't I give him his Hammer, I have it in my sketch, I ended up removing it to give the monkey more space, but I should have still drawn it anyways in that little gap right there. He's the only one who doesn't have something extra too ://// Really left my man hanging...
I can't unsee that Rhalgr looks like he's taking a very feminine nude candid holding his naked breast, but I still think that's too funny to fix.
I had a couple of ideas for the middle, I was considering a researcher group hang in Omphalos, but really didn't see myself drawing 3 to 5 people if I include the Roe with the nice hair (her real name btw) and Deryk. For the longest time I actually wanted to do Oschon's Stone with Wanderer's Palace in the background, but I misremembered the stone as standing right in the middle of that outcrop and not weirdly to the side as it does. Taking a look around all the other stones (I actually did end up taking most of that Pilgrimage in-game for this), I ended up doing Azeyma's instead even if my WoL has no actual affiliation to her besides the azem of it all ofc.
btw I did the entirety of that middle drawing with my WoL on the final submission date := With that in mind I'm actually pretty darn pleased with it outside of...
...the background, which I'm a little embarrassed by :/// I think it looks good enough, but I did use that Line Extraction Thing from Clip Studio and just laid it on top of the reference screenshot I took with some other effects and stuff and then drew some extra highlighting lines on top of it. I think it's perfectly fine to use those tools, this is in no means intended to shade to anyone who does, but I just feel like I could have done it better with a little bit more time (management) and/or confidence in backgrounds :/ also the coloring is supposed to make it look heavenly, but I worry it just makes it hard to get what you're looking at if the crystals aren't bright orange
Speaking of orange color, I will just never find that sweet spot where bronze-ish anime skin doesn't look full on orange on characters with light hair colors. I do actually look out for that, I have that exact same problem with my Azem, but then two weeks later I look at it again and am always a little mortified that I left it like this. Sorry to all the Blonde, Tan Greeks out there, I always let you down.
also to incriminate myself even more, i could have colored in leofard's skin a little more in that sketch, huh... i guess take that i colored in both prishe and alxaal (who is white) instead??? what was i on, that's actually pretty embarassing :/
I gave Ata a red pencil when I didn't draw the sketches in red
Anyways, this is the best thing that I've ever drawn, I might retire now, It's been a good run. I doubt I will win this - I biffed it with the spatial ratios on this one, imo it's hard to really know what you're looking at on the selection screen :'/ - but I'm so happy to have been chosen as finalist and I'd be nothing but grateful if you do end up lending me your vote!
