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.
Making this comic was only possible through the support of my patrons. If you enjoyed it and want to see more don't forget to ring that bell and smash the subscribe button consider giving me a follow and donating on kofi or subbing on patreon! Links are on my pinned post
(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.
