You know the whole Louisoix getting tempered thing becomes a LOT more horrific when you realize tempering is less like demonic possession and more like being turned into a zombie who's only desire is to "feed" (i.e. kill or turn others)
I guess it was sort of easy for me the first time running the Bahamut raids to just brush over it as an exciting identity fakeout plot twist. Oh this isn't the real Louisoix! Twins will be fine, we're doing cool hero stuff!
But up until Endwalker, tempering had no cure and it eventually warped the afflicted into mishapen monsters as their bodies deteriorated. If a Primal got a "bite" out of you, there was no escaping it. And it's not abstract fantasy magic to the people of Eorzea, it's a very real threat that required the straight up execution of friends and family because killing them was the only mercy you could offer.
And with Louisoix... like, this figure comes up to you sounding and looking like your grandad. You think you found him! He's alive! But then it turns violent and you realize your grandad is dead. "Something" else that's taken over and warped his body, and it wants to kill you.
Maybe some part of his memories and impulses are still in there and come through for flashes, but the thing controlling him has already won, because he's already dead. All the hopes you had of a reunion or a peaceful end for him have now been dismembered because this monster wearing his face is loose and bent on destruction.
And if you don't kill that thing yourself, and take down this hive and its leader, a LOT more people are going to die.
It was late afternoon when Urianger found his mentor settled in on the rocks overlooking the Thaliak River. The vista, though breathtaking, was otherwise quite dismal as it sat far too close to the falls that collected the Tipped Ewer into the Thaliak. The rising mist coated the overlook in constant dew, leaving nowhere dry to sit, and left robes and spirits unpleasantly sodden within half a bell, so it was hardly pleasant to enjoy a meal at. Paper warped and ink ran in the damp without constant wards, making any sort of scholarly work or even pleasure reading tedious at best. And then the bracing wind would pick up and rob the body of warmth and possibly a page or two. Urianger would have understood if Louisoix enjoyed fishing of any sort, there were quite a few Archons of his age who favored that sort of casting as well, but he never saw the sage wield a rod. So it was inexplicable as to why, when not attending to matters scholarly, familial, political, or a mixture of the three, Louisoix inevitably wandered back to this vista, often with a tome and the wooden folding stool one of his more crafty students had gifted him.
At the least, Urianger could understand why Louisoix visited more frequently of late.
“Master Louisoix, the bells grow short ere I take my leave of these shores.”
Louisoix didn’t quite look away from the roaring waters below, but he did acknowledge Urianger’s presence with a nod, “So soon? I suppose Bloewyda and Wilfsunn would have little reason to stay until the final dawn considering how much of their work has relocated to Sharlayan proper.”
“Verily, ‘twould have been but a half moon’s venture for them, had the evacuation not drawn so close.”
“Aye, might as well make the most of it then, I cannot fault their efficiency or pragmatism, the rest of us will join you soon by the end of the moon at any rate.” He chuckled, a little wearily, and turned to the young Elezen with a warm smile, “However, I’m quite surprised you came all the way out here, when I last saw you at lecture. Surely you haven’t been building up your nerve since this morning?”
Urianger looked down at his shuffling feet, “Thou hath seen through mine machinations, I hath indeed mine own agenda here.”
Louisoix adopted that knowing and slightly mischievous twinkle in his eye, “Come to finally ask about this vista, have you not?”
“‘Tis a miserable place.”
“It is! But think of the Ruling Quarter’s canals, how the rowdy waters below and that orderly flow to our west are not merely kin, but one and the same.”
“Archon Totolymo once said ‘twas the work of our forebears that tamed the river.”
“That they did. They had started the work when the Ruling Quarter was first planned, but it wasn’t until my grandsire was but a man grown that we finally received word that the flooding here was completely under control. A full hundred years after the establishment of the colony!”
“And thy reverence for such engineering bringeth thou henceforth?”
Louisoix chuckled again, “Mayhap in part. Nay, I look downriver and imagine what feats of engineering, daring, and aetherology would be required to tame the whole of the mighty Thaliak.”
For a moment, both scholars looked north, out at the swift current glowing orange with the setting sun.
“Would such a mastery ever be possible?”
“Unlikely in my lifetime, and possibly not even in yours or your children’s. But the diligent planners of the Ruling Quarter’s canals hadn’t expected to see the completion of their life’s work. Nor did those that they handed their tools and blueprints to as they passed. If we started the work today, we could expect much the same, and yet, with every generation, our mastery over the river would grow.”
Louisoix turned back to Urianger and carefully affixed his eyes to the boy’s, “This is the manner with which I view our interpretation of prophecy.”
Already, Urianger was a standout in prognostication and, given a few more years of tutelage, would become Louisoix’s equal, if not his better.
“...’Tis much to think about.”
“Come now, Master Augurelt, if we do not act upon the knowledge that we have, what use is it? We cannot stand idly by and let the future as seen by history come to pass while we still have initiative in the present.”
He gestured out to the river, “The factors that influence the waters are myriad, but they are finite. The current is unruly, swift, and strong, but it can be managed with time and diligence. Though the tools and techniques be different, to influence the future as we do these waters would not be insurmountable.”
Urianger looked long and hard at the river, “...And thus thy course of action.”
“My dear student, we have interpreted the same Divine Chronicles. You know about as well as I do the challenges that lie before us, before Eorzea. To condemn a continent of souls to their deaths… I made my respectful dissent clear five years ago, and my stance has not changed yet.”
“And thou wouldst confer these beliefs and goals unto the next generation, unto me and mine.”
“And with any luck, you shall do the same with the generation after yours, if it were to come to it, if the Calamity be delayed but not denied.”
A stiff breeze passed them both, and they shuddered in unison.
“Come, let us quit this dreary overlook before we both catch our deaths.”
***
It was a full eighteen years later that Urianger found himself overlooking the Thaliak once again. This time from the other end of the falls from which the Tipped Ewer flowed into the river proper, outside the guarded walls and vaulted halls of the Great Gubal Library. Elidibus had a little more to confer with this Arbert character that Urianger was not to be privy to. However, with his soothsaying and basic reasoning skills, he could intuit what Elidibus had to say.
The Ascian was already looking to twist and pervert the heroic desires of Arbert and his party to his own ends. For Urianger to then twist these machinations to his own favor was too risky by half. Surely Elidibus would recognize duplicity from the duplicity with which he acted himself.
And yet, Urianger had a strange reassurance: somehow he was sure the Emissary wasn’t all there. It was as if he were a mammet, motivated by the magicks that powered and instructed him, without forethought or real cunning. In some ways, it would seem he sought out balance seemingly for the sake of balance. Oh, of course there was this talk of Ardor and the Rejoining, but so little that was seemingly relevant to Elidibus’s current machinations, at least from Urianger’s perspective.
But for this scheme, none could know of his true agenda. Arbert was willingly fooled by Elidibus, yes, but he had no such desperate credulity over Urianger’s words and deeds. Thus, Urianger’s betrayal of the Scions had to be absolute if Arbert were to believe it.
Besides, Urianger’s plans aligned shockingly close to Elidibus’s own. He would ride the current until it was too late for the Ascian to change the course, then, instead of blackmail, he would simply beseech Hydaelyn himself.
He took a stone, damp from the mist, and cast it into the thundering waters below. It was not simply the Scions that he was betraying, was it? He wondered what Louisoix would have to say of his current course of action. The sage had had but kindly smiles for Urianger, whether it was genuine affection or out of pity for the neglected boy he grown out of being. Perhaps this was what would cause Louisoix to finally knit his brows and thin his lips in concern. Of all the students he could have passed this obligation to, to shift the tides of fate, it had to be Urianger…
***
Hundreds of years later, G’raha Tia chuckled to himself hollowly. For a man of so many esoteric words, Urianger wrote but briefly and plainly of his internal conflict. There was much regret, but also much hope. The Seventh Umbral Calamity could not be denied, but its effects so blunted as to force the hand of the Ascians so soon after. It was a pity the soothsayer had not the advantage of two hundred years of hindsight. So sure that Urianger had failed Louisoix in his writing, that there would be no one to pick up the great work after he was gone, that the Eighth Umbral Calamity would come and go and naught could be done to prevent or avoid it.
Aye, Cid Garlond and Nero Scaeva were the technical knowhow, they were the ones that engineered and planted the seeds, but it was Urianger’s writings and musings that first alerted them to the possibility that such seeds could be sowed and could actually bear fruit. The mighty Thaliak River may have dried up in the stagnation that overtook all of Eorzea, but were it still flowing, G’raha was sure the Garlond Ironworks now had the tools and techniques to temper its currents.
Or at least reverse the flow of the waters completely.
