A/N: Final Fantasy XIV is an online RPG, spiritual sequel to Final Fantasy XI. It's currently undergoing a complete redesign and is offline, to be released as "Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn". My story is set in a time before Dalamud's true identity was known and tries to capture just how people felt with an apocalypse hanging over them, getting closer each passing day.
Any comments and reviews are appreciated, as always. Thank you.
Prologue
Dark times befall the land of Eorzea. The same cataclysmic fate threatens every one of its cities and settlements, each beastmen clan nestled in rocky canyon and on windy scree. Even the subterranean Kobold are not safe, subsiding on the false belief that they'll survive deep in the heart of the world. For the effects of this coming disaster will impact all living things, one way or another.
To people in ages past, the name "Dalamud" meant almost nothing. The lesser of Hydaelyn's two moons, it meekly followed the much larger Menphina through the heavens. For thousands of years civilisations would look up into the night sky and barely notice Dalamud; a tiny white speck lost amongst countless stars.
Eorzeans today have no such luxury. Dalamud dominates their view, larger than the sun and summarily choking the skies with thick, cloying clouds. It sits amongst its charges as an immense orb of red, striated by purple fault lines with its perfect spherical aspect scarred by tower-like structures; clear signs of an artificial make. Whatever purpose this monstrosity hoped to fulfil has now been lost in the annals of time, destroyed as readily as its makers in the Fourth Umbral Era.
Those who claim to see the future talk of Dalamud colliding with Eorzea; blazing a path with meteorites that will char and scorch the land to a black nothingness. The Eorzean Alliance, comprised of representatives of each Grand Company, has tried to maintain calm amongst the populace of the three big cities – Limsa Lominsa, Gridania and Ul'dah – but behind closed doors, they too know the truth; Dalamud is falling and there's nothing anyone can do. Eorzea's beast races remain the same as they ever were; isolated and refusing to co-operate, their hope placed avidly in the eikons' power.
For some people, the rumours are too much to bear and they disappear without a trace, or worse. Others hope against hope that something can be done, that a last minute saviour will arrive and avert the coming apocalypse. Until then, people have to go on living and attempt to ignore the colossal harbinger of doom hanging in their once-beautiful skies like a festering demon.