the Spira pre-apocalyptic world's knowledge ( and other things)?

[yevonsama]

We all know that the Spira which we seen in FFX actually is the ruin of real Spiral after 1000 years be destroyed by Sin and Yevon religion.

Unfortunately, all of knowledge be destroyed and very few things left to study. However, when research about them, I think we will find many interesting thing.

At first: Aeon.

We know that Aeon actually is the spirit of someone who be sacrificed and become the fayth. The Aeon's design will have some element related to the guy who be sacrificed. EX: Jetch' Aeon used a Jetch's blade. Jojimbo is a mercenary similar to its fayth. However, we don't really see anything similar between Bahamut's fayth and Bahamut ( or he didn't show these elements in game).


Almost of these Aeon which Yuna used in FFX is " standard Aeon". But more deeply we search, we will know that have very many kind of Aeon may be existed in the past:

- standard Aeon: one fayth summon one Aeon:
list: Valefor, Ifrit, Ixion, Shiva, Bahamut, Jojimbo

- Final Aeon: although be seen as the stronger version compare to standard Aeon, we don't really feel anything like that in FFX. Beside of that, we knew something about this kind of Aeon:
+ it be created by someone have close relationship with a summoner.
+ it can be used as standard Aeon ( Anima) by every other summoners.
+ Until now, we don't see anything look like " the summoner have close relationship with that fayth will creat stronger Final Aeon compare to other summoner". Seymour and his Anima be killed by a group of guardians ( Yuna group).

= > something game isn't reveal, but it may be exist:
+ Compare with what we saw in Seymour. May be even with Final Aeon, it still very difficult for the summoner to defeat Sin. I mean, beside four high summoners and Yunalesca, may be have more summoners who collected Final Aeon, but they still lost the battle with Sin, and it cost their lives.
+ May be just like Seymour, many other summoners collected Final Aeon, but they didn't fight Sin.
+ After be defeated by another Final Aeon, may be that fayth ( and Final Aeon) still not be destroyed. Instead, it become the standard Aeon. And if a summoner find where the fayth be hidden, may be he/she can recruit them as his/her Aeon .

list: Anima, Jetch's Aeon, Zaon's Aeon, Gandof's Aeon, Ohalland's Aeon, Yocun's Aeon.

- multi-Aeon: The Aeon which actually is the group of Aeons be created by a group of fayths. These people who be sacrificed may be have some relationship to each other (we don't really know about it).

list: Magus sisters.

- Dream Zanarkand - a great version of multi-Aeon: this fake Zanarkand existed be created in the same way as Aeons. Some Zanarkand citizens sacrificed themselve and continue summon this dream city. Isn't like any other multi-Aeon, this " Aeon" is a huge group of buildings, citizen and anything about the real city in the past.

* now we know that Aeon isn't only be used to fight. And may be not every Aeon can be used as a weapon, too.

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What more powerful Aeon may existed in the past?

Thank to these knowledge which have just be explained above, we know that have very many kind of Aeon. In the past ( Gandof's period, Yocun's period), may be have more Aeon's temples than just five Aeon. The road to Requiem Temple be destroyed, and everyone total forgot about it. The remain temples usually be attack by Sin, and Crusader and Warrior Monk have to fight to prevent it. Sometime they successed, but may be not always. What is seen in FFX is " the Aeons which still remaining" more than all the Aeon of Spiral.

* So, what we seen through thse idea? Who know in the past, may be really exist some " Aeon Army" look like this :

or like this:

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So, what " Aeon" really is?

Thank to knowledge about Sin, Aeon, Dream Zanarkand and Job Sphere, we know that may be existed some kind of " pyreflies science" in the past. And that is the reality about what we called " summoner".

This " science" research about pyreflies, unsent, Farplane,... and how to use its power. Aeon just one among many method to use that power ( it have something relate to unsent - fayth - and pyreflies). Job Sphere is another way to used someone's skill to working/ fighting. In FFX-2, Shinra even noticed that may be Spira's pre-apocalyptic world know deeper about Farplane than the present-day, and they even can use Farplane power as a generator to light their city ( and even Vegnagun really practice that idea). Even Sin actually is the idea of a summoner ( Yevon) about how to use a huge group of pyreflies to made a mass-destruction weapon, and may be he never have any idea about " use Final Aeon as my core" in the beginning

 

[Dionysos]

I’m a bit late to this… But I found this again and it does deserve a response.

That’s a great way to categorise the various types of Aeons, and also how to explain Anima being both a Final Aeon and also a regular Aeon.
Seymour moved her Fayth, I believe, from Zanarkand (where she had been located to serve as the Final Aeon) to Baaj Temple, so the shift in location might also have had a role in altering her function when discovered by other summoners.

It’s true that Spira has many abandoned ruins, and some temples which are in serious disrepair and are now off the beaten track. We see Remiem Temple and the stolen Fayth in the cave (stolen from an unknown temple at an unknown location). Baaj temple would be another if it housed other Fayths before Seymour’s mother (who must have been moved there only recently and couldn't have been the original Fayth there).

The route that Yuna took must be just one route. Maybe it was the only route left where there are Fayths still intact. Other Fayths must have existed over the centuries since the fall of Zanarkand and the first emergence of Sin.

Spira during FFX is a world experiencing decay. Most of its advanced civilisations have ended because Machina has been banned. The small towns and little fishing villages have been battered over the centuries by attacks from Sin. We see a lot of ruins throughout the game which are just there. They are often background decoration and nobody gives them much thought, but it is clear that there used to be a lot more going on.

It certainly is post-apocalyptic.

Some of Yevon’s temples are maintained, but over the years some must have been considered less essential than others. Maybe Yevon officials decided that the pilgrimage was becoming too easy with too many Fayths for summoners to choose from, and they needed to make it so that only every now and then could a summoner actually temporarily defeat Sin leading to a Calm. Not only would increasing the difficulty of the pilgrimage mean that more people would die (therefore increasing the urgency of the pilgrimage and the people's faith in Yevon) but it means that fewer summoners would ever reach the finishing line, which in turn means fewer summoners would learn the dark secret behind Yevon and end up breaking the entire system (as Yuna and her party eventually did).


As for the nature of the Aeon itself, an Aeon being a manifestation of pyreflies sustained by the dreaming of a Fayth seems to add up with what we know (or what I know/remember from it). It’s soul-power.

I can see how tempting it was for people (including the developers of the game) to connect the pyreflies and the Farplane idea to FFVII’s Mako and Lifestream, using the character ‘Shinra’ to suggest that his descendants would one day learn how to tap into the resources the afterlife could offer.

As fans, people are divided on the issue of actually connecting the two games, but there remain parallels where the idea of disrupting the flow of souls and harming the planet are concerned. In FFX, it was religion which manipulated the flow of souls; in FFVII, it was a corporation and its scientists.

 

[Molosev]

I found this information about "Aeon" thanks to mothcorrupteth on another thread.
This may help to understand what Aeons are.

 

[Dionysos]

I found this information about "Aeon" thanks to mothcorrupteth on another thread.
This may help to understand what Aeons are.

The word Aeon itself is from Greek aion for ‘age’ (indicating a long period of time).

In Gnostic beliefs Aeons are emanations of God, the purest of which were immaterial and barely detectable as they are of a higher plane of existence. Us mortals exist in the corrupted material plane and only by attaining gnosis (knowledge) can we free the divine essence within us and be saved. Aeons are spirits which stemmed from an unknowable God. It gets very deep, philosophically, and I only have a very limited grasp of it.

There are some similarities to the Hindu and Buddhist conceptualisation (which is of particular relevance to FFX as Spira is heavily inspired by Hindu and Buddhist traditions, aesthetically speaking as well as thematically). Here deities can manifest using varied channels, so when the deity appears before mortals they are seeing a representation or an aspect, but not the full, pure form of the deity.

Hence the Fayth dream and trained summoners can generate ‘Aeons’ through them, but the Aeons don’t really look like their Fayths. Instead they serve as representations of the will of these Fayths.

In this case the Aeons we encounter in the game were generated by mortals who sacrificed themselves so that their souls could transcend their mortal prisons and become something grander, more divine, which exists in another plane of existence but can temporarily be channelled by the summoners during their pilgrimages.

Maybe the summoners are reaching beyond themselves to tap into a divine energy existing beyond the reaches of regular mortals who are uninitiated into the practices of Yevon's summoners. As the game shows, it is extremely difficult to command Aeons. Only a handful of summoners are able to even attempt the pilgrimage.

Interestingly the Farplane presents the deceased living in fields of bliss surrounded by beautiful waterfalls appearing as glowing spiritual essences (pyreflies), so these are those who are 'sent' and and free of the material world corrupting their essences. They are therefore closer to the divine nature as they have been purified by those who have the skills to transfer essences from one plane to the next to save them. So I guess it does all connect up in a way.


The religion of Yevon appears to be a bit of a mixture of Gnosticism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism and Zoroastrianism (the symbol of Yevon resembling FF's version of Ahriman), amongst others.

Sometimes we just need an excuse to think about these things and when we do we can come to understand them a little better.

 

[blakstang98]

To add to the convoluted nature of the Aeon, and that it's a fayth that's been prayed to and such, what about the dreams of the fayth? So the fayth dreams, and that is a person of the past, right? But the person from the past is dead, one would assume, but not an unsent, per se. But they don't show up in the Farlane. Maybe they just stopped existing in their current world (example, Zanarkand 1000 years ago)?

I'm sure you might see where I'm going with this. Braska used a dream of the fayth as his connection and close companion to use as the Final Aeon. But he (Jecht) for all intents and purposes, was around 1000 years ago, and shouldn't be alive, nor is he unsent. So how does an apparition of an apparition become a real Final Aeon? It's a bit strange. And frankly, it puts my mind into a total tailspin trying to make sense of it. So Jecht is basically considered a real, living person, otherwise, how could he become a fayth? The fayth were essentially those who willingly sacrificed themselves (in a non-violent manner) to become the non-living fayth. And Jecht is the non-living entity (I assume) of another non-living entity.

Suck on that.

 

[Dionysos]

To add to the convoluted nature of the Aeon, and that it's a fayth that's been prayed to and such, what about the dreams of the fayth? So the fayth dreams, and that is a person of the past, right? But the person from the past is dead, one would assume, but not an unsent, per se. But they don't show up in the Farlane. Maybe they just stopped existing in their current world (example, Zanarkand 1000 years ago)?

I'm sure you might see where I'm going with this. Braska used a dream of the fayth as his connection and close companion to use as the Final Aeon. But he (Jecht) for all intents and purposes, was around 1000 years ago, and shouldn't be alive, nor is he unsent. So how does an apparition of an apparition become a real Final Aeon? It's a bit strange. And frankly, it puts my mind into a total tailspin trying to make sense of it. So Jecht is basically considered a real, living person, otherwise, how could he become a fayth? The fayth were essentially those who willingly sacrificed themselves (in a non-violent manner) to become the non-living fayth. And Jecht is the non-living entity (I assume) of another non-living entity.

Suck on that.

Oh damn!

That does beat me. You're right. They've snagged themselves in a bit of a plot tangle with this one.

The best I can come up with is that by passing into the real world, Jecht (and Tidus) managed to trick the mortal realm into believing that they were flesh and blood 'real' people. I'm not sure how that works, but maybe the Fayth that were dreaming up Dream Zanarkand lost sight of Jecht and he was able to become a real person. Or... They willingly lost sight of him as the Fayth also wanted to end the cycle of suffering and end Yu Yevon.

So Jecht might be a part of a loophole which was exploited, with Tidus following in his footsteps to perform the finishing blow to Yevon. Two dreams were used to end the dream and release the souls of the Fayth into the Farplane. I wonder whether this means that all the dreams have souls, or if they only became more than just a simulation in the minds of the slumbering Fayth once they crossed into the real Spira. If not souls (pyreflies in this game), then enough about them must have appeared real for Jecht to be able to trick the system into letting him become the Final Aeon.

I wonder if it was Jecht not being completely real which might have enabled him to control Sin more effectively than previous Sins after becoming him. We know that Jecht-Sin chose to take Auron to Dream Zanarkand and to later return and take adult Tidus to real Spira, so maybe he was able to overpower his Sinful urges enough to get his son to finish the job purely because he had no soul to corrupt.

I'll have to think on this particular headache. It's a real brainteaser.


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Internet cut out and had to rewrite it all.

 

[blakstang98]

Oh damn!

That does beat me. You're right. They've snagged themselves in a bit of a plot tangle with this one.

The best I can come up with is that by passing into the real world, Jecht (and Tidus) managed to trick the mortal realm into believing that they were flesh and blood 'real' people. I'm not sure how that works, but maybe the Fayth that were dreaming up Dream Zanarkand lost sight of Jecht and he was able to become a real person. Or... They willingly lost sight of him as the Fayth also wanted to end the cycle of suffering and end Yu Yevon.

So Jecht might be a part of a loophole which was exploited, with Tidus following in his footsteps to perform the finishing blow to Yevon. Two dreams were used to end the dream and release the souls of the Fayth into the Farplane. I wonder whether this means that all the dreams have souls, or if they only became more than just a simulation in the minds of the slumbering Fayth once they crossed into the real Spira. If not souls (pyreflies in this game), then enough about them must have appeared real for Jecht to be able to trick the system into letting him become the Final Aeon.

I wonder if it was Jecht not being completely real which might have enabled him to control Sin more effectively than previous Sins after becoming him. We know that Jecht-Sin chose to take Auron to Dream Zanarkand and to later return and take adult Tidus to real Spira, so maybe he was able to overpower his Sinful urges enough to get his son to finish the job purely because he had no soul to corrupt.

I'll have to think on this particular headache. It's a real brainteaser.


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Internet cut out and had to rewrite it all.

The part about Jecht controlling Sin is interesting. I almost feel like it was less about Jecht controlling it better than his predecessors sort of giving up. When you go from being on the verge of eliminating Sin to becoming Sin, I imagine that would create a somber moment for that person. You go from free the world to the destroyer of the world, literally. There isn't much about the history of the previous Sin's and who they were. Jecht went in with a mindset that he was going to reverse the trend, from within, which we eventually knew that he couldn't do. He went in with the mindset of reversing history. He did need help when all was said and done though, from a guy he went the distance with. Maybe the competitive nature of being an athlete gave him more drive to try to make a difference, and I'm sure his predecessors weren't athletes, and by nature weren't competitive.

Well, no storyline is perfect. Obviously if people were thinking about these details from the beginning, it would just make the story a messy sell. So they had to make Jecht and Tidus out to be real people, and not dreams. Hell, Tidus didn't connect the dots for a long time himself. And obviously the irony of the pilgrimage being Yuna's deathmarch, turned out to be Tidus'. And there is enough "gray area" there to argue that Jecht and Tidus didn't actually die, and were in fact still "alive", even though they were dreams. Maybe they'd be better categorized as unsent. They can still be harmed and possibly sent. Therefore, they can contribute as though they were alive. Then instead of being sent to finish it, the fayth woke and the dream ended. I wonder if they would show up in the Farplane? Although, I think Yuna did go back in X-2 (yeah, getting into another game's story), but he didn't? I forget.

It's certainly a brainteaser, but I think that kind of minute detail is probably something that would get missed in any FF game, really. I probably wouldn't think into this great of detail in any other game story, but it's interesting. This is the best, deep in-game analysis I've thought of in a long time, possibly ever.

 

[Dionysos]

The part about Jecht controlling Sin is interesting. I almost feel like it was less about Jecht controlling it better than his predecessors sort of giving up. When you go from being on the verge of eliminating Sin to becoming Sin, I imagine that would create a somber moment for that person. You go from free the world to the destroyer of the world, literally. There isn't much about the history of the previous Sin's and who they were. Jecht went in with a mindset that he was going to reverse the trend, from within, which we eventually knew that he couldn't do. He went in with the mindset of reversing history. He did need help when all was said and done though, from a guy he went the distance with. Maybe the competitive nature of being an athlete gave him more drive to try to make a difference, and I'm sure his predecessors weren't athletes, and by nature weren't competitive.

Well, no storyline is perfect. Obviously if people were thinking about these details from the beginning, it would just make the story a messy sell. So they had to make Jecht and Tidus out to be real people, and not dreams. Hell, Tidus didn't connect the dots for a long time himself. And obviously the irony of the pilgrimage being Yuna's deathmarch, turned out to be Tidus'. And there is enough "gray area" there to argue that Jecht and Tidus didn't actually die, and were in fact still "alive", even though they were dreams. Maybe they'd be better categorized as unsent. They can still be harmed and possibly sent. Therefore, they can contribute as though they were alive. Then instead of being sent to finish it, the fayth woke and the dream ended. I wonder if they would show up in the Farplane? Although, I think Yuna did go back in X-2 (yeah, getting into another game's story), but he didn't? I forget.

It's certainly a brainteaser, but I think that kind of minute detail is probably something that would get missed in any FF game, really. I probably wouldn't think into this great of detail in any other game story, but it's interesting. This is the best, deep in-game analysis I've thought of in a long time, possibly ever.

I don't think that Jecht had a great deal of control over Sin, but during certain moments he appears to have been able to point Sin in the right direction. Like a lucid dream. He went to fetch Tidus to bring him to real-Spira as I think he must have planned with Auron before becoming Sin. Auron's comments "Are you sure?" just before they get sucked into Sin is definitely directed at Jecht.

But I can imagine that his attitude being who he was must have been rare and unexpected. He might have been completely unlike any other people who became Sin. I can imagine that the vast majority of those who sacrificed themselves to become the Final Aeon and then Sin would have been completely indoctrinated into the Yevon faith, so they may not have had much fight in them when it came to attempting to do something unorthodox such as overpowering Sin or ending the whole cycle. They may not have considered it possible.

But Jecht and Tidus were able to introduce fresh ideas and perspectives.

On this subject (and putting aside the body for a moment) I do wonder.... Were Jecht and Tidus 'conscious'? Or were they just elaborate imitations of life and human experience? For example, I could dream up a character and make that character act like a human with a personality and have apparently original thoughts (actually my own but projected onto someone else), but that doesn't make the character alive anywhere other than in my head. I'm not sure how it works.
Maybe while in Dream-Zanarkand they were simply the projections / simulations in the minds of the sleeping Fayth, but once they crossed into the real Spira maybe that marks the moment they attained true consciousness whilst also keeping their made-up memories of their time in Dream Zanarkand? I'm not sure, as Auron's presence might complicate things unless he served as an anchor-point to help Tidus on this path to becoming conscious and making the dreamt-up memories 'real' to Tidus while he becomes a real person in Spira.

I think at the end of FFX-2 Yuna can wish Tidus back into existence and the Fayth restore him. I don't know how this works, but they must hold the power there, being the dreamers who created Tidus in the first place. Maybe they recycled a stray pyrefly and gifted it to Tidus so that he could become a real boy.

 

[blakstang98]

On this subject (and putting aside the body for a moment) I do wonder.... Were Jecht and Tidus 'conscious'? Or were they just elaborate imitations of life and human experience? For example, I could dream up a character and make that character act like a human with a personality and have apparently original thoughts (actually my own but projected onto someone else), but that doesn't make the character alive anywhere other than in my head. I'm not sure how it works.
Maybe while in Dream-Zanarkand they were simply the projections / simulations in the minds of the sleeping Fayth, but once they crossed into the real Spira maybe that marks the moment they attained true consciousness whilst also keeping their made-up memories of their time in Dream Zanarkand? I'm not sure, as Auron's presence might complicate things unless he served as an anchor-point to help Tidus on this path to becoming conscious and making the dreamt-up memories 'real' to Tidus while he becomes a real person in Spira.

I disagree with this thought. Mainly, if someone could dream someone up and they would be in modern day Spira, why not dream them up to be superhuman, as opposed to just an ordinary human? I suppose they could just be so primitive and devoid of imagination, because of said indoctrination, but I would like to believe that if they were serious about defeating Sin, they would dream someone up that was more powerful than Sin and the Final Aeon. Otherwise, you're just dreaming someone up to eventually meet their demise.

Even though I didn't think much about this sort of topic at the time, I always felt the Tidus appearance at the end of FFX-2 was a little off. I think they just added that wrinkle to help you feel like Yuna's original intention for Sphere Hunting didn't totally go in vain. She did manage to save the world, again, but that wasn't the desired end result. It was like, there was a fayth that was willing to dream to bring him back, just for her. It felt odd and out of place. But it sort of brought "her story" to a better end than 2 years previous. So it felt more like giving the fans what they wanted, even if it did fly in the face of what was realistic to the plot.

 

[Dionysos]

I disagree with this thought. Mainly, if someone could dream someone up and they would be in modern day Spira, why not dream them up to be superhuman, as opposed to just an ordinary human? I suppose they could just be so primitive and devoid of imagination, because of said indoctrination, but I would like to believe that if they were serious about defeating Sin, they would dream someone up that was more powerful than Sin and the Final Aeon. Otherwise, you're just dreaming someone up to eventually meet their demise.

Even though I didn't think much about this sort of topic at the time, I always felt the Tidus appearance at the end of FFX-2 was a little off. I think they just added that wrinkle to help you feel like Yuna's original intention for Sphere Hunting didn't totally go in vain. She did manage to save the world, again, but that wasn't the desired end result. It was like, there was a fayth that was willing to dream to bring him back, just for her. It felt odd and out of place. But it sort of brought "her story" to a better end than 2 years previous. So it felt more like giving the fans what they wanted, even if it did fly in the face of what was realistic to the plot.

While Jecht and Tidus, etc, were being dreamt I don’t think it was the intention for them to be anything other than dreams at first. But, in a way, the Fayth did dream them up to be superhuman in the way that they dreamt them to be star Blitzball players with skills surpassing anybody else.

I don’t know. Maybe there are limits to the dreams which the Fayth can sustain, or maybe they couldn't make them appear real in the real world if they made them too superhuman (Aeons, for example, can't be maintained for very long at a time, and Tidus and Jecht needed to exist for entire pilgrimages). Or maybe SE didn’t think about this too deeply and thought they'd get away with it.

About Tidus in X-2, I agree with you. It was as if we the players had now almost become the Fayth and were dreaming/wishing him back into existence. I think the ending was better left with FFX. I know a lot of people love X-2 too, and I don't mean to (and lack the power to) take it away from them, but FFX's ending was very strong untouched.