I second lassarina's comment about your explanation for how Darkspawn end up in Ivalice. I'm still near the beginning of DA so I don't yet have really deep thoughts about that universe yet, but I'm okay being spoiled even more than I already am and I'll undoubtably have deeper thoughts once I start marathoning through DA once my end quarter hell wraps up around Thursday (?) of this week.
A couple of quick thoughts regarding FFXII:
1. Magick is performed by working with the Mist, a natural occurring energy (http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Sage_Knowledge_1-26#SK_09:_Mist). While mist is found all over Ivalice, its levels vary (it appears quite weak in cities?! my headcanon is that city-dwelling people have very low levels of mist available to/in them for performing spells) and mist is held within magicite, a mineral ore. (I haven't yet found an explanation of precisely how people perform spells, but my headcanon has created a physical explanation: mist can be absorbed into the mineral structure of bones and then psycho-physiologically harnessed when casting spells. Various bits of my Gabranth fiction expound on this but I'm not sure what parts have been published and what hasn't … I need to dig through my 2009 NaNo files to find much of it).
On the surface, magic in DA seems really different since it involves the Fade (I'm still getting a handle on what the Fade is but it is okay if our conversation spoils me). Yet, there might be an interesting connection with Lyrium which is also a mineral??!? This will take a little more working out …
All that said, if Alistair travels to Ivalice and he's able to absorb mist into his body just like anyone else, he may be able to learn basic spells.
2. Technology bits: Yes, Ivalice does have electricity (http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Sage_Knowledge_1-26#SK_11:_Electricity_and_Magick) and it is an alternate fuel to artificially condensed mist. Draklor definitely had old school computers in some of the rooms. We'd need to find a walk through video (or rev up an old save) but I vaguely remember them looking like ancient mainframes from the 1960s. They definitely have short-range "radio" (of some sort) because they are able to transfer audio messages in real time between airships. They may have longer range radio capabilities or telegraph. These technologies don't appear to be wide spread outside military use and, perhaps, Archadia's middle class and upper class citizens? Technologies are driven by a variety of means: via magicite http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Sage_Knowledge_1-26#SK_12:_Magicite, electricity, windmills, and oil powered machines http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Sage_Knowledge_27-52#SK_49:_Ogir-Yensa_Sandsea.
I tend to make sense of Ivalice by thinking of FFXII representing an early industrial age where most of the world is living in pre-industrial agrarian style except for the main cities of big empires that are able to afford industrialization. Comparing to our world, horseback cavalry units still existed during WWI and the Russian Civil War. Thus, chocobo don't seem entirely out of place in FFXII -- the Dalmascan military definitely relied on them.
3. I'm interested in how you pull this together. I'm still figuring out just what the whole Darkspawn Corruption is about.
4. Instead of the Occuria, the Old Gods could also be the Ivalician Scions of Light and Darkness: the ??? and the Espers.
no subject
A couple of quick thoughts regarding FFXII:
1. Magick is performed by working with the Mist, a natural occurring energy (http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Sage_Knowledge_1-26#SK_09:_Mist). While mist is found all over Ivalice, its levels vary (it appears quite weak in cities?! my headcanon is that city-dwelling people have very low levels of mist available to/in them for performing spells) and mist is held within magicite, a mineral ore. (I haven't yet found an explanation of precisely how people perform spells, but my headcanon has created a physical explanation: mist can be absorbed into the mineral structure of bones and then psycho-physiologically harnessed when casting spells. Various bits of my Gabranth fiction expound on this but I'm not sure what parts have been published and what hasn't … I need to dig through my 2009 NaNo files to find much of it).
On the surface, magic in DA seems really different since it involves the Fade (I'm still getting a handle on what the Fade is but it is okay if our conversation spoils me). Yet, there might be an interesting connection with Lyrium which is also a mineral??!? This will take a little more working out …
All that said, if Alistair travels to Ivalice and he's able to absorb mist into his body just like anyone else, he may be able to learn basic spells.
2. Technology bits: Yes, Ivalice does have electricity (http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Sage_Knowledge_1-26#SK_11:_Electricity_and_Magick) and it is an alternate fuel to artificially condensed mist. Draklor definitely had old school computers in some of the rooms. We'd need to find a walk through video (or rev up an old save) but I vaguely remember them looking like ancient mainframes from the 1960s. They definitely have short-range "radio" (of some sort) because they are able to transfer audio messages in real time between airships. They may have longer range radio capabilities or telegraph. These technologies don't appear to be wide spread outside military use and, perhaps, Archadia's middle class and upper class citizens? Technologies are driven by a variety of means: via magicite http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Sage_Knowledge_1-26#SK_12:_Magicite, electricity, windmills, and oil powered machines http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Sage_Knowledge_27-52#SK_49:_Ogir-Yensa_Sandsea.
I tend to make sense of Ivalice by thinking of FFXII representing an early industrial age where most of the world is living in pre-industrial agrarian style except for the main cities of big empires that are able to afford industrialization. Comparing to our world, horseback cavalry units still existed during WWI and the Russian Civil War. Thus, chocobo don't seem entirely out of place in FFXII -- the Dalmascan military definitely relied on them.
3. I'm interested in how you pull this together. I'm still figuring out just what the whole Darkspawn Corruption is about.
4. Instead of the Occuria, the Old Gods could also be the Ivalician Scions of Light and Darkness: the ??? and the Espers.