This article features major story spoilers from Shadowbringers expansion onwards, so please proceed with caution!
Final Fantasy XIV’s New Years event called Heavensturn features a reward this year, which prompted me to share my theory about a mythical creature we have heard about during Shadowbringers, but when we got to meet this creature, it turned out to be…. underwhelming.
When we ventured to the First (one of the shards of our sundered world) and into the Rak'tika Greatwood, we heard about an ancient civilisation called Ronka. We explored some ruins and also helped an NPC in the village to find the legendary Great Serpent of Ronka. But the creature we have found was quite small in stature, and not looking very threatening, so the question remained: is this little screeching creature truly the fabled Great Serpent?
During some previous seasonal events we have received rewards which seemed to be variations of this little creature. Different names, different outfits, but the same old “scree”. The newest addition to these is the reward for the current Heavensturn event, which is the Great White Tsuchinoko, the legendary white serpent from the East.
We could easily dismiss these little creatures as the developers trying to bring some fun into the game, but what if there is something more to it? What if the Great Serpent of Ronka was real and was indeed great?
As we learnt during Shadowbringers, the world got sundered into 14 shards or reflections. Which means that each living being got split into 14 parts. They lived their lives, died, rejoined the lifestream and eventually got reborn. With each calamity striking down the world, one of the shards has rejoined our world, also called the Source. There have been 7 calamities, so our soul is 7 times rejoined. When we visited the First, we met people who were strikingly similar to people we knew and also met our own local reflection.
But if we are 7 times rejoined, it means that every other creature on the Source is. While every creature on any other shards is just one part of the original soul they were before the sundering.
The Tender Valley level 100 dungeon in Dawntrail was strikingly familiar to the Ronkan ruins we visited on the First, and the end boss was none other… but the Greatest Serpent of Tural. A lot greater than any other serpent we have met so far.
Here comes my theory: what if the Great Serpent of Ronka was indeed real and great, got sundered like any other living being, and the version we have fought in this dungeon is a 7 times rejoined Great Serpent, hence the size difference compared to the one we met on the First? Yes, I know, we are not any bigger than the people of the First were, but thanks to our rejoined nature, our soul is more dense. In case of other creatures maybe their rejoining showed in difference of their size.
So there would be a version of the Great Serpent on each reflection, including the ones which have rejoined the Source, and each reflection’s people would have a legend of this great serpent and give it different names, hence the Great Serpent of Ronka, Tural and Tsuchinoko, etc.
Are you still following? Good.
But how could the people of the First remember a legendary being from before the sundering? I don’t know the exact answer, but on the First we also visited a cave which had murals depicting the sundering. We didn’t get a complete explanation on how this is possible, but for those of you who are into the beliefs around reincarnation this is not going to be too strange to understand.
There is a location we have visited during Endwalker, which is set in the past, before the sundering and we have seen many familiar creatures there which we have fought on our world, and we could see how they have been created in the past (apparently one famous one was created by our unsundered self).
If I could have one request towards the developers, I would love to get a side quest pop up in this area and let us witness the creation of the Great Serpent.
Whatever the future holds for us, I’m sure we haven’t seen the last of these screeching creatures, and when we get to visit another shard, we will find people there with their own legend involving a great serpent.
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