Out of Water: The Seventh Calamity

Where I am from, we had no real name for it- but of course, here in Eorzea, such a thing is celebrated as a day of prayer and remembrance for all the brave souls who put everything upon the line at the Cartenau Flats, and for those that never returned. With this being such an important part of life here in the west, I decided it was only right to seek out and try to understand what the calamity was like from the viewpoint of those who were actively on the ground here.

I attended a small memorial service advertised at Camp Drybone - a place as dry and as desolate as the name describes - and met a few number of people you would not find at such grand remembrance events in places like Ul'dah or Limsa or even Wineport. These were men and women who were on the ground that fateful day years ago when Dalamud popped open and released that horrible beast upon an unsuspecting world.

I got myself an ale and sat back to listen to a few of the people - there were stories of people who had sought shelter for weeks in seed cellars and basements, weathering the destruction there. Ul'dah itself was a mess; while there was little real destruction in the city itself, the city had to deal with the sudden destruction and cessation of all economic traffic going into and out of the city. Supplies were suddenly hard to get all over, and there was a lot of sectioning off. Communities grew together, more insular, and then they just focused on helping their own. There are some places, like the Silver Bazaar and the small community north of Camp Drybone, where they still haven't managed to get back on their feet after all this time.

Lines of refugees trying and clamoring to get into the city was common, and air travel was rather restricted due to the supplies needing to be used elsewhere, and the Empire treating Eorzea's skies as a hunting ground.

But the one thing that I took from all the stories was that even though Eorzea had suffered what might have been a fatal blow, its people came together and managed to staunch the bleeding. Communities bonded and started taking care of those who needed it, and, tides be kind, it does sound like a lesson certain parts of the world could listen to right now.

News of the Seventh Calamity was slower in reaching us, but I do remember hearing the kojin merchants talk about how the geomancers and astrologers had been nervously trying to calm the populace after two moons sank beneath the horizon one night, but then only one crept back above the horizon. The lesser moon, the one Eorzeans called 'Dalamud', had lost its geosynchronous orbit responding to whatever technical fishflip the Empire had cooking. But we didn't, couldn't know that. The ocean currents started to change, and the Ruby Princess herself had to calm the populace.

Secondhand reports began to filter through - the red moon still not returning, night after night, week after week... and then as the ships began to filter in again, life seemed to go on. Then the news seemed to reach the east in one fell swoop, along with piles of refugees who suddenly didn't know if they would ever have a home to go back to. The piers of The Ruby Sea looked like shantytowns as people could not, would not pay skyrocketing prices for food and water from Kugane merchants trying to squeeze profits out of the situation.

The lesser moon, cracking like an egg and hatching out a monstrosity like Bahamut. Chaos and destruction raining down upon Eorzea, shards of the lesser moon covering the region of the world, digging in like urchin quills, from Ul'dah and Gridania to as far away as the Northern Empty and the Bloodbrine Sea. And the sheer amounts of death and panic among the peoples of Eorzea as they feared the end was coming. The momentary joy as Bahamut was supposedly sealed up again - and the utter terror and hopelessness as he broke free again.

And then... something that nobody can remember, and then... Bahamut was gone. Hundreds of people, just... gone, in a flash of light, and things... things were forever changed. The world felt like it had been wrenched back from the brink, but possibly just barely, by the thickness of a fin. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of beings, had been granted one last chance to get things right, to get off their collective tail scales and do something about the state of the world as it was, because the way it had been going certainly wasn't working.

Spoken all over the Star started pursuing their passions, whether in remembrance of someone they may have lost, to make this Star a better place, and (in one young raen's case) to learn the arts of the diplomat so she could be there for her people when the time came to finally reach out to the outside world after so long. Perhaps, if one wished to follow the currents of our ancestors, and to pay respect to those who gave all so we could have a second chance, mayhap it would be a grand idea to follow your passion to help your fellow man? For if I took home one lesson from the hardy, robust men and women who were sharing their stories over cold mugs of ale and other libations, the single overarching theme was that while one singular fish in the ocean may not amount to much, when an entire school gathers, sometimes what we can pull off would astound the entire world.

For proof, simply ask the Warrior of Light and the Scions of the Seventh Dawn. Ask the free peoples of Ishgard, Ala Mhigo, Doma, Dalmasca, any number of former imperial provinces. Perhaps even the residents of Garlemald proper, those of Tural, maybe even Alexandria. While the Warrior may be a nigh-unstoppable force of nature, where would they be without their friends? Where would they be without their school, swelling and swimming? Or would they simply have been washed away by the tides?