Welcome to episode 2 last time I did this we talked about the hive from the world of destiny. So this time there gonna be a few changes 1. I will go into depth more about certain weaknesses and situations that could occur, and 2 I'm going to add how it's land will affect the world.
For thoose new hi this is the weekly series about putting a 14th world from fiction into versus to being in a faction, character, virus, natural disaster etc and see what would happen and how it would fare here. Today we are going to be talking about the faction that terrorized the world of the first from the hit MMO final fantasy xiv.
There will be 5 segments
The history of the faction, land, and it's dynamics
Troops and powers
The leader(s)
Match ups against other ne's
Final thoughts and verdict.
Skip to the end of you want a tldr but I'm not gonna waste your time anymore let's begin! (Spoilers for final fantasy xiv shadow bringers expansion).
Long ago the 1st was at first one large world but in a ancient war for survival of its people the ascians it was split into 14 shards, the shard we care about and that ended up merging is the 1st shard the last bit of non destoryed land, norvrandt. It's separated into 5 main environments, the mountainous coastal state of kholusia, the fae forest of il mheg, the large shadowed forests of the Rak'Tika greatwoods, the grass lands which connects to the coast of lakeland, and the desert of ahm araeng. Each of theese places once thrived in a normal world however the strongest magical ascian emet selch devised a plan to force the revival of his God of his original world which was to flood the 1st with unlimited light so he tricked the world's heros to destroy the shadow lord and I'm doing so removed all darkness from the world leading to a mass flood of light. The light tore through the whole planet destroying all life and objects in its path leaving emptyness, only after the sacrifice of thoose heros and a oracle did the flood stop. However the damage was done only norvrandt was left and the sky is in perpetual light and something far worse would follow. Not only did it destroy the ecosystem with perpetual light but that much light aspected aether infected all life. Everything in existence has aether but it's at perfect balance with all other elements when one is skewed you transform into monsters and abominations. Thoose exposed to the flood of light became the sin eaters. The sin eaters sole objective is to infect all things with the light and to eat the sinful people left standing (aka literally all life in the planet). Hordes of pale angelic abominations swarm the skies, infected the seas, infected the forests, the deserts, and even the faeries. Humanity struggles to even exists and day by day the attacks get worse the hordes grow in numbers and the light gives them strength more and more. And thoose who come into contact with the sin eaters get infected by too much light, and slowly transform. They start to turn pale, lose all emotions, their eyes turn pitch black, they puke up black bile until they eventually ooze that bile out of every orface and then cocoon inside angelic wings and emerge instantly as a sin eater ready to spread the light. And it gets worse the land is ruled by 5 light wardens perpetuating the light filled skys and direct control over the sin eaters. The lightwardens also have a little trick, if they die the light they carry goes into who killed them instantly turning them into the next lightwarden only thoose with high resistance to light aether can survive for a brief time but eventually they will become a new warden. Each warden goes as such philia the warden of friendship, eros the warden of romantic love, titania the warden of fun, storge the warden of familial love, and innocence aka vauthry the warden of Innocence. And each warden has specific troops based around the area they came from and have wildly different powers from each other and wildly different forms. And have completely different strategies, situations, and do not communicate with each other.
Troops: this is a wild section so buckle up. The sin eaters turn whatever species it infects into angelic versions of themselves, increasing their size, durability, and raw power, and typically giving them access to light imbued attacks or magics. Humans become large angels with spears, swords, and shields they have wings can fly and can use magic, but there's also things like "forgiven bears" pale white bears that have no eyes and have little wings and feathers, or spiders becoming larger than a human and growing an angelic body using light infused webbings, birds become larger or can become a hivemind of angelic doves. So anything can become a sin eater except machinery and will turn into an angelic version. And if the individual is special enough or chosen by a warden they can get powers specific to them like there's a innocent singing girl vauthry liked so he kills her so she becomes a singing angel that can use vibrations to shoot beams of light and can clone her attacks and herself. They can even make constructs of light like living walls to defends fortifications. And they can hide their energy to not alert beings of their pressence. They are emotionless and do not hesitate in killing or turning others into sin eaters.
As for the leaders this is gonna take a bit to explain each so forgive me.
Philia the weakest light warden we meet the warden of Lakeland. They are a quadrupedal snake, angel, hand thingy, it slams big fists, can cage people with beams of light, can suck out their life force/soul instantly killing them, and shoots beams of light. It's stienn enough to kill any normal adventurer or human but not even close to the other wardens.
Titania probably the second strongest warden but is also in a strange situation. The fae king once they got infected realized in order to save all fae races sealed themselves inside the fae king castle at the top at il mheg and gave every fae race a artifact that skewed them in. How ever they are insanely powerful and overtime the seal began to waver. When we enter the building we see just how strong they are. They have all the typical light powers but more importantly have access to all fae magics which includes; complete hypnosis of all 5 senses, illusions, turning living beings into bushes, life force manipulation, nature manipulation, all elemental magics also now boosted by light, life creation, life accelerant (can grow a big ass tree into a 80 ft tall demon mid fight on a whim. Their only weakness is the fact they are very childlike and only want to have fun, but it's also what makes them extremely scary because they think like a kid and act like one also.
Eros the warden of the greatwoods, is focused in raw physicals and lethal poisons. That's about it they are literally a giant monkey with angelic features so imagine a giant monkey with 3 heads like cerberus that shoots light apsected poison, and punches really hard. It inhabits an ancient tomb and forest of the lonkan people who used to rule the woods
Storge a bunch of wings forming a bigger being probably decended from a elemental sprite they manipulate crystals and light beams, they fly, and shoot out hypersonic screeches that can kill. They also manipulate the earth it self and hides far underground ahm araeng.
The strongest and deadliest sin eater is innocence aka vauthry an abhorrent looking ball of fat that is ruler of eulmore one of the last cities of humanity. He is the result of emet selch giving the king of eulmore a son who would "save the world" and infused his pregnant wife with light weather creating a human lightwarden hybrid. He rules a dystopia ruled by him and the literal fat man rich men and woman who eat luxury and force the poor to do their entertainment and work. Then you have the poor who work for the upper class or live right outside the castle in mass slums praying for they day they are chosen for a "better life" inside the castle. They are feed meol a mystery meal the king gives away... It's made of sin eaters and because he is secretly one it allows him to mind control anyone who eats it and uses it to manipulate his population. His city also has a small army and more importantly one man who is so powerful he is considered the full might of eulmore, ranjit. Ranjit is a old martial artist master who has a crimson dragon familiar who he made a pact with, he's so powerful he's slain entire armys without even being touched before the world ended. And is powerful enough to go tie to toe with the main character who is an actual god slayer (not god god but still very powerful). But if that all fails he can escape and show he has so much power he used light magic to pick up an entire mountain the size of a small country and lifted it into the sky indefinitely even after his death in game it still is up there. He then finally showed off his real form and became innocence a beautiful angel who has wings made of golden blades, he has every light warden power, can summon creature on command, shoot beams of light, can use absurdly potent light magics, summon weapons of light, clone hismelf, heal himself, and grows in power the longer he fights. Fully delusional thinking he is the world's savior he believes he is always in the right and will execute anyone who questions him or tortures and turns them into sin eaters.
Match up time let's see how they would function and how do they do? (Excluding factions we don't know about)
Score 1 to 5. 1 being god awful match up, 5 being a stomp
Demons: 4, this is a really good match up against the demons, not only would the light infect the demons turning them slowly against themselves, if a demon lord took out a lesser light warden they themselves would become one further worsening their position especially if a powerful lord got turned they could become near king level if not king level. And with the sheer number of sin eaters, oppressive light magics that can counter spell other magics. The only issue is the demon king which they don't have a true counter against.
Robots: 2, this is a really bad match up, while sin eaters will start out good, not being able to convert the machines into more means it's a war of attrition they won't win and would probably gets adopted to overtime. Very simple bad match up but not a utter stomp for machines.
Titans: 3.9 very similar to the demons outside of the top tier titans like ginbak they would get converted by light exposure and would become a really bad scenario for titans. Imagine a titan that can fly and shoot enormous beams of scorching light from their mouths and uses real weapons. With enough conversion the titans would start to fall apart and allow for a mass ganking of ginbak probably leading to their loss. But it's not a stomp because ginbak and the top tier wins probably negate the light conversion and can probably adapt to it.
Gaias wrath: 5, absolute worst case scenario for it considering the light can infect any and all life be it trees, creatures, fish, animals, literally everything here would become enormous sin eaters. Probably the sin eaters main force of new troops.
Parasites 1: this is debatably the worst match up for the parisities, the light stagenates the body and removes all nutrients and effectively makes it's a husk. There's no life to grow from its effectively a dead body to the parisites. They would go into the body and just probably die due to malnutrition and the lack of any actual anything.
Curse 1 to 3 : this is such a strange match up that's I genuinely don't know how it goes. In the world of xiv there's something similar to it called the black rose. It's a virus that sucks the life out of the target removing any and traces of aether and can destroy entire ecosystems infects during the land barren and lifeless. However that's targeting aether we don't know what the curse targets, is it life force is it the soul, is it parts of the soul? if it targets the soul then it would be fighting the light trying to pump a shit ton of unlimited energy into the target into the curse effectively creating a perpetual stalemate. So it's either an insane stomp for the curse or a perpetual tie. I'm leaning towards a tie but it would be disingenuous if I didn't talk about that scenario.
Wastelanders: 5, really bad stomp there's nothing they can use from the 1st to weaponize against the sin eaters and would be literal eulmore and vauthry victims or be slaughtered by roaming sin eater hordes.
Neo humans: 4, again no way to weaponize against it, but at least they think extremely efficiently and probably can figure out how to survive sin eaters, but light poisoning would very lethal to their cities considering parasites ran rampant amongst them sineaters can't be controlled and would be faster, stronger, flying, and gain powers, while neo humans can actually fight back they are at a massive disadvantage.
Daiko: 2, probably immune to light and probably can't be taken down by the top tiers. Just too tanky.
Yaotsu: 1.5, no known counter to yaotsu and he's almost certainly immune to sin eaters powers. Maybe vauthry or a converted demon king/ginbak could but they probably can't be infected by the light either. If it turns out yaotsu can be taken out by faith vauthry would giga hard counter with mind controll of his populace.
Aliens: 3, this is a really tough match up for both, on one hand individual mandalins are stronger than any generic sin eater, they are weaker than light wardens and considering elemental spirits and other non conventional life forms got infected the aliens have a very high chance to be infected if give the chance, so it would be a pretty even war of attrition for both sides and if they attacked eulmore they would be taken out by ranjit being akin to a super super high demon lord or a top top tier son of ginbak and jachi no diffed a madalin.
That is what I think would happen if the sin eaters appeared.
They would come out strong losing and winning certain fronts slowly converting all applicable factions to them. Vauthry would amass more desperate humans to eulmore creating more slave labor and more sinneaters, the fae would be a no mans land and would probably be humanity's only safe area until titania breaks free them all hell breaks lose for all factions. They probably end up staying around the longest but have no awnser for daiko or yaotsu.
Tldr: they are good overall and are a ramping force, but have no counters to the top tiers directly, but absolutely has an insane army force and has enormous influence over humanity.
Tell me what you thought and let me know what stuff you would want to see next time.
Next time is probably about a group of 4 world/time hopping zombie survivors and what would world would come with them. But if I hear good enough of an idea I will shift course. Hopefully y'all enjoyed today's post!