the-paladin-of-hydaelyn:

Is this where it all begins?..

Here is a brief rundown on what happened, below the cut.

It starts at Sastasha and Tam-Tara

The four adventurers were trying to clear Sastasha, but Edda, being a novice conjurer, almost didn’t heal the party in time. By the time you get to Tam-tara, you discover that she wasn’t quick enough to heal and her fiancée, Avery, went charging in and literally lost his head. The Elezen Liavinne and the lalafell Paiyo Reiyo, as well as Avery, tore into her after Sastasha and Liavinne and Paiyo did the same after Tam-tara. They even called her a freak for carrying around Avery’s head in her grief. Paiyo isn’t seen again until Tam-tara HM and Liavinne becomes a member of the Scions, but is killed in the Imperial assault in the Waking Sands and is buried by the WoL at the churchyard near Camp Drybone.

Now onto Tam-Tara HM. 

The WoL finds Paiyo Reiyo in distress outside the Quicksand in Ul’dah. They have both been invited by Edda to her wedding with Avery within the Tam-Tara Deepcroft. Feeling uneasy, Paiyo agrees to go with you, not before discovering the empty grave of Liavinne. Whilst traversing the Deepcroft, you find a litany of reanimated corpses (including the first boss, who is Liavinne). On Liavinne’s death, she comments on Edda, saying “I always knew she was weird.” as she falls. Continuing on, you see more letters from Edda and writing in blood on the wall. You learn that she has been meddling in dark magic and void magic in order to reanimate the corpses in a way that she can use to reattach Avery’s head to bring him back to life. After freeing Paiyo from a trap and defeating an armour like ‘empty body’, you venture into the deepest part of the Deepcroft, finding disgusting creatures labelled as body parts (like eyes and lungs) as well as bloated corpses. On arriving at the arena where you defeated the Psycheflayer from NM, you see Edda, laughing disturbingly in the middle. It is here that you learn that she intends to kill the WoL and use their body as Avery’s vessel. You also see a large, void-tainted and disembodied head of Avery (which is the final boss). All over the floor, you see in Eorzean letters, the name AVERY written over and over again. When she calls in some “groomsmen”, which are shambling corpses crawling on the floor, the try to crawl to the middle, each one that arrives makes a letter of Avery’s name glow, causing more damage to the WoL when she casts Red Wedding. On defeating Avery, Edda walks back, shocked at what she saw, walking through candles which set her robes on fire until she walks off and falls into the Gelmorran abyss below. You leave and find Paiyo who has a flash/premonition of Edda smiling, causing him to run away.

This is where the story would have ended until HW added the Palace of the Dead (though there are some instances where you see Edda appear, such as in the kids area behind the carpenter’s guild, albeit briefly.

Now, when entering the Palace of the Dead, we merely assume that it is a Gelmorran ruin where strange things have happened. Armed with Padjali magic in the form of Aetherpool Arms and Armour, the WoL ventures down. In a series of cutscenes, we see a woman in a dark black dress with a scythe and later on, a floating small head. By the time we get to floor 50, we discover that it is indeed Edda, somehow reanimated. On her defeat, the WoL finds her wedding band and is greeted by Edda’s spirit, who tells the WoL that she doesn’t remember much, just falling into darkness and that she had become a stronger adventurer to make the WoL proud, like she promised. Her soul now at rest, she finally disappears. After this, the WoL, along with Paiyo, finds Avery’s wedding band in the water near to Buscarran’s Druthers and buries both rings together so that the couple can finally be at peace together.

On journeying further into the Palace of the Dead, we discover that Edda had been reanimated by a powerful necromancer who had long been sealed within the Gelmorran ruins there, he is the one that found her after she fell and used her for his own ends. He is defeated on the 100th floor.

And this is the long and sad story of Edda (Blackbosom) and Avery Bravearm. The important lesson here is to not be mean to your fellow party members and to respect your healers.

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