Banishers of Emptiness.

Chains of Promathia is probably the most talked about talked about expansion in Final Fantasy XI. Most of FFXI's Playerbase have heard of or completed Chains of Promathia and most people long to finish. Many will argue that it has the best story in the game and the reward for its completion that everybody would like to have. While I don' remember the actual date I started working on Chains of Promathia I can certainly remember like it was, well, yesterday. The first thing I remember is zoning into Lower Delkfutt's Tower as a level twenty something Thief and just in awe. I didn' continue until some time later:

At that time I never knew what any of the Promyvion areas were aside from the fact that a lot of people needed them and that they were, by the looks of it, a challenge. Even though I do not like this person, if it were not for them I may not have had such a smooth run through Promyvion, so I would like to thank Darkeindzel for putting those original runs together for my friends and I.


I believe it was on one of the first Saturdays in January of 2009 that the official Chains of Promathia static group started. Our initial group consisted of Letira who would be our Paladin through each of our runs and our Warrior in our epic fights on the Airship in Chapter 6. Then there was Oric who was my best friend in real life and in game. Oric was perhaps our main source of DD throughout Promathia lending himself and his Automaton Serenade in plenty of missions and his Scholar before I had leveled White Mage as one of my main jobs and finally leading us support as Bard in the final battle against Promathia. Then we have Aylah, our favorite Elvaan in game who met Oric and I when we first joined the game back in December of 2007. Another of our main source of DD throughout our run she would be sly and protect us with her Big Booty Shield or help as her Puppetmaster and during our Airship fight she did more than just buff as Corsair eventually providing a large source of DD during the battle. Then we have Seraphe who at the time joined us as his Monk and helped tank for us on Ninja during a lot of our earlier missions. Finally we have Map Master Ixidor who, as given by his title, we would've been lost without. Usually dealing devastating blows as Dark Knight or nukes as Black Mage or lending a healing hand as Red Mage Ixi definately was a great member of the team, who I must also thank Darkeindzel for introducing us to. Oh, and there's me who you guys know already ;)


"Go, go, CoP Static Go!" we would cheer each Saturday evening when being invited to our Skype room. I don' want to sound too, well, I'm not sure what the exact word would be but we worked great together and just about all of the time we came out on top and ended the day with either Aylah or myself eating victory Chinese. This would continue throughout the year and was definately an event we would look forward to each Saturday. Then we all had our doubts as we were faced with a large series of events:


I don' really prefer to go on about that bad which followed us for quite some time so I'll just sum it up. Our friend Letira had started to experience computer and real life problems which eventually led us to a hiatus. However, Letira came back but sadly that Saturday we were to resume, Seraphe never showed and while I still feel like an asshole for doing this I dropped Seraphe from the static and replaced him with Karlik, a shy player who soloed the majority of his jobs to 75. It struck again, none of us ever thought that we would ever finish Chains of Promathia when Ixidor's credit card company pulled sneaky shit which eventually led to him taking a leave of absense for a few months and Karlik who quit. Now, lets get back to the good.


This past Saturday we were all thrilled to learn that Ixidor's new credit card finally came in the mail. We finally continued on with The Garden of Antiquity. In a group decision we all agreed that, no matter what, we would experience the ending to this great story and walk away with our ring. We started around our normal time but we clearly didn' stop when we normally did. We were joined by Katiekat, a fellow Mithra from our linkshell who was on the same mission as we were. We continued on until three that morning with our dreaded fight against the pots.

I would like to go ahead and say that without Oric and Aylah, who are both skilled 75 Puppetmasters, we more than likely NEVER would have beat this fight. To be quite honest I'm not really sure which aggravated us more, the Airship fight or this fight. While we had our strategy down we kept messing up and then we finally got it. We started the fight with Oric and Aylah doing what they could with the Red Mage pots until a mess up. Once we messed up we ran to the other side, closer to the Black Mages, and wiped. We reraised and recovered with only more wipe in store. Oric, whose Automaton was ready again, went and started soloing the pots. Then, with barely thirty seconds left we won thanks to an Automaton, a few Astral Flows, and some heavy Black Magic.


We couldn' believe it...after a year since we first gathered together in Tavnazian Safehold we were facing the Twilight God, Promathia. We really couldn' believe that we were there. A year later with better gear and more knowledge we entered the Empyreal Paradox with strategy in mind. There he was standing right before us....Promathia. We took action as Prishe and Selh'teus accompanied us and after a few tries and job swaps later I screamed over Skype, "HOLY FUCKING SHIT GUYS! WE FUCKING BEAT MOTHERFUCKIN' CHAINS OF PROMATHIA!"


All that was left for us to do was to get our final cutscenes saying farewell to the NPCs we grew to know throughout Chains of Promathia. I'll be honest and say that I did end up crying through near all of these cutscenes but it really hit me even harder saying good-bye to Prishe and ultimately enjoying the final cutscene with Distant Worlds playing. I really am going to miss Chains of Promathia and now matter what all happened I really enjoyed every bit of it.


In conclusion, after starting before I even had unlocked an advanced job up until just completing and experiencing the storyline I feel a bit close to all those I worked together with. We experienced this as a team and we saved Vana'Diel together. Without then, I don' think I'd be able to do it. Thank you guys, thank you for joining and I hope we'll continue to kick ass and stay friends.







P.S. In case you were wondering what ring I ended up choosing, I eventually decided upon choosing the Rajas Ring. While I have my two main jos, White Mage and Summoner, at 75 I have been leveling Dragoon for the past few months and I decided that while the Tamas Ring is a great ring I can do fine with another mage ring and figured to treat my Dragoon.