The Story Is Over :: FFXI

I transcribed the ending to the Scholar’s Story. Please be warned… SPOILERS!!!

All of the below is spoken by Professor Schultz after beating him in a fight.

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A remarkable display… To have refined your skills to this point is nothing short of commendable. Yet this fight only served to confirm my prior suspicions. Your underdeveloped skills belie your decades of study. It is not enough to merely house the seeds of greatness within you. You must toll to nurture them and see them through to fruition. Frankly, I’m not required to, nor shall I presume to lecture you on such matters. Haha, but I wonder if you and I are not a good deal alike. Great minds think alike, after all.

What I am about to confess may come as no surprise to you at all, as quickly to catch on to things as you are. But the being you see before you is no longer the corporeal Hume I once was. My life as a child of Altana ceased some 200 years ago.

I was a mere painter when I began my service in the Republican Army. Around the time of the Second Battle of Konschtat I was charged with the development of novel wartime strategies. Schultz… Gunther Schultz. Have you heard the name? I was quite the well-known military tactician in my day. In my time, though, I came to be afflicted by a deadly sickness. On my deathbed in quiet reflection, I came to realize that I had nothing but a mind racked with regret. Battle strategies not yet tested. Weapons not taken beyond the blueprint stage. Undeveloped theories of new wartime magics… All of which would die with me and be lost, perhaps forever.

It was wit these anxieties weighing heavy on my heart that I was visited by the great demon Brifons. He told me how he had come to be deeply impressed by the tactics I had laid out in my life’s works. And so began our friendly rivalry. He saw fit to provide me with this demonized form, the magical nature of which grants me immortality.

For ages now we have used this world as our chessboard, engaged in match after math in all corners of Vana’diel. You would be beset to find a single battle or struggle in all that time which our hands did not have some stake in. This most recent Crystal War was no exception. I on the side of Altana, and he on the side of the Beastmen. In terms of an even match, however, I found myself at a marked disadvantage. To compensate for that handicap, I set ut to devise a new approach. The grimoire you hold, there, is the end result of my endeavors. Armed with it, even a beginning pupil could come to fill the role of a full-fledged scholar.

I wonder, are you aware of the fate that befell my peers following the Crystal War? Following the disappearance of the scholars after the war, the three nations banned the grimoire unequivocally. An era of book burnings and oppression of our pupils was ushered in…Some sought refuge across the seas… Others were incarcerated on trumped-up charges, only to die needlessly in prison… Bounty hunters invited violence and murder on our kind, spurred on by the rewards placed on our heads.

Eventually those dark times subsided and order was restored. Though when it was, it seemed as though the scholars, and any capable of carrying on the tradition of the grimoire, had died out. You may be very well my last pupil. Suffice it to say that to recall the misfortunes forced upon our pupils… Even to speak of it now seems too much for…

Alas, the form which I take now does not afford me the luxury of tears. The eyes in these sockets serve neither to see nor cry. And the beats of this heart, if one call call it such, pump forth neither blood nor emotion. You must be wondering why6 I should feel compelled to share these things with you. I imagine it is because your inquisitiveness reminds me of myself, a bit. An intellectual inquisitiveness is a scholar’s greatest asset. You must always foster it. I would only advice that you not allow your thirst for knowledge to lead you across the bounds of mortality, as have I. That is all.

Your accomplishments have been recognized, and you are hereby officially ordained a “Herald of the Grimoire.” You have graduated with distinction. I apologize I have no diploma with which to present you. Go forth now guided by the central pillar of our school, “To know is to act.” I prophesy that someday we scholars will again be needed by Vana’diel. That day may bring you and I together again. Though as colleagues or rivals, I cannot say. I certainly will be looking forward to it. With that said, we shall postpone the conclusion of today’s contest. There is always the promise of another battle. Until then, I’ll keep an eye out for you, and the chessboard ready.