Random Thoughts.....What Are You Thinking?

Quests

New MSQ
New Warring Triad Quests
Hildibrand
Scholasticate
Anima Story Quests

Instanced Content

New Dungeon: Baelsar's Wall (Built by Garleans separating Gridania and the region Ala Mhigo's in)
New Dungeon: Sohm Al (Hard)
New 24-man: Dun Scaith
New Trial: Containment Bay Z1T9 and Ex (Zurvan the Demon)

New Features

Zhloe Aliapoh: Gain access to new content by raising Zhloe's satisfaction level (in 3.5/3.55, other NPCs in the future) through gathering/crafting requests; will have glamour elements to it

Exploratory Missions

Existing Gathering/Hunting Missions have been heavily updated
Equipment from completing daily requirements
Missions include boss battles requiring 4 parties

Party Finder Updates

Now for world or entire data center
Data-center PF only for DF/RF content
Party members can chat cross-world
Party Finder filters
Password-locked parties

PVP

Players have option of matching in Frontline without GC requirements now (can still do based on GC though)
Dueling iLvl sync options: i150, or matching Host's iLvl
Recast timers reset at start of duels
New map for the Feast
Chat disabled during Feast battles
Targetting commands and new auto-translate for Feast; these will be actions you can add to hotbar

Chocobo Companion

DUTY FINDER CAN BE USED WHILE CHOCOBO IS OUT!!!!
MY GOD IT'S BEAUTIFUL
Chocobo will appear in party frames like a pet
All chocobos will act like SMN/SCH pets: parties can have 8 players and 8 chocobos
Other players' chocobos won't appear in frames anymore, so you have to click them to see health

Egi Glamour

Can alter Titan, Garuda, Ifrit
Complete quest to unlock feature
Alter using text commands
Other players WILL see the changes
3.5 will ONLY let you change those egis TO Carbuncle; other egis in other patches

Novice Network

Players will have to confirm they want to join chat channel after being invited
Players can opt out of Network

Returning Players

Features created to help players who are returning from a break
If you haven't logged in for 45 days, can set status to "returning player"
Can use Novice Network
Gain extra XP by partying with a Mentor

Additional Features

Can preview item colors on the equipment screen
Paintings will be added as furnishings

Patch 3.5

Part 1 coming Mid-January (I'm guessing January 17?)
Part 2 coming March
Live Letter 34 at Tokyo Fan Fest, December 24-25
Armor sets from Dun Scaith

Brother Morys was the one, a Hyur taken in by the Conjurers' Guild despite being an outsider of Gridania. As the storyline goes on, it's heavily implied, as far as I can tell, that Morys became enthralled to (what I presume was) a dragon and entered the Twelveswood with it as a child. In the wood, the dragon was responsible for the deaths of several forest creatures, including some of the Spirits of the Wood. Enraged, it seems that the Elementals bound it in "amber," creating Amberscale Rock (you can still visit the rock sans any context in ARR), and then spirited the boy away, wiped his memory, and claimed him as a wildling. This aethero-abduction also granted him a sensitivity to the voices of the Elementals, something the Guild keeps secret lest people purposely defile the wood in hopes of being claimed. It's also hinted that Morys' compulsions to return to Ishgard come from the bound dragon.

At first, I thought that Morys was the boy from the Boy and the Dragon Gay, a famous story banned in Ishgard about a boy rescued from bandits by a dragon.

However, it was also hinted that Damielliot (a young Elezen from Ul'dah who kept passing out everywhere and falling asleep for prolonged periods) was the same boy from the story. I considered a wildly convoluted scenario is which Damielliot, when under the care of conjurers for his condition, saw in Morys via the Echo the events from the story, and then re-lived them in his fever-dreams where we got an Echo vision from him. I gave up on all of this because Ferne confirmed that - whatever the case - Amberscale Rock is not the Boy and the Dragon Gay dragon and because Occam could not disapprove any harder.

It's a story about a boy who was kidnapped by brigands, who were then attacked by a dragon, leaving the boy injured and alone, where he was beset upon by beasts, but then saved by a smaller, younger dragon. The two became friends and took to the skies together, a legend considered a warm and fuzzy fantasy to, say, Ul'dahns, whereas it's flat out heresy to Ishgardians. The story was a favorite of 1.0 Alchemist Guildmaster's son, Damielliot, who was prone to falling under strange sleeping spells that were harder and harder to rouse him from. Through this boy, you saw an Echo that implied he was the boy from the story, but a lot of it didn't line up - the boy in the story had a past that was nothing like Damielliot's (as far as we knew, assuming the story is even accurate).

Meanwhile, the Conjurer storyline dealt with a misfit conjurer, Morys, brought into the guild despite being an outsider of Gridania. He experiences strange compulsions to return to Ishgard, but something keeps him within the wood. We later learn that his fate is tied to Amberscale Rock, a suspiciously dragon-like hunk of amber. It was heavily implied that Amberscale Rock was a dragon, that Morys was bound to him as an Ishgardian heretic is bound to the Dravanian Horde, and that the Elementals bound the dragon and claimed Morys as a Wildling to prevent the dragon from manipulating him into returning to Ishgard.

I thought the stories might be connected, but didn't really dig into the reading until Hiir noticed the same thing to a more specific degree. We started to theorize that the boy from the Boy and the Dragon Gay was Morys, who fled with his young dragon to the Shroud where they could hide together. Instead, so the theory went, the dragon killed creatures of the wood, and broke Morys' mind - and the Elementals intervened.