Dynamis: The Shrouded Land
My dearest ****,
This may be my last letter to you. I have continued my correspondence in the hopes of retaining the gift of words, and some sense of time. But there is no escape from this hell. This realm stands apart from Vana'diel. It is a prison. There are those among the Hydra who have begun to think the world was destroyed as we lay unconscious, and this shade of reality is all that remains.
Twenty years ago, contact with an elite unit known as the Hydra Corps was lost. They had been presumed dead, their true fate a mystery-only recently were several letters from a supposed member found, apparently a young thief from Windurst. The intended recipient was tracked down, and through her tears, the woman was able to inform the Vana’diel Tribune that the letters were, in fact, genuine. Rapifafa had read the story herself, yet remained skeptical.
As Rapifafa made her preparations in the days before the full moon, she travelled to Xarcabard of the Northlands and was greeted by a familiar sight.

Raogrimm informed Rapifafa that while he had been released from his rage, some part of that rage still resided within another world, and eventually, a new Shadow Lord could be born. If the beastmen in this other world were allowed to rally around him, it is likely they will attempt to find some way into the real world. Raogrimm pleads that Rapifafa retrace the steps of the Multinational Expedition sent 30 years ago so she may gain entry to the alternate world and stop this from happening.
Rapifafa first returned home to Windurst in an attempt to track the steps of Iru-Kuiru, as she was already quite familiar with the man through her dealings with the Rhinostery. There, the Hume Cornelia appeared before Rapifafa.

Cornelia made no excuses for the horrible sins that Raogrimm has committed over the decades as the Shadow Lord, but she still wished to rescue her love from the darkness. It would have been suicide to simply confront the newly forming Shadow Lord, so Cornelia tells Rapifafa that by collecting items left behind by the Hydra Corps, she may stand a chance. By obtaining a certain rare hourglass, she should be able to enter the alternate realm.
Rapifafa was unable to find the hourglass described in any shop she searched, but eventually some wandering Goblin Merchants were able to supply Rapifafa with what she needed at quite a hefty price. The hourglass is a curiosity in and of itself- no matter how violently Rapifafa shook or upended it, the sands would not fall.
With the hourglass in hand, Rapifafa entered the alternate world through some strange markings in Windurst, with some words from Iru-Kuiru sending her off.

Iru-Kuiru had a strange feeling about this alternate world- before he met his end in the Elshimo islands, he had visited a protocrystal of one of the Sleeping Gods of Vana'diel. He felt that this alternate universe gives off a similar aura.
In the alternate Windurst, Yagudo walked the streets of Windurst, and Rapifafa quickly found herself fighting for her life. Unlike any others who may have stumbled into this world, however, she was tethered to the real world through the strange hourglass she carried. Its sands would being falling as soon as she entered the strange realm, and she would be sent back to the real world when the last grain fell.

After numerous expeditions into the strange realm, some alongside other adventurers, Rapifafa is able to find a giant Yagudo Idol in the realm. Upon its destruction, Rapifafa found a lantern in its remnants, likely belonging to a former Hydra Corps member.
Rapifafa travelled to Bastok next, where she was surprised to find one former member remorseful for his past actions.

Similar to Windurst, Bastok was filled with Quadav in the alternate world. Rapifafa repeated the task she performed in Windurst, destroying a large Quadav icon and finding an eyeglass formerly owned by a Hydra Corps member.

Next, Rapifafa travelled to San d’Oria.

Francmage stated that death does not exist within the alternate world. If a trapped individual died within, he would simply rise from the dead and continue the endless struggle. For that same reason he was confused why some of the beastmen that Rapifafa ran into were wearing leftover armor and non-beastmen currencies- if people could not truly die within the realm, where had they disappeared off to?
Rapifafa pressed on, defeating an Orcish Tombstone in the alternate world, and finding a Hydra Corps Command Scepter.

Finally Rapifafa travelled to Jeuno, where she met Yow Rabntah, the hunter from Kazham.

Upon destroying the Goblin Statue, Rapifafa found a parchment map left behind by the Hydra Corps.

With the four Hydra Corps items in hand, Rapifafa traveled north to the Beaucedine Glacier, where Cornelia gave Rapifafa her one more task before heading for Xarcabard.

Rapifafa was now in the alternate version of the Northlands. This was where the Hydra Corps had last been spotted.
I still have no idea of where I am. The area appears to be Beaucedine Glacier, but I see no sign of the allied forces. Neither day nor night has dominion here. There is no sense of time passing at all...
As Rapifafa traveled through the frozen lands of the alternate world, any traces of doubt she had of the story the letters told were removed from her mind.
I was a little disappointed when I was introduced to the other members. 'Multi-national strike force' is a misleading description--the great bulk of the unit has been assembled from the knightly orders of San d'Oria. They said it had to do with the problem of supplying different sizes of equipment, smoothness in relaying orders, and other such flimsy excuses.

Our battle has been never-ending. All for the brief flowerings of scarlet color on the endless fields of snow... Most of my companions have lost their grip on sanity, and pursue our enemies with a dull single-mindedness. Why do they fight? Why bother to spill each other's blood anymore? I am losing the will to care the longer I stay here...
I don't want to become like them. I don't want to forget you.

Rapifafa fought her way to where the ruins of Fei’Yin would normally be, and there she defeated a demon, which left behind a Hydra Corps Insignia, showcasing the golden serpent of the Hydra Corps.

With the five symbols of the Hydra Corps in her possession, Cornelia was able to send Rapifafa to the alternate world’s Xarcabard to confront the newly-forming Shadow Lord.

Rapifafa can only advance through the alternate Xarcabard slowly, getting slightly deeper in each time. During her travels through this alternate realm, Rapifafa had found some intact pieces of armor off the beastmen and leftover Hydra Corps members. Rapifafa had heard rumors that there were other adventurers entering this alternate reality and were able to find strange, powerful weapons that could speak to the wielder, but her own investigation yielded no such treasures, and she had little time for a long search. She would have to make do with the Hydra Corps armor she had found.
…they issued me with my new mission attire…when I put it on I can almost feel my abilities being enhanced. With this kind of equipment, I'm sure to survive the coming conflict.

Eventually, Rapifafa is able to fight her way through the demon hordes fast enough to reach the alternate Castle Zvahl.

There, Rapifafa confronts the newly-forming Shadow Lord.

With the help of Raogrimm and the rest of the expeditionary force, Rapifafa is able to defeat the Dynamis Lord.

Raogrimm knows that as long as he exists, he can once again be consumed by his rage. He explained that before he met his end in Castle Zvahl, a strange being had drawn him here, offering to preserve his soul. Apparently the darkness within him could not be contained by this strange being, and it began to consume the realm originally created for his safety. The ruler of the alternate realm contacted Raogrimm and gave him a new task- he was to stay in this realm and watch over it until his hatred finally subsides.
This time, however, he would not face this task alone. The Multinational Expedition once split by national and racial lines now came together to face this great task ahead.

As Rapifafa bids farewell to the legendary Expedition of 30 years past, she thought of the final words of the Tarutaru man who had written those letters.
I will not say goodbye. We will meet again one day, I swear it…
Gameplay CommentsWhen I said that Tu'lia was the first endgame area in FFXI, that was probably untrue. Dynamis is probably more fitting of that title, but it came in a very strange form. In this event, you would enter an area with a 1 hour time limit (extendable to 3) and a 3-day lockout (to prevent one group from taking an area all for themselves). It also allowed up to 64 players to participate (of course, I have my doubts that even the earliest groups took even half that amount of members to any given run).
Unlike most of the other things I talk about, Dynamis as it used to exist cannot be accessed anymore if you play the game today. In the years since its introduction, the event has been redesigned (though the core concept has arguably remained the same). In it's original form, Dynamis was basically just a copy of the 3 town and 2 field areas described, with a really dense population of monsters. Thus a lot of the time you needed a puller who knew what he was doing, otherwise your group would get swarmed. There were boss monsters in the area as well, but generally their unique rewards weren't as attractive as the things the random mooks would drop- the aforementioned Hydra Corps Armor and Ancient Currency.
Hydra Corps Armor was job-specific equipment, basically acting as a second set of Artifact Armor. However, because of the way itemization was set up in FFXI, these pieces weren't necessarily upgrades from your first Artifact Armor set. Armor in FFXI was designed laterally (as opposed to vertical progression where stat numbers simply become bigger the higher level you get, some armor pieces had unique effects no other armor had) so it had a very "collect 'em all" quality to them, which is part of why I think the core players of XI have stuck with it as long as they have.
However, the thing Dynamis was probably most notable for was the ancient currency drops, which were used to obtain absurdly difficult-to-obtain weapons known as Relic Weapons. Aside from generally being very powerful, they all had unique skins that could wow any passerby.

As you probably already noted, many of these weapons are given the names associated with legendary weapons in the Final Fantasy series. However, instead of them being plopped in a chest at the end of an optional dungeon or being given to you for free a'la FFV, the developers of FFXI apparently intended these weapons to be legendary among the playerbase. A typical run of Dynamis yielded a couple hundred coins, and completing a single weapon requires approximately 18000 of these coins. The numbers alone don't tell the full story because it needs to be kept in mind that each of those Dynamis runs can only happen once every 3 days and were generally done by groups of 12 or more people. This meant that you would usually have linkshells "funding" a single person in the group to have a relic, and even if you managed to have a friendly enough group to not get into a virtual war over a pixel sword, it would still take something like a year to complete a single weapon (though generally the shield Aegis or the horn Gjallerhorn were selected by groups because those were the most beneficial to the group as a whole).
As a little bonus, anybody completing a relic weapon would receive a little cutscene involving the original wielder of the weapon (though it was pretty insubstantial). While technically that means this journal is not me trying to 100% the story for you, I think I'm okay with not spending hundreds of hours grinding out a virtual weapon to show a picture of a guy going "here's my super sword". =P
The last thing I want to note is that the story of Dynamis does contain relevant plot points to FFXI's story, but I honestly always found that amusing, because by the time these plot points were addressed, I can only assume less than 100 people on every server had ever beaten Dynamis Lord and therefore gotten all of the story. Dynamis Lord was an absurdly difficult fight when it first came out, generally consisting of a stunlock strategy involving a Red Mage using their Chainspell ability with a Dark Knight subjob (to get the Stun spell).