Let's Play FFX Part 3: It's a Good Thing Wakka is a Dog Person

[mintywolf]

Okay so! I got a message from Livvy on tumblr explaining how to increase the resolution and get better screencaps. Unfortunately, I had already taken about a billion screencaps of Besaid before then. I was able to revert to an earlier save with the new settings, but not all the way to end of the last recap. So for this installment, these are going to be in the native PS2 resolution. I’m sorry!




Sin drops off our hero off the shore of Besaid Island, where the Aurochs see his apparently unconscious body drifting along and decide that the best course of action is to peg a blitzball at it. These guys are terrible lifeguards.


Fortunately he’s overjoyed to see something familiar, for once.


He does respond by Sphere Kicking their ball into orbit, though.


“Hey! That guy stole our ball!” Also wow Botta what happened to you?? (My guess is piranhas.)


Aaand it took him less than five minutes to forget Rikku’s advice.


Nice save.




This is pretty much the only time blitzball players’ superhuman lung capacity is addressed, and even then it’s kind of vaguely handwaved. As with most other belief-suspending aspects of the world of Spira, the only explanation we’re given is that it has something to do with pyreflies. (Pyreflies: the midichlorians of FFX.) It would also stand to reason that a summoner’s ability to manipulate pyreflies is what allows Yuna to walk on water.

Long-term breath-holding does require training, though, so of our eventual team of party members, only Wakka, Tidus, and Rikku are able to swim. While Rikku hasn’t had any blitzball training, it seems likely that the Al Bhed would have some kind of device to draw breathable oxygen out of the water. (Apparently, even when she’s not wearing her wetsuit.) Either that or the Al Bhed are all accomplished swimmers!


“I think Walter is a good egg.”




Incidentally, I was just listening to a Selected Shorts podcast today (while inking the next page of my comic, which I should probably still be doing . . .) that featured the Ray Bradbury short story “The Veldt”. (Read excellently by Stephen Colbert.) The story features a family living in a futuristic home that automatically takes care of all their needs, allowing them to live lives of indolence. As you can probably guess, this ends horribly, although not in ways you might expect.

The society Wakka describes is a setting of many science-fiction dystopias, an advanced society that appears utopic but is fundamentally flawed in some way. In this case, the flaw is Sin.

I wonder how soon after the Zanarkand-Bevelle war all the machina cities fell to Sin. He makes it sound like it was an immediate retribution. It could be that the first incarnation, Lord Zaon’s Sin, was just so powerful that he laid waste to all of Spira on one rampage, so that all the ancient technology was lost at once. Or maybe Sin hit so frequently that the people simply had no time to rebuild, and over time, with their machina crippled by Sin’s attacks, they had no means of fending for themselves and died out except for a few survivors who figured out how to cope without the help of machines.


Here’s another seagull. This one resembles Tidus. I don’t know what’s up with that . . .

Wakka is in the middle of explaining how Old Spira was powered by machina, allowing the inhabitants to live in luxury while the machines did the work for them. Then Sin came along and destroyed everything, an act that – he has been taught by Yevon – was punishment for their laziness. Nowadays every Spiran bears the burden of Sin, whom they are taught will never be really gone until they all repent for their sins. While he stresses that it’s important that they repent, he also expresses the opinion that it isn’t fair that everyone today has to suffer for “what some goofballs did back way back when”.

This echoes the infamous Catholic concept of original sin (“I poked a badger with a spoon!”), whereby humanity is assumed to be in a constant state of sin inherited for generations since the fall of man. However, Christian faith necessitates intervention from the divine in order to be absolved of your sins (you have to be baptized in order to be “saved”, or “make your peace with God” before you die, or if you’re Catholic you go to confession and tell the priest your sins). The concept of independent self-improvement is more in line with the Buddhist interpretation of karma, whereby performing positive deeds and overcoming negative habits moves you along the path towards nirvana, a state of transcendent peace. (Also, uncoincidentally, the name of Yuna’s ultimate weapon but I’ll get to that eventually.)

Look at that tangent! Thanks, seagull.






Wakka adopts Stray Doggie Tidus and starts treating him as a little brother immediately. (Including pushing him into the lagoon and dragging him around in a headlock, which is a very big brotherly thing to do.) We learn very soon that it’s because Tidus reminds him of his own little brother Chappu, who died only a year ago, but he didn’t even take the time to get to know him before deciding that he liked him. As we’ll see, Wakka makes judgments of people’s character right away, for better or for worse.


The aurochs, by the way, is a now-extinct species of giant wild cattle similar to oxen. No, I don’t have any idea what this has to do with blitzball or why their logo is a seashell.


Most people get around the Your-Name-Here convention by not even bothering to learn poor Waffles’s name. But as epithets go this one is pretty poetic. I can see Yuna sitting on the dock a year from now looking wistfully out at the ocean and romantically remembering ~*~The Boy from the Sea~*~.


Aiders?

I guess since Dream Zanarkand is a peaceful utopia, the dream-people weren’t given any consciousness of war or unpleasant history so he’d have no reason to know what a crusade was. This makes me giggle, though.




Speak for yourself, Thong Skirt Lady!


Bawwwwww poor Waffles.


Kitties!!! With the fur ridges along their backs, they look like tiny domesticated coeurls aaaaaah what adorable worldbuilding.


The two main livelihoods on Besaid are weaving and fishing. Unfortunately, the local economy, which relies on sea-based trade to other islands and the mainland to export the handmade textiles and import goods, is constantly imperiled by Sin.




“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that. I guess they won’t mind if I loot the place?”


Pictured: one of the few beds in the entire village. Not pictured anywhere: room for everyone to live.

There are some beds in the Crusaders’ lodge, but that seems to function not only as a base for the Crusaders but as a kind of hotel for visitors. Apart from that there are only four huts. Even if people sleep on hammocks or futons that they only bring out at night, that is still not nearly enough space for all the people who live in Besaid! (I do assume that some of them, like Lulu and Yuna, live in the temple, but that doesn’t account for everyone.)

I guess the only real explanation here is Video Game Architecture. It wasn’t until fairly recently that games, particularly open-world games, started showing every detail of the worlds you’re playing in. The Elder Scrolls games, for example, have villages with houses for every single NPC, all of whom have families and schedules independent of you. Earlier RPGs tended to supply just enough houses as were essential to the plot plus maybe a few more (which you usually couldn’t enter) for flavor, and the layout of Besaid seems to be an artifact of that.

I would have loved to see Spira redeveloped as an open world in FFX-2, where you could go everywhere and explore everything. But alas.


Wakka tells Tidus to go present himself to the temple summoner, whom I guess is this guy? It’s definitely not Yuna, since she’s an apprentice summoner and also he knows she’s currently in the trials. Also, Yuna had to have been apprenticed to somebody in order to learn how to become a summoner, and it stands to reason that the village would have one who did not go on pilgrimage in order to perform sendings and other necessary rituals at the temple. But it’s kind of weird that we never know who it is.


The village probably scraped together all the money they could to fund this so Yuna could see it before she left on her pilgrimage. :( I’m sure it was not an easy task for them to raise all that money but that shows how much they care about her.




I like the idea of the High Summoners having fan followings, and everyone has their favorite. It’d be really funny if there were like, summoner trading cards, or something, but that’s actually pretty morbid. And commercial culture doesn’t seem to have hit Spira yet except perhaps in Luca. In the post-Sin Spira of X-2, though . . . it seems like something they’d do. I feel like there’d be all kinds of ridiculous memorabilia of Yuna and her guardians.

The dead summoners seem to function both like Catholic saints and Shinto kami. As an alternative to praying directly to Yevon, people pray to the summoners to ask for favors, blessings, and intercessions. There’s even some specificity as there is for which saint or Shinto shrine to pray to for a certain task; Wakka prays to Lord Ohalland for good blitzball fortune because he was a blitzball player.


I tried to decipher this wall hanging but couldn’t read the symbols clearly enough. I’ll try to get a higher-resolution picture of it for next time and also one that doesn’t have a pillar in front of it.








Around this time everyone and their dog starts expressing worry that the apprentice summoner has not yet returned from the trials. With Tidus’ interpretation of High Summoners as “we should respect some great men, or something like that” and the way everyone is deliberately not mentioning the gender of the missing summoner makes it seem like it’s supposed to be a surprise. But we are so used to men being the standard characters in media that when a story starts concealing a character’s gender we already suspect that it’s because it’s a deviation from the norm, and therefore a woman. So it’s not really a surprise. (Also it's mentioned right out in the instruction booklet.)


This old lady gives it away, but she’s the only one and you have to look hard to be able to find her. (Somehow Tidus is still surprised later when Yuna turns out to be not an old man.)


I don’t know who this comment is supposed to be referencing so I am forced to assume it is Waffles. Or maybe the worried old man over there, but what an awful thing to say, Green Shirt Man!


“Except to you, just now.”




Man, that would be pretty terrible. Everyone in the village is gathered around to see how it went and they just bring out her broken little body. :c




Which seems to be a horribly real possibility. (The second line of dialogue is from the other person, btw. They’re not talking to Tidus; he’s just eavesdropping on their conversation.)

What did happen to the last summoner? And who was it? Did they become a summoner? Did they die? (Did they become a summoner, go on pilgrimage, and die that way?) Nobody ever mentions this person again. Maybe if the fayth rejects you, or you somehow else fail to become a summoner, you are shunned by society or have to go somewhere to perform penance before you can try again.


Are you sure? We can go back and talk to all the villagers again.






This brings up a question that I have had for some time and for which I’ve never really seen a satisfactory answer: what is so dangerous about the Cloister of Trials? When Tidus goes in (and he manages to barge into all of them eventually) the only obstacle to the Chamber of the Fayth is a sphere puzzle. So, unless there are more trials that we don’t see on account of gameplay/story segregation, it would seem that the real danger is the communion with the fayth itself. (And we do see Yuna being overwhelmed by this, especially when she receives Bahamut.)

I had a discussion about this with some people on tumblr awhile back, which heck I will just repost rather than trying to paraphrase.

kawohni:
Yuna’s first “real” appearance, and she’s all sweaty and gross. :[
But in all seriousness, apparently obtaining an Aeon is a dangerous and difficult task. Some summoners even die in their attempt to do so, as indicated by Lulu’s backstory.
It’s pretty interesting, but I always wonder what exactly goes into the art of summoning. We see the tail end of the process of acquiring an Aeon in Bevelle, and it does look rather jarring and uncomfortable and I’m sure it takes a ton of spiritual power, but does something else happen?
Given that summoners are generally psychopomps of sorts, it really makes me question how one gains that power.

mintywolf:
I always wondered this too. Near the beginning Tidus asks Wakka if it’s dangerous in there, and Wakka replies “sometimes,” and everyone in the village seems worried about her, but we never see anything particularly dangerous in the Cloister of Trials.
(Also, are the capabilities of summoners really assessed by a sphere puzzle, or is that a story/gameplay separation? Are there more Trials that we simply don’t see?)
So is the danger from the actual communion with the fayth? We do see Yuna fall down exhausted after receiving some of her aeons (to the disdain of Dona in one case) and Bahamut knocks her right out.
I wonder if any summoners ever died during this process. :o

auronlu:
When I first played FFX, I also wondered what was so scary about the Cloister of Trials. The characters seem to make an awfully big deal out of MYST-style puzzles.
To some extent, I think it’s gameplay and story segregation. However, I’ve seen some pretty awesome meta fanon dealing with the Cloister of Trials in Clarion (story of Braska’s Pilgrimage) and Aftermath (dealing with the events leading to the foundation of the Youth League).
The basic idea in those two stories (if I’m recalling correctly) is: Someone died to become a fayth. The ritual of snapping all those spheres into place somehow recreates or taps into the ritual that killed and bound the sacrificial martyr, priming the sleeping fayth to be ready to open up and loan some of that imprisoned life-force out. Summoners are literally manipulating the stored powers of life and death in their hands when they touch those spheres.
Powerful, dangerous stuff, which may in turn be opening up the summoner’s spirit to accept the aeon. (And, come to think of it, since the guardians have to participate, all that mumbo jumbo with the spheres may be priming the guardians’ spirits and attuning them to their summoner in some fashion so as to prepare them for the same death-ritual in the Final Summoning.)
It’s easier to understand why the ritual of obtaining the aeon could be dangerous to a summoner.
First, there’s the prayer to the fayth. The fayth probably tests the summoner’s spirit, will, and mind before agreeing to join with the summoner, so there’s an inner trial as well as the outer one.
Then there’s the joining itself.
When we see Bahamut and Yuna at the moment of junctioning, the fayth enters her body. Essentially, the summoner is opening up her body and soul to house that fayth just like a living summoner’s statue. That’s pyreflies entering someone’s living flesh, the same pyreflies that give aeons their physical shape and that provide artificial life support to the fleshly-but-terminal bodies of the unsent. Pyreflies are like a bridge between matter and energy; they are both physical and non-physical, in a sense.
The fayth is grafted to the summoner, physically (because of the pyreflies), spiritually, and mentally. An alien is taking up residence in her head.
I wouldn’t be surprised if some summoners go insane, or that others die in a psychosomatic response that’s akin to anaphylactic shock or donated-organ-rejection.

MacalaniaSpring also put forth the idea (on the same post but I can’t find it now because I didn’t want to reblog it three times, but I liked it) that before the trials summoners spend 24 hours fasting, so that they enter the Chamber of the Fayth spiritually meditative and purified, but physically tired and weakened.

And while I absolutely agree that receiving the fayth is a spiritually, emotionally, mentally, and physically taxing ordeal for the summoner, it’s also a completely solitary one since it’s forbidden for anyone else to enter the Chamber of the Fayth. So why do guardians need to be there? There’s a little kid in the temple who says “Wakka’s a guardian, he should go help!” and another one who wants to charge in there and help the summoner himself, but what are they expecting to be able to do? Help what? How?

I mean, maybe they’re just there for moral support, or to help the tired summoner back out if necessary, but it still seems like there’s something we’re not being told.




And of course our beloved Waffles just says “To heck with all that!” and in he goes.
He has no real idea of who’s in danger or even what’s going on. He just goes.

At first I was really annoyed with him about this, because clearly this is a tradition that everyone around him places very heavy value on, it’s something important and sacred to them (and his breaking the rules could have serious consequences, such as Yuna’s excommunication, we learn), and he just stampedes in his yellow boots over 1000 years of someone else’s cultural tradition like it’s completely meaningless. But his heart is in the right place, and while Tidus is impulsive this shows that he is also caring and courageous, willing to charge into an unknown place he was just told is dangerous in order to save someone he has never met.

Next time: Waffles opens the Chamber of Secrets.

Comments

[melchar]

As I played the game [and replayed it] - one of the things I noticed was how the other fayth treated Tidus. Fayth pretty much ignore everyone except their summoner ... and Tidus. At one point Tidus is thumping on & crying against Pterya's [Isaaru's version of Valefor] chest.

Sure, Tidus might be getting away with this because he is the protagonist - but it could also be professional courtesy. That the fayth recognize Tidus as being one of them. IMO Tidus -is- Yuna's 'fayth of the final summons'. He shows up on Besaid while she is undergoing her trial - and is with her through the pilgrimage.

[mintywolf]

I think the reason we never see anyone else interacting with them might be that it is a kind of taboo to interfere with or possibly touch another summoner's aeons. It seems like they would be a deeply personal entity, since they are born from the joining of the fayth and the individual summoner, like the taboo against touching someone else's daemon in His Dark Materials, if you've read those books. Essentially, it's like touching someone else's soul.

Of course, Tidus wouldn't know this, so he wouldn't know why it's culturally inappropriate to flail against Issaru's aeon in his distress. Fortunately, Issaru is a patient guy.

And I don't believe he's a fayth himself, is he? Technically, he's kind of an aeon, since Dream Zanarkand is one big aeon-type construction being dreamed by the fayth. To become a fayth he'd have to die and have his spirit transformed like Jecht did.

The fayth, or at least Bahamut's fayth, seem to recognize him as something more than human, (as well as something more than a dream), though. I think Bahamut's fayth is the only one we see talking to him specifically rather than just addressing Yuna.

[auronlu]

"These guys are terrible lifeguards" had me laughing out loud already.

...personally I think Botta just broke his nose trying to "head" a blitzball. Yes, I know he's got multiple slash-scars as if he's been in combat. He's just that bad.

...heh, I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who remembers bad bootleg subtitles once I go back to the original version.

Seagull tangent (heh): Yes, what really struck me about religion in FFX is that we've got the whole Christian "atoning for your sins" apparatus, complete with adherence to sacred dogma and a priesthood who can excommunicate you, but — no God. Unless it's Yevon, but really, despite all the "Praise be to Yevon," there are no idols to Yevon, and Yevon seems to mean the religion, the way, rather than an overarching deity. As you say, like Buddhism, which is named after the bloke who founded it (although, human nature being what it is, various cultures that adapted Buddhism sometimes made him a focus of worship and even started giving him multiple incarnations that operate like divine avatars).

Dear Wakka with his black-and-white snap decisions mentality. Whatever he believes, he's all the way. Messy gray areas make his head hurt.

...I've played this game for so long that I had forgotten how baffled I was by the "Aurochs" name. I mean, at least they could've been water buffalos. Then again, an entirely unseaworthy animal mascot seems almost appropriate for this team.

Vilucha's tweaking Tidus over his clothing is one of the cute touches in this game. (I suspect the line was already in the script, but somebody decided to give it to the npc with the most obviously silly costume. As opposed to Codpiece Man, her husband,* whose underwear-over-pants problem is not obvious from a distance.)

*This game has a weird variant of the FF Dead Moms Society: not only do Dead Moms never have a name, but npcs can escape from No Name Limbo if they offer themselves as free agents for blitzball. No wonder so many unlikely people are blitz players.

"Tiny domesticated coeurls" oh gack I never thought of that. That's so cute. (And it makes me like them better; how can one pet a cat properly with that dratted dorsal fin in the way?)

Video Game Architecture is especially glaring in Besaid. On the bright side, someone took the time to give all the villagers at least tiny bits of backstory or characterization and make them consistent throughout the game.

Whoa. I always thought Wakka meant Yuna as the "Temple summoner." But you're right; Wakka wouldn't say that while she was in the Cloister. That's puzzling. Why did I never notice that? Gotta be him, though — the one I've been calling Father Turan, oops — as you have to talk to him to trigger the Path of Plot Advancement.

Aww, I like your headcanon that the reason the statue is arriving now is that the village had to fund it and wanted it up for Yuna to see. That makes so much sense. (Otherwise, why did it take ten years to get one?)

... that big block of Yevon writing on the wall with the too-blurry-to-read characters VEXES ME. I'd love it if you could puzzle it out. Maybe it'll be easier to read in the remaster. (I'm still praying that we'll be given camera control.)

The "he looks pretty weak" line is puzzling. As I have run into two lines of dialog in FFVII today that include pronoun confusion, and Lady Yocun is called "Lord Yocun" by one confused npc, I hope that isn't a he/she mistake. FFX's script is usually quite polished, however. (I had actually assumed this line was referring to Wakka, and that the npc was wondering why he wasn't guarding Yuna, but "weak" is just not a word that could be applied to my favorite meathead.)

I'm still perplexed at why the Cloister of Trials is dangerous to guardians. Besaid's seems pretty danged tame. But the other temples are, actually, somewhat dangerous, between walls of fire and ice bridges suddenly vanishing and OMG THAT THING IN BEVELLE COULD DRIVE ANYONE TO PERMANENT INSANITY especially if that music really is being piped through invisible speakers.

And I'm grateful that you rescued my nattering from the hidden depths of Tumblr reblogging, since I can never find any old posts on that site, tags or no tags.

Yes, Tidus charging in and trampling over the teachings is terribly disrespectful and does not cast him in a good light. But it's exactly what he's good for. :)

[mintywolf]

Yep. :) What Yevon needs is an outsider blundering around, shaking its foundations and challenging its precepts. Tidus is an excellent agent of change.

Yeah I still wonder about the Cloister of Trials. The ice and fire obstacles are treacherous enough to the unwary but what is really the worst thing that could happen to you if you get stumped by Besaid's sphere puzzle? You get stuck in there for awhile while you and your guardians figure it out? (And also, if you get stumped on Besaid's sphere puzzle . . . you probably shouldn't be preparing to go on a pilgrimage anyway.)

The way everyone in the game was describing it I was picturing a series of rooms with different challenges in them, designed to test the summoner's strength, skill, and wits. (Puzzles, monsters, riddles, traps, etc.) Some system of weeding out the unprepared or unworthy. But I have played a lot of D&D so my expectations were high.

I need to improve my organization system on tumblr, haha. The only way I was able to find that post was through my "final fantasy x" tag, which was over 200 posts long. But the archive system on tumblr is TERRIBLE.

And oh yes I really really hope we get a free-rotating camera in the remake. A zoom or first-person look feature would be really nice too. I always want to see all the little details of rooms even if we can't interact with them.

I think the temple priest could be a summoner as well so people would still address him as Father. (Presumably, Father Zuke still does summonery things like sendings.) And yeah for a long time I thought he meant Yuna too, and then I finally realized that that made no sense for several reasons. I don't know why the game never bothers to point out who the resident temple summoner is but it has to be that priest.

Hahahaha the people of Final Fantasy have mastered airships, black magic, flightless bird riding, and all kinds of weird sports and games but not PANTS.

I think if you pet a mini-coeurl the fur would flatten down but pop back up. They probably don't like it, though.

I really like the blending of religions in FFX. It gives it a real-world solemnity and gravity while still being a fantasy-world construct.

(I also like the evil central theocracy controlling everything. Religious dystopias are one of my favorite kinds. A lot of my family is Catholic but my mother parted ways with the Catholic Church when I was about three for feminist reasons, and I'm glad she did because otherwise I would have been raised with that. I think I must have picked up some of her residual bitterness towards the Church growing up.)

Hahaha and man poor Botta. Sustaining combat damage from a blitzball like a champion.

[cumuluscastle]

I was just thinking about the summoners the other day, because I was talking to my husband about Anima and trying to explain the story behind that aeon (I believe after reading one of your entries).

I was explaining how Seymour's mother becomes his aeon, but then he decides not to defeat Sin and how I thought that was a betrayal (althoguh one also feels sorry for Seymour when in the Zanarkand Ruins you can see how reluctant he was to lose his mother). My husband asked me why she would continue to help him and I couldn't answer that.

It's interesting, though. We've seen the aeons as the 'ghosts' of the people they once were, and Bahamut certainly shows a lot of agency, but your questions about what causes a summoner to fail in the Cloister of Trials cut to the heart of the matter. There is no real way of knowing why a summoner succeeds or fails. I like the idea of rituals involved with the spheres in the puzzles, but if the aeons are judging the summoners then what about Seymour? I suppose his mother might still overlook his evil out of love, but the aeons seem bound as much as the summoners are to follow a prescribed course. Because even if she still cares for Seymour, I find it difficult to believe she'd willingly participate in that 'display' he puts on in the Luca Stadium.

The fayth want to end the cycle of Sin, but it's only Bahamut who actually speaks to and helps Tidus actively. Meanwhile, the aeons still continue to follow summoners. Both Isaaru and Dona are on a very straightforward pilgrimage being assisted by their aeons and presumably on the path to receiving the Final Aeon and continuing the cycle.

I think that the only failed summoners whose stories we know are Lulu's: Father Zuke and Ginnem. Zuke seems to have quit the pilgrimage of his own choice - and he seems to be a bit outcast because of it. At least, he quit in the Calm Lands and that is where the party finds him. It's as if he never left and never contemplated going back home. Lady Ginnem is certainly more complicated though. When the party fights her she summons Yojimbo, so she must have been successful in obtaining that aeon, I suppose? So then how did she become unsent and how did Lulu escape? Could obtaining Yojimbo have killed her?

Anyway, I find it interesting and strange. The aeons seem to still have personality and agency, but not enough to really make choices about which summoners get to wield them or how.

[mintywolf]

I've wondered about how much agency the aeons have, too. The fayth themselves seem unable to manifest very far from their statues (with the exception of Bahamut) so the only way for them to exercise their power is with the help of a summoner. And we never hear of aeons going rogue or turning against their summoner so it seems like they have to obey the commands given to them.

Also, aeons are formed from the merging of the fayth and the summoner, so they can't exist independently of their summoner. And they grow stronger through the bond with their summoner, so an aeon that didn't like its summoner would be weak.

Seymour's mother is an interesting case because she expresses regret for how he turned out as a result of his troubled childhood, and his obsession with power after receiving her aeon, but since she can't stop him by herself, she gives Anima to Yuna and asks her to destroy Sin to end his obsession. She doesn't ask her to fight Seymour directly . . . but you are free to summon her when you do.

I think the fayth probably have the power to reject a summoner by simply not answering their prayers to grant them an aeon, but that's all. And it's possible that a summoner might die trying to take in a fayth that was just too powerful.

I've wondered if that was what happened to Lady Ginnem, but Lulu makes it sound like it was the fiends in the cave that did her in. (Only in a brief mention, though. The pieces of her backstory are vague and hard to put together.) How she obtained Yojimbo and became an unsent and how Lulu got out of there are mysteries as well. I had to come up with a viable answer for my comic, but there really isn't one given in the game.

Father Zuke is actually now a monk at the temple in Bevelle, as revealed by some conversation options when you meet him. But I think there must be some kind of punishment or required penance if a summoner quits their pilgrimage, and it is likely that he'd be shunned by some people.

In the end Bahamut asks Yuna to free the aeons because they're tired and want to be able to rest in the Farplane, but it's possible that they also just want to be free. An interesting note: several of the aeons (Valefor, Shiva, and Anima that I've noticed, there could be more but I'd have to get a closer look) have chains of some sort incorporated into their design, indicating bonds of servitude.