Fenrir... (Spoiler heavy.)

[Atomos]

One of my favourite Eidolons of the game, but I always wondered... when you summon him:

Spoiler

It always shows the moon of Terra in the background, and yet not the moon of Gaia.

Surely an Eidolon from a tribe of Gaia would appear howling at his own planets moon, but in both Terrestrial Rage and Millennial Decay Terra's red moon appears. Maybe this is a hint at the mixture of cultures carried on from Terra to Gaia that may have been found by some of the ealier Gaian tribes and incorporated into their own folk lore.

Since Arc is presumably a Terran summon, both from the fact that it appeared in Oeilvert to protect the Gulug stone which leads you to yet another Terran landmark, it's obvious that Terra at one point had/has always had Eidolons of its own, but they withered with the crystals decay. But as Ozma is also speculated to be a 'forgotten' Eidolon, and so it has lost its form, then surely if there are no longer any Terrans left to 'worship' or spread news of Ark then will it at some stage/should it have suffered the same fate as Ozma? Or is Ark also integrated into Gaian lore somewhere which is keeping its memory and form alive?

Little things like this make me wish they brought out a whole book or related about the folklore of FFIX and the Eidolons etc. I know most of this is all based on speculation of many things but as something I find very interesting in this game, I wanted to know other peoples opinions on the matter.

 

[Dionysos]

This is a very interesting thing to point out. Thank you.

Spoiler

It hadn’t occurred to me that it was the Red Moon of Terra that we were seeing behind Fenrir in both of his summon animations. There is likely some significance for including the Red Moon both times, whether they intended to make that a statement about the planet merger, or perhaps they felt the colour suited Fenrir better.

The inclusion of a moon in general would just be because he is a wolf. We’re used to seeing wolves howl at the moon, and with the moon having special associations with wolves, lupine beasts, and lycanthropes. So it makes sense that they would choose a moon for Fenrir to howl in front of. But, if they were just to include ‘any old moon’, it would have made sense to have included a moon more closely resembling Gaia’s Blue Moon (i.e if they happened to forget about the twin moons and just included 'the Moon' as we see in our own sky, it would still more closely resemble the Blue Moon). So the Red Moon was obviously at the very least a conscious stylistic choice.

Perhaps Fenrir is an eidolon from Terra’s world. His fur is particularly ‘alien’ looking. This doesn’t mean anything, since there are monsters of all sorts of shapes and colours stomping about on any FF planet. But he doesn’t look like a typical beastly hound. Perhaps the far eastern artistic design elements have crept in here. Nevertheless, the colour scheme for the wolf is similar to that of the Terran landscape when the player visits it.

Regardless of whether Fenrir is a Terran eidolon or not, he may still represent a response to the merger. The symbolism with Terra’s Red Moon may seem to fit with the Nordic concept of Ragnarok. For one, it is more fiery and destructive-looking, contrasted to the calm and pure (and brighter) Blue Moon.
Secondly, perhaps in this universe the coming of the Red Moon was akin to the coming of Ragnarok, or as a symbol of the approach of a changed and troubled future and the cataclysmic end of the known world. This is thus fitting for a backdrop to Fenrir.

However, I personally find the FFIX universe’s Fenrir to be a softer, pet-like hound when compared to the fierce and savage bringer of destruction from Norse mythology and most other popular culture depictions. With Fenrir being a ‘friendly’ in the FFIX universe, perhaps instead the Red Moon serves as a celestial reminder of the changing world, with Gaia’s struggle to retain its identity, and Terra’s struggle to assimilate Gaia and retain its lifeforce, and as a result of / during the process of which, there is much destruction, a la Ragnarok

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