“Jongleur’s X” is the name of a famous mathematical paradox that has circulated for centuries among the learned folk of Eorzea, in various forms. Its name comes from the fact that the most widely-cited description of the paradox was originally found in an anonymous dancing manual dating back to one of the earlier Ul’dahn dynastic courts, where it was proposed as an impossible juggling routine in which fifteen jongleurs of varying skill would juggle harmless scarves and deadly knives. The inclusion of Jongleur’s X in the manual is thought by most scholars to be an erudite joke and is popularly attributed to Lalamu Lamu, a poet-philosopher of the time whose sense of humor is well known.
The demon Ferdiad’s favorite trick, when toying with mortals, is an aether-warping glyph that disrupts a person’s sense of balance and direction so suddenly and violently that the victim is overwhelmed by nausea and panic, often causing themselves injury before the effect vanishes as swiftly as it came on. Any learned individual subjected to this spell, in the unlikely event they could recall what it looked like, would recognize it as a solved form of Jongleur’s X.
The resemblance between the demon’s magic and the complex geometric formulae used by arcanists raises many troubling questions.
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