Concern about the Aetherytes

[Riardon]

There are aetherytes everywhere.
I know teleportation is dangerous and taxing for the commons and they use it rarely or during an extreme emergency.
Aren't they pose a threat as well?
I mean bad guys can use it to teleport directly inside building or cities.
An army can do it as well.
Is there a safeguard for this?
I mean the threat is kinda too obvious.

[Apoptomon]

Well I guess there's the atheryte guards who could try to raise an alarm. Also, if an aetheryte location was threatened with invasion, it could be dismantled as apreventative measure like the one in the House of Fierce in Yanxia.

[Enkidoh]

Also, the risk is not actually as high as you would think - before you can teleport to a location you need to first attune to said aetheryte, which... is simply not possible for an unfriendly army (read: Garlemald). This is because teleportation requires the aethertye as a beacon to guide you through the 'aetherial sea', without that, you would get lost and trapped in it forever.

There was a spell known to the Sharlayans called Flow which bypasses aetherytes, but is considered so dangerous for obvious reasons it's acutally forbidden (this is the spell Y'shtola used to allow her and Thancred to escape from the Brass Blades at the end of 2.55... and... well... that went about as well as you would expect - Thancred ended up naked in the Dravanian Forelands and Y'shtola... was lost in the Lifestream for weeks until the Senna siblings managed to get her out, using the elementals to do so. Flow also aetherically changed both forever - Thancred has permanently lost the ability to manipulate aether (and thus cannot use magic now nor will he be able to teleport ever again), and Y'shtola is physically blind, resulting in her having to consume her own aether to 'see' through the aether, which is shortening her life as a result.

Having said that, there was one occurrence of a hostile force being deliberately teleported into a building with tragic consequences, but that was actually Ascian magic and not regular teleportation available to normal people (Lahabrea in his Thancred-suit teleported Livia and her force inside the Waking Sands, completely bypassing the Immortal Flames troops guarding it outside... and even then he effectively used himself as an aetheryte of sorts to do so.).

Either way, teleportation is not nearly as useful for transporting military forces as you might think, and that is by design.

[Kallera]

I thought there was one situation where aetheryte were used to effectively ‘kill’ by using it as a trap, shutting off the destination mid teleport and vanishing people in the blink of an eye, and that it really pissed off the Sharlayans.

I do remember it being tampered with at least once.

[MikkoAkure]

I thought there was one situation where aetheryte were used to effectively ‘kill’ by using it as a trap, shutting off the destination mid teleport and vanishing people in the blink of an eye, and that it really pissed off the Sharlayans.

I do remember it being tampered with at least once.

According to the Encyclopedia Eorzea, when Belah'dia had their civil war one side attempted to ambush the other by teleporting into their camp using the aertheryte. The ambushed side destroyed the aetheryte and 800 soldiers disappeared mid-teleport. The Sharlayans suspended the aethernet there the next year until the war was over, but it didn't seem like there were any other repercussions.

[Riardon]

According to the Encyclopedia Eorzea, when Belah'dia had their civil war one side attempted to ambush the other by teleporting into their camp using the aertheryte. The ambushed side destroyed the aetheryte and 800 soldiers disappeared mid-teleport. The Sharlayans suspended the aethernet there the next year until the war was over, but it didn't seem like there were any other repercussions.

Totally forgot this incident it's been some months since I read the book.
So aethernet is potentialy dangerous with no real safety measures in place.
The guards around an aetheryte are a joke in case an army tries to teleport.
And they can always attune to an aetheryte under a disguise (few people each time pretending random adventurers) prior to a larger planned invasion in future.
I mean you don't need all of your thousand troops do it but a smaller team (few hundreds maybe or less) could exploit an aetheryte for a subterfuge in a large city.
Aetherytes look like a major security vulnerability to me.

[Vulcwen]

The main flaw is having aetherytes in open areas, rather than walled off with a gate.. it is essentially an international port. Ul'dah's main aetheryte has been handled the best in this case. To be really secure, you'd also do the same with Aethernet shards, or don't connect the shards with the main aetheryte (if that's even possible). It is possible to travel unattuned to an aetheryte, although not many people can do so and live (the WoL has done this).

That said, given that it's possible to destroy an aetheryte mid-teleport, it's evidence that teleportation is not instant, and that there is some way to tell if people are coming.

[ObsidianFire]

Most people can not use teleportation like we do. There's a finite resource called Anima that is used up whenever someone teleports that comes back slowly. For most people, this finite resource means they can't just teleport around the realm on a whim as they might not be able to teleport back for a while. The WoL (and probably most people with the Echo and most people who are adventurers) has infinite Anima (or it regenerates so fast it might as well be infinite) so we can pretty much teleport as often as we want.

And yeah, individuals have to attune to an Aetheryte before they can teleport to it. So the concern isn't guarding the Aetheryte from people coming through the Aetheryte, but from people taking over the city the normal way.

The few times it seems we are teleporting to Aetherytes before attuning them is really a result of having access to Y'shtola. And it's not really an Aetheryte we're attuning to. It's one of the crystals on an Aethernet and we already have access to one of the other crystals on the same Aethernet. Y'shtola is boosting the aetheric signal for us which is mentioned to be very difficult to do the first time she does it (Titian Hard I think?). That part just get's cut out most of the other times it happens.

The other reason why teleporting in on an Aetheryte probably isn't done all that often for sieges is because it's tactically a very obvious thing to do. It would be a lot more surprising to take over something else before making use of teleportation. There's just so much that could go wrong logistically by sending people to an Aetheryte where it isn't known what's on the other side that I can see people writing it off almost immediately.

[Cilia]

Given aetherytes are capable of being deactivated or destroyed, I imagine aetheryte travel would be suspended in times of war. Since Garleans can't use aetherytes and the Empire is the only country any of the protagonists have been shown to be at war with, at present the risk aetheryte travel presents is... minimal.

[YianKutku]

It is possible to travel to an aetheryte you have not been attuned to, but doing so is very, very risky, with the probable result being to disappear in the Lifestream forever. The WoL does travel to unattuned aetherytes a few times, but we have the Scions to help us in every case (Y'shtola in the MSQ, Urianger in Coils).

If you don't care about the risks, however, then you can send people through the aetherytes anyway and write it off as acceptable losses.

This is why there is a guard at the Rhalgr's Reach aetheryte, and why the Doman House of the Fierce aetheryte was disabled when we first arrive there. The Rhalgr's Reach aetheryte guard isn't there to defend against enemies who teleport there: he's supposed to destroy or disable the aetheryte and cut off that route. The House of the Fierce aetheryte was disabled because the Domans were worried about Zenos sending troops through it during the Doman rebellion.

Pureblood Garleans cannot use aetherytes, but since it's a huge risk anyway, they'll be sending conscripts.