Shard question

[Jandor]

So Hydaelyn seems to exist in traditional space, Omega and Midgard both popped over from other planets.

So my question is this; if you got in a spaceship on the source, and your friend got in a spaceship on the 1st, and you both set off to the Hydaelyn systems version of Mars, would you be able to meet up on the surface of the other world?

[Rongway]

This gets asked now and then, but even the devs don't have a straight answer to this at the moment, in part because the universe hasn't needed an answer to this yet. Whether the sundering was localized to Hydaelyn or extended to other planets is uncertain.

[MrThinker]

In short, wait for Shadowbringers to release, play through the MSQ, and if it hasn't been answered by then, return to this thread.

Though my personal opinion is that it should be localised just because the devs open themselves up to a whole can of worms and greater plothole potential otherwise.

[Mansion]

Also it would not be surprising that as Shards being copies of the source, they are limited in that "dimension".
I mean, if space travel was a thing in FFXIV (like we humans do, not transcendental beings like Midgar or Omega), and if it existed on the First, I'd assume that they could not get beyond a certain point because they only exist thanks to Hydealyn's doing.
So watching the stars and planets from any shard would show the actual stars and planets (the Universe around Hydealyn), but it would not possible to access them because shards are like bundled in pocket dimensions? (That actually solves the lore for AST in 5.0 when they might look at the stars from the First. We might want to look carefully at thos job quests)
Or it would be a one way : you get out of pocket dimension of X shard, and if you return, you end up going to the Source (because that's the one that physically exists in the Universe) ?

[SannaR]

My thinking on this is the answer is it was a localized thing only though how creating extra mass and matter didn't cause any ripple effects of moving other planets out of alignment is beyond me. What's also not known is if you can see any of the remaining shards orbiting the source or not or if they're invisible and they just create a huge blackness to on lookers around the Source.

[Iscah]

(That actually solves the lore for AST in 5.0 when they might look at the stars from the First. We might want to look carefully at thos job quests)

That shouldn't be an issue either way. If the shards are entirely split universes, they're still copies of the Source and all the stars will still be in the same places.

12,000 years isn't a lot on an astronomical timescale, and I don't think there's much scope for random variation, at least regarding what the night sky will look like (but you'd have to confirm that with an astronomer). The stars will continue on the same courses according to gravity and motion.

My thinking on this is the answer is it was a localized thing only though how creating extra mass and matter didn't cause any ripple effects of moving other planets out of alignment is beyond me. What's also not known is if you can see any of the remaining shards orbiting the source or not or if they're invisible and they just create a huge blackness to on lookers around the Source.

I don't think they're physically in the Source dimension though. No extra mass was created there, and you can never physically see from one to the other. It's more like reality itself has split into multiple threads, and each is equally real and alone from its own perspective.

Though if the split is localised, I would guess that maybe the Source is the only one you could actually arrive on if you travelled from elsewhere in that universe.

[LineageRazor]

Also, be very careful in your assumption that the "Hydaelyn system" looks anything like a real-life star-with-orbiting-planets would. This is a fantasy universe, and there might not be anything like a "solar system" at all. Rather than being a tiny speck orbiting an enormous ball of nuclear fusion, it's entirely possible that the planet IS the center in this model, with a small sun orbiting around it to provide light, an object similar in size and motion to the moon, but much brighter and warmer. Certainly, individuals in the game are fond of referring to the planets themselves as "stars".

There may well be no other planets in the solar system, because there's no system for them to be in - or if they do exist, they could be even tinier objects rotating around Hydaelyn!

[ObsidianFire]

Yeah... We see Hydaelyn (who is clearly the planet) being referred to as a "star" by individuals who call the planet they came from a "star" too. And life on Hydaelyn seems to come from Hydaelyn herself. Although... the dragons know that the sun is a ball of plasma in space, so there is that. They also are very sure that the sun is not alive.

The best way to think of it (I've found) is that Hydaelyn, the Source and the Shards all share the same 4D space. They all have the same sky, the same passage of time, etc. What they aren't is on the same "phase" or "wavelength" of reality or each other. The Source seems to be in the same "phase" as the rest of reality is, probably because it is the thing the rest of the Shards are copies of. The Source is where beings who are not from Hydaelyn, but from other planets/stars end up.

[Astarotha]

thats actually how i see the shards, all of them occupying the same 'location' in space but phased in such a way they have 'effects' that can be felt but dont experience the same events and we feel them more because we are the anchor point

[SannaR]

I mean yes they're obviously vibrating and at a different wavelength so that you can't see it staring out into space just like all the different earths in the Marvel/DC universes or in the TV show Sliders aren't taking up the same exact same space. She still created extra stuff so that stuff has to displace something. We don't know if other world travelers even saw them or can see them. If they can be seen from someone or something coming into our system do they ripple occasionally? Would it be like occasionally spotting a cloaked Klingon bird of prey where you're not sure you saw something for a second?