Will Coerthas ever return to normal?

I'll second King, here. Coerthas in 1.0 seemed to me more like a snowless tundra than anything rather than sweeping, warm plains. The snow is actually more likely an imbalance of water aether that is freezing once it hits the already-frigid temperatures. Or, rather, a re-balancing of water aether that was disrupted by Dalamud and the Crystal Tower. I'd wager that Coerthas was always cold, and even colder pre-Allagan meddling.

That being said, though, I dearly, dearly miss 1.0 Coerthas. Those bleak plains were some of my favorite for exploring (inb4 THEY ALL LOOKED THE SAME LOLOLOL).

I could see that Ishgard might do like a reclamation project - Look at the abandoned fortress north of town. I could see a new dungeon crawl where they're trying to clean it up much like The Lost City of Andapor(HM) and Gridania's efforts to reclaim it - It's a tactical stronghold and could be pivotal in dealing with a Garlean attack.

There's also something that's been bugging me - there's a large ship frozen in the middle of the lake - The North Star, and what bothers me is that it's just... sitting there, all immaculate and frozen in the lake. I could see them trying to either reclaim it or turn it into some kind of raid or new dungeon. Could be some time-lost precious cargo and the ship happens to be carrying it, only to find that something else lurks below the levels of the ship.

Or they might SOMEHOW breathe life into the lake once more, but somehow keep the snowy tundra intact.

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Originally Posted by Canadane

When you have a significant gravitational pull suddenly encompass your planetary mass instead, you can expect some weather changes to be the least of your issues.

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On that note, I'm surprised we haven't heard of any further reaching effects of Dalamud's fall. A moon fell within the atmosphere before exploding into a billion pieces and ceasing to exist. If the gravitational pull of the moon and the sun dictate the tides of the planet, why did we not hear of any crazy tsunamis or similar disasters? Strictly speaking, a large portion of Limsa should have undergone dramatic changes as well (aside from the apparent shrapnel damage), not to mention what ever catastrophes occurred across the sea. I feel for whatever island nations might be on Hydaelyn, because they would have probably been utterly destroyed and drowned as a result of such an event ... which would have made for a pretty cool dungeon or something.

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Originally Posted by Februs

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Aside from such consequences usually not glossed over/not thought of in much of fiction, the reasoning for why it isn't as bad as it should be is probably Allagan related. They put the thing up there, wouldn't surprise me if the reasoning goes that (with the help of the Crystal Tower) they were able to minimize the effect of the planet suddenly having two moons instead of one and its return ultimately ended up being less damaging as far as climate goes because of it.

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Originally Posted by Februs

On that note, I'm surprised we haven't heard of any further reaching effects of Dalamud's fall.

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I think part of that goes back to something I mentioned in another thread - I think part of the event was essentially a redistribution of the massive amounts of aether in play following Louisoix's attempt at resealing Bahamut and his subsequent actions as Phoenix.

There are references to the land being healed, at least partially, as well as changed in unexpected ways...which could certainly be attributed to aether being poured back into the land.

Also, Dalamud was very much the lesser moon - it's large, but it's more like a large asteroid (you could probably extrapolate a rough estimate of the size via Bahamut's hand from T5, actually...I've heard someone did and put Bahamut at around 1.9km tall, which puts Dalamud between 5km and 10km in diameter...our own moon is 3,474km in diameter, for reference) than a full fledged moon...and since Eorzea's main big moon is still in the sky, I'd bet that's why you didn't hear much in the way of the expected natural disasters that would of course follow such a moon descending and then disappearing.

You need to remember as well that Dalamud was incredibly small. We couldn't even see it in the sky until they pointed it out to us. So like Celie said there is no way it could have had any effect on magnetism or weather. I think it would be safe to think of it more like a weather or communications satellite in the way it would effect the atmosphere

Here is a reference for how we saw Dalamud through the stages of v1, as you can see it was small and waaaay out there.

http://i.imgur.com/YRUEAX0.jpg

There's one way we can see it in its original state. Just wait a few years, because there's one trope that never fails to show up eventually: TIME TRAVEL!!!! :D TO THE DELOREAN! Or Atomos.... Whatever.

Yeah, Dalamud was WAY too small to have any effect on weather or tides just from its gravitational pull alone. However, it's possible that one of its functions up there was to keep Coerthas warm, for some unknown Allagan reason. Once it stopped performing that function, Coerthas cooled off again.

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Originally Posted by LineageRazor

Yeah, Dalamud was WAY too small to have any effect on weather or tides just from its gravitational pull alone. However, it's possible that one of its functions up there was to keep Coerthas warm, for some unknown Allagan reason. Once it stopped performing that function, Coerthas cooled off again.

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Wouldn't that suggest a more gradual process to the cooling as the region lost the heat? From the accounts that we do have, it was a sudden shift more like a snap freeze.

There's also how Dalamud was described as essentially dormant until Nael van Darnus and crew managed to awaken it via the Meteor project...plus how it was designed as an additional power source for the Crystal Tower. Not sure they would also make it a source of generating heat in the Coerthas region (which would probably take additional Allagan technology in the area...and the only Allagan tech I've heard of in the area are the pieces of Dalamud that landed there.

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Originally Posted by Canadane

When you have a significant gravitational pull suddenly encompass your planetary mass instead, you can expect some weather changes to be the least of your issues.
One could derive that Corethas was chilly before Dalamud was placed up there, and it's returned to it's natural state after many thousands of years.

I don't expect us to be seeing the greenlands anymore there. :(

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I always thought Coerthas was meant to be a mirror of the Scottish highlands. Freezing and plenty of snow in winter, with cooler, moderate temperatures the rest of the year.