A question regarding travel as it pertains to the story...

Just consider it to be timey-wimey wibbly wobbly stuff.

Case in point: by all rights, we've spent a good 5-8 years in Eorzea, but the Twins are still 16.

(The Simpsons kids are still in school after, what, 30 years?)

"How did they do that?" is to be explained as "they got carried with the plot".

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Originally Posted by MoofiaBossVal

My understanding is that whenever Hien and his retinue go to Eorzea, they are flying on the Yol. So he can only bring a small number of elites.

That begs the question: how long does it take for them to travel from Yanxia to Ala Mhigo? It appears that the 4.4 and 4.5 MSQ takes place over the course of a few days. Even if Hien had a 1 day headstart, he's still flying across the continent on a bird very quickly. Either the birds can travel at jet speed, or Aldenard isn't really a huge continent and the distance isn't that great. But didn't the boat trip from Limsa to Hingashi take a month? In which case the birds would have to be flying at jet speeds, or Hien had a REALLY LONG headstart, and the MSQ took place over weeks.

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Flying from Doma to Eorzea would mean either flying over open ocean, or over Garlean territory. The former is implausible due to the time, distance, and need to let the birds rest; the latter is implausible because it's hostile territory occupied by the world's biggest airship fleet.

Also, remember that Hien was present for the final battle for Ala Mhigo. He and Yugiri could've teleported over. Of course, then we have to question how he got there that time, especially without anybody else knowing he was coming, just in time for a Big Damn Heroes moment, but that's just pure dramatic timing.

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Originally Posted by MoofiaBossVal

But didn't the boat trip from Limsa to Hingashi take a month? In which case the birds would have to be flying at jet speeds, or Hien had a REALLY LONG headstart, and the MSQ took place over weeks.

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Encyclopedia Eorzea Vol. 1 states that the fastest merchant vessels can travel from Limsa to Hingashi in two months assuming the weather is fine (I believe, I recently moved and my copy of EE is sitting in a box somewhere so I'm going off memory of the last time a discussion on Stormblood's boat rides got brought up on Reddit). The 4.0 MSQ "Not Without Incident" mentions that Carvallain's ship has also been retrofitted with a Garlean ceruleum engine so that probably helps him out quite a bit when the weather sucks. Either way, traveling from Limsa to Hingashi takes a while. We travel by boat there and back in the 4.0 MSQ, and I'm assuming Y'shtola was stuck traveling there by boat in the 4.4 MSQ "Emissary of the Dawn" when she goes to catalogue information on Tsukuyomi and deal with Seiryu's Wall. That's a hell of a lot of time spent traveling by boat in Stormblood, at least six months if we assume the weather cooperated on all three trips and that everyone teleported back to Ala Mhigo in the 4.4 MSQ "The Call". I can only assume the Yol are actually Valstrax in disguise and we got a defective one without jet engine wings because otherwise it would've taken a long time for Hien and friends to fly over.

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It appears that the 4.4 and 4.5 MSQ takes place over the course of a few days.

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It's actually quite deceptive, because they send Alphinaud and (presumably) Tataru back to Eorzea by boat, and they seem to both be back by the end of 4.56.

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That's a hell of a lot of time spent traveling by boat in Stormblood,

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That's not even the half of it.

Okay, so we start out traveling to Hingashi aboard the Misery, that's a two month trip right there. But, Carvallain mentions both in the MSQ and in ambient dialog that he actually took a round trip back to Eorzea, then back to Hingashi, to pick the Scions up again. Meaning, they were actually in the Far East for about four months before having another two month trip. Already, this is eight months worth of time.

Next we have the patch content, and it gets even crazier. First, it's implied that Alphinaud and Alisaie travel back to the East by ship, because they say they don't have time to return to Eorzea following the setup of the meeting with the Garleans. That could be two more months, but regardless we need to tack on another two for the return of the Doman refugees from Revenant's Toll, as they explicitly take a ship, and this travel is directly bookended by the MSQ, and it happens before 5.4. Then, of course, we have Y'shtola stating that she's taking a ship to the Far East, so again that's two more months.

For a period of time here, they tend to get very willy-nilly with travel between the two areas, as in multiple cases you have people going back and forth without directly saying how they went about it. Specifically Alisaie, Lyse, and Y'shtola when she goes back. Take that as you will, we have no explanation. However as stated above Alphinaud at least is shipped back to Eorzea by boat, and he arrives before 5.0.

So even if we only account for travel directly related to the MSQ, we have at least fourteen months worth of boatrides in Stormblood. It's really much more extreme when you consider alternative content like all the job questlines which frequently had characters go between the continents, often explicitly by boat, but it's conceivable that many of those trips could be overlapping so it's not that relevant in terms of the counting.

All in all travel time (never mind the overall passage of time) is an absurd rabbit hole. I actually expect this to get more extreme over time, because if Thancred goes anywhere we can pretty much be assured it was a trip rather than a teleportation.

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Originally Posted by TheMightyMollusk

Flying from Doma to Eorzea would mean either flying over open ocean, or over Garlean territory. The former is implausible due to the time, distance, and need to let the birds rest; the latter is implausible because it's hostile territory occupied by the world's biggest airship fleet.

Also, remember that Hien was present for the final battle for Ala Mhigo. He and Yugiri could've teleported over. Of course, then we have to question how he got there that time, especially without anybody else knowing he was coming, just in time for a Big Damn Heroes moment, but that's just pure dramatic timing.

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I believe that for the battle of Ala Mhigo, they actually mentioned at some point that Hien and his retinue immediately left on their asinine little birds after they went to Kugane to see the Scions off and realised that had already started their return to Eorzea. Granted I haven't been able to find a citation in the quest dialogue, and am not nearly invested enough in my claim at this time to sit through all the cutscenes so take it as you will.

Teleportation isn't actually all that useful for an army. First, it would require every solder to already be attuned to the nearest aetheryte. Second, an army isn't just soldiers. It's also wagons full of food and weapons and supplies, materials for building and maintaining camps, chocobos and stables to house them, and a million other things. Being limited to just yourself and whatever you're carrying means teleportation is only useful on a small, personal scale. Adventurers setting out on their own, a business trip to Limsa, day tripping the city for the Starlight festival, etc. It's mostly worthless in large scale settings like armies because the logistics don't allow it.

Also, there is another far more potentially dangerous reason why aetherytes are not used to send troops quickly to a battlefield, and that's because it's far too easy to use the aetheryte as a deadly trap. I understand the lorebook mentions an incident that occured back during the Ul'dah-Sil'dih War where an army was actually slaughtered instantly by attempting to teleport to an aetheryte that was destroyed by the enemy mid-teleport, thus causing those teleporting to it at the time to literally disappear in the blink of an eye, never to be seen again (essentially those affected were for all intents and purposes killed by the teleport as they're then lost in the Lifestream where their dematerialized bodies and souls would be drawn into the river of aether and diffuse back into it without the aetheryte to guide them to their destination). Apparently this greatly annoyed the Sharalyans who suspended the aetheryte service at that particular location from then on but nothing further really came of it.

Either way, no doubt this incident serves as a cautionary tale to modern armies as to just how deadly easy it is to use an aetheryte against you (this is one of the reasons why aetheryte camps are usually heavily guarded by troops of the revelant citystate, to stop sabotage of the aetheryte and thus keep those teleporting safe - collecting teleportation tolls from those using it is the other reason).

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Originally Posted by TheMightyMollusk

Flying from Doma to Eorzea would mean either flying over open ocean, or over Garlean territory. The former is implausible due to the time, distance, and need to let the birds rest; the latter is implausible because it's hostile territory occupied by the world's biggest airship fleet.

Also, remember that Hien was present for the final battle for Ala Mhigo. He and Yugiri could've teleported over. Of course, then we have to question how he got there that time, especially without anybody else knowing he was coming, just in time for a Big Damn Heroes moment, but that's just pure dramatic timing.

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You have to attuned to an aetheryte beforehand to travel to it.

Hien was certainly never in Ala Mhigo before his hero moment at the end of 4.0. Therefore, the only way he could have gotten there would have been flying mount (which is what he rides in on).

As for resting places along the way, he could have landed on islands and along the coasts of Ilsabard along the way. With a force that small and with the speed and agility of the Yol mounts, and the fact that he is bringing ninjas, he could pretty easily dodge the Garleans.

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Originally Posted by Wyssahtyn

I believe that for the battle of Ala Mhigo, they actually mentioned at some point that Hien and his retinue immediately left on their asinine little birds after they went to Kugane to see the Scions off and realised that had already started their return to Eorzea. Granted I haven't been able to find a citation in the quest dialogue, and am not nearly invested enough in my claim at this time to sit through all the cutscenes so take it as you will.

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Those birds travel way faster than any ship. Even if Hien had to stop and rest, he should be outspeeding the Scions. And Hien had a heart start? What was he doing along the way then? What, fighting Garlean outposts and liberating small villages?

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Originally Posted by Veloran

All in all travel time (never mind the overall passage of time) is an absurd rabbit hole. I actually expect this to get more extreme over time, because if Thancred goes anywhere we can pretty much be assured it was a trip rather than a teleportation.

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Huh, that reminds me.

At the beginning of Shadowbringers 5.0, the WoL leaves the Source for the First.

Tataru and Krile track down Estinien (who is in Kugane) and get him to fill in for the WoL while the WoL is away. So that's a two months boat ride from Limsa to Kugane.

Estinien travels from Kugane to Radz-at-Han, a city on the Thavnairan peninsula on the southern coast of Ilsabard. He then travels ALL THE WAY UP to Garlemald. Well actually he was raiding a bunch of Black Rose facilities before he bumped into Gaius and they decided to both visit the Emperor.

There is no indication that Estinien is using a mount to travel, so presumably he is doing this all on foot. Well, Estinien is a dragoon, so he could super jump, but we never see dragoons doing that for long distance travel, and he's traveling with Gaius and Severa and Valdaeulin anyway so he can't super jump ahead and leave them behind. So that's a pretty long walk!

If you draw a straight line from Thavnair to Garlemald, it's about half the distance from Limsa to Kugane. If it took a ship two months to go from Limsa to Kugane (a ship which is travelling far faster than a man on foot, and is travelling 24/7, whereas people on foot have to stop to eat and rest), then who knows how long Estinien and Gaius were travelling. It'd have to be several months at least. And who knows how long it would have taken Estinien to get from Garlemald to Mor Dhona. So if we go by travel time, ShB 5.0 through 5.1 could have taken at least half a year (LOL Zenos sat in a chair doing nothing for 6 months! He should have tried figuring out how to pursue the WoL to the First, or he should have killed time by travelling the world looking for powerful beings like Hraesvelgr and Tiamat and the dragons in Meracydia to fight).

And yet, the Shadowbringers MSQ and cutscenes imply that the whole story of 5.0-5.1 happens over a few weeks. Estinien's journey would only be possible if they were using a flying mount or an airship to zip everywhere super fast.

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Originally Posted by Veloran

I actually expect this to get more extreme over time, because if Thancred goes anywhere we can pretty much be assured it was a trip rather than a teleportation.

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Like the several times he went to Garlemald, its capital, within like one patch lol

I could be misremembering because it's been a long time, but I believe it was explained that people with the echo can teleport and everyone else can't.

So, everyone else is taking the long way, every time. Which is why they "journey with us" they are always asking to meet us at certain locations, because the WOL travels differently and it conveniently fits the quest structure programed to the game.