Demons, Heaven, Hell and parallel universes

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Originally Posted by PorxiesRCute

People keep saying they "killed the mystery" of the world but personally I like learning things about the cosmology of a world. I think it is cool and fun.

And there are still plenty of things we don't know. What about other planets -- Meteion only visited a finite number of worlds and could not have seen them all; for example, what about Ultima the High Seraph, where did she come from and what is she?

What about the other reflections we haven't seen? Hell, what about the rest of the Ninth? What's going on there?

What came *before* the Ancients? Were they always immortal? Was their world always a "perfect paradise"? What life came before them?

Aside from Allag, they've only scratched the surface on the bygone civilizations on the Source. And there's still half a world we have yet to see.

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Heck one thing I don't recall being touched on is what happens to the memories of those that do return to the aetherial sea. We know that they are washed away in a process that's slower than what happens in Origenics. That some memories can even be etched onto a soul. Yet since there are no regulators to capture said memories to then send them to somewhere else once separated from the soul what happens to all of that aether that makes up the memories from that soul's last lifetime? Not that those types of questions fall under what the op is asking about.

Okay I'm confused here...
First someone wonders why I bring up a multiverse and then goes on to say that there are multiple universes... which is exactly what a multiverse is.
Then I'm suddenly wanting there to be demons and am focussing on demons, when I mentioned them once in one out of five paragraphs.

Where do you gues pull those interpretations from?

I just wanted to have a little discussions on whether people think there are parallel universes (i.e. a multiverse) beyond the reflections. Star Trek-style mirror universe, D&D-style alignment-themed heavens and hells/abysses, christian heaven and hell, cthulu or warhammer 40k-style horror dimensions... doesn't really matter. I did not express any wants in this regard, because I don't have any... beyond wanting to know what is already there, to draw conclusions from and what those facts could potentially lead to, and having a ltitle silly fun speculation beyond that.

With how reflection travel works, it's entirely possible that mutliple cross-over events are connected to differrent times of the same reflection, so even there being more crossover events, than there are still existing reflections is in itself no proof that there are any full-on parallel dimensions (though no proof against it either). Also each reflection probably has the same number of continents than the Source, so there's that too.
Hmm... that being said, do you think it's possible to time-travel into reflections that no longer exist? Because if it is, that would open up all 13 relfections to be the place of cross-over events, even a pre-flooded Thirteenth.

To go a bit more specific into Nier Automata: One of the game endings is the aliens shooting an information capsule out into the cosmos, with 9S being able to decide whether he goes with it. The Nier raid in FF14 could very well happen, because Aetherys happened to be in the path of this arc and some of the inhabitants, which might include 9S and some kind of replica of 2B, could then have hopped onto the planet. Or they could have fully settled another, nearby planet and it was 2P and her "rebels" or what you want to call them, who hopped over to Aetherys, with 2B and 9S in pursuit. With them being fully artificial beings, unlike the Omicrons, who were organics transitioned into artificial bodies (maybe with some left over organic bits, like the brain in there?), they might well have been overlooked, or immune to Meteions "mercies."

I think it's pretty clear that other universes do exist; the Interdimensional Rift connects to the other Finals Fantasy, and like you said, there's the Nier crossover, not to mention Monster Hunter, Dragon Quest, GARO, Yokai Watch... I don't see why one couldn't say that, idk, Supernatural or some other franchise with a Chrisitian-style afterlife also exists in that multiverse. It will probably never be confirmed or denied, because it's mostly Western franchises that do that, and Final Fantasy usually crosses over with other Japanese media. (Except Fall Guys. Actually, somebody's probably written up a whole theory about what sort of cosmology and afterlife exist in Fall Guys' universe...)

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Hmm... that being said, do you think it's possible to time-travel into reflections that no longer exist? Because if it is, that would open up all 13 relfections to be the place of cross-over events, even a pre-flooded Thirteenth.

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You'd probably have to travel back in time on the Source and then cross over into the other reflection, but I don't see why not. Crossover events usually happen in the Big Three city-states, though. Unless you're suggesting that one of those other reflections would be the home of that crossover event, but I don't think that's likely; the reflections are all their own worlds, they're not going to shoehorn in some totally different universe's story and cosmology.

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Originally Posted by No_Nick_Needed

Okay I'm confused here...
First someone wonders why I bring up a multiverse and then goes on to say that there are multiple universes... which is exactly what a multiverse is.
Then I'm suddenly wanting there to be demons and am focussing on demons, when I mentioned them once in one out of five paragraphs.

Where do you gues pull those interpretations from?

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They are literally the very first word in your thread title, and take up a weird amount of your original post for not being your actual focus. If they weren't something you're asking about, you maybe should've done an edit pass on your original post.

But okay, let's talk alternate universes:

Yes, there's a multiverse, but it's eminently quantifiable. On a cosmologically close scale to the Source, we have the shards; somewhere further out than that, we have a multiverse covered by other Final Fantasies, including Dissidia. There is not a universe out there where up is down and cats is dogs (unless FFXVII gets real weird), but there is a universe where Quina exists. Spinoffs and side games also exist in this space, going by Ace being in Dissidia NT, so it's not completely out of the picture for a FFXIV character to turn up in the universe of Mystic Quest, if for some reason someone wanted that. The hiccup here is, of all things, the Dragon Quest collab, which implies that somewhere in this multiverse is a world with the Brickmen, but it's kinda hard to read that as signs for the future. It might not be that hard, though; it makes complete sense that a Dragon Quest world is somewhere in a weird corner of the FF multiverse.

And yes, it's possible to travel to the past of a shard, including to one that doesn't exist; this happened in the main story, this is how the Crystal Tower got to the First. However, this is not only extremely difficult--time travel and shard travel are fundamentally different systems, so you basically need to get two different machines to work together for it, as explained in the Twinning--it's also a phenomenally bad idea in 99% of cases, as to put short, it's in no way worth it unless the world you're escaping and probably never getting back to is doomed.

And yes, as Porxies points out, it's an absurdly unlikely thing to happen for the sake of an event as most of these are, because the events are set up in ARR zones so as many players as possible can participate.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

it's not completely out of the picture for a FFXIV character to turn up in the universe of Mystic Quest, if for some reason someone wanted that.

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Four words: Mystic Quest Orchestrion Rolls.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

There is not a universe out there where up is down and cats is dogs (unless FFXVII gets real weird), but there is a universe where Quina exists.

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To my knowledge there's nothing about cats and dogs, but there are the moogles in FF8 and 12. In the former they start out as giant mole-people and evolve into cute and cuddly things that look a little werewolf-ish. And in FF12 they are winged bunnies instead of the winged teddy bears they are in most FF games. ;)

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

And yes, it's possible to travel to the past of a shard, including to one that doesn't exist; this happened in the main story, this is how the Crystal Tower got to the First.

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Oh right... G'Raha and the ironworks did send the tower back, after the 8th calamity, which would have consumed the First. Somehow I never made that connection. Good point.

As for the difficulty of time and rift travel... that certainly used to be true, but between Electrope, Azem's key, the gate to the Golden City and the Alexandrians being able to do a localized "mini-rejoining," which I for one would have considered entirely impossible before Dawntrail, there are definitely new possibilities now.

Speaking of the realm fusuion... I wonder if that could be used as a way to do a full rejoining, but without the massive casualties that the Ascian way entails, by doing it in many small steps. Imagine if you could merge a part of the First into some uninhabited desert on the Source, then evacutate the people brought over into the Source, and do it again in the same spot, rinse and repeat until all parts of the First have been brought over, or at least all sentient beings at any rate. Well... the First might be a bad example, since it is in recovery, but if there's a reflection that's about to collapse, and become another horror show like the Void, this could be done to evacuate the survivors into the Source.

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Originally Posted by No_Nick_Needed

Speaking of the realm fusuion... I wonder if that could be used as a way to do a full rejoining, but without the massive casualties that the Ascian way entails, by doing it in many small steps.

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So did you notice that this technique was only ever framed as, and used as, a tool for invasion and conquest? That there was no possible 'positive' use of this ability, because it was always being used to enforce one world's existence over another?

Maybe think about that fact before deciding that you could totally use it to do a 'good Rejoining' by displacing the entire population of a planet. And for what? At best this is a hyper-specific evacuation plan... that would actually only serve to mangle the Source as you start doing these cut-rate micro-rejoinings; notice that Heritage Found is really terrible ecologically. That escape plan also gives up on a hope for recovery that I think is pretty core to FFXIV's outlook: that things can be made better.

And instead trying to approach it as a Rejoining itself is actually worse; nobody wants a Rejoining. The only people who were ever pushing for that were a bunch of nostalgic ghost wizards that are all dead now. And even their approach doesn't work here; even if you do buy into 'more soul equals more better', a Rejoining that somehow doesn't kill anyone wouldn't even do that, because then no souls are being rejoined.


In short: Bad idea.

The whole thing started with the Milala and was only later corrupted and refined by Preservation, but even if we ignroe this and just look at real fusion itself, it's original intended purpose still does not make it inherently evil and impossible to use for good.

The Garlean war machina were developed to conquer and subjugate the world and yet we and others used some of them to fight back agains the Garleans, and later the Garleans used their makina to safe people from blasphemies.
There's also a good chance that airships in general were first and foremost developed as military vessels by Garlemald and yet we all love the Enterprise and nobody would consider her evil.
We used parts of Dalamud to upgrade the engines of the Ragnarok, so we could get to Ultima Thule.
Omega was designed to wipe out other civilizations, and yet we didn't only use it fight Shinryuu to a stand-still, but eventually even managed to turn it around into... well, at least a neutral, non-hostile party, if not exactly a friend or ally.

Again I did not decide anything, I asked a question. Is is possible? Is there a scenario, where it makes sense?
Obviously it should not be done, just because it can be done and would only be a last resort, if all attempt to stablilize the shard in question fail.

There's also the Void and the First to consider. We already had one instance of pulling light aether from one to send to the other, so we already have a kind of proof of concept of dumping one's excess aether into the other is possible and having apparently a positive effect on both. Realm fusion might be a way to do this in a way that more directly connects the two reflections, without the complication of having to utilize the Tower of Babil, the Crystal Tower and the seals that once held Zodiark, to keep an accidental void-sent incursion from happening.
Again, I'm not necessarily saying it can or should be done, but I think it's worth thinking about, or at least fun to speculate a little bit.

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Originally Posted by No_Nick_Needed

Again I did not decide anything, I asked a question. Is is possible? Is there a scenario, where it makes sense?
Obviously it should not be done, just because it can be done and would only be a last resort, if all attempt to stablilize the shard in question fail.

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With the Ascians gone and the past 2 world hopper threats put down, there's no scenario where needing to stabilize a shard or escape from a calamity would actually occur unless the writers invent something new and I'd hope they would try not to retread the same plotlines yet again.

Rejoinings are an act of destruction and even if you did the theoretical "safe" route, teleporting whole populations of people into the Source causes more problems if Alexandria is anything to go by.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

... [T]eleporting whole populations of people into the Source causes more problems if Alexandria is anything to go by.

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The real problem with interdimensional fusion isn't really the displacement of people, but that it brings along the environment from the area fused. Theoretically if you fused an area from a more environmentally healthy and aetherically balanced world (as opposed to the lightning oversaturated hellscape the Ninth apparently became) it wouldn't have the sort of impact Alexandria did on Yyasulani - you'd still wind up with a load of temporo-spatially displaced people and alien structures, which would still wreak environmental chaos on wherever they fused onto, but the people themselves aren't the problem.

Still not a great idea.