Saving the Void? (Time travel) - future expansion idea?

I'm saying going full Ancient, whether the WoL changes form or not, is endgame possibly. No more Final Fantasy XIV after that, at least no more story.

It's only one way the story could go....Hydaelyn can fight Zodiark too. Or fuse with it.

Of course they could well introduce a bigger bad than Zodiark and the Rejoining... Like what threat was it that created the sound that threw off the creation magic of the Ancients in the first place? That seems a fact worth knowing. The source of that might still be out there.

Maybe Zenos brainjacked the Crystal Tower against all lore and restored its time travel and went back and disrupted their magic so he'd have monsters to fight!

No, but really, please don't let it be that.

There's a major issue with the concept of "regaining our lost soul fragments" - they're other people.

We could rejoin with Ardbert because he is conveniently dead already, but I can't see the ethics of seeking out and rejoining with the remaining, presumably-living individuals as being enjoyable or in line with the story. At very least it seems a time-consuming plot exercise to repeatedly introduce these individuals and justify why they have to merge with us - and not going through that would probably be worse.

Plus it introduces even more shards and realities and takes ever more focus away from the world-building of the two we already have.

Even if the WoLs rejoined who's to say they couldn't be fractured again and go back to their lives? Hydaelyn could probably do it.

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Originally Posted by Ayuhra

Even if the WoLs rejoined who's to say they couldn't be fractured again and go back to their lives? Hydaelyn could probably do it.

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A second sundering would in effect be committing murder all over again. Death of personality is still death.

I mean if the remaining WoLs rejoined into an Ancient to cast down something like Zodiark, and it was the same ancient who summoned Hydaelyn to preserve new life...

The Ancient would probably turn to Hydaelyn again and ask to be sundered because the Ancients' time is over and the worlds as they are now need their Warriors of Light. Hydaelyn sunders the Ancient, the WoLs are restored to their previous forms and go on to continue protecting their worlds.

How would they be restored rather than just scattered into the Lifestream? I dunno, man, but there's lots of ways to get around that in lore.

....I seem to have derailed the thread, sorry OP.

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Originally Posted by Edax

Wouldn't the WoL lose their own racial identity and become an Ancient if they fully Rejoined their soul? From a meta perspective, I don't think the player base would be cool with losing their avatars.
The Ascians are using meat puppets to appear as Hyurs so maybe the WoL could just possess a fake copy of their old body? But this seems convoluted to me, I don't think FFXIV is actually taking the side that the Rejoining is actually a good thing. I get the overall impression that FFXIV celebrates diversity so that destroying other Warriors of Light to absorb the souls for more power would be what a villain would do. Heck I even remember a movie where Jet Li was playing the villain and was trying to do just that.

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"The One" was the name of the movie, as I recall, but I didn't see it myself. I DID think of it, though, when I learned that we were regaining soul fragments, and that Emet considered us to be more "whole" as a result. Needless to say, I tend to doubt that the plotline will ever see the WoL traveling from shard to shard to murder his soul-buddies for Moar Powah. XD

As for losing our body and possessing a new one - I don't think that would be necessary. Ascians may not have physical bodies - but from we could see in Emet's recreation of Amaurot, the Ancients DID have physical bodies. I suspect that shedding their body was part of the reason why the Big Three were able to avoid the Sundering, and also a useful tool for Ascians in general to allow them to travel between Shards and avoid normal forms of death.

One possibility for the WOL to survive the destruction of their physical body.

Hijacked Garlean Cloning Facility.

We killed Emet-Selch after all, i'd say we are entitled to loot his stuff once we get into Garlemald.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

There's a major issue with the concept of "regaining our lost soul fragments" - they're other people.

We could rejoin with Ardbert because he is conveniently dead already, but I can't see the ethics of seeking out and rejoining with the remaining, presumably-living individuals as being enjoyable or in line with the story. At very least it seems a time-consuming plot exercise to repeatedly introduce these individuals and justify why they have to merge with us - and not going through that would probably be worse.

Plus it introduces even more shards and realities and takes ever more focus away from the world-building of the two we already have.

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Any future rejoinings we have with our other soul fragments will in most likelihood be consensual. Considering how Yoshi-P basically mentioned things were going to get frantic after 5.3, expect something to happen which will result in that happening naturally over the course of the next few expansions, WITHOUT going to other worlds. After all, Elidibus DID mention he was going to throw other WoL at us, I wouldn't put it past him to throw our other soul fragments at us. Meaning we fight, things get explained to them, some catastrophe ends up happening that can destroy all the shards and the source, and they proceed to willingly combine with us so we can stop it.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

Any future rejoinings we have with our other soul fragments will in most likelihood be consensual. Considering how Yoshi-P basically mentioned things were going to get frantic after 5.3, expect something to happen which will result in that happening naturally over the course of the next few expansions, WITHOUT going to other worlds. After all, Elidibus DID mention he was going to throw other WoL at us, I wouldn't put it past him to throw our other soul fragments at us. Meaning we fight, things get explained to them, some catastrophe ends up happening that can destroy all the shards and the source, and they proceed to willingly combine with us so we can stop it.

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There is also the possibility of those fragments being absorbed as a result of the WoL killing their other selves. Should be theoretically possible since they wouldn't be fighting on even footing anymore. That whole rejoining with Ardbert thing gives an edge up.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

Considering how Yoshi-P basically mentioned things were going to get frantic after 5.3

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I saw someone say that was meant to be translated as "the second half of Shadowbringers" which might mean patches or might be 5.0 itself. The story certainly got pretty frantic on major lore reveals in its second half.

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Originally Posted by Absimiliard

There is also the possibility of those fragments being absorbed as a result of the WoL killing their other selves. Should be theoretically possible since they wouldn't be fighting on even footing anymore. That whole rejoining with Ardbert thing gives an edge up.

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It would be completely at odds with the ideals of the story and everything we've done so far. How could we possibly justify killing our other selves violently, in a narrative where the heroes place emphasis on the value of individuals, and on not sacrificing people for causes?

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Originally Posted by Iscah

There's a major issue with the concept of "regaining our lost soul fragments" - they're other people.

We could rejoin with Ardbert because he is conveniently dead already, but I can't see the ethics of seeking out and rejoining with the remaining, presumably-living individuals as being enjoyable or in line with the story. At very least it seems a time-consuming plot exercise to repeatedly introduce these individuals and justify why they have to merge with us - and not going through that would probably be worse.

Plus it introduces even more shards and realities and takes ever more focus away from the world-building of the two we already have.

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I can see the plot hook working once, where we adventure with another fragment of ourselves and through our adventures grow close with them as they decide on their destiny and we come to terms with what rejoining means and the good of the few vs the many.

Maybe another shard where our fragment is the villain (the actual villain, alive and...well, villaining.) They learn of us and try to absorb us as opposed to us absorbing them maybe. Create a conflict where we need to absorb them to live and have the question posed: do we hold to our ideals that the shards deserve their independence, even if that leads to imperfect shards like evil WoL? Does evil WoL deserve their sentience and independence from the whole of the Ancient WoL? What would it mean for all of the shards if evil WoL were to win and absorb us?

But those are just 1 time plot hooks off the cuff. It would feel tedious to pick these people up one at a time and you're absolutely right we'd be spread very thin as far as world lore goes.

Even if they went down that story-path, there would be the issue of getting to other worlds in the first place.

We specifically destroyed what seems to be the Crystal Tower's time-machine core in the Twinning - which in any case established that G'raha Tia's bond with the tower is what enabled him to survive the trip in the first place. It's out of the question for us.

Sure, we could build something else... but then why have us break the time machine instead of getting someone to tinker with it?

I'm on phone so I can't quote specific snippets of your post. I was responding specifically to the comment about rejoining all of our personal shards, not about time travel or the void.

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Originally Posted by SaberMaxwell

I'm on phone so I can't quote specific snippets of your post. I was responding specifically to the comment about rejoining all of our personal shards, not about time travel or the void.

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I know, I just mean that - assuming we were going to do such a thing, and that each shard is on a different world - we'd need some way of getting there. And instead we deliberately broke the one established possibility we had.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

It would be completely at odds with the ideals of the story and everything we've done so far. How could we possibly justify killing our other selves violently, in a narrative where the heroes place emphasis on the value of individuals, and on not sacrificing people for causes?

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And yet innumerable NPCs have been sent to give their lives to create windows of opportunity for the Warrior of Light to act.

There is a major difference between the WoL killing people specifically so that they can effectively repair their soul to its original state verses NPCs voluntarily sacrificing themselves so that the WoL doesn't die. The WoL has always been shown to majorly regret that those people died to create those windows of opportunity as well. To the point that the SB DRK story is all about the WoL's massive case of Survivor's Guilt. Even without the DRK quests, NPCs sacrificing themselves for the WoL to go on is always portrayed as something the WoL wanted to prevent.

That said, Ardbert is a unique case since he is already dead. The only choice he effectively has is to pick which way he is going to Rejoin with the WoL's soul. Either by doing nothing and watching his world Rejoin the Source and become a part of the WoL's soul that way, or by choosing to Rejoin the WoL's soul before the Rejoining happens and potentially stop the Rejoining all together. Given that he killed himself to try to keep his world in some form of existence and he knows the WoL is trying to keep his world exiting, he chooses to help the WoL out by at least making his death meaningful.

What might throw a kink into all of this is that Elidibus says that he is going to send Warriors of Light after us now that we are the Warrior of Darkness. Where he's going to get these Warriors of Light has not been explained yet. However, the WoL really can't die right now so I can see Elidibus bringing WoL from other times/shards and us having to kill them to keep from dying ourselves. Although given what the WoL is like (both us and Ardbert), I can see a lot of cases of the various WoLs realizing what is going on and deciding to mess up Elidibus' plans in some way. I think a lot would depend on weather or not the people Elidibus is thinking of involving can get back to where they are from or not...

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Originally Posted by Iscah

I know, I just mean that - assuming we were going to do such a thing, and that each shard is on a different world - we'd need some way of getting there. And instead we deliberately broke the one established possibility we had.

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I thought we only broke the time machine, and that the Tower itself could be used to bear people across shards. For instance, wasn't the World of Darkness raid us using the Tower to go to the 13th?

The Crystal Tower had a link to the Cloud of Darkness and the Void via a pact Xande made with the Cloud of Darkness back at the end of the 3rd Astral Era. During the conclusion of the Crystal Tower raid, Unei and Doga sever the pact with the Cloud of Darkness which in turn severs the connection the Crystal Tower has with the Void.

Xande's Throne in the Crystal Tower still has some mechanism that lets it connect to the Rift, but without the pact, it don't have any destination. Omega can create interdenominational rifts though, and we know Omega's technology was hooked up to both Xande's Throne and Alexander. Presumably Omega's contribution to the CT wasn't broken since the WoL can still go back and forth between the Crystal Tower on the 1st Shard and the Syrcuss Trench on the Source, but the Scions are still stuck on the 1st Shard. I very much doubt that the Crystal Tower will be going anywhere else until the Scions can get back to the Source as well since we will most likely need them for 6.0.

There's also the issue that G'raha Tia on the 1st Shard can't seem to teleport himself to the Source either. Weather that just applies to the Source or weather that applies to moving the entire CT around isn't known. G'raha Tia of the 1st also has the problem where the future he's from technically shouldn't exist anymore. So I can see part of the plot going forwards being about if he continues existing (and staying in control of the CT) or somehow dying and going out of existence (in which case there isn't anyone who can control the CT anymore).

One of the non-story reasons I think the CT won't be going anywhere is that I can't see the dev team making two layouts of both the Crystarium and Lakeland; one with the CT and one without it. That would be... odd...