Lahabrea, old vs new... *Spoilers*

Would be nice if Varis survives the attack by Zenos and teams up with the Scions and us to take down Zenos, which at the end leads to the use of the Black Rose on Zenos by Varis himself. Showing the first-hand effects of the weapon on a live specimen.

And given that Garlemald was founded by Ascians, it would be nice if more interactions between Varis and the Ascians could be shown. Probably could show flashbacks of conversations involving Lahabrea, Emet-Selch, Elidibus and Varis in the latter's rise to power; showing who Varis was closest to, and what led to Varis' less than cordial relationship with the Ascians; as well as the role the Ascians played in the founding and development of Garlemald.

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Originally Posted by Kaiten_kenbu

Would be nice if Varis survives the attack by Zenos and teams up with the Scions and us to take down Zenos, which at the end leads to the use of the Black Rose on Zenos by Varis himself. Showing the first-hand effects of the weapon on a live specimen.

And given that Garlemald was founded by Ascians, it would be nice if more interactions between Varis and the Ascians could be shown. Probably could show flashbacks of conversations involving Lahabrea, Emet-Selch, Elidibus and Varis in the latter's rise to power; showing who Varis was closest to, and what led to Varis' less than cordial relationship with the Ascians; as well as the role the Ascians played in the founding and development of Garlemald.

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Actually, you might not be too far from the truth. Zenos is allowed to swap bodies because the artificial Echo he has allows him to transfer his aether into a new body upon death, or apparently back into his old body. If I recall correctly, the effects of Black Rose is somewhat similar to the Flood, in that it doesn't destroy aether or anything like that, but rather sets the aether to an extreme inactive state, hence why we're able to use Eden to bring life back to the Empty. If this is true, then Black Rose could ironically be used as a weapon to truly defeat Zenos. It may, in fact, be required to defeat him, depending on how they want to go with his story.

I know it's a bit of a quibble but I really don't want to our characters to be forced to use a magical analogue of a chemical weapon, even to stop Zenos. It'd just make me really uncomfortable, there's a reason those things are illegal under IRL international law.

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Originally Posted by FJerome

I know it's a bit of a quibble but I really don't want to our characters to be forced to use a magical analogue of a chemical weapon, even to stop Zenos. It'd just make me really uncomfortable, there's a reason those things are illegal under IRL international law.

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Well, I mean, obviously we wouldn't just bomb / gas the guy with the stuff, not only would that be somewhat immoral even against an Ascian, but also it'd be rather a bit... anti-climatic, wouldn't you say? We'll obviously fight the guy ourselves, but something could be created based upon Black Rose to use *specifically* against Zenos. Basically, a White Auracite style mcguffin specifically for Zenos.

It probably *won't* actually happen, but it'd be a way to incorporate Black Rose into the story without making Zenos decide, hey, maybe it's alright to use this stuff after all.

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I *did* mention that myself, actually, that there was an echo scene and a slight bit of dialogue towards the end, but at the time it was very vague and felt like throwaway reasoning for her to be the way she is

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There was more than that, actually. She was referenced to by various NPC's and story segments utilizing her less-than-stellar past reputation as a means to demean her, not to mention her own pre-'death' dialogue and other bits you mentioned. In short, it was no secret - it was just fleshed later - which is not what we can expect if Square decides to reintroduce Lahabrea, which to me would make no sense and presents a pretty big challenge for them to overcome through decent writing. I can't speak for everyone, but I never have and never will be interested in Lahabrea. The ShB name-drops were nice and all, but it was part and parcel of the overall Ascian arc rather than implications of anything specifically related to Lahabrea having a future impact. Of COURSE the Scion's would have inquired about him, or been interested in hearing about his past, or been mentioned by default as a by-product of Amaurot/Ancients, but that doesn't really imply anything.

We can also safely dispense the notion that the Scion's or WoL will resort to chemical weapons. They won't. However, certain 'not quite good or bad yet' characters might, such as Gaius, can easily be written to do so.

Well, I haven't played the Eden questline...

But I feel that the Black Rose has to be used somewhere in the story, rather than being just mentioned. Who better to use it against than Zenos? And who should use it? Varis, as revenge against the little shit for biting the hand that feeds him.

Of course Varis would announce it under the pretext that its for the good of the Empire. After all, I doubt he has any intention of leaving the Empire to someone whose only interest is in the fight.

And at this point, I don't think Elidibus would mind killing Zenos.

Or maybe Varis gives himself the Echo, allows himself to be possessed by Elidibus and uses the Black Rose against Zenos, which the Scions sand WoL/D stop and Possessed Varis becomes a final boss at some point.

And the party wipe attack will be the Black Rose.

Well he's not like any of my post-grad profs. He has not once tried to seduce his female students and he has not yet put his own books on the required reading list. And he has not mentioned Foucault once.

As for Lahabrea, I think that - coming back or not - there are sinister revelations in the future. Particularly around his being a professor of Phantomology, which as far as I can tell is the art of constructing monsters for scientific study and a twisted art form

This leads me to three conclusions.

Firstly, if your Utopia is attacked by a monster that uses yourown powers to make monsters, wouldn't your first suspect be the expert in monster making who runs a school in monster making and whise creations sometimes escape?

Secondly, if your team of three leaders includes a politician, an ambassador, and a guy who designs and builds new lifeforms of immense power, who do you think got put in charge of Project Zodiark?

Thirdly, if Lahabrea's main skillset is monster making, and he escaped the sundering at full strength, why didn't he make any for us? Or did he, and now they'll get revenge for him beyond the grave.

Re-watching some of the Praetorium cutscenes post-Lahabrea fight for the first time, at this stage I would like to just go on the record that even if a piece of the analysis I did before is true imo LineageRazor's idea of him being thoroughly-beaten-with-the-temper stick probably plays a bigger role.

It's worth it to look back at this point because when he's placed side-by-side against Emet-Selch and Elidibus for comparison 1) he is clearly out of his skull crazy 2) he was doing his best to communicate and having such a hard time good god. It's actually kind of depressing given he used to be good at that. Even besides the habit of running around cackling at explosions (seriously, he loses it with both Bahamut and Ultima) he's prone to referring to Zodiark as "the master" and reads similar to one of Ifrit's thralls.

Managed to get some monologue quotes:

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The growing imbalance afflicting the planet must be redressed. If it is permitted to worsen, the very laws of existence--both aetheric and physical--will be warped beyond all recognition.

Know you the root of this corruption? Hydaelyn!

Like a parasite, She must be burned out if the planet is to recover. And naught but the return of the one true god will ensure Her complete excision. Yet to pave the way for the master's return, a chaotic confluence of untold proportions must needs be brought about. And that will necessitate the presence of the primals.

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Guy uses a lot of $5 words in there (necessitate, confluence, excision...) but tragically he does not manage to communicate much at all. It kind of needs to be reverse-engineered to make any sense.

Far as I can tell given Shadowbringers, seems like there are maybe two ways to interpret what he's trying to say.

The first, and potentially more alarming, would be if he's referring to a Terminus event.

If Lahabrea is sensing a similar world state compared to what happened right before the Terminus event that destroyed Amaurot, suddenly it makes a lot of sense why the Ascians have been rushing their attempts at Calamities.

They are not new at this. Most of the time there seem to be at least a few hundred years between rejoinings. Suddenly they're trying to blast them out one after another in less than a ten year time frame.

With Zodiark (who saved them from the past Terminus event) sundered, of course Lahabrea is going to blame Hydaelyn. As far as he knows, the only entity capable of stopping Terminus is Zodiark. Zodiark was specifically designed to do that whereas Hydaelyn was created specifically to keep Zodiark in check. He has no reason to think Hydaelyn can deal with Terminus. It's like trying to use a wrench to hammer a nail. Not so efficient.

Meanwhile Lahabrea be all "we gotta cause chaos (possibly with primals) to get calamities and revive Zodiark so he can prevent the laws of existence from going haywire".

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Another way of reading this, I'm a bit more skeptical on because less narrative tension. When he refers to the laws of existence being warped, second possibility would being he considers the current state of being as screwy physics/aether compared to the pre-sundered world. There's some danger in the worlds being permanently separated and it being made impossible to rejoin Zodiark, which would mean no going home and no reviving the other Ascians. This would still spark urgency and a need to revive Zodiark faster, but since Lahabrea is trying to communicate the idea of borked physics to you (a sundered soul) I think first scenario is more likely.

Also worth noting that WoL channels a blade of light to free Thancred from Lahabrea apparently, but I guess not strong enough to actually kill or sunder Lahabrea. I do wonder a bit if it effected his aetheric balance at all/made him slightly less extremely tempered than he was previously, but hard to know.

There are probably a lot of other scenes that read different with context, I'm willing to bet that Elidibus is super weird in hindsight too.

The REAL reason Lahabrea has shallow writing compared to Emet-Selch is back in ARR they almost certainly didn't have the Ascian lore fleshed out yet. I liked him anyway, though. He was the Thancred of the Ascians; always so cool despite the fact that he was constantly jobbing.

I wonder if he's actually gone, though? He was struck down, absorbed into an Eye of Nidhogg that was later drained to summon Shinryu who also died and then the inert Eyes were destroyed by Estinien. Could he have "survived" that? ...I honestly don't know, I'm asking. Echo can do some weird stuff.

....While we're on the topic of the Unsundered, I've always wondered why poor Igeyorhm didn't get to be one. She was the one that turned the thirteenth shard into a void then she worked with Lahabrea and died alongside him but the plot has mostly forgotten her.

That IS a good question. How did those particular three escape the sundering? Were they elsewhere? Were they protected? Why them and no others? What if there are others that they don't know about?

(...why would beings that never die reproduce and have children...?)