6.0 Story Speculations

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

I'm starting to question why Hydaelyn, a being who was supposedly summoned in order to preserve the new lives on the star even possessed the ability to sunder the world in the first place.

It doesn't really seem to align with her purpose, unlike...say, Alexander's ability to travel through time, which fit with its intended purpose of creating an ideal world by enabling it to right past wrongs...or at least it would've had the thing not been simply too powerful to act without draining excessive amount of aether.

For that matter, I'm also questioning if Zodiark seemingly being tied to the resurgence of the Final Days might simply be because the Source simply isn't in a state to withstand the presence of an active primal as powerful as he is. Even fractured, he's liable to be several magnitudes stronger then Alexander, and while he doesn't seem to actually be free of the moon by the time 6.0 rolls around, perhaps simply being awake is enough to have grave side effects on the world.

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I think you're on to something here, as the evidence we have to date implies that Hydaelyn only functions in a capacity to stop the final days from coming to pass. A permanent solution to what Zodiark can't fix. Balance is the desired goal.

Zodiark on the other hand, may not even be aware he is causing the thing he was summoned to stop. And if his volume of power is enough to end all existence and he blindly uses that power, he becomes like a child with nuclear weapons or, worse, an idealistic youngster who lacks the foresight to think about the consequences of their actions.

Maybe I've missed some lore somewhere, but where was it stated that Zodiark and Hydaelyn consumed aether like regular Primals?

They're the result of Creation magicks, not flawed summoning like current day primals. I'd consider Zodiark as a framework over reality on the Star, so they set laws of the world in aether through He, but He still needs to be fed aether everytime it must change things : rewrite laws = 50% ancients worth of aether, reseed life = 25%, etc.
Otherwise, we'd be way out of aether since Hydaelyn has been around these past 13000 years or so. Hydaelyn is also shown as out of aether and thus, unable to act. Wouldn't She simply feed on some aether to help us when we actually really need it, if She simply has the power to do so?

Besides, I've never got Hydaelyn summoning as a mean to stop the Final Days from coming, but to counter Zodiark. It's even said by Emet-Selch, when he explains that since She was summoned to stop Him, She had the power to "enervate Her foe". I understand that She used that power on Him, which split Zodiark in 14, and I suppose that since He was the Will of the Star, totally twined with the star at that point, it had the consequences of also splitting the world in Source and Reflections.

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Originally Posted by Alenore

Maybe I've missed some lore somewhere, but where was it stated that Zodiark and Hydaelyn consumed aether like regular Primals?

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It was never explicitly stated anywhere, but it was never said that that wasn't the case either, plus we all know Ascians have a penchant for conveniently leaving out details they deem unnecessary or would put them at fault.

Primals in general require aether, which as previously mentioned is why Alexander decided to seal itself because it couldn't act out its intended purpose without causing more harm to the world then it prevented and it was also bleeding the world of aether by simply existing on top of that.

The sacrifices made to Zodiark may have simply been in lieu of the aether he otherwise would've needed to pull directly from the world itself (Which was not an option due to the state the Final Days had left it in), and for all we know he may have continued to need further sacrifices even had he managed to act out his original purpose lest he start draining the world of its aether.

I feel like if it was safe for them to do it prematurely, the Ascians would've tried to wake up and/or release Zodiark before the Rejoining was complete as it really would've only made their job easier if their god was around to help them squish any opposition from pesky Warriors of Light and such. It is possible that Fandaniel is somehow privy to knowledge and methods that not even the unsundered were aware of despite his seemingly lesser status as a sundered, though.

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Originally Posted by Alenore

Maybe I've missed some lore somewhere, but where was it stated that Zodiark and Hydaelyn consumed aether like regular Primals?

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It's not even explicitly stated that they're the same as the primals we know. Emet-Selch describes them as primals (to paraphrase the spirit of the line in various languages) "for lack of a more familiar word" / "in language even you could understand." They could be aether-tight and powered sufficiently by the Ancients who summoned them / sacrificed themselves, for all we know. The fact that when sundered beings summon things, the results constantly consume aether and leak auric corruption might have been the entire point of teaching it to them: they're incapable of doing it right, and chaos inevitably ensues.

One would think if Hydaelyn could just eat aether, She wouldn't be as weak as She is sitting in a sea of it.

She seems unable or unwilling, to me, but the anti-Hydaelyn crowd used to just say "every time She's weak, She eats a world on purpose" as their interpretation of Calamities.

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

She seems unable or unwilling, to me, but the anti-Hydaelyn crowd used to just say "every time She's weak, She eats a world on purpose" as their interpretation of Calamities.

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That's an interesting way of framing things. For starters, not everybody who is wary of Hydaelyn is even making the same arguments. Furthermore, the game has given many legitimate reason to doubt Hydaelyn (even if we're being generous and ignore the creepy patch art with Minfilia being bound in chains among various other factors, Krile and Y'shtola are currently doubting Hydaelyn in the most recent content patch).

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Originally Posted by Alenore

Maybe I've missed some lore somewhere, but where was it stated that Zodiark and Hydaelyn consumed aether like regular Primals?

They're the result of Creation magicks, not flawed summoning like current day primals. I'd consider Zodiark as a framework over reality on the Star, so they set laws of the world in aether through He, but He still needs to be fed aether everytime it must change things : rewrite laws = 50% ancients worth of aether, reseed life = 25%, etc.
Otherwise, we'd be way out of aether since Hydaelyn has been around these past 13000 years or so. Hydaelyn is also shown as out of aether and thus, unable to act. Wouldn't She simply feed on some aether to help us when we actually really need it, if She simply has the power to do so?

Besides, I've never got Hydaelyn summoning as a mean to stop the Final Days from coming, but to counter Zodiark. It's even said by Emet-Selch, when he explains that since She was summoned to stop Him, She had the power to "enervate Her foe". I understand that She used that power on Him, which split Zodiark in 14, and I suppose that since He was the Will of the Star, totally twined with the star at that point, it had the consequences of also splitting the world in Source and Reflections.

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It’s never stated no, a lot of people just seem to want to assume that because hur durr theyre primals. Even though we’ve been shown they vary greatly from the primals we see on the source.

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Originally Posted by Alenore

Maybe I've missed some lore somewhere, but where was it stated that Zodiark and Hydaelyn consumed aether like regular Primals?

They're the result of Creation magicks, not flawed summoning like current day primals. I'd consider Zodiark as a framework over reality on the Star, so they set laws of the world in aether through He, but He still needs to be fed aether everytime it must change things : rewrite laws = 50% ancients worth of aether, reseed life = 25%, etc.
Otherwise, we'd be way out of aether since Hydaelyn has been around these past 13000 years or so. Hydaelyn is also shown as out of aether and thus, unable to act. Wouldn't She simply feed on some aether to help us when we actually really need it, if She simply has the power to do so?

Besides, I've never got Hydaelyn summoning as a mean to stop the Final Days from coming, but to counter Zodiark. It's even said by Emet-Selch, when he explains that since She was summoned to stop Him, She had the power to "enervate Her foe". I understand that She used that power on Him, which split Zodiark in 14, and I suppose that since He was the Will of the Star, totally twined with the star at that point, it had the consequences of also splitting the world in Source and Reflections.

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I'd also give this a read as a potential battery for them (1) because the Heart of Sabik is indeed referred to as a black auracite and 2) because they both are represented by giant crystals.) Worth bearing in mind that these crystals are rechargeable, as well. They are not infinite reservoirs of power but, as with the RDM focus, they seem to have the property of amplifying immaterial aether. All that would render them good candidates for being able to power such Primals through occasional re-charging via the Aetherial Sea, and also control the release of the Primal's own energy outwards.

Of course, it is nowhere stated that they specifically consume aether constantly, and it is very possible the ancients would have considered this before putting one into the Underworld; they had been researching them as a means of combatting the Terminus beasts in Akadaemia Anyder, and they had knowledge of arcane constructs even before that (the firebird in the Hades short story), so it's not as though they went into this with zero knowledge. The fact that Zodiark stimulated growth as he did (per Hythlodaeus) is, I think, a big question mark on the whole "consuming the world's aether" thing. If anything, I believe the chief concern would've been of the effect of the Primal's aetheric aspect on the Aetherial Sea's aether, so perhaps there was a desire to keep this balanced once the desired growth levels were achieved, rather than it being a case of the Primal feeding too much off the world.

Personally I think they endowed Hydaelyn with the power to enervate in the event that Zodiark resisted. They predicted that their own people would turn on them for it, and Zodiark was many times more powerful than Hydaelyn - at the point of summoning, anyway. It's not inconceivable that they would expect resistance in such circumstances. No Primal is going to take too kindly to another one just being grafted onto it. The fact that the panels in Rak'tika, for whatever those are worth, depict her with the double halo by the end, could easily mean she had tapped into a portion of his power after enervating and binding. After all, if the power reservoir is a crystal, it may be as easy as the Primal taking up residence in the one installed in the Aetherial Sea, expelling a chunk of it in the process of binding him with whatever (no doubt still considerable) power was left in him.

https://i.imgur.com/83YHUCm.jpg

It's also worth noting that Emet describes this power, to enervate (which when you think about it is a pretty complex concept, since it strikes at all attributes), as one never seen before in the French version, which does make me wonder if some third party approached them with it and didn't fully apprise them of how it would work. Maybe the expectation was that it'd just work as a method of leaching Zodiark, but instead it went a lot further than that.

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Originally Posted by Alenore

Besides, I've never got Hydaelyn summoning as a mean to stop the Final Days from coming, but to counter Zodiark. It's even said by Emet-Selch, when he explains that since She was summoned to stop Him, She had the power to "enervate Her foe". I understand that She used that power on Him, which split Zodiark in 14, and I suppose that since He was the Will of the Star, totally twined with the star at that point, it had the consequences of also splitting the world in Source and Reflections.

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The evidence that supports Hydaelyn being summoned to stop the final days comes from the recordings at the end of the Anamnesis Anyder dungeon where Venat and followers discuss that Hydaelyn needs to be summoned to be a permanent solution to the coming of The Final Days as all Zodiark has done is just extend the time period before this comes to pass. Venat and company are presented as individuals who are out of options and I feel if there is something wrong with Hydaelyn, it is this forced desperation that encumbered her summoners.

Meaning, if we continue down the path of Zodiark as a blind power, he would resist Hydaelyn at all costs forcing her to amp up her actions to get balance and stop the Final Days from coming again. Granted it was less nefarious on the part of Hydaelyn, but she was just doing what she thought was right.

While it's possible Hydaelyn was created as a permanent safeguard against a repeat of the Final Days, I'm not so certain of it - the only context we've been given behind her creation is as a restraint to keep Zodiark in check. While he did fix things, it still seems the Ancients never discovered the root cause of the Sound; can't counteract what you don't understand.

I was also of the mind that the summoning rituals taught to the beast tribes were deliberately made imperfect, though I'm not so certain the aetheric drain is deliberately baked in. I'd wager the general belligerence is, given only three (Ramuh, who is nonetheless so severe we end up fighting him anyway; Alexander, who removes himself from spacetime; and Susano, who is just out to have a good fight) aren't outright hostile and show no desire to temper mortals. Doubtless part of it is that summons are usually called on as superweapons by the beast tribes, though many such conflicts are engendered or taken advantage of by the Ascians for their own ends.

Going in a different direction, I can't help but wonder... bear with me on this—it's a bit of an odd take.

Zodiark has the power to reshape the laws of reality. Thus, no matter how firm his laws seem, they have one enormous weakness: Zodiark Himself. If he willed it to be, or if someone seized control of him and made him act, he could unmake those laws and plunge the world into chaos. This, in turn, is why they summoned Hydaelyn with the express purpose of shackling Zodiark. By locking him into a state where he can not act, Zodiark is rendered incapable of undermining the fabric of reality.

Unfortunately, either something went horribly wrong, or something went horribly right.

Situation A: Hydaelyn uses her heretofore unheard of gift of "Enervation" to shatter Zodiark. But since Zodiark—as the will of the star—is inseparably tied to it, hitting him is in effect the same as hitting the star itself. Thus was everything shattered. Zodiark, Hydaelyn, the moon in which the latter sealed the former, the world beneath her feet, and every single soul, living or otherwise.

Situation B: Hydaelyn determined that Zodiark can never be contained so long as someone with the power to unshackle him exists. And so she intentionally did the above. Venat and her followers may have planned that all along, or it may have been improvisation during the fight with Zodiark. Or maybe Hydaelyn was never under anyone's control and they all went Pikachuface.png when she did it, having been thoroughly surprised by the consequences of their actions.

… as an aside, I still believe we're going to find out that it was Azem, not Venat+Friends, whose objections to further sacrifices to Zodiark caused a rift to form in Amaurotine society. Though I can't imagine how such a misunderstanding could occur short of Azem choosing to remain anonymous in their objections.

EDIT: As for The Sound, I'm beginning to believe it may just be a MacGuffin—an object, device, or event that is necessary to the plot and the motivation of the characters, but insignificant, unimportant, or irrelevant in itself. In other words, it might not actually matter what caused it to happen, or why it caused the Ancients to freak out. What does matter is that it got the snowball that is "the Ancients ruin everything for everyone by ending the world/summoning Zodiark/summoning Hydaelyn" rolling.

Or it could be a whole plot reference to Final Fantasy 7. I'd rather it not be, but I do love to draw comparisons between Zenos and Sephiroth...