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

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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...