*Spoilers* The Past and After the Endwalker MSQ End

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Originally Posted by Lurina

When you meet Elidibus in the Crystal Tower, his line is weird - he doesn't just say that he saw you in Elpis, he says, "I saw you... No, I did not. But I did." Like he's remembering two different versions of history at the same time.

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I still need to rewatch that scene, but is it maybe just the point where he gets the idea to send you back in time in the first place? He remembered he saw you there, thinks it has to be impossible, then thinks that it would make sense if he sent you back there to fulfil that loop?

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Originally Posted by Iscah

I still need to rewatch that scene, but is it maybe just the point where he gets the idea to send you back in time in the first place? He remembered he saw you there, thinks it has to be impossible, then thinks that it would make sense if he sent you back there to fulfil that loop?

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I would've thought he'd have said "no, I couldn't have" or something if that were the case. "I did not" feels like a counter-assertion instead of just disbelief. Especially since the way he delivers the line sort of makes it sound like he's talking about two separate versions of himself: "I did not. But I did. I did."

But who knows.

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Originally Posted by Lurina

When you meet Elidibus in the Crystal Tower, his line is weird - he doesn't just say that he saw you in Elpis, he says, "I saw you... No, I did not. But I did." Like he's remembering two different versions of history at the same time.

So it's not impossible that Pandaemonium is already building to some kind of split timeline scenario in the way that the WoL's first visit - from which Venat and Emet seem to remember you uncomplicatedly - was not.

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Could this not be a reference to how Elidibus is not really "Elidibus" due to his memories being intensely damaged? So he has memories of Elidibus seeing the WoL in Elpis, but it is not really "his" memories.

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Originally Posted by AlysanneVrannai

Could this not be a reference to how Elidibus is not really "Elidibus" due to his memories being intensely damaged? So he has memories of Elidibus seeing the WoL in Elpis, but it is not really "his" memories.

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That seems like a stretch, since he doesn't seem to have any problem considering his other memories as belonging to him.

But again, who knows. All I'm saying is that it's a possibility.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

I am regarding Pandæmonium as a chance to learn more about events in our own timeline. The crystal has surfaced in ours, after all.

Though also, theoretically, whatever we do or don't do there, it is almost certainly going to integrate into our timeline in the end exactly because we have no idea what happens there. If we save everyone, that's nice (in the short term) and we've probably set up Elidibus's memory of seeing us in Elpis. If it all goes to disaster, it's still a disaster long past that we have now learned about.

I don't think we can break our timeline here because we cannot contradict any events we already know to have happened – unlike the Final Days at large where we are very aware of the outcome.

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As Elidibus stated, we can't change anything for our timeline - for better or ill. The Final Days are averted on our end, nothing about that should change no matter what we do in the past. Venat also restates this, but notes that we can still change theirs.

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Originally Posted by Lurina

When you meet Elidibus in the Crystal Tower, his line is weird - he doesn't just say that he saw you in Elpis, he says, "I saw you... No, I did not. But I did." Like he's remembering two different versions of history at the same time.

So it's not impossible that Pandaemonium is already building to some kind of split timeline scenario in the way that the WoL's first visit - from which Venat and Emet seem to remember you uncomplicatedly - was not.

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We might not be at the point of time convergence yet - the Final Days are still going to happen if we leave things as they are when we last left Venat. There's still the upcoming patches for Endwalker for that to happen- opportunities to wrap up as much of the past so we can focus on the future. At the moment, the negative implications of time travel are...well, there doesn't seem to be any as of yet (other than our characters getting older while time traveling and not aging as they should - which doesn't really matter to us players). This leaves things open to a Warlord of Draenor or Final Fantasy XI: Wings of the Goddess time travel expansion somewhere down the line - or perhaps this will be the time travel expansion and everything else will look towards the future.

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Originally Posted by Lurina

When you meet Elidibus in the Crystal Tower, his line is weird - he doesn't just say that he saw you in Elpis, he says, "I saw you... No, I did not. But I did." Like he's remembering two different versions of history at the same time.

So it's not impossible that Pandaemonium is already building to some kind of split timeline scenario in the way that the WoL's first visit - from which Venat and Emet seem to remember you uncomplicatedly - was not.

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I suspect what that was is that Elidibus, as stated in that cutscene, has memories from the soul crystals we gave him. Those memories include Emet's, Hermes', and also potentially his own (if he's Themis like he seems) and possibly even Lahabrea's (depending on who Lahabrea was at the time and the future events of Pandaemonium). But thanks to Kairos, the memories of us there are a little inconsistent and essentially turn up as a brief 'wait what the hell' moment.

Perhaps none of them even remember us, but Emet and/or Hermes saw us from a distance and that stuck into the memories enough for Elidibus to notice.

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Originally Posted by LystAP

1 and 2 are already done. We can teleport to Elpis at a specific point in time - where people acknowledge us as Azem's familiar. There doesn't need to be a complex rationale behind it. Some weird timely wimy thing has us linked to this particular Elpis in space and time. Do recall that the First wasn't always temporally balanced with the Source. The other Scions spent years in the First whereas only a few months have past on the Source when you went back.

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Issues remain, the door to Elpis limits us to a very specific period of time, and you’d still have the issues I mentioned if you don’t attempt to replicate those magicks.

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Originally Posted by LystAP

The rest will depend on SE writing the plot. The quickest way is to just have the Convocation use the Echo on you. The Ancients also have ways to determine if your lying.

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Exactly how effective the echo is with finding specific memories is difficult to say. Ultimately, the problem is that even if you convince them, you still have Hermes sabotage to deal with, and given he isn’t there to help with Zodiark now, it’s unlikely you’ll succeed at forestalling the first final days. It was SE who wrote that limitation.

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Originally Posted by LystAP

Venat judged that many would fall to despair when faced with 'reality', but that's also her own presumption. That's an assumption Vauthy made of people of the First as well, but we've seen how that turned out. In this expansion, Vrtra was convinced (based off his eons of experience) that everyone would hate him, but it didn't turn out that way either. As is noted in the story, Venat as flawed as much as everyone else.

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And yet we are shown why we should believe her judgement the correct one, if their reaction to the Final Days is indicative.

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Originally Posted by Kordarion

Except that if you look at the following dialogue options we are given both outright state that that isn't the case at all. One says that it wasn't there all along and the other says we made it together, which I presume has something to do with the scions as Meteion says this in relation to having used her powers to feel the player characters emotions.

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I took that as referring to mankind in general and the sum total of their experiences since Meteion's time making it.

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Originally Posted by EaraGrace

Exactly how effective the echo is with finding specific memories is difficult to say. Ultimately, the problem is that even if you convince them, you still have Hermes sabotage to deal with, and given he isn’t there to help with Zodiark now, it’s unlikely you’ll succeed at forestalling the first final days. It was SE who wrote that limitation.

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But that's not what SE wrote. Venat merely suggests keeping Hermes in the dark because he is a "brilliant mind" and could be useful, at no point is he given specific credit for any part of Zodiark's creation or discovering the solution.

But more importantly, Venat still didn't tell them even after Zodiark was created and the Final Days halted. At that point if Hermes had been crucial to their prior success, it had already been achieved and he had outlived his usefulness. At that point there is no excuse not to reveal the truth.

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Originally Posted by Veloran

But that's not what SE wrote. Venat merely suggests keeping Hermes in the dark because he is a "brilliant mind" and could be useful, at no point is he given specific credit for any part of Zodiark's creation or discovering the solution.

But more importantly, Venat still didn't tell them even after Zodiark was created and the Final Days halted. At that point if Hermes had been crucial to their prior success, it had already been achieved and he had outlived his usefulness. At that point there is no excuse not to reveal the truth.

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I'm fairly certain that in one of the conversations leading up to Elpis that is is stated that Fandaniel/Hermes was the person who discovered that the Final days phenomena was occurring where the celestial aether currents were weakest therefore, even if he missed the mark on the true cause, he was still the one to discover the relationship between weak aether fields and the final days manifesting.