Few Questions About The Story + General Questions

Firstly.

THERE WILL BE SPOILERS FOR THOSE WHO HAVEN'T FINISHED THE MQ SO PLEASE DON'T READ BEYOND THIS POINT IF YOU HAVEN'T FINISHED THE MAIN STORY YET!!

So as stated in the title I've recently just finished the MQ and have some questions that either that game hasn't either explained yet, I've misunderstood, or just plainly missed it.

So we find out pretty late that two of the ancient ascians became the heart of Zodiark and Hydaelyn. The heart of Zodiark being Elidibus. Now I know in a sense we didn't kill Elidibus as we merely trapped him inside the crystal tower. That being said wouldn't that cause some level of damage to Zodiark? I know that it's not like a human heart ect but still I would of thought us sealing away his heart would cause some issues.

This next question is more of a general thing. If the main purpose of the Ascians was the rejoining why did they spend so much time in the source when they could of just spent all of their time on the other shards where the Warrior of Light couldn't foil their plans? If it wasn't for the fact of our awesome cat lad summoning us to the first there would of been nothing we could of done to stop it. And even if we still stopped the first. If they were doing all sorts of crazy stuff on all the other shards we would of had no way of stopping them right?

Not really a story related question but. How strong are we? I do like the fact that we do get our asses handed to us multiple times to sort of remind us we aren't just unstoppable gods but at the same time even foes who whooped our asses we end up getting the better of them. At the end point of Shadowbringers is there anyone who can stand against us? Apart from the hunt crazed Zenos

Back to the story based questions. Y'shtola's aether vision is basically killing her right? Or is it just shortening her life span? If so have we ever been told how long she's got?

Are there any other Ascians left apart from Fandaniel? Is so what are they up too? Are they like him where they are now free to do as they please or are they still trying to cause the rejoining? As Fandaniel has gotta be making their life harder too.

This might not make much sense but did the ancient ascians bring about their own destruction? During the dungeon where Emet-Selch is showing us the final days I believe he mentions about their nightmares coming to life and in a side quest we find out that an ascian I believe made a chimera as he was trying to create a lion but saw a bird during the process and thus mixed up the two animals together. If all it takes is a moment of distraction to create that could the panic of their world ending have caused them to create monsters or made what was happening even worse by their own thoughts and magic coming to life? Or could like rumours all it could of taken was one paranoid ascian thinking "oh god the world is ending" to start the chain of events that then caused everything?

Thanks for any answers you're able to provide!

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Originally Posted by ArmaDragkun

So we find out pretty late that two of the ancient ascians became the heart of Zodiark and Hydaelyn. The heart of Zodiark being Elidibus. Now I know in a sense we didn't kill Elidibus as we merely trapped him inside the crystal tower. That being said wouldn't that cause some level of damage to Zodiark? I know that it's not like a human heart ect but still I would of thought us sealing away his heart would cause some issues.

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The Elidibus walking around ingame is not Zodiark. He is a separate entity. He is either a familiar or the actual original Elidibus' soul that has been regurgitated and sent out to go check out the disturbance among the Convocation. Zodiark is currently incapacitated, having been chopped up into bits.

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This next question is more of a general thing. If the main purpose of the Ascians was the rejoining why did they spend so much time in the source when they could of just spent all of their time on the other shards where the Warrior of Light couldn't foil their plans? If it wasn't for the fact of our awesome cat lad summoning us to the first there would of been nothing we could of done to stop it. And even if we still stopped the first. If they were doing all sorts of crazy stuff on all the other shards we would of had no way of stopping them right?

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The story was not planned out. The writers didn't know what to do with the Ascians until they released Stormblood 4.0 and began writing the story of ShB.

Realistically there is no reason why the Ascians shouldn't have won. An Ascian could have teleported high into the sky above the WoL and chucked a rock down and split open the WoL's skull and the WoL wouldn't have known what hit him. The Ascians could've learned to take a hint and stop messing with the serial Primal and Ascian slayer. They could have teleported to literally any other continent (the New World, Meracadyia, etc) to start their plans for the rejoining anew without any interference from the WoL, or waited a hundred years until the WoL died of old age.

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Not really a story related question but. How strong are we?

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As strong as the plot demands. ARR-HW writing makes the WoL out to be not particularly strong, pretty much an unusually skilled mortal, on par with Estinien and Raubahn. During ARR-HW, the WoL requires powerups and outside intervention to defeat strong foes like the Ultima Weapon or Nidhogg. 3.3 has you fight Nidhogg - who has both of his eyes - and you need Hraesvelgr's eye to stand a chance. But then in Stormblood there is a ridiculous power escalation where the WoL inexplicably solos Shinryu - a primal that also has both of Nidhogg's eyes - without any powerups whatsoever (not to mention somehow beating Omega, a being that fought Midgardsomr in his prime to a standstill, who was far stronger than Nidhogg).

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Back to the story based questions. Y'shtola's aether vision is basically killing her right? Or is it just shortening her life span? If so have we ever been told how long she's got?

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The "aether vision is draining her lifeforce" line was tossed out in HW and then they never came back to it. She has never suffered visibly from this supposed illness so it's pretty much just lip service until the writers decide to remember and decide to have consequences kick in. Decent chance she will live to teleport back to the First and retire with Runar for at least a few years.

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Are there any other Ascians left apart from Fandaniel? Is so what are they up too? Are they like him where they are now free to do as they please or are they still trying to cause the rejoining? As Fandaniel has gotta be making their life harder too.

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We don't know what happened to the other Ascians. You can headcanon them as being coerced by the fanatical Unsundered and having just waltzed off to do their own thing once they realized their overlords were gone.

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This might not make much sense but did the ancient ascians bring about their own destruction? During the dungeon where Emet-Selch is showing us the final days I believe he mentions about their nightmares coming to life and in a side quest we find out that an ascian I believe made a chimera as he was trying to create a lion but saw a bird during the process and thus mixed up the two animals together. If all it takes is a moment of distraction to create that could the panic of their world ending have caused them to create monsters or made what was happening even worse by their own thoughts and magic coming to life? Or could like rumours all it could of taken was one paranoid ascian thinking "oh god the world is ending" to start the chain of events that then caused everything?

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It appears that there was something wrong with the very heart of the planet (presumably where the Lifestream is located). A sound emanated from it which made the Ancient's magic spiral out of control, causing a mass spawning of Terminus beasts. The ancients recreated the heart of the star as a primal under their control - Zodiark - which stopped more Terminus beasts from appearing. A popular theory is that the source of the sound is a Lavos like alien parasite, though we don't know.

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Originally Posted by ArmaDragkun

I would of thought us sealing away his heart would cause some issues.

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Zodiark is bound on the moon (as told to you in Heavensward by Minfilia on behalf of Hydaelyn). Whether it would cause issues or not, Zodiark is already bound up and unable to do anything obvious. We will find out if it caused issues in EW.

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If the main purpose of the Ascians was the rejoining why did they spend so much time in the source when they could of just spent all of their time on the other shards where the Warrior of Light couldn't foil their plans?

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Each Ascian was tasked with a shard each and by the time the Warrior of Light was around, these eternal beings had already succeeded at rejoining 7 shards and just had 1 more left. Some of them were on the first or taking trips there, it's just that Ardbert defeated them (with consequences because they had accounted for their own defeat). Emet had been taking regular trips to the first, Elidibus was at least taking trips to the moon.

The rest of them would most likely be interested in the source because it is the shard the others would be joined into and become their home again. They would not want the source to collapse and a warrior of light coming along could put the source at risk of falling to light. They did need there to be chaos on the source for some reason, I'm not sure if we know why yet, maybe so that everyone would fight eachother and their aether would become free for the ascians to be resurrected.

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If they were doing all sorts of crazy stuff on all the other shards we would of had no way of stopping them right?

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They only needed to do it once more and there was so much progress on the first that there was not a lot of point doing it on other shards. It was not seen as very likely the warrior of light would get to another shard and a lot of the ascians had actually been defeated, whether by scions, Thordan, Adbert, "Shadowhunter" or others.

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Not really a story related question but. How strong are we?

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As long as we do the mechanics we are unstoppable and we did do the mechanics because those wipes didn't count. :)

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Back to the story based questions. Y'shtola's aether vision is basically killing her right?

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It's not killing her. The disabilities your friends got after they returned were to give them unique characteristics like being able to see aether or being unable to use magic. Since she cannot see, she uses her magic to see aether instead and that is a sort of superpower.

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Are there any other Ascians left apart from Fandaniel?

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I would suggest doing the eden and summoner quests, but we can't really know for sure can we? EW could reveal more of them.

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This might not make much sense but did the ancient ascians bring about their own destruction?

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Yes, they practiced synthesizing things out of magic so much that the lapse in concentration can cause them to create the beasts representing their worst fears. There were procedures to prevent this but what procedure can account for a lapse in concentration? You might discover more about this through the eden quests (and the sidequests in the tempest).

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Originally Posted by ArmaDragkun

Firstly.

This next question is more of a general thing. If the main purpose of the Ascians was the rejoining why did they spend so much time in the source when they could of just spent all of their time on the other shards where the Warrior of Light couldn't foil their plans? If it wasn't for the fact of our awesome cat lad summoning us to the first there would of been nothing we could of done to stop it. And even if we still stopped the first. If they were doing all sorts of crazy stuff on all the other shards we would of had no way of stopping them right?

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So there are a couple of factors at play here that prevent the Ascians just doing spooky stuff on the shards and ignoring the Source. First of all the Rejoinings are a two-sided affair. They needed to both prime a shard and create a situation conducive to a calamity on the Source/weaken the boundry between the Source and the reflection to be rejoined. Nextly there's the fact that while are The Warrior of Light we're not unique (aside from obvious meta stuff with us being the main character so obviously we're at the center of things). There have been multiple warriors of Light throughout history on both the Source and the Shards. Ardbert's party being a pretty pertinent example given that they did in fact succeed in foiling the plans of and then slaying two of the Overlords even if it ended badly for them.

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Not really a story related question but. How strong are we? I do like the fact that we do get our asses handed to us multiple times to sort of remind us we aren't just unstoppable gods but at the same time even foes who whooped our asses we end up getting the better of them. At the end point of Shadowbringers is there anyone who can stand against us? Apart from the hunt crazed Zenos

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Aside from the obvious "as strong as the story needs us to be", the way I personally look at this is by working from the assumption that Power Levels Are Fake. All the stats and so on in the game are just abstractions that don't reflect any actual objective in universe levels because that's kinda silly. While we're clearly very powerful at this point just by virtue of all the powerful opponents we've bested there's no real objective scale we can place things on because of that abstraction. For the same reason the level 79 jellyfish in the Tempest are not stronger than Bahamut Prime. As for how that applies to us I think it means that for all that we're a slayer of gods etc etc we're still (at least until they outright tell us otherwise anyway) a regular person, albeit a very talented one We've accumulated a lot of skill and some measure of divine protection from the blessing of light and so on but a random Garlean soldier could still in theory get lucky and take us out with an arrow to the head, even if that'll never happen because it'd be quite the anticlimactic way to end the story.

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Back to the story based questions. Y'shtola's aether vision is basically killing her right? Or is it just shortening her life span? If so have we ever been told how long she's got?

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Again this largely comes down to "it's killing her as quickly as the plot demands". If they decide it being relevant again is important then it could kill her next week. If not then it's just shortening her lifespan and she's going to die of old age at age 73 instead of 89.

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Are there any other Ascians left apart from Fandaniel? Is so what are they up too? Are they like him where they are now free to do as they please or are they still trying to cause the rejoining? As Fandaniel has gotta be making their life harder too.

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This is sort of a big unknown since we have a few overlords still unacounted for (Pashtarot, Altima, Halmarut. and Deudalaphon) There's also the possibility that some of the ones previously dealt with may have been raised again by the unsundered between their defeat and the present day, as well as whatever the deal ends up being with Lahabrea given his apparent involvement with Pandemonium next expansion. We can probably rule out Mitron and Loghrif coming back given what happened with Eden and now that the stones are gone we probably won't be seeing any more coming back from the dead but there's always room for Shenanigans.

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This might not make much sense but did the ancient ascians bring about their own destruction? During the dungeon where Emet-Selch is showing us the final days I believe he mentions about their nightmares coming to life and in a side quest we find out that an ascian I believe made a chimera as he was trying to create a lion but saw a bird during the process and thus mixed up the two animals together. If all it takes is a moment of distraction to create that could the panic of their world ending have caused them to create monsters or made what was happening even worse by their own thoughts and magic coming to life? Or could like rumours all it could of taken was one paranoid ascian thinking "oh god the world is ending" to start the chain of events that then caused everything?

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While the initial catalysing event was almost certainly the Sound, Emet-Selch's narration of events did heavily imply that at least some part of the final days was self inflicted; particularly these lines before the First Beast.

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Originally Posted by Emet-Selch

...and the unchecked energies of creation begat malformed beasts.

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Originally Posted by Emet-Selch

Just as prayer gives rise to Primals, our dread made manifest our deepest fears.

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It's definitely easy to interpret these as "our creation magic went out of control began 3D printing scary nightmare monsters", with the trauma of the world ending essentially creating a feedback loop. How much of the Final Days was a result of that vs it just being a symptom of the Sound and the Terminus creatures is still a bit up in the air but hopefully Endwalker should give a bit of clarity to some of that Incidentally the lion/bird chimera was most likely the precursor to the present day Griffins.

Thank you all for the replies!!

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Originally Posted by ArmaDragkun

If the main purpose of the Ascians was the rejoining why did they spend so much time in the source when they could of just spent all of their time on the other shards where the Warrior of Light couldn't foil their plans? If it wasn't for the fact of our awesome cat lad summoning us to the first there would of been nothing we could of done to stop it. And even if we still stopped the first. If they were doing all sorts of crazy stuff on all the other shards we would of had no way of stopping them right?

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They did do this - on the 14th world, they immediately beaten up the WoLs who barely had any power of light, except the world got plunged into darkness and creates a void. The Void killed all the inhabitants and made it a dead zone. No life can live there, only voidsent (who are hungry thirsty Aether beings). That's when they realize they can't immediately destroy a world, but slowly push it towards oblivion. To speed things up and to ensure no world have an imbalance of light/dark to the point it creates "The Void", they have to slowly tip the scales, and then have the source deal with a similar problem for the main world to absorb the shard's aspected aether. That's why they sent a couple of ascians in each shard to handle the problem. Lahabrea was sent to deal with us - an unsundered Ascian no less. It's just that, our power of light was stronger than what lahabrea can imagine at the time.

Similar to the ShB plotline, the Ascians plunge the world of the First very close to Light, then have the main world - the source - absorb all the aspected light aether. You learn more about the Ascian's real plan if you complete all of the Role Quests and do the final Role Quest plotline - Ardbert's final party member that didn't die.

The only problem was that they didn't expect Ardbert and the gang to kill the Ascians on the first, which resulted in tipping the world into Light - and only through Minfilia's help were they able to stay the flood. With Minfilia stopping the flood, she basically brought the world back from the brink - which allowed the Ascians time to force the Source to light. It's just... we're been growing too strong and out of their control that we stopped their plans each time at the source for them to succeed. Only through ShB's 5.0 intro plot do we learn that they eventually resorted to killing us using a "deadly poison" instead.

Something that was said in the story (i think as a retcon) that i think needs addressed. The ascians decided the WoL wasnt meant to be killed, because the WoL was meant to address the overabundance of darkness in the source. The flood of light cant happen if theres not enough light, and elidibus said the source was about to be too far into darkness, and ruin their plans.
Good/Evil deeds dont effect light/dark aspected aether. but the WoL was gathering light aspected aether as the WoL grew stronger. so i "assume" this was their original plan, until the empire made the alternative "black rose", a light aspected disaster.

Of course the base games story doesnt have ascians saying darkness threatens the planet, so much as the balance between them wasnt going according to plan. which they probably intended an actual "light bad" theme earlier, but changed it to something a bit more neutral. (This is where i think the retcon came in) As the Ascians sure did seem to try and kill the WoL a few times, and it didnt seem fake.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

They did do this - on the 14th world, they immediately beaten up the WoLs who barely had any power of light, except the world got plunged into darkness and creates a void. The Void killed all the inhabitants and made it a dead zone.

No life can live there, only voidsent (who are hungry thirsty Aether beings). That's when they realize they can't immediately destroy a world, but slowly push it towards oblivion. To speed things up and to ensure no world have an imbalance of light/dark to the point it creates "The Void", they have to slowly tip the scales, and then have the source deal with a similar problem for the main world to absorb the shard's aspected aether. That's why they sent a couple of ascians in each shard to handle the problem. Lahabrea was sent to deal with us - an unsundered Ascian no less. It's just that, our power of light was stronger than what lahabrea can imagine at the time.

Similar to the ShB plotline, the Ascians plunge the world of the First very close to Light, then have the main world - the source - absorb all the aspected light aether. You learn more about the Ascian's real plan if you complete all of the Role Quests and do the final Role Quest plotline - Ardbert's final party member that didn't die.

The only problem was that they didn't expect Ardbert and the gang to kill the Ascians on the first, which resulted in tipping the world into Light - and only through Minfilia's help were they able to stay the flood. With Minfilia stopping the flood, she basically brought the world back from the brink - which allowed the Ascians time to force the Source to light. It's just... we're been growing too strong and out of their control that we stopped their plans each time at the source for them to succeed. Only through ShB's 5.0 intro plot do we learn that they eventually resorted to killing us using a "deadly poison" instead

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Minor correction - the 'fourteenth' world is not a Shard but actually the Source, the player's world and what was left of the original planet after the Sundering - there are thirteen Shards not fourteen (13 Shards + the Source = 14), and it was the Thirteenth Shard that fell to the Flood of Darkness and became the Void (this was the Shard Igeyorhm was responsible for, and because of her actions causing it to fall to the Flood of Darkness and thus become useless to Rejoin she felt guilt about caused her to throw in her lot with Lahabrea).

And the

death of the WoL in the '8th Calamity' timeline to Black Rose was not an intentional act by the Ascians but purely accidental, such was the overpowered nature of that Calamity (it was so powerful it ruined the land even centuries later, turning much of the Source barren even centuries later), the WoL was pretty much just an accidental casualty. Although given how it's been stated in past Calamities WoLs would appear just prior to Calamities to unite the people of that time only to then 'disappear' when the actual Calamity occurs, maybe this is simply a normal state of affairs.

I mean, the game zig-zags on to how the Ascians regard the WoL from tolerance to mild annoyance with to outright wanting to destroy them, but given other WoLs throughout history on the Source and Shards were prone to being manipulated by the Ascians just as much as others (e.g. what happened to Ardbert, the disaster on the Thirteenth), the times they showed genuine murderous intent towards the WoL was probably just because they felt the WoL could no longer be considered a useful tool and so was to be discarded and eliminated like throwing away a broken appliance - and given how meddlesome the WoL was becoming, no wonder Lahabrea declared outright "it's time for the Warrior of Light, to die." Sadly someone did die, but it was not the WoL....

Also this thread really needs to be in the Lore section given the big spoilers....