Are shards different?

This may sound like a strange question, but I had the thought after thinking about why the first and the source are different despite being the same world and the same landmass. I'm aware that this is answered in-game indirectly.
The reason why they're different in civilizations, knowledge, structures, perceptions, names, and other things is because of the calamities and any external interventions.
But let's say for example that there are two shards untouched by the ascians and mostly by any external interventions excluding Hydaelyn herself. Would they be different? Would people make different decisions and have different names? Would the two shards be different or very identical?

I think that's more of a philosophical question than anything else.

That's like asking if another version of you in an identical world would make the same decision at the same point every time, but then you would need to expand that to every single living being and every single possible natural occurrence across their entire history because any time the tiniest thing possible changes, then that will have an exponential effect on the changes and different paths take on other shards.


The lore does state that there is a difference between the Shards, and even absent of Ascian intervention, they could have progressed differently:

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Originally Posted by Ardbert

One of those reflections—the one nearest to the Source—is our home. And we were the heroes blessed with Her Light. But not all worlds hold Light and Dark in equal measure. In ours, the power of Light was greater by far.

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I would think the inequality of Light and Dark could subtly steer each Shard in different ways, to the point where after 12,000 years (not including time differences), they will be in completely different places due to different things happening on each Shard due to the balance of aether on each one, and those different events causing even more different events that wouldn't have happened on the other Shards, so on and so on which each different event having a knock-on effect. And then the time differences between worlds would also probably have an effect as well.

The only thing that remains universal is the aetheric balance, and the ruins of the ancients. There are going to be ruins of the old world anywhere catastrophes and natural disasters didn't grind them to dust.

I also suspect that due to each shared having significantly less aether, they will be rather weak compared to those on hydaelen. Like how nobody on the first had ever summoned voidsent because they simply packed the aetheric density without literal generations of controlled breeding and planned marriages to cultivate mages strong enough to barely open the way

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Originally Posted by shadowclasper

I also suspect that due to each shared having significantly less aether, they will be rather weak compared to those on hydaelen. Like how nobody on the first had ever summoned voidsent because they simply packed the aetheric density without literal generations of controlled breeding and planned marriages to cultivate mages strong enough to barely open the way

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This can't be taken as a given. In fact, all evidence suggests otherwise: the WoL and the Crystal Exarch are confirmably more aetherically dense than those in the First (the Scions might, that one gets complicated and can't easily be argued either way), and yet neither of them are gods among men on the First. Ran'jit gives us a run for our money more than once, and the Exarch is no more powerful as a Trust partner than Lyna is.

The lack of voidsent on the Thirteenth might be a matter of the rifts that voidsent use to travel only existing between the Source and Thirteenth; or at least definitely not between the First and Thirteenth. Or it could just be that the First doesn't have the generations and multiple civilizations of institutional knowledge set in motion by immortal ghost wizards that the Source does in Allag and Mhach, so the people of the First just aren't at a level of knowledge where they'd do that as readily. (Especially because they've already got Sin Eaters all over the place, why do they need the Sin Eaters' goth cousins?)

If I recall correctly, it's far more difficult to open a gate to the 13th from the 1st because the shards are linked to the Source, not to each other.

Or it might be that worlds link to the next one along in the chain, so 13th to Source to 1st to 2nd, etc. etc.

I can't remember exactly, but I'm reasonably certain the 1st and the 13th aren't directly linked.

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Originally Posted by shadowclasper

I also suspect that due to each shared having significantly less aether, they will be rather weak compared to those on hydaelen. Like how nobody on the first had ever summoned voidsent because they simply packed the aetheric density without literal generations of controlled breeding and planned marriages to cultivate mages strong enough to barely open the way

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The characters on the First you're referencing were attempting to open stable Voidgates, which is an entirely different realm of aether required compared to Voidsent summoning. Considering the fact that the people there knew about Voidsent enough to create a breeding program in order to make children who can open stable Voidgates, it's otherwise not a problem, except for perhaps the distance between the two Shards.

There's also the fact that the Allagans of the 3rd Astral Era and the Mhachi of the 5th were less joined than we are and did not have the benefit of a recent Calamity, which also weakens the barrier between the Void and the Source and they summoned WAY more Voidsent than anyone in our modern day has.

Garleans also have no ability to manipulate aether at all but still somehow are able to contact the Thirteenth. I don't know if that was an oversight though.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

Garleans also have no ability to manipulate aether at all but still somehow are able to contact the Thirteenth. I don't know if that was an oversight though.

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I think they’re actually going to double down rather than retcon it, given Reaper and well… gestures to spoilers.

I've been pretty certain for a while that Reapers managed their voidsent contracts through some kind of external process, that in the modern day is part of their soul crystal, hence why our Avatar seems to be anchored to ours before we even pick the thing up. So even if voidsent contracting and consort usually uses aether manipulation (which we don't know for sure either), they found a way to have it not do that.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

I've been pretty certain for a while that Reapers managed their voidsent contracts through some kind of external process, that in the modern day is part of their soul crystal, hence why our Avatar seems to be anchored to ours before we even pick the thing up. So even if voidsent contracting and consort usually uses aether manipulation (which we don't know for sure either), they found a way to have it not do that.

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In a way, that side story about Zenos shoving a crystal into his hand was a bit foreshadowy.

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Originally Posted by Kranel_San

The reason why they're different in civilizations, knowledge, structures, perceptions, names, and other things is because of the calamities and any external interventions. But let's say for example that there are two shards untouched by the ascians and mostly by any external interventions excluding Hydaelyn herself. Would they be different? Would people make different decisions and have different names? Would the two shards be different or very identical?

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I think it’s safe to say people present on the shards would be different and have made different decisions. While they are technically parallel dimensions, the shards can easily be thought of as different planets instead. They’ve had 12 thousand years (roughly as long as all of recorded history in the real world) to culturally develop independently. Barring a rare exception, there are probably not even going to be doppelgängers between shards. To look alike you’d have to have the same or similar genetics and the likelihood that the same bloodlines lived, married each other, and produced the same offspring through the millennia on two different planets is pretty low.

Their names could be a slightly different case, depending on their origin. Yoshida and Oda answered a question in a lore q&a one year (2020, I think?) in regards to the naming schemes of moonkeeper names. Their lore says that some of their family names had been passed down from the 1st astral, so it was asked if they were remnants of the time as ancients. And the devs essentially replied that there could be remnants of ancient civilization present in those name choices, tho the people using them wouldn’t necessarily remember where they got them from. So, if some names have a common origin point in the unsundered world, then they could theoretically be shared across shards.

The above is the same logic I apply to architecture, too. If there are ruins originating from the unsundered world that were still intact for at least a time, they could have influenced architectural trends on the shards. It’s my current pet theory for why Limsa and Eulmore are so similar architecturally: they’re both based off some extant design style from the unsundered world. (I doubt it’ll ever be discussed one way or the other, but eh. lol)

The only things the shards all had in common for certain is their geography and (we can currently assume) their initial populations. All culture and genetics would have logically diverged from that point on. Geography would have changed less, but could still be significant just due to the random nature of weather or terraforming by the indigenous civilizations (irrigating their thanalan/ahm areng or strip mining their lakeland/mor dhona, etc). But, as you said, barring failed rejoinings the shards could be geographically identical, in theory.