[6.0 spoilers]Was there an explanation of how the Final Days worked?

We know that when exposed to the Final Days, the Ancients lost control of their creation magics and made monsters, and we know that this same stimuli resulted in post-sundered people's souls basically dissolving as they were replaced with monsters.

As information-gathering bio-constructs, there would presumably be no need to give the Meteia the power to do things like turn people into monsters, and I don't see how the manipulation of emotional energy would cause a person to transform into a flesh-hungry beast with 9 mouths.

So the question: were we ever given any explanation of the actual mechanics of this process and how the Meteia have the power to actually do this? Or is this an Underpants Gnomes sort of situation where the mechanics haven't been revealed and we just need to trust that through some unknown mechanism Collecting Underpants does in fact lead to Profit?

No judgment on either situation, I'm just trying to remember if I'm forgetting something or not.

As far as i remember its not even meteion doing it directly, its just an effect of her "despair-dynamis". As Yshtola said, she cant see the monsters, she only sees a void within the aether around em... the dynamis basically floods out all aether and the remains get transformed by the persons negative emotions - depending on how strong they are, you may become one of the larger monsters... its quite similar to what happened to meteion herself.

From the stories we heard, her dynamis basically creates more and more negative emotions till ppl turn, while at the same time wounds inflicted by those monsters might turn you as well, id assume thats cause your aether gets weakened... poisoned?


They didnt get that power purposely, they only could use dynamis as it was more common then aether. But that made em vulnerable, the pain, the suffering... but being dynamis they didnt just turn, they became the embodiment of those feelings, projecting em onto everything they met - unless sufficient aether was used to shield you.


The transformation process seems to follow the same principle like voidsent or sin eaters, where - in this case dynamis - gets overturned and out of control, altering your form and mind. This seems to be a natural reaction in this universe as any imbalance towards any element may create this. Again if id assume, this is proved by voidsent and sin eaters basically mirroring each other. (ofc that has gameplay/developing reasons but still)

Dynamis was, and still is, barely understood. The Meteia displaying abilities they weren't created with is hardly surprising considering, especially when you factor in the fact the conditions they were faced with were wholly unexpected.

I'm pretty sure they weren't designed to be able to merge into a universe-destroying angel of death, but they can do that too...

I think people were turned into monsters because of our nature as sundered Ancients. It was said that the Song of Despair hijacked the Ancient's creation magic, which caused them to unwillingly spit out monsters that swarmed the unsundered star.

Creation magic uses the wielder's aether to create things, but the problem is that the sundered of modern day don't have nearly as much aether as the Ancients. So, in lieu of our aether being used to create monsters, our aether is entirely expended, turning us into them (in a fashion).

Keep in mind that the other civilizations we met in Ultima Thule and The Dead Ends weren't turned into monsters, because they weren't Ancients with creation magic. They fell apart in their own ways.

There's Polarity in Emotions, Elemental Aether, most likely in Dynamis as well, One of Despair, One of Hope. For someone sensitive to Dynamis like Meteion, witness both extremes of shared emotions/consciousness.

The important thing to remember is that it's not that dynamis is emotion, it's that dynamis responds to emotion but is itself its own weird thing. It's kinda like how heat does things to molecule (me showing right now that I don't remember that much about physics but bear with me), but you wouldn't call molecules 'heat particles'.

Following that metaphor, Meteion basically did the dynamis equivalent of melting us.

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Originally Posted by NegativeS

Keep in mind that the other civilizations we met in Ultima Thule and The Dead Ends weren't turned into monsters, because they weren't Ancients with creation magic. They fell apart in their own ways.

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This is going into a different mystery, but I think a partial reason for this one is that the civilizations we met in Ultima Thule fell before/during Meteion's expedition (the Karellians and Nibirun actually mention Meteion in their Dead Ends notes), and she only started doing the thing that hit us later. Someone's gonna hate me for mentioning this, but the Mandervillians were hit by the same symptoms as us.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

This is going into a different mystery, but I think a partial reason for this one is that the civilizations we met in Ultima Thule fell before/during Meteion's expedition (the Karellians and Nibirun actually mention Meteion in their Dead Ends notes), and she only started doing the thing that hit us later. Someone's gonna hate me for mentioning this, but the Mandervillians were hit by the same symptoms as us.

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Well, we at least know that the Dragons were post-Final Days, because Midgardsormr fled the Dragonstar and arrived on Ethyris after the Sundering.

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Originally Posted by NegativeS

Well, we at least know that the Dragons were post-Final Days, because Midgardsormr fled the Dragonstar and arrived on Ethyris after the Sundering.

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Actually, the Dragonstar's very likely in Meteion's report; the quotes in the quest Follow, Wander, Stumble, Listen get up to Deka-Pente (fifteen), and the UT map lists the Dragonstar as Deka-Okto (eighteen) and the Omicron as Deka-Hexi (sixteen), with the Ea outright cited as Tria (three). So that was pre-turning, and it's just that it took Midgardsormr (and Omega) a really long time to get there.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

This is going into a different mystery, but I think a partial reason for this one is that the civilizations we met in Ultima Thule fell before/during Meteion's expedition (the Karellians and Nibirun actually mention Meteion in their Dead Ends notes), and she only started doing the thing that hit us later. Someone's gonna hate me for mentioning this, but the Mandervillians were hit by the same symptoms as us.

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Id say its depending on how dense your Aether is, as they said ours was unusually high before the sundering...

And im also pretty sure all those civilizations we encounter in UT were among the first one she encountered, that literally drove her insane - like the last one where the cafe was, she told us "not even i know what happened here, it was empty when i arrived...".

From the notes i got the impression on some occasions she arrived just in time to witness the end, starting to take all the negative emotions with her, hasting the process... but not yet doing it on purpose. Like the Nibirun... didnt her notes tell us "ive encountered the last life on this planet after it ended all others, it told me what happened and then ended itself..." or something like that?

Then at some point they corrupted too much and started sending out their song, becoming infamous for world ending?


Either way, ive always wondered if there will be Jenova like threads from space, now that shes gone. Strong creatures like Zodiark might have been hidden - or even whole worlds. Or maybe eve a whole Race of Ultima...