The Ascian Theory

This is a theory that I came up with to better understand the Ascians. I'm only about 60% of the way through Realm and I have done some research, so I could be missing some points, but I will continue to edit this when I come across more information from reading more and from gameplay. If you happen to see something that catches your eye, good or bad, please comment so that I can get the correct information and if there is much more that I will need to add.

This is a work in progress :)

https://herologarin.com/2016/11/02/t...e_preview=true

You aren't alone in your curiosity, Logarin, but you make quite a few jumps in your hypothesis. It's always great to see more players taking an interest in lore, though. My advice would be to continue with the story---avoid spoiling it for yourself---and never stop digging.

Thanks :) I noticed that there's a lot of ideas about what the Ascians will do or who they are, but not much on the origin of them. I can't wait to explore more into the lore :)

Where did you notice some jumps? Would like to make this better

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Originally Posted by HeroLogarin

Where did you notice some jumps? Would like to make this better

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I can't speak for treuhavik, obviously, but this was what stood out to me as being something of a jump:

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Here’s an idea for, what if the Ascians are the souls of the population on Hydaelyn that were filled with darkness. The first one being Elidibus. With Zodiark creating him first, he poured his darkness into him and made his soul immortal and his servant.

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What evidence are you using to support this, and how does it answer the question of why Elidibus is the one in the white robe? What do you mean by "filled with darkness"? How would Zodiark have gone about doing this, given that he's a dormant god? There seems to be little connecting your question in the sentence before with the idea in the quote above, so it seems like a bit of a leap.

I don't want to risk spoiling anything but from a purely conceptual stand point I think the answer to who the Ascians are lies in the nature and source of the Echo. In many ways I have come to suspect that in reality the difference between the Ascians and the WoL is experience and loyalty. The Ascians have suggested several times that much of their abilities come from their own use of the echo. Comparatively the WoL barely has any mastery over their echo. Theoretically speaking though I suspect that the WoL has much of the same potential to do what he Ascians do, however wether they would be willing to go that far is another question. Whatever the origin of their souls, they seem to have transcended their mortality now.

There loyalty to Zodiark is another question we lack an answer to so far. It could be they were just viable candidates that were 'scouted'. We learn the lesser Ascians seem to have been originally. As for Elidibus being different, I suspect that is as much in the role they play in the conflict. Think chess pieces. You want different pieces for different uses. The role Elidibus plays is in serving Zodiark is substantially different.

Thank you Hinoto-no-Ryuji and Belhi for commenting. this helps a lot.

The idea of the darkness in souls got lost in writing since I didn't add a section into it about how this is used. Let us say there's someone that hates the world and wants it destroyed without faltering on that desire. Zodiark is darkness and has found a way to create his own servants to do his bidding, and I'm talking way back before the 1st era and before he was sealed as the moon since the era's are the key to bringing Zodiark back. He takes this soul and creates what we know as Ascians from that, with conditions of forgetting your past, come join me, that kind of thing. With this first soul he would create Elidibus who would have this same power to create more Ascians.

Continuing from that, he is also the only Ascian that has been revealed to be wearing a white robe, usually something a Prophet of a religion would do, while the other Ascians where the black robes. From what I've read there is a hierarchy within the Ascians, from Ascian Overlords to lesser Ascians. I haven't played through the rest of realm yet, but from what I noticed, there are about 10 Ascians that appear in a cut scene when they reveal the statue of Zodiark. What if there are more than we realize, but they stay in the void because they are not needed, like soldiers in a garrison preparing for commands. They can live forever, can move between bodies but the lesser have to return to the void before taking another host, and they have immense power. If I was Zodiark, I'd have an army in my back pocket if I would need it on the day that I was reborn.

Part of this theory rose from the question of how many Ascians are there really? I've noticed some refer to FF12 with Ivalice and I'm trying to avoid connecting it to other games. Was wondering if the Ascian hierarchy could be similar to the style of hierarchy like KH with the Nobodies, but I could be up the wrong tree on that one.

If you guys have seen or heard anything about this back in 1.0 would be awesome to know. Is Travanchet still in the Limsa Lominsa story line?

I'm going to add these parts that I mentioned into the theory to make it easier to read :P

Without going too deeply into spoiler territory, while there's still a lot of questions left to answer, the latest MSQs do quite a bit to explore the motivations of the Ascians. Suffice it to say, destroying the world is NOT on their agenda. In fact, doing so is considered to be an embarrassing faux pass among their kind. So, it doesn't make a lot of sense that individuals who want to destroy the world be recruited by Zodiark.

Let us say there's someone that hates the world and wants it destroyed without faltering on that desire.

This was just a thought of the darkest desire possible, a hypothetical :). when I add it to the Theory I'll make sure to change it so its a little more clear. Was looking for dark desires, thoughts, and wishes that would be a catalyst for the spell/incantation/magic that he would use to turn those that would be worthy in his eye's to fight for him while he's imprisoned.

There is a specific number of Overseers for a reason though it would be spoilery to discuss why. Elidibus is a special case because he is an Emissary. Again, from later MSQ I get the feeling this role has a specific purpose. Both Zodiark and Hydaelyn have 'rules' they have to work by. They have to generally work through their respective agents.

We do learn from the SMN quest that lesser Ascians are individuals who have been 'raised up' by Ascian Overlords. We also learn that lesser Ascians don't have the complete set of abilities their masters have.

I feel this will again come back to the Echo. We honestly have no idea what the world was like before the first Era. We barely know anything about that period of time. Even where the MSQ is there is a lot not known and many things that have been revealed raise more questions. For the Ascians though, regardless of their age, I think originally they were individuals like the WoL with the Echo who for some reason or another chose to follow Zodiark. Likewise I suspect that realistically many of their abilities come as much from having a much greater mastery over than any on team Hydaelyn seem to have.

Hmm interesting.

it's looking like I'll need to play through the MSQ and the side quests to get more info. Thank you guys for helping me and letting me know what's known right now, this will help tremendously :)

Here is a good question that i don't know how much it will affect what I will find in the game. When the game was remade as Realm Reborn, did it keep everything from the 1.0 version of the game or were there quests that got scrapped that would have Ascian lore in them?

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Originally Posted by HeroLogarin

Here is a good question that i don't know how much it will affect what I will find in the game. When the game was remade as Realm Reborn, did it keep everything from the 1.0 version of the game or were there quests that got scrapped that would have Ascian lore in them?

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There is atleast one plot point from 1.0 that had ascien involvement that we see a continuation later in the game

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Originally Posted by HeroLogarin

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Quests that existed in 1.0 are no longer available. Events in 1.0 happened 5+ years in Eorzea's past from our current perspective. I mean, a big chunk of the population died or was relocated, and the landscape was significantly altered during the Calamity.

Some of the job-specific questlines and the like were semi-retooled and reused to fit in as the 2.0 job quests, but the main scenario, which features some Ascian involvement, is no longer accessible except through watching Youtube recordings.

As a 1.0 player since Alpha, I can't really say there was much to go on aside a really...reallly cool cutscene. If lore is your pleasure you can easily look up the tid bits from 1.0 on the subject for reference.

Speaking of lore in general and without spoiling anything...it drives me nuts how this game handles lore. Some things they'll shoot volumes out for small unimportant aspects that are a single patch worthy, and then on others...like say the whole bloody story with our main enemies, next to nothing considering the years its been. I just pray they dont have a blab all about origin moment before the conclusion like they seem to do with recent events.

The Ascians were given fetch quests by Zodiark, and they are getting 4k gil and some xp for each of the fetch quests they do. They don't like grinding all the fetch quests, but they have to do it if they want to access beast tribe quests to level up their crafters.

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Originally Posted by HeroLogarin

Here is a good question that i don't know how much it will affect what I will find in the game. When the game was remade as Realm Reborn, did it keep everything from the 1.0 version of the game or were there quests that got scrapped that would have Ascian lore in them?

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The Ascian appearances in 1.0 were... so few you could count them on several fingers of one hand. There was firstly one named Travanchet in the original 1.0 Limsa storyline who was visibly walking around in the form of an elezen man, but he was easily identified as an Ascian because he had the Ascian theme music (Without Shadow), muttered arrogant comments along the lines of "power such as this does not belong in the hands of your kind") and used the gloomy darkness-vortex type magic Lahabrea and his ilk would later use in ARR.

The second occurrence of Ascians where they were actually identified as such was during the Path of the Twelve storyline in Thanalan where the player and their Path Companion, after interfering in an Ixal-amalj'aa confrontation over crystals, encountered a wraith-like 'bestial' Ascian, which did little but screech evilly and hover in the background ominously for a few seconds before disappearing. An npc with the player at the time actually identified them as an Ascian and some sylphs who were also present said "These ones are much evil! These ones have much power!" And yet it was so easily fooled by a simple sylph invisible spell. :p

Interestingly the model used for the 'bestial' Ascian in this scene has since been recycled as the 'Ascian Prime' form in the Aetherochemical Research Facility battle in Heavensward, although I don't take that to mean anything more than just simple pragmatic recycling of graphic models and not hints at something deeper (Ferne stated at the first Fanfest that Travanchet and his storyline were retconned and are no longer canon at least).

Either way, as far as I was aware that was the sum total of Ascian appearances in 1.0, although I have heard that there was a possible sighting of another during the Ul'dah storyline, but I am unsure about this (there were no appearances of Ascians in the Gridanian storyline which is where I started in 1.0 so I have no idea if that is true or not).

Wow! This is great info! I'll start searching this weekend for the videos and see what I can find. I'm also going to add the points that you guys mentioned into the doc as bullets so I can organize it properly with more info that I find in gameplay and videos.

Thank you so much for all your help! :)

I should add that Koji has also said that Ascian prime is also closer to one of the Ascian's true forms. What we see is generally just a form used to deal with mortals as obviously appearing as some kind of horrifying reaper creature would likely simply terrify people your trying to talk to, to manipulate into summoning primals.

All up to date from the points that have been mentioned in the forum. I will add more as I get through gameplay and research.

Progress is coming along nicely thanks to you guys :)