Emet-selch and the flood

New player, finished ShB like 2 days ago, but my brain is still hurting from all the (brilliant) lore bomb explosions, so I'm still thinking about all of it (and will for the rest of my life, probably), so I after all I have the simplest and probably stupidest question of all: what did Emet-selch have to do with the flood? Was he the one who triggered it? Yes, the flood was to cause a new calamity thus the rejoining thus the reawakening of Ascian society, etc, but I don't remember anything relating HIM to the flood.

In so far as I can recall, the Flood of Light on the First was triggered by Ardbert and company defeating the two Ascians in charge of their shard at the time. I forget their names. Afterwards, when the Flood of Light was halted, and the shard therefore salvageable for a Rejoining, Emet-Selch was in charge of priming it for such. It should be noted that a Flood is not conducive to the Ascians' goals as the parameters for a Rejoining require a shard to be kept on the precipice or some such rather than be tipped over.

We still don't exactly know what caused the flood, we do know the trigger has something to do with the manifestation or presence of Crystals of Light. The plan was to manipulate heroes to manifest these crystals and thus tip the scales towards Light, executed by Logriff and Mitron on command of Emet-Selch. The manipulation was a bit too effective which triggered the flood.

I don't recall anything saying if Emet actually told Mitron and Logriff to go harass Ardbert or not. As far as I recall his earliest involvement in the First was convincing the previous ruler of Eulmore to combine Vauthry with a Sin Eater, which was after the Flood.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by yajnaji

New player, finished ShB like 2 days ago, but my brain is still hurting from all the (brilliant) lore bomb explosions, so I'm still thinking about all of it (and will for the rest of my life, probably), so I after all I have the simplest and probably stupidest question of all: what did Emet-selch have to do with the flood? Was he the one who triggered it? Yes, the flood was to cause a new calamity thus the rejoining thus the reawakening of Ascian society, etc, but I don't remember anything relating HIM to the flood.

---

The Flood of Light was triggered by Ardbert and his companions defeating the Shadowkeeper, along with the Ascians who were pulling the strings trying to get Cylva(Shadowkeeper) to cause a Flood of Light having her corral Ardbert and Co. towards this path under the belief that it would remedy The Void that is the 13th.

Emet-selch was basically an oversight committee for the proceedings, and the point was to bring the world to the brink, and then calamity on The Source with Black Rose.

There's a few holes with it, honestly, but that's the gist of it. Elidibus had a bigger hand in prepping it and helping to herd Ardbert and company. The important thing to remember, I guess, though it sort of goes into one of the holes, is that they needed the Light to overwhelm The First at roughly the same time the caused the calamity, which is why when The Flood was stopped, the plan became shepherd people with Sin Eaters and Vauthry and bring about their slowed extinction.

That's the way I saw it, anyway. I'm sure I've left out all sorts of details.

To connect all the bits of this thread here:

Emet-Selch was on the Source acting as Solus zos Galvus and then taking a nap when everything on the First went sideways, so he never really had anything to do with what was going on there until after Lahabrea, Mitron, and Loghrif were killed. At that point, Elidibus started trying to clean it up and as part of that effort tasked Emet-Selch with trying to re-establish the conditions required for Rejoining the First.

Now, no one wants a Flood to happen. It wipes out all life and also renders the dimension un-Rejoinable. We've been told in the past that a completed Flood renders a dimension completely aetherless, but the Empty may have shown this to be a "misunderstanding" in the case of a Flood of Light, we're not sure yet.

The First is a very Light-heavy world on its own. It may have been that way from the start (the powers of Zodiark and Hydealyn were not evenly divided among the shards), or Elidibus may have been telling the truth when he told the Shadowkeeper that the First was damned to fall to Light because the Thirteenth fell to a Flood of Darkness and the universe likes balance. We don't know for sure, yet.

This is why the Ascians' plans kept involving a dangerous amount of Light: it was the path of least resistance. It was much easier to use Light to unnaturally imbalace all the elements at once towards the umbral polar charge than to try to do anything else. Divert the river rather than fight the river, so to speak.

The Ascians manipulated adventurers of the First into becoming Warriors of Light so that the force of Light would center itself on them and behave more predictably. The plan was to strike them down and cause a Calamity on the Source around roughly the same time, but the Shadowkeeper failed, Ardbert and friends killed Mitron and Loghrif, and accidentally triggered the Flood by throwing the balance in the wrong direction.

Elidibus tried to throw a Hail Mary by convincing Ardbert and friends to "redeem" themselves for their "mistake" by Rejoining the First themselves, because Hydaelyn was, from their point of view, unwilling or unable to stop the Flood even though they though they did everything She said. Their role was to cause a Calamity on the Source by breaking the beast tribes' faith and driving them all towards a new god. Urianger broke this plan and sent Minfilia to try to save the First, and she did buy it some time.

However, Elidibus then called Emet-Selch back from his nap. Emet-Selch was using Vauthry as part of a new plan to push the First's balance back towards the delicate point required for a Calamity, planning to use Black Rose to trigger it Source-side and thus Rejoin the First before the threat of a Flood returned.

In the "original timeline", we supposedly failed to prevent this. We never went to the First, Emet-Selch created the perfect conditions, and and Black Rose killed us all. Centuries after that, the world was still suffering for it with an extraordinarily long Eighth Umbral Era. From centuries into that era, the Crystal Exarch was sent back to change it, and eventually supposed succeeded by raising the Crystarium and pulling us out of Ghymlyt Dark.

This leaves Elidibus back to throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks.

As to whether we really "changed time", whether the "old timeline" is really gone, whether the "new timeline" is the only timeline, that's all up in the air for the moment.

Though it does have me wonder why he is suddenly creating myriad Warriors of Light, I'm guessing the intent is to eventually pit them against the Warriors of Darkness (us) and have history repeat itself, but that still seems like it'll take too long for that to happen.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Morningstar1337

Though it does have me wonder why he is suddenly creating myriad Warriors of Light, I'm guessing the intent is to eventually pit them against the Warriors of Darkness (us) and have history repeat itself, but that still seems like it'll take too long for that to happen.

---

A lot of it seems to be about creating chaos, ultimately - the world is just starting to stabilise and rebuild, and Elidibus is pulling the rug out from beneath them by giving people "illusions of grandeur" that they've been chosen to drop everything and help the world by doing grand things... when actually they were already doing important work even though it wasn't exciting. Now everyone is off playing heroes on their own best guess of what to do instead of working with each other to get stuff done together.

Maybe Elidibus has deeper motives as well, but even on the surface it's looking rather sinister.

So y'all telling me that the Flood was an accident... then how were the Ascians planning to make the rejoining from the First before it happened?

I'm more confused now than before, but thank you for all the replies.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by yajnaji

So y'all telling me that the Flood was an accident... then how were the Ascians planning to make the rejoining from the First before it happened?

I'm more confused now than before, but thank you for all the replies.

---

Basically, the conditions for a Rejoining are that the shard's aether is heavily unbalanced and a corresponding disaster on the Source opens the aetherial floodgates. But if the shard is *too* unbalanced, it floods.

So the Ascians' job is to ideally keep the shard 99% of the way to a flood state without letting it reach 100%, which is what happened when Ardbert didn't act as they anticipated.

It should also be highlighted again that the First is a special case.

First, as far as we know, a Flood happens when there is a sudden, dramatic shift in the primordial forces of Light and Darkness. A world can be Light-heavy or Darkness-heavy and still find a tenuous equilibrium if it's left alone.

A Calamity and Rejoining happens because of instability involving elemental forces, not necessarily primordial forces (though imbalance in primordial forces can make it a risky venture). Calamities are elemental. Floods are primordial. But here's the thing: the primordial forces affect the elements. In the presence of Darkness, the elements will become more active, gaining an "astral" charge. In the presence of Light, elements will become more passive, gaining an "umbral" charge. Because astral and umbral are elemental in nature, they can be harnessed for Calamities/Rejoinings. Because the First was so unstable and Light-heavy, it made sense to try to manipulate the Light to skew the elements umbral until the conditions for a Calamity were achieved. That incidentally risked a Flood.

But nobody wants a Flood. And if you're on a world where you can imbalance the aether towards a specific elemental force without worrying about primordial forces all that much, you might not even run as much risk of a Flood, for all we know.

For more information about elemental vs primordial forces, I made this infographic to be a smart-ass but it got passed around a fair amount so I must have struck a chord, lol.