Do you think Unukalhai

Is another shard of our soul like Ardbert?

I know I'm far from the first person to suggest this, but I want to know how popular the theory is in general.

Welp, apparently I am not alone in this theory. I have been saying ever since 5.0 that we probably have our shard from the Thirteenth locked in the Rising Stones' solar and no one is even talking about it.

If you have done all role quests in ShB and the Warring Triad quests, Cylva mentions that she has seen Unu in our memories, and that she was one of his companions. This is, in my opinion, relevant enough to discuss. How many of Unukalhai's former companions are around, or which is the same, survivors from the Thirteenth? It is worth noting that they were saved by the Ascians. To aid them, yes, but perhaps the Thirteenth catastrophe was their first attempt to be heard after the Sundering, to make their plight known to mortals. Room for thought.

I think it's the simplest way to tie up in old plot hook that they haven't bothered to touch in a while, though is it the cleanest is the question. As it stands right now, the poor kid just hangs around the Solar, (Lol. A shard of Azem in the Solar.) but he is in the end an Ascian-like entity left in stasis for millennia before being thawed out and lied to by Elidibus. Why save a shard of Azem over the others? Is Cylva someone important? Did he save them all and we just haven't met them yet? Did they all have the Echo / fight Igeyorhm...? Do we rejoin with the kid...?

There's a lot to consider if we take the bait.

I'm still kind of laughing at myself for spending this game hoping we don't become a god in the end; that we - hero's journey accomplished - just...retire? Something with closure. Ascension as closure can be very unsatisfying and XI got pretty weird by the end. Now we're at a point in the game like IN A WAR BETWEEN THE PLANET AND THE MOON, YOU ARE THE SUN and it's like, "Uh oh."

And if he had time to air-lift out all these soul fragments, I sure hope Elidibus found the time to get the shard of Zodiark out of there, for the sake of his own integrity as an intelligent antagonist.

...Sabik?

Damn i forgot that guy even existed, by name at least

I doubt it. The fact that they left Unukalhai forgotten in the back of the Rising Stones for yet another expansion makes it feel like they have no plans for him right now. You'd think an expansion focused on shards, and floods, and souls, and Ascians, and the Echo, and Warriors of Light and Darkness and all that might involve the one character who has personal experience with all of those things, but nope.

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Originally Posted by Brightamethyst

I doubt it. The fact that they left Unukalhai forgotten in the back of the Rising Stones for yet another expansion makes it feel like they have no plans for him right now. You'd think an expansion focused on shards, and floods, and souls, and Ascians, and the Echo, and Warriors of Light and Darkness and all that might involve the one character who has personal experience with all of those things, but nope.

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I'd be inclined to think they had just forgotten about him too except that every patch of ShB has given him new dialogue where he talks about the things he's heard we've been up to on the First, so clearly he's still on the writers' minds. Cylva also mentioned him at the end of the role quests.

I doubt he'll be revealed to be another fragment of Azem, but I fully expect him to make a reappearance in the plot at some point. After all that's happened with G'raha Tia, all bets are off.

I'm hoping they might think to retroactively give him something to do, after all they've done with the Firmament effectively adding a new chapter to Heavensward.

People might recall I had a tendency to fret about how Francel had been left cooped up at Skyfire Locks with nothing to do all this time and no story involvement since ARR. The Firmament story rewrites that. They're Lv60 quests unlocked immediately following Dragonsong, and suddenly Francel has shifted from doing nothing to being very busy indeed. He wasn't at the Locks all this time - that was just a time anomaly until we did the quest to move him forward.

So, hypothetically they could do the same with Unukalhai if they wanted - slip in some kind of Lv60/70 quest filling in what he's actually doing at that point. Perhaps finally make the Warring Triad quests mandatory now that they've broken that MSQ-sidequest separation rule with CT.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

Perhaps finally make the Warring Triad quests mandatory now that they've broken that MSQ-sidequest separation rule with CT.

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I was honestly shocked when they didn't do that in 5.0. It was the absolute perfect time to finally write Unukalhai into the MSQ. Why did they not?

I assume he's not our 13th shard, though if he is, I reckon he will be killed in the upcoming war events with Zenos. In this way, his soul will return to the Lifestream of the Source and then bind with ours or something.

Like I said though, I don't think that he is part of Azem. Of course there's not a lot to base it on, one way or the other. The character is essentially a blank slate, like a little mini-Elidibus that helps the good guys rather than the Ascians.

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Originally Posted by Brightamethyst

I was honestly shocked when they didn't do that in 5.0. It was the absolute perfect time to finally write Unukalhai into the MSQ. Why did they not?

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Presumably for the same reason they didn't mandate completion of Alexander and Omega, which is also relevant to the story and why they waited until 5.3 for CT.