Midgardsomr and the Sundering (Spoilers)

So I actually set up my account on this forum to ask this question.

The question boils down to what a 'Star' actually entails, and how the Sundering may have affected it.

Midgardsomr and the Greatwyrms he sired are such terrible and powerful beings that have influenced the world since they arrived from a distant Star. They are an explicitly alien form of life, granted sanctuary by Hydealyn.

The reveal of the Sundering and how all people of the planet used to be capable of powerful creation magic also established that as a person's soul is rejoined with its shards, it grows denser and more powerful. An unsundered soul such as Emet Selch has near unrivaled power one-on-one, and appropriately need the co-operation of many weaker souls to do battle with.

So... is that part of the secret of the dragon's might? Did Hydaelyn only sunder *the planet itself* into the Source and the 13 reflections, and Midgardsomr's power is in part due to his arrival from an unsundered Star? This could well apply to Omega too, having arrived from the same planet. Their souls could be at their true 'density' and might, and it's only now that multiple rejoinings have occured that humanity can actually hold against them without outside assistance.

Altenrativly, the Sundering could have shattered the entire universe and there's a version of Midgardsomr's planet out there. There's little evidence the dragons made their pilgramage to the first, aside from I think one dragon enemy type which seems unique to the first.

Personally, I think the Sundering was localized onto just the Star of Hydaelyn and shunted the reflections into alternate timelines/dimensions, saving the world from destruction but unwittingly leaving it vunerable to invasion?

Does this also imply that a planet weilding that much raw power is doomed to destroy itself? I'm going to be closely watching for the truth of the Final Days in the future, that's for certain.

I would think "Star" in this case, simply means "another heavenly body".
Most likely from a nearby solar system. If it's like our universe, even the closest neighboring star is outrageously far away.

I believe the sundering did indeed only sunder Hydaelyn. This is why we only see dragons on the Source, and definitely lends an explanation to the first brood's might compared to most other life forms.
I also posit that broods born after the first tend to be weaker for the same reason. They were born of the Source's sundered aether.

In the context of the game, when someone refers to 'this star', it actually means planet or world, not a sun/ball of gaseous plasma undergoing nuclear fusion reactions (this pops up quite commonly in manga and anime, which I understand is due to the Japanese language not having a specific word for 'planet', instead using a word commonly translated as 'star', but I dropped out of my Japanese language class so someone far more knowledgable on the subject would be better able to clarify or deny that).

Either way, the Sundering only resulted in Hydaelyn the world being split into the Source and 13 shards. The dragons were not sundered because they are not native to Hydaelyn and arrived on the Source long after the Sundering occurred.

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Originally Posted by Wayback

Did Hydaelyn only sunder *the planet itself* into the Source and the 13 reflections

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Yes. The Sundering is a localized phenomenon. It only affects Hydaelyn and its immediate surroundings (the moon.) Beings that came from other planets or realities post-Sundering (the dragons, Omega, Gilgamesh, etc) are unaffected by it.

Have we ever gotten explicit confirmation that the Sundering was only a localized phenomenon? I don't really remember any evidence that suggest that it wasn't a universe-spanning event.

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

Either way, the Sundering only resulted in Hydaelyn the world being split into the Source and 13 shards. The dragons were not sundered because they are not native to Hydaelyn and arrived on the Source long after the Sundering occurred.

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Originally Posted by Brightamethyst

Yes. The Sundering is a localized phenomenon. It only affects Hydaelyn and its immediate surroundings (the moon.) Beings that came from other planets or realities post-Sundering (the dragons, Omega, Gilgamesh, etc) are unaffected by it.

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Originally Posted by GoldStarz

Have we ever gotten explicit confirmation that the Sundering was only a localized phenomenon? I don't really remember any evidence that suggest that it wasn't a universe-spanning event.

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We do not know that, and neither does the story team. We have been told that the answer to "Was the Sundering localized or universal?" is "The story team has not needed to have an answer to that question yet, so we do not have an official answer."

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Originally Posted by Rongway

We do not know that, and neither does the story team. We have been told that the answer to "Was the Sundering localized or universal?" is "The story team has not needed to have an answer to that question yet, so we do not have an official answer."

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Isn't that just splitting hairs though? Yes the development team basically shrugged and said that, but the devil is, as always, in the detail. If the Sundering was universal it would have affected everything, including the dragons and Omega (which are both aliens and come from completely different planets). But the dragons and Omega are not - neither are seen in the First and came to the Source long after the Sundering, Middy after all even had permission from Hydaelyn Herself to settle on it. As SilverArrow said, as the dragons are clearly unsundered, it definetely explains their immense strength compared to 'native' creatures of the Source.

Either way, you are right the development team haven't confirmed or denied anything, but by taking note of what is explained in-game, it's pretty clear that the Sundering was localized to Hydaelyn and it's moon only, and thus I will stand by that until such time SE say otherwise.

I do admit though that there are flying lizard creatures called dracos in the First that although look a lot like dragons, are however just non-sentinent animals, and Omega did have the power to travel across different dimensions - which is after all how the Crystal Tower got there, but again neither prove the Sundering was universal - the draco probably just evolved on the First independently like the dinosaurs on the Source, and Omega is only seen on the Source - so my case still stands. ;)

The explanation for that is of course, the reflections of Midgardzormr and Omega never travelled to Hydaelyn. Their worlds developed differently, maybe they didn't travel between worlds at all, and if they did, space is BIG.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

The explanation for that is of course, the reflections of Midgardzormr and Omega never travelled to Hydaelyn. Their worlds developed differently, maybe they didn't travel between worlds at all, and if they did, space is BIG.

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Why would they have developed differently? The split created identical copies, so any differences between them that occur over time would need to have an instigator that is not common to all of them. On Hydaelyn, these changes can be attributed to the Ascians, as they are an independent force meddling in all fourteen of the worlds, and even minor meddling could have spiraled significantly over twelve thousand years. It's highly unlikely that the Ascians would have traveled all the way to Midgardsormr's world and meddled there, however, so whatever chain of events happened there to force Middy into exile would have happened exactly the same way across all fourteen copies. Given that all fourteen Middy's are completely identical, it stands to reason that all fourteen would have chosen exactly the same path of escape.

The only way that Middy could have chosen different paths is if the fourteen universes were NOT identical. However, in-game dialogue (such as Emet's demo with the copy Rynes) states that the copies were, indeed, exactly the same.

Probably a better reason why we should assume that Hydaelyn didn't split the entire universe, however, is because of how ridiculous that would make her power level. She's the WEAKER among herself and Zodiark, and had to chop him into fourteen pieces just to stand a chance of defeating him. In the case of Zodiark, his power source is at best three quarters of the population of one planet (or possibly just three quarters ofthe population of one city; I'm still not sure if it were only Amarautians the fueled him, or the whole planet's population). I could believe such a being could "rewrite the laws of reality" on a local scale - but intergalactic? Or even just galactic? There's magnitudes upon magnitudes of difference in what that would take to accomplish.

I suspect that the writers don't particularly care, and probably will never establish for certain one way or another - but given the evidence we have, I'd say far more is pointing toward it being a local phenomenon than a universal one.

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

I do admit though that there are flying lizard creatures called dracos in the First that although look a lot like dragons, are however just non-sentinent animals, and Omega did have the power to travel across different dimensions - which is after all how the Crystal Tower got there, but again neither prove the Sundering was universal - the draco probably just evolved on the First independently like the dinosaurs on the Source, and Omega is only seen on the Source - so my case still stands. ;)

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There are similar enemies in the northernmost section of the Bozjan Southern Front, and they do seem to be normal animals rather than sapient lifeforms.

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Originally Posted by LineageRazor

Why would they have developed differently? The split created identical copies...

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No it didn't. Each shard had a different elemental alignment, or rather, each had a different element with a majority influence.
Elemental aether has an effect on the world around it. A little extra water aether and a certain creature might get a drink somewhere it wouldn't. A little extra fire aether and a fire spreads a little further than it would have done. So on and so on, butterfly effect.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

No it didn't. Each shard had a different elemental alignment, or rather, each had a different element with a majority influence.
Elemental aether has an effect on the world around it. A little extra water aether and a certain creature might get a drink somewhere it wouldn't. A little extra fire aether and a fire spreads a little further than it would have done. So on and so on, butterfly effect.

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Pedantically, when the split happened, the shards were identical.

The differences in aether happened after the Ascians tried and failed to Rejoin the Thirteenth, which caused the Flood of Darkness, and also threw the aetherial balance of every other shard off. (Through some as yet unexplained mechanism where the aether of one shard affects others, which is also how Rejoinings and Calamities work.) We don't currently know if Midgardsormr came to the Source before or after the Thirteenth fell to Darkness.

I can't comment on the "power level" of dragons as compared to the races of man (particularly since aetheric soul density doesn't seem to translate to higher power), but...

Considering that Hydaelyn sundered Zodiark, the "will of the [planet]," the sundering phenomenon is more likely to be localized than not. Further, Midgardsormr's pact is explicitly with Hydaelyn, so he'd have had to appeared on the scene at some point after the Sundering.

Make of those what you will.

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

In the context of the game, when someone refers to 'this star', it actually means planet or world, not a sun/ball of gaseous plasma undergoing nuclear fusion reactions (this pops up quite commonly in manga and anime, which I understand is due to the Japanese language not having a specific word for 'planet', instead using a word commonly translated as 'star', but I dropped out of my Japanese language class so someone far more knowledgable on the subject would be better able to clarify or deny that).

Either way, the Sundering only resulted in Hydaelyn the world being split into the Source and 13 shards. The dragons were not sundered because they are not native to Hydaelyn and arrived on the Source long after the Sundering occurred.

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I can confirm that, yes, the Kanji used for star (星) also means planet, or more specifically a light emitting/reflecting heavenly body. The main distinction would be that the word for star is the Kanji by itself, and is pronounced as ho-shi (ほし). But when the Kanji is combined with others to create a myriad of celestial objects it is often pronounced as se-i (せい) as in the actual word for planet (惑星) wa-ku-se-i (わくせい).

The English word Star is actually very similar but is actually a homonym. It comes from the Ancient Greeks who first discovered the concept of planets, noticing that they moved across the night sky. The term used to describe them was, planētes asteres, which means wandering stars, or simply planētai, wanderers, for short. It isn't used as often today, but it still sounds "old timey" so that's probably why it's being used in FFXIV.

One of the wonderful and thought-provoking observations from studying real-world history, is the links we can often see between ancient civilisations and cultures.

Most ancient civilisations discovered or adopted technologies like iron weapons, the wheel, road and bridge construction, and so on, at roughly the same time in history. The same can be observed for ideas like religion, although those tend to evolve more quickly to better reflect local socio-geographic conditions.

Similarly, the kanji for ( 星 ) as most of us would know, comes from Chinese. The same word was used — and is still used today — in China to name the planets. Mars, for example, is 火星 or the "fiery star" in both Chinese and Japanese. That shouldn't be surprising — Japan adopted the Chinese writing system during the time of the Tang Dynasty (618AD to 907AD), and it was also around this time that Buddhism came to Japan via China.

My hypothesis is that both the Greeks and the Chinese likely influenced each other, in their observations about the "wandering stars", and came to similar conclusions that they are planets, or special stars.

The term is anachronistic today, given what we now know about planets. But the use of "star" to refer to planets really isn't limited to just the way the Chinese and Japanese name the planets — it very often appears in English literature as well. So it really bemuses me why some people are so confused about the term. They are effectively synonymous, from a literary point of view, even till this day. It's not just "old-fashion speech".

I can see why we're splitting hairs here regarding full extent of the sundering, but I think the game has been pretty clear that Hydaelyn split "the star" which I interpreted to be the planet into 13 more dimensions and the dragons have said numerous times they showed up after the sundering and made a pact with Hydaelyn to protect the star.

Where I read into this discussion, is the amount of power the dragons have are extraordinarily great, so without an actual lore official source saying otherwise, I'd assume the dragons are not sundered because they were on another planet that wasn't sundered. This would fall in line with their power level and the Ascian machinations around their eyes in Stormblood as a key resource to accelerate the war in Ala Mhigo as well as motivating the church in Ishgard to also accelerate the Dragonsong War.