Alexander Questline Question

I am thinking I missed something major lore wise somehow.

I am still going through the questline, but is there a reason we cannot kill the leader of the illuminati?

Cause he just came up to me, out in the open at the camp, with only two guards, talked about his unstoppable evil plan, and then just walked away.

Why did I let him do this? Why did I not just walk up and kill him and his guards right there? They are a clear threat. They are activating a primal that could wipe out the planet if it became mobile.

So I can only assume I missed some dialogue or earlier comment/note that said "If you kill the leader of the illuminati the planet will explode" or something to that effect.

Aside from cutscene incompetence? The story of Alexander takes place within a temporal loop (albeit one most of the players can exit), so Quickthinx can't be defeated / killed until his fated demise after A12 because that would cause a temporal paradox.

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Originally Posted by Necrotica

Cause he just came up to me, out in the open at the camp, with only two guards, talked about his unstoppable evil plan, and then just walked away.

Why did I let him do this? Why did I not just walk up and kill him and his guards right there? They are a clear threat. They are activating a primal that could wipe out the planet if it became mobile.

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Simple cutscene incompetence. We let Gaius fire up his doomsday robot too.

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Originally Posted by Cilia

Aside from cutscene incompetence? The story of Alexander takes place within a temporal loop (albeit one most of the players can exit), so Quickthinx can't be defeated / killed until his fated demise after A12 because that would cause a temporal paradox.

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That's spoilers for where they're up to, but seeing as it's out of the bag... there's nothing that strictly requires his presence in the later part of the story, especially if it's the sort of time loop where the details of what actually happened are flexible until the protagonist personally witnesses them.

Ouch. Double whammy of writing no no's. Time travel and requiring the protagonist to be an idiot for the plot to work.

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Originally Posted by Necrotica

Ouch. Double whammy of writing no no's. Time travel and requiring the protagonist to be an idiot for the plot to work.

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The time travel logic was done quite well, actually.

I do like a good stable time loop story.

Trying to figure out the timeline for it.

Alexander is summoned, something goes wrongs, summoners killed. Now there is just an Alexander sitting there.
Illuminati gain entrance to it, activate it. Start the time loop, maybe.
We go in to stop them, but travel back in time to just before Alexander was summoned, thus replacing the original summoning. Then we travel back to future. But this means there would not longer be an abandoned Alexander for the illuminati to gain access to.

EDIT: I know the illuminati rode Alexander back to kill the summoners the second time, but something had to have gone wrong at the original summoning still. Otherwise the loop could not have started cause the Aura would have just used Alexander as they planned.

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Originally Posted by Necrotica

Trying to figure out the timeline for it.

Alexander is summoned, something goes wrongs, summoners killed. Now there is just an Alexander sitting there.
Illuminati gain entrance to it, activate it. Start the time loop, maybe.
We go in to stop them, but travel back in time to just before Alexander was summoned, thus replacing the original summoning. Then we travel back to future. But this means there would not longer be an abandoned Alexander for the illuminati to gain access to.

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Hide boxed for spoilers - don't click if you don't want it. (Or have finished A12 and its accompanying denouement quests.)

The story of Alexander takes place entirely within a closed temporal loop, albeit one most of the players can exit.

The earliest point in time is [X] hundred (thousand?) years ago, wherein Mide and Dayan are spat out by Alexander. Carrying a fragment of the Enigma Codex, they return to the Azim Steppe and found the Hotgo tribe and tell the tale of Alexander until it becomes legend.

3 years ago, Mide, Dayan, and other like-minded Au Ra ventured to the Dravanian Hinterlands and "summoned" Alexander, even though it was really the party from A10 going back in time due to Roundrox engaging Alexander's time travel mechanism in delirium. This ends up with the summoners being killed by the Illuminati except for Dayan, who is absorbed into Alexander's core; additionally Backrix' journal chronicling the tale of Alexander from A1 - A10 is dropped in the confusion, as well as Shanoa / Shrodinger falling from the top of the machine into the lake shore. Both are found by past Quickthinx, who uses them as guides to engineer the plot of Alexander up to that point.

A1 - A10 play out as per "prophecy." Now outside what's written in Backrix' journal, the party succeeds in defeating Alexander's last line of defense (Cruise Chaser) only to be confronted by the soul of Alexander, who freezes them in time and attempts to blast them on Quickthinx' orders. They're freed from the temporal stasis at the last second; the PC engages Alexander Prime in the Soul of the Creator, wherein upon surviving his Divine Judgment Alexander opens portals to the past to allow them to save their past self / selves from annihilation at his hands detailed earlier. Alexander Prime is defeated.

However, Quickthinx is still alive due to extensive cybernetics and makes one last play at controlling Alexander, only for Alex himself to reject and kill Quickthinx. Mide throws herself into Alexander's core to stop it from going critical and is absorbed like Dayan, only to later be spat out [X] hundred (thousand?) years ago (see first point) with him. The party leaves Alexander, who then seals himself outside of space-time to prevent anyone from abusing his power.

EDIT

If what you're looking for is a specific point of origin for the whole thing, there is none we can observe. Don't think too hard about it.

But it still doesn't work even if you ignore point of origin for Alexander.

Summoned/Travels back in time. It is now physically there. The summoners are killed by the illuminati. The cut scene then shows it disappear and travel/return to 3 years in the future. What was left behind for people to discover and go inside of to start the loop?

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Originally Posted by Necrotica

But it still doesn't work even if you ignore point of origin for Alexander.

Summoned/Travels back in time. It is now physically there. The summoners are killed by the illuminati. The cut scene then shows it disappear and travel/return to 3 years in the future. What was left behind for people to discover and go inside of to start the loop?

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In the present day, prior to the summoning, there are Sharlayan ruins in the lake. (From memory it was referred to in passing as a "defence mechanism" or something like that.)

The Illuminati (guided by Backrix's lost journal) summon Alexander into the structure somehow, and it emerges from the river as we see in the initial post-credits cutscene.

It briefly teleports back to three years ago, where Mide thinks she's summoned it and raises the barrier to seal it away – but then it vanishes back to the present time and nothing else is left behind to see.

In any case nothing needs to be left behind from the earlier "summoning", which wasn't a summoning at all. The Hotgo group intended to summon Alexander but were interrupted by the arrival of the Illuminati-summoned Alexander arriving from the future, and thought it was the result of their own work.

So in that scenario the time travel back 3 years alexander is actually standing atop the original version of itself still below the water. Makes more sense since it leaves an Alexander there to be explored.

Aura 'Summoning' with codex-never actually happens, just Goblin summon travelling back.
Goblin Summoning guided by journal
Goblin Summoning travel back 3 years and drops off journal.

The first goblin summoning would need to have been done without the journal. And the first Aura summoning would still need to fail in a vacuum without the time travel.

Aura attempt and fail. Codex broken.
Goblins find codex and fix, use to summon.
Goblins have it rough, time travel, drop journal allowing for a much smoother attempt the next time starting the loop.

Aura attempts, Goblins travel to this point to make sure codex breaks, provide journal to past selves.
Goblins with journal get codex bits and summon Alexander. Repeat as necessary to get desired result.

Pet cat interferes with journal handoff, causing the time loop to break down. It can be guessed that the original journal was way more complete for the Illuminati leader to use, but the cat caused it to be dropped earlier than if the gobin had kept to the point of dieing at the control room.

So each time the illuminati let the invaders get farther so that they can get another chapter of the book filled out, travel back, repeat.

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Originally Posted by Necrotica

The first goblin summoning would need to have been done without the journal. And the first Aura summoning would still need to fail in a vacuum without the time travel.

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I think you're missing a very key concept of a stable time loop like this: there is no "first version" before the loop is established. There is just a single version of events, some of which happen prior to the events that caused them in the first place.

Everyone in the story only lives through the events of the story once. There are no repeat cycles, just a timeline that does some squiggles and loops before continuing on as usual.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

I think you're missing a very key concept of a stable time loop like this: there is no "first version" before the loop is established. There is just a single version of events, some of which happen prior to the events that caused them in the first place.

Everyone in the story only lives through the events of the story once. There are no repeat cycles, just a timeline that does some squiggles and loops before continuing on as usual.

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That's not actually a stable/closed time loop, it runs headfirst into the bootstrap paradox wherein the time loop causes itself to exist without a real point of origin, which itself means the time loop shouldn't actually happen.

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Originally Posted by GoldStarz

That's not actually a stable/closed time loop, it runs headfirst into the bootstrap paradox wherein the time loop causes itself to exist without a real point of origin, which itself means the time loop shouldn't actually happen.

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Thus necessitating the existence of a hypothetical "Zeroth Loop" (or "first version") that set it all in motion. Unfortunately because we are a part of perpetuating the loop, that lies outside of our ability to observe.

Again, don't think about it too hard. You're just going to end up with more questions than answers.

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Originally Posted by GoldStarz

That's not actually a stable/closed time loop, it runs headfirst into the bootstrap paradox wherein the time loop causes itself to exist without a real point of origin, which itself means the time loop shouldn't actually happen.

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It is a stable loop, or at least what I have always understood to be the meaning of a stable loop.

A stable loop needs to be an open loop in terms of physical things going in and out of it, because a thing actually, physically trapped in the loop will degrade over time. Information can be passed around the loop but it needs to be via speech or memory or rewritten into a new physical book. You can't send the same thing around again.

The sort of exception is Mide and Dayan, who don't actually go around the loop infinitely themselves, but are ultimately transported into the past to become their own ancestors, write the codex and set up the events of the loop without actually reliving it themselves. It's kept stable because young Mide doesn't know any of this history.

It's a bootstrap paradox, certainly – though Wikipedia tells me the correct term is a causal loop and it should be differentiated from a time loop because "causal loops are unchanging and self-originating, whereas time loops are constantly resetting".

So it's definitely a causal loop, not a time loop. One solid sequence of events, no resets or repeats. It's a paradox in that there's no real origin to the whole thing and there's no triggering event, but given that it has come into existence somehow, there are no events in it that contradict each other or "don't add up".

If you need an explanation for it, it's possible that Alexander calculated the scheme and set it in motion "from the middle" – that if a being capable of time travel plans to go back in time and do a thing, that plan is enough for those past events to have already happened and their outcomes are already in motion.

For a useful reference with Alexander's story: Time travel in that story works basically on Bill and Ted rules. If someone will go back in time to do something via time travel, then they have already done it. This makes stopping Quickthinx difficult as an individual, because he has the ability to have already won, all he needs to do is remember to go back in time and set up the conditions of his own victory.

It makes internal sense as a time travel story; because time travel does not exist in real life, we can't apply real-life logic to it, so internal logic is the only logic that applies.


And as for the old chestnut of 'why did the Warrior of Light not simply perform indiscriminate murder': like every single time this comes up, it's because the situation is more complicated than that, and the Warrior of Light was paying more attention than the person who asked. Quickthinx is smart, he's inordinately prepared for every single eventuality (because time travel, but at the time that's not known). The conclusion cutscene for the very first of the raids shows that he was already prepared for a sucker-punch shot from Mide. Do you really think he didn't also have contingencies for the WoL fight-idioting at them? No; you have to watch for a better opening than that. Especially when what you think is an opening is a situation with a number of innocents that Quickthinx could very easily turn fire on instead; Biggs, Wedge, and Roundrox are pretty easy targets for retaliation, which Quickthinx would very happily do.

The problem here is the same you see from a lot of people who don't understand Superman; classic drama around Superman is very rarely about threatening him, and every bit about threatening the significantly less invincible people he cares about.

I'm guessing the first loop was Mide & company summoning Alexander without interference. Alexander proceeds to use its mainframe to calculate timelines, and quickly learns that every possible worldline has him causing the Eighth Umbral Calamity, except one: where the future is entrusted to the Warrior of Light. It is possible that Alexander's time travel could rewind events like when we wipe and start over a fight. Thus Alexander engineers the stable loop by overwriting the events of his initial summoning leading to Dayan getting absorbed and the cat and journal falling into Quickthinx hands, who summons him a few years later. This way, he can provide players with raid loot test the Warrior of Light's worthiness of safeguarding the future.

Or something like that.

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Originally Posted by Zohar_Lahar

I'm guessing the first loop was Mide & company summoning Alexander without interference. Alexander proceeds to use its mainframe to calculate timelines, and quickly learns that every possible worldline has him causing the Eighth Umbral Calamity, except one: where the future is entrusted to the Warrior of Light. It is possible that Alexander's time travel could rewind events like when we wipe and start over a fight. Thus Alexander engineers the stable loop by overwriting the events of his initial summoning leading to Dayan getting absorbed and the cat and journal falling into Quickthinx hands, who summons him a few years later. This way, he can provide players with raid loot test the Warrior of Light's worthiness of safeguarding the future.

Or something like that.

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I have a different theory on this one, that I always liked:

Alexander saw that the greatest possible future for the world isn't one where it doesn't exist, but one where it exists briefly, only to be defeated. So it's not just about making sure it can't cause a Calamity, thus bringing the whole thing to a net zero in good vs. bad; something positive has to have happened as a result of its defeat. I think that Alexander saw further than the simple math of 'if I live in full a Calamity happens'; after all, if this is a machine that can see every possible future, reasonably it could've read further than the direct consequences. It saw the further consequences of its brief existence years on, and saw good that could only happen if it did in fact exist.

Alexander didn't just see that it had to avoid becoming the Eighth Umbral Calamity itself. It saw that the only way to avoid the Eighth Umbral Calamity from ever happening was to make sure the right people saw how to avert it.

It saw the Tycoon.

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Originally Posted by Zohar_Lahar

I'm guessing the first loop was ...

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There is no "first loop" in a story like this. No rewriting. There is just the causal loop that has always happened.

There never needs to be a version of events where the Hotgo group successfully summoned Alexander, just one where Mide thinks they did. Alexander is never overwriting time; it is manipulating events to ensure that a particular sequence plays out.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

There is no "first loop" in a story like this. No rewriting. There is just the causal loop that has always happened.

There never needs to be a version of events where the Hotgo group successfully summoned Alexander, just one where Mide thinks they did. Alexander is never overwriting time; it is manipulating events to ensure that a particular sequence plays out.

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Causal loops still do have an origin point (ie a first loop), just not one that can be observed. Basically, a first loop where A and B caused C still exists, but all other loops will from there work off of C to cause the chain of events we've experienced.

Personally, I like Cleretic's hypothetical version the best where Alex was summoned and just immediately calculated its best possible path of existence and enacted it. It keeps things pretty clean and it has a good vibe to it.

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Originally Posted by GoldStarz

Causal loops still do have an origin point (ie a first loop)

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The whole point of a causal loop is that it only plays out once neatly in a single pass through time. No repeating, no variants – the same person might end up at the same point in spacetime for the second time in their life, but that isn't the same as reliving the original experience.

Events can be manipulated but it basically depends on exploiting gaps in knowledge. If Alexander comes to life with no understanding of why the goblins summoned it and immediately starts devising how to set up the chain of events leading to its summoning, that "becomes" the summoners' reason... but at the same time it was always the reason.

If Mide summoned Alexander three years ago AND we travelled back in time to three years ago, you would have two Alexanders there, which is not what happened.

On a side note, despite Mide's conviction from the beginning that Dayan is trapped inside Alexander, he actually isn't until the point where we travel back in time, because that's when he is pulled into present-day Alexander's core.

What makes it a mess is that, thanks to Shadowbringers, we now know that the game works on multiverse theory. Changing the past creates a new branching timeline. So there may have been an "original" version out there. But, we can't time travel freely, so we'll never know.

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Originally Posted by TheMightyMollusk

What makes it a mess is that, thanks to Shadowbringers, we now know that the game works on multiverse theory. Changing the past creates a new branching timeline. So there may have been an "original" version out there. But, we can't time travel freely, so we'll never know.

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It seems to me that it only creates a branching timeline if the changes can't be absorbed into the original timeline, though – otherwise the Alexander storyline cannot work.

Our trip to three years ago can be absorbed because everything that happens fits into and does not contradict Mide's memories of what happened the first time she experienced them, even though it recontextualises them with things she didn't notice happening before.

Our later "save ourselves" trip can also be absorbed because what we do the second time fits in with what we did the first time. Alexander just needs to plan that "at an opportune future moment I will send these people back to this moment to break the forcefield" and the loop neatly forms.

If these events created a split, then I don't believe it is possible to return to the present day you came from and still see the consequences of what you "changed" by time-travelling. Either you return to the unaltered version of events (less likely and leaving us without a plot) or you're stuck in this new alternate path of time. Additionally there is another you in this timeline: the version of yourself that was naturally copied into this timeline at the moment of the split while you were the product of the other timeline's copy.

So we cannot have caused a split in the timeline when we time-travelled, or things would be getting very messy.

As for Shadowbringers, I had hoped not to raise that here because the OP is evidently not up to that yet. But I think that is a different and unique circumstance that cannot be absorbed in the same way.

(Shadowbringers spoilers under the cut)

The plot in Shadowbringers is about very deliberately trying to alter the timeline, which causes a split to prevent the paradox of G'raha erasing his own past.

The outcomes I am speaking about hypothetically above – getting locked into an alternate timeline with your alternate self present – are what specifically happens to G'raha. At the moment of the split (somewhere around the present day) he is asleep in the tower and those two split versions of him, the native one and the older time-traveller, will both ultimately end up in our timeline once the time-traveller's actions cause the split.

Though it's worth noting that even in the conclusion to Alexander, the possibility is raised that time could have been altered if we hadn't successfully thwarted the Illuminati's plans to change it. We're just fortunate that for most of the plot span Quickthinx is trying to replicate the "prophesised" events from the book and thus ensuring that they happen to be recorded.

Was reading through this and it seems there might be some confusion which I think has been addressed, but just in case it's not, here's the timeline more or less.

Note there is no infinite loop a la Re:Zero/Groundhog's Day/Edge of Tomorrow. It's just a one time string of events that play out one time, albeit not in chronological order.

Here's the timeline image I whipped up, obvious spoilers. There might be minor errors, but I don't really care if "well actually, blah blah happened before blah blah" within a specific time stamp. This should just give you an overall understanding of what's going on chronologically.

https://i.ibb.co/4PJ84wQ/Alexander.png

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Originally Posted by kaynide

Here's the timeline image I whipped up, obvious spoilers. There might be minor errors, but I don't really care if "well actually, blah blah happened before blah blah" within a specific time stamp. This should just give you an overall understanding of what's going on chronologically.

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We only went to "three years ago" briefly during that one cutscene and returned. Raids A11 and A12 and all the events around them take place in the present day. Quickthinx is the one leading the Illuminati during this period and is active during the present-day plot all the way up to the finale.

Also on minor points – the second point should be that the idea of Alexander (not Alexander the physical entity) was created by the founder of the tribe, which in any case seems to be Mide herself, so she's recording rather than inventing the idea.

And Backrix is a "he". Goblin names are gendered and -ix is the masculine ending.