Where did the dark crystal go?

If I'm not mistaken, they teased a purple version of the mother crystal in MSQ, but in Endwalker there is no sight of it. What happened to it? Did it even exist? Or were the Ascians simply messing with us. Did Zodiark have one of his own? Is it hiding in the core of the moon?

I want answers.

It is located beneath the arena and is briefly visible during each time he spins it.

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

It is located beneath the arena and is briefly visible during each time he spins it.

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OH, I never noticed that! Does anyone have any screenshots? I also wonder if his crystal still exists, because the mother crystal did at least until we fed its aether to the spaceship. I could see the dark crystal coming up in a plotline later down the road. The moon can't just run out of uses can it? There has to be more in store for it.

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Originally Posted by DamianFatale

OH, I never noticed that! Does anyone have any screenshots? I also wonder if his crystal still exists, because the mother crystal did at least until we fed its aether to the spaceship. I could see the dark crystal coming up in a plotline later down the road. The moon can't just run out of uses can it? There has to be more in store for it.

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Maybe it's dissolving creating that spiralling stream of energy rising out of the moon.

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Originally Posted by BetaKeja

Maybe it's dissolving creating that spiralling stream of energy rising out of the moon.

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I kinda thought that was instead Zodiark's aether, since... well, he had an awful lot of it.

If the 'Fathercrystal' is anything like the Mothercrystal (which is also speculative, we don't know if the exact same process was at play), then it's probably remaining as just a big chunk of crystallized aether. Which, hey, maybe we'll find a use for sometime.

Since the moon had been retconned to be created this whole time, AND the mother crystal is just a natural phenomenon, I'd guess the father crystal is nothing special.

I thought it might have held all the souls that were sacrificed to summon Zodiark in the first place. And since we defeated Zodiark, we freed all those souls, so the crystal is gone now.

That or it's simply crystallized aether like Hydaelyn's crystal was said to be. Zenos went in that pit so he may have ate some of it (he loves eating these crystals, apparently xD)

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Originally Posted by JepMZ

Since the moon had been retconned to be created this whole time, AND the mother crystal is just a natural phenomenon, I'd guess the father crystal is nothing special.

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In the recent live letter Q&A, they explicitly stated there was "another purpose" for the moon and its reflections in the shards that's apparently going to come up the future, so I have a feeling the truth is not quite so simple.

Moreso if you choose to believe that the moon being visible in Elpis is not simply a glitch and rather foreshadowing something. I'm personally of the belief that it was not entirely created and rather it was simply Zodiark's prison and the ark that were installed upon it once the need arose.

I almost wonder if Zodiark's fragments are somehow responsible for (read as: being used for) keeping the shards separated or something. Unlike everything else, he was sundered into literal pieces instead of split into multiple reflections. This means there's at least one small piece of him on (or rather in) the moon of every shard. That can't be accidental. Plus we've got Endwalker confirming the fate of the Source being shared with its shards, meaning all of them are still inextricably connected.

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Originally Posted by Absimiliard

I almost wonder if Zodiark's fragments are somehow responsible for (read as: being used for) keeping the shards separated or something. Unlike everything else, he was sundered into literal pieces instead of split into multiple reflections. This means there's at least one small piece of him on (or rather in) the moon of every shard. That can't be accidental. Plus we've got Endwalker confirming the fate of the Source being shared with its shards, meaning all of them are still inextricably connected.

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Or perhaps keeping the aether on each shard regulated into its own circle. Because what is going to happen to all the aether now that there's nothing keeping it flowing like it had been for millenia? We're about to see some serious fallback from this, forcing us into shard hopping I wager.

Perhaps that fount of aether rising from the depths of the moon where he once was is not simply coming from his Source-side remnants, but is also slowly leaking back in from the shards with the potential for ill effects on them as the process continues.

I would really rather not go shard-hopping again just yet and prefer sort out matters in Ilsabard or one of the other continents first, though it seems exceedingly unlikely that another existential crisis isn't brewing for Etheriys in the wake of its natural order being undermined after several millenia.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

Or perhaps keeping the aether on each shard regulated into its own circle. Because what is going to happen to all the aether now that there's nothing keeping it flowing like it had been for millenia? We're about to see some serious fallback from this, forcing us into shard hopping I wager.

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If the moon is present on every shard, I'd be curious to know if that's also still true of the 13th.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

If the moon is present on every shard, I'd be curious to know if that's also still true of the 13th.

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I don't think we saw one... granted, that's not exactly a smoking gun; being generous, we were there for maybe a few hours, and there's rather a number of 'few hour' chunks of time where I can look outside into our own sky and not see our moon.

I actually think that the most interesting thing about the 'Fathercrystal' (if it needs a name, I'll grant that's a pretty good one) is that it's a relic of what I believe is one of only to confirmed retcons across the entire history of the game. While there's a lot of things that we can reasonably assume to have been retconned at one stage but don't actually have clear proof (whatever Silvertear Lake's deal was probably isn't a thing anymore, the 'we got astral and umbral backwards' reveal was probably a retcon), there are two times that the writers have come out and said they changed something from their initial plans:

1. Nerva's gender
2. The Ascians' original concept, as confirmed in a chat between Yoshi-P and Thancred's Japanese VA

We don't know when exactly that concept changed, but we can reason that it was sometime between 2.0 (when Thancred was first voiced) and 3.2 (the patch with the Antitower and Unukalhai's backstory, which hindsight says were the first intentional clues of their new concept). My guess is the new course was set by 3.0, but that's just gut feel.

Still, it means that the Fathercrystal is the biggest, clearest thing we can point to and say 'this is from the original Ascian concept'. Which means that the question of 'what was its deal' actually has two answers: what it was in the original concept (where it was presumably a big deal), and what it is in the current one (where, going by the fact we haven't seen the thing in nine years, it probably isn't).

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Originally Posted by Lyth

If the moon is present on every shard, I'd be curious to know if that's also still true of the 13th.

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We actually have confirmation that it does, as its or something that appears to be the moon is visible in the world of Darkness.

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Originally Posted by Anvaire

We actually have confirmation that it does, as its or something that appears to be the moon is visible in the world of Darkness.

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If you're talking about the big red orb, that's actually the Cloud of Darkness, you can confirm it by backtracking after defeating her and seeing it's not in the sky anymore.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

Or perhaps keeping the aether on each shard regulated into its own circle. Because what is going to happen to all the aether now that there's nothing keeping it flowing like it had been for millenia? We're about to see some serious fallback from this, forcing us into shard hopping I wager.

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The FSH quests in Sharlayan actually touch on this a little bit, albeit only in the affects it's having on the tides and sealife. But presumably the change in the aether flow's 12,000 year status quo is going to have bigger repercussions than causing a delirious whale to show up in Scholar's Harbor.

But if Zodiark's pieces still exist in the shards' moons, maybe those shards won't have the aether shifting the Source is experiencing.