Are we in the 8th Umbral Era?

Aside from the Scions and a few others in the know, most people do not know that a Calamity is when a shard is rejoined to the source. All they know is massive event occurs around the world causing death and destruction.

So would the calendar makers of Hydaelyn (since most people do not know it was called Etheirys and would still call it that) mark the Final Days as a Calamity and declare the 8th Umbral Era as having started?

Well, the last time there was a huge cutscene and the Alliance leaders made the decision, so unless we get another one of those I don't think so.

Would be neat

That would just be impractical, from a calendar point of view.
We're barely into the 7th Astral era, and Astral eras usually last over a thousand years.
There are devastating events all the time that don't mark era changes.
The Final Days were relatively minor ultimately.
Calamities usually cause massive geological change on top of the death count.

Astral era only lasted that long because planet needed to recover. 8th calamity was actually rather soon in the bad future.

Also, we've kind of put a stop to the cycles of Astral and Umbral now as the whole point of them was to cause Rejoinings under the Ascians' direction.

With Zodiark now destroyed and all three of the Unsundered Ascians dead (two deader-than-dead, the third redeemed and resting in the Lifestream) who were the primary instigators of the whole thing, and only a few Sundered remaining, any further 'Calamities' that do occur would have little aetherial reason to do so, other than it's initiated by yet another Sundered Ascian who has gone off the rails, and since we've already had Fandaniel fill that role, once is enough.

The Final days had more of a world wide impact than the Bahumat attack. Judging from all the abominatiions in the skies of Thanalan, 90% of all life on the continent was turned.

Seriously that sky had swarms of them. If each one was once a person I am amazed there is anyone left in Thanalan at all.

I think you mean Thavnair.

It's a little hard to gauge exactly how devastating any disaster was to a region's population unless specifically stated as what we see in-game is a "condensed" version of the world with the city-states having populations of hundreds if not thousands in actuality.

Though the 8th Calamity was indisputably a calamity.
It nigh on destroyed the ecosystem and created an Umbral Era that lasted probably centuries.

The Final Days was a disastrous loss of life, but it didn't really cause lasting damage to the world.
Outside of Thavnair it wasn't even particularly major.
There's no age of recovery.

Even the most minor Umbral Calamity, the 7th, changed the landscape and permanently altered the weather in some areas.

I don't think we get to know that. I know there was a big scene where leaders proclaimed it to be the start of the Astral Era but does it really work that way? "When did the Astral Era start" feels like something future historians would decide long after the fact and the people of the time would never know.

There was a rather pronounced lack of the natural disasters that were present in the original Final Days, though whether that can be chalked up to an additional side effect of the Ancient's malfunctioning creation magicks and/or the more prolonged influence of the negative dynamis is anyone's guess.

There's implications that the world's natural balance has been somehow disturbed by Zodiark's destruction as well as the Final Days, however, so whether or not things will remain okay is anyone's guess.

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Originally Posted by Brightamethyst

I don't think we get to know that. I know there was a big scene where leaders proclaimed it to be the start of the Astral Era but does it really work that way? "When did the Astral Era start" feels like something future historians would decide long after the fact and the people of the time would never know.

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In the past, Calamities have nearly wiped out the world's civilizations or at least the local ones. The 7th Calamity was stopped in the middle of it so it wasn't as destructive to society and no country fell due to its effects so the leaders of the nations involved are 100% within their power to decide when the era began and ended with no need of future historians. The immediate cause only lasted a few hours at best and the Umbral Era that followed only lasted 5 years and had less to do with Bahamut and more to do with a rogue legion of Garleans taking advantage of Bahamut. Other Umbral Eras have lasted up to hundreds of years and completely destroyed society so it's more probable that future historians needed to look back and decide "oh, well this is when things started to turn around so we'll count the years starting at this point".

But another important thing to think about, is "does the average person even know or care what year it is?". In Eorzea, 99.9% of the population doesn't even know that Hydaelyn even existed, so the events of the universe and rejoinings and calamities might be beyond the general public other than scholars and those whom the scholars are advising. And considering how localized the 7th Calamity was, I wouldn't be surprised if only Eorzea followed that specific calendar and everyone else is 5 years off, if they were even following the same calendar before that. Besides not knowing if everyone in the world agrees on what year it is, we don't know if everyone uses solar or lunar calendars or the same month system.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

In the past, Calamities have nearly wiped out the world's civilizations or at least the local ones. The 7th Calamity was stopped in the middle of it so it wasn't as destructive to society and no country fell due to its effects so the leaders of the nations involved are 100% within their power to decide when the era began and ended with no need of future historians. The immediate cause only lasted a few hours at best and the Umbral Era that followed only lasted 5 years and had less to do with Bahamut and more to do with a rogue legion of Garleans taking advantage of Bahamut. Other Umbral Eras have lasted up to hundreds of years and completely destroyed society so it's more probable that future historians needed to look back and decide "oh, well this is when things started to turn around so we'll count the years starting at this point".

But another important thing to think about, is "does the average person even know or care what year it is?". In Eorzea, 99.9% of the population doesn't even know that Hydaelyn even existed, so the events of the universe and rejoinings and calamities might be beyond the general public other than scholars and those whom the scholars are advising. And considering how localized the 7th Calamity was, I wouldn't be surprised if only Eorzea followed that specific calendar and everyone else is 5 years off, if they were even following the same calendar before that. Besides not knowing if everyone in the world agrees on what year it is, we don't know if everyone uses solar or lunar calendars or the same month system.

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Excellent point. After I, as the WoL, conquer all nations, a grand unified calendar shall be created! Of course we shall measure the founding of my glorious empire as the start point. All eras prior will just collectively be referred to as the dark ages.

But more on topic, I doubt most of the world was even aware the 7th calamity even happened.

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Originally Posted by Necrotica

The Final days had more of a world wide impact than the Bahumat attack. Judging from all the abominatiions in the skies of Thavnair, 90% of all life on the continent was turned.

Seriously that sky had swarms of them. If each one was once a person I am amazed there is anyone left in Thavnair at all.

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It's possible that animals could turn as well? The burning jungle is going to be a pretty traumatic event for anything with the mind to process it, and if a baby too young to think anything much beyond basic wants can be considered in despair enough to turn, then any sentient being could be at risk.

oh goodness, the thought of that scene is still making me involuntarily tear up...

The Scions did entertain the notion that all life could potentially start turning under the influence of dynamis, including flora and fauna.

I'd like to hope the matter of the blasphemies doesn't blow over too easily and we spend at least some part of the MSQ and/or side content doing some spot clean-up of them in areas that weren't so fortunate as to have an organized military to keep them in check.

I've been wondering similar after realizing that the declaration of Calamities and Astral and Umbral Eras are entirely political. Specifically: do other nations disagree on the count? That other thread has brought up that Meracydia became kind of a blasted wasteland after the Allagans hit it; are they mad that we only think there's been seven Calamities? The Bozja Incident hit Bozja way harder than Dalamud hit Eorzea, do the Bozjans think we're a continent of wusses for restarting our calendar over that one?

Hell, how does Ala Mhigo feel about us swapping from Umbral to Astral while they were still pretty firmly conquered and oppressed?

An additional thought on animals turning to blasphemies: it could be some kind of critical mass of aether (or aether/dynamis interaction) required to spawn something, so one terrified mouse won't matter but a hundred small terrified creatures in the same place would coalesce into something big.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

An additional thought on animals turning to blasphemies: it could be some kind of critical mass of aether (or aether/dynamis interaction) required to spawn something, so one terrified mouse won't matter but a hundred small terrified creatures in the same place would coalesce into something big.

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The Ugly Duckling gave in to his despair and brought ruin upon all those that mocked him.

It's normal for each nation to have different calendar, tho.
Thavnair, Garlemald, Hingashi, and Sharlayan may not even recognize that 7th Astral had started, or 7th Umbral for that matter.

Considering one Auri merchant turned into a creature that was implied to rival a first brood dragon left me thinking the power level of the blasphemies is more nuanced. The man had been dealing with a horrific amount of stress and worry over what was likely months verses the moments of sudden panic of others in Thavnair. I haven't finished all of the role quests, but the big bads of each have been people who were hurting very badly for lengthy periods of time in each I have finished.


On the subject of the calendars, a rejoining as a side effect of the Final Days throwing aether off that badly in the source sounds like a possible story route for the upcoming patches. The only thing is something would need to be going very wrong in one of the reflections, too, for it to happen. Emet-Selch did imply we'd be visiting another shard in future content, so who knows.