Could G'raha's Original Timeline still exist?

And if so, do you all think we'll get to go there some day. Time/dimensional travel is a really wonky and crazy sort of business. Just out of curiosity, I'd like to see first hand how the 8th Calamity had ravaged Ethyris amd what had happened to all the lands we had helped ul to Stormblood, along with their most prominent characters.

I'm also wonder if Zenos is still alive in this timelime, too. Whether you love him or hate him, you gotta admit he's really freaking hard to kill. He's like a cockroach with 9 lives, lol!

And on top of that, what happened to this world's version of Hydalyn and Zodiark. Were the Ascians successfull in rejoining more worlds? Was Hydalyn affected by the Black Rose due to the flow of aether in Eoreza being completely ravaged?

Lol, I have so many questions!

What are your guy's thoughts on this and what would you all like to see if we ever get to go to G'raha's old timeline. :D


Also, sorry all the thread creations. xD

We know that G'raha's timeline still exists as it was featured in the anniversary short stories: https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes.../#sidestory_08

I doubt we'll visit it, but you never know.

Zenos would depend on whether or not he could survive the Black Rose. It's supposed to stifle aether, and he's nothing but a soul until he gets his own body back. He can't just flee into the Rift like the Ascians, so it's hard to call for sure.

along with that, the story, or at least the Dng you go into the tower again has a ending cutscene that basically states they will rebuild themselves with the guidance of Midgarsomr..,

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Originally Posted by Moomba33

We know that G'raha's timeline still exists as it was featured in the anniversary short stories: https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes.../#sidestory_08

I doubt we'll visit it, but you never know.

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That is so amazing! I glad the Ironworks in G'raha's old timeline get a chance to start anew and that Midgarsomr will be leading them. :D

Now I really hope we get to go to their world one day. Its not impossible, considering we have access to their Crystal Tower on the First. If the Scions manage to figure out a way to traverse to and from the Shards. Then maybe Cid and Nero could figure out how to get G'raha's Crystal Tower to work and use it once again traverse space and time. :3

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Originally Posted by TheMightyMollusk

Zenos would depend on whether or not he could survive the Black Rose. It's supposed to stifle aether, and he's nothing but a soul until he gets his own body back. He can't just flee into the Rift like the Ascians, so it's hard to call for sure.

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Twould be a hilarious thing if Zenos became the new "Shadow Hunter" of G'raha's timeline. Killing Ascians over and over again, one after the other both as a worthy way to pass the time and in the hopes of eventually finding Elidibus and finally getting his body back.

He could have hopped from body to body as the Black Rose spread. With each body slowly succumbing to the deadly poison, he'd flee it just before it would snuff out his existence into the next unwitting vessal.

Lol, it would be even funnier if he somehow managed to reanimate the WoL's body and used it as his own until the day finally came when he'd regain his own body. Plus, in a way, he could keep what remains of his "one and only true friend" close to him at all times. Giving Zenos some form of comfort knowing that despite we can't fight him anymore, he can at least still fight with us as the new host of our vessal. :'3

assuming Corporeal Aether isn't Jumbled after a dive into BlackRose soup.
I admittedly never looked into if the body needs Corporeal Aether to Function, or if the soul Aether will do just fine if there are none.
One thing for sure. Zenos might just be the start of the chaos and turmoil.

But we never knew if there was else inside of him, but his Desire for us/WoL/D.

When SE decided to go for time travel not only once but twice and combined both loop and timeline anything is possible.

In a sense all Graha did was jump to a new timeline to escape his own, there could be infinite timelines which also means just like graha did, other timelines could invade hours.

At least that gives them another chance to create a proper garlemald!

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Originally Posted by GTK0HLK

assuming Corporeal Aether isn't Jumbled after a dive into BlackRose soup.
I admittedly never looked into if the body needs Corporeal Aether to Function, or if the soul Aether will do just fine if there are none.
One thing for sure. Zenos might just be the start of the chaos and turmoil.

But we never knew if there was else inside of him, but his Desire for us/WoL/D.

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Isn't corporal aether the soul though?

Lol, yeah! The Eighth Umbral Calamity seems like the type of world he'd initially want to live in. Can see him being a major driving force for why G'raha's timeline remained in pure chaos for so long, other than the Ascians doing their usual thing *Laughs in Lalabreha*.

I think the WoL is his whole reason for even wanting to continue living after his Resonant powers unceremoniously brought him back to life. The WoL was the only one to actually make him feel alive and give his life meaning in so doing. In our timeline, one of the reasons why he had killed Emperor Varis was to stop him from releasing Black Rose and killing the WoL. In a world where the WoL perishes, I can't imagine how empty Zenos must have felt if he survived the Eighth Umbral Calamity.

Hell, I can imagine him committing his life to killing the Ascians out of revenge for taking away the one person that actually gave meaning to his life; especially since he can't die himself, like the Ascians and I doubt he would let Black Rose kill him outright just to put himself out of his misery. Unless the release of the poison caught him unawares. No, I can see Zenos going the Lahabrea route in burning his life energy down to nothing in his pursuit of the Ascians; making sure that if he is going to then he will take them with him. And top of that, the whole of Ethyris at that. Setting the world ablaze and taking the whole Star with him!

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Originally Posted by Ralphe2449

When SE decided to go for time travel not only once but twice and combined both loop and timeline anything is possible.

In a sense all Graha did was jump to a new timeline to escape his own, there could be infinite timelines which also means just like graha did, other timelines could invade ours.

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G'raha didn't "jump timelines" but travelled back in time along a single timeline. It was his actions upon reaching that earlier point in the timeline that created a split, resulting in the path we are currently on. (Though due to the oddities of time logic, that means they have always existed in parallel, even "before" he travelled back.)

As far as we know, the Crystal Tower time machine has not been shown to be able to jump from one timeline to another.

It's not impossible for someone with a more advanced space-time machine to find their way across multiple threads of timelines, but I don't really want the story to go there.

I also would prefer that they keep multiple timelines to a minimum, only created in exceptional circumstances, not created spontaneously every time someone rolls a dice. "Only when a time traveller breaks something" seems like a straightforward rule for the sanity of the narrative.

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Originally Posted by Soge01

Isn't corporal aether the soul though?

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Corporeal = of the body. (Same root word as "corpse".)

Mind and soul would be incorporeal aether.

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Originally Posted by GTK0HLK

assuming Corporeal Aether isn't Jumbled after a dive into BlackRose soup.
I admittedly never looked into if the body needs Corporeal Aether to Function, or if the soul Aether will do just fine if there are none.
One thing for sure. Zenos might just be the start of the chaos and turmoil.

But we never knew if there was else inside of him, but his Desire for us/WoL/D.

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The Sage job quests involve a rare condition that prevents the body from absorbing aether from food, resulting in a person slowly wasting away. So the body does need aether to live.

All of the signs we've been shown indicate that Black Rose stills the aether around it, in a similar process to the Flood of Light (Emet-Selch even directly compares them at one point). It doesn't jumble the body's aether, it just stifles it, resulting in death. The body is still intact, it's just empty.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

G'raha didn't "jump timelines" but travelled back in time along a single timeline. It was his actions upon reaching that earlier point in the timeline that created a split, resulting in the path we are currently on. (Though due to the oddities of time logic, that means they have always existed in parallel, even "before" he travelled back.)

As far as we know, the Crystal Tower time machine has not been shown to be able to jump from one timeline to another.

It's not impossible for someone with a more advanced space-time machine to find their way across multiple threads of timelines, but I don't really want the story to go there.

I also would prefer that they keep multiple timelines to a minimum, only created in exceptional circumstances, not created spontaneously every time someone rolls a dice. "Only when a time traveller breaks something" seems like a straightforward rule for the sanity of the narrative.

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The problem with that is simple, how many times has the timeline been split up until that moment?
You cant assume you live in the original timeline, it could have been split a hundred fold by the time the exarch moved back in time creating yet even more branches. The joke was more the fact that Graha's noble efforts to "avert that future" never really achieved anything because that future still exists on a separate timeline, so he really just avoided it by jumping back in time and creating a new timeline which looks a bit less noble.


If a person from the future can go back at any moment in history or if some separate event can create an entirely new timeline then you are starting to have infinite branching timelines where literally anything can happen, you can have branches that are completely different from the other timelines which definitely makes writing a bit easier since now anything is possible but it also makes things feel like they have a bit less weight.

I would have preferred if the rules were simple myself, time travel is a loop and that's it, but the moment they made timelines a thing, you no longer can be certain for anything which is my main point.

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Originally Posted by Ralphe2449

The problem with that is simple, how many times has the timeline been split up until that moment?
You cant assume you live in the original timeline, it could have been split a hundred fold by the time the exarch moved back in time creating yet even more branches.

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That's why I say "only when a time traveller breaks something", and I mean that as a shorthand for my take on the time travel logic that I think I may have launched into too many times here already.

In short, because time loops can form, that demonstrates that the timeline does not automatically split as soon as time travel is involved. There has to be a further factor.

As I said before, I think that factor has to be whether the time traveller "breaks something", by which I mean they change something to an extent that it cannot be reconciled with history as the time traveller knows it. In the specific case of G'raha averting the calamity, that event undeniably happened in his past, so changing the situation to the point that the calamity cannot occur will disrupt the would-be time loop and create a split.

By comparison, when we travel to "three years ago" in Alexander, or our second shorter trip to save ourself from Alexander's laser blast, we don't disrupt anything. We see things play out in a way that is compatible with our previous understanding of the situation - despite adding some perspective-shifting new details about what actually happened - and so that did not split the timeline. It simply became, and indeed alway was, part of how things played out in the single timeline of events there.

Basically, what it comes down to is that changing the past is hard. The more understanding that the time traveller has of a situation, the more chance they have of disrupting it - which is why G'raha succeeded by targeting the specific root cause of the event - but if there are gaps in their knowledge then those events are more malleable and it's almost impossible to create the sort of contradiction that would break the timeline. We travelled to Elpis without any prior knowledge of events there, so anything we did there just became part of the one version of events that had always happened.

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So by setting the rule that there is only a split if a traveller breaks the timeline, then there are a few limiting factors. There is the bar set for the difficulty of time travel in the first place; even if achieved, there is no guarantee of a split; and depending on the time traveller's goals, they may not want to cause a split anyway (as this will likely cut them off from ever returning home).

There conceivably could be other splits we don't know about, caused by other people in other parts of the timeline, but that's the thing. We don't know about them, therefore they are irrelevant to the story we exist in which starts with a single timeline in the ancient world and splits into the two modern timelines we are aware of. Nothing else matters for the narrative, and as long as we're not in the sort of infinite multiverse where every victory creates a twin timeline where we lost, then I don't need to know about the others.

Also, it's ultimately a story. The writers can prevent any further time travel issues by simply having nobody else ever invent time travel. Cid in this timeline doesn't seem eager to do so.