Solution 9 - Unfounded Speculation!

Let's go peepz:

https://i.imgur.com/lWV10L7.jpg

I posted this in another thread, but it is my unfounded speulation that I have gleened:

"Lots of interesting possibilities. The expansions have had similarities to the main titles; Stormblood vaguely resembled FFII (War with the Empire, nothing too deep), Shadowbringers had several elements from FFIII (Crystal Tower, Warriors of Darkness, Light and Darkness are neither good nor evil, Eternal Wind), Endwalker FFIV (Too many to list, lol). Assuming this trend continues, Dawntrail should have FFV references and story beats. We already have Krile stepping up to be a more important role, her namesake being from FFV. The main story element that I think they'd use is two worlds once separated remerging into one, but of course that's nothing new for FFXIV. Another game that has a major story element of two worlds merging is FFIX. I'm thinking that's the Solution Nine reference, and could be another plan put in place by the Ascians. Perhaps the whole northern continent is from another shard, or another shard is bleeding over into the source and perhaps that's why there's a huge gash in the world, and also why there are two very different civilizations in the same place. The whole "Soul Supply" thing has me thinking about Zidane's people, the Genomes, who are vessels waiting to be filled with souls."

I'm going to stake my flag of pure speculation on: It's homegrown Turali. A few centuries ago, a thousand or few at most, or even recently, people in North Tural were able to advance their technology to this cyberpunk-esque state because they had plenty of lightning aether and ceruleum to work with. And for outside help at most they uncovered some Ancient ruins to use as inspiration but instead of Creation Magic to summon concepts like the Benthos Ondo, went in a completely new direction. Ascians didn't wipe them out because they didn't have a Lightning-aspected Calamity scheduled yet and also miffed and ignoring them because whatever they were don't wouldn't matter when the Final Rejoining removed them and those people weren't recreating the homeland in the right way anyway. The place has a strong Digital Upload SF vibes, very Ea-like in end goal. Or, in a fun reversal of the Terra of IX and the most popular current theory- the souls trying to move over to another Shard are from the Source/Tural and Solution Nine is part of the attempt to transfer their souls to one of the Shards, maybe in a misunderstanding of how to escape Calamities/the Final Days. For deep dramatic irony.
Most society-leveling Calamities have a lessened impact the further out from Eorzea's epicenter one goes, according to SB, so North Tural was free to advance their tech in the past until something else culturally made them reject it and the Federation that governs Tural from Tuliyollal replaced it except for this enclave up north.

The only concrete link to a previous title is the name coming from one of Zidane's Dyne attacks in IX. Dyne is a unit of measurement in physics, which is derived from the Greek word dynamis. As we know from Endwalker dynamis is an actual thing in the XIV universe, analagous to real world dark energy...

Beyond that, I can't say much. It's in North Tural, so maybe intended to symbolize the technological gap between North and South America? The architecture looks a little too cyberpunk compared to Amaurot's more solarpunk aesthetic to make me think they're connected.

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Originally Posted by Teah_Kaye

So the only thing I'm pretty confident will turn out to be true is S9 being connected to Ancients somehow, the proto-alphabet is a clear link between the people of S9, Loporrits and the Twelve (both of which we know were created by the Ancients) and the Ancients themselves who apparently use the same alphabet in their maps for Elpis and its subzones as well.

That being said, diamondedge83's post inspired me to pull out my tinfoil hat...

Admittedly I have not played FF9 and my speculation surrounding elements pertaining to that game will probably be of lower quality, but I read into it a bit and had some thoughts. What if S9 was created by the Ascians and is inhabited by Genomes, who were intended to take on the souls of the people who were trapped in Zodiark after the Ascians' plan was complete? I don't think we ever got any elaboration on how that part of the plan was supposed to work, we just assumed they would immediately be restored in body and soul, but maybe that wouldn't be possible on such a large scale and creating vessels for the souls of the sacrificed people was a compromise.

And in that case they've been blissfully partying it up in their cyberpunk city for thousands of years, waiting for their cue to go in and intercept all those souls and unaware of recent developments that will have made their original purpose obsolete. Maybe the people of S9 are either lacking souls entirely and we'll have to give them the bad news that the souls they've been awaiting aren't coming after all or they've been haphazardly pulling them from the Lifestream following Zodiark's demise.

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FFIX is great, It's not my favorite, but it is the game I consider to be the quintessential FF game, you should play it if you get the chance. Your idea would also incorporate themes from FFX in the form of Zanarkand, a city made up of dreams (which aren't fundamentally different from souls). Someone else had mentioned that Azem had their own plan which is why they left the convocation, but didn't join Venat. Perhaps S9 could be that. Souls safely stored away in their own little Matrix-esque dream world, meanwhile outside, Genome like beings manage the city and can't be affected by the Endsinger as they are without souls.

IX is a good game, but it's not without its flaws - the big one being it focuses so heavily on 3 of the main protagonists the rest get little to no time to truly shine as characters. It also has a massive number of time-sensitive sidequests, so if you wanna complete it 100%... (Well, that's virtually impossible, on account of Excalibur II and all.)

According to Sakaguchi himself it's everything he envisioned a Final Fantasy game to be, but just know what you're getting into before starting it up.

It reminded me of the underground world in FF11s seekers of alduin.. been a while. But was where we battled hades and stuff.

It reminded me of the underground world in FF11s seekers of alduin.. been a while. But was where we battled hades and stuff.

Zone was called Ra'Kaznar Inner Court. Idk kinda look similar

My personal wish would have been a group of Ancients who somehow remembered who they were after the Sundering and decided to build back their city with tech rather than Creation Magic since they had been diminished. That or maybe an Ascian pet project at rebuilding their society in the new world. That is about as likely as a snowstorm in the Sahara though.

Elsewise I have heard everything from it being a nod to Terra in FF9, to it being connected to Azem or Ultima, to it being survivors from a rejoining of another Shard. I have heard that it could be a splinter of Allag as well that just didn't fall when the rest. When I say "I heard", it is just fan speculation I hear about the nets. No one has any concrete info. I just wanted to be clear.

Given the name of the city (Zidane's ability), Zidane's nature, and the fact that there was a sign mentioning souls in the very city, I would at least say that the city has something to do with an ancient species either from the Source, one of the Shards, or even space, who came here and are trying to maintain themselves.

No matter what, it was the first thing I have seen them present from Dawntrail that made me sit up and actually feel some interest, so I can't wait to find out what it is about. :)

I don't want Solution 9 to be Ancient / Azem related. It should be just a direct FFIX reference: an alien civilization embedding itself to North Tural in an attempt to save themselves. Their bodies are not suitable for the planet so they created artificial bodies (genomes) to transfer their souls into.

Although I can see it being Azem's solution in saving the world from the Final Days, creating a city surrounded by a shield of heavy aether-rich buildings

If it weren't for the use of the proto-Eorzean alphabet I'd have suggested they could be from the future and pulled a Crystarium on us on a bigger scale.

I looked around at what we have available and in what looks to be Shaaloani there's a bar sign that says "BAR" very clearly on it in modern Eorzean. So it is strange that they use the Eorzean alphabet in the New World while the more connected Hingashi uses their own, separate writing system but that also means that Solution Nine is completely and utterly separate from the rest of the New World as if there wasn't any doubt before. That said, the signs also have what appears to me like it could be a different writing script as well, but it's the same thing repeated on both "Employment" and "Soul Supply".

Some things I'm curious about are why there's a dungeon where Solution Nine architecture looks blown up:
https://lds-img.finalfantasyxiv.com/...660.1634253356

Maybe a Eulmore situation where they're our enemies before they become our allies and hub at the end of the expansion?

Maybe some army who doesn't like them being there invades them and we chase after?


There's also this previous artwork that looks like a ceruleum tank and by the GPU fans, this is definitely a part of Solution Nine:
https://lds-img.finalfantasyxiv.com/...660.1634253356

Maybe this is the "Soul Supply"? Maybe the Niners are mining souls out of the lifestream/ceruleum for some purpose? The city looks to be powered by lightning aether so they could be using ceruleum for other things.


My spitball guess and I've been batting pretty low on guesses lately, is that due to time dilation between shards shenanigans and/or the Ascians being dead/distracted, one of the shards made leaps and bounds in technology without evil ghosts breaking things to prevent that. At some point they realize the whole shards theory and with their technology they ported over a beachhead of sorts, but didn't quite have the Exarch's abilities of living person transference and so they have a system set up to make bodies and then inject souls into them. From what I can tell, the Void uses modern Eorzean script, at least on the maps, but the others could have kept the proto script around if they had no big societal collapses.

I think the important thing to remember about Solution Nine is exactly where the zone sits in terms of 'content type': It's the secondary city. It's definitely connected to Heritage Found, and we'll probably first visit them very early; perhaps in that 'pick between two mini-branches' part of the questline, same as we did with Eulmore and Radz-at-Han. I think more Radz than Eulmore, because I believe before ShB's release they were already making it pretty subtextually clear that Eulmore's Up To Some Stuff in a way they're just not with Solution Nine. This also means that, while it's probably going to face a change of some kind to explain why we don't have full access to its services at first, it is going to... y'know, still be there afterwards, and is highly unlikely to overshadow the rest of what we've seen, which is of a very different vibe.

I'm guessing that we'll be seeing an overall conflict of 'traditionalism versus modernity' in Dawntrail--likely not a literal conflict, since it's been made very clear that Tural's all cool with each other, more just everyone having to grapple with that question in their own way. And to aid that whole thing, Solution Nine's situation will be largely 'self-made'; not elevated by some externality like shard travel, but developing entirely by its own propulsion and will.

Basically: I think it's FFXIV Wakanda.

I think the name Heritage Found is probably important too. There are two distinct civilizations in the same place, but what if they aren't? Heritage Found makes it seem like there were a people there that left, and their decendants found their way back and built their new civilization at the same site. Mikko's thought that they could be from the future isn't so far fetched, their alphabet being the proto version could just mean that they kept it alive and didn't deviate like Eorzea. Perhaps they're even from a different timeline's future as well. I wouldn't mind some Chrono Cross stuff going on. Cleritic's idea of it being Wakanda (more like Esthar from FFVIII, same idea) is just as likely. This is my favorite part while waiting for the next expansion; we're probably all wrong, but everyone's ideas are just as good (sometimes better) than what it will actually be.

Baseless Speculation: It's Rowena's hometown.

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Originally Posted by Teah_Kaye

The only thing that gives me pause is why they would be so careful to scrub the entire environment of props and avoid letting us see any of the NPCs (with the exception of a few faces from the adverts) if that were the case.

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Tuliyollal is also missing NPCs. I think it's more of just a WIP thing than anything else. The Crystarium and Sharlayan previews did the same thing.

Spitball Theory: Calamity of Lightning. Solution Nine is the last surviving remnant of the civilization that rose after the first calamity and that the First Astral Era did reach a little beyond "to forge stone tools and established settlements and towns, which grew into kingdoms that soon went to war, each seeking to expand their domain." Just a tad. And to add to the Shinra vibes, "To forge their tools and weapons, mountains were gutted and skies blackened." So, this society was older than Allag but younger than immediate Pre-Sundering. Enough so that the proto-script survived unaltered. In Tural the memory of this civilization survived as folktales said as Allag did back east, with the same recentish rediscovery by North Tural's version of Saint Coinach, hence Heritage Found. Nothing wackier than that.

I actually like Mikko's idea.

As for my own... well this post will contain spoils for a 24 year old game.

*shapes tinfoil hat into a cowboy hat*

In Final Fantasy IX, Zidane is a manufactured person. He's a Genome that was given a soul and a mission. He forgot the mission. His mission was to destroy all of the inhabitants of Gaia, so that the inhabitants of Terra could populate the fused planet after Terra consumed Gaia's crystal heart. Terra was a wandering planet of highly advanced beings whose planet was dying, due to their incidental killing of its crystal core.

Mothercrystals in prior Final Fantasies have always been important. Either bestowing power directly to heroes or maintaining the forces of nature. Sometimes both. In IX, they started the tradition of The Crystal calling souls back to itself when beings died, like a fusion of the old crystals and FFVII's planetary rebirth cycle. They flesh this out and explicitly show it in FFXI.

Anyway, in IX, The Terrans having essentially killed their world... They needed a way to live. And they found out that they could move their planet to other planets and have it merge its empty core with a new crystal core, and this would stave off their extinction. Of course, this meant that they had to replace a cycle of life. A young crystal would not work, and the natural flow and evolution of crystals and worlds was too slow for them. So they traveled from world to world, sometimes shepherding primitive peoples till their world was ripe, more or less, and then they replaced them with themselves.

It's been an awful long time since I've played through IX, so I don't remember if that had happened once or twice or multiple times before. I just remember that in IX it was currently what was happening to Gaia, and it was the reason for things like The Mist and Kuja and Zidane.

With that backdrop in place, it wouldn't surprise me one way or the other, whether Solution-9 was alien or it was ancient. The Ascian's civilization has actually been responsible for prior FFIX references and is utterly alien to our real world, so it could easily be that. It could also be an amalgam. You know, "Why not both?"

Just as Venat as Hydaelyn took in the alien race of Dragons as both refugees and allies, so too, perhaps, did her controlled opposition.

We've already been shown in the Hildibrand questlines of EW that there are multiple alien races already caught up in present day affairs. The symbiote race responsible(but possibly not responsible) for the Hildibrand clan's prodigious power. The blue alien race for Pupu. These came to Etheirys of their own will, in need.

But what if, what if perhaps Etheirys took in another world, not a shard, to save itself? What if under the auspices of the Ascians, another world, or at least its denizens, were taken in?

What would such a fusion mean for Rejoinings? What would it mean towards the larger threat that was always out there til just recently? And what would it mean with regards to the WoL and who the WoL is?

Perhaps there are still puzzle pieces in our own origin that have yet to be laid bare. As it stands, a lot of folks like to believe that the world of FFXIV is a solved equation. We've certainly been shown that to be the case. Yet, with XIV dev's love for subverting expectations, what if there's a few more motes of light that have yet to twinkle?

What if the WoL is a strange Zidane analogue crafted by both Ascians and Aliens? An Angel of Death sent to reap Nihilism.


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Yeah, never gonna happen, but YEEHAW!

Here is my entirely baseless theory. The Final Days hit and you have a world full of super wizards attempting to figure out what to do about it. Some want to sacrifice half the population to make a god, others want to eradicate the species. Perhaps, Solution 9 is the literal 9th idea on the list of ideas (with the absolute worst ideas at the top for some reason). What if one group of Ancients decided to either digitize themselves and take the servers out of phase with the universe. And we know taking things out of phase with the universe is within their power because the shards are out of phase with our universe. Or they figured out a way to send their city to the future beyond the issue. Or they flew to another more aetherically dense world and have returned now that the threat is over. My theory is that Solution 9 is gonna be Ancients in one form or another so they can rollback the unintended suggestion that some peoples are so culturally and/or genetically inferior that there is no choice but to wipe them out.

I also wanna point out, some of the glyph symbols in the artwork very much resemble the glypy symbols found in certain Allagan themed dungeons, like the twinning and fractial. Maybe someone continued where the Allagans stopped, Or maybe not all of them disappeared after all.

https://twitter.com/MlNRATHOUS/statu...21541337715199

https://twitter.com/KyrenXIV/status/1743844058320294174

Since no one has posted it, I will. The Altima bit is a slight reach, but the use of the proto-alphabet notable.

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Originally Posted by NekoMataMata

https://twitter.com/MlNRATHOUS/statu...21541337715199

https://twitter.com/KyrenXIV/status/1743844058320294174

Since no one has posted it, I will. The Altima bit is a slight reach, but the use of the proto-alphabet notable.

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I don't think it's just 'a slight reach', I think it's desperation from the Ascian-lovers for their story not being done. Not only does it not resemble Altima's sigil from the Ivalice games, it also doesn't resemble how the Ascian sigils are drawn in the first place: they're far more vertically-oriented (probably because they go on the face), and symmetrical (probably because they have to cut them in half sometimes).

Anything is possible at this point, since we have next to no information available. I made a postulate about the metropolis 'across the pond' about a year ago, although my original guess was that there would be an Esthar-like city in Meracydia. I am happy that they brought in a more futuristic aesthetic just to change things up. But it's hard to be definitive about S9's origin.

The most useful visual cue in identifying Ancient structures is the scale. Everything from the doors, to the counters, to the aetheryte in Amaurot are significantly bigger than our character models. Elpis is done to normal scale only because we start out miniaturized in Propylaion before being enlarged to fit the scale of the zone. There is also some homogeneity between the architectural motifs in the two places, as well as the use of stone/marble and earth tones. The primary focus of their designs seems to be on utility and functionality over flash and spectacle. The electronic billboards and neon lighting in S9 carries a more aggressively commercialized feel that we haven't seen before.

Outside of the name itself, FFIX is probably not the first game I would have thought of as source material. I can't help but wonder if this is simply a similar trick to Krile's clover, since we've fallen into the predictive habit of 'what story are they going to remake next?'

Some notes I've made on just the layout of the New World:

1) Xak Tural is pretty much completely surround on all sides by mountains or rough seas and beaches. If we are sailing from Sharlayan, we had to sail south into the Indigo deep and west into the Stardust Sea. Basically, S9 is like Esthar from 8, Zankarand from 10, etc.

2) The bridge across the giant scar from Yok Tural to Xak Tural is the only way into and out of the northern continent of Xak Tural from the west. The only known records of contact from the other entry point is Hingashi sailors from the east from the EE books. This bridge is very advanced compared to the architecture of Tuliyollal so I would assume it was built by the inhabitants of S9.

3) There are two distinct people groups in the trailer. The colorful poncho dressed Tuliyollal inhabitants and the overall wearing worker uniform people. The uniform workers are almost certainly labor for the Ceruleum mining in the Shaaloani region. The question is are these workers citizens of S9 or labor outsourced from Yok Tural?

4) All forms of advanced tech exist in Xak Tural. They have trains transporting Ceruleum from the Shaaloani region into the base of S9 at Heritage Found. They do not share their tech from the images and videos we have seen of Yok Tural.

5) The floral and fauna of Yok Tural compared to Xak Tural is night and day to each other. Yok Tural is relatively untouched wilderness whereas the landscape of Xak Tural is barren Arizona desert. The question is how long has S9 been there and maintaining their consumption of the resources of the land? or has the land been like this since the beginning?

6) S9 has a dome or shield over it with gatehouses at Heritage found. This has probably led to the Cities of Gold/El Dorado myth. If no one can get in and it looks so advanced from the outside, they are obviously hiding knowledge and riches beyond measure to the common folk. Very Eulmore of them.

I'll make more notes as I observe the info more closely, but I'm certain the Ancients/Ascians are involved in this civilization. I definitely think we are moving away from the Ancient's story because of Endwalker, but they are intrinsically apart of the world of FFXIV.

It's not to say they are the main reason that S9 exists but they played a part in getting them to the point they are at technologically (Emet telling them how to use Ceruleum).

The one question I keep asking myself still is we know where the ruins of Amaurot are on the First but we have yet to see them on the Source. If the majority of the cities' ruins were located in Xak Tural, it would give a good explanation as to the advancement of their civilization especially with help from the Ascians.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

I don't think it's just 'a slight reach', I think it's desperation from the Ascian-lovers for their story not being done.

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This sounds so demeaning, why you say it like that? No, it's drawing a connection to something that's known, also we have never seen an Ascian that moved on from being an Ascian and not turn into something even worse. Would be nice to see just a normal Ascian having moved on and working as a florist or something.

I also think it's a massive reach obviously, everybody who looks at it can see it, but I don't think people have issues desperately clinging to Ascian relevance.

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Originally Posted by Eisi

This sounds so demeaning, why you say it like that? No, it's drawing a connection to something that's known, also we have never seen an Ascian that moved on from being an Ascian and not turn into something even worse. Would be nice to see just a normal Ascian having moved on and working as a florist or something.

I also think it's a massive reach obviously, everybody who looks at it can see it, but I don't think people have issues desperately clinging to Ascian relevance.

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See, the thing that bugs me is that the immense wishful reach is stifling more interesting--and perhaps more plausible--explanations. ANd yet, I might get a bit mad in expressing that, but who doesn't?

Because I actually think the more plausible idea for this one isn't Altima: It's something like Atlas from the FFXIII games.

https://i.imgur.com/d5dB0FC.jpg

Yeah, it's not quite an exact, but that sign reads to me like a tribal painting of Atlas with some perspective-distortion more than it does Altima's sigil. But I doubt we'll get to entertain that theory or anything like it very much when the alternative is 'Maybe It's Ascians Again'.

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Originally Posted by Teah_Kaye

Honestly, you could make an argument for the glyph resembling anything with horns/legs.

Here, I'll put forth a totally new original theory that no one here has come up with yet. S9 is actually teeming with bedbugs. The glyph represents an upside-down bedbug feeding on someone's hairy skin, and it is projected onto bedbug-infested buildings so that the residents know to stay away.

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Looks more like a Red Herring to me. Seriously though, it could just be an Ad for some kind of store or battle arena. It could be a sign that just means "Don't Enter/Danger."

Unfounded speculation? I can do that. I had the inkling when they first showed off some of the dungeon design concepts that the Ronkans might be involved in some way, and that feeling is still only getting stronger. I have nothing to base this on aside from "well, this kind of looks like that..." observations and comparisons, and some comparisons to FFV, but I'm willing to see how far it'll get me in the story and how wrong I end up being. That's the fun part.

As for Solution 9; I wonder if we'll see actual people there. From some of the concept art, they're leaning heavily into the whole 'inside of a computer' look, and I feel like there's more to that than just futuristic aesthetic. If we're leaning into FFIX comparisons, maybe whoever "lives" there either all uploaded themselves into some digital state, or are some form of autonomous workforce. Maybe we'll fight the Eliminator there, as some robotic security force mean to eliminate threats. Maybe the Arcadion is some sort of literal digital playground for it's inhabitants and we'll have to fight all forms of freakish virtual reality nightmares they conjure up.

Anyway, I honestly thought they would have waited until a Meracydia expansion to do anything FFIX-related, what with it's 'World Tree' and being an analogue to Australia being good comparisons to the Lifa Tree and the Outer Continent.

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Originally Posted by Mayhemmer

Anyway, I honestly thought they would have waited until a Meracydia expansion to do anything FFIX-related, what with it's 'World Tree' and being an analogue to Australia being good comparisons to the Lifa Tree and the Outer Continent.

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Well, to be fair they're always sprinkling a little bit of any FF references whenever it strikes their fancy, but generally it has felt as though major story beats have taken inspiration from the games in order. It's not perfect, in fact it didn't start out strong at all; how many FFI references are in Heavensward? Matoya? and Azys la is more an FFVI than FFI reference. Stormblood is only vaguely FFII. It's really mostly Shadowbringers with major FFIII and Endwalker with FFIV references. I prefer them throwing in whatever fits, and both FFV and FFIX deal with two worlds joining together (in very different ways). For all we know though, Solution Nine could be more of a Midgar+slums/Cocoon+Gran Pulse type thing. I really liked how 6.x merged FFIII with FFIV.

I don't know about you, but the view with the train looks waaaay to close to the view from the slums of Sector 7 in yet another FF game ...

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Originally Posted by Teah_Kaye

I understand things being incomplete and not ready to show, but it's a bit weird that they haven't even shown us 2D concept art of S9's inhabitants, no?

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I don't think it's the inhabitants themselves, since the trailer can confirm Hyurs do live there (One of the billboards has a female Hyur fashion model)

If it's about the inhabitants, then it could be likely the clothes they're wearing.

The "glyph" just looks like an over-large kanji sort of thing to me. It doesn't have the clean line style of Ascian glyphs at all.

I feel like I should also put out a counter-argument to what I said before about the expansion sequential referential story beats thing. The fact is there is so little of FFI and FFII in Heavensward and Stormblood that it could easily be just a happy coincidence that Shadowbringers had heavy FFIII elements immediately followed by Endwalker having Heavy FFIV elements and that they just happened to fit so well with the story being told. That being the case, there may be nothing more of FFV in Dawntrail than what we've already seen; Krile officially being a party member, the Big Bridge connecting two land masses, Dawntrail being the slightes nods to the Dawn Warriors and of course the letter to Galuf that had the clover in it. I think I would actually prefer if they didn't try to force any order to the references, I think it's funner if they are sprinkled in from all the games if and when they fit into the story.

Maybe they will reveal that all Miqo'tes are genomes :D

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Originally Posted by Yuella

Maybe they will reveal that all Miqo'tes are genomes :D

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Take your angry upvote.

Plot twist: It's a remnant of the destroyed 9th Reflection, which was Lightning-tipped and found some way to transpose a city of theirs onto the Source before the big kerblammo. They have better tech because the Ascians were pretty hands-off until it was time to cause chaos, and with an abundance of Lightning spurring technological development they were able to get to modern (or near-future) tech.

Since then they've been isolationist to prevent the people of the Source from getting their hands on their sweet sweet tech, like Esthar in VIII.

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Originally Posted by Cilia

Plot twist: It's a remnant of the destroyed 9th Reflection, which was Lightning-tipped and found some way to transpose a city of theirs onto the Source before the big kerblammo. They have better tech because the Ascians were pretty hands-off until it was time to cause chaos, and with an abundance of Lightning spurring technological development they were able to get to modern (or near-future) tech.

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Can't be the ninth, it's still intact. The Second, Third, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Tenth and Twelfth are the shards that have been restored through the calamities. The Twelfth shard was the one rejoined through a lightning aspected aether calamity.

Would be cool if "Solution 9" means it's the 9th solution they thought of. Maybe Solution 9 was the one that involved transporting your whole city into a different shard (which happened to land on the source), but it also meant leaving the rest of your world behind. Could've been their last resort, after all the other solutions failed. They could've come from any shard, not necessarily shard 9. Maybe even from the most ancient shard (the first that was rejoined, whichever that one was) which would explain why their alphabet is so close to the ancient's and also would explain the high tech: they've lived for longer than any other civilization in the Source.

Honestly as cool as this theory sounds, it almost sounds too... obvious? simple? I don't know, I'm not fully buying it but as of right now that's the most interesting thing that I can think of. I'm ready to be surprised though!

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Originally Posted by Cassar

Would be cool if "Solution 9" means it's the 9th solution they thought of. Maybe Solution 9 was the one that involved transporting your whole city into a different shard (which happened to land on the source), but it also meant leaving the rest of your world behind. Could've been their last resort, after all the other solutions failed. They could've come from any shard, not necessarily shard 9. Maybe even from the most ancient shard (the first that was rejoined, whichever that one was) which would explain why their alphabet is so close to the ancient's and also would explain the high tech: they've lived for longer than any other civilization in the Source.

Honestly as cool as this theory sounds, it almost sounds too... obvious? simple? I don't know, I'm not fully buying it but as of right now that's the most interesting thing that I can think of. I'm ready to be surprised though!

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I have a similar theory that Solution 9 is a 9th solution, though I was thinking to the Final Days. A lot of people think they are from the 12th which was the Lightning Calamity, which would explain why their tech seems to run off it. That was the second calamity.

Gonna throw this out there, but I think the seeds for Solution 9 were mentioned a long time ago, back when we learned about the lore for the Xaela tribes, specifically for the Haragin.

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The legends of this coastal tribe tell of a group of their ancestors who crafted a giant ship and sailed out across the endless eastern ocean. The explorers are said to have returned with tales of a terrible island covered in massive grey monoliths and inhabited by fire-breathing steel demons.

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East for them would have them land on the New World, unless they encountered another isle along the way. Leads me to believe that Solution 9 has been around for a while, though that doesn't necessarily mean they've been very active.