[7.0 Spoilers] Regarding the Milala

After the coronation, it is revealed Krile is from another shard, the Unlost World. In the Unlost World, it is heavily implied the Milala arrived upon that shard to escape the calamity of ice. We know from Emet-selch that experiencing a calamity results in one's soul being "rejoined" with their equivalent self, increasing their soul's density.

Based on this, the Milala would be 5-times rejoined before their travel to the Unlost World (6/14). It is likely that Krile inherited the unusually dense soul of a Milala upon birth on the Unlost world, giving her the same density (6/14).

We know that Krile's parents sent her to the source shortly after she was born, and that she experienced the 7th Umbral calamity, putting her at 7/14. However, the average denizen of the source would be 7-times rejoined, or 8/14. Special cases such as time travel (G'raha Tia) or merging under extreme conditions (WoL) have a density of 9/14.

Upon learning of this, Krile says:

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I struggle to believe I am from another reflection. I wonder, does this mean my soul is thinner than a native of the Source?
Surely not. Y'shtola would have noticed. Gods, there's so much I don't understand, my head is ripe to burst...

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Would Y'shtola have noticed this difference in density? If she has observed Krile and determined nothing is strange, how did her soul gain the extra density?


A few theories, assuming Krile is in fact 8/14
* Upon the 6th Umbral Calamity, her shard's soul was in a sort of limbo until she was transported to the source, when it was subsequently rejoined.
* Krile's past soul-self did the Ardbert thing with a denizen of the Unlost World
* Upon death, Krile's previous soul-self merged with her Unlost World self in that shard's aetherial sea.

Really hope they explain this in the 7.x patches. There was a LOT that went unexplained in 7.0 (Krile's story being the most annoying example) and the circumstances around Krile being left on the Source were hardly elaborate.

And this assumes that soul density stays the same when in other aetherial seas AND that souls stick with races. I just assumed souls would be the density of whatever aetherial sea they came out of as that is the only way they'd be uniform. Since souls are eternal, if they stay their density based on when they were minted, the people on the source would have a variety of soul densities based on how long ago their soul was created.

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Originally Posted by Lady_Silvermoon

I just assumed souls would be the density of whatever aetherial sea they came out of as that is the only way they'd be uniform. Since souls are eternal, if they stay their density based on when they were minted

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I considered this, but in Shadowbringers, Y'shtola and G'raha mention that G'raha's soul density is higher from having experienced the 8th calamity, so it seems like living people actively experience rejoining during a calamity.

Yeah, this whole thing feels weird to me, too.

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Originally Posted by jadeharley

Would Y'shtola have noticed this difference in density?

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Absolutely. As you noted, Y'sthola can see that WoL and G'raha have more dense souls. A less dense soul might have spoken to some sort of health condition, etc, so Y'sthola would have said something. And perhaps even moreso, Y'shtola's hunger for inter-shard travel would have made a less dense soul too curious a topic to not delve into.

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Originally Posted by jadeharley

If she has observed Krile and determined nothing is strange, how did her soul gain the extra density?

A few theories, assuming Krile is in fact 8/14
* Upon the 6th Umbral Calamity, her shard's soul was in a sort of limbo until she was transported to the source, when it was subsequently rejoined.
* Krile's past soul-self did the Ardbert thing with a denizen of the Unlost World
* Upon death, Krile's previous soul-self merged with her Unlost World self in that shard's aetherial sea.

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I have a variety of thoughts on this:

• I kind of doubt it's the 1st one, as you'd either need to invent some special reason why the soul was in limbo as opposed to simply being reborn or have it be a coincidence that the soul wasn't occupied at the time.
• The 2nd one seems unlikely because "uncovering the history of past bodies in a different shard" seems like a complex narrative for the writers to somehow fit into the story in a way that doesn't feel clunky.
• The 3rd one seems like the most plausible; compatible souls fusing in the aetherial sea just has a "yeah, that makes sense" ring to it.

That said...part of me doesn't think they're introducing this specific aspect of metaphysical lore for the sake of Krile or Dawntrail's story. One thing that the devs could possibly want to be a part of FF14's story is to have Azem's soul eventually reach 13/14 or perhaps even 14/14. But the writers are likely going to avoid further Rejoinings since the Ascians are gone, and we can't just do the Ardbert thing again because even doing it one more time could feel repetitive and risks taking the specialness out of what we did with Ardbert. And if all of that is the case, then they need to introduce another mechanic by which souls can rejoin.

So that's my thought. That however they explain the density of Krile's soul, that will be the method by which we rejoin our soul further in future expansions. And if that's the case, then the method would have to be something that could be done while a person is still alive.

Finally, there are plenty of plot holes in Dawntrail, so it could just be that this ends up being one of them. But since they explicitly pointed out that we can't currently explain it, I'm hoping that means they'll eventually make sense of it and not leave us hanging.

I agree #3 seems the most likely, by virtue of being similar to rejoinings. My understanding of a rejoining is
* Large amounts of aether flood the source via some catastrophe
* Everyone living gets merged with their equivalent soul on the rejoined shard
* Everyone dead also gets merged, as the aetherial seas of the source and shard get shoved together

I do think they'll probably avoid repeating the ardbert thing too much.

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Originally Posted by Lady_Silvermoon

And this assumes that soul density stays the same when in other aetherial seas AND that souls stick with races.

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It doesn't necessarily assume that, because coincidences can occur. But yeah, there'd be a lesser probability of a soul ending up in the same race as what it left, in theory? Unless there's something else at play?

We do have some lore in the game about this. We know that the Dotharl seem to be regularly reborn not only as Aura, but as Dotharl, and given how small their numbers are it seems unlikely that that's a coincidence. So there may be something going on there with souls being attracted to certain types of bodies and perhaps even cultures?

And I'm unsure whether this is relevant or not, but it's probably worth noting that for the majority of FF14 WoL's, Ardbert is not the same race as their WoL, despite them sharing splinters of the same 14/14 soul. So that might in some way speak to ways in which souls don't stick with one race?

...though also notably, just about everyone else "sharing souls" from other shards seems to be not only the same race, but the same exact body and age. Rowena, Gerolt, trolley kid, Magnus, etc...

Anyway, food for thought!

If Krile has a denser soul than most Source people, it might explain why her echo is unusually strong and with some extras... Thanks to Venat, we know that the ancients could use the echo at will, so I think it'd make sense.
Then again, the WoL's echo didn't show any changes after merging with Ardbert, so it could just be individual differences, rather than something systematic like a denser soul.

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Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

That said...part of me doesn't think they're introducing this specific aspect of metaphysical lore for the sake of Krile or Dawntrail's story. One thing that the devs could possibly want to be a part of FF14's story is to have Azem's soul eventually reach 13/14 or perhaps even 14/14. But the writers are likely going to avoid further Rejoinings since the Ascians are gone, and we can't just do the Ardbert thing again because even doing it one more time could feel repetitive and risks taking the specialness out of what we did with Ardbert. And if all of that is the case, then they need to introduce another mechanic by which souls can rejoin.

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That's an interesting point, and also raises the question of what might happen in similar circumstances if we were to encounter a situation in which we meet a shard counterpart who doesn't want to rejoin.
Though I digress - that's probably a topic for another thread.

Well... nothing much would happen, I imagine. We could only join with Ardbert, because he was already dead, but was kept from rejoining the life-stream of the First by Hydaelyn's direct intervention, allowing him to join with us later. With Hydaelyn gone, the chances of that happening again are pretty much zero.

What is a more interesting question to me is, what happens to those who traveled from one shard to another and died over there? Like the native Alexandrians, who came to the Source. Does their soul somehow go back to their own shard, since it still exists in some form or another, or does it stay in the Source?
And if it's the latter, what does that mean?
If one of the two dies, do their souls merge, or does the dead's soul wait for the living one to also die to rejoin, or is it just going to be reborn as a seperate being, until both parts of the soul end up being dead at the same time? Or does the lack of a proper rejoining mean, they'll never re-fuse and will stay seperate?

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Originally Posted by No_Nick_Needed

What is a more interesting question to me is, what happens to those who traveled from one shard to another and died over there? Like the native Alexandrians, who came to the Source. Does their soul somehow go back to their own shard,

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There's nothing in the lore that suggests that souls have any sort of true connection to their relative shards; on the contrary, there are numerous instances of souls of the dead playing by the rules of the shard they are in and needing explicit labor to be ferried between them. To name just one example, the soul of Minfilia is explicitly ferried from the First to the Source by Hydaelyn.

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Originally Posted by No_Nick_Needed

If one of the two dies, do their souls merge, or does the dead's soul wait for the living one to also die to rejoin, or is it just going to be reborn as a seperate being, until both parts of the soul end up being dead at the same time? Or does the lack of a proper rejoining mean, they'll never re-fuse and will stay seperate?

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I don't think we have a definitive answer to this. Though we could easily learn the answer if something unfortunate happened to the Rowena or Gerolt in Solution 9. Y'know, for science!

My guess would be that there isn't anything particularly special happening during a Rejoining, that everything in the shard dies and simply gets deposited into the Source. If that's the case, it would mean that the souls of the dead have some manner of magnetism to their counterparts (living or dead) and fuse with them. The demonstrated exception to this rule would be souls that are "undead" like Ardbert; he's technically dead, but in a way that has resisted the natural process of what happens to souls after death.

(I wonder what this means for the Scions who spent years in the First? Y'sthola would have noticed if their souls had become more dense, suggesting they didn't join with their counterparts. Does that means that they have living counterparts somewhere on the First? Or that the rules work differently for the type of out-of-body experience the Scions were having? It will be interesting to see whether whatever explanation the writers eventually provide is internally consistent.)

Living counterparts for the Scians in the First... I wonder if that might have been the reason why the connection between their physical bodies and souls weakened over time. Both the characters in the story and most of us players thought it was a timelimit of how long you can seperate a soul and body, but what if it was actually their souls being pulled by their counterpart body in the First.

But I just remembered one factor which I never thought about before in context of rejoined souls: The Seventh Umbral Calamity happened during the lifetime of all the characters we know, except some very young children. Do we know for sure that the WoL and G'Raha have 9 and everyone else from the Source 8 parts of their soul, or do we just know that pair has one more soul fragment than everyone else? Because if it's the former, we already have our answer to whether a dead soul can join with a living one.

It also makes me think about the voidsent. Just in our own stories, we killed many voidsent in the Source and between the Allagan wars and the War of the Magi, entire legions of voidsent found their end in the Source, which thanks to post-Endwalker MSQ we know means they died for good. So wouldn't that mean that there are plenty of other people who are rejoined just as often as G'Raha and the WoL, thanks to their soul-fragment from the 13th having come to the Soure? It could also mean that the WoL and G'Raha might even be 10 soul-fragments rejoined.

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Originally Posted by No_Nick_Needed

The Seventh Umbral Calamity happened during the lifetime of all the characters we know, except some very young children. Do we know for sure that the WoL and G'Raha have 9 and everyone else from the Source 8 parts of their soul, or do we just know that pair has one more soul fragment than everyone else? Because if it's the former, we already have our answer to whether a dead soul can join with a living one.

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Before the climax of Shadowbringers, Emet-Selch referred to the WoL as something along the lines of "a vaunted hero of the Source seven times rejoined". Emet-Selch sometimes stretches the truth, but I don't see any reason to doubt his words here.

Beyond that, the Rejoining itself immediately had an impact on everyone in the Source: they could now all understand one another. Before the most recent Rejoining, only those with the Echo could understand the various tribes.

And while there's no explicit link here, in Endwalker they talk about how after the Calamity there was a brief period of universal memory loss; one possible explanation for that would be the mass rejoining of souls. That would surprisingly fit in well with Dawntrail's lore on souls and memories.

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Originally Posted by No_Nick_Needed

So wouldn't that mean that there are plenty of other people who are rejoined just as often as G'Raha and the WoL, thanks to their soul-fragment from the 13th having come to the Soure? It could also mean that the WoL and G'Raha might even be 10 soul-fragments rejoined.

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This is a really good point; there are plenty of Voidsent that have died on the first. Cagnazzio and Rubicante for sure, and probably Diablos, Scathach, Echidna, Ferdniand, and any number of their minions...under what conditions those souls might rejoin with their Source counterparts is an interesting question.

And this is where I take a step back and wonder how much I can expect of the writers. Broad internal consistency is not a strength of FF14; there is unfortunately plenty in FF14 that contradicts itself if one's memory is nerdy enough. Dawntrail is full of examples of this, but even a fantastically written expansion like Shadowbringers had to officially retcon the functionality of Light and Darkness and transform the Ascians from cackling bringers of chaos to a principled group that was focused on a very non-chaotic goal.

All of which is to say, I love analyzing the implications of all the lore and stories we've received over the years, but part of me doesn't trust the writers to not negate their premises when it suits them. I hope they write something that is internally consistent, something that is grand and unifying and complete. I hope for that and I want that. But I've apparently thought so much about this topic that I've remembered the ways it hasn't worked out before, and now I'm feeling pessimistic... XD ^^; T-T

But they did find two ways out to explain the cackling, moustache twirling Ascians of ARR and Heaven's Ward. Lahabreha was corrupted by the Heart of Sabik and as we've seen with Amon/Hermes, the lesser, sundered Ascians can be dominated by one of the lives they lived as sundered souls, so they might be drastically different than their original Ancient self. So it's at least a well covered-up retcon. ^^

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Originally Posted by No_Nick_Needed

But they did find two ways out to explain the cackling, moustache twirling Ascians of ARR and Heaven's Ward. Lahabreha was corrupted by the Heart of Sabik and as we've seen with Amon/Hermes, the lesser, sundered Ascians can be dominated by one of the lives they lived as sundered souls, so they might be drastically different than their original Ancient self. So it's at least a well covered-up retcon. ^^

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Personally, I found their attempt at a Lahabrea retcon to be contrived, as the final twist was dependent on a smart, well-reasoned man making an incredibly dumb decision. Broadly speaking I don't mind when characters make dumb decisions, as real people do that all the time. But a well-written story foreshadows such things by introducing us to the character flaws that will eventually result in a character making a poor choice, so that when they finally make that choice, it feels true to the character. And by my read, Lahabrea's choice felt like it was in conflict with everything we had previously experienced of his character in Pandemonium. And that made it feel like they just replaced one plot hole with another.

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Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

Personally, I found their attempt at a Lahabrea retcon to be contrived, as the final twist was dependent on a smart, well-reasoned man making an incredibly dumb decision. Broadly speaking I don't mind when characters make dumb decisions, as real people do that all the time. But a well-written story foreshadows such things by introducing us to the character flaws that will eventually result in a character making a poor choice, so that when they finally make that choice, it feels true to the character. And by my read, Lahabrea's choice felt like it was in conflict with everything we had previously experienced of his character in Pandemonium. And that made it feel like they just replaced one plot hole with another.

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Sorry but Lahabrea is the kind of stupid that only someone smart can manage. Man tore his soul in half on the off chance that he might agree on some level with Athena. Making poor choices was always an element with him.

Re: Lahabrea, I'd say the fact that he reabsorbed his markedly unhinged alter ego by the end of the Elpis-based quests was foreshadowing enough. Said alter ego showed us a part of him that was a lot less far removed from the Lahabrea we met in ARR. The reason Panda-Lahabrea was so different, to begin with, was precisely because he'd literally compartmentalized that part of himself.