Some wild speculation about a certain macguffin from 7.0

This is 100% wild speculation, but I think the reason why the Dimensional Key has Azem's symbol on it is not because it belonged to them, but because they put a protective/regulatory spell on it which flashed in the presence of Azem's duty finder spell probably like when a Convocation symbol flashes over an Ascian's face. So why would Azem have to put a protective seal on it? Encased in the key is a twisted white rock. Auracite. Sphene did say it 'responds to fervent desire.'

We know from Pandaemonium that even the Ancients have been bumping into bits of Auracite like The Heart of Sabik. Another spooky thought is we don't know which Azem put it there assuming it is a seal. Where my imagination is running is that dealing with these bits of Auracite, and where they're coming from, and their consequences has been a kind of thorn in the side for anyone who has held the seat of Azem. It's why the Last Azem knew to to reach out to us to deal with the stuff going on in Pandaemonium. Venat had to deal with it, the Last Azem had to deal with, and now it is the Warrior of Light's turn to inherit that burden. How cool would it be if our next grand adventure culminates in us defeating actual Ultima.

I am so looking forward to the Pandaemonium follow up quest!

As a fellow "Ultima Prime" theorist, I'm definitely open to more auracite shenanigans.

A moment of pedantry, if you'll indulge me, though: If I'm reading the line by Nemjiji correctly, Athena found a piece of auracite and from it developed the Heart of Sabik as we know it.

The jury in my brain is still out on what I think The Key is(n't), though. It appears to me that the "goblet" portion of the artifact is the electrope interface that Preservation developed to jailbreak it, and the true artifact the Milalla possessed is the gray/orange-glowing bit within.

The swirly appearance of the true artifact reminds me of Ancient motifs, so I started with theories of Ancient production.

The fact that Preservation failed to get the artifact to work despite facing the same threats and having the same goals as the Milalla is interesting. What other condition that the Speaker met did they fail? My first shot in the dark was that by some coincidence the Speaker was themselves an Azem shard, creating a through-line with all the sun motifs in the Milalla ruins.

But by then I'm just building an easily toppled house of cards.

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

The jury in my brain is still out on what I think The Key is(n't), though. It appears to me that the "goblet" portion of the artifact is the electrope interface that Preservation developed to jailbreak it, and the true artifact the Milalla possessed is the gray/orange-glowing bit within.

The swirly appearance of the true artifact reminds me of Ancient motifs, so I started with theories of Ancient production.

The fact that Preservation failed to get the artifact to work despite facing the same threats and having the same goals as the Milalla is interesting. What other condition that the Speaker met did they fail? My first shot in the dark was that by some coincidence the Speaker was themselves an Azem shard, creating a through-line with all the sun motifs in the Milalla ruins.

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The thing that still makes me disagree with the Ancients as a theory on this (it resembles their stuff most of all potential contenders, but not so exactly that it's clear) is that the current skillset the key's been shown to have would be utterly worthless to them. The Ancients wouldn't have needed a way to cross shards because the shards didn't exist at their time, and the Ascians wouldn't have needed it because they could travel between shards pretty easy. So either the Ancients didn't make it, or they made it for a reason that up until now has never been stated. And that latter one sounds too sloppy for the XIV writers.

But also... uhm, can I ask for detail on 'Preservation failed to get the artifact to work'? Because all evidence I've got suggest they're actually its most successful users; the traditional millala couldn't get it working in the Storm Surge times, while Preservation got their plans rolling pretty well and pretty quickly (well, by their timescale) both the first and second times they got hold of the thing. They didn't pull off full-power dimensional fusion, but that seems like it's more because it's a really big process that they were stopped from doing both times.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

But also... uhm, can I ask for detail on 'Preservation failed to get the artifact to work'?

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Robor & (Alayla)
As those around them froze to death, our ancestors looked to a mighty relic for salvation. By its power they opened a portal, and used it to flee to another reality. <...> (The key is none other than that relic, and it has been in the safekeeping of our people since time immemorial.) <...> When lightning threatened this world, we attempted to use the key to flee again like our ancestors once did. Alas, no matter what we tried, we couldn't invoke its power. We had all but given up when Preservation approached us with an offer of partnership. <...> By augmenting it with electrope, Preservation did succeed in opening a portal. Yet they could never grasp how they had managed to do so, much less the underlying principles of the technology. To this day, not a single person understands the mechanics of interdimensional fusion. Let alone who imbued the key with its power, when they did so, or why.

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If I'm interpreting the summary correctly, it worked "as intended" for the Speaker, then not for the Milalla's descendants, and not for Preservation, leading to electrope-based augmentation that eventually stumbled over a jailbreak for the portal feature. Desperately wanting to survive the collapse of your world is then perhaps not sufficient to activate it.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

...the current skillset the key's been shown to have would be utterly worthless to them. The Ancients wouldn't have needed a way to cross shards because the shards didn't exist at their time, and the Ascians wouldn't have needed it because they could travel between shards pretty easy. So either the Ancients didn't make it, or they made it for a reason that up until now has never been stated. And that latter one sounds too sloppy for the XIV writers.

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Data correlation is a messy process until the puzzle is actually solved and you can trim away the excess.

If the story is introducing multiple new Azem connections through the Milalla at the same time post-Endwalker (e.g. the sun-themed sanctuary, the relic symbol), then it would not be unreasonable (in my opinion) to explore potential anticipations of further Azem-related connections in whatever future plot that connects to (including ones that act as "new revelations" expanding on existing content).

However, as soon as one gets specific on what they might be, the house of cards gets a little too high for comfort.

Random example, Robor questions what the true nature of interdimensional fusion is, and why someone would imbue the artifact with that power, and when that might have happened. It stands to reason (in my opinion) to anticipate that those are questions that are intended to be answered. And - if the all the revelations in the same ballpark as the artifact have been related to Azem so far - would not one start in that same ballpark when anticipating those answers, and then work outward from there?

Except...where can you even go from there, with regard to Azem, without the house of cards immediately becoming too high to put any weight on? Following through my knee-jerk first thoughts mentioned above: If the Key is simply a means of travel - sure, that's a suitable invention for the Traveler - but it would mean either the Key worked on the unsundered world and only incidentally works inter-shard by virtue of that, or Azem knew the sundering was coming and created it as an emergency tool. That's a pretty big can of worms to open unprompted, but I wouldn't argue the story is devoid of potential foreshadows to that revelation, either. In either one of those cases, though, it might make sense to limit its use to Azem (or shards thereof), simply for the sake of security - or hope/faith that their future selves were as trustworthy when the chips were down.

Edit: Notice that the Milalla temple in Dawntrail is filled with the same ostensible sun motifs that appear on the Aloalo Island boss's outfit, in the same sun-orange hue as the Azem crystal/symbol.

(Before anyone jumps this gun, yes, the short story focuses on Azem creating an artifact that reduces "the traveler's burden" and "forgets" the crystal in Hythlodaeus's office. The short story also, depending on the language, declares it to be blue, so we might be stuck with that.)

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

If I'm interpreting the summary correctly, it worked "as intended" for the Speaker, then not for the Milalla's descendants, and not for Preservation, leading to electrope-based augmentation that eventually stumbled over a jailbreak for the portal feature. Desperately wanting to survive the collapse of your world is then perhaps not sufficient to activate it.

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Yeah, I disagree on that interpretation. That quote sounds like Preservation did make it work, they just didn't understand how. There's no 'Preservation's failed attempt' there, and what little we know about Preservation does suggest that 'put it in an electrope machine' would be their first plan anyway. And not necessarily a bad one, given that electrope manipulation itself stems back to Aloalo.

My personal running theory is that the key, appropriate to its name, does absolute sod-all by itself but can power something else to do dimensional whatsits. Preservation basically blindly reverse-engineered a 'something else' that the people of Aloalo also had and used, that got forgotten over the ages thanks to random quirks of history and record-keeping. In fact, I wouldn't be tremendously surprised if we've seen evidence of it ourselves: the larger statue of the Speaker we find in Aloalo's secret route is holding a big amber orb that doesn't seem to be reflected in the golem we actually fight.

As for the origins of the key itself... yeah, I can buy that it's auracite, but my suspicion is that we don't yet know its creator(s). Again, I've personally ruled out the Ancients and Ascians; the fact Aloalo's people already had it rules out everything after the Fifth Calamity, so everything modern and the War of the Magi participants are out; and best guess on timeframes also rules out any known civilizations from the First or the Ninth. That leaves our options pretty slim:

• Ancient Doma,
• Ancient Bozja,
• Ivalice,
• Allag,
• Goug I guess,
• Some group in Meracydia,
• Some group in Tural that predates literally every figure or group we just met in Dawntrail,
• Pre-Flood of Darkness Thirteenth society somehow,
• Or a completely incalculable unknown, maybe from somewhere we haven't been or an era we don't know much about.

I don't have concrete ways to rule most of these out, but I've got gut-feel 'that doesn't seem right' responses to most of them; it just doesn't look or smell like their thing as we understand it. Couple that with the fact I just think us not already having the answer is more complelling, and yeah, I think we literally can't even make an educated guess yet.

Yeah, the idea of 'why would Azem or or the Ancients need such a device' is partially what prompted me to fall down this rabbit hole as well as a more thematic lens. Dawntrail is a story with themes of legacy, burden, and grief, and we've been exploring those themes with the new characters. But where does The Warrior of Light fit in? We've already basically accepted that we carry on the legacy of Azem since Shadowbringers, and will continue to do so as represented by the summoning crystal. So what if this new thing is actually a burden-? And that is where the idea of it being like a weapon that Azem could not destroy, and they could only partially neutralize it during one of their adventures. And to continue being reckless with this house of cards, maybe the seal is why Preservation couldn't access its full power. With the seal, its only capable of dimensional travel, but with out the seal it's capable of things like dimensional fusion. Spooky stuff.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

The thing that still makes me disagree with the Ancients as a theory on this (it resembles their stuff most of all potential contenders, but not so exactly that it's clear) is that the current skillset the key's been shown to have would be utterly worthless to them. The Ancients wouldn't have needed a way to cross shards because the shards didn't exist at their time, and the Ascians wouldn't have needed it because they could travel between shards pretty easy. So either the Ancients didn't make it, or they made it for a reason that up until now has never been stated. And that latter one sounds too sloppy for the XIV writers.

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How do we know that the only thing it can do or even if the only thing it was meant to do is interdimensional teleportation? Nuclear fission in our reality has been used to make weapons of unimaginable destruction but currently we mostly use it to heat water into steam. Considering what we know about both the writers as well as our Azem, it could very well be the Ancient version of the Ironworks' increasingly intricate kettles and originally designed to derive energy from an artificially created pocket universe in order to heat water to make tea but as a side effect and some tweaking it can open portals to other realities.

Right now it's a magical writers' tool of undetermined power, purpose, and potential meant to do whatever the writers want it to do and the only lead we have to go on is the Azem symbol. So far almost everything magical has been derived back to Amaurot or Allag but nothing we've encountered from Allag has the symbol for a Seat of Convocation member slapped on it.

We also don't know if it was OUR Azem who made it, ours was the last of a line and we know of one other. It could be that the device was originally made by Venat and the reason why the Milala were able to use it to escape the Fifth Umbral Era was with Hydaelyn's intervention. That could also account for Krile's particular affinity towards Hydaelyn over other echo-bearers, since she's the only Milala on the Source.

Azem's spell draws a knight, a naked roegadyn, 2 frogs and 4 people in swimming costumes from across space; if it is of azem perhaps the intended use was intradimensional travel? The unique circumstances surrounding the creation of the shards - all being from the same original dimension - could allow it to function as a workaround to hydaelyn's barrier. Assuming this to be true, unless the intent was to visit other planets, it does seem to be an invention of limited use to the ancients though.

The handle of the cup is fairly clearly electrope, and presumably from the efforts of the ninth scientists's attempts to make it work.
The bendy crystal looks kind of like it's from elpis or amaurot recreated, but in fairness the anyder and lunar ones are a lot more rectangular.
When y'shtola tried to blow it up, it had a sort of round looking shield protect it. It sort of reminds me of art of war, but more likely to be aloala than nym. I did think it looked a bit like the ronkan mount's action, but magic circle with lines in is not really compelling either way.

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Originally Posted by mallleable

Yeah, the idea of 'why would Azem or or the Ancients need such a device' is partially what prompted me to fall down this rabbit hole as well as a more thematic lens. Dawntrail is a story with themes of legacy, burden, and grief, and we've been exploring those themes with the new characters. But where does The Warrior of Light fit in? We've already basically accepted that we carry on the legacy of Azem since Shadowbringers, and will continue to do so as represented by the summoning crystal. So what if this new thing is actually a burden-? And that is where the idea of it being like a weapon that Azem could not destroy, and they could only partially neutralize it during one of their adventures. And to continue being reckless with this house of cards, maybe the seal is why Preservation couldn't access its full power. With the seal, its only capable of dimensional travel, but with out the seal it's capable of things like dimensional fusion. Spooky stuff.

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I do like the idea that this is perhaps a weapon by intention, honestly, or at least a tool of malice; perhaps the dark truth is that Preservation were closer to its intended uses than anyone else, and it's a tool of invasion and conquering rather than exploration and travel.

I'm not sure if it's true or if I believe it, but I think it's a valuable thought exercise. Like, can we definitively rule this out? And honestly, I can't.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

How do we know that the only thing it can do or even if the only thing it was meant to do is interdimensional teleportation? Nuclear fission in our reality has been used to make weapons of unimaginable destruction but currently we mostly use it to heat water into steam. Considering what we know about both the writers as well as our Azem, it could very well be the Ancient version of the Ironworks' increasingly intricate kettles and originally designed to derive energy from an artificially created pocket universe in order to heat water to make tea but as a side effect and some tweaking it can open portals to other realities.

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Basically my thought there is 'if it was first intended for some other important thing, they would've hinted at it'. The key's only ever described as a tool capable of doing this one specific thing, so reasonably, that's its main thing. It being originally intended for something largely irrelevant and later got discovered to also be capable of dimensional travel would be a bit of a pointless 'that's nice'-level extra, given the important part of that story is likely the person who found it was capable of dimensional travel. Sure, they could add this extra wrinkle, but that's not where the key's origin story is. Its origin story is either its invention or discovery as a tool of dimensional travel, because that's the lead interesting part; it doesn't really matter if it happened to also be a pretty good stapler pre-Sundering.

I don't think it showing the symbol of Azem is a smoking gun for Ancient-ness, either. As has been said a few times in this subforum, we've actually got a pretty limited scope on it doing that; it did that when we produced the Azem crystal, it's entirely possible it'd show an entirely different symbol if we pulled out another Convocation soul crystal, or even, say, the Pictomancer job crystal. But even if it is specifically intended to project that symbol, that's not necessarily a sign of its creator, it could be a sign added in by people who revered this person and their symbol. Those people could even be post-Azem; we know some Ancient-era figures survived as legends, would it be so weird if 'the Traveler' did too?

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Originally Posted by fulminating

Azem's spell draws a knight, a naked roegadyn, 2 frogs and 4 people in swimming costumes from across space; if it is of azem perhaps the intended use was intradimensional travel? The unique circumstances surrounding the creation of the shards - all being from the same original dimension - could allow it to function as a workaround to hydaelyn's barrier. Assuming this to be true, unless the intent was to visit other planets, it does seem to be an invention of limited use to the ancients though.

The handle of the cup is fairly clearly electrope, and presumably from the efforts of the ninth scientists's attempts to make it work.
The bendy crystal looks kind of like it's from elpis or amaurot recreated, but in fairness the anyder and lunar ones are a lot more rectangular.
When y'shtola tried to blow it up, it had a sort of round looking shield protect it. It sort of reminds me of art of war, but more likely to be aloala than nym. I did think it looked a bit like the ronkan mount's action, but magic circle with lines in is not really compelling either way.

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What if the concept crystal they handed over to Hythlodaeus but "forgot" it at the Bureau was a prototype of some sort that was meant to allow someone or a group of people to reach Meteion? That it was meant to be a proof of concept that never to our knowledge was put into practice prior to the sundering. It could have also had a distances problem if it was meant for that in mind, but it could work to allow Azem to zip around the planet more quickly. Think instant transmission from Dragon Ball or how Eternity Bands in game work; just without the limitations they have. That then later on allowed for shard travel without the need to ditch your body. Because what is a reflection but a piece of the star stuck in a pocket dimension of a sort.

Just my random thoughts on the key; lots of assumptions and very probably wrong..but!

a) Assuming it was the artifact made by Azem, it's abilities don't really make sense, unless it has something "else" to it; A guess might be Space-Time travel/teleportation without aetheryte (as seen in Ascians); With ancients, they have aetherytes and walk/fly/arrive at the main gate/move normally in Elpis, so one might assume they don't have ascian-bampf powers yet.

b) The shard-travel might be an unintended effect of what the key does. It could have been originally designed to traverse alternate dimensions or the inter-dimensional rift. Assuming the cross-travel of characters like Lightning or Shantoto are canon, access to other worlds might have been the goal. (I hope this isn't the case, and I hope the key isn't just thrown away a la "oh so that's how you get to the FF11 raid, lol")

c) because story reasons, it might be something strongly connected to Meracydia. Cargo-cult worship or Azem or something.

Just did the Pandaemonium follow up quest, and it was cute, but this house of cards remains untoppled! For now.

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Originally Posted by kaynide

Assuming it was the artifact made by Azem, it's abilities don't really make sense, unless it has something "else" to it; A guess might be Space-Time travel/teleportation without aetheryte (as seen in Ascians); With ancients, they have aetherytes and walk/fly/arrive at the main gate/move normally in Elpis, so one might assume they don't have ascian-bampf powers yet.

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Interestingly, they do already have Ascian-bampf powers. In the first boss fight in Ktisis Hyperborea, both Emet-Selch and Hythlodaeus (who's always insisting that he's not that good at magic) use Ascian-style teleportation to evade one of the boss's mechanics.

This is worming its way back into my brain. Speculating there might be a difference between rejoining, and fusion.

So we know that The Source is exerting a pull on the reflections. And my understanding that what the Ascians were doing when rejoining could be described as a controlled burn so that the reflection can be reduced into simple aether, and more easily ride the flow back to the source. A flood overwhelms the pull, and clogs it making rejoining significantly more difficult. Dump water on a fire, and it goes out as opposed to boiling water off in a controlled matter.

I think sending Everkeep to The Source was a huge step forward towards unlocking dimensional fusion because The key can now work with The Source's pull on the other reflections. However things get squirrely if we assume The Key is some kind of Auracite because it implies that it works by amplifying The Source's desire to be whole again further implying that the star could have some kind of lowercase P primal will.

Well, if you follow the theory that we are actually Azem, because we travel back in time during an expansion, and meet Venat at that campfire, then the key makes a lot of sense. We make it because we need it in the future.

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Or more likely Venat and our ancient frenemies make it for us - along with maybe a Catboy scientist/adventurer/philosopher with red hair who seems suspiciously familiar.

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Originally Posted by Shookbeast

Well, if you follow the theory that we are actually Azem, because we travel back in time during an expansion, and meet Venat at that campfire, then the key makes a lot of sense. We make it because we need it in the future.

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Or more likely Venat and our ancient frenemies make it for us - along with maybe a Catboy scientist/adventurer/philosopher with red hair who seems suspiciously familiar.

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But the thing is, 'just becoming Azem again' kinda goes against everything that's being explored in Dawntrail -- especially in 7.2. The Warrior of Light carries the legacy of Azem, but they will never become Azem again. They are their own person. Which gave me the idea that The Key could be a warning, an unresolved burden from Azem, not a gift.

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Originally Posted by mallleable

But the thing is, 'just becoming Azem again' kinda goes against everything that's being explored in Dawntrail -- especially in 7.2. The Warrior of Light carries the legacy of Azem, but they will never become Azem again. They are their own person. Which gave me the idea that The Key could be a warning, an unresolved burden from Azem, not a gift.

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Also, very few of our characters resemble Azem physically. Hyur and elezen do, but for everyone else... well, Ancients don't have cat tails.

So sure, you can fit this mystery into that theory, but it doesn't stop that theory from falling apart or being directly against the themes of the game in literally every other respect.

I’m not sure we’d become Azem “again” though. I think us finding out that we create our own destiny fits in kinda perfectly with us finding out we’re “our” Azem through time travel. There is no “Ancient Wise Being” who set everything up for us. It’s just us, and our friends, once again trying to save the world/universe/timeline/lifestream. If the theory holds, we don't become some all powerful Ancient - we’re probably still just ourselves - and maybe even chuck the key through a portal in a fit of desperation.

I do like the idea of the key being a warning/burden though. That would be a pretty rad reveal from Calyx. “You dummy, this key is meant to lock things, not open them.” (Calyx proceeds to use the key to “open things” and starts the 8.0 storyline).

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...character_and/

So someone on Reddit has pointed out that Calyx's theme seems to borrow elements from the Pandaemonium lobby theme.

Please, I only have so much red thread for my conspiracy board!

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Originally Posted by mallleable

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...character_and/

So someone on Reddit has pointed out that Calyx's theme seems to borrow elements from the Pandaemonium lobby theme.

Please, I only have so much red thread for my conspiracy board!

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The instrumentation of Calyx's theme is pulling from the same 'ominous villain theme' box that Pandaemonium was, this most likely isn't anything beyond 'this is what Bad Guys sound like'. It's basically a new song to match Without Shadow or Paradaisical Predicaments.

Yeah, the Ascians frequently dominated this kind of music in the past, but that's more out of their general storytelling monopoly than anything. In isolation I actually associate these instruments more with Ishgard.

I do find Calyx’s interest in our Azem crystal/powers both interesting and ominous. For a while I thought Sphene was going to be our soul shard from the 9th - given her rather portentous lines about “with your strength... without sacrifice.” But now that we know Calyx programmed her… maybe he’s the WOL of the 9th? Maybe he’s our twisted soul reflection, bent on “saving” as many people as possible?

I’m not sure if this is true, but I suspect he’d need a legitimate Azem soul shard to use our crystal. But if Calyx is just a computer driven memory - then he’s got no soul to work with.

So where is the hypothetical Azem soul from the 9th, that used to be Calyx?

If only there was a flesh and blood character with a soul from the 9th who also was sickly like Calyx and recently came into the story with a giant red flag regarding how they can’t use regulators - so if they were to die, their soul would be up for grabs…

Some reiteration, we know that The Dimensional Key is capable of dimensional travel when it allowed the Milalla to flee through a portal from The Source to The Ninth. It is also capable of dimensional fusion, allowing The Golden Gate, and The Dome to fuse to The Source. So it might be the case that The Key is simply capable of dimensional manipulation magicks, so it could be possible to use it to do the opposite of fusion, dimensional splitting -- or sundering.

I think Venat could have used the crystal within The Key to sunder the world. This could explain a couple of things like why Azem's sigil appeared on it as well as give Calyx, and Preservation the detailed knowledge about the shard system. Venat's memories of the sundering could have been seared onto the crystal, and Preservation could have found them when they made The Key. Which leaves a couple of possibilities: Venat made the crystal to sunder the world or she repurposed the crystal. I'm unsure she made it because otherwise there would be 'Venat magic' on it, not 'Azem Magic.' It also seems a bit odd to include other spells on it like dimensional travel, and fusion when designing a thing to sunder the world. So the possibility that she simply repurposed it remains.

I still think it might be some kind of Auracite that contains a dimensional fusion spell (like how the Auracite within the Heart of Sabik contains Ultima), and Venat crossed paths with it during her time as Azem and put a protective ward on it to mitigate its corruption, and would later repurpose it to sunder the world. I think we should go to Elpis, and pay Ventat another visit.

Its sundering capabilities could also explain the weird pocket dimensions that are present like The Strayborough Deadwalk, and the space that would become Sareel Ja's Vana'diel. They could have been created when Preservation started experimenting on the crystal.

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Originally Posted by mallleable

Its sundering capabilities could also explain the weird pocket dimensions that are present like The Strayborough Deadwalk, and the space that would become Sareel Ja's Vana'diel. They could have been created when Preservation started experimenting on the crystal.

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Sareel Ja's Vana'diel isn't a pocket dimension, it's a holodeck. That holodeck's exact location isn't clear, but it's by all evidence somewhere near Yak T'el, he made it out of electrope in/around the Skydeep Cenote. There is the matter of the Vana'diel that he saw when he went through the portal, but that seems to be Actual FFXI Vana'diel, which was known.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

Sareel Ja's Vana'diel isn't a pocket dimension, it's a holodeck. That holodeck's exact location isn't clear, but it's by all evidence somewhere near Yak T'el, he made it out of electrope in/around the Skydeep Cenote. There is the matter of the Vana'diel that he saw when he went through the portal, but that seems to be Actual FFXI Vana'diel, which was known.

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"Fortunate, then, that that world between worlds was filled with structures made from electrope. More than I could ever hope for."

You're probably right about it not being a weird pocket dimension created by potential localized sundering, it's still a bit unclear but it seems like there is a lot of electrope floating around in the rift around The Gate's fusion point.

So could electrope be a sort of crystallised dark matter that comes out of the rift – like a solidified version of the mist we see around voidgates – and it has formed so much in Alexandria because it has some major "cracks" letting it in?

Though I suppose we should expect to see it in Alzadaal's Legacy as well if that were its source. Though perhaps it would accumulate more quickly in an aetherially thin shard, and with a less contained gate.

I think it might be time to bump this thread with new info about The Key from 7.3, and 7.4.

7.3

During the escape room puzzle section in the Preservation labs, we learned that the actual Key is the white crystal, and the rest is an electrope housing made my Preservation. There was also some documents that demonstrate the volatility of The Key during Preservation's early experiments on it.

"Nothing of note. The mystery of the key's activation condition remains unsolved.

The key triggered an explosion today. Temporary interdimensional portal verified. Continue attempts to stabilize the core's energy reactions.

Thirteen researchers sustained fatal injuries in the explosion. Memory faculties of four personnel sufficiently intact for Endless conversion. Remaining nine designated for aether reclamation processing.

Nothing of note. Rejected resignations of two Milalla researchers.

Major incident. Details in full report."

It describes The Key causing an explosion big enough to kill 13 scientists, and violent enough that most of the scientists could not become Endless as a result.

7.4

While no definitive answers were given, we did get some statements about The Key from a direct descendant of the original Speaker, Miayli, and rather ominous ones. Miayli is also Alayla's sister.

Miayli: But be that as it may, my sister gave up not only her life, but her darling daughter to prevent its misuse.

Miayli: They devoted their lives to understanding the key so that future generations would not be burdened by it.

Miayli: A word of caution, keeper of the key.
Miayli: As you know, it is a relic that has traveled across centuries and worlds, passing through countless hands...
Miayli: ...Oft beckoning to those ruled by ambition or avarice. Indeed, some have wondered if it chooses its master.
Miayli: But I believe differently. I believe that some inexorable force─call it “fate” if you will─ushers it from one bearer to the next.
Miayli: Be wary, for fate's regard now falls upon you.

At one point she asks the Warrior of Light what they would do with The Key if they can get it to work, and the player has dialog choices.

'Travel'

Miayli: For some, that might be a self-serving end. But your deeds are proof that I needn't worry.

'Herosim'

Miayli: For some, that might be a self-serving end. But your deeds are proof that I needn't worry.

'I don't know'

Miayli: The very fact that you don't have an answer is proof that you understand the weight of this power, and do not take it lightly.

The 'I don't know' option is the only one where Miayli has unique dialog.

While these are all Miayli's feelings, there doesn't seem to be a reason to doubt her given her relation to The Key. The Key seems as dangerous as ever, especially with the idea that it may have 'chosen' the Warrior of Light. Perhaps that is what was happening when the Azem symbol appeared on it at the start of the Queen Eternal fight. The idea of it being a burden, and not a gift is very much alive still.