Demons, Heaven, Hell and parallel universes

Considering that since the launch of the game, we learned that everything believed to be demons early on, are actually the darkness corrupted denizens of the Thirteenth, courtesy to the Ascians messing up the first attempted rejoining, we can pretty safely conclude that we haven't met any actual demons yet. But do they exist in the world of FF14?

Apart from the reflections, which appear to be more akin to localized pocket dimensions, do actual parallel dimensions/universes/planes of existence exist? Like actual heaven(s) and hell(s) for example?

We know that the Eorzean creation myth with the Twelve isn't true, but does that mean it's all made up, or that it mixed the former Ancients together with actually existing stuff?

With the crossover events we got plenty of hints of some parallel dimensions, but with little enough information that they might just be one of the reflections... but there were more crossover events, than there are unexplored reflections left.
Between the 7 lost to rejoinings, the Thirteenth, the First and now the one Alexandria is from, there are only 3 unknown relfections left, after all.

There is of course the possibility, that those crossover worlds aren't parallel dimensions at all, but are rather regular planets in the same universe, that just got temporarily connected over a distance and which we could just fly to, with the Ragnarok, if we learned of their location.

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Originally Posted by No_Nick_Needed

We know that the Eorzean creation myth with the Twelve isn't true, but does that mean it's all made up, or that it mixed the former Ancients together with actually existing stuff?

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I'll remind you that in this context, the main thing that was proven true by Myths of the Realm was the existence of the seven heavens... and crucially, not the seven hells, which appear to be purely theoretical. We also learned that the seven heavens are not afterlives, though, and are entirely the domain of the Twelve and their direct creations (or extensions, in the case of Dalamud).

For Abrahamic religion-derived demons to exist, there would need to be an Abrahamic religion-derived hell, and probably by extension Abrahamic religion-derived cosmology--something to make them, essentially. And those, putting it as simply as possible, don't exist here; there are no demons. The closest you could get, in both aesthetic and origin, are the voidsent--not only are they very clearly demonic with at least some of their taxonomy derived from those origins, they actually do have origins in, to grossly simplify, godlike figures screwing up and making them.

Other than that the closest you can get is, like, Ifrit (also from an Abrahamic origin, as it happens). But if you're counting Ifrit as a demon, what are you even asking for, really?

EDIT: I don't even completely follow how you're dragging in parallel universes here, but to clarify, FFXIV follows the Dissidia multiverse model as best anyone can tell; the other Final Fantasy universes exist off in their own universes, with the Interdimensional Rift between them, and FFXIV's own mini-multiverse of the shards exists as a mostly-internal network. This is how Omega's storyline behaved, this is how Gilgamesh's presence behaved, this is how the FFXII, XV and both XI collab events behaved, and to the best of anyone's reckoning so far is how the XI alliance raids behave. The Nier raids are a little ambiguous, but it's essentially ambiguity on if they came from a further afield part of FFXIV's universe or from one in that greater multiverse.

As the player character was a guest in the omniphallus, I don’t think that it can be used as definitive proof for or against the existence of the hells - rhalgr and naldthal used attacks called hell of lightning/hell’s trial so there’s also that to consider.

So we've actually reached the point in XIV's story where to add new stuff, it has to come from somewhere else. Mainly because they took Endwalker as an opportunity to shoot their own universe in the foot. this was done to place more importance and focus on Etheirys going forward. A real, have our cake and eat it too, sort of moment. They wanted this epic universe spanning be all end all boss moment, but they realized they still had most of Etheirys unexplored, so they made the universe dead (at least in one direction, because that's how 3 dimensional space works but anyway...).

So now we're where we are, with exploring the unexplored places on Etheirys, but the writers feeling the need to have world shaking stakes, and those have to come from somewhere else, because otherwise they're intentionally creating huge plot holes for the past storyline.

So the most current story is pulling those stakes from shards across the dimensional gap, but the rift can lead to any other dimension or time anyway, and that's how Soreel Ja is having fever dreams of Vana'diel.

Because there is no strict ruleset for the interdimensional rift in XIV's universe, the writers have given themselves carte blanche to do whatever the hell they want with it. Meaning if they really wanted to, they could have had us set foot on the real Vana'diel by stepping through a convenient rift. That's how we got the Nier crossover event, afterall. How a continuity that comes from "real world" Earth timeline story winds up on The First.

So the answer to OP's question is that, yeah, they could have actual demons, Heaven, or Hell if they really wanted to have it. But it would be whatever the writer imagines it to be that fits into the convenient content formula and typing for the WoL to beat up. It also wouldn't have the strongest meaning or connection to XIV's universe, because it'd be from completely outside of it.

To answer OP's question in another way, there doesn't seem to be any actual God entity in XIV's universe nor any Satan analogue. Comparisons to be made with characters we've been given, surely, and also the idea that The Ancient Ascians had a concept for God and then made it a reality, thereby making themselves Gods in a sense, but nothing that's as incomprehensible as say... The Zohar entity from Xenogears. No Wave Existences and Miang Protocols here, fam.

I've realized that there's probably a worthwhile question to ask, because without it, the OP's opening questions don't really make enough sense to have a satisfying conclusive answer:

If you want demons and hell, why aren't voidsent and the Thirteenth enough?

Because FFXIV is not rooted enough in real-world theological and mythological concepts to actually just do something like 'these are demons', they make their own local versions and occasionally import some names. Remember that our equivalent of the Greek pantheon is a bunch of bureaucratic fops living in a metropolis who happened to have more power than they had responsibility; for the most part they don't just give us 'this is X thing from Y mythology'. And voidsent are pretty clearly our equivalent of demons, with the Thirteenth as our equivalent of hell. Things are a little askew--they're grape flavored instead of cherry flavored, and the whole 'eternal punishment' thing is more aimed at them than others--but they fit the vast majority of the bill.

If the OP is asking the question they're asking, clearly what they want from 'demons and hell' isn't covered by voidsent fitting that vast majority of the bill. So, why? What is it they want, that voidsent aren't providing? Because without that answer we're just gonna be wildly stabbing in random directions in hopes that we're getting close to a satisfactory answer.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

I've realized that there's probably a worthwhile question to ask, because without it, the OP's opening questions don't really make enough sense to have a satisfying conclusive answer:

If you want demons and hell, why aren't voidsent and the Thirteenth enough?

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I can only guess at OP's desires, but to me I would say that it would be insanely interesting if a supernatural order actually presented itself at this point within the FFXIV cosmology.

As it stands, they robbed the setting of nearly all of its mysteries, and the afterlife is confirmed to be part of a planetary process that can be physically observed. You lose a lot of wonder when death on Etheirys basically entails just chilling in a semi-hostile blue planet center until you get reborn. The showing and doing of going into the Aitiascope down into the Aetherial Sea in our physical bodies on top of that is the sort of genie they can't put back in the bottle.

It robbed from lore that came before it with regards to how life and death work in the setting and resulted in mild undercuts to a lot of, "And they're dead and gone forever." / their spirit came back to aid us sort of things.

But imagine for instance that an actual God entity presented itself to the setting as being above and beyond the weird cycle of Etheirys. I have no idea about how they'd write it, nor what such an entity would consider good, nor do I know what such an entity's "fallen angels" would be like.

But if it did come about, it'd have us scratching our heads once more and asking a million questions.

And for what it's worth, I've been perfectly OK with XIV's versions of angels and demons and gods. I like the bacon necktie. It's fun to think about still, even if its most recent happenings are not to taste.

TL;DR - The desire for divinities to feel mysterious and unknowable and their dark counterparts to have a similar feeling.

People keep saying they "killed the mystery" of the world but personally I like learning things about the cosmology of a world. I think it is cool and fun.

And there are still plenty of things we don't know. What about other planets -- Meteion only visited a finite number of worlds and could not have seen them all; for example, what about Ultima the High Seraph, where did she come from and what is she?

What about the other reflections we haven't seen? Hell, what about the rest of the Ninth? What's going on there?

What came *before* the Ancients? Were they always immortal? Was their world always a "perfect paradise"? What life came before them?

Aside from Allag, they've only scratched the surface on the bygone civilizations on the Source. And there's still half a world we have yet to see.

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Originally Posted by PorxiesRCute

People keep saying they "killed the mystery" of the world

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Until we see otherwise we won't know about the universe. The in game direction is that it's all dead, even though that can't be true logistically speaking. But the issue is they don't want us thinking about it much beyond the promised "cosmic exploration." (Pretty sure it's gonna be Island Sanctuary in space)

Mysteries surrounding Reflections aren't a new mystery, hence there's no novelty in wondering about it. It's been on all our minds for years at this point.

What came before The Ascians could be interesting, but the knowledge that it will result in The Ascians inevitably would curtail enthusiasm, so it's something of a non-starter. (Plus the writers would have to set in concrete what sort of society lead to a perfection-adjacent society, and that'd be like opening a huge can of worms/would be really easy to fumble)

Because we are dealing with fiction, civilizations prior that have not yet been introduced will simultaneously insert new plot holes. As in, if they introduce... oh idk, let's make something up. Let's say they introduce a civilization that predates Allag or came right after Allag, and it wasn't quite as good but it was still pretty marvelous... We'll call them the Porxians. Anything they did will be just as important as anything they didn't do, and the mainstay of their Porxian civilization will have to be isolated to whatever 6 region map their expansion entails. Barring the topic not getting its own expansion, the lore surrounding the Porxians would have to explain why no one has ever heard of, mentioned, seen, or had reason to talk about them until the point of their introduction in our story.

This is actually what makes Shard civilizations so easy to write into the story, or really anything from the Interdimensional Rift. Inserting entire societies into a setting is not an easy feat, and explanations as to why they didn't come in sooner are usually extremely weak. Having a no rules dimensional barrier/passage is like a godsend to a writer in a setting like this. Isolationism and difficulty of traversal only go so far, after all, and when we've got civilizations capable of space travel even in Allag's day just sitting right beneath our pristine magical forest, it doesn't get any easier to hand wave away.

As for the, "half the world still to see" you really just mean Meracydia and the land beneath the Garlean cloud cover which has already been said to be typically impassable mountain ranges. I'm sounding like a broken record at this point, but the mystery there is also not new, and even once they finally turn us in that direction, the explanations as to why it didn't feature in our story yet will be weak, and the plausibility of its Source related portions being deeply meaningful to the setting will also not hold water.

I mean, the entire premise of the mystery in those regions is literally just, "You don't know what's there, for sure!" And the thing is, neither do the writers! And any mystery that is there is already hamstrung by the established setting and all that came before. (i.e. There is no escaping The Ascians on The Planet of The Ascians)

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

I can only guess at OP's desires, but to me I would say that it would be insanely interesting if a supernatural order actually presented itself at this point within the FFXIV cosmology.

As it stands, they robbed the setting of nearly all of its mysteries, and the afterlife is confirmed to be part of a planetary process that can be physically observed. You lose a lot of wonder when death on Etheirys basically entails just chilling in a semi-hostile blue planet center until you get reborn. The showing and doing of going into the Aitiascope down into the Aetherial Sea in our physical bodies on top of that is the sort of genie they can't put back in the bottle.

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Okay, then what you're asking for isn't 'demons' (which the OP does seem focused specifically on for whatever reason, which is why I was asking), it's just new mysteries at all. And specifically you seem to want more cosmological or existential mysteries, big questions to speculate about the answer to, an unknowable monster to eventually fight, but not too soon or else the mystery is over. Dawntrail's currently dealing with smaller mysteries, more personal and societal, so you're not feeling fulfilled because those levels don't interest you.

In fact, I'd honestly suspect that if we got demons, you wouldn't be happy, because demons are actually very quantifiable and predictable as an enemy. You want a mystery, and demons would remain a mystery for maybe one patch before we get a fairly obvious answer, and you're unsatisfied by the lack of mystery again. You want, like, an alien invasion, an eldritch horror, or some form of Ascians 2.

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

[character limit]

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So then... what exactly do you want?

Should they introduce a bunch of big existential questions and then never answer them? Should this game just be Lost?

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Originally Posted by PorxiesRCute

People keep saying they "killed the mystery" of the world but personally I like learning things about the cosmology of a world. I think it is cool and fun.

And there are still plenty of things we don't know. What about other planets -- Meteion only visited a finite number of worlds and could not have seen them all; for example, what about Ultima the High Seraph, where did she come from and what is she?

What about the other reflections we haven't seen? Hell, what about the rest of the Ninth? What's going on there?

What came *before* the Ancients? Were they always immortal? Was their world always a "perfect paradise"? What life came before them?

Aside from Allag, they've only scratched the surface on the bygone civilizations on the Source. And there's still half a world we have yet to see.

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Heck one thing I don't recall being touched on is what happens to the memories of those that do return to the aetherial sea. We know that they are washed away in a process that's slower than what happens in Origenics. That some memories can even be etched onto a soul. Yet since there are no regulators to capture said memories to then send them to somewhere else once separated from the soul what happens to all of that aether that makes up the memories from that soul's last lifetime? Not that those types of questions fall under what the op is asking about.

Okay I'm confused here...
First someone wonders why I bring up a multiverse and then goes on to say that there are multiple universes... which is exactly what a multiverse is.
Then I'm suddenly wanting there to be demons and am focussing on demons, when I mentioned them once in one out of five paragraphs.

Where do you gues pull those interpretations from?

I just wanted to have a little discussions on whether people think there are parallel universes (i.e. a multiverse) beyond the reflections. Star Trek-style mirror universe, D&D-style alignment-themed heavens and hells/abysses, christian heaven and hell, cthulu or warhammer 40k-style horror dimensions... doesn't really matter. I did not express any wants in this regard, because I don't have any... beyond wanting to know what is already there, to draw conclusions from and what those facts could potentially lead to, and having a ltitle silly fun speculation beyond that.

With how reflection travel works, it's entirely possible that mutliple cross-over events are connected to differrent times of the same reflection, so even there being more crossover events, than there are still existing reflections is in itself no proof that there are any full-on parallel dimensions (though no proof against it either). Also each reflection probably has the same number of continents than the Source, so there's that too.
Hmm... that being said, do you think it's possible to time-travel into reflections that no longer exist? Because if it is, that would open up all 13 relfections to be the place of cross-over events, even a pre-flooded Thirteenth.

To go a bit more specific into Nier Automata: One of the game endings is the aliens shooting an information capsule out into the cosmos, with 9S being able to decide whether he goes with it. The Nier raid in FF14 could very well happen, because Aetherys happened to be in the path of this arc and some of the inhabitants, which might include 9S and some kind of replica of 2B, could then have hopped onto the planet. Or they could have fully settled another, nearby planet and it was 2P and her "rebels" or what you want to call them, who hopped over to Aetherys, with 2B and 9S in pursuit. With them being fully artificial beings, unlike the Omicrons, who were organics transitioned into artificial bodies (maybe with some left over organic bits, like the brain in there?), they might well have been overlooked, or immune to Meteions "mercies."

I think it's pretty clear that other universes do exist; the Interdimensional Rift connects to the other Finals Fantasy, and like you said, there's the Nier crossover, not to mention Monster Hunter, Dragon Quest, GARO, Yokai Watch... I don't see why one couldn't say that, idk, Supernatural or some other franchise with a Chrisitian-style afterlife also exists in that multiverse. It will probably never be confirmed or denied, because it's mostly Western franchises that do that, and Final Fantasy usually crosses over with other Japanese media. (Except Fall Guys. Actually, somebody's probably written up a whole theory about what sort of cosmology and afterlife exist in Fall Guys' universe...)

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Hmm... that being said, do you think it's possible to time-travel into reflections that no longer exist? Because if it is, that would open up all 13 relfections to be the place of cross-over events, even a pre-flooded Thirteenth.

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You'd probably have to travel back in time on the Source and then cross over into the other reflection, but I don't see why not. Crossover events usually happen in the Big Three city-states, though. Unless you're suggesting that one of those other reflections would be the home of that crossover event, but I don't think that's likely; the reflections are all their own worlds, they're not going to shoehorn in some totally different universe's story and cosmology.

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Originally Posted by No_Nick_Needed

Okay I'm confused here...
First someone wonders why I bring up a multiverse and then goes on to say that there are multiple universes... which is exactly what a multiverse is.
Then I'm suddenly wanting there to be demons and am focussing on demons, when I mentioned them once in one out of five paragraphs.

Where do you gues pull those interpretations from?

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They are literally the very first word in your thread title, and take up a weird amount of your original post for not being your actual focus. If they weren't something you're asking about, you maybe should've done an edit pass on your original post.

But okay, let's talk alternate universes:

Yes, there's a multiverse, but it's eminently quantifiable. On a cosmologically close scale to the Source, we have the shards; somewhere further out than that, we have a multiverse covered by other Final Fantasies, including Dissidia. There is not a universe out there where up is down and cats is dogs (unless FFXVII gets real weird), but there is a universe where Quina exists. Spinoffs and side games also exist in this space, going by Ace being in Dissidia NT, so it's not completely out of the picture for a FFXIV character to turn up in the universe of Mystic Quest, if for some reason someone wanted that. The hiccup here is, of all things, the Dragon Quest collab, which implies that somewhere in this multiverse is a world with the Brickmen, but it's kinda hard to read that as signs for the future. It might not be that hard, though; it makes complete sense that a Dragon Quest world is somewhere in a weird corner of the FF multiverse.

And yes, it's possible to travel to the past of a shard, including to one that doesn't exist; this happened in the main story, this is how the Crystal Tower got to the First. However, this is not only extremely difficult--time travel and shard travel are fundamentally different systems, so you basically need to get two different machines to work together for it, as explained in the Twinning--it's also a phenomenally bad idea in 99% of cases, as to put short, it's in no way worth it unless the world you're escaping and probably never getting back to is doomed.

And yes, as Porxies points out, it's an absurdly unlikely thing to happen for the sake of an event as most of these are, because the events are set up in ARR zones so as many players as possible can participate.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

it's not completely out of the picture for a FFXIV character to turn up in the universe of Mystic Quest, if for some reason someone wanted that.

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Four words: Mystic Quest Orchestrion Rolls.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

There is not a universe out there where up is down and cats is dogs (unless FFXVII gets real weird), but there is a universe where Quina exists.

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To my knowledge there's nothing about cats and dogs, but there are the moogles in FF8 and 12. In the former they start out as giant mole-people and evolve into cute and cuddly things that look a little werewolf-ish. And in FF12 they are winged bunnies instead of the winged teddy bears they are in most FF games. ;)

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

And yes, it's possible to travel to the past of a shard, including to one that doesn't exist; this happened in the main story, this is how the Crystal Tower got to the First.

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Oh right... G'Raha and the ironworks did send the tower back, after the 8th calamity, which would have consumed the First. Somehow I never made that connection. Good point.

As for the difficulty of time and rift travel... that certainly used to be true, but between Electrope, Azem's key, the gate to the Golden City and the Alexandrians being able to do a localized "mini-rejoining," which I for one would have considered entirely impossible before Dawntrail, there are definitely new possibilities now.

Speaking of the realm fusuion... I wonder if that could be used as a way to do a full rejoining, but without the massive casualties that the Ascian way entails, by doing it in many small steps. Imagine if you could merge a part of the First into some uninhabited desert on the Source, then evacutate the people brought over into the Source, and do it again in the same spot, rinse and repeat until all parts of the First have been brought over, or at least all sentient beings at any rate. Well... the First might be a bad example, since it is in recovery, but if there's a reflection that's about to collapse, and become another horror show like the Void, this could be done to evacuate the survivors into the Source.

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Originally Posted by No_Nick_Needed

Speaking of the realm fusuion... I wonder if that could be used as a way to do a full rejoining, but without the massive casualties that the Ascian way entails, by doing it in many small steps.

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So did you notice that this technique was only ever framed as, and used as, a tool for invasion and conquest? That there was no possible 'positive' use of this ability, because it was always being used to enforce one world's existence over another?

Maybe think about that fact before deciding that you could totally use it to do a 'good Rejoining' by displacing the entire population of a planet. And for what? At best this is a hyper-specific evacuation plan... that would actually only serve to mangle the Source as you start doing these cut-rate micro-rejoinings; notice that Heritage Found is really terrible ecologically. That escape plan also gives up on a hope for recovery that I think is pretty core to FFXIV's outlook: that things can be made better.

And instead trying to approach it as a Rejoining itself is actually worse; nobody wants a Rejoining. The only people who were ever pushing for that were a bunch of nostalgic ghost wizards that are all dead now. And even their approach doesn't work here; even if you do buy into 'more soul equals more better', a Rejoining that somehow doesn't kill anyone wouldn't even do that, because then no souls are being rejoined.


In short: Bad idea.

The whole thing started with the Milala and was only later corrupted and refined by Preservation, but even if we ignroe this and just look at real fusion itself, it's original intended purpose still does not make it inherently evil and impossible to use for good.

The Garlean war machina were developed to conquer and subjugate the world and yet we and others used some of them to fight back agains the Garleans, and later the Garleans used their makina to safe people from blasphemies.
There's also a good chance that airships in general were first and foremost developed as military vessels by Garlemald and yet we all love the Enterprise and nobody would consider her evil.
We used parts of Dalamud to upgrade the engines of the Ragnarok, so we could get to Ultima Thule.
Omega was designed to wipe out other civilizations, and yet we didn't only use it fight Shinryuu to a stand-still, but eventually even managed to turn it around into... well, at least a neutral, non-hostile party, if not exactly a friend or ally.

Again I did not decide anything, I asked a question. Is is possible? Is there a scenario, where it makes sense?
Obviously it should not be done, just because it can be done and would only be a last resort, if all attempt to stablilize the shard in question fail.

There's also the Void and the First to consider. We already had one instance of pulling light aether from one to send to the other, so we already have a kind of proof of concept of dumping one's excess aether into the other is possible and having apparently a positive effect on both. Realm fusion might be a way to do this in a way that more directly connects the two reflections, without the complication of having to utilize the Tower of Babil, the Crystal Tower and the seals that once held Zodiark, to keep an accidental void-sent incursion from happening.
Again, I'm not necessarily saying it can or should be done, but I think it's worth thinking about, or at least fun to speculate a little bit.

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Originally Posted by No_Nick_Needed

Again I did not decide anything, I asked a question. Is is possible? Is there a scenario, where it makes sense?
Obviously it should not be done, just because it can be done and would only be a last resort, if all attempt to stablilize the shard in question fail.

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With the Ascians gone and the past 2 world hopper threats put down, there's no scenario where needing to stabilize a shard or escape from a calamity would actually occur unless the writers invent something new and I'd hope they would try not to retread the same plotlines yet again.

Rejoinings are an act of destruction and even if you did the theoretical "safe" route, teleporting whole populations of people into the Source causes more problems if Alexandria is anything to go by.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

... [T]eleporting whole populations of people into the Source causes more problems if Alexandria is anything to go by.

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The real problem with interdimensional fusion isn't really the displacement of people, but that it brings along the environment from the area fused. Theoretically if you fused an area from a more environmentally healthy and aetherically balanced world (as opposed to the lightning oversaturated hellscape the Ninth apparently became) it wouldn't have the sort of impact Alexandria did on Yyasulani - you'd still wind up with a load of temporo-spatially displaced people and alien structures, which would still wreak environmental chaos on wherever they fused onto, but the people themselves aren't the problem.

Still not a great idea.

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Originally Posted by Cilia

you'd still wind up with a load of temporo-spatially displaced people and alien structures, which would still wreak environmental chaos on wherever they fused onto, but the people themselves aren't the problem.

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My issue with the people is that you’re taking an entire nation and transplanting them into someone else’s world. Now that world needs to make room for them for resources and a place in greater world politics where neither side has cultural context for each other and each other’s ways are completely alien. Historically this hasn’t exactly worked out for the people receiving the visitors.

We still do not understand the effect Alexandrians will have on the Source. They are an EXTREMELY highly advanced and populous nation with a culture and sensibilities alien to our own and trying to avoid DT and 7.1 spoilers but the situation isn’t stable and the people in general aren’t exactly crying tears of joy to have received help from the Source.

In a realistic scenario, there will be issues further down the line in years to come regarding resources for the newcomers, fights over technology, fights over land (they effectively annexed a whole region of Tural’s), and fights over ideology. 7.1 proved that the instability of their situation is not over and we have at least 2-4 more patches revolving around it before their situation is solved in the near term but tens or hundreds of years down the line it could change again for the worse.

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Originally Posted by No_Nick_Needed

The whole thing started with the Milala and was only later corrupted and refined by Preservation

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This is such a good point. Azem's Sippy Cup doesn't even necessarily have to do worldmerging (although it might be beneficial for everyone if a small part of the First was merged with the Thirteenth and vice versa...). Also, it's pretty blatantly set up for the WOL to use the thing to travel to other worlds at some point in the future, maybe in 8.0.

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Originally Posted by Cilia

The real problem with interdimensional fusion isn't really the displacement of people, but that it brings along the environment from the area fused. Theoretically if you fused an area from a more environmentally healthy and aetherically balanced world (as opposed to the lightning oversaturated hellscape the Ninth apparently became) it wouldn't have the sort of impact Alexandria did on Yyasulani - you'd still wind up with a load of temporo-spatially displaced people and alien structures, which would still wreak environmental chaos on wherever they fused onto, but the people themselves aren't the problem.

Still not a great idea.

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Also worth saying, fusing locations still leads to a net negative.

Like, let's say just as an example you're fusing Il Mheg onto Coerthas; that's probably the best single one you do ecologically, Il Mheg's one of the healthiest parts of Norvrandt, while Coerthas is still dealing with a winter that may well be permanent. But when you do that, you basically overwrite Coerthas with Il Mheg; there's no longer two distinct locations that people live in and make the best of, there's now only one. The same amount of people, now trying to share less resources.

And that one's without factoring in the populations, which I agree with Mikko is a big problem especially in that hypothetical; let's be honest, fusing Il Mheg and Coerthas just creates the most singularly horrifying war that Eorzea's ever seen.

Coerthas might have trouble, but is still alive. Now a far better target in the Source would be the Burn. With the aether flow having been restored in Stormblood, that land will eventually come back to life, but that will take a long time. I don't fully remember what Y'Shotola said, but I wouldn't be surprised if it'll take centuries.
Though taking Ill Mheg out of Norvrant would probably undermine the restoration work we did, in the Eden raids.
Now taking Living Memory might be worth considering, under certain circumstances. If it's the last bit of that reflection, that's still around, we probably lack the means to restore the reflection, meaning it won't be missed over there (unlike Ill Mheg would be). Furthermore, we need to consider side-effects, like triggering a calamity in the Source. There might be no liveable land there, but there's a whole lot of lightning aether. If there's a chance that with no land to ankor it to, it's going to crash into the Source and cause a calamity, then better not even think about it.

But if we can be sure that won't happen, and the Cloud was confirmed to have saved the actual souls and not just memories, it might be worth considering to transplant Living Memory into the Burn. After all, with no living beings left in Living Memory, those souls wouldn't be able to reincarnate, due to lack of anything to make babies, right?

Hmm... that makes me wonder... if Source citizens were to travel to Living Memory and beget and birth a child in a year long stay and then returned to the Source with their new child, would that child have a soul from that reflection? It should, shouldn't it?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by No_Nick_Needed

Coerthas might have trouble, but is still alive. Now a far better target in the Source would be the Burn. With the aether flow having been restored in Stormblood, that land will eventually come back to life, but that will take a long time. I don't fully remember what Y'Shotola said, but I wouldn't be surprised if it'll take centuries.
Though taking Ill Mheg out of Norvrant would probably undermine the restoration work we did, in the Eden raids.
Now taking Living Memory might be worth considering, under certain circumstances. If it's the last bit of that reflection, that's still around, we probably lack the means to restore the reflection, meaning it won't be missed over there (unlike Ill Mheg would be). Furthermore, we need to consider side-effects, like triggering a calamity in the Source. There might be no liveable land there, but there's a whole lot of lightning aether. If there's a chance that with no land to ankor it to, it's going to crash into the Source and cause a calamity, then better not even think about it.

But if we can be sure that won't happen, and the Cloud was confirmed to have saved the actual souls and not just memories, it might be worth considering to transplant Living Memory into the Burn. After all, with no living beings left in Living Memory, those souls wouldn't be able to reincarnate, due to lack of anything to make babies, right?

Hmm... that makes me wonder... if Source citizens were to travel to Living Memory and beget and birth a child in a year long stay and then returned to the Source with their new child, would that child have a soul from that reflection? It should, shouldn't it?

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We don't know the state of the unlost world (the Ninth reflection, according to interviews) outside of Living Memory—besides the fact that we see the sun and moon and regular weather patterns once the meso terminal is shut down, implying the shard exists past the Storm Surge—but we do know that there are no souls stored in Living Memory, just memories. That's the whole point of Origenics, memories are separated from the souls and souls are used as fodder for regulators for the living in Alexandria and the memories are stored "in the cloud".

But that still leaves the souls of the original habitants, plus the Aloalo immigrants, minus the ones that went over to the Source with Alexandria and Solution 9, presumably floating around in their lifestream, unless of course there's still inhabited land around, outside of Living Memory.

I don't see any reason why there couldn't be parallel worlds like Star Trek's mirror universe or Abyssea on top of shards.
It's already established as a thing that happens in the FF multiverse.

The Interdimensional Rift allows for free travel through space and time and connects the franchise.
It's basically 6th dimensional space. The shards are rights next to each other, almost touching, in this space, but other FF worlds exist, further away.
These worlds, in theory, all follow the same basic rules and all exist, did exist, will exist, or could exist, in the same universe, at some point in time.

World of Final Fantasy introduced the Extraverse.
This is a higher level of interdimensional space that allows crossovers with other IPs that may not follow the same rules as FF at all.
So 9th dimensional space that connects different, unrelated multiverses, and a convenient plot excuse to handwave crossovers from other IPs while letting them stay mostly irrelevant to the series cosmology.

The main reason to NOT do that is the same reason why each FF has been in a separate world from the previous one: if you say that you're connecting to the world of FF1, you have to recreate the world of FF1, with all of the limitations that the 8-Bit NES version had to impose on the design of the world at the time. It's constraining yourself to the limits of an earlier design team's creation.

FF has always been about breaking limits instead of adhering to them, and so they recreate the limits with each iteration. And FF14 has continued that tradition by incorporating stuff that REFERENCES the other FFs, but doesn't go so far as to connect to them DIRECTLY; that allows for what happens in 14 to be something that's 14's creation, not 14 re-creating what the 9 team or the 13 team or the 3 team did.

Hell, to dip into 7.1 spoiler territory for a second (re: the Alliance raid series):

... this is the reason why Sareel Ja talks about seeing the Walk of Echoes and drawing inspiration from THAT when creating his little pocket universe to train up his copy of Gulool Ja Ja. He's not stealing anything from the REAL Vana'diel, but instead blendering together stuff from possible futures of the real Vana'diel that have been consumed by Atomos and dropped in the Threshold. Which means the depiction of Vana'diel we're seeing in the Alliance raid doesn't need to adhere to any of the limitations we see in 11.

So while we on the outside can look at Dissidia or WoFF or Stranger of Paradise and say "oh, these games acknowledge that the FFs are kind of in a multiverse continuum with each other" I don't think any FF game should actually attempt to break through those barriers (for anything other than fun running gags like Gilgamesh, obviously).