Spoilers: Ascian's Endgame?

[Nialle]

The line you're looking for is "Seven times have the masses survived the Rejoining, but their souls are grown weak and wan..."

Yeah. The wording seems to me to mean they are trying to merge worlds and have been at it for a long time now, with every Umbral Era.

[Morningstar1337]

Yeah. The wording seems to me to mean they are trying to merge worlds and have been at it for a long time now, with every Umbral Era.

IDK the wording makes it more like End of Evangaleon than Crisis on Infinite Earths IMO

Then again it could be both: a multiversial Instrumentality project.

[Saikou]

Clearly, I need to watch this scene again...

[Alberel]

The line you're looking for is "Seven times have the masses survived the Rejoining, but their souls are grown weak and wan..."

Something people seem to miss with this quote is the reference to the strength of their souls. Based on Minfilia's exposition on aetheric natures the strength of a mortal soul would probably reflect Hydaelyn's own strength. Seven times the Ascians have attempted this Rejoining, causing an Umbral Era each time, and each attempt has seen Hydaelyn gravely weakened. They've been routinely trying to kill her for the last few millenia...

That also means we can assume every event that caused the dawn of an Umbral Era was an Ascian machination. The quake that wiped out the Allagans and stopped Xande from fully opening the voidgate to unleash the Cloud of Darkness possibly indicates that the Ascians fear the Void as much as we do... So I think their between-world is entirely separate from the void.

[Saikou]

The Ascians have summoned voidkin to fight us, most notably the gargoyle minion the first time we encounter an Ascian. I'd like to hold the assumption that Cloud of Darkness = Famfrit (known as "the darkening cloud"), even if the current CT-Ascian disconnect seems to make that more and more unlikely.

[Magis]

The Ascians have summoned voidkin to fight us, most notably the gargoyle minion the first time we encounter an Ascian. I'd like to hold the assumption that Cloud of Darkness = Famfrit (known as "the darkening cloud"), even if the current CT-Ascian disconnect seems to make that more and more unlikely.

Ascians seem to have a lot of power over magic, so I'd assume summoning voidkin isn't out of there abilities... especially when much less beings were able to do it successfully.

[AdamuKun322]

Well, from what I know:
- Lahabrea is able to called down Ultima
- He's definitely an Ascian Black Mage
- I believe it is he who has been jumping between beastkin to teach them how to summon their primals
- Eldibus is the chief of the Ascians hence his middle platform in that scene and center to Zodiark to reinforce his position
- He has a better understanding of the Echo and what it can truly be capable of
- He probably stands a better chance at fighting us Warriors of Light and I would not be surprised if he is able to take control of the Crystal Braves

[Alenore]

- Lahabrea is able to use the power of the Heart of Sabik, which is Ultima,
- He uses Shadow Flare (arcanist), and uses usually spells related to the Void. I haven't seen him use BLM/THM spells,
- There's no special reasons why an ascian of his rank would go teach beastmen himself,
- Elidibus is an emissary, he never said he was the chief, or anything like that. The scene in this expansion, where Elidibus stands in the middle of them all, looks more like he's being given voice than he's leading them,
- He said himself he was only an Emissary while Lahabrea was a warrior. In sheer firepower, Lahabrea is probably more powerful than Elidibus. Now, firepower isn't everything.

[AdamuKun322]

There is so much to learn about this "new" enemy. Perhaps 2.4, 2.5 will elaborate on it? Nah that Flare he uses is much to large to be the ACN's Shadow Flare. It's gotta be a Black Mage Flare.

[Nutz]

For whatever reason it seems that the Ascians' plan is for there to simply be a lot of summonings. Well, this is the means in any case. From what I gathered from the cut scenes they more or less invented Shiva for want of a primal for the heretics of Ishgard to summon. Presumably all this summoning leeches life from Hydaelyn, and there's been a lot of it lately. They seem to believe that they're nearing a tipping point, but logistically I'm unsure what should happen next. Is Hydaelyn passively imprisoning Zodiark and this excessive use of aether will allow him to break his chains? Are they trying to get all of the primals to be summoned at once and somehow convert all of that concentrated energy into an effort to summon Zodiark?

Maybe I should rewatch, but I never got the impression that the Ascians' final goal was any sort of joining of light and dark worlds, but the 'rejoining' text must have been chosen for a reason. Perhaps it suggests that during Umbral eras the world is severed from Hydaelyn and the coming of an Astral era marks the rejoining (though from the 2.0 end cut scenes it seemed as though the beginning of an Astral era was an arbitrary man-made contrivance).

In any case I love the main story and various other story lines. I just sometimes feel like they give us very little information at a time, but fluff up the number of main story quests with things like 'go fetch Tataru's sledgehammer'!