Spoilers - plus help I don't understand the warriors of darkness storyline

[Alleo]

Thank you for your breakdown and replies it does make much more sense now. I guess it was lucky we had the last element on us at the time! I am curious as to why hydaelyn treats each world differently (no WoL for them!)

Well theoretically we have all six elemental crystals so we always could have summoned the one that was still missing. I am not sure if its correct but each WoL probably will take away some of her power. The crystals seems to help us against the Ascians but they have her aether in it. If we are able to give back her power by giving her our crystals we are probably also taking away her power if we get a crystal. We dont even know if the other worlds had no WoL. Maybe these WoL just lost to the Ascians? We are also her last trump card, so maybe she just cant "create" more WoL without using the last bit of her power.

Its also the question if everyone that is choosen as a WoL, really goes along the path. She never truly forced us to help her so maybe some choose not do to something?

[Anonymoose]

I think TinyRedLeaf addressed the questions I would have replied to quite well, already, but...

I wonder if hydaelyn is so weak because her light is effectively dammed away in the first world?

It's hard to say for sure how much of Her weakness can be attributed to bits of the Light being on other worlds and how much is just that seven straight Calamities (and seven sets of Warriors of Light that can harness Her strength) have really taken their toll. Hell, even empowering us, casting out Lahabrea, and the Ultima shields cost Her pretty dearly.

And if she already had warriors of light /emissaries there, why she didn't act sooner

As far as we know, Minfilia is the only Emissary - The First may have been the only time that Ascian machination we defeated so hard that a gap was placed between a flood of Light and a Rejoining. The Warriors of Light may have just done everything they could have in the past and kept ultimately losing ground; there might not have been a flood of Light to stop. But this is all speculation - it could all be wrong.

What are the different aspects of the crystals? Are there only six?

Technically ... There's Lighting / Fire / Earth / Ice / Water / Wind. But there are also crystals of Darkness, and since 1.0 there have been manifestations of imbalanced aspects that tip towards two adjacent elements, even three when it's the "Astral" trio (Wind / Lighting \ Fire) or the "Umbral" trio (Water \ Ice / Earth). The entire Chrysalis, for example, is made of Dark Crystal - from the door to the platforms to the statue. That, combined with the fact that it looks like the inside of the Burning Heart, has me suspicious that the interdimensional rift is actually within the moon - perhaps within the "Fathercrystal" itself.

What I'm left to wonder about, now that the cosmology of FFXIV has gone down such a completely different direction, is who or what exactly are the Twelve?

You know me; I hold logic and speculation pretty dear until we get to issues of "keeping the faith". I'll support doubt, I'll back interpretations to the contrary, but it just seems like a more powerful adventure if you hold fast to hope. Most tangible evidence so far points to the Twelve being seeds of faith that descend from legends of the Archons and the Warriors of Light, every era reinforced and strengthened when history repeats itself. The Circle of Knowing were twelve figures bringing accurate warnings of the future and even today the commonfolk will be quick to say, "THE ANGELS HAVE RETURNED TO US!"

Still ... I keep the faith that the Twelve are something. My current baseless headcanon is that they existed in an unwritten era of Prehistory between the division of the Source and the first Rejoining; that they were extremely powerful forms of Life that existed early on as a means to lead and guide, but ultimately it didn't work out. But who knows. Maybe they were all dragons, eh!?

Louisoix and the Circle of Knowing attempt to summon the Twelve to reseal Bahamut, but they appear only in symbol form and are almost immediately shattered. <...> There was a quest at the end of 1.0 that had players go on a pilgrimage to to all the spots in the world with the Twelve's symbols and pray to them. It clearly wasn't enough.

Correct. Louisoix tried to tap into a summoning ritual to essentially summon primal versions of the Twelve and direct their strength towards sending Dalamud back into the heavens before ultimately killing himself to prevent their corporeal manifestation (Bahamut broke the spell before it got that far). From the symbols in the sky to the literal recreation of Dalamud around Bahamut, it's strongly suggested that these are just manifestations of faith and aether.

What the Twelve are otherwise - if anything - is still a great mystery.

[SuzakuCMX]

Correct. Louisoix tried to tap into a summoning ritual to essentially summon primal versions of the Twelve and direct their strength towards sending Dalamud back into the heavens before ultimately killing himself to prevent their corporeal manifestation (Bahamut broke the spell before it got that far). From the symbols in the sky to the literal recreation of Dalamud around Bahamut, it's strongly suggested that these are just manifestations of faith and aether.

What the Twelve are otherwise - if anything - is still a great mystery.

It's important to note that despite the Circle of Knowing being so against primals that they tried to summon the deities in a manner similar to primals. Urianger was the one in 1.0 who came and directed players to the deities' symbols around Eorzea and to pray at them in order to fill them with aether.

[Viaeus]

Thank you for all the clarifications in this thread, great explanations.

I have one question. We know now that the Ascians try to cause calamities in the reflection worlds to rejoin them with the Source. Our world already is the Source, so why do the Ascians try to create calamities in our world? Does our world need to be rejoined with itself?

[Cilia]

Knowing what we now know, it sounds to me like the Ascians need to make a massive aetherial disturbance (i.e. calamitous event) in order to initiate a Rejoining. This is the task of the Ascians operating on the Source; the others are supposed to keep a Reflection balanced until such a time as it is Rejoined.

Conjecture, though. We don't know the whole story.

[Naria]

The Calamites that we know any detail about have involved two things 1) Massive war(s) 2) the consumption of a great deal of aether either through magic (White and Black/Void for the Sixth Umbral Calamity) or Primal summoning (the Third and Seventh Calamities) as a result of those wars. Since the WoD say that the aether of the First Shard would be returned to the Source if a rejoining occurred, presumably one of the components of a rejoinging is to create a massive deficit of aether on the Source. We don't know what the necessary components for a rejoining on a Shard world are, besides that they need to be in relative balance. As Cilia said it could very well be that Calamities don't happen on the Shards, only the Source.

[Cilia]

So by creating a massive aetherial disturbance or deficit on the Source, the barriers between it and a Reflection are ovecome by the Source's need to fill that deficit... and a Reflection is Rejoined to compensate...

... yeah, sounds logical.

[Naria]

It is possible that there is some other component to it--that on the Shard targeted to be rejoined the Ascians cause some kind of planetary catastrophe that would result in a great deal of death in short period of time (not unlike the Source's Calamities but without the encouragement of aetherial consumption/drain) in order to "free up" aether and insure that specific shard is rejoined and not another, but that is pure speculation on my part. As I've said elsewhere, with what we know at the moment I doubt that Calamities happen on all remaining shards whenever there is one on the Source (It seems like it would create a lot of extra work for the Ascians). I might be accrediting them with too much organizational skill. We know so little about the other shards I could easily be completely wrong.

But yeah unless I've missed something the MSQ didn't say either way if Calamities happen on the Shards, only that the Ascians are also active on the Shards to maintain balance. On a world rich in Light like the First that would mean promoting Dark (whatever that would entail). On the Source however the Ascians seem mainly occupied with deliberately causing an aether drain on the planet/Hydaelyn. The fact that millennia pass between Umbral Calamities makes me think there is something more to it then just causing a massive aether drain on the Source.

[Cilia]

Ehh... I was just saying that sounds like the most logical answer to the how and why of the Ascians' MO, for now.

Don't think a length of time between Rejoinings is necessary; the Ascians have done nothing but try and force another one and it's only been 5 years since the last... but I digress.

[Anonymoose]

Don't think a length of time between Rejoinings is necessary; the Ascians have done nothing but try and force another one and it's only been 5 years since the last... but I digress.

Personally, I assume it's another correlation/causation thing. Look at what usually happens after a Calamity - a huge amount of people die, the land becomes uninhabitable, and the survivors scatter to the wind with what pitiful knowledge and technology they can steward through the strife. Who is going to cause any noteworthy measure of chaos? And with what? The delay between previous calamities was likely allow enough people to come together with enough resources and enough motivations to actually get the chaos ball rolling again.

Thanks to Louisoix we still have plenty of civilizations, technologies, and peoples ready to rise up and [insert cause here].

No delay necessary.