The shards and the butterfly effect + nonud time travel [Spoilers for end of HW]

[Balipu]

Okay so the original world got blown into the Source(where we are) and the thirteen shards. So far so good. The shards are very much like the Source, but not quite. For example the Warriors of Darkness have the same jobs we do, but with different names.

Now we know that the Ascians like to mess with all of these worlds. However I doubt they do the exact same tricks (Allagan conquest of Meracydia, Cartenau...etc) every time. And this is where the butterfly effect comes up. When we get to these shards (the new year poem has me suspect it will be quite soon) how different will those shards be? Totally different? Or mostly the same with a few small changes?
Could Yda be alive on one of the shards? Or Papalymo? Edda? Moenbryda? Gaius?

Speaking of Cartenau. We of course weren't there when it happened in 1.0 The players never took part in the battle proper. Based on the fact that the 13th shard is the void and the void is super old we can guess that the timeline might not be the same for all the shards. Could we maybe fight on the Cartenau of a shard? Or play a part in the Conquest of Meracydia? i know i said they probably didn't occur everywhere but there might be a chance.

EDIT: By the way that nonud in the title is supposed to be bonus. I just can't type properly in the dark.

[Anonymoose]

I'm going to guess that they're quite different. From the "beginning of (its) time" each shard was already unique in terms of how much Light and Dark energy it was possessed of. That unique balance alone should wreak havoc on similarities over 20,000+ years.

Then you have that it's likely that only the Source has had seven Calamities. Dimensional barriers are blown out from the Source side; is there any reason that a shard world should suffer effects of any Calamity but the one that destroys their world?

And lastly, if the world was already going off-course 20,000 years ago, you can be NIGH certain that the world didn't see the same individual people come and go. That means new people. New ambitions. New events. New wars. New national borders. New names for every landmass and landmark, and ones that might not look like ones in a world that's suffered seven apocalypses.

[Cilia]

Assuming we get to them at some point, the Shard Worlds will likely have the same geography, but radically different histories and cultures. The people we know on the Source are unlikely to have alternate world counterparts depending on when the Source was shattered; millennia of different history makes the probability of this extremely low.

[Balipu]

Yes this is also what I am more leaning towards. But the Warriors of Darkness to give me pause. I mean I know they can't be given jobs we do not have because gameplay reasons, but they all have the basic jobs of the game with the level 50 artifact armor. And even their race is super common. Which is admittedly bloody convenient for Elidibus. It is harder to send Sahagin ninjas on covert missions.

[Anonymoose]

On one hand, after arriving on the Source, they even adopted conventional Eorzean names to better fit in. I assume they could have just picked that armor up at a House of Splendors Augmented AF Overstock Extravaganza sale (like when Rowena gifted Moenbryda that Allagan axe after the Final Fantasy III NOAH expedition fad died down).

On the other ... they were wearing that gear in the Warrior of Light's Echo of their casting out Mitron. Perhaps, like the Ascians, we saw a crude approximation based on what we knew and assumed thus far...? lol...

(Somewhere, a dev. reads this chanting in hushed whispers, "Please don't think too hard about it.")

It seems an obvious inference to make that SE just wanted to hint that the Warriors of Darkness were once adventurers just like us by using the generic trailer party, and that just happens to be what the generic trailer party wore. That little detail (that the first probably didn't have Farreach warriors, Gridanian bards, Mhachi black mages, etc.) might have slipped through the cracks.

[Balipu]

You are probbaly right, Moose. As usual. We do have to visit the shards to clear all of this up it seems.

[Driven]

I always took it that the the Mother Crystal (Hydaelyn) took an active role with all the worlds. Like a mysterious personal (“Judeo-Christian God”). Even if it is a very limited role, I see the Mother Crystal potentially shaping the destiny for each world, which could make them very similar.
On a practical level for our gameplay, if Hydaelyn did influence how these worlds turn out- that would make it easier for us to understand the basics if we we’re to travel to one of these shards one day. And it could provide well fleshed out plot points.

Also, on a side note, is it 100% established that we (our personal character in the over all story) were not in 1.0? I have noticed many references throughout AAR and even Storm Blood that could be interpreted that we could be the original Warrior of Light from 1.0.

Love this topic by the way!

[ObsidianFire]

It's very much implied that your personal character is the WoL from 1.0. In fact, if you had a character in 1.0 then your character was the WoL for 1.0. Louisoix flung you five years forward in time so that you wouldn't die at. At the end of the ARR MSQ after you've killed Giaus, all the major players in 1.0 (GC leaders, Cid, Minfilia, etc.) remember that you were the WoL.

If you didn't have a character in 1.0 then none of that dialogue happens. You're just some random adventurer that was given the Echo and are doing things that remind everyone of what the previous WoL did. Presumably, the 1.0 WoL died at Carteneau or Louisoix's time-travel spell didn't work right. On the flip side, I can think of a dozen role-playing reasons where even in this case you can still be the 1.0 WoL and not make references to that time (time-travel amnesia, don't want to be remembered for what you did back in 1.0, etc.).

[Balipu]

Well 1.0 characters get a totally different intro so it is hinted that people who missed all the 1.0 aren't the same warriors of light. Of course in the grand scheme of things it matters little. We are outsiders that arrived in Eorzea either durting 1.0 or 2.0 And no matter what race we are and where we go, none of this is our actual home. Hell it might turn out that we are from one of the shards.

[Nezerius]

But the Warriors of Darkness to give me pause. I mean I know they can't be given jobs we do not have because gameplay reasons, but they all have the basic jobs of the game with the level 50 artifact armor.

While the armor is probably because they wanted them to have a familiar look, the Warriors of Darkness do have different job names. Devout, Ranger, Magus, and Knight. Note that because of the job name of PLD being Knight, the Knight of Darkness is called Magic Swordsman instead.

It's probably small differences like this that also make the other shards stand out from how the Source has progressed over time.