The Aetherophysics of Soul Shenanigans (4.4 SPOILERS)

[Apoptomon]

"My word, this data!" (Nice write-up!) Thanks for laying out some ideas / discussion of how it (possibly) works - some circumstances like how the WoD got to the Source (and more recently, Solus' deal) confused me. Do any of you have some thoughts on how these might apply to us WoL / echo users?

Oh also, since I started with a quote from Aulus, now that soul extraction is not just a boss mechanic but a very threatening msq plot point, any thoughts on where that might fit in or work with the other kinds of 'soul shenanigans'?

[Anonymoose]

Doesn't Elidibus have a line about perception being affected by expectation/foreknowledge?

Yes! At the time, it was meant as a lampshade (between 1.0 and ARR's shifting game engine and lore, the Ascian presentation just didn't mesh without assumptions like this), but now that it exists, it could conceivably be used to handwave a number of concerns. (Cheaply, but effectively.)

I think of sickness, so that also raises several questions

Assuming he didn't merely feign the illness and death on Elidibus's orders so that he could withdraw for a nap and set up the war of succession, having allowed dissent to fester and not having named a successor. It would display just how deeply he trusts, even if he dislikes, Elidibus's machinations.

So just what does Zenos have?

Just Resonance as far as I know, which led me to suspect possession of a Resistance member who died during the battle (no change in appearance of host anatomy) or, if the game is being deceptive, transmigration into and transfiguration of a living host a la Wuur.

I do not think Kahedin was possessed. Raised, yes, and there's the catch: he had far less intellect, and no personality, than any of the other cases of an Ascian pulling necromancy out of their sleeve.

You actually might be right about this, but I'd chalked it up as the second-most-likely interpretation. In the LV56 quest, Y'mhitra and Dancing Wolf theorize that Kahedin was necromantically raised as an "undead puppet". Later, in the LV60 quest, Y'mhitra gleans that the black-masks seem to fear death in certain scenarios, prompting the theory that they must possess corpses to continue existing, and must flee from one to another when their host corpse is destroyed. Depending on your game's client language, Dancing Wolf's reply is a little different, and can be closer to, "What, you mean not only can he control the dead, like Kahedin, but he can possess them!?" or a little closer to, "Aha! So he used Kahedin because he needed a body that was already dead!" I merely went with the most efficient interpretation, lol.

As pretains to your other observations:

Yes, extending the concept of the Word of the Mother before she was released as an independent entity by Hydaelyn to any other entity, in any other context would change a lot of probabilities. So far, we've only seen such an entity (a soul enmeshed with the Crystal, briefly, in close proximity, manifested as Her voice) in very specific contexts.

And, yes, the revelation that Ascians bearing Crystals of Darkness (or by extension the Warriors of Darkness, who had Crystals of Light, or Unukalhai, who might have a crystal we've never seen) could somehow use those aetherial wellsprings as a way to spontaneously generate biological host anatomy in consistency with their metal projection of themselves would change many of these probabilities, lol.

Again - logical efficiency. Sorting out what we know into what might be without assuming other, unknown mechanics are in play.

now that soul extraction is not just a boss mechanic but a very threatening msq plot point, any thoughts on where that might fit in or work with the other kinds of 'soul shenanigans'?

If only I knew where to put it or what the implications were! The Resonance mechanic seems to be draining formless spiritual aether and hyperfocusing it on a target while enforcing the "form" of the person in the copy-tank, wheres the boss mechanic seems to have been a forced full displacement of living body and living soul without compromising either. They may be slightly different processes for all I know.

That said, the more creative and conspiracy minded might begin to suspect that the later could perhaps be connected to The Voice... Ohohoho... /darksteelfoilhat

Maybe it's just me, but it feels like we're overdue an explanation for how someone becomes an Ascian in the first place.

Agreed. In the meantime, I've been suspecting that Tristan was being groomed for an eventual shift. Perhaps one starts by being granted Dark gifts and information just to see what conflict they rile up and how hungry they get for more and whether they can be pressed into directed service - and whether they don't just get ganked ten minutes later, of course. As they grow more capable, greedy for more power, more in line with the Dark, perhaps that is when they are granted more transcendent gifts. Or I'm just extrapolating baselessly in the wrong direction.

Or it could simply be that the personalities they display are wholly their own. In which case, that suggests a significant degree of free will - and one has to wonder if we could, at some point, reason with an Ascian.

If I were going to point at anything as a suggestion that the Ascians have free will, it would be their sheer audacity. Between arrogantly overlooking possibilities to recklessly endangering big-picture, long-term goals for the sake of personal advancement and prestige, it borders on outright asininity. Why would Zodiark want the dark acolytes to, if they were a rigidly controlled organization, act like Team Rocket?

Maybe he was "Solus" for so long that he started identifying with that persona. Maybe he's doing it just to mess with Varis, or as a shorthand reminder that he is, in essence, the person that Varis knew as Solus.

To be fair, if the council of fourteen is taking names from the Ivalician scions, and the Ivalician scions number only twelve, and they didn't avoid this by having Shadowhunters kills go unnamed (they look to perhaps be Loghrif and Fandaniel), then just not addressing his "true name" and just letting him pose as Solus in name and visage for now is as good as anything...though quite a tall house of cards in terms of assumptions until we get more information. It assumes everything from Overlord status to transmigrated Ascian to ... [goes crosseyed] It's not yet Occan's favorite, at any rate, imho.

Warriors of Light go back to the Lifestrem and are reborn like everyone else is. Only since they have the Echo, their soul can survive the Lifestream intact instead of dissipating. As it is, the WoD are specifically trying to stay in the Lifestream when they die. In fact, their initial goal was trying to get all the life on their Shard into the Lifestream so that it could eventually be reborn on another Shard after their Shard was Flooded with Light. Granted, they never had to go that far in the end, but their goal to end up in the Lifestream is something the Ascians try their best to avoid

The Warriors of Darkness were definitely out to Rejoin their world out of sentiment that, in some form, the souls of all those who died would live on. Obviously, most if not all would of course be shorn apart by the great blender that is the Lifestream and their "aetherial atoms" would end up all over the place.

But is there any cause to suspect this is not also true for those with the Echo? I'm not sure. It's always been a concern, of course. Mythology paints Echo-gifted souls as "reborn on the cusp of each Calamity", but are they mis-interpreating Hydaeyn choosing new people each cycle? Or does She keep their souls intact, wipe their memories, birth them back into the world, and activate them with the grand starshower gesture as necessary? So far there's been very little cause to suspect so. Even Bahamut - all the pieces of his old soul remanifested - wasn't Bahamut. Then again, the Warrior of Light is absolutely something else, something special; they have a "true nature" we don't yet understand, we just don't know what it is. What if we are someone special reincarnated, reactivated?

And if one could ride out the Lifestream until rebirth, would merely being eaten by Leviathan be enough to destroy Wuur? Would merely being hit by Ascalon be enough to kill Lahabrea? We're meant to assume this "brought the chaos of the Lifestream" to them in another form, much like shearing an Ascian soul apart with pure aether while bound in white auracite, but is any of this true? Is any of it not? (And does this blender have different settings? How turbulent is a river compared to the sea?)

[SynthielLyrin]

In order!

one has to wonder if we could, at some point, reason with an Ascian.

Would they want to? To reason with them should imply some degree of them being less cryptic and more truthful, as well as being willing to accept that maybe Hydaelyn is right. To the Warrior of Light, She certainly is. Of course, we’d have to be able to accept the flip side too, so… would –we- want to? Would we take the word and reasoning of world-enders and deceivers, with the blood of our allies and many others on their hands? Even without taking into account that then working together would be a crapshoot and a half, considering we got the various leaders on board with ‘they are a threat and should go’.
You can fire back with us actually doing it the one time with Unukalhai (not counting the Warriors of Darkness since that was double agents all the way down), but even then… that was burning up the ‘best shot’ they had at convincing us, in a way. We wouldn’t draw the weapons immediately on the kid based on presumed innocence, and the WoL is a sentimental sucker. Considering that ‘Solus’ has a hard time getting Varis to act in a manner that benefits him, even after giving him the information off our screen, and Solus was both a familiar figure and a celebrated figure in the Empire, it’s a long shot to see another ascian try that again, but with us.

and they didn't avoid this by having Shadowhunters kills go unnamed

Are we certain they are kills? The time we actually see a red masked ascian leave a corpse, he stands up anyways; ‘Solus’ gets shot, and then he reappears none the worse for wear at another location with his corpse within line of sight, sighing. So taking the mask as trophy guarantees absolutely nothing unless it was a black mask.
That, and if Shadowhunter is who we all are certain he is… that still leaves the matter of how he managed to inflict the Aetherial Sea on his kills. He is no primal that can drain the aether of a stricken foe (Leviathan, Thordan) that has to regroup, reform and then act; neither is he capable of manipulating the ruinous amounts of aether that a Blade of Light takes, unless this whole time garleans being unable to magic was a lie. So there is something missing there, I think. Or more than one something: manipulators likely do not visit a barren wasteland, and if it is who we’re certain he is, then he scored all those kills en route from Eorzea to the Burn, and found Alphinaud there. I do not trust him, and I am flagrantly biased here, but things don’t add up. How did he get there, and how did he score those kills?
Not that managing to force a retreat from those fiends is nothing. It’s a p cool feat, and it is a good way to force even the Emissary’s hands or the Voice’s, if now the mortals are 1) more on to their bullshit (and hell, even the Blessing of Light won’t help with that, unless Ysayle didn’t get her summoning techniques way back when not from an ascian) and 2) more capable of thrashing them enough to flee.

But is there any cause to suspect this is not also true for those with the Echo? I'm not sure. It's always been a concern, of course. Mythology paints Echo-gifted souls as "reborn on the cusp of each Calamity", but are they mis-interpreating Hydaeyn choosing new people each cycle? Or does She keep their souls intact, wipe their memories, birth them back into the world, and activate them with the grand starshower gesture as necessary? So far there's been very little cause to suspect so. Even Bahamut - all the pieces of his old soul remanifested - wasn't Bahamut. Then again, the Warrior of Light is absolutely something else, something special; they have a "true nature" we don't yet understand, we just don't know what it is. What if we are someone special reincarnated, reactivated?
And if one could ride out the Lifestream until rebirth, would merely being eaten by Leviathan be enough to destroy Wuur? Would merely being hit by Ascalon be enough to kill Lahabrea? We're meant to assume this "brought the chaos of the Lifestream" to them in another form, much like shearing an Ascian soul apart with pure aether while bound in white auracite, but is any of this true? Is any of it not? (And does this blender have different settings? How turbulent is a river compared to the sea?)

Man oh man.
If the dotharli beliefs have a high truth value, then hell you don’t even need the Echo or the Blessing of Light so long as your soul burns impossibly bright in death. … by being a complete hellion in battle. But that does not mean you get reborn, as much as maybe your soul finds its way reasonably well back to the tribe and you get to grow up to your glory again. Even if they do not, then Zenos somehow found himself a body, also short a Blessing, so it might be more on strengthening the soul so it can actually pull off those tricks and the Echo is a flag that means it is possible.
We do not know how Hydaelyn works. We know She chooses souls to be Her champions and grants them power but no directives beyond ‘do good’, maybe. And that She can yoink a soul back to her and name it Her Voice, once, and that as far as we saw with one group of stray children, even working with Zodiark once does not mean She cannot take them back. But at that point, neither can She guarantee that they will live, or be reborn ‘as themselves’ in any manner.
(I want them back dammit!)
The WoL is something absolutely special though, being as we have 6 damn crystals on us, and Hydaelyn herself has come to bat for us once or twice. Us being locked into life until further notice could well be part of being a divine champion. The big trick is that we have managed to deny that same privilege to others in the same category.