Let's Talk the Twins and Their End Goals

[MetalSnakeXI1]

And I do kind of wonder if he truly cares about it. For someone that talks all about balance he was quite ready to go out and kill us. We are the last main WoL on the source (as far as we know) thus the last really strong champion for Hydaelyns side. What would happen with the balance if we die? Wouldnt that mean that the Ascians have a free reign and would just create lots of calamities and with that also lots of Darkness too? One Ascians already destroyed a shard with too much Darkness, so could Elidibus really keep them in check?

That's one of my problems with the Ascians as villains for XIV,Elidibus's plans seems a little counterintuitive for his goal cuz he kind of went a little too far in some instances.Cuz if the Warrior of Light dies that's it there goes his plan of balance and yet another world gets destroyed

His current actions using Zenos's body kind of undermines the efforts he went through with Urianger in HW to resolve the problem of the WoD when you think about it.Honestly we need a bit more details than we currently have and it's a problem in SB since the Ascians were so downplayed here up until the Under The Moonlight MSQ patch

[LineageRazor]

Wouldn't say they were vague about the cause, They literally ripped that line From FF3 it was a huge nod to the whole problem in that game that an unbalance of either light or dark would cause the flood and warriors from the opposite order would stop the flood

But FF3 was just as vague! Think back to FF3 - sometime in the past, Warriors of Darkness arose because the Light became too strong and they needed to tip back the balance. But HOW they did that is never stated! What actions does a Warrior of Darkness take to weaken the Light? What quests did they do? What enemies did they fight? It's implied that what the Warriors of Darkness did was good and necessary, because imbalance is Bad, but what they actually DID to restore that balance is vague.

It's EASY to portray Light's fight against Darkness, because you can give it all the trappings of standard Good vs Evil (even though the game TELLS us that Light is not necessarily Good and Darkness is not necessarily Evil). You have plenty of cackling villains to defeat, monsters to slay, dark temples to explore, and so on and so forth. Things start to fall apart, though, when you try to imagine it from the other point of view - when the representatives of Darkness are the heroes. What quality makes a cackling Light villain different from a cackling Darkness villain? How is a Light monster different from a Darkness monster? The writers never say.

All FF3 (and this game, as well) says is that Imbalance Is Bad, which is an easy, if pithy, notion to get behind, but exactly WHAT we're balancing is never spelled out. Light and Darkness are vague, meaningless terms on their own, and the writers can decide however they like as to just what things count as Light and what things count as Darkness.

Some posters have pointed out that Light and Darkness COULD represent Order and Chaos. Warriors of Light arise when society is collapsing, and Warriors of Darkness arise to shake things up when the world becomes too rigid and stagnant. Not a bad notion, but the game never makes that clear, so: vagueness. Even if we assume it's true, though, it's tough to look at the state of the world in game and say, "Boy, this world is so stagnant and orderly that we're on the verge of a Flood of Light!" Every city we've visited in the game seems like it could collapse into civil war if we did even a little bit of "shaking up".

Kugane has it's revolutionaries and deeply corrupt nobles. Ishgard has had a theological upheaval and the common folk are starting to wonder why they toe the line when the Houses aren't as "noble" as they were taught. Limsa Lominsa needs an iron-fisted leader just to barely keep its population of pirates from running amok. Gridania is forced to levy severe and seemingly arbitrary punishments against people at the whims of the Elementals, and is engaged in what could be called a small-scale war with poachers. Garlemand's current regime was explicitly created for the purpose of sowing chaos. Ala Mhigo and Doma are only just beginning to pick up the pieces to form stable societies after being liberated. Only Ul'dah could be said to be a bastion of Order, thanks to the self-serving desires of the Syndicate to maintain the status quo - and even that city has no shortage of malcontents. None of this paints a picture of a world so overwhelmed by order and stagnation that the forces of chaos need to step up to maintain the balance!

[ObsidianFire]

I'm almost positive Darkness is not a stand-in for Chaos and Light is not a stand-in for whatever concept is opposite Chaos in this 'verse (Levin an Impression gives the best hint for what it might be).

Solus says two things about the purpose of the Garlean Empire that indicated this this best. The first is, "If aught threatens the balance 'twixt Light and Dark, it falls to you to remove it." and the second, a few line later is, "The founding father was an Ascian! And he created the Empire solely for the purpose of sowing the seeds of chaos!". So there's two non-contradictory purposes behind the Garlean Empire's creation. One is keeping Light and Darkness in Balance. The second is spreading Chaos. That's really hard to do if both Darkness and Chaos are the same thing.

That also might do a lot to explain Elidibus. He always maintains that the wants to keep Light and Darkness in Balance. As far as I can find, he's never said if he's trying to curtail how much Chaos there is. Given how the various projects he's been involved with have turned out (or could have turned out), my gut feeling is that he does not mind if there's more Chaos rather then less once he's done.

I've been digging around in the game scripts to see if there's anything said about Light/Darkness and Chaos. I've still got a ways to go (the 2.x series is long) but there are some things that do stick out. The first people who associate the WoL with Light are the Ascians. Their first title for us is Bringer of Light, and they keep calling us that for the rest of the game. Except the part where Middy blocks our Blessing of Light. And the Ascians are immensely happy about that since it removes a barrier to what they really want to do. Also, the existence of the Warrior of Light is incompatible with the Ascians by their own admition. They can't do what they want to do while we're there. As it is, the Ascians are always associated with Chaos. Both by the Scions and by their own admission. Anything that furthers more Chaos serves their ends even it it keeps Light/Darkness balanced. As for the way the Ascians want to balance Light and Darkness... the way they think they can do this permanently is by killing Hydaelyn. Only, they can't do that without Zodiark being restored. Which can only come about from Rejoinings/Ardors aka shards being rejoined with Hydaelyn. The Ascians' true long-term goals are not to balance out the Source's Light and Darkness; they are to balance out all the light and darkness of the shards by killing what they see as the source of light after collapsing all the shards into the Source. Nevermind that will take out every other living thing on the Shards with it...

I can't help but think that the Light/Darkness dichotomy is a bit of a red herring to the real dichotomy of Chaos/????. Not to say the Light/Darkness dichotomy isn't important, it is. But that it's a welcome distraction that the Ascians can point at to keep the WoL and Co. from discovering what the real dichotomy is. And the Ascians really do want the Chaos/???? balance to stay as unbalanced as possible. They need more Chaos so they can pull more Rejoinings off. If the Chaos/???? balance is ignored, then the Light/Darkness balance will be maintained in the worst way possible. If indeed that really is what the Ascians are trying to do in the first place...

[Seraphor]

They aren't contradictory is the Empires purpose is to be the Dark side of the balance.
Sowing the seeds of Chaos is playing their part in maintaining the balance between Light and Dark if they're solely responsible for the Dark portion.

[Remedi]

But FF3 was just as vague! Think back to FF3 - sometime in the past, Warriors of Darkness arose because the Light became too strong and they needed to tip back the balance. But HOW they did that is never stated! What actions does a Warrior of Darkness take to weaken the Light? What quests did they do? What enemies did they fight? It's implied that what the Warriors of Darkness did was good and necessary, because imbalance is Bad, but what they actually DID to restore that balance is vague.

It wasn't vague, the story of FF3 was very simple there were no hidden meaning, the theme was a balance of both power must be achieved for life to thrive, you are overthinking on a very simple story with the informations of now in mind.

Ofc it is not the same for FFXIV, what I meant with that they took a story element out of FF3 and put it in a new context, while the fact that an overaboundance of light is catastrophic for life is a thing, what it does for the whole setting fo FFXIV is not yet clear.
As far as we know Darkness void is a better void than a light void since it doesn't kill life it makes them aether starved, while as far as we know Light void scorches and destroy everything, but I'm sure there's more than that. That revelation was made to actually change everything of what we know at the time and make the conflict deeper and mysterious. However we lack proper knowledge to really ascertain the situation at the moment.

That said consider that how it was said in FF3 it was said to be a legend, which is the best way actually to add past events to a story, as far as writing is concerned

[Alleo]

Well, as it is hinted that there will be a Calamity of Light soon... Let's assume a Calamity / Flood of Light is caused by too much, overflowing light. As the WoL, we are an embodiment of light, so killing us would tip the scales towards darkness, making it more balanced than before - so maybe killing us is Elidibus' way of maintaining the balance.

I do wonder if a calamity of Light can really be dangerous to us at all or if it can even happen on our source. First as far as we know we are only now finally catching up with the plans of the Ascians. We had 7 calamities already that are 7 times that Hydaelyn lost. She herself was was quite weak yet still protected us from harm against Ultima which made it impossible for her to communicate with us thus it seems that our survival was more important than her own state. She needed a vessel to do anything at all after that and only the crystals of the WoD and one of our own gave her enough strenght back to free Minfilia of her role and sent her with the WoDs to stop the Light from destroying anything. We have heard nothing else from her since then so it felt like she must have been able to stop that. So on one hand she is weak, lost a lot thus I just cant see how us freeing some states and killing three black Ascians (where one was even from a shard that is the void now) destroys any kind of balance that much that we will have too much Light soon. On the other hand we know (or believe right now) that Hydaelyn is able to take back Light if its growing too much. So why should too much Light even be dangerous to us?

Also if us stopping a big war from happening by trying to solve things with less direct fights will already be quite bad for that balance than what would that mean for our future? Will we have to let the Ascians win, by creating a calamity that will kill an unknown number of people on the source and will kill a whole shard? I still hope that this is all a plot by Zodiark so that he can get back sooner and that we at the end still stop another one from happening.

[ObsidianFire]

So on one hand she is weak, lost a lot thus I just cant see how us freeing some states and killing three black Ascians (where one was even from a shard that is the void now) destroys any kind of balance that much that we will have too much Light soon. On the other hand we know (or believe right now) that Hydaelyn is able to take back Light if its growing too much. So why should too much Light even be dangerous to us?

Currently, it seems there's a lot more... cosmic infrastructure... in place for Light to regulate itself. Or at least, there would be if Hydaelyn was allowed to function at full strength. She seems to have the power to increase the Light in a given situation when needed (the WoL) and also decrease it as well (her Emissary). Unfortunately, the Ascians make it pretty clear that Hydaelyn is weakening and that they are very happy about that.

As much as we, the WoL are a source of Light, we're not the only people giving the Ascians a hard time anymore. We now know there are people other then us out there who are taking on the Ascians and at least being a nuance (killing of the hosts the Ascians were possessing) or at best really killing them (the Ascians no longer exist). So people who are necessarily agents of Light are making the Darkness have a harder time spreading and who knows what that's doing to the Light/Dark balance. It's almost like there's a third party in play now and we have no idea how that messes with the balance just yet.

Also if us stopping a big war from happening by trying to solve things with less direct fights will already be quite bad for that balance than what would that mean for our future? Will we have to let the Ascians win, by creating a calamity that will kill an unknown number of people on the source and will kill a whole shard? I still hope that this is all a plot by Zodiark so that he can get back sooner and that we at the end still stop another one from happening.

There's two different Light/Dark balances that exist. There's the overarching cosmic one and the one for each shard. The Ascians plan to balance the Cosmic Light/Darkness balance by killing Hydaelyn. In order to do so, they need Zodiark to be restored. Zodiark can't be restored with shards that have had a Flood take place on them though. So the Ascians need to keep the Light/Dark balance of each shard intact until the Shard is Rejoined to the Source. Meanwhile, they also want the Source to have as much Chaos as possible since that is what leads people to summoning primals, which leads to more Rejoinings happening. Which leads to Zodiark reforming faster.

The fact that is seems there's a Calamity coming up with little to no warning (compared to the last one anyway) seems to indicate something has gone wrong and there's been lots of primal summonings somewhere on Hydaelyn. There's never been a Calamity that's come so soon after another one; usually there's a good millennia between Calamities. On the other hand, the 7th Umbral Calamity was a bit of a weird on, so may be that Calamity isn't really over yet?

[Alleo]

I just wonder if the cosmic balance can really tip too much to the Light side if Hydaelyn can regulate it on her own. Thus if she can then why should we ever really care about a true balance (whatever that really is) on our source? Yes shards can be lost but that is something that needs to be changed on each shard. So wouldnt it be better to just kill all the Ascians, let Hydaelyn do the regulation of the Light and maybe use her power to sent emissaries to the shards that will overlook their balance so that they dont destroy themselves? Honestly I hope that this is the way that we will go in the end because it would not sit well with me if we have to let the Ascians do their things to prevent something worse.

Maybe the calamities are happening much sooner (if there is one truly coming) because the Ascians are getting tired of waiting? Or maybe because Elidibus is afraid of us? Because he seemingly now plays a more active role with Zenos body. Or maybe in the past a calamity often also destroyed the one party that they have used to create one, while here Garlemald still exists thus can be used to create another one. Maybe even because Eorzea was not destroyed thus did not need a long time to rebuild. (All of this is still just wild speculation)

In the end I dont think that it means our twins and I am not even sure if the warning is true at all.

[Remedi]

We should know exactly what the gods really want in th first place to make some decisions.
So far writing-wise the fact that we are essentially doormats isn't really good

as just a pancake would say in a meme, our answer to everyone is

OK, I believe you

[MetalSnakeXI1]

We should know exactly what the gods really want in th first place to make some decisions.
So far writing-wise the fact that we are essentially doormats isn't really good

as just a pancake would say in a meme, our answer to everyone is

OK, I believe you

Well that's a problem with deities in most RPGs in general.

Either they're evil or they do nothing