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Thread: Eureka Finale

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  1. #14
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    Anonymoose's Avatar
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    Getting back to the events themselves, a bit, I'm still working on trying to iron all the points out into the correct interpretations.

    The Primal

    A box (that is a primal) which forges tainted weapons (that becomes new primals) which temper, twist, and consume their wielders (who people mistake for primals) is certainly a lot to unpack. Krile assumes that if people wanted to summon a weaponsmith, you'd expect something like Byregot, but that's perhaps easy to explain. We're talking rebellion against the Allagan Empire, likely well past the aetherochemical revolution. What if Eureka arose in the era of the abandonment of the gods, and the Ascians just had the rebels imagine a shortcut to victory - basically a "Fabrication Node" that grants wishes.

    Odin / Zantetsuken

    So, have the writers assented to Eureka re-definig Odin and claiming the Dark Divinity as its own? Maybe! There's a chance it's a chicken-and-egg situation, but these weapons do act suspiciously like Zantetsuken. Moreover, we have Shin-Zantetsuken and Raiden both harking back to it. On one hand, we might assume that Urth led a faction of rebels and wished for a weapon for her champion, only to regret what Odin became and sacrificed herself to seal the weapon away; Wiyu would have been an Allagan summoner whose mission to contend with Odin met with disaster. (This doesn't address the legend of the Au Ra or the legend of the Allagan Hero very well.) On the other hand, not one example pre-dates Odin. If he was part of a pattern, wouldn't you assume something was his contemporary? Ejika knew what Odin was before he requested a weapon. Raiden already knew who Odin was. What if Eureka was summoned after Odin, with similar things in mind? Perhaps Eureka isn't claiming Odin after all.

    So the mystery rolls on, perhaps. Either way I doubt they concluded his involvement with the game at LV50.
    (Not that I didn't get bored of them blaming everything on him XI; go back far enough and everything is connected to him.)

    The Destruction of Val and Emmerololth

    I still can't work this out; Galuf's Memo is quite strange.

    The Isle of Val ceases communication in 2.1 (Build on the Stone), which leads to the confirmation that the island is gone in 2.2 (Through the Maelstrom). From 2.2 until 4.1, it is assumed that Val was destroyed by a spell like in power to Ultima. We (as players) can assume that this was true (to the writers) at the time. We know that the person assigned to create our horizontal progression content (odd-number-patch, non-raid busywork) requested to use Val after-the-fact, leading to "new revelations" (recall our discussion about addition-retcons, the healthier kind of retroactive continuity adjustments?).

    We know that Krile Baldesion was one of the Students who was on Val at the time of the "attack" and it is confirmed that Hydaelyn saved her; they match the same aetheric signature to all three known sites of divine intervention (The Word of the Mother): The Praetorium (Warrior of Light), the Isle of Val (Krile), and the Sil'dih Aqueducts (Minfilia). In Eureka, Krile revises her hypothesis, concluding beyond the shadow of a doubt that Val was - in fact - teleported. She muses that perhaps it teleported to escape the Ultima blast, but simultaneously concludes that, even if that were true, it doesn't matter.

    Galuf's memo states that they sealed the primal for a while, but upon its discovery by the Ascians, they "drowned the entire isle in the Lifestream." This can't be the teleportation itself; that's not how teleportation works. Teleportation (including Flow) "entaileth the reduction of the corporeal form into its constituent aether, that the caster might enter the Lifestream, and ride its currents thereby" (Aetherial Trail). However, notice that the memo says, "And now, we await our own end. Even as I write, the Isle of Val drifts the Lifestream." You can't write a memo if you're mid-teleport. Ergo he must have teleported the island (somehow) into the actual Aetherial Sea (or at least a thick subterranean "river" or "point of confluence" or something).

    That would explain the destruction of Emmerololth; the Ascians don't go there. Even if it could survive a quick dip in a teleport (Y'shtola's soul held out in a vein for enough time to assume this is possible), escaping from the Sea would be ... complicated. This of course calls into questions why the Ascians utilize a completely different means of teleport in the first place (Rule of Cool + Why even risk it?), but sure, we can handwave it. Let's say the island arrives in the sea and it takes a while for the blender to really go to work on all the physical contents, and meanwhile the "Dawn Warrior" clique (Galuf and friends) keep Emmerololth from using his Crystal of Darkness long enough to hold his head out the window or whatever.

    What I can't work out is the timeline. Val falls under attack in 2.1, and is confirmed missing in 2.2.

    Not only does Emmerololth have a speaking line in 2.3, all his friends are there, so you can't just be like, "Whoops. Wrong name." There are 14 platforms, clearly meant to represent each world, and every one is filled. The recent "new revelations" about Emet-selch add a 15th Ascian to our mix, but having the Source represented twice while another world goes un-represented seems unlikely, and if Emet is Solus he was definitely pretending to be bedridden or napping at the time, anyway.

    So did Emmerololth just abandon the attack on Val, and perhaps the Aetherial Sea, to come to a meeting, and then go back, perhaps to the Sea? Or did Nabriales or some underlings attack the first time (recall he all but admitted "he" Ultima'd the island to Minfilia in 2.5, or at least implied knowledge of the attack), and then Emmerololth was sent in after-the-fact and got wiped out? That sounds unlikely, especially the part where he knowingly teleports into the Sea to get killed. (Maybe Corguevais attacked the first time and then Nabriales / Lahabrea set Emmerololth up get him out of the way, trololol).

    There's always the possibility that Ascian names are titles or are passed down or something, but it really doesn't fit with anything we know; especially that it's considered meaningful when we take out an overlord at all. I suppose if Solus becomes the new Lahabrea and Emet-selch was somewhere else all along, we could try our best to retcon Emmerololth a new stand-in, but that's pretty messy. What could it even be blamed on? "Oh, they never bothered to replace Nabriales or Igeyorhm because... uh... their worlds were already rejoined and the void, respectively!"

    And then - even then - the unmaking of Nabriales is enough to cause Elidibus and Lahabrea to discuss their discomfort at the destruction of what should have been eternal, as if this was the very first time it'd ever happened. What about Emmerololth? In spite of all of Galuf's anachronistic knowledge (but hey, he was a smart dude, maybe he figured it out on his own slightly before Minfilia and Moenbryda), was he just wrong about defeating him at all? Did he get away? What was the point of even giving the players this memo, then?

    Ah, well. Either I'm missing something or the writers will work it out. We're a lucky fanbase with a dedicated team who seems to want all the wrinkles ironed out when the final version of the game is set in stone.
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    Last edited by Anonymoose; 02-21-2019 at 06:09 AM.
    "I shall refrain from making any further wild claims until such time as I have evidence."
    – Y'shtola