Crystal Tower theories

[YianKutku]

A slide from the artist dev panel:

In case anyone wanted to yell at the censors.

[MrThinker]

Okay, from what I can tell, both of the words are 'years'. In further support, the kanji for 'year' appears similar to one of the kanji censored. As for the numbers in front of them, the first appears to be double digits and the second is a single digit, either 9, 8 or 6. The first digit of the first number is not 1, in fact, it has a rounded top, meaning it could be any of 2,3,6,8,9. The 2nd digit of the first number does not appear to be 0, 1, 2 or 7 as the digit appears to have that line running through the middle. What does everyone else see? My guesses are 94 years and 9 years atm.

[Daralii]

The fact that the CT appeared, instead of being constructed, is the key bit. A question I now have is if that's also what happened on the Source, and Allag just claimed it as their own.

[Fenral]

Japanese text says it "warped" to the First, which increases the likelihood of it being the original. Just, how?


Screw it, I'll start:

In the original timeline we won't experience, Solus turns the Flood of Light to his advantage using Black Rose (somehow?) and eliminates the Eorzean Alliance in an Eighth Calamity, securing a Rejoining and victory for Garlemeald. X years later, G'raha Tia awakens in Syrcus Tower, except instead of being greeted by a bright and hopeful future, everything sucks. By following the history of the WoL, he discovers when and why everything went sideways, and transports the Crystal Tower to the past on the First, overshooting by a number of years. He keeps himself in partial stasis, watching events unfold until that moment, later interfering by pulling the Scions out of the Source to prevent their demise, and lastly pulling the WoL, with the intent of restabilizing the First before it can be used in a Rejoining.

[MrThinker]

Japanese text says it "warped" to the First, which increases the likelihood of it being the original. Just, how?


Screw it, I'll start:

In the original timeline we won't experience, Solus turns the Flood of Light to his advantage using Black Rose (somehow?) and eliminates the Eorzean Alliance in an Eighth Calamity, securing a Rejoining and victory for Garlemeald. X years later, G'raha Tia awakens in Syrcus Tower, except instead of being greeted by a bright and hopeful future, everything sucks. By following the history of the WoL, he discovers when and why everything went sideways, and transports the Crystal Tower to the past on the First, overshooting by a number of years. He keeps himself in partial stasis, watching events unfold until that moment, later interfering by pulling the Scions out of the Source to prevent their demise, and lastly pulling the WoL, with the intent of restabilizing the First before it can be used in a Rejoining.

At this point, I'm open to anything, and this makes use of what little we know.

inb4 the crystal tower is essentially a giant interdimsional aetheryte

[Fenral]

Its overall capabilities are so ill-defined it could do basically anything and we wouldn't have a basis to believe otherwise. That's definitely the real reason we sealed it away and forgot about it after 2.5, but that's also why introducing it to begin with was an irresponsible writing decision. There's disregarding conservation of detail, and then there's hog-tying it and tossing it down a ravine. I'm still trying to figure out if Yoshida knew from the beginning how and when he wanted to use it, or just had this idea that he wanted to do something with it at some point and had Ishikawa leave it vague.

[Anonymoose]

Amazingly enough my knee-jerk shot from the hip guess is similar to this insanity for once:

The First's Crystal Tower is the same entity as the one from our dimension, but sent from our future to the First's past (somehow), causing them to both exist relative to one another at this point in time. The idea that there are two is an illusion resulting from this phenomenon. "Our" G'raha is still slumbering in "now" Crystal Tower, whereas the Voice is "future" G'raha, having woken up in the future.

Why do I like this theory all of a sudden? Because instead of ignoring Alexander it fits RIGHT in with the mechanics of timespace it established. It would also allow G'raha to spend a few years of Crystal Tower's future teleported to this period of time in different places. He could create the illusion that one is in every shard if he wanted to.

But, cannot stress this enough, wild guess here. Almost surely wrong.

[Fenral]

The only issue with comparisons to Alexander is that it was a perfectly stable time loop. Mide's attempt to change the past is what actually caused Alexander to seemingly respond to her original summons, trapping Dayan and setting her on the path to re-summon Alexander. So where does that leave G'raha? He presumably wouldn't have had access to the historical records of the First, so it's possible that his intervention could be what led to our impending downfall in the first place. Otherwise, after stopping the Scions' plans the first time, he wouldn't know where to intervene when pulling the rest. It'd be ironically fitting for him to become a slave to destiny after finally deciding to choose for himself.

Given the overall statistics, I think there's a high chance Future G'raha is going to end up dead, but will somehow pass on to us the means to open the present-day Tower, short-circuiting the loop and leaving us with a less-powerful incarnation to take with us into 6.0 as we confront Allag's other legacy. Even failing that, I've been emotionally preparing myself for the best and inevitable worst for years now, so as long as he goes out at least as well as Tsuyu I probably won't be able to complain too much. Just cry a lot. For now I'm glad he (appears to be) getting an actual developed arc.

[Anonymoose]

So where does that leave G'raha?

In this hypothetical scenario? Assuming that he would have to act to change then future when in reality he already did and always had and it never reached that final breaking point but he couldn't have known because he couldn't see time from a 4-dimensional perspective. And we don't know that Hydaelyn and Zodiark can't. Any accusation that Hydaelyn is vague or reckless goes out the window if all along She was saying exactly what She needed to set up the dominoes exactly how She wanted them.

(Again, almost ASSUREDLY wrong, lol.)

[Daralii]

Japanese text says it "warped" to the First, which increases the likelihood of it being the original. Just, how?


Screw it, I'll start:

In the original timeline we won't experience, Solus turns the Flood of Light to his advantage using Black Rose (somehow?) and eliminates the Eorzean Alliance in an Eighth Calamity, securing a Rejoining and victory for Garlemeald. X years later, G'raha Tia awakens in Syrcus Tower, except instead of being greeted by a bright and hopeful future, everything sucks. By following the history of the WoL, he discovers when and why everything went sideways, and transports the Crystal Tower to the past on the First, overshooting by a number of years. He keeps himself in partial stasis, watching events unfold until that moment, later interfering by pulling the Scions out of the Source to prevent their demise, and lastly pulling the WoL, with the intent of restabilizing the First before it can be used in a Rejoining.

So the question becomes if we'll know on Tuesday, or if we'll be left hanging for 3 months.