Revelations from SHADOWBRINGERS

[Dualblade]

There is something I want to talk about... the flashforward echo dream. I assume it is during when empire use Black Rose. Was that Cid's memory when i was holding the heavensward book?

Gonna spoil this to be safe.

Its the Exarch holding the book, as he was trying to figure out what time period he needed to pull the WoL from.

I haven't read the whole thread yet but I know plenty of people have given their thoughts on the MSQ so instead I'll focus on the tank role quest.

I'll admit I wasn't sure how much to expect out of the role quests, in paticular with Branden since he was one of the ones I was less interested in. But of course this came from us knowing little about all of the WoD, and the role quests did not dissapoint in bringing his character to a much better level.

I am not good at remembering names so I'm keeping this brief, but damn if Branden's story didn't bring a tear to my eye and the rp duty in it was well done. Granson as well was well done especially since it hadn't been to long since I completed the longer sidequest in Wright that connected to this quest. Being a Dark Knight alongside it I think made for the best decision not just because its Shadowbringers, but also because of the revenge theme it had going on. And being able to let go of that.

Pertaining to the eventually NieR Automata raid.

So one of the aether current quests in Amaraunt has one of the citizens say he is petitioning to create an automata force that could be their soldiers essentially, unless I'm remembering what I read wrongly. I DO know they talked about automatan though, and given what we learned of the ancient civilization I'm 99% sure our androids are going to be creations from that time before the Split. The question remains where the machines come from, whether created from fear like what the calamity was shown doing during the dungeon or alien life like both Omega is and NieR had them as.

And Eden

The devs said the WoL/D would be facing enemies made of their own imagination. Eden was probably also an pre-Split Ascian creation, and it will be the WoL having to unlock their own creation potential that will save the First. And may also give greater insight into what caused the calamity that struck so long ago.

And final edit for Hydaelyn.

Hydaelyn didn't cause the flood except in empowering those who would stand against Zodiark's tempered. At worst she only cares about keeping Zodiark in check even now, and otherwise is content to let the worlds do as they will. I do not think we will kill Hydaelyn, but I agree with Fenral: allying with the Ascians is an option that no long exists, but we no longer are also beholden to keeping Hydaelyn around if she truly does prove to be a threat since she is not truly the star itself...though the question also comes after as to whether the first Calamity has truly been stopped, or only halted by Zodiark's continued existance or by Hydaelyn taking up the role of halting it.

[SaitoHikari]

On the subject of the WoL old plot threads given new context...

I'm not entirely sure the 14th council member had much involvement with Hydaleyn's summoning at all. Perhaps they were sympathetic to those that did summon Hydaleyn, but weren't directly responsible for it. I find it far more likely that they were neutral.

1) If they explicitly supported the summoning of Zodiark, they would have been tempered, as Emet-Selch mentioned happened to all the Ascians. The divided WoL would be siding with the Ascians then.
2) If they explicitly supported the summoning of Hydaleyn, I find it hard to imagine that she would have divided the WoL's soul on purpose in the first place, because keeping their soul together and giving them the power to travel the shards would have gone a long way towards being able to defend them from the Ascians. Although that begs the question, who were her original summoners?
3) Although 2 assumes that Hydaelyn even divided the world on purpose, and it wasn't some freak accident of space-time. When Emet-Selch was explaining how the shards came to be, it appeared that he was operating under the assumption that Hydaelyn could do this at will. If so, what's to stop her from simply restoring the shards by dividing the Source once more?

There is also the question of exactly how Elidibus, Emet-Selch, and Lahabrea managed to escape the sundering intact, although we'll have to wait and see on this part.

Is the WoL tempered by Hydaelyn? I'm leaning towards no on this front as well. Zenos appears to suggest that 'tempering' as a concept is mostly a willpower thing. I also wonder what the exact nature of Middy's deal with Hydaelyn was, when he sealed the WoL's Blessing. There's a possibility that it served a different purpose beyond what we were quite frankly assuming. After all, why did our existence reach a point where Hydaelyn needed Middy to temporarily cut us off from her aether (assuming that was actually happening at all)?

We also need to keep an eye on the WoL from the 13th Shard. He is clearly about to come back in a big way. How much influence does Elidibus still have on him? His current base of operations is right next to where the Scions' bodies are...

[KageTokage]

Random thought about Eden.

If we're going to be facing beings born of imagination, I'm really hoping we'll get to fight a simulacrum of what kind of monstrosity we might've become had the light of wardens managed to turn us into a sin eater.

[Dualblade]

Random thought about Eden.

If we're going to be facing beings born of imagination, I'm really hoping we'll get to fight a simulacrum of what kind of monstrosity we might've become had the light of wardens managed to turn us into a sin eater.

Gonna be honest

I know a lot of people called Vauthry being Innocence early on but I myself thought it would be born of all that corrupted Light we had been containing being released and forming the strongest Light Warden. So I'm all for us fighting a Sin Eater version of ourselves.

Might be the closest we get to fighting a "Primal" version of ourselves that some people have been wanting as well.

[Malrend]

Random thought about Eden.

If we're going to be facing beings born of imagination, I'm really hoping we'll get to fight a simulacrum of what kind of monstrosity we might've become had the light of wardens managed to turn us into a sin eater.

That gives me an idea:

Imagine a "what-if" simulacrum of the WoL as Titania.

[polyphonica]

Regarding the MSQ:

One of the things that's fascinating about the twist at the end is the implication that basically all native lifeforms as we know them were created by the original power of the Amaurotians at least in part as an effort to repopulate the world after their calamities. It supports that any sufficiently-advanced civilization will (initially?) seem indistinguishable from gods -- and, their ability to create a construct that rewrites the planetary laws of nature (Zodiark) is itself a sort of proof.

Although we definitely got the sense of this all along, it puts into perspective why the Ascians generally thought of all planetary life as basically insignificant ants to be toyed with. Thanks to Hydaelyn, the natural evolution of their creations was stunted by having their aether fractured. The fact that so many of their brethren sacrificed themselves for this "imperfect" result is definitely a big part of why they kept fighting so hard for the rejoining.

Aside that, it's important from a narrative point of view that this come after Heavensward, as the dragon conflict sets the stage for the perspective of the Ascians. Nidhogg's thousand year war of revenge was because time flows differently when you're all-but-immortal -- a thousand years is like a day. Now you see it from the point of view of the Ascians who have been at this for "thousands of thousands of years" and you can see why they think of all life as we know it as totally insignificant. As they allude to many times, the scale of their perspective is completely different -- how can you get attached to anything so transient after seeing eons of generations come and go, especially knowing that this "transience" is a byproduct of a forcibly-introduced imperfection that could be destroyed?

It also leads to the point that both Zodiark and Hydaelyn were solutions based on the limitations of Amaurotian knowledge because of the one domain they hadn't mastered: control of time. Why would an immortal being care to study time? With time travel, Emet-Selch alluded to a much more elegant solution to his problem: go back in time to eliminate the "hero" Amaurotian entirely -- who, as others have suggested, is probably the 14th member and the one responsible for summoning Hydaelyn to start with. Of course, had he not been tempered by Zodiark, there was an even better potential solution to his problem: going back in time to stop the original calamity from happening in the first place. But given that the Amaurotians, in all their "infinite wisdom," still don't seem to know what actually caused it in the first place, they probably wouldn't know when to go back to anyway. (I like the theory that it was their own hubris and over-manipulation of aether that caused things to fall apart until they were able to give the world a new form through Zodiark.)

As for what to do with Zodiark and Hydaelyn now, the real question is just what is the minimum required to preserve the status quo of the shards and prevent massive loss of life. Because Hydaelyn was summoned to counteract Zodiark, there's basically no way to remove the former unless you remove the latter, and perhaps the reverse is true as well. But if doing so would threaten the stability of the shards, then it may be that they need to preserve both somehow. Can they usher the two gods into eternal slumber instead?

Incidentally, one of the most fun points is that the Shadowbringers plot provides seemingly-significant evidence to suggest that the Dotharl belief in reincarnation -- that the spirits of the fallen re-inhabit the lives of the newly-born -- may actually literally be how things work. (And actually a lot of Xaela beliefs, though distorted by time and tradition, are not so very far off from the apparent truth.) The previously-immortal souls of the Amaurotians (and the other life created by them) were sundered along with the world itself, and they continually reincarnate into new life as part of the reincarnation cycle. We already basically knew in a broad sense that this is how the lifestream worked, but the idea that souls would remain distinct enough to be linked even through the millennia really supports that the Dotharl are onto something.

In any case, this expansion definitely gives an awful lot to think about, and many more major questions left to be explained.

[Erendis]

About a sidequest unlocking currents in last area and crystals

At first I just wanted to make a remark about how regretful it was that we got a lightning crystal instead of an item to make a set of Amaurotian clothes. But then it came to me: if we see this one concept as a crystal, maybe all of the crystals are concepts? Or maybe during the split Amaurotians' creative magics condensed into crystals? After all, we can't craft anything without crystals...

[EdwinLi]

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I have a theory that....

by the time we defeat Zodiark, we may have to defeat Hydaelyn because PLOT reason caused her to become aggressive to us. At that point events may follow that cause all remaining Shards to fuse with the Source but instead of causing a Calamity, it creates a new World that fuses all the lands in the remaining Shards and kept them intact thus the First locations will still remain and become part of this new world with the Source and the other Shard's lands as well.

However, to restore the world to its original self, without causing Calamities, may cause the events leading to meeting or discovering what caused the Calamaity that almost destroyed the world in the first place before the 13 shards.

This would also open up a large amount of new lands to future expansions as well with the Ascions, since they are defeated and Zodiark and Hydaelyn are no more, becoming replaced by a new Antagonist that worship the being that caused the Calamity in the original world. It would also cause a story reason why our character may struggle in the beginning of this new storyline because the Blessing of Light is no more with Hydaelyn gone and now we only have our own power of the Echo which should be in the complete form that the Ascions have which allows us to see into the Souls better. Don't forget we see and learn directly that the ancient beings of the original world basically had the power of the Echo with full control over it as they can see the Soul of WoL and Arbert with easy and what "color" it is.

[Elecrom]

I don't get

...
... how the Lifeduration of the people on the source isn't the least effected from having half of the shards already rejoined.
If a Rejoining should bring the people of the first closer to the Pre-Split race like Emet-Selch/Hades said, even though it could be a lie considering he wanted to just sacrifice all life on the first anyway.

Also how can Voidsent retain a personality and Sineaters cannot? Even among the Lightbringers it seems it is not the norm they have one considering Titania was transformed when she killed the former one and Vauthry got fused with one in the womb

[Zackneifein]

For your first point :

Even us, probably the strongest (or at least one of) "human" being of the Source, with 7 shards rejoined is seen as having less magic power than a newborn baby by Amarautine. And the more or less eternal life of Amarautine is probably link to their immense magic power.

For your second point :

The Void, and by extension Void Sent exist since multiple millenea, Sin Eater one century at most, maybe it take time for being of pure energy to become sentient. And let not forget that we have not seen that much Void Sent with intelligence, maybe all those we have seen they were remarkably powerful being in the Thirteenth that became Void Sent, like Titania.