Revelations from SHADOWBRINGERS

[MrThinker]

About your points:

Yes I agree with that. In one side quest they also discussed about helping other cities or if they should solve their problems alone. This also hints at Ancient ones living outside Amaurot too. And there is one speech bubble NPC that question if it was the right decision to become a citizen of the Amaurot.

My problem is just: Where they the only ones or did the other races live side by side with them too? Maybe there is some dialogue ingame that I missed, or it could of course all just be speculation.

Hm was it ever stated that by being light aspected gave her the power to split? I watched a couple of cutscenes again and Elidibus said that it was the power that her summoners gave her thus its seems to hint that it was intended to be used that way. (Maybe because they knew that they could not defeat him in a direct fight)

Varis and the Ascians would have us believe they were the only race and that the racial 'differences' only came about due to the sundering. As for why the same races exist, it is simply because Hydaelyn divided the 14 worlds the same way, so the same racial differences came to be.

[Alleo]

Varis and the Ascians would have us believe they were the only race and that the racial 'differences' only came about due to the sundering. As for why the same races exist, it is simply because Hydaelyn divided the 14 worlds the same way, so the same racial differences came to be.

Yes but that can only happen if the races already existed (which is one evidence that they could have been there) but at the same the Ancient ones never talk about other races, Emet talks about their perfect race in a time where death, tragedy and stuff like that did not exist. It imo could be everything. Only Ancient ones, Ancient ones that are different races so they use the robes and masks to be "one" or Ancient and the races living at the same time. Or of course Ancients coming first and after the apocalypse somehow the other races are born and because they are not as perfect as them even with complete souls they are seen as less important thus great to be sacrificed.

[Crushnight]

Eden stuff

so Eden is the 1st sin eater and apparently Minfilia stopped it when she came to the first. Though unlike every other sin eater Eden is not made of light but apparently is light which may mean that there is a equivalent within the void.

If that is true then we could have our way of fixing the void potentially and it seems Gaia is the oracle of darkness so she may be the key to it as well.

Refighting old primals with new skins is interesting but i have to say where on the source did we face anything that was close to Titan's power in a car XD i know these are just names at this point since Urianger states that our memories of other foes are fusing with the primal idea we know. So we probably have the next 4 bosses lined up as Garuda, Ifrit, Ramuh and Shiva. Wonder how Nomura will change their looks up

Tin foil hat time i suspect the last 4 bosses will have something to do with the void and us fixing it now i hope it will be like they have shown with Eden where certain spots will start to have life return and then slowly go outward from there, as this could leave voidsent as enemies for awhile but we also have to consider would the voidsent just eat all this new life up the moment it emerges? Could fixing the void actually be possible this way due to the nature of voidsent or would something akin to the flood of light be needed where if voidsent so much as touch it they transform back?

[Remedi]

well Eden happened............where is moose?

[CaesarCV]

Honestly I think we should make a new thread for EDEN...this one is already pretty full/cluttered.

[Zyneste]

Just a sort of shower thought during The Praetorium MS roullette.

When fighting ultima, Hydalyn says "though must look to the light" and begins dismantling Ultima. She removes its invulnerability. Rips out Garuda, followed by ifrit, followed by Titan. Kinda fits her powers, all this time later. The power to make 1 into two. Take aspects from one and separate them. Not entirely comparable, but its there.

[dragoelete]

Just a sort of shower thought during The Praetorium MS roullette.

When fighting ultima, Hydalyn says "though must look to the light" and begins dismantling Ultima. She removes its invulnerability. Rips out Garuda, followed by ifrit, followed by Titan. Kinda fits her powers, all this time later. The power to make 1 into two. Take aspects from one and separate them. Not entirely comparable, but its there.

this is also shown in HW in the laha fight there.

[GrizzlyTank]

Having completed all role quests now as well as started Eden.

Getting an impression that the 13th shard will sooner or later play a much bigger part in the story forward.

[Iscah]

I kept putting off replying until I sorted through everything and wrote all my notes coherently, and this has turned into a monster of a post.


Miscellaneous thoughts on Shadowbringers:

CALLED IT since 4.4. G'raha Tia has come back from The Future, allowing for the possibility that the player has skipped the CT raids and so the WoL has not met his younger self yet, rather than trying to pull a "you've done those quests, even though you haven't" thing.

(and it is so good to see him back and I like him even more than I already did.)

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On the other hand, will gladly say I didn't call it from that discussion the other week about alternate versions of characters turning up. Rowena and Gerolt are absolutely the sort of characters that should inexplicably have identical counterparts - which is not what the interview made it sound like.

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I also stand corrected on insisting that the Warriors of Darkness couldn't be involved in the plot because they're dead. (They are though, it just didn't stop them.) Ardbert was a really pleasant surprise.

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The whole trailer feels like a bit of a fake in hindsight. The "alone in a wasteland" scene with the gremlin and the angel never actually happened (and Emet giving the same quotes felt kind of forced in to legitimise it); "Master Matoya" was deliberate misdirection and again the in-game justification seems more like something they made up just so they could do that in the trailer.

And the whole Warrior of Darkness "become what you must" thing... yeah, that never really happened either. I'm glad it didn't, because I don't know how they would have done it well, but still.

The trailer looked good, and the game was good... but not what the trailer seemed to be advertising.

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The "Church of the First Light" gets mentioned several times as a pre-Flood religion of the First, but nobody seems to be looking very deeply into it. I would think that right now when we're trying to unravel the truth of the gods, taking a close look at what may have been the equivalent of Eorzea's church of the Twelve would be an excellent place to start.

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The B-plot in Garlemald moved weirdly fast, and has left us in quite a predicament. Varis seems to have been killed off very suddenly, and Gaius has been left on a cliffhanger. I have to wonder if there's a chance Varis has survived and Estinien and Gaius (and his friends who we still don't know the names of) are going to help him escape?

We never got a resolution for that super evil face shot we got of Varis at the end of 4.5, either...

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I know Amaurot is a great big lore bomb and everything, but I'm not sure that I liked it. Pacing-wise the whole Tempest was a bit of a let-down after the high point following the Innocence trial. I'm all set for a final confrontation and instead I have more sidequests, the "go back and do your role quest" requirement (which really should have wrapped up at Lv78 so people could be ready ahead of time) and then I seem to have slipped into a weird surrealist beaurocratic...thing.

And the actual reveals - soul fragments and past lives and turning the whole thing (surrounding discussion if not the game itself) into "guess who our other selves might be so we can absorb them".

I have to wonder what happens if and when we are fully reunited - is it just another upgrade for our super WoL powers, or something more dramatic? Perhaps something echoing Minfilia and Ryne, where we have to choose whether to fully embrace it or reject it and remain human.

(The actual climax and ending was great though.)

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Time travel to rewrite history also makes me extremely wary, though we have a separate thread discussing that. I suspect we haven't resolved the threat of the eighth Calamity yet.

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I have to wonder, yet again, exactly what Y'shtola can see. She can only recognise us by our aether and not our physical forms, but then she remarks on murals and how you can tell the age by the type of paint. Is everyone using aetherial ink or something?

She does indicate from that first sighting of Amaurot that she can see illusions as if they're real - which brings up an interesting thought of what we must look like with glamour prisms in use!

Also I hope they remember that for a plot point if we're ever looking for a magically-concealed entrance or something.

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It bugs me that Eulmore doesn't seem to be physically where Limsa is.

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Thinking back on the last Rising poem, I'm going to guess the "Hero of the Light Transcending" is Vauthry? He seems the most likely fit and I'm pretty sure he said something about being transcendent somewhere in there.

(Yet another thing that made us think it might be about us turning to Darkness when we actually weren't, though...)

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Boring theory on the Amdapori statues: sin eater angels are natural counterparts to the voidsent blackguards summoned by the Mhachi, and the Amdapori built their angel statues as an inspired counterpart to that form - coincidentally resembling the real thing.

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Someone pointed out in FC chat that there are no elemental sprites in Norvrandt. Which made me stop and think, oh yeah, I don't think I've seen them anywhere.

This ties into Eden, maybe.

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Cute detail from a sidequest: Urianger isn't just able to outsmart Ascians, he can trick pixies into making tea for him.

Also the scene when Thancred names Ryne, and Urianger exclaims that means Thancred's actually been listening to his lectures... I laughed so hard at that. Also suggests that it's a regular thing he goes off on lectures knowing he's not being listened to, but he's going to give the information anyway. Or possibly hoping (correctly?) that Thancred is only feigning disinterest in the first place.

I love how much more characterisation he's had in this story.

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A fun bit of irony from the lorebook page on NOAH: G'raha was originally assigned to the expedition to ensure they "did not unwittingly rouse aught with the power to endanger the course of history"...

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In combination with the scene if you show your G'raha Tia minion to the Exarch, Rammbroes has a new comment if you talk to him post-MSQ.

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Raising a question (or adding to one I had already) about correct usage of Sunseeker names/titles, G'raha is always "G'raha Tia" when referred to by name - twice by us, once by Urianger in the secret chamber cutscene, and once when G'raha is 'talking to himself' at the ending. I've been wondering for a while whether Tia is meant to be treated like a surname or if it's considered part of the forename, particularly since it's always included in characters' overhead nametags. So I'm not sure if calling him G'raha is just using his forename, or if it's the equivalent of referring to Emet-Selch as Emet.

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It also occurs to me that Urianger would quite possibly have been aware of G'raha, at least by name, as part of his previous work with the Students of Baldesion. Enough to think "ah yes, I've seen that name on some of the reports we received" anyway. That, and I assume we would have told the Scions about what happened at the Tower.

I don't think this actually adds anything, but it's a thought.

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I find it interesting that the quest where Emet explains the murals is titled "The Burden of Knowledge" and not Truth. It may not mean anything, but still.

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Was the moon always a wasteland in this reality, or was it more like a mini-Earth to begin with? It looks similar to the Burn or the Empty.

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Is Hydaelyn weakening because she specifically refuses to draw energy from the planet to power Herself?

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Are the Ascians inherently linked to Darkness (eg. as in the argument that Hydaelyn commanding us to fight and defeat the Ascians means She is setting up for an overbalance towards Light) or is that an illusion?

On the Twinning:

Everything comes together, and that initial entrance to the dungeon was such a thrill, going up those ever-so-familiar steps into Syrcus Tower and suddenly going the other way... into something that looks like Alexander's core while the music plays from Omega. Oh yes we're in for a ride.

Interesting to note that the numbers on the datalogs correspond to the game patches - 2.5 recounts opening the tower and finding G'raha, 3.5 references the Thirteenth and time travel, and 4.5 is on Omega and the interdimensional rift. The three elements that will be used to create their spacetime machine. (How long and how specifically have they been setting this up?)

It sets me trying to make sense of the (fairly nonsensical) lyrics for Locus, of which bits now suggest some relevance:

Arrested destiny, alone in a trance
No escaping from this waking dream, no hope for advance

This was probably meant to be Dayan, but I want to read it as referring to G'raha now.

Your world's a fantasy, you've failed the test

Hi Emet.

Falling back right into the system of
Falling back on all that's erased
When fighting back right out of this system
Means falling back right into this space

"All that's erased" makes me think of the (time-breaking) bad timeline that may or may not cease to exist.

I don't know, maybe this is all one big musical Rorschach blotch and I'm just grabbing onto what I want to make sense of. The song still makes minimal sense overall.

The lyrics of eScape (specifically the part used for the dungeon music) are definitely interesting though, and I suspect were written with this plot and usage already planned:

Time
Try, dare the dead tread ahead on a road that is borrowed design.
Through the sum of their sons do they seek tomorrow.
Tonight, witness then as the end shall begin what was final.
Their lies, folding back, further back, ever back to primal.

The first sighting of Amaurot also reminded me of the steampunk city inside Alexander. The architecture's not really the same, but we haven't seen anything else like it within the world(s) of the game.


An interesting note from the post-dungeon recorded message: it seems that G'raha physically merging with the tower was necessary for him to safely travel back in time, which rules out (or at least considerably reduces) the possibility of other people repeating the trick even if they have the technology.


On a completely different note... having been long amused by the running saga of the Ironworks kettle, I love that it came back for one final(?) punchline.

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Also did anyone else notice that the 3 dungeon lightwardens are all named after a form of love and correlate to an event prior to that dungeon

I did notice the naming theme, though the correlation might be stretching things.

Using C.S. Lewis's The Four Loves as reference...

First warden: Philia - friendship

Second warden (Titania) by deduction: Charity or Agape - unconditional love

Third warden: Eros - romantic love

Fourth warden: Storge ("two syllables and the g is 'hard'") - affection/empathy

2) Now for 5.X story....

From what I can think up, I think the key to getting the Scion's soul back to the Source maybe Young G'raha Tia. We know at the end Old G'raha Tia has just awakened his younger self in the Source Crystal Tower for a reason and I suspect it is so Young G'raha Tia can begin learning the Soul summoning spell Old G'raha Tia knows so he can help bring back the Scions into the Source.

I do still hope for that tearful and happy reunion for Team NOAH because this will be a great letdown if they do not even go there.

Though it is sad the Old G'raha Tia cannot be there since he is now forever bound to the First in this new Timeline.

This also may mean the events of mastering CT's powers may advance a head of time now since Young G'raha Tia will awaken to learn how to control the CT's powers so he can bring the Scion's souls back to the Source.

We know at the end Old G'raha Tia has just awakened his younger self in the Source Crystal Tower for a reason...

We don't "know" that at all. All we know is that the Exarch has said the words "no time to be sleeping". Not that they have had any kind of effect. As I wrote in another discussion, it may be entirely metaphorical.

Until we see him for sure, there's no guarantee that young G'raha will be involved at this point - and I still think it would cause too many timeline issues, especially since they've taken they approach that if the player hasn't done the CT raids, they haven't happened yet. (In the default version of the Exarch's conversation with Urianger, he says that the WoL hasn't met his past self yet.)

That would mean G'raha isn't even asleep in the tower at this point, and even putting in a "must complete CT before continuing MSQ" roadblock now wouldn't help to resolve it. It needed to happen earlier if it was going to at all. Otherwise we'll be letting G'raha shut himself in the tower just so we can immediately get him out again...

Perhaps I'll be proven wrong and they'll make it work somehow. But I can't see it happening at this point in time.

This really seems like we are heading into our final addon.
I hope thats not the case...

I am absolutely fine with 6.0 being the last expansion that wraps up the Hydaelyn/Zodiark conflict. This sort of in-depth plot is great, but it needs a resolution - not just another twist and another twist to prolong the story for the sake of it.

There could be further "self-contained" adventures still to come afterwards. Perhaps we even resolve the whole Warrior of Light thing and go back to being just an adventurer.

I'm never going to get to do any knight erranting as a free paladin in the job quests am I?

Technically you do that the rest of the time while playing the game.

in regards to Y'shtola:

Urianger explains before hand that the Night's Blessed believe that identifying one's self by their given name is some kind of bad, and so they instead use the names of their predecessors, whether they parents, ancestors or teachers, to protect themselves. In order to observe their beliefs, Y'shtola took the name of her teacher, and all the Night's Blessed refer to her as such

The problem is, we didn't have that information for the trailer. The whole justification seems like a setup so they could have Urianger call her "Master Matoya" in the trailer and send us into theorycrafting meltdown about something that had no real significance at all.

I also am wondering about Urianger's moments of poisoning the well statements iirc was it him that said "What if we were already tempered?" and "What if we were fighting for the wrong side" when looking at the element chart? The musical cues were there, saying hey something's not right.

I don't think you're using "poisoning the well" correctly - I can't see where either of those are 'discrediting' statements - but anyway.

I don't remember when he suggested us being tempered (though it's a fair suggestion to make once we've been told that Hydaelyn is a primal - certainly something that should be taken into consideration) and think you might be confused with Ardbert bringing it up at one point.

Re. the elements, you're misunderstanding his explanation.

He never said that we were fighting for the wrong side. He wasn't talking about that at all. He is simply explaining that the "active" and "passive" polarities which Eorzeans have arbitrarily labelled "astral and umbral" are interpreted the opposite way on the First.

The Eorzean elemental chart connects astral=active and umbral=passive, but the First connects Darkness=active and Light=passive.

The overbalance of Light "bringing the world to a halt" does seem to demonstrate Light=passive, thus the suggestion that the Eorzean model has applied the wrong labels to the polarities. The labels themselves don't mean anything - they could be called positive/negative or earth/sky or anything that doesn't carry meanings associated with light and darkness.

I'm sorry...but did you say "Brighter future?"

I think it's important to note the Elemental chart is EXTREMELY important since the revelation is Light is not Life.
It's the opposite.

Hydadelyn is Light aspected. Zodiark is Dark Aspected

But Light is devoid of Life because it contains none of the elements that make up life.
Dark is all the elements that make up life.

Also I don't see it stated anywhere but please link to resources because I've been combing back and forth on this - did it say that they specifically summoned Hydaelyn for a better future.

She was specifically stated to have been summoned as a counterpart/failsafe and checkpoint.



She even reiterates this. Saying that both lived in "harmony" though she's speaking passively since her aspect is passive and pure. That is the nature of her being a primal she isn't ACTIVE like Zodiark, she REACTED when she felt Zodiark asking for power.

Even her method is passive. She didn't outright destroy him, she shattered him and reality. She never CREATED.

The Umbral Calamity is a LIGHT calamity (Since Umbral = Light) Astral = Dark. Every calamity labeled Umbral is a calamity of stillness....

Stillness is also what BLACK ROSE is. It's a light aspected death. It's purest form is the lack of life.

Her mission was the same, she always told you the WARRIOR of LIGHT to BANISH the DARKNESS. Darkness is Life.

Yes the Ascians are tempered and are gonna revere Zodiark because they saved them from a calamity and the nature of summoning primals is just that. We can't be tempered by Hydaeyln unless the ones that are not sundered are are around who summoned her. She split everyone apart. It seems good in theory. But you can't overlook her very nature even if it's "nice" She can't create new life. Only dark aspected creatures can. If we do not have a Darkness aspected primal equal to her to keep her in check, yes as benign as she seems, it means too much Light aspect and therefore the eventual end of ALL life because we do not carry enough darkness. This is why BOTH primals are bad regardless of who has the upper hand at the moment.

But I mean if you guys want to ignore what the elemental chart and supporting evidence is out there, you're welcome to because themes and all...

On your specific statement:

But Light is devoid of Life because it contains none of the elements that make up life.
Dark is all the elements that make up life.

This is not strictly what Light and Dark are. By Urianger's explanation, they are the logic by which the people of the First associated Light with the passive polarity and Darkness with the active polarity.

Urianger's explanation (paraphrased for easier reading!)
Our world is composed of six elements, in addition to two poles in fundamental opposition. Astral, the active; umbral, the passive.
As a reflection of the Source, the First is comprised of the same forces, but the terms used are different. The people of the First do not use the terms astral and umbral.
When I asked the name of the pole aligned with activity and growth, I was told that as life's myriad colours combine to produce black, the people of the First had called it "Darkness."
[And the pole aligned with passivity:] Peace and tranquility being as purest white unmarred by colour, I was told, it had been given the name of "Light."

It's purely a poetic concept - one that happened to land closer to the truth than the people of the Source did, but they're still arbitrary associations either way. Darkness is not "Life", at least not directly, and its opposite is characterised not as death but "peace and tranquility". Good things, certainly in moderation.



Based on what other elemental primals are able to do, it seems that Hydaelyn and Zodiark would have immediate control over their specific elements, but not all of the element.

For comparision - Leviathan can cause a tidal wave, but does not gain control over all movement of water. The natural forces that create waves would still be in effect while he is summoned.

just cause hyd is a light aspected primal doesnt mean she is everything that is aspected to light... just look at the way they are zod was summoned to keep life as it is (which is stasis) while hyd was summoned to allow new life to live(which is activity)

I don't think that reading is right either. Hydaelyn was apparently created to control/pacify Zodiark with the intent that it would allow new life to live, but that's not the same thing as Hydaelyn Herself being aspected towards activity.

Honestly both of you are wrong.

Zodiark stopped the cataclysm and then repaired the damage it wrought, i.e. rebuilt the cities but did not create new life. The new life first about came about via the surviving Amaurotians creation magic and any other life forms that survived the cataclysm and then spread around the planet naturally.

I'm not sure where you're getting that version of events from.

Hythlodaeus specifically says that the second group "gave of themselves to Zodiark" to restore life to the planet.

He also says nothing about Zodiark repairing damage from the cataclysm, only that He halted it.

[white auracite]

So maybe I am misremembering the White Aetheryte, but why did we never stuff the Light into it? I mean, obviously the Light from Lakeland's Light Warden would have been absorbed by the WoL/D, but every Light Warden after we were aware of the Aetheryte, but just...Never used it. Is there some specific reason that couldn't have worked? Did no one think "Hey, this can hold Aether. Why don't we try using this on the Light and see what happens?" Was the plan that reliant on the WoL/D that they never tried to think of an alternative?

Or am I overestimating what the thing can do?

From when we were using white auracite previously to defeat Ascians, the auracite is used to trap the Ascian's soul while we obtain aether from a separate source to destroy it. So it's not quite a parallel use.

We're not sure if any of the surviving Hydelyn Sect members were tempered, or if any of them survived the sundering. Their identity is actually the biggest mystery left in the scenario, since we know very little about them. It's fairly safe to assume either they all died in the summoning, the presumed war between them and the Ascians or in the sundering thereafter however. Why? Because none of them have appeared lol.

Hythlodaeus says that Hydaelyn's summoners surrendered their life energies to create Her.

This strikes me as an interesting parallel of the whole conflict and the mindsets of both Zodiark and Hydaelyn.

Zodiark's summoners called on other people to sacrifice their lives (however willingly).

Hydaelyn's summoners sacrificed themselves.

Taking vs giving. Valuing their own lives vs giving them up for the sake of others.

These mindsets could easily be reflected in the intentions of the primals themselves.

Hm maybe I remember it wrong, but wasnt it said that the summoners gave Hydealyn the ability to split the essence of every thing? Why would you give her something like that if you dont intent to use it?

That depends whether the "ability to split the essence of things" was a deliberate design element envisioned by the summoners, or whether it was something unforseen that happened to fall within Her abilities once created. Perhaps She was only meant to split and weaken Zodiark, and everything else was a side effect of Zodiark being bound to the planet itself.

The first is Seal Rock of all things...

I realize that the island that popped out of the waves was the opposite side of Vylbrand from Amaurot, but that city is so huge and Vylbrand so small by comparison that I honestly wonder if Seal Island is another part of the city. For those who don't know, the PvP area was on the bottom of the ocean until one day ot decided to rise out of the waves with no notice shortly before Dalamud fell. There were Allagan ruins on it, a stone tablet written in Sahagin...and a curious horn that the Ascians were obsessed with. Known as a "key" to the Sharlayans, it was one of several horns - another is in Louisoix's staff which we used to kill our first Ascian. The Ascians stole it, and the lore book itself hints that the horn was used in the summoning of Titan and Leviathan. I'm now wondering in ruins of Amaurot were still there in the days of Allagan, and if the ruins were built on top of them to study it. I also wonder if the "keys" were made to summon Zodiark, and that's why the Ascians know of them and repurpose them for summoning primals.

I think you might be onto something with the horns! The lorebook says "much remains shrouded in mystery" about them.

Seal Rock itself is mentioned to be an Allagan contruct though, and housed a facility for research into Omega.

And as was already mentioned, that horn comes up again in the Alexander storyline, and is currently trapped within its crystal core - supposedly permanently, but then the ending to Alexander suggests that the sealing barrier might have to be released at some point (or the time loop won't complete).

Hm, contemplation regarding the last zone.

The lore book says the Agelyss Wise, the ruined road in eastern La Noscea, is hypothesized to have been ancient even when Allag was around. Now there's a lot of history before Allag so it could still be anything, but given the proximity to where Amaurot would be on the Source (since Kholuscia=Vylbrand), maybe the Agelyss Wise is Amaurotine?

Also very interesting! The location would certainly add up, and it's such an intriguing description to begin with.

G'raha Exarch

Playing on Sunseeker naming format? I like it.

(Though have also been amused by a thought that we'll come back to find him grumbling that people found out his name but assumed Mystel naming conventions and keep writing it as Graha-Tia...)

[Dualblade]

Mostly using it to make it clear which one I'm talking about actually.

Also on Elemental Sprites, they DO actually show up in the Vii sidequest that gets you flying. Fire and Ice first, then Lightning at the end. But they are specifically summoned as part of a ritual.