Is it even possible for the Ascians to succeed?

[Big-Isaac]

The Ascians are trying to rejoin all of the shards with the source, which would result in humanity being returned to how it was originally and Zodiark becoming whole again.

What I don't quite understand is... what about the 13th shard? Emet Selch admits that they screwed up, causing the 13th shard to turn into void.
So with one of the shards lost, is it even possible for the Ascians to reach their goal?

[TankHunter678]

Technically it is possible. If there is a darkness version of something like Eden Prime then the Oracle of Darkness could get control of it. Given that Darkness is a creation attribute then it could generate the elemental aether needed to restore the desolate empty lands. If the Ascians somehow managed to get a hold of the Oracle of Light and control Eden by extension then if needed to prevent the elements from going out of control before preparations were done then they could use Eden to stabilize the individual elements. This would result in life coming back to the 13th shard and returning it from a void state.

After that it would be pushing it in a more controlled manner then last time to a darkness aspect and then do a rejoining. This is the kind of plan someone like Elidibus is liable to use as his Emissary role puts him in a better position to go over the first part of the plan to restore the shard.

[Anonymoose]

It would require some NeW ReVeLaTiOnS, as we've always been told the void is nothing; the void is empty; the void is a hole where a shard used to be; the void is useless. If that's revealed to be not-necessarily-the-whole-story, yeah, we can probably get around it. But would even the writers want to, and thereby deprive themselves of voidsent as a convenient source of plot fuel?

Watch us kill Elidibus before it even comes up.

[Jonnycbad]

If you do the 5th role quest you learn that the Ascians purposely forced the First to be flooded with light and then were going to use this to undo or nullify the flood of darkness on the 13th enough for it to be rejoined. So, it is possible in theory for the 13th flood to be reversed. Now this would save the aether but not make it hospital by any means. The 13th has been a dark void for at least 10,500 years. All beings on the 13th have likely been voidsent for that long or are born from existing voidsent. There's likely no bastion of civilization left.

[Vulcwen]

We don't know how long the void exists from the perspective of the void. The timey wimey stuff between shards means we have literally no information on how long ago anything was on the shards based on what happened on the source.
From the void it could've happened just a year ago, or it could've been a void for 50000 years already, we don't know.

[Anonymoose]

If you do the 5th role quest you learn that the Ascians purposely forced the First to be flooded with light and then were going to use this to undo or nullify the flood of darkness on the 13th enough for it to be rejoined.

Can anyone point me to a citation for the final role quest being about "fixing the void"? I didn't see that in there at all and I keep seeing people say it. I know the Ascians tried to frame the First as damned to experience a Flood of Light because the Thirteenth had already fallen to a Flood of Darkness, and therefore it was preferable to rejoin the First than allow that to happen. But where did it say anything about the damage to the Thirteenth being ameliorated in any way?

[TankHunter678]

It would require some NeW ReVeLaTiOnS, as we've always been told the void is nothing; the void is empty; the void is a hole where a shard used to be; the void is useless. If that's revealed to be not-necessarily-the-whole-story, yeah, we can probably get around it. But would even the writers want to, and thereby deprive themselves of voidsent as a convenient source of plot fuel?

Watch us kill Elidibus before it even comes up.

We also were told that the Flood of Light would achieve the same result on the first, that it would be reduced to a void of light. As we have come to learn even the Empty, a place that is a void of light, can be restored through the use of the systems behind the flood.

It would also make for a good expansion story to be going and restoring the ability for the 13th to sustain life for the wayward souls that arrived on the source/first from that shard.

[ObsidianFire]

We also were told that the Flood of Light would achieve the same result on the first, that it would be reduced to a void of light. As we have come to learn even the Empty, a place that is a void of light, can be restored through the use of the systems behind the flood.

It would also make for a good expansion story to be going and restoring the ability for the 13th to sustain life for the wayward souls that arrived on the source/first from that shard.

This is... very wrong... given everything that we currently know. We have known for years (since 3.4) that a Flood of Light does the opposite of a Flood of Darkness. A Flood of Darkness results in a place void of aether and filled with life. A Flood of Light results in a place void of life and filled with aether.

The Empty is not Void of Light; it is in fact filled with it. It is also filled with aether, if extremely Umbral (static) aether. The entire point of using Eden is to make the aether less Umbral (static) so that it can function as elemental aether again and support life.

Eden would not work in the Void as the Void has no aether for Eden to work with. The first thing that would have to be done to "restore" the Void/13th Shard would be to find some way to make it produce aether again naturally. Which is currently beyond anything we can do. The life in the Void gets aether not from any aether in the Void, but by stealing it from the Source. That stolen aether doesn't replenish the Void's aether stores though. It just gets hoarded by whatever life acquired it.

[Big-Isaac]

The whole "flood of darkness" thing doesn't make a lot of sense to me, tbh.
"Darkness" and "Void" are not supposed to be the same thing. Darkness is just another element like fire, water, light or wind. Void meanwhile isn't an aspect; it's the lack of all aspects. It's supposed to be some kind of entropic force that tries to reduce everything to nothing.
So if a flood of darkness turned the 13th into void, then how is a flood of light supposed to fix it?

[YianKutku]

Can anyone point me to a citation for the final role quest being about "fixing the void"? I didn't see that in there at all and I keep seeing people say it. I know the Ascians tried to frame the First as damned to experience a Flood of Light because the Thirteenth had already fallen to a Flood of Darkness, and therefore it was preferable to rejoin the First than allow that to happen. But where did it say anything about the damage to the Thirteenth being ameliorated in any way?

Spoiler-blocked for size and obvious spoilers for the final role questline:

That's the closest I can find, although I admit that it's phrased in implicit terms rather than explicit. If the intent of that dialogue was to say that a near-Flood of Light on the First would help "balance out" the Flood of Darkness on the Thirteenth, it kind of skips over the steps of how.

So I'm not actually sure if we're intended to read that dialogue in that way. Or if, as is the usual Ascian methodology, they heavily hint and imply but don't actually say it, because they're lying by omissions and implications, and content to let their patsies believe something erroneous in order to further their own schemes.