The Nature of the WOL (Spoilers)

[Rannie]

Well since he/she knows that they are a shade and said as much, it makes more sense in the fact that if Hythlodaeus the shade referred to their real self as him or her. But like I said everything is still up in the air on it. I still am of the mind that we were Hythlodaues but I also know I could be wrong...

[Avarant]

Emet at one point says you're the product of 7 rejoining. So Ardbert + you is 8/14

[Avarant]

Remember unukalai is from the 13th too.

[MrThinker]

Emet at one point says you're the product of 7 rejoining. So Ardbert + you is 8/14

Why do people keep forgetting the source as a shard?

Its: The Source + 7 rejoined shards = us at 8/14 at the beginning of ARR

Us + Ardbert = us at 9/14

EDIT: Sorry if this came out as brash, Ive corrected too many people about this part.

[Ayuhra]

How I took it:

The Warrior of Light is still a unique soul who, like others, fractured into 14 pieces.

Of those 14 pieces the first shard, from the Source, was already there. There have been seven Calamities (Rejoinings) on the Source so the Warrior of Light had eight fragments going into Shadowbringers.

After Ardbert fused into the WoL, that was nine fragments and that was enough for Emet-Selch to briefly glimpse the WoL's Ascian form which is who they were before the sundering. Hythlodaeus implied that the WoL's soul was that of someone Emet-Selch once knew, but we don't who that individual was. Possibly someone responsible for summoning Hydaelyn.

[Edax]

When we are waiting for the Ladder to be fixed in Kholusia, Emet claims that the Rejoinings benefit the peoples on the Source, by saying that the survivors of the last Rejoining would have souls and existences equal to himself.
As for the whole sacrifice the survivors plan... we are still unsure if the current races existed at the time of the sundering... and if by completing the rejoinings they'd automatically turn into ancients, but either way, tempering seems to be the likely explanation.

Varis' explanation is that there was but one race before the sundering.



I got the impression that any soul that was fully rejoined would become an Ancient as in that time there only existed one race of "mankind". Although what complicates this theory is that it appears the original Ascians whom remain whole have renounced their flesh and appear as Hyurs. So I'm unsure whether or not if the WoL ever fully Rejoined, whether or not he/she would remain the same race or transform into an Ancient.

[Ayuhra]

Varis' explanation is that there was but one race before the sundering.

I got the impression that any soul that was fully rejoined would become an Ancient as in that time there only existed one race of "mankind". Although what complicates this theory is that it appears the original Ascians whom remain whole have renounced their flesh and appear as Hyurs. So I'm unsure whether or not if the WoL ever fully Rejoined, whether or not he/she would remain the same race or transform into an Ancient.

My impression was that the original race was Ascians, they were the "mankind" Varis spoke of.

I also never thought they renounced flesh, I thought they were aetheric beings to begin with and in the "shattered" worlds now need host bodies to be able to interact with mortal races. Either that or their mortal forms did die in the sundering but their souls survived intact.

Hence Lahabrea being a body hopper (spending most of ARR in a Thancred suit), Emet-Selch wanting to use a clone of his old vessel vs molding a new host into his own image and Elidibus is idk what. He wore a Zenos suit for a while.

When they appear, people might see a Hyur because they need to see something. They just see an approximation of what the Ascians actually look like, which would be why Ascians don't have a shadow.

I'm not saying I'm right about this, obviously, just offering my own interpretation.

[Alleo]

Hey thanks for the responses guys. But as a follow up why are you all saying 8/14 or 9/14 of a complete soul? Are you saying that us plus our 7 buds for every fight are canonically shards of the WOL? Or are you saying that because of the rejoinings that have happened in thus far?

On that note, I hadn't considered that each rejoining would change everyone the way Ardbert changed us. After each rejoining everyone becomes more whole.

Now if that is true doesn't that throw into question Emet Selch's plan for restoring those ancients lost to summon Zodiark? He says once the rejoinings are complete he would sacrifice the lesser people of the source to Zodiark to restore the ancients consumed to summon him. But if we are taking about after the final rejoining wouldn't the denizens of the source be restored ancients? Even after all rejoinings he would still see them as lesser? Is that because the 13th was lost? Or just because he is a dick?

Well even in the past when everything was still whole they were quite ready to sacrifice the new life to get the old life back (even if they gave their life willingly to give the new life a future). This of course could either be because they could not get over the loss and are stuck in the past or because they are tempered and Zodiark needed more power. This was the reason why some of the Ancient summoned Hydealyn because they wanted all this sacrifice to stop. So yeah he just sees those he knew and that sacrificed themselves to Zodiark as those who should live and the rest are always just meant to be lambs ready to be sacrificed.

We are at the beginning 8/14 souls because 1 source soul and then 7 rejoined souls. Thats why we are probably also able to take in that much light without it killing us. (Even with our gift there should have been a limit) One could even say that this should mean that everyone one the source should be 8/14 complete. With Ardbert who gave us his soulpart we are now 9/14. And with more of our soul complete we probably reminded Emet of the Ancient one.

And yes everyone probably becomes more whole but with the sacrifice of all those soul parts that rejoined with the source one. These cease to exist as a single living part and all those people also needed to die before that could even happen so for me at least the rejoining is quite bad.

Possible spicy opinion but I actually think Hythlodaeus is us, we were Hythlodaeus. Literally no one else can see Ardbert, except us, until Hythlodaeus confirms they can see him too, albeit faintly, commenting on how recognizable the hue of our soul is. Emet-Selch acts astonished to see an Ascian before him when we rejoin with Ardbert, briefly seeing us as our fully "restored" self.

The japanese version makes it more clear that he is talking about "our" Ancient self as a different person than him. Of course this could again just be a trick but I doubt they would do that and later also show our Ancient form too. I think Emet and our Ancient ones were just good friends with the shade and he recognized only the color, he could not really see Ardbert himself. I just think that this part was a hint that we were a special Ancient one which could lean towards the theory that we once were the 14th.

[LineageRazor]

Varis' explanation is that there was but one race before the sundering.

This brings up an interesting conundrum.

The timeline goes something like this:
1. Calamity approaches!
2. Council summons Zodiark
3. Sacrifice half of the Ancients to bring the Calamity under control.
4. Sacrifice half of what's left to bring life back to the world.
5. Propose to sacrifice most of THAT life to bring back the original sacrifices.
6. Dissenters summon Hydaelyn to protect that life.
7. Hydaelyn Sunders the world.

There are many things about this timeline that make it quite likely that the myriad Spoken races all existed PRIOR to the Sundering. Would the Dissenters have taken such a drastic step if the life they were preserving was nothing more than trees and deer? It's POSSIBLE that they were environmental extremists of that sort, but I find it far more likely that this new life included new intelligent races - basically, the races we know, such as Kobolds, Hyur, Roegadyn, Sahagin, and so on and so forth. All of these races, then, existed PRIOR to the Sundering, and this is how they all wound up existing across all Thirteen Shards. Now, it could certainly be the Ascians' perspective that there was only One Race (that mattered) prior to the Sundering, and so they weren't LYING, exactly, when they told Varis of this.

Additionally, I do not believe that all intelligent life forms contain a piece of an Ancient's soul. The population of Ancients was decimated (first by the Calamity, then by the horrendous sacrifices to Zodiark), so it seems unlikely that there were enough Ancients to provide a soul fragment to every living person - and even if there were, what happens when that limit is eventually reached, and another baby is born? No, it seems more likely to me that the majority of people are "new life" of the sort created by Zodiark and protected by Hydaelyn. Souls in this system do not persist intact, but are instead dispersed into the Lifestream upon death and become the source for new souls. The Sundered souls of the Ancients exist within this system, but remain intact, occasionally being reborn into new bodies with no recollection of their prior lives.

[Iscah]

I also suspect Varis has been misled on the nature of the races' origins - perhaps given the information "there was one perfect race before the Sundering" and left to make the (incorrect) logical leap that it was therefore split into multiple imperfect races.

That doesn't seem consistent with the information that Hydaelyn apparently splits things into perfect copies of themselves, or the existence of the same races on every shard.