Theory on Hydaelyn and Zodiark’s nature

[Iscah]

Watching the scene with Arbert and Minfilia again, she raises her hand and casts a light-spell that halts Arbert's axe-swing directly. The light is still swirling around him as she speaks to him.

I think she is talking about herself when she is talking about those bound to carry out the will of Hydaelyn. On other occasions she has compared herself to an Ascian - their direct opposite.

His expression changes from anger to acceptance not as he is physically halted, but as Minfilia promises she will not let the First fall to Light.

Also, just from the physics of it, as much as they apply in the aetherial sea, he's mid-swing with that heavy axe. Simply commanding him to stop isn't enough - there has to be an outside force preventing either him or the axe from moving.

[AceOfCakez]

In true JRPG fashion, I wouldn't put it past the writers to feel that we have some special ability to resist tempering. One theory is that we are tempered by Hydaelen. I think another theory is that resisting tempering is an unseen power of the Echo. And by studying it, we can learn to untemper others (I feel like Ga Bu is being kept around as a potential plot point for when we figure out how to untemper ppl).

[Alleo]

I dunno, I think the current situation is a stop gap, temporary fix. Why do the souls need to be split - wouldn't it just be as well if we were able to move on beyond the Primal's influences and be able to create NEW souls and NEW life? The whole point of the sundering wasn't just to keep Zodiark in check but keep the new life that was created. I think it's time to leave the nest and let ourselves for better or worse create new lives as such.

But again if we rejoin that means that all those other soul shards are going to "die". Killing of millions of individual souls to create new life is a bad exchange, especially since the story does point more in the direction that its fine to be that way. Seemingly even some of the Ancient ones thought it would be better to live that way. Because with that great power comes great responsibilities and who knows what bad stuff people could create with that. We are not at a time anymore where Ancient ones had all those regulations in place to stop people from overdoing it (and yet they still got wiped out by their own creations at the end) so I dont think that this would end greatly.

[Trunks]

If the Echo prevents tempering, how were the Ascians tempered by Zodiark? It’s been heavily hinted that the Echo is either an innately Ascian power, or a power Ascians possess. If it prevented tempering, they too would be immune.

Whether we are tempered by Hydaelyn or not is almost irrelevant, though (fwiw, I think not). Her commandments of Hear, Feel, Think are essentially the basis of free will. If we are slaves to her will, and her will is that we have free will, it’s distinction without difference.

I think it’s clear at this point that Hydaelyn represents liberty, and Zodiark represents order. That’s the essence of the split between the summoning factions. Emet-Selch’s obsession with “perfection” is proof enough that order is their overriding concern, and we saw this in the glimpses we got of Aumarotian society. It’s even clearer if you’re familiar with the work Aumarot is derived from - Utopia - which parodizes the application of philosophical ideals to practical governance by showing the absurd extremes to which a society must go to maintain order. Many of these are featured in the quests of fake-Aumarot, such as everyone wearing the same clothes because free expression is egotism and a danger to society. This is what “the Sound” which precipitated the crisis which befell the Ascians represents: discord. Perfection is a fragile thing.

The Hydaelyn faction, meanwhile, objected to the forced sacrifice of life to Zodiark. They believed the future belonged to those who lived, and that it was wrong to take that future from them against their will. It’s significant that this was the point of their objection - after two sacrifices had already been made to Zodiark by the consent of the sacrificed.

It is likely that Hydaelyn was summoned with the express purpose of defending against the dominating will of Zodiark - hence her ability to protect us from tempering, aka the Blessing of Light. But in doing this, the system by which Zodiark restored order was threatened: his dominating will was the mechanism by which the volatility of Creation magic was kept in check. This made their coexistence untenable, and so they were destined to conflict. From there, it’s easy to see how we arrived at the Sundering.

Zodiark was the will of the star made manifest, and outright destroying him would doubtless have consequences, if it were even possible. At the very least, his destruction could return the world to how it was before he restored it. The summoners of Hydaelyn did not want this, obviously, because they went along with his summoning in the first place. So the question became how to ensure the agency of the living, while also neutralizing the threat of unchecked Creation magic.

This might have all been obvious before Hydaelyn’s summoning, hence her being given the power to Sunder in the first place, perhaps as a “weapon of last resort”. This would also make sense given that they sacrificed themselves to summon her. It’s also possible that in doing so, Hydaelyn’s own summoning was undone - whereas Zodiark was apparently physically banished and split, Hydaelyn seems to exist in an unsummoned state, regulating the aetheric balance. This might explain why Rejoinings and the summoning of Primals weaken her.

[Alleo]

If the Echo prevents tempering, how were the Ascians tempered by Zodiark? It’s been heavily hinted that the Echo is either an innately Ascian power, or a power Ascians possess. If it prevented tempering, they too would be immune.

Maybe the echo only came after Zodiark and as a way to protect people from his influence but thanks to the split this somehow was messed up and only certain people get it now. Also do the Ascians even have "our" form of echo or their own version of it?

I also agree with most of your post but I do want to point out that we dont know if those who summoned Hydealyn were really fine with Zodiark being summoned. We do know that the 14th left the council at the end and maybe they already had a group against it but because most of the rest of the population was for this they could not do anything. But again just speculation of course.

I also (while reading through a fanfic) came on the theory that maybe the sacrifice Hydealyn gets to sustain herself are the memories of those that died. (But I have no idea if memories are aether?) So in a way it is a sacrifice but at least the people can still live out their lifes.

[RyuDragnier]

If the Echo prevents tempering, how were the Ascians tempered by Zodiark? It’s been heavily hinted that the Echo is either an innately Ascian power, or a power Ascians possess. If it prevented tempering, they too would be immune.

The echo, as far as I can guess, is something that only Sundered former Ascians have, or at least their souls. It basically is an indicator that their soul was there at the sundering (as far as I can tell from Elidibus' hints). Elidibus/Lahabrea/Emet-Selch don't have it because they're Unsundered, they wouldn't have it simply because they weren't touched by the Sundering.

[Kallera]

The echo, as far as I can guess, is something that only Sundered former Ascians have, or at least their souls. It basically is an indicator that their soul was there at the sundering (as far as I can tell from Elidibus' hints). Elidibus/Lahabrea/Emet-Selch don't have it because they're Unsundered, they wouldn't have it simply because they weren't touched by the Sundering.

The echo comes with it the ability to understand and be understood in different tongues. The Amauroutine people did not seem to have any language barrier on their end, even when talking to the scions. Lahabrea and emet selch did have the echo, Lahabrea hinted as much that its power was used in the fusion dance with iyegohrm, and emet selch did similar in his battle with joining multiple masks to his person.

[shinkin]

The Hydaelyn faction, meanwhile, objected to the forced sacrifice of life to Zodiark. They believed the future belonged to those who lived, and that it was wrong to take that future from them against their will.

It is likely that Hydaelyn was summoned with the express purpose of defending against the dominating will of Zodiark - hence her ability to protect us from tempering, aka the Blessing of Light. But in doing this, the system by which Zodiark restored order was threatened: his dominating will was the mechanism by which the volatility of Creation magic was kept in check. This made their coexistence untenable, and so they were destined to conflict. From there, it’s easy to see how we arrived at the Sundering.

again, where does it ever imply they were forced to do anything, let alone Zodiark's "dominating will"? Genuinely asking because I don't remember any of this being said. Emet tells us what Zodiark needed to do X and Y but that's it, and when Hydaelyn's creation is brought about they just say that the dissenting group that summoned her didn't think there should be any more sacrifices. Not that anyone was being forced into sacrifice. The notion they were being forced into doing so, IMO, goes completely against Emet's arguments when he says that the lesser races would never be able to do the same thing or act so selflessly. Now granted, he is tempered, but I don't recall any explicit mention on what type of diety Zodiark was.

[ObsidianFire]

A few different things... All Ascians (including Lahabrea, Elidibus and Emet-Selch) have the Echo. Lahabrea refers to the Echo in 2.0 as "an aberration in the aether" and Elidibus calls it "a gift". This suggest the Echo wasn't something the Ancients originally had, but was something they gained later. Where they got it from? Who knows! Given that the Echo is what protects us from being Tempered and the Ascians are indeed Tempered by Zoidark, I suspect the Echo was something that came about after Zoidark was summoned. All that said, the Echo is one of the most mysterious things in the game right now and we have very, very little information about where it comes from.

Zoidark is mentioned as only doing two big things. The first is rewriting the Laws of Reality so the Last Days ended. The second is renewing the Planet afterwars. Both times, he needed so much aether to accomplish those things that half the existing Ancient population had to sacrifice themselves to power him up. It's only after the planet is renewed that the Convocation of Thirteen decide to get back the Ancient Souls sacrificed to Zoidark. In order to do that, they plan to let life flourish on the renewed planet and then offer the aether of that life to Zoidark so he will give up the souls of the Ancients in exchange.

Given that Zoidark needed so much aether Ancients had to die to provide that aether, I'd say it's very plausible this means the Convocation planed to sacrifice future Ancients to get the souls they had already sacrificed back. That said, the Convocation is Tempered by Zoidark and we never hear anything about Zoidark being able to release souls. How the Convocation knew that plan would work is unknown. One thing to note is that the Convocation's plant to get the souls back from Zoidark ultimately results in Zoidark having more ather which is the goal of all beings Tempered to a primal. I can easily see other Ancients seeing that plan and wondering how many times the cycle of sacrificing existing life to Zoidark get the life previously sacrificed to Zoidark back from Zoidark was going to happen. And then deciding they would really like not to have that kind of cycle going on.

Zoidark isn't mentioned to have Tempered anyone other then the people who summoned him, which would have been the Covocation of Thirteen. Ironically, Hydaelyn probably never got the chance to Temper the people who summoned her since all of her summoners died to summon her; there probably simply wasn't anything around to Temper. It also illustrates one of the differences between Zoidark's and Hydaelyn's summoners. The summoners of Zoidark asked other people to sacrifice themselves to Zoidark and then kept asking people to sacrifice themselves to Zoidark afterwards. The summoners of Hydaelyn only sacrificed themselves to her and did manage to come up with (or presever) a system that results in people getting reincarnated from the era of the Ancients.

[QT_Melon]

But again if we rejoin that means that all those other soul shards are going to "die". Killing of millions of individual souls to create new life is a bad exchange, especially since the story does point more in the direction that its fine to be that way. Seemingly even some of the Ancient ones thought it would be better to live that way. Because with that great power comes great responsibilities and who knows what bad stuff people could create with that. We are not at a time anymore where Ancient ones had all those regulations in place to stop people from overdoing it (and yet they still got wiped out by their own creations at the end) so I dont think that this would end greatly.

I said nothing about whether or not we need to rejoin. I am questioning the fact that "We just leave things as they are" because they still are a problem. The sundering didn't leave a perfect solution, we've seen the consequences of that conflict. That doesn't mean the remaining Ascian(s) are right, but is defeating them really just the end all solution? No one is going to force a rejoining? That is never guaranteed. There can lie in different set of circumstances.

What I was pondering if in the end we do have to stop being co dependent upon said system. It was posed in another thread that we don't know if say death of Hydaelyn and Zodiark would cause reality to crumble and everything to rejoin. It seems at the moment that has less to do with either primal than the forcing of the athereal flow in various aspects. Eden seems to be also demonstrating or making parallels.