Revelations from Patch 5.2

[Alleo]

About MSQ and the WoLs

Honestly I dont see the solution being us fighting against them. Even if we somehow stop them Elidibus has time on his side. Once we are gone he can just start up the next round of WoLs.

I also dont think that its bad that we have a few with the echo because Elidibus does have a point: We will be gone somewhere in the future and there needs to be more adventurers that will protect the normal people.

I guess we just have to stop and put an end to the Ascians. Because it seems that WoL are born in conflict. And its not that easy to become one because even on the source there had only been a couple of them active at a time, at recent times we had three and there should be many more echo users than that. Maybe those two soldiers wont even become WoLs.

So if we stop the Ascians then there should be no conflict that needs specifically WoLs thus no loss of balance. If we just stop the WoLs then its just a short time win.


About Venat: The Amaurotine was female. Yet when Hythlo talkes about Hades old friend (which is us) he changes it to he or she depending on our own gender. I think that might be a good clue that Venat is not us.

[Swilly]

Brief thought about Werlyt:

Struck me as strange that Nero isn't there, in a plot concerning the ugly consequences of something he directly influenced. However, I guess there is still room for him to show up later to brighten everyone's day...

In any case, it was a sad bit of meta that Gaius gave Nero no recognition for his rather large role in restoring Ultima—just the thing he was so desperately afraid of all the way back in 2.0. Then again, I would hope that after everything he's been through since then, Nero isn't quite so proud of this anymore anyway...

[polyphonica]

Honestly I dont see the solution being us fighting against them. Even if we somehow stop them Elidibus has time on his side. Once we are gone he can just start up the next round of WoLs.

I also dont think that its bad that we have a few with the echo because Elidibus does have a point: We will be gone somewhere in the future and there needs to be more adventurers that will protect the normal people.

More speculation...

Ultimately dealing with Elidibus is the key and best outcome, but it also depends on how quickly his actions have the effect of tipping the balance back towards light. We might be forced to first try to unravel the immediate scheme before we can deal with the underlying root cause. I also assume it's not like Elidibus is going to go out of his way to fight us at this point given how many other Ascians have fallen at our hand. So if Elidibus keeps himself out of reach for the time-being, our options might be limited.

I guess this all comes back to what Elidibus said of his plans at the end of 5.0:

"I will keep these 'heroes' mired in the First, and victory will be ours at the last. Warriors of Darkness now, are they? Then their fate is decided. They shall meet the same end as those who came before--death at the hands of Warriors of Light!"

At the time I guessed he meant he was going to bring WoL from other shards (like the void) to face the "threat" of the WoD somehow. But given what we see him doing now, it seems like his end-game here after awakening all these new "Warriors of Light" is to turn them on us instead. (This way also he doesn't have to face us in a direct confrontation and so risk himself -- he just manipulates things to the outcome he wants.)

A lot of this patch focused on us meeting up with various people who we helped along the way who pledged they'd never forget what we did for them and for the world. But it also focused on how, after the flood of light happened, all the good deeds of the past Warriors of Light were quickly forgotten to assign them all the blame (and that an accurate version of history got basically blotted out by bias). Taking all these points in composite, the question seems to be: what sort of calamity could cause the new army of heroes of the First to turn against us?

I guess if they really want to spin the story on its head, it'd be a flood of darkness. The Crystal Tower as we know was used in the past to open a gateway to the Void. What if somehow that gate is opened again and a flood of voidsend pours out of the Crystal Tower -- enough forces of darkness to blot out the day sky, say... The blame for this would fall on the Crystal Exarch and his friends/allies -- the Warriors of Darkness. Some people would say (wrongly, but likely encouraged by a certain "Warrior of Light"...) that we brought back the night so that we could unleash a new breed of terror (and we all can't be trusted because of things we've hidden from everyone). Elidibus's hope, then, would be that the First's new Warriors of Light (perhaps under the misguided influence (tempering?) of "Hydaelyn") would step in and beat all the "forces of darkness" -- taking us out of the picture and ushering in the new/"final" flood of light that triggers the rejoining. Basically, this way he solves all the problems at once without having to put himself at risk of being killed by the "Ascian-slayer."

Assuming they went that route, obviously the question would be how would we thwart it. I think, despite it all, we will still have some allies who won't turn so easily. But somehow we'd have to stop the flood of darkness without contributing to the world tipping to light. As I said from the start, killing Elidibus would be ideal, but my guess is he's going to play pretty cautious. At the very least you'd have to undo the scheme enough so that you could get to him.

Anyway, obviously all this is going way out on a limb in pure speculation. We'll see what happens...