Revelations from Patch 5.3

[Rhivryn]

Re. Cyella

She's not from the Source to begin with, and she's not a "world hopper". Elidibus brought her to the First.

Her role now is to help spread the true story of the Warriors of Light and how they tried to prevent the Flood.

she's a world hopper in the sense that she came from another world. As far as her telling the true story of the WoLs, I saw the point of that after the base MSQ, but as soon as the rest of the Crystarium was obsessed with the topic and people like Moren would do the same thing, I felt that particular endeavor in fine enough hands. I would like to see more of her, especially because of the events in The Empty and the whole idea that the entire purpose of the Ascians being totally pointless if the Void can't be restored, implying a journey there might be possible in the future, that her being present for it would be narratively impactful. I feel that her tagging along with us would be more helpful than doing nothing in Norvrandt, considering should any events unfold concerning the Void (and it's *possible* restoration) we'd undoubtedly become embroiled in them, and I'd like to think she deserves to be a part of that. I feel like she would WANT it to be restored. I suppose I'll leave it to my headcanon that my character would offer such a thing to her, and get Beg Luqq to make another spirit vessel and figure out a way to bring her with us. Also that she was present for the Trial.

[Vyrerus]

It's here.



Whether it makes sense or not (and we can see just how easily they can try force things to make sense, whether the end result is satisfactory, or not), the wording confirms what that poster said. Much the same with Emet-Selch, with the "it is believed". Perhaps there is something to the headcanon that souls really are indestructible, white auracite or not, and all that happens is that the soul is forced back into the Lifestream for rebirth; Lahabrea's was trapped in the eyes at the time. To me the way this reads is that they're being non-committal.

First off, thank you for finding it.

Second though... man, I hope they pin some of these Lifestream and Soul antics down in a more concrete way sooner rather than later. It's already something Y'shtola's taken a dip in without any real consequences.

While I could understand that a great wyrm's eye could retain aether for longer, I don't see how Lahabrea would have retained his form and will at all, after having been rended into a mere vapor. Feel like if he'd still had his will, he would have usurped the power of Nidhogg and come out as a draconic Ascian or something lol. And I mean, that would also mean that his Aether/Soul are partially in Estinien's now, just like Nidhogg's, so I mean... smh. throws hands up Why do I even try?

[Jandor]

Anyway, interesting to see that NPCs are occupying the housing there - which makes sense (we're supposed to be repairing the homes of the poor, lost souls in the Brume), but DOES throw a bit of a wrench into the theory that this is going to be our new housing district. Maybe we'll be given other wards, while a single ward is reserved for NPCs?

Seems the most likely outcome, a new housing area based on it, but the existing Firmament area stays as it is.

People will still want to access it after all. It's handy for leveling crafters and gatherers, and has some nice rewards to work towards.

[Iscah]

As well as the nice prospect of giving houses to all the NPCs, it means at least one version of the Firmament remains looking "as intended" and not a rainbow of Hingan castles and novelty animal houses.

[LineageRazor]

As well as the nice prospect of giving houses to all the NPCs, it means at least one version of the Firmament remains looking "as intended" and not a rainbow of Hingan castles and novelty animal houses.

Yeah, it's true; wards do tend to have that Rainbow Pimp Gear thing going on - archetecture style!

[LineageRazor]

Caught up on the thread, now, and a few comments on others' posts:

As for a line of dialogue that tells us that their souls are destroyed, it comes from Urianger, the second time the scions convene after defeating Iceheart as Shiva. The line is, "'Tis our belief that an Ascian soul may be permanently undone if smitten by a sufficiently concentrated burst of pure aether."

One thing to bear in mind while speaking of Nabriales, while this theory may be true, it was speculated BEFORE learning about the origins of Ascians - specifically that many Ascians are raised from individuals bearing fragments of a Convocation member's soul, and then imprinted with memories using the soul crystals. In such a light, while the Ascian's soul might be destroyed, only a FRAGMENT of a soul is being destroyed. In theory, they could find another Nabriales soul fragment, imprint it with the crystal, and Nabriales will be back in action.

In the case of unsundered Ascians, you just need to destroy their soul once, and that Ascian is done. The Sundered ones, as long as someone exists to raise them up, could in theory come back as many times as they have soul fragments remaining.

So, Urianger was both right and wrong. Right in that Ascians may be permanently undone. Wrong in that most Ascians have plenty of leftover soul bits if you happen to undo just one of them.

None of that has any bearing on stuff like whether Hauchefaunt's the same or different or whatever - just a bit of musing on Urianger's theorizing from a basis of incomplete knowledge.

YoRHa fights against 10 characters in an effort to post this.

Did you see those flight units attacking the dwarf village? Are you kidding me? Those things could wipe out the entirety of the First in the blink of an eye. Forget Ascians, Zenos, Fandaniel, Zodiark, Hydaelyn, Rejoinings...none of that would matter in the face of virtually anything from the YoRHa universe. The technology is quite literally light years ahead of ANYTHING in FFXIV. The Source would be utterly destroyed. In short order. It would be like Blade Runner showing up in Game of Thrones.

I disagree. Allagan technology is LEAGUES beyond anything portrayed in Neir, and we get that thrown at us all the time. The flight units? Even Garleans have equivalents. Sure, they ran roughshod all over the village, but it was a sneak attack. Set up some proper magical defenses, and things would not have gone so smoothly for them.

To be honest, even in their own game, the technological capability is not that far beyond even real-life stuff. Heck, at one point in a Neir: Automata sidequest, 2B and 9S wrestle with the decision of whether or not to give Pascal access to blueprints that allow for the creation of nuclear devices - with the implication that doing so would greatly improve the destructive capabilities of the Machine Lifeforms, if Pascal ever went rogue. So these high-tech alien robots haven't even mastered the concept of nuclear fusion? Or been able to replicate the destructive power of it in other ways?

Much like Garlean technology, Neir technology is DIFFERENT, not BETTER than what can be fielded by the natives.

Alleo also brought up the subject of how the buildings and such could have gone unnoticed for long enough for them to become ruins. I think I answered it once before, but it's entirely possible. Flight technology on the First seems to be limited to Airships and Amaro, both of which could have a flight ceiling that puts them well below the ability to fly over mountains. More than that, aside from Dwarves, the population of the area is pretty sparse; even if the capability was there to fly higher, there might not be any interest. Even if there was interest, it's possible that the interested tried, succeeded, and never returned, because they were shot down by Machine Lifeforms, leading others to believe that the attempts were too dangerous (wind, or faulty technology would be blamed - they'd have no reason to believe that intelligent robots were the cause). Or, maybe they weren't shot down, and they really DID die from wind or faulty technology.

Basically, in a fantasy setting like this one, we can't assume that high-altitude travel is something the natives practice regularly enough that they would have had the opportunity to find the ruins before now. There has to be a first discovery for everything - and in this case, the ruins were first discovered by the Dwarves.

I'm kind of surprised they didn't just go the route of transferring the Exarch's memories without his soul, though. I think it would have made the death scene more poignant, but at the same time I think I'd be stuck wondering whether he truly died (i.e. body considered dead, soul free to return to the Lifestream) or whether his soul would remain trapped in his crystalised body. That said, I had contemplated that as a potential ending for him - fusing with the tower completely and watching over the Crystarium forever - but then there's the running theme over the story that immortality is actually pretty miserable.[/hb]

I don't get this feeling at all, really - pretty much all the immortals we encounter seem to think immortality is pretty groovy. The dragons are comfortable with it, the Ancients found it natural, and the Ascians are flat-out affronted that we don't have it.

While the remaining Ascians are miserable, it's not because they're immortal, it's because they witnessed the END of all their immortal friends, and the only way to (maybe) get them back is a whole lot more murder. (Only it's not murder, you see, not really, and if we keep telling ourselves that, eventually we'll believe it!) If Immortality has lost its appeal, it's only because there's no one else around to be immortal with.

Midgardsormr went through a situation very similar to that of the Ascians, but he seems to have pushed through it, and now has a new population of immortal dragons thriving. He was able to set aside the past and forge a new future - something the Ascians were never able to manage.

Outside of FFXIV, stories that speculate on what a drag it is to be immortal tend to focus on the problem of all your mortal loved ones dying on you again and again - but that doesn't really apply if your entire society is immortal.

[Alleo]

I think the biggest thing about immortality (or very long age because seemingly the concept of death is known to the Ancients) is how a few of them are not able to let go. Nidhogg and his vengeance, Tiamat and her sorrow, the Ascians and their wish to bring them back instead of accepting their passing and honoring it. It feels that a lot more immortals have problems with moving on. Of course its also understandable because they have such a long life spawn and losing someone there is horrible because you know that there are many more years to be believed without them. So I also got the feeling that being immortal is really only great if you dont lose anyone dear to you.

About flight height and mountains. Well it really depends when they landed here. Yes flying might have been much more restricted and the amount of people living there sparse after the flood of light. But who knows how long its already there? And if it fell down from the sky then someone should have noticed and investigated it. I just have a big issue believing that something like that was hidden for who knows how long. (And did nobody ever climb these mountains and see it then?)

[Draginhikari]

I think the biggest thing about immortality (or very long age because seemingly the concept of death is known to the Ancients) is how a few of them are not able to let go. Nidhogg and his vengeance, Tiamat and her sorrow, the Ascians and their wish to bring them back instead of accepting their passing and honoring it. It feels that a lot more immortals have problems with moving on. Of course its also understandable because they have such a long life spawn and losing someone there is horrible because you know that there are many more years to be believed without them. So I also got the feeling that being immortal is really only great if you dont lose anyone dear to you.

About flight height and mountains. Well it really depends when they landed here. Yes flying might have been much more restricted and the amount of people living there sparse after the flood of light. But who knows how long its already there? And if it fell down from the sky then someone should have noticed and investigated it. I just have a big issue believing that something like that was hidden for who knows how long. (And did nobody ever climb these mountains and see it then?)

That's always been kind of the thing, we as humans can only understand the world in terms of the fact that everyone eventually dies, due this fact, our minds cannot really process the idea of eternity or even an extension far beyond our mortal lives. Even if someone were able to extend their life to a thousand years without being able to extend the lives of those, we care about what would that mean? Is that something our minds can remain Sane under or it is a fate worse than death? How long could we live before we completely forgot who we were in the first place or the people that were in our lives. What happens when we stop remembering?

Nidhogg played an example of this, for him a 1000 years was the same as yesterday, his rage can't ever really be satisfied so he takes it out on Ishgard over and over again, even though the ones responsible for the crime have long since dead because he cannot see those lines because his scale of time is so far detached that it becomes almost impossible for him to reconcile the fact that most of Ishgard doesn't even understand why the dragons are attacking them. Even once the truth has been revealed and Ishgard attempts to take some responsibility for what happened it's not enough because there will never be a period of time long enough for him to accept what happened and moved on. The Ascians have a similar problem with basically endless sorrow and sense of failure about a duty that almost lost all meaning the more time has gone by so they attempt to restore that meaning by trying to force the world back to the way it was before. The harsh thing is, can the world ever truly be how it was were the Ascians to succeed? I'd guess the answer is likely no, but there is no way for them to reconcile that.

[Kiniun]

Finishing this thread took longer than finishing the MSQ!

The thing I don't get for Emet-Selch or Elidibus is why they didn't just wait for the Warrior of Light to die of natural causes? Once Lahabrea died, wouldn't they think, "Oh, there's some danger in engaging wit this WoL? For Elidibus, it's an even more important question when he became last of the Unsundered. Especially if only the Unsundered can raise up Sundered Ascians! And surely a century means nothing when you've been waiting for 12,000 years. Hydaelyn continues to weaken as the ages pass (if we can believe Master Matoya). So why not wait a little bit? Sure, these plans will be ruined, but with eternity, there will always be a chance to set up new ones.

[Kesey]

Finishing this thread took longer than finishing the MSQ!

The thing I don't get for Emet-Selch or Elidibus is why they didn't just wait for the Warrior of Light to die of natural causes? Once Lahabrea died, wouldn't they think, "Oh, there's some danger in engaging wit this WoL? For Elidibus, it's an even more important question when he became last of the Unsundered. Especially if only the Unsundered can raise up Sundered Ascians! And surely a century means nothing when you've been waiting for 12,000 years. Hydaelyn continues to weaken as the ages pass (if we can believe Master Matoya). So why not wait a little bit? Sure, these plans will be ruined, but with eternity, there will always be a chance to set up new ones.

I believe the issue belies in set up to make these things happen. If you scrub the plans just because the WOL shows up you've wasted hundreds if not thousands of years of preparations. Ascian impatience is definitely born of loneliness for having what they once had and the friends that needed to be sacrificed to make it right.

Finally, I believe clues show that every moment of history where the balance is thrown off has a hero (most likely our reincarnated aether). We saw the paintings in Rak'tika. The world has needed to be saved 3 times. The last one that was crossed out we can assume was Ardbert and his friends, the canceling needed because the brought the flood of light. But the first is assumed to be during the time of the Ancients/Ascians and second would have transpired during the time of the Ronkans. Each of these moments had us around. Furthermore, I would like to assume Ronka and the Allagans are equivalents for the First and Source. So most likely all the Ascian plans are potentially in chaos by us or people similar to us.