Revelations from Patch 5.3

[LineageRazor]

On the topic of Ancient soul fragments and reactions to the starshower, I definitely don't think that everyone has a fragment of an Ancient's soul inside of them, for the simple reason that there's simply too many people. Remember that you have to include all the beastmen races along with all the human races, and there's suddenly an awful lot of Ancient souls to account for. Add to this, the Ancient population was DECIMATED prior to the Sundering - there just weren't all that many Ancients left to have souls to split.

But, assuming for the sake of argument, that everyone DOES have an Ancient soul fragment within them - what happens when one more child is born? Is that child then born soulless, because all the Ancient souls are already in use?

No, I think most likely there's only a very limited number of Ancient soul fragments around, and the only difference with them is that when their bearer dies, the soul doesn't dissolve into the Lifestream as regular souls do, but instead floats around and is eventually reborn into a new host. It is likely these hosts who are the individuals capable of expressing the Echo.

(Note that I might be wrong on this, and the writers simply haven't done the math. There was a discussion a while back on the topic of whether the population of Sunseeker Miqo'te is even sustainable with only twenty-six tribes. They could well be an endangered species!)

As for why non-Echo individuals might still be moved by the Starshower, the tragedy of the Ancients may well be marked indelibly into the Lifestream itself, so ANY lifeform born from it might feel a twinge upon witnessing the Starshower.

[Iscah]

True, tho, in his case he only transfered his memorys also, while the Scions had to transfer there memories AND soul/body in the shard. Maybe it just is explained poorly and got lost in translation also, for me it seemed it is just his memory we carry over so he can continue his own legacy. Feels awkard still, since i mean Ardbert not just merged or overwritten our memories after all as well.

An important detail does seem to be getting lost in translation, as you say.

The Exarch didn't transfer only his memories. Both his soul and memories are in the crystal, just like the other Scions. The only difference is that he didn't put both in at once.

When the Scions transfer themselves into the crystals, first they transfer their memories and the red part begins to glow. Then their souls enter the crystals and the white part begins to glow.

Now look at the final scene with the Exarch - cutscene #5 of "Hope's Confluence".

When we first show him the crystal, only the red part is glowing from the memories he transferred into it earlier.

He tells us that his "mind and memories" will travel with us while his body remains here.

We hold it out to him, he looks at it, and it begins to glow white. This means his soul has gone into the crystal - but unlike the Scions, who simply vanish into aether, he has a physical body to leave behind.

If anything, it seems that his soul was holding back the complete transformation of his body, and it's only after he leaves it that the crystallisation takes over.



Also it doesn't seem like merging his two souls has "overwritten" the younger G'raha, just added to him. When you talk with him afterwards at the Rising Stones, he seems like a balance between the two. He has the Exarch's memories, of course, but he just seems younger and different. It will be interesting to see how he acts from here onwards.

[Erendis]

An important detail does seem to be getting lost in translation, as you say.

The Exarch didn't transfer only his memories. Both his soul and memories are in the crystal, just like the other Scions. The only difference is that he didn't put both in at once.

Tbh, it is really weird that this info is in missable dialog. I missed this one dialog and story outcome was totally different. Also, everyone else needed porxie to transfer souls and there was no porxie with Exarch...

On another missable dialog, it was really sweet of Urianger to miss Emet-Selch in Ocular too (he better make his minion >.> ).

I've been thinking about Rising event and while the minstrel's song is about past, perhaps his words about balance of elements and facing new dawn have something to do with the future.
For a while now I've been thinking about Minfilia's words (even before 5.3):

And in light of Azem they gain some importance.

Could ancient city/country across the pond where calamity began be in current Meracydia? What if Azem was counted as deserter because they went there to help?

On unrelated note, we get submarines to travel to Polynesia, what's the counterpart here?

[Iscah]

Tbh, it is really weird that this info is in missable dialog. I missed this one dialog and story outcome was totally different. Also, everyone else needed porxie to transfer souls and there was no porxie with Exarch...

What do you mean, "missable dialogue"? The line about his mind and memories was fairly clear in the scene. The rest of what I explained about the glowing colours of the crystal wasn't dialogue at all - it's my observation of what is shown on the screen. The camera focuses on the crystals as these things happen.

The thing with the porxie was explained sometime earlier in 5.1/5.2, I think, but I'll have to go over that explanation again. It was something about the Scions' aether.

[Erendis]

Indeed he said mind and memories, however to me mind = memories, not mind = soul. And yes, I missed crystal shining until someone mentioned it here (I was too taken by Exarch turning into crystal...)

[Fenral]

So anyway, on that assumption that all is well and it's only the Exarch's body that is there in the tower... it's a strange thing. He died and there's a body but at the same time he's not dead, so should it be mourned or not? His departure from the First might as well be death in some ways, and yet the people know he's alive but beyond their reach.

All of a sudden I am reminded of The Little Prince... there are shades of that story's ending here, I think, though of course it's not the same thing. But a bit of that mixed joy and sorrow.

In the major arcana of the Tarot, "death" is used less to mean "oh emm jeebers you gon die" like you see in fiction, but to symbolize an end necessary for a new beginning. Even when the Tarot aren't invoked, I still consider it a useful lens to view situations like this through. He did actually die as the Exarch, but rather than simply reverting to the old G'raha, he was reborn as a combination of the two.

(For aspiring writers out there, the tl;dr is that it is perfectly okay to bring dead characters back, as long as they are changed by the experience in some way, not necessarily the Pet Sematary kind of way...)

The Exarch ended up being this weird mashup of Desch and Xande (FFIII editions), I wrote up something a bit after he was revealed (speculative, so I got some stuff wrong), so I imagine this was probably the best way they had to reconcile those polar opposites.

Also yeah, Le Petit Prince is exactly the tone they were going for. Doing something that will definitely kill you, on the belief, with no concrete evidence, that it won't be the end. In that case, I think it's okay to mourn.

[Alleo]

The thing with the porxie was explained sometime earlier in 5.1/5.2, I think, but I'll have to go over that explanation again. It was something about the Scions' aether.

I think the porxie was only needed for the scions because they were only souls that seemingly changed so much that they needed that spell to get out of their built shells? (Not remembering the exact way they explained it) The exarch of course had no such restrictions since he had his body with him.

[RyuDragnier]

Ehil Tou Custom Delivery

Apparently dragons change form due to external and internal factors, and their shapes can vary due to that same reason. Ehil Tou looks very unique as a dragon because of that, and makes you wonder if a full on humanoid dragon is possible.

[Iscah]

The Exarch ended up being this weird mashup of Desch and Xande (FFIII editions), I wrote up something a bit after he was revealed (speculative, so I got some stuff wrong), so I imagine this was probably the best way they had to reconcile those polar opposites.

Having played FFIII now (minus actually defeating the Cloud of Darkness and getting to the ending) I don't see much parallel between the Exarch and Xande but I do think he's taking some degree of inspiration from the original Doga - at a superficial level, he's the old mentor-mage in a red cloak, but also the penultimate "gather heroes to help you in your moment of need" thing stuck out to me as parallel to the Exarch calling up heroes to help us fight Hades.

[Fenral]

Having played FFIII now (minus actually defeating the Cloud of Darkness and getting to the ending) I don't see much parallel between the Exarch and Xande but I do think he's taking some degree of inspiration from the original Doga - at a superficial level, he's the old mentor-mage in a red cloak, but also the penultimate "gather heroes to help you in your moment of need" thing stuck out to me as parallel to the Exarch calling up heroes to help us fight Hades.

Actually, yeah. I was seeing the Xande parallel as "going to great lengths to extend his lifespan in the face of an inevitable end," with "acceptance" as the most probable resolution to his arc with what little we had to go on (see also, Kuja), but he ended up crossing the Minwu threshold into anti-nihilism and then everything went really off the rails. But the way he "sacrificed" himself (in 2.5), went unremarked on for most of the story's runtime (until late 4.X), and then returned dramatically to save us is definitely the crowning Desch moment people (mostly JP) believed he was being set up for.

But now that you've met FFIII Desch, I think you can agree it's fitting that his "Salina" is actually the Warrior of Light (though I guess that's an ending spoiler kinda). I was admittedly worried they would lean too hard into the source material again and award that role to the literal, 2000-years-ago Salina (in a bid to stabilize the time loop).


Also, farm Eureka! The EXP is good, and having a large stack of Shuriken makes the adds on the remake's Cloud of Darkness a lot more manageable.