Quote Originally Posted by TheMightyMollusk View Post
Re; Thordan and Tiamat, bear in mind that he knew the Empire and the WoL were on his tail, and didn't know if that giant dragon over there (who, it should be noted, he had no reason at all to know about beforehand; Tiamat had no involvement in the Dragonsong War, and has been chained up there since the Allagans still ruled most of the world) would be hostile. Given the trouble that Nidhogg has given Ishgard with one eye for the last thousand years, attacking another giant dragon who still had both eyes while two hostile forces were right behind him would be completely idiotic. He probably figured he could come back for them later, but then we kill him.
He knew the WoL was on his tail, somewhat, but not the Empire. They're after Azys Lla itself, and Mr. Pope-hat Archbishop gets into Azys Lla before they even bomb the Zundu. As for Nidhogg giving the Holy See trouble, that was just as much on the Holy See's desire list to reinforce their own control over Ishgard as it was the dragon's tenacity. If they'd wanted to, they could have mounted an offensive using both eyes and their powers long before we arrived and put Nidhogg to death. They didn't, because it would compromise the legitimacy of their rule and air too much dirt, breaking the faithful and weakening the faith aspect of their primal power.

I can concede he wouldn't have known she was weaker than Nidhogg by some league, but given he and the Heavensward had at least a full week of free reign about Azys Lla as well as guidance from the Ascians, as well as the knowledge that their forebears killed a First Brood great wyrm without any special powers... it's not idiotic at all. The end of Heavensward's plot suffers from having us have to catch up to the villain, and realistically, the villain had no reason to wait on us, other than to maybe see if we could kill the Ascians for them. But that just begs the question, if they didn't think themselves capable of beating the Ascians themselves, then why would they think themselves capable of beating us? /shrug