Could there be a relatively peaceful solution to the shard problem?

[Rosenstrauch]

To put my thoughts into perspective on why I say Hydaelyn destroyed the world, I'm going to employ a metaphor.

The resting heart rate of a healthy human being is roughly in the range of 60-80 beats per minute. A trained athlete can have theirs dip down to around 40 beats per minute, and an unhealthy individual will typically have their heart rate spike over 100. While active, your heart rate will also spike to up to around 200 beats per minute depending on the activity. And you can't really control this. Your heart is one of the muscles in your body that works automatically, because if it didn't you'd die.

Imagine waking up one day and finding out that, if your heart rate ever goes over 70 beats per minute, you'll drop dead within seconds. That sounds ridiculous, right? Nobody could live like that. A more "fair" example might be breathing, which is reflexive and typically automatic, but can be done manually. Imagine having to breathe manually for the rest of your life, and only at a slow, steady rate. If you breathe too quickly, you die. Still pretty ridiculous, yeah?

In all of the Disciples of Magic questlines, the matter of using one's own aether reserves to cast spells is brought up. Conjurers have to draw power from the surrounding land. People with low aetheric reserves are kept from joining the Thaumaturge's Guild for their own safety. Black Mages who lack the training or outside means to control the massive amounts of aether needing for their spells can end up burning themselves alive from within. A Tonberry Scholar puts herself into a coma just trying to summon her fairy. Red Mages need specialized equipment to handle mixing white and black magics while avoid the ever present issue of death by spellcasting. All this is after six, then seven rejoinings, given that the story of FFXIV straddles between the five years before the seventh and the year after.

Now the thing is, the world wasn't always like that. There used to be a time when even children's capacity for aether greatly exceeded that of the most accomplished magic users in the present day. It's hard to believe that the spellcasters of that era had to worry about things like boiling their own aether or healing themselves to death. At least, not until Hydaelyn did her thing. And even if their greatest minds—what remained of them, at any rate—had the foresight to immediately warn everyone about what had happened, it's hard for me to believe the entire world made the transition smoothly. On the contrary, I expect that in the years following the event, all fourteen shards experienced a lot of death, the collapse and dissolution of civilizations and cultures, and so on.

Granted, the above is just speculation. For all we know, there were absolutely zero ramifications to Hydaelyn splitting the world aside from things like "people are no longer nigh-immortal" and "Amaurot somehow ended up under the ocean". I'd be pretty disappointed if that were the case. It's not as if any other "good guy" in the story is exempt from making terrible decisions—with lasting consequences—that seemed like a good idea at the time. Heck, Ryne came seconds away from causing a second Flood of Light and wiping out all life on the First and all she was trying to do was help us by being Shiva. Why should Hydaelyn be any different?

But even if there's some kind of substantial mitigating factor, like "Hydaelyn needed to do it or else Zodiark would enslave everyone" or "If Hydaelyn didn't do it, the evil space alien gorging itself on souls in the underworld couldn't be dealt with", or something else along those lines... even if something like that turned out to be in play, it wouldn't make the effects of the Sundering any less horrifying from my perspective. -5 doesn't become a positive value just because it's closer to 0 than -10, and bad things don't become good just because the alternative is worse. Which is why I think, should we ever get a full(er) account of what happened to the old world, the collateral damage of the Sundering should not be downplayed or glossed over.


... and that's it for this long-winded digression. Circling back to the topic at hand, I've always wondered how feasible it might be to establish gateways between the remaining shards as an alternative to further rejoinings. Instead of trying to force everything back into one world, networking what remains so people can move freely between the shards. Mind you, the last time anyone established a semi-permanent connection to one of the Reflections, it was Xande doing it with the Thirteenth/the Void, so it probably has a high chance of backfiring horribly.

Also, I apologize for causing anyone reading this to breathe manually. And again, my apologies.

[Shadotterdan]

I'm trying to imagine this and a dying world comes to mind. Considering how fast a lot of plants, animals and of course insects die, world would become barren pretty quickly and people would die out from starvation as they ran out of food sources, perhaps even turning to cannibalism before the end. I'm not quite sure this horrible fate is better than the usual...

Oof, why do I forget to check after making topics.

Anyways, I actually thought about that and reworded things slightly on the assumption that sentient souls are different from the plants and animals so that the horror of the world is reduced to just no more babies

[Erendis]

Yes, I noticed how it was worded, but it is very unlikely that ex sentient/non sentient aether would be differentiated before transfer.

[Jandor]

If there is, we'll be the ones finding it. And boy that will be asinine. Especially if they never address the time bubble. I mean, it'll still be ridiculous, and it'll be ridiculous because if the Ascians who know how the world works and how the world was rewritten couldn't find it in 12,000 years, and we find it in one despite being a fragmented baboon version of one of them, we'll be left to wonder if they were just jackin' it for 11,900 years or something.

They don't really need to, the time bubble concept has been taken massively out of context anyway.

If I recall correctly it was mentioned way back before even ARR had released, let alone any expansions, as a 'Simpsons' style excuse for avoiding the problem of the characters (mainly the twins) getting older.

It was never meant to be taken as literal canon that everything that we ever do happens within the span of one year.

[Rannie]

They don't really need to, the time bubble concept has been taken massively out of context anyway.

If I recall correctly it was mentioned way back before even ARR had released, let alone any expansions, as a 'Simpsons' style excuse for avoiding the problem of the characters (mainly the twins) getting older.

It was never meant to be taken as literal canon that everything that we ever do happens within the span of one year.

Except for during canon cutscenes it explicitly states only so many years has passed take for example after you fight the Saphire Weapon ala Gundam style, the Elezen with Gauis during the cutscene states that Ala Mhigo fell 20 years prior, which it also states the same when you start up or go into the description for Part 1 of New Game Plus for Stormblood canonically we are still in 1577 and puts us 5 years after 1.0.

[MikkoAkure]

Except for during canon cutscenes it explicitly states only so many years has passed take for example after you fight the Saphire Weapon ala Gundam style, the Elezen with Gauis during the cutscene states that Ala Mhigo fell 20 years prior, which it also states the same when you start up or go into the description for Part 1 of New Game Plus for Stormblood canonically we are still in 1577 and puts us 5 years after 1.0.

There's the year from the Emperor dying and the Doman revolution happening to the time we actually arrive in Doma. And included in that is the 2-3 month journey across the ocean in the fastest ship in the world. But the thing is, is that the game is an MMO with new people coming in all the time and was not designed to have a hard, exact timeline from the point that the game starts. You can already do coils after completing Shadowbringers and view side story cutscenes with characters that could to be dead according to the narrative at the time you do them, so it's already all over the place. In the end, I don't think you're supposed to think too hard about it. It's just an MMO and I don't view it as being meant to be as consistent as say a movie or a novel or literally any other type of video game.

[RyuDragnier]

Except for during canon cutscenes it explicitly states only so many years has passed take for example after you fight the Saphire Weapon ala Gundam style, the Elezen with Gauis during the cutscene states that Ala Mhigo fell 20 years prior, which it also states the same when you start up or go into the description for Part 1 of New Game Plus for Stormblood canonically we are still in 1577 and puts us 5 years after 1.0.

Which is still ridiculous because from how much stuff has happened in X amount of time (including the woman moving to Idylshire and then having a baby), it should be either 1579 or 1580.

[Rannie]

Seeing as how Solus was born in 1489* and died at the age of 88.... 1577-1489 is 88 years old . also part 2 of Stormblood in New game plus gives 25 years since the fall of Doma... the revolutionary the uprising in Doma per their chronology happens around the same time frame. Doma fell to the Empire in 1552*.

*page 51 of the encyclopedia Eorzea the time line up until ARR...

The only thing that I can claim to have it make plausible sense is teleportation and magic
*shrugs*

Edit: his age of death is specified in page 178 of the EE1

My point to all this is basically they're giving specified dates during canon events and not changing the said time bubble to be outside of the year 1577.

[Iscah]

My point to all this is basically they're giving specified dates during canon events and not changing the said time bubble to be outside of the year 1577.

That is, explicitly, their intention with the time bubble. However many years' worth of adventures we cram into it, the writers are not required to move time forward, keep track of changing dates or "x years since", or increase characters' ages.

1577 is an extremely long and stretchy year and we have clearly spent more than a year of time within it.

[Morningstar1337]

Maybe, just maybe, the orbit of the star around is sun is like 10 times as long as Earth's? Perhaps a "year" in eorzea is more like a decade on earth (with people's lifespans being similarly scaled cuz magic)?