Do the Scions know? (Spoilers)

[YianKutku]

That's not certain, actually. It's hinted that only folks who have the Echo are ones who bear a fragment of an Ancient's soul. For everyone else, their souls are simply Lifestream stuff and upon death dissolve back into the Lifestream, just as described in the ARR quests where they were discussing how to kill an Ascian.

If it WERE the case that EVERYONE has a fragment - what happens when you run out? Remember that fully three quarters of all Ancients were absorbed into Zodiark, so Soul fragments can only come from the remaining one quarter, and those fragments need to be distributed among all the races, including the Beastmen. What happens if a child is born and there are no fragments left?

I actually recall a Q&A on these forums after 5.0 release where a bunch of lore questions were answered, but I can't find it right now. In it, there was an answer about Ancient souls which said that every soul was an Ancient fragment.

I remember this because it was so unexpected, and also caused a lot of problems and contradictions to established lore (or lore hints), such as where Alpha's soul came from. However, as mentioned, I have no idea how to search for that thread.

(Can anyone else corroborate or find that thread? I have the vague impression it also had the answer from Soken that the Rak'tika "Civilizations" theme didn't have any real lyrics.)

[Kesey]

I actually recall a Q&A on these forums after 5.0 release where a bunch of lore questions were answered, but I can't find it right now. In it, there was an answer about Ancient souls which said that every soul was an Ancient fragment.

I remember this because it was so unexpected, and also caused a lot of problems and contradictions to established lore (or lore hints), such as where Alpha's soul came from. However, as mentioned, I have no idea how to search for that thread.

(Can anyone else corroborate or find that thread? I have the vague impression it also had the answer from Soken that the Rak'tika "Civilizations" theme didn't have any real lyrics.)

I could be over thinking this theory, but I'm starting to wonder about the speculation Urianger had at the end of 5.3 about the connections between world religious beliefs and the crossover with Azem. We see the deification of "The 12" where one member was called Azem and I begin to wonder if the ancient soul shards in the other Scions correlate back the other deities in "The 12" and they weren't really gods but a group of adventurers who saved the world together long ago and were important enough to be remembered but over time the story gets muddied and they are recognized as deities. Even places like the Azim Steppe where Azem is the central deity, still interacts in their religious stories with other beings.

[YianKutku]

I could be over thinking this theory, but I'm starting to wonder about the speculation Urianger had at the end of 5.3 about the connections between world religious beliefs and the crossover with Azem. We see the deification of "The 12" where one member was called Azem and I begin to wonder if the ancient soul shards in the other Scions correlate back the other deities in "The 12" and they weren't really gods but a group of adventurers who saved the world together long ago and were important enough to be remembered but over time the story gets muddied and they are recognized as deities. Even places like the Azim Steppe where Azem is the central deity, still interacts in their religious stories with other beings.

It's kind of the friction between verisimilitude for mythology, in that plenty of things get conflated together to form the bulk of beliefs about a given deity, and Doylist storytelling, where we're supposed to look for hints and foreshadowing everywhere as Chekov's Guns. (I'm putting aside the stated habit of the devs to deliberately leave open plot hooks so they can come back and use them much later; back when the Warriors of Darkness first appeared in 3.x, the Shadowbringers storyline had not been conceived of. Source is Live Letter LIII.)

We know, albeit from 1.0 dialogue, that the current idea of Rhalgr as "a bag of angry muscles" was actually based off an Archon from the Fifth Astral Era. (Roegadyn name, so I can't spell it.) So there's already precedent for the images and (most likely) domains of the gods being worshipped now having been changed over time. This is exactly how mythology works in RL, and I'm sure Koji Fox would love to expound more on this (as would Banri Oda, who I think is a bigger mythology fan).

But we also have this whole "Azem and Azeyma and Azim" thing, specifically mentioned in the game dialogue, which takes time (however trivial in the grand scheme) to code in, which means it must be significant. This is not how mythology in RL works, but it is how self-contained stories work.

[Rasler_Heios]

I could be over thinking this theory, but I'm starting to wonder about the speculation Urianger had at the end of 5.3 about the connections between world religious beliefs and the crossover with Azem. We see the deification of "The 12" where one member was called Azem and I begin to wonder if the ancient soul shards in the other Scions correlate back the other deities in "The 12" and they weren't really gods but a group of adventurers who saved the world together long ago and were important enough to be remembered but over time the story gets muddied and they are recognized as deities. Even places like the Azim Steppe where Azem is the central deity, still interacts in their religious stories with other beings.

There were prevailing theories before that "the 12" were the main group who opposed the Convocation of Fourteen and originally called Hydealyn. When the star split, this original group were in the source and helped propagate a religion in line to their beliefs. The weird thing here is you are using the title/seat of Azem which is used by the Convocation. Azem defecting to this other group might have chosen another name/title to go by, but instead was still using the same name/title.

[Gerel]

I actually recall a Q&A on these forums after 5.0 release where a bunch of lore questions were answered, but I can't find it right now. In it, there was an answer about Ancient souls which said that every soul was an Ancient fragment.

I remember this because it was so unexpected, and also caused a lot of problems and contradictions to established lore (or lore hints), such as where Alpha's soul came from. However, as mentioned, I have no idea how to search for that thread.

(Can anyone else corroborate or find that thread? I have the vague impression it also had the answer from Soken that the Rak'tika "Civilizations" theme didn't have any real lyrics.)

I can recall that thread, yeah. I think the question pertained more as to whether or not every soul was strengthened on the Source during a Calamity, with the answer being a "yes," but that it didn't mean every soul was a fragment of an Ancient (the race). There were other races coming into being post-Zodiark, after all, which became the focus of groups like Venat's.

EDIT: Think I found the relevant question by digging through my Discord DMs. Here's the link.

4. Emet-Selch remarks that we are of the Source, "seven times rejoined". Is he talking about our soul, or only the world? If our soul has been rejoined, does that mean everyone on the Source has been rejoined to another soul-fragment each Calamity, or are we (and perhaps other specific characters) special in some way?
Oda: Each time there is a rejoining, any living things have the souls rejoined. This is true for everyone equally. The souls get more dense, and potentially more powerful.

Yoshi: The Rejoining isn't just for the characters, but for the whole world. Of course, this does apply to yourself, as well.

[Veloran]

There were other races coming into being post-Zodiark, after all, which became the focus of groups like Venat's.

We actually have no evidence of this. Half the Amaurotines were sacrificed to restart the proliferation of life on the planet, but we're never actually told that this life is materially any different from the rest of the unsundered life previously existing on the star. We also don't know the timeline of how long this went on before the Anyder summoned Hydaelyn and the Sundering happened, or whether any sort of new races/species ever came into existence in that period. Personally I think Hydaelyn is directly responsible for what forms the sundered life took after the star was shattered.

Obviously souls can exist outside of all this as evidenced by the dragons, so for Alpha we should just assume he developed a soul on his own.

[Kesey]

We actually have no evidence of this. Half the Amaurotines were sacrificed to restart the proliferation of life on the planet, but we're never actually told that this life is materially any different from the rest of the unsundered life previously existing on the star. We also don't know the timeline of how long this went on before the Anyder summoned Hydaelyn and the Sundering happened, or whether any sort of new races/species ever came into existence in that period. Personally I think Hydaelyn is directly responsible for what forms the sundered life took after the star was shattered.

Obviously souls can exist outside of all this as evidenced by the dragons, so for Alpha we should just assume he developed a soul on his own.

I think it was established that the Allagans created the Ixali and the giants surrounding the crystal tower. So there is post sundered races that came into being, even if they are just beast tribes.