6.0 Story Speculations

[Rosenstrauch]

1: Why would Emet try and reason with someone who's tempered?
2: Ysayle, she had the blessing and yet pretty much didn't care, did as she pleased and used her powers to cause more harm than any good, she wasn't forced to peruse the agenda of stopping the Ascians

For the first: Emet-Selch is tempered, as is Elidibus. Mitron might be tempered as well, and the same might hold true for Fandaniel. This has not stopped the Scions, the WoL, or Ryne from attempting to reason with any of them. Likewise, Tiamat was explicitly tempered, aware of this fact, and unwilling to free herself from her bonds out of the belief that she would fall sway to Bahamut's will if she approached him. This carries the strong implication that she is not currently under his control, and is able to think and act for herself. And even before all this... recall that Lyse was willing to entertain the notion that the Qalyana, despite being tempered to Lakshmi, were still worthy of consideration and so invited them to join the summit held in Ala Mhigo to help decide how the nation would be governed going forward. And even though that backfired on everyone involved, nobody ever said Lyse made the wrong call in giving them the opportunity to be heard. Nor did she stop trying to make peace with the Qalyana after the fact, even though their current leader from that point on—the resurrected daughter of the previous leader—literally has no soul.

If the protagonists are willing to give such consideration to the tempered, despite the previously held belief that they had to be killed on sight to prevent further primal summonings, there is no particular reason why someone like Emet-Selch would refuse to do so despite having a much clearer picture of what being tempered actually means.


As for the second: I would recommend rewatching the cutscene after the Shiva fight. In it, Ysayle echoes Hydaelyn's own catch phrase and a particular verse from Answers, strongly implying that, like the WoL, she'd been in direct contact with Hydaelyn on at least one occasion. Her end goal, which remained the same from her first appearance all the way up to her death, is similarly in line with what Hydaelyn would surely want: An end to the Dragonsong War. Another thing to keep in mind is that Midgardsormr is explicitly bound to act as Hydaelyn's servant, yet he made no effort to stop Niddhog's Horde from descending upon Ishgard, nor did he ever come to the city's defense over the course of 1,000 years of bloodshed.

There is a strong enough implication through Ysayle and Midgardsormr's actions to suggest Hydaelyn had written Ishgard off as an acceptable loss if it meant putting an end to the conflict it had brought upon itself. And it's not hard to imagine Hydaelyn would view things that way, knowing what she did to the old world in pursuit of containing Zodiark. And while we came to Ishgard's defense, we had to do so without Hydaelyn's Blessing.

[KizuyaKatogami]

I appreciate that you said this in two lines when it probably would have taken me two pages, lol.

DRK is also entirely rooted in love and protection. Even though "darkside" is tapping into rage and negativity, that "flame in the abyss" is the level to which you care and love that you're that furious at seeing people violated in the first place. Like Blitz said, DRK is, ironically, one of the most "good"-coded roles in the game depending on how you look at it.

Except how many times in those quests were there things like reveling in the blood of people and creatures. Doesn’t sound very heroic to me .

[Lauront]

I am of the view that Emet's entire backup plan beyond the Lightwarden thing - i.e. with the MC having met his challenge, he has Hythlodaeus deliver the Convocation crystals to them (which would mean supplying them to him beforehand) and thus provides the MC with a means to call him their side while dealing with Elidibus to put him to rest - shows he was able to engage in a significant amount of autonomy. Two things stand out to me - for one, Zodiark is dormant. For another, while Emet does pay homage to him as a saviour, he is fully aware he is not a god in the traditional sense. So while his original plan is consistent with Zodiark's will, so too is Zodiark's resurrection instrumental to their plan and therefore subservient to it in a way.

With all that we have learnt of Primals, and all the possible lore points they might draw on (e.g. auracites as their potential batteries as per Mikoto's exposition), it's fair to say the usual fare of Primals are rather basic by comparison to Hydaelyn and Zodiark and that we are learning more and more of how the analogy is only correct at a rudimentary level. They're Primals+++.

Personally, I don't think tempering on the MC matters too much unless something happens to Hydaelyn that made it matter, i.e. it was used to compel them, since it does seem to be at the Primal's discretion whether to use it that way. Otherwise there's too many get out of jail cards with tempering that make it rather inconsequential beyond being a form of aetheric alignment (plus perhaps the umbral state of the soul) - even an influx of memories returning can be done with or without it.

There is a strong enough implication through Ysayle and Midgardsormr's actions to suggest Hydaelyn had written Ishgard off as an acceptable loss if it meant putting an end to the conflict it had brought upon itself. And it's not hard to imagine Hydaelyn would view things that way, knowing what she did to the old world in pursuit of containing Zodiark. And while we came to Ishgard's defense, we had to do so without Hydaelyn's Blessing.

When you combine that with the lyrics in the Fiend (standard "Warning: Infectious levels of edge" caution applies), you have to wonder if it's something to do with her own primal "imperative".

[Rosenstrauch]

Except how many times in those quests were there things like reveling in the blood of people and creatures. Doesn’t sound very heroic to me .

I will never forget the time when, in the pursuit of helping a grieving widow come to terms with her late husband's death in the Dragonsong War and the suffering she ended up enduring because of it, we goaded an elderly priest into attacking us so we could kill him in "self-defense".

There's breaking the letter of the law to uphold the spirit of it, and then there's... that.

[KizuyaKatogami]

I will never forget the time when, in the pursuit of helping a grieving widow come to terms with her late husband's death in the Dragonsong War and the suffering she ended up enduring because of it, we goaded an elderly priest into attacking us so we could kill him in "self-defense".

There's breaking the letter of the law to uphold the spirit of it, and then there's... that.

THANK YOU! i bring that up so many times because that quest is embedded into my memory. When i did that quest i was honestly so surprised that it took a turn like that. That’s why i could never see the drk quests as just upholding the law in our hands. We did pretty messed up things and if you read the journal entries during each quest you can see some of the twisted aspects of it. IT seems to be another case of "it's okay when the protagonist does it, but if the antagonist does it its bad." And this is a theme i see a lot of throughout playing the game. There's things the protags do that are very questionable and a lot of people turn a blind eye to it, but then crucify the antagonists for doing the same thing. Such a double standard.

[BlitzAceRush]

Snip

Yet there has been no example of someone fully tempered being able to turn around and do something in direct opposition to their primal even in your example, the Qalyana at ever turn served their primal, so again, unless Hydaelyn and Zodiark temper on a fundamentally different level, why would a 12 thousand+ year old Ancient waste his time trying to convince someone who couldn't due to being tempered to an opposing force to change sides? Either we're not tempered, Hydaelyn's version doesn't stop us turning against them.

The protagonists reach out to the tempered because they want to have hope, hope that there's salvation and understanding to be had for those tempered, before the cure, that hope was met with suffering at worst or indifference at best.
Tiamat I already pointed out in my pervious post that even the Scions make note her case is special, she's still sane, still herself which is already not normal, her fear is an untested one, would she succumb if she came in direct contact with him? She doesn't know, but given her power, doesn't want to risk it, why is she like this? Tempered but still herself? The Scions takes some guesses, which I listed in my post, but again it's expanding on what we know about tempering just like back in Stormblood when Zenos likened it to a contest of wills, combined that with them positing that how you feel about the thing you summon can also influence it and it's clearly not as clear cut as "summon thing, you now worship thing" as we believed back in ARR.

As for Ysayle I never doubted she had contact with Hydaelyn, in fact that was kind of my point, that she was blessed and chose to do her own thing rather than anything Ascian related.
As for everything else, I kind of disagree with the notion that Hydaelyn's in the atherial sea playing 4d chess with the world, given how low on power she is at the start of ARR, it seems to me more she just seeks out people she thinks will do good and gives them the blessing in the hopes their own nature will lead them to making a difference, most of the people she gives it too seem to do just that, like Tenzen, Ramza, they go on to save their corner of the world from one danger or another, but they were good people trying to do right regardless, the blessing just let them reach higher. She doesn't even take it away if you misuse it, if she even can, while Ysayle's goal was noble she did a lot of harm in how she tried to make it happen, yet Hydaelyn didn't do anything, either because she can't perhaps due to her dwindling power or choice.
We seem to be the exception and with the reveals as to who we used to be, that makes sense, but she basically blew what little power she had left helping us out but even before then, it seems most everyone else who gets the blessing is on their own to decided how to use it.

[Erendis]

Not sure where it is better to promote this but since the Q&A will happen during fanfest this place is as good as any. Ask Yoshida Anything.

[Fenral]

I might have missed this if it came up before, but... is there anything in particular keeping us from using Azem's crystal to become an Ascian?

[MoofiaBossVal]

I might have missed this if it came up before, but... is there anything in particular keeping us from using Azem's crystal to become an Ascian?

Nope, and as far I can tell, there would be no downsides to doing so. In fact, the WoL has only to gain by using the soul crystal, as they will receive knowledge of what was going on in the past that could be crucial to stopping Fandaniel, the Final Days, and the Sound in the present day. Would also presumably give the WoL knowledge of/access to new techniques, like the Ascian's teleportation abilities (would be useful for getting to the Moon or quickly traversing the planet during these urgent times), or spells that the ancient Amaurotines and Azem could use back then.

Still holding out hope that Azem/Ascian of Light is going to be a secret job you get during the Endwalker MSQ.

[KizuyaKatogami]

I might have missed this if it came up before, but... is there anything in particular keeping us from using Azem's crystal to become an Ascian?

Most likely just basic knowledge on how to use it. It will most likely be taught to us at some point in 6.0 though.