6.0 Story Speculations

[Lauront]

Thinking on the Final Days, putting some pieces together and hypothesizing...

The Fatebreaker (Eden 11 Boss) carries the epithet "Dread Hope"—this is because he represents both Ran'jit and Thancred (Dread and Hope respectively). And when he's defeated, Mitron balks at the achievement, refusing to accept that the WoL and Ryne could triumph over her fears when his own people couldn't do the same. One might argue the reason we were able to do so, despite how powerful the Fatebreaker was, is because Ryne had already conquered her fear of Ran'jit and had a... three year reality check in Thancred's case. While she certainly fears the former and loves the latter, they aren't quite the deific figures Mitron wanted them to be.

Or maybe Ran'jit and Thancred were just second bananas to the WoL. Who can say? But I digress—what I want to do is draw attention to the words "dread" and hope", and two synonyms for those words: "fear" and "faith". The Fatebreaker is a being straddling the line between both, and was manifested using both as a source of strength. In this respect, the Fatebreaker can be said to be both a Primal—a false god born out of the would-be summoner's faith—and a Terminus, born from the unchecked creation magicks of the Amaurotine people and their deepest fears. And of course, both Primals and the Terminus share the common root of being born from, and shaped by, the subconscious of their creators.

With that in mind, I have to wonder if Venat and Hydaelyn's goal was, in actuality, stripping humanity of the power to summon such creatures by any means necessary, and that this goal is what led to Hydaelyn sundering not just Zodiark, but also the entire world. If the Unsundered trio hadn't somehow avoided it, there wouldn't be anyone capable of using creation magic left. Nor would there be anyone left who could pass on the knowledge of how to use it. After all, the Unsundered raising up their fallen comrades and seeding civilizations with the power to summon primals is the very reason they keep cropping up, and it's not out of the question that the few edge cases where the Ascians aren't involved (Enkidu, Susano, Lakshmi) wouldn't be possible if the Source hadn't been rejoined as many times as it had been.

That's been something I've put forth as well - if there was a material difference with the newly minted souls/new life, and that consisted in the ability to use creation magicks, it would then tie into their belief that Zodiark was not a "permanent" solution, and close that circle. I think where questions begin to arise is around the ability to enervate, which is how she was able to cause the Sundering in the first place. Emet-Selch describes it as a power that hadn't been seen before in the French version and, when you think about it, it is a fairly complex thing to do. It may have been part of the original plan (whether known to the wider circle of summoners or just Venat), but equally it may have simply been a tool to weaken Zodiark and possibly, once installed in the Underworld/Aetherial Sea, dilute the souls coming out of it, with no intention of breaking up the world along with it. Her aspect of light (assuming it was chosen out of more than just a desire to create the opposite aspect to Zodiark) alone would suffice to alter the aether in the Aetherial Sea to a more umbral state, depending on how they were installed into the Aetherial Sea. Of course, with it being such a new power, it's not out of the question it'd behave in unpredictable ways when deployed against a Primal in the very heart of the planet. Especially if the power was handed to them by a third party dissatisfied with the fact that the world didn't end the first time round.