6.0 Story Speculations

[Fenral]

I also happen to believe there's a link of some sort between Amaurot and Sharlayan; if I recall right the spiraling shell design used as their emblem is seen at the end of Akademia Anyder.

We may have also gotten a tease of that link with the gear from Anyder, which was somewhat inexplicably a color-variant of the Sharlayan set from HW.

[KizuyaKatogami]

*Snip*

Really interesting theory and one that i’ve thought a few times myself. I especially like it because it actually aligns with Venat’s goal from ff12 and i think your theory is how they’re going to draw the inspiration from her.

[KizuyaKatogami]

We may have also gotten a tease of that link with the gear from Anyder, which was somewhat inexplicably a color-variant of the Sharlayan set from HW.

Yeah it was shire gear, although i don’t think that was meant to be a link, think it was just laziness xD. But yeah i have theorized that maybe they’re hiding the reveal of Sharlayan because it may look quite similar to Amaurot. Other links would include the music. Both Sharlayan and Amaurot having jazz themed music.

[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.

[WhiteArchmage]

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.

That also reminds me of something that's been making noise around my head for a while: The seal at Silvertear.

It supposedly prevented summoning, or at least made it more difficult to summon because if it existed for so long and still Summoning was such a big thing in the Allagan Empire's time, then it was doing a pretty bad job at it. But the 1.0 cinematic really drove home how the breaking of the seal "unleashed"... SOMETHING to do with Primals. My out-of-the-left-field theory is that SOMEONE/THING is really trying to stop that aspect of creation magicks. Either believing that unchecked Summoning/Creation Magicks could recreate the End of Days/Terminus, or a "it was the best idea at the time", could even be a mix of both: wanting to keep a check on creation magicks but the Seal was the best solution in a short time.

Granted, that WAS 1.0 and a lot of those ideas probably got discarded for 2.0+. But seeing how the team replayed through 2.x for the ShB story, it'd be a nice bookends to bring in unexplored stuff from 1.0 for the end of the game's first Big Arc.

[Cilia]

While the 1.0 opening cutscene does suggest Silvertear held some sort of seal on summons... I'm not wholly sure what it's meant to symbolize anymore.

Summons have definitely become more commonplace since Silvertear, but we know that summons were being carried out ages ago in Meracydia. Further people are still able to summon even without summoning rites (Susano'o) and despite being an alien presence in the world (Gilgamesh summoning Enkidu).

I don't know what Silvertear's deal is anymore, but while Hydaelyn's sundering may have erased the collective knowledge of how to summon on purpose (only surviving thanks to Lahabrea, Emet-Selch, and Elidibus escaping) I'm not sold on the idea the whole point of the sundering was to achieve that end.

[Kesey]

While the 1.0 opening cutscene does suggest Silvertear held some sort of seal on summons... I'm not wholly sure what it's meant to symbolize anymore.

Summons have definitely become more commonplace since Silvertear, but we know that summons were being carried out ages ago in Meracydia. Further people are still able to summon even without summoning rites (Susano'o) and despite being an alien presence in the world (Gilgamesh summoning Enkidu).

I don't know what Silvertear's deal is anymore, but while Hydaelyn's sundering may have erased the collective knowledge of how to summon on purpose (only surviving thanks to Lahabrea, Emet-Selch, and Elidibus escaping) I'm not sold on the idea the whole point of the sundering was to achieve that end.

I agree. I also thought the story was pretty clear that sundering was done to sever the power source for Zodiark. This is also why the Ascians want the rejoinings, because each time another world is merged into the source Zodiark's power grows.

[Bright-Flower]

I suspect that they've simply gone in another direction from whatever was initially being implied with the Silvertear cinematic and it may no longer be relevant. Even if it is addressed in 6.0 I have a feeling it's not going to be whatever was intended all those years ago.

[RyuDragnier]

While the 1.0 opening cutscene does suggest Silvertear held some sort of seal on summons... I'm not wholly sure what it's meant to symbolize anymore.

Summons have definitely become more commonplace since Silvertear, but we know that summons were being carried out ages ago in Meracydia. Further people are still able to summon even without summoning rites (Susano'o) and despite being an alien presence in the world (Gilgamesh summoning Enkidu).

I don't know what Silvertear's deal is anymore, but while Hydaelyn's sundering may have erased the collective knowledge of how to summon on purpose (only surviving thanks to Lahabrea, Emet-Selch, and Elidibus escaping) I'm not sold on the idea the whole point of the sundering was to achieve that end.

I am suspecting that what the seal (which was likely composed of white auracite) may have been doing was keeping the Bureau of the Architects safe. As we learned in Tales from the Shadows: Ere Our Curtain Falls, the concepts (blueprints) of primals were kept in the Bureau of the Architects. We also learned in the Community Cohesion sidequest in Amaurot that you can't create something from a concept if you don't know how to do creation magic...unless said concept is sealed in crystal. Since a primal must be invoked by somebody who knows the concept, you must first know the concept to begin with (which Lahabrea was having to make prior to this).

When the airship's ceruleum engines blew up in the 1.0 opening cinematic, it shattered the seal on the bureau, allowing Ascians into part of it where they grabbed partial concepts, allowing the primals to be summoned (thus the vision of them "taking off" from the light). Midgardsormr's role in this scenario was to prevent the Bureau from ever getting unearthed and to safeguard it thanks to the white auracite sealing it.

[EdwinLi]

Sharlayan!

Looks like the speculation I made previously was right about Sharlayan choosing to do nothing and try to be the only civilization to survive the end of the world which may lead to certain Scions and WoL being trapped in Sharlayan because of the Sharlayan government