Sundering and specific character questions. [Spoilers]

[Tsiron]

First, the unsundered. How did they remain unsundered? "They were off-planet at the time" is the simplest and most reasonable answer.

On the Moon, perhaps..?

[RyuDragnier]

On the Moon, perhaps..?

Considering the fact there are actual Amaurotine ruins up there, this is the most likely scenario. Now, why there was no moon present during The Final Days however...that's the big question. Unless of course it was created after them.

[Theozilla]

Koji said in an interview 3 years ago that the Sundering was isolated to just our planet and the Dragonstar was not affected.

Oh that’s interesting to hear, does anyone have a think to said interview out of curiosity/ for posterity’s sake?

Considering the fact there are actual Amaurotine ruins up there, this is the most likely scenario. Now, why there was no moon present during The Final Days however...that's the big question. Unless of course it was created after them.

I mean the current moon we know was formed after the Sundering, as Hydaelyn stated that Zodiark got “banished to the heavens”, i.e. got turned into the moon (and moons of the Shards?).


If the Sundering being localized to just the original planet (and local orbit) of the Source is indeed explicity stated canon, I guess Vyrerus’ theorizing of how hypothetical space travel would work makes the most sense (even with the Gordian of trying to figure out the time differential would affect stuff too, like different night skies).

If the Source and Shards are basically a local space-time singularity/aberration, would that mean only the Source can receive meteorites and asteroids falling onto to it, or would any meteorites falling into the local space the Source and Shards are located in, essentially be duplicated and the “same” meteorite falls into both the Source and the Shards? But then I suppose any “duplication” would only apply to non-living beings or else Midgardsormr and other “alien” beings would have been “duplicated” as well?

(to be clear I am fully aware that part of these inconsistencies/reconciliation issues, are just an inherent aspect of the suspension of disbelief for fantasy stories, but it is still fun/interesting to theorize how the metaphysics of the FFXIV universe works with its “alien” characters)

[Vyrerus]

Gordian of how the time lag/sync shenanigans works

So if we look at General Relativity and the Hafele-Keating experiment, we can see that when you move objects through space, time for them will speed up compared with any other objects closer to a center of gravity.

From the mess I cobbled together before, we know that the shards all have different Aetherial Coordinates while still occupying the same physical space. These Aetherial Coordinates make them further out of phase from the physical reality of the FFXIV universe, making them on that one plane, further from or closer to the gravity well of the Source. This means that their Aetherial Coordinates dictate how much faster or slower time passes on the Shards. Given that the Ascians essentially bring them in phase for Rejoinings, the closer a Shard gets to Rejoining status, the closer in phase it becomes to the Source's gravity well, causing their time scales to realign.

That's the best I've got on that. I would have gotten to it sooner, but I was preoccupied with my lunacy.

[Brightamethyst]

The lack of explanation for the time differences on the shards never bothered me since it's clearly just a plot device. They needed a way for it to be a 100 years ago, a month ago, and right now, all at the same time, and 'time sync shenanigans' is an easy way to explain it. The how and why is unimportant (probably.)