Why did the Ascians never try to do these?

[Anonymoose]

The difficulty I have with this is the fact that Courgevais, an ascian, provided the horn which would power Alexander's core.

As a Lominsan I am honor-bound to point out that this was Travanchet.

It means at least one ascian had to have been aware that a time-travelling-city primal was on the board.

I hate to lean on this argument because it's used against me every time I whine about Shadowbringers time travel throwing all the rules established by Alexander time travel out the window, but The Wings of Time and The Rift are very different methods with potentially-similar-looking results. They're different beasts when it comes to how time is traveled and the effect it has on the world(s) when it is done, so even if they knew about Alexander (whose own conclusion about itself was that it's difficult to use towards any specific goal where by the benefits outweigh the drawbacks), The Tycoon is still big news.

<snip>

To be honest I'm not sure where we disagree. Emet-Selch admitted these things. That his cooperation was whimsical. That he was trying to "understand what drives the hero of the Source. To determine if our goals are truly incompatible," because just trying to get rid of them wasn't working for anyone and he can just keep scheming if he wants. That he was still scheming "every hour of every day." And, when we show up, that his scheme he decided on isn't quite going to plan exactly because his invitation was only for "abomination, ripe with the power to bring about the world's annihilation."

Imho, offering cooperation with the stance of "I'll be spending the entire time I'm with you gathering intel and laying groundwork ensuring I can steamroll you if I want, you'd be wise to do the same, but hey, I hope we can be friends" is not exactly good faith (This is actually debatable! Some would say Emet-Selch was operating under limited sincerity of intention by admitting his bad faith, so it's kind of good faith up until he shot G'raha.) I agree with the stuff you said, too, though, so I don't it's at odds.

Arguably, Emet-Selch wrote a fan-fic and gave it a chance to play out but the Warrior of Light didn't validate his headcanon, lol.