Thinking about Elidibus

[PangTong]

Thanks for the response. I think I more or less get it, the one thing I'm still not sure on is this point:

So now Elidibus is in a pickle. He was trying to balance Light and Dark on the Source so he can trigger a calamity and Thordan just woke up three very powerful primals that are going to stomp all over his perfectly-balanced chessboard.
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He did care about balance: the balance needed to complete the rejoining, kill the sundered, restore the Source, bring back Zodiark, sacrifice a ton of living things, and resurrect his brothers.

To what extent is balance between Light and Dark needed to trigger calamities? This is the first I'm hearing of it. Like, we know that the 7th calamity was "astral" in its element i.e. all elements aspected astrally, which while not the same as Darkness, we know to be intrinsically related to Darkness and thus one would assume required (or at least caused as a natural consequence) an imbalance towards Darkness. Same thing with the 8th Calamity but towards umbral/Light. Is this not the case?

Or do you mean balance only to the extent necessary to avoid a Flood? In this case, why does Elidibus take issue with actions that push the Source towards Dark/Light, if this itself could be used to trigger a calamity? Or am I mistaken about that and he was just mad about the WoL messing with the Ascians' plans?

Also, if Elidibus was concerned with balance only to the extent necessary to accomplish the mission of the Ascians, that doesn't really make him any different to the other Ascians with regards to attitudes towards balance, right? So am I understanding you correctly in that his whole shtick of being the "balance guy" was just to con mortals into doing his (Zodiark's) bidding?


This is unrelated to my original question, but when you said:

Emet-Selch realized in his final probably-untempered moments that their plan had gone awry before even the Great Sundering, and that we might be worthy inheritors of the world after all.
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Elidibus realizes that there is nothing left to fight for, and the mission had probably failed before it had even truly begun.

What makes you think that the Ascians' plan was doomed from the start?