Quote Originally Posted by Anonymoose View Post
The thing he was having the Warriors of Darkness do was explained in multiple pieces across a long time, but, thank the Twelve, Ardbert just summarized it when he was falling for Urianger's "Hey, why don't you just kill the Warrior of Light instead?" misdirection.
Wow, that went over my head. I think when I read this line I assumed that the "new god" they were referring to was Zodiark, or perhaps the next primal to be summoned by the beast tribes, but with that context neither of those makes a whole lot of sense. I'd be curious to know if there were other clues I missed.

Thanks for all the responses. While I've got the ear of some experts there's one other slightly less serious thing I've always found a bit weird about the Ascians in the story:

At some point the Ascians decide that the biggest obstacle in the way of their goal is the Warrior of Light, and so they set about trying to find ways to kill us or otherwise use us. But it's like... the Ascians are immortal. The Warrior of Light is not. They've already spent thousands and thousands of years just on the seven calamities they've managed so far. Just... wait for us to die lol? Even if we assume the Warrior of Light/the soul of Azem will just continuously reincarnate, there must surely be periods of some years where they're not capable of much (presumably our character was a baby at some point). And wouldn't said reincarnation happen anyway even if the Ascians killed us? Seems a lot less risky to just wait a bit than trying to get stuff done while we're around, and getting permakilled in the process.

I guess you can just put it down to the Ascians underestimating us, or maybe they just think it'd be a shame to put all the plans they've been working so hard on on pause and potentially have their projects (like Garlemald) go up in smoke, but even so, they literally have all the time in the world. I suspect the real reason for this is "because the story needs to happen," so if they ever actually give a strong reason for why the Ascians are in such a damn hurry to cause the 8th so soon after the 7th, I'll be really impressed.