The questions I want EW to answer the most: WHY and HOW was the world sundered?

[Lyth]

6.0: Hydaelyn and Zodiark are both sundered fragments that arose from Necron, the original primordial primal of the void, the Echo is a debuff in the final fight that you can click off, the Lambs of Dalamud are running the show in Sharlayan, Zenos is walking around with the rest of Azem's sundered rejoinings, and Tataru has joined forces with Rowena to profit off your successes through Azem Fan Club T-shirt sales.

[Kesey]

What I can't square isn't the deep lore explanation of tempering, but the high odds the story beat has set up the WOL is tempered.

Currently, the WOL is Hydaelyn's chosen champion, but it doesn't fit with the Azem back story as we know it. Azem left the council of what would become the Ascians refusing to summon Zodiark and ALSO ignored the requests of Venat's group to summon Hydaelyn.

If Azem is Hydaelyn's champion then why didn't Azem side with summoning of Hydaelyn?

Now if Azem refused the idea of summoning either on purpose, then given all the story beats we've been handed up to this point, we can not rule out that Azem was tempered into her service. Even if the whole idea was to temper them to protect them from being tempered by Zodiark and not mind control them.

And when you think on this potential plot more, tempering Azem's soul fragment is the only way to ensure that Azem does the destiny Hydaelyn laid before them. Because with the echo there is the threat that Azem remembers the Ancient days and why they shouldn't be with Hydaelyn or Zodiark.

And this is further problematic with the existence of the Azem soulstone, because all of those Ancient soul stones are used to make former sundered Ascians remember their Ancient memories, the WOL is carrying around the answer of what happened to Azem in Ancient times in their pocket waiting for the right echo moment to trigger.

This, of course, is only conjecture, but again can't be ruled out yet.

[Cleretic]

5.3+?: Zenos wants to play Planetary Rock'em Sock'em Robots, and he's called dibs on the purple one. (I seriously hope they don't do this.)

I'm not fond of it either (I'm not fond of any Zenos plot really, with the exception of watching him doing his own thing in 5.0, that had a nice 'Vegeta in early Namek Saga' vibe), and there's still room for them to swerve, but I wouldn't be looking for it. At this point it's in sort of a 'you were told you were getting fish for dinner, so don't get mad that it's not chicken' situation. Like how Stormblood was ultimately all about fighting the Empire, and never meaningfully changed from that for more than three minutes at a time, but also never once pretended it wouldn't be.

And this is further problematic with the existence of the Azem soulstone, because all of those Ancient soul stones are used to make former sundered Ascians remember their Ancient memories, the WOL is carrying around the answer of what happened to Azem in Ancient times in their pocket waiting for the right echo moment to trigger.

First of all: It is worth noting that the Azem stone is not an 'official' one in the same way as everything else. It was made in secret by Emet. It also doesn't seem to carry an actual memory of Azem like the others carried memories of the 'final' Convocation; remember that when we called on it like we did the others, we instead got Emet talking about them, and a spell either of Azem's or inspired by them. So even if the WoL does have part of Azem's soul (which itself is still not confirmed, but we're being led down that path very hard, so even if it's wrong the truth will be following from that assumption), that crystal isn't designed to do the job in the same way that, say, Deudalaphon's is.

There's also something to remember about the whole situation from Azem's presumed angle: since their last known presence, the Convocation have shifted into becoming planet-destroying genocidal monsters on an unfathomable scale, while Hydaelyn's been spending all that time trying to get them to knock it off. I think it's folly to assume that Azem wouldn't be realigning their expectations over the years, and if they had a say I think it's perfectly reasonable for them to look at Hydaelyn and go 'you know what, I didn't much like you, but the other guys went crazy, we need to get them to stop before anything else'.

[Vyrerus]

6.0: Tataru has joined forces with Rowena

6.1 We have to bring down their mercantile empire, economically. Very scary!