*Spoilers* Anyone feel joining Emet would have been better

[Vexander]

The thing is, uniting the Shards should have always been impossible from the moment the Thirteenth reflection fell to Void. There is no rejoining it to the source. The fragment of souls there will never return to the aetherial sea, nothing new will be born there, etc...

[Zoliru]

One question I do have about all this is, what were the Ascians' plans going forward had they succeeded in Rejoining all the shards? Because that still wouldn't have prevented the Final Days from eventually happening again. Was it just to have Zodiark be around forever, keeping all the celestial currents or whatever in balance? If that's the case, wouldn't Zodiark continuously require sacrifices to remain powerful enough to hold the world together?

Well Zodiarc was there as a tool to keep the celestial currents functioning, considering he didnt require any sacrifices and worked just as well for 12000 years while sundered, I would say it is unlikely that he would need more sacrifices anytime soon, especially considering the story clearly focuses on the ancients choosing sacrifice, not Zodiarc, Zodiarc is a tool.

You do make an important point though, rejoining would be achieved and everything would go back to normal ancient times, the real question is whenever or not the threat of Meiteion would be revealed, the most likely answer is that Hydaelyn in her last moments after her defeat would reveal the truth since its not like she wants the star to be destroyed. Though time travel complicates things because if time travel happened anyway then we as WoL also know the truth and could have informed Emet.

Since as you know, Meiteion has existed for thousands of years and has failed to destroy eithyris, in the case where nobody is aware of her, the question is up to whichever Ancient might decide to research the final days for academic purposes which at least seems to be a common thing in their society, to research and understand and fix problems, that person might figure it out in a timeline where nobody knows about Meiteion.
And considering the ancient society is about continuous improvement is more than likely that people would slowly learn more details about dynamis as a subject and some would choose to research it only to find there's a literal wave of dynamis slamming itself against the planet's celestial currents which will lead to further questions and research which would reveal the threat of meiteion in time.
After all, when more discoveries happen, the amount of subjects to research decrease(unless it opens other trees of research early on but stops near the end) so it stands to reason dynamis would get its time in the light.


Though there is a certain plot hole here, why did Meiteion sit at ultima thule for 12000 years doing nothing but singing the song of oblivion, like, you ve been trying this thing for 12000 years, are you really gonna do nothing to quicken that process?
Barrier at 100%, 12000 years, Meiteion is not doing even 0.1% of barrier damage in a year, there has to be ways to try to interfere, though you could argue she doesnt care cuz "le end is inevitable" but that only gives more time for the ancients to figure it out and beat her.

Nobody is saying "Ancients with no knowledge of Meteion would have beaten her". No, they would just have hid behind Zodiark and kept going with their life while the rest of the universe suffered, unbeknownst to them.

I just said this, it is highly likely the ancients would have figured it out due to one simple fact, immortality kinda gives you nigh infinite time, and it is also more than likely that there would be at least a few scholars research the final days just like we research historical events, hell it is a certainty because anyone intelligent would want to learn what can cause extinction level events.

And also "kept going with their life while the rest of the universe suffered"?

You mean the universe full of dead civilizations? Are you so desperate to villainise the Ancients that you blame them for focusing internally?

Because in my eyes the Ancients have been the good guys all along.

The thing is, uniting the Shards should have always been impossible from the moment the Thirteenth reflection fell to Void. There is no rejoining it to the source. The fragment of souls there will never return to the aetherial sea, nothing new will be born there, etc...

That is actually an interesting hypothesis, could you elaborate?

From memory in order to achieve a rejoining a certain energy needs to be so out of balance it consumes the entire shard, so I would assume since the void took over the thirteenth the rejoining of the thirteenth to the source would have been complete including souls and all.

But I do remember Emet saying they screwed up the thirteenth by rushing, though we werent given full details as to what that meant, do we know more about it?

I feel that would be a giant plot hole is true because it would make no sense for the Ascians to keep trying to rejoin all the shards if the final goal wouldnt be possible due to the mess that was the thirteenth, were they thinking of uniting all the shards and then somehow fixing the issue with the thirteenth and then rejoining it with the source?

[Cleretic]

I feel that would be a giant plot hole is true because it would make no sense for the Ascians to keep trying to rejoin all the shards if the final goal wouldnt be possible due to the mess that was the thirteenth, were they thinking of uniting all the shards and then somehow fixing the issue with the thirteenth and then rejoining it with the source?

Yes, this was generally expected to be the plan. Remember that at the time of the Sundering the Convocation (and Amaurot as a whole) was already well and truly going down the road of 'solve every problem by sacrificing lives to our dark god', so they were expecting to do that once Zodiark was whole enough to do something, as the Ascians, after ten thousand years, had learned nothing.

I don't remember if it was ever directly stated they wanted to do that with the Thirteenth, or just a fair assumption. The list of things they definitely have/would ask Zodiark for are full of such huge tasks that, frankly, re-balancing a shard's aether is probably among the more restrained ones.

[Jandor]

I feel that would be a giant plot hole is true because it would make no sense for the Ascians to keep trying to rejoin all the shards if the final goal wouldnt be possible due to the mess that was the thirteenth, were they thinking of uniting all the shards and then somehow fixing the issue with the thirteenth and then rejoining it with the source?

I think most of us having been working under the assumption that the Ascian plan basically amounted to 'rejoin the other 12 shards, worry about the 13th later.'
It's possible that given the circumstances they'd have just had to go with it and hope that 93% restored is enough for Zodiark to be able to figure out and "fix" the rest.

Plus, y'know, they're tempered. They're not going to give up even if it won't work, they'll keep trying to restore him till he's either restored or destroyed, and if they'd still been around when he was destroyed you can pretty much guarantee they'd have immediately set about trying to re-summon him.

It wasn’t sacrificed though. There’s an entire short story on the official site going into what happened after. The 8th astral era.

To be fair, the Ironworks and G'raha didn't know it would survive when they put their plan in to action, indeed they considered its destruction a reasonably likely outcome.

It all worked out in the end, but it was definitely more than a bit questionable in the moment.

[Vexander]

That is actually an interesting hypothesis, could you elaborate?

From memory in order to achieve a rejoining a certain energy needs to be so out of balance it consumes the entire shard, so I would assume since the void took over the thirteenth the rejoining of the thirteenth to the source would have been complete including souls and all.

But I do remember Emet saying they screwed up the thirteenth by rushing, though we werent given full details as to what that meant, do we know more about it?

I feel that would be a giant plot hole is true because it would make no sense for the Ascians to keep trying to rejoin all the shards if the final goal wouldnt be possible due to the mess that was the thirteenth, were they thinking of uniting all the shards and then somehow fixing the issue with the thirteenth and then rejoining it with the source?

It is indeed a plot hole. In Shadowbringers, Emet-Selch outright states the Ascians don't want the First to fall to Light either, because then it can never be rejoined to the Source. I believe between the Crystal Tower, Void Ark/Mhach, and also the Ivalice raids, we learned that the denizens of the Thirteenth, when it fell to Void, were all transformed into aether-starved/aether-consuming entities that cannot die, but simply reform in the Void after being destroyed. So, those fragments of souls could never return to the Aetherial Sea, and thus, no matter if the Ascians rejoined the remaining twelve Shards to the Source, they could never perfectly recreate the old Etheirys. The density of the souls of the people would not be the same.

I think an interesting hypothesis/question that one might have there is, could Hydaelyn have allowed the Thirteenth to fall to Void for that very reason? Would a soul that is 13/14ths whole still be susceptible to Dynamis?

[Cleretic]

I think an interesting hypothesis/question that one might have there is, could Hydaelyn have allowed the Thirteenth to fall to Void for that very reason? Would a soul that is 13/14ths whole still be susceptible to Dynamis?

What power would she have even had to stop it? Serious quesiton; with the limitations she was under, what could she have possibly done to make them not do that?

[Dark_Lord_Kuro]

Wasnt that supposed to be solved by the rejoining of the first? The light from the first would "cancel" the darkness from the 13th?
Or at least that how i understood it
I mean why else would they voluntairly make it a void of light seeing what happened when the 13th shard was made a void of darkness

[Jandor]

Wasnt that supposed to be solved by the rejoining of the first? The light from the first would "cancel" the darkness from the 13th?
Or at least that how i understood it
I mean why else would they voluntairly make it a void of light seeing what happened when the 13th shard was made a void of darkness

They didn't voluntarily make a void of light, they just messed up, again.

Luckily the goals of Hydaelyn and the Ascians aligned, in so far as neither wanted yet another void, so She bailed them out by chucking Minfilia at the flood of light.