*Spoilers* Anyone feel joining Emet would have been better

[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?