Quote Originally Posted by Iscah View Post
An explanation I've seen elsewhere that makes sense:
The inhabitants are initially recreated memories, as explained to us while we're exploring, but that changes when we summon Emet and Hyth and they work their magic to allow us to reclaim the other Scions' souls. This (according to the theory) flooded the whole zone with aether, replacing the dynamis that originally gave it form – so the Scions' aether is no longer needed to do the same job – and this seems to have affected the inhabitants as well. It has given them physical aether-based forms and they seem to have broken out of the frozen state they were trapped in.
So would that mean
the Ultima Thule denizens weren’t composed of souls prior to Emet and Hythlodaeus’ magick and/or Meteoin’s defeat and the dead sun spilling out the souls it had had trapped inside it?



Quote Originally Posted by Iscah View Post
What do you mean, I seem to have a pet subject...?

G'raha's timeline has always been an oddity because it contrasted with the Alexander plot before it, which indicates that time loops are the standard outcome of time travel shenanigans and G'raha's successful "breaking out" is inconsistent.

My own theory is that the split specifically happened because he altered the past in a way that could not be reconciled with his original future, so the timeline has to take a second course but the first one can't be shut down.

For everything else, the changes get absorbed into the single original timeline.

The "Elpis time loop" doesn't have anything to do with G'raha's time loop spiral besides that his actions paved the way for the timeline where the Elpis loop is completed.

You don't need one to happen "before" the other can be fulfilled. In the sort of objective whole-of-timeline view of everything that happened over time, they're just separate loops and swirls that link into each other.

We may feel like we "create" time as we live it, but as soon as it's possible to make contact with someone from another point in time, you have to accept that from another person's perspective your future has already happened even though you are in full control of your actions at all times.
Wouldn’t it just be simpler to just accept that Alexander and Endwalker causal loop time travel while G’raha Tia in ShadowBringers does multiverse-theory (a la Future Trunks in DBZ) time travel. And therefore just assume that Exarch!G’raha’s timeline had a slightly different history even before the 8th Umbral Calamity?