*Spoilers* The Past and After the Endwalker MSQ End

[Cilia]

More pointedly G'raha never intended even to survive the events of Shadowbringers, and spent the remainder of his time on the First as the Crystal Exarch trying to find a way to send the rest of the Scions home. He can't do it on the Source either, since that Crystal Tower isn't retrofitted for spacetime travel, and doesn't know if it's possible at all. We don't either.

Our journey to unsundered Elpis was made affirming we would come back, and thus wouldn't be able to effect meaningful change. The implicit rule therefore is that if you effect meaningful change you won't be able to return to the (relative) present or the (relative) present will reflect said changes, creating a paradox. In other words, either way you won't be able to return to the "now" you know.

Again, would you risk that?

[Veloran]

Would you risk throwing all that away?

Again, would you risk that?

Because saving people who you can potentially help is the heroic thing to do.

[EaraGrace]

Because saving people who you can potentially help is the heroic thing to do.

We’ll then we need only two things.

1. We need to rediscover time travel magicks. It’ll take centuries of work, and lots of blood, sweat and tears. You’d also need to an Ancient to help improve and empower the process.

2. You need a massive amount of aether and a way to store it. You can use the crystal tower again, but you’d need to supplement the Aether in some way as even the amount from the Calamity of Earth will be lacking. Might need to summon a primal, one equivalent to the heart of Zodiark.

Then when you get there, you better hope someone with the ability to perceive aether like Emet and Hyth are around, not just anyone can see the weakened form you’ll arrive with. Thereafter it’s up to you. You can try convincing them of what’s about to happen, most won’t believe you without proof and you won’t be at Elpis in time for the proof to reveal itself. You’d also need to avoid being captured and interrogated.

But let’s say you convince them of Meteion. At that point you’re basically opening a black box. Based on Venats judgement many Ancients would fall to despair, Hermes will rebel and fight against you, Zodiarks summoning is likely ruined and you have no Ragnorak or Mothercrystal to get to Ultima Thule.

IF you manage to forestall the Final Days, you’d still be alone to fight against Meteion, no dynamis controlling friends with you. Unless the Ancients try to make them, which may be a hard sell given you’re basically creating a group of empathy beings to send off to hell. They’ll not have the bonds you have with the Scions, nor memories of past trials to give them strength.

But maybe. Just maybe. You’ll do so. And then you’ll likely die as you’ll not have allies to call, or dying Ancient friends that are waiting for your word.

[LystAP]

We’ll then we need only two things.

1. We need to rediscover time travel magicks. It’ll take centuries of work, and lots of blood, sweat and tears. You’d also need to an Ancient to help improve and empower the process.

2. You need a massive amount of aether and a way to store it. You can use the crystal tower again, but you’d need to supplement the Aether in some way as even the amount from the Calamity of Earth will be lacking. Might need to summon a primal, one equivalent to the heart of Zodiark.

Then when you get there, you better hope someone with the ability to perceive aether like Emet and Hyth are around, not just anyone can see the weakened form you’ll arrive with. Thereafter it’s up to you. You can try convincing them of what’s about to happen, most won’t believe you without proof and you won’t be at Elpis in time for the proof to reveal itself. You’d also need to avoid being captured and interrogated.

But let’s say you convince them of Meteion. At that point you’re basically opening a black box. Based on Venats judgement many Ancients would fall to despair, Hermes will rebel and fight against you, Zodiarks summoning is likely ruined and you have no Ragnorak or Mothercrystal to get to Ultima Thule.

IF you manage to forestall the Final Days, you’d still be alone to fight against Meteion, no dynamis controlling friends with you. Unless the Ancients try to make them, which may be a hard sell given you’re basically creating a group of empathy beings to send off to hell. They’ll not have the bonds you have with the Scions, nor memories of past trials to give them strength.

But maybe. Just maybe. You’ll do so. And then you’ll likely die as you’ll not have allies to call, or dying Ancient friends that are waiting for your word.

1 and 2 are already done. We can teleport to Elpis at a specific point in time - where people acknowledge us as Azem's familiar. There doesn't need to be a complex rationale behind it. Some weird timely wimy thing has us linked to this particular Elpis in space and time. Do recall that the First wasn't always temporally balanced with the Source. The other Scions spent years in the First whereas only a few months have past on the Source when you went back. The rest will depend on SE writing the plot. The quickest way is to just have the Convocation use the Echo on you. The Ancients also have ways to determine if your lying.

Venat judged that many would fall to despair when faced with 'reality', but that's also her own presumption. That's an assumption Vauthy made of people of the First as well, but we've seen how that turned out. In this expansion, Vrtra was convinced (based off his eons of experience) that everyone would hate him, but it didn't turn out that way either. As is noted in the story, Venat as flawed as much as everyone else.

[EaraGrace]

1 and 2 are already done. We can teleport to Elpis at a specific point in time - where people acknowledge us as Azem's familiar. There doesn't need to be a complex rationale behind it. Some weird timely wimy thing has us linked to this particular Elpis in space and time. Do recall that the First wasn't always temporally balanced with the Source. The other Scions spent years in the First whereas only a few months have past on the Source when you went back.

Issues remain, the door to Elpis limits us to a very specific period of time, and you’d still have the issues I mentioned if you don’t attempt to replicate those magicks.

The rest will depend on SE writing the plot. The quickest way is to just have the Convocation use the Echo on you. The Ancients also have ways to determine if your lying.

Exactly how effective the echo is with finding specific memories is difficult to say. Ultimately, the problem is that even if you convince them, you still have Hermes sabotage to deal with, and given he isn’t there to help with Zodiark now, it’s unlikely you’ll succeed at forestalling the first final days. It was SE who wrote that limitation.

Venat judged that many would fall to despair when faced with 'reality', but that's also her own presumption. That's an assumption Vauthy made of people of the First as well, but we've seen how that turned out. In this expansion, Vrtra was convinced (based off his eons of experience) that everyone would hate him, but it didn't turn out that way either. As is noted in the story, Venat as flawed as much as everyone else.

And yet we are shown why we should believe her judgement the correct one, if their reaction to the Final Days is indicative.

[Veloran]

Exactly how effective the echo is with finding specific memories is difficult to say. Ultimately, the problem is that even if you convince them, you still have Hermes sabotage to deal with, and given he isn’t there to help with Zodiark now, it’s unlikely you’ll succeed at forestalling the first final days. It was SE who wrote that limitation.

But that's not what SE wrote. Venat merely suggests keeping Hermes in the dark because he is a "brilliant mind" and could be useful, at no point is he given specific credit for any part of Zodiark's creation or discovering the solution.

But more importantly, Venat still didn't tell them even after Zodiark was created and the Final Days halted. At that point if Hermes had been crucial to their prior success, it had already been achieved and he had outlived his usefulness. At that point there is no excuse not to reveal the truth.

[Kordarion]

But that's not what SE wrote. Venat merely suggests keeping Hermes in the dark because he is a "brilliant mind" and could be useful, at no point is he given specific credit for any part of Zodiark's creation or discovering the solution.

But more importantly, Venat still didn't tell them even after Zodiark was created and the Final Days halted. At that point if Hermes had been crucial to their prior success, it had already been achieved and he had outlived his usefulness. At that point there is no excuse not to reveal the truth.

I'm fairly certain that in one of the conversations leading up to Elpis that is is stated that Fandaniel/Hermes was the person who discovered that the Final days phenomena was occurring where the celestial aether currents were weakest therefore, even if he missed the mark on the true cause, he was still the one to discover the relationship between weak aether fields and the final days manifesting.

[LystAP]

Issues remain, the door to Elpis limits us to a very specific period of time, and you’d still have the issues I mentioned if you don’t attempt to replicate those magicks.

What issues? There's no indication that we are currently being inhibited to travel back to that time. And that specific period of time should be enough to interact with the necessary people to make a impact. What matters is that it is before the Final Days.

Exactly how effective the echo is with finding specific memories is difficult to say. Ultimately, the problem is that even if you convince them, you still have Hermes sabotage to deal with, and given he isn’t there to help with Zodiark now, it’s unlikely you’ll succeed at forestalling the first final days. It was SE who wrote that limitation.

The Ancients have more precise control over the Echo than the WoL. It's why Venat had you mount Argos and travel to that floating island. She was able to bring up the exact time that Hermes sent off the Meteia. As noted earlier in this thread, we have the answer that Hermes was looking for in our memories. With that answer, Hermes would have no reason to sabotage the plan, and work towards saving the star. It was a answer that Meteion accepted, and Hermes would see that. If for some weird reason he isn't convinced, the Convocation would still have the idea of Zodiark from you, as well as the mechanics behind it.

And yet we are shown why we should believe her judgement the correct one, if their reaction to the Final Days is indicative.

It's unknown what exactly Venat did, but it doesn't seem at all she told people the truth. We are shown why she did what she did, but this was done after the Final Days, and when there is a possibility that Zodiark tempered part of the populace.

But more importantly, Venat still didn't tell them even after Zodiark was created and the Final Days halted. At that point if Hermes had been crucial to their prior success, it had already been achieved and he had outlived his usefulness. At that point there is no excuse not to reveal the truth.

It's rather weird that Venat didn't reveal the truth to the Convocation AFTER the Final Days were averted.

[AlysanneVrannai]

Because saving people who you can potentially help is the heroic thing to do.

You have no idea if there are even people to save to begin with if you truly consider the implications of what we have learned about time travel.

There is no sign that the different timelines exist before we "create them" by splitting the timeline through time travel. To go back to Elpis and avert the calamity could potentially be you creating a whole new reality just to save that reality from a calamity you technically created by splitting the timeline, and you dont even know if you can truly save their timeline or not, or whether they will suffer more in the future.

My earlier post says this is a can of worms you dont want to open for a good reason.

[Rosenstrauch]

You have no idea if there are even people to save to begin with if you truly consider the implications of what we have learned about time travel.

There is no sign that the different timelines exist before we "create them" by splitting the timeline through time travel. To go back to Elpis and avert the calamity could potentially be you creating a whole new reality just to save that reality from a calamity you technically created by splitting the timeline, and you dont even know if you can truly save their timeline or not, or whether they will suffer more in the future.

My earlier post says this is a can of worms you dont want to open for a good reason.

It's a can of worms that has already been opened, scooped out, and used to bait the hooks. See: Shadowbringers.