[ENDWALKER MSQ SPOILERS] Timeline weirdness

[Shookbeast]

It is, kind of, and that's where some people get confused when we start talking about actual timelines.

In some timeline discussions I've seen people talking as if the First is the timeline that G'raha came from, which isn't the case at all, and it takes a few posts back and forth to establish why people are talking past each other because they're picturing something else at a fundamental level.

The shards might be thought of as sub-timelines, with their varying time flows and all stemming from copies of the Source, but this is ultimately a confusing detail that has nothing to do with time travel. We don't call it time travel when we teleport from the Source to the First – we are simply moving from "now" here to "now" there.

For the sake of discussing the timeline as a whole, the Source and all the shards function as a single unit. The First and the Source have a shared flow of time (slight fluctuations of speed aside) and what happens to one can affect the other.

When the timeline splits due to the effects of Shadowbringers, there is a Source and a First in our timeline and a Source and a First in the other timeline. They affect their paired shard in the same timeline but have no bearing on the fate of the other.

What I find to be a cool point for storytelling - is the difference is passage of time between reflections. I do wonder if we’ll find a reflection where much less time has passed since the Sundering - and much of the Ancients’ world still exists. That could lead to some very interesting discoveries. (If we are to believe each reflection was indeed an exact copy).

I suppose the opposite is also possible, per Emet’s “preview of things to come” and we discover a reflection where much more time has passed and they are much more advanced technologically. (Although, a world closer to the Sundering would also be much more advanced on a technological level as well…)

[Iscah]

Query. Why would the 8th Umbral Calamity timeline lead to the Final Days as we had in Endwalker? The only reason Fandaniel could do what he did was because we went and off'd Emet-Selch and Elidibus, who would presumably still be alive to reign in Fandaniel in the Calamity Timeine.

Short term, it probably wouldn't, exactly because the unsundered Ascians are still around and causing their own kind of trouble. What happens after the short story "An Unpromised Future" is entirely speculative and would have to take a different path to resolve first the Ascians then the Final Days, assuming that a new WoL did arise in the right place to defeat Emet and Elidibus in that timeline.

If it got to the point of Fandaniel putting his plan into action, Hydaelyn might make contact with this new WoL as best she can – and be a lot less cryptic about it when she doesn't need to avoid telling us things before our time loop resolves. In the other timeline she would be free to tell this future WoL about the Meteia and the nature of the threat they pose.

Different timeline, different path. But there would still potentially be a way out if things aligned right.

[Lium]

The simplest answer is: it isn't wholly separate. It only diverged from our own timeline when G'raha altered the events of "his timeline's" past to the point that those events couldn't come to pass any more. A new branch of time forms to hold this new future, and now is of equal importance as the original.

Prior to Shadowbringers there is one timeline. Afterwards there are two. The timeline is a Y shape.

When we travel to Elpis, we move from our "branch" of the split timeline to the "trunk" that is shared by both halves of the split. Thus our actions there affect both timelines.

Unfortunately there's no satisfactory answer as to how the time loop formed, but it did, and things have just always happened that way. All the parts interconnect neatly.


Also, just in case you're working under what seems to be a common misconception: the First is not a "timeline" separate to the Source, it is a "shard" and still aetherically connected to the Source. A copy of all the shards exists in each half of the split timeline, with the other timeline ruined because of the First's rejoining.

As an aside, I really like your posts. Very informative and thoughtful. You and that other person who posts with a lalafell avatar and is very professorial. He/she has a wealth of knowledge concerning FFXIV lore. They usually start the new patch threads for everyone to share their experiences.

On-topic. This is one of the many reasons I dislike time travel shenanigans in my fantasy and sci-fi. Number one, it's a copout. If you write something so apocalyptic and egregious that it seems there is no way forward, then you should have to make your characters live with it in some way, and find a way to move forward. Heartbreak and all. Doesn't mean they can't still win or solve the problem. But it came at a great cost that cannot be undone.

Having said that, what Iscah said is likely the best explanation. Both Timeline G and Timeline S (using the OP's designation) had the same "trunk" and only diverged when G'raha made his leap to the First. To add to this, I think the other poster in this thread was also correct when they said Timeline G (G'raha's timeline) autocorrected itself. Meaning it's likely that in the 8UC, the soul of Azem is reborn and is sent back to Elpis by a different means.

Basically, the WoL going back in time to meet Venat happens across ALL timelines. Just at different times and possibly by different means. But the result is always the same. Because it always happened. No matter what.

[Iscah]

Having said that, what Iscah said is likely the best explanation. Both Timeline G and Timeline S (using the OP's designation) had the same "trunk" and only diverged when G'raha made his leap to the First. To add to this, I think the other poster in this thread was also correct when they said Timeline G (G'raha's timeline) autocorrected itself. Meaning it's likely that in the 8UC, the soul of Azem is reborn and is sent back to Elpis by a different means.

The thing here is, there isn't any need for the other timeline's WoL to go back to Elpis directly. As already covered, our trip takes place in the trunk of both timelines, so there's no need (or really any opportunity) for a second person to go through the same experience. We set Venat on the path to become Hydaelyn, and now she exists in the other half of the split timeline as well as ours.

In our timeline, she can't tell us about the time loop or the Meteia until we've been through the time loop, thus her crypticness. By the time she can tell us everything, we already know it.

But speculatively, in the other timeline, she could see that the cycle of events has gone awry. If we told her in Elpis about averting the Eighth Calamity – and we must have, given how much it ties into talking about Emet's future that he's horrified to hear about – then she should be able to recognise that when the Eighth Calamity does actually happen, that must mean she's in the bad timeline and the time loop will not be fulfilled here. Therefore she can safely tell the whole story straight away to anyone she can still contact. A new WoL in this timeline would not need to make the journey back to Elpis to learn what we did.

As an aside, I really like your posts. Very informative and thoughtful. You and that other person who posts with a lalafell avatar and is very professorial. He/she has a wealth of knowledge concerning FFXIV lore. They usually start the new patch threads for everyone to share their experiences.

Thankyou!

[Veloran]

The thing here is, there isn't any need for the other timeline's WoL to go back to Elpis directly. As already covered, our trip takes place in the trunk of both timelines, so there's no need (or really any opportunity) for a second person to go through the same experience. We set Venat on the path to become Hydaelyn, and now she exists in the other half of the split timeline as well as ours.

That's a good headcanon, hopefully they back it up someday.

In our timeline, she can't tell us about the time loop or the Meteia until we've been through the time loop,

At the end of Elpis Venat expresses zero interest in maintaining a timeloop, and in fact speaks as though WoL's actions have either retroactively created a new future or created a new timeline entirely.

[AlysanneVrannai]

Also, just in case you're working under what seems to be a common misconception: the First is not a "timeline" separate to the Source, it is a "shard" and still aetherically connected to the Source. A copy of all the shards exists in each half of the split timeline, with the other timeline ruined because of the First's rejoining.

Hey, thanks for the response. To clarify some things I'll try to outline how I've interpreted the way time travel works in two concise points.

1. Time Travel is rigid; In our timeline G'raha was always going to summon us to the First, and we were always going to use the Crystal Tower on the First to arrive at Elpis because we had already been at Elpis to lay the seeds for Hydaelyn to guide us to those very moments. Time Loop and all that.

2. There is "chronology" (word used VERY loosely) in non-bootstrap time travel. I.e, for the time loop to have ever existed it NEEDS the events of the 8UC to have happened, otherwise the Time Loop could not have "started" (I know there is no start or end, again, used very loosely).

The notion of the "Elpis Trunk" and 8UC being a "branch" of our timeline confuses me greatly, and does not add up to me. The implication that different "branches" can influence the creation of their own branch seems... Intensely weird to me, but as I type it out it is in a way similar to a time loop? The conditionals here are a bit too much for me to grasp at the moment.

If the branch notion is correct, does it go like this? Elpis->8UC->Our Timeline->Elpis? but it also goes Elpis->Our Timeline->Elpis? Simultaneously? time travel, man...

[Iscah]

The notion of the "Elpis Trunk" and 8UC being a "branch" of our timeline confuses me greatly, and does not add up to me. The implication that different "branches" can influence the creation of their own branch seems... Intensely weird to me, but as I type it out it is in a way similar to a time loop? The conditionals here are a bit too much for me to grasp at the moment.

If the branch notion is correct, does it go like this? Elpis->8UC->Our Timeline->Elpis? but it also goes Elpis->Our Timeline->Elpis? Simultaneously? time travel, man...

As I see it, there isn't a thing that comes first. Time just somehow exists, as a whole, before you have personally lived it – even as your own actions and choices seem to create the shape of that timeline. From the point of view of a future observer, the thing you're about to do already happened.

(This is not to say that we don't have free will over our actions, just that our decision has already been recorded, from another perspective.)

If there's any sense of what comes first, I think it has to be a simple chronological past-to-future: Elpis happens, then the splitting point between the two branches of time, then you travel back from one of them to complete the loop that is already in motion.

But it's all interlocking pieces that just work together without a clear starting point.

[Jandor]

<snip>

For the sake of discussing the timeline as a whole, the Source and all the shards function as a single unit. The First and the Source have a shared flow of time (slight fluctuations of speed aside) and what happens to one can affect the other.

When the timeline splits due to the effects of Shadowbringers, there is a Source and a First in our timeline and a Source and a First in the other timeline. They affect their paired shard in the same timeline but have no bearing on the fate of the other.

I basically agree with your view of the shards and the timeline and a single "unit" containing it all, I just arrive at a different conclusion at the point of the split. I don't think there needs to be a second overall unit, the 8th calamity world can fit in the original unit just fine.

Only G'raha Tia's original world needs to survive to prevent a paradox, and our single unit has previously accommodated far more worlds than it currently has, the space exists to save it without creating a second unit.

IMHO it makes the time travel neater (none of the time travel has resulted in a "true" split,) shuts down various cans of worms before they're opened (we can't change the unsundered world even if we wanted to,) and while not particularly relevant, results in a happier end to the tale of the 8th calamity world (both the Ascians and Meteion are dealt with there as well.)

But it's all interlocking pieces that just work together without a clear starting point.

Like a jigsaw.

[Kordarion]

An issue with the branch notion - Beyond the unsubstantiated nature of it - is the narrative implications in-universe. 8UC is basically a complete "bad end" for Venat right down to people again trying to return to the past over going forward in the future (and by his very nature G'raha is the biggest thematic walking contradiction in the entire universe) and despite the short story existing to try and suggest some hopeful future for it, the storyline of Endwalker would imply that it's completely doomed. Frankly the existence of that short story makes me think that they didn't know what they were going to be doing in Endwalker when it was written.

I've actually thought some more on the 8UC being an entirely separate entity from our current timeline and I've come to realise that this could actually be a best case scenario for all of the time travel madness of the last two expansions. Keep in mind everything I say is just a theory.

If our universe and the 8UC universe were two separate universes in a multiverse then G'raha's actions in Shadowbringers are no longer him changing the past, instead its G'raha having travelled to an alternate universe and impacting change on that universe instead. This would mean that instead of three major instances of time travel, not including pandemonium because we still don't know that will fully play out, where two create time loops and the third changes time, we instead have two major instances of time travel where both create time loops and an instance of inter-universal travel. Meaning that the laws of time-travel are no longer contradictory, all you can do when traveling through time is take actions that have already occurred in your present.

Of course this then begs the question of how the sundering happened in the 8UC and I'm not sure how to answer that.

[Iscah]

I basically agree with your view of the shards and the timeline and a single "unit" containing it all, I just arrive at a different conclusion at the point of the split. I don't think there needs to be a second overall unit, the 8th calamity world can fit in the original unit just fine.

Only G'raha Tia's original world needs to survive to prevent a paradox, and our single unit has previously accommodated far more worlds than it currently has, the space exists to save it without creating a second unit.

IMHO it makes the time travel neater (none of the time travel has resulted in a "true" split,) shuts down various cans of worms before they're opened (we can't change the unsundered world even if we wanted to,) and while not particularly relevant, results in a happier end to the tale of the 8th calamity world (both the Ascians and Meteion are dealt with there as well.)

That doesn't sound simpler to me, and in fact sounds a lot more complicated.

The "unit", as we're calling it, isn't an arbitrary space that has some spare room now that a few shards have been merged. It's the mass of aether that once made up the unsundered world and has now been divided among the fourteen reflections. Rejoining the shards (at least as I am understanding it) just merges part of that aether back together - it doesn't leave empty space to be filled by another world that wasn't part of the original set.

You're still calling for a true split; you're just changing the magnitude of the split.

Additionally, G'raha's "original world" is the Source (which aetherially is really the Source and seven reflections bundled into it), but then the First gets merged into it. So you'd need the Source and the First to both split apart into a second copy and then get merged with each other, all while still semi-attached to the other copy of the Source and shards... it all just sounds a lot more complicated and tangled to me than the idea that you have "a timeline" which contains the whole universe (not just the unit of sundered shards) and two copies of it have gone in different independent directions, and once they have split they have nothing more to do with each other.

As I covered earlier, if the intent is that the post-Eighth Calamity world is to reach a happy ending after all that has happened, it is possible to write a series of events that resolves everything there in an entirely different way.

And back on the question of why we don't go back to prevent the Final Days in the unsundered world, I think I have found the very simple answer: the characters do not know what would happen if they did, and should not want to risk overwriting their own timeline. Despite our knowledge as the audience, with access to the side story confirming that the Eighth Calamity timeline still exists equally alongside the current one, the characters do not know this. At most they have G'raha's continued existence to suggest that possibly, even probably, the other timeline has continued to exist without being overwritten - but it's entirely theoretical and they have no way of confirming the result.

We did almost break things in Elpis by telling the others about their future, but that's the WoL on their own. Canonically they're probably not the one to think that through, especially once Venat says it's fine to talk. It might come to them later, or only upon talking to the more theory-minded Scions, that actually they came unsettlingly close to finding themself on the wrong path of time and potentially unable to return to the present.