Quote Originally Posted by Teraq View Post
I am... like... incredibly confused by what's been going on here.

I remember seeing a white-hot Pandaemonium take on Reddit that Erichthonios would go on to become our Lahabrea. And... I... just... nah fam, for multiple reasons. I mean, what we know so far about Pandaemonium seems pretty clear to me, but I will concede we do not know exactly when it takes place. It might be before Themis actually became Elidibus. But the Azem mentioned in the quest line is very much supposed to be us, and I don't think it's ever been ambiguous?...
Eric certainly doesn't seem to be him. I think the NPC who gives you the quest is a better candidate, for being his sundered fragment, maybe. As for Themis? He is not donning a red mask, but he is donning the robes of an Emissary, so I wonder if he's perhaps working for something like the Words of Elidibus, assuming such exists. Once he's joined the Convocation he gets to know Lahabrea personally, so everything thus far suggests it's before then.

Yeah I think the topic of Ancients and space is weird too. Like, we have Venat coming up with the star trekking bunnies and her Moon being a literal functional spaceship. Given that they're her creations, can we infer that they're based off her own knowledge of how space travel works (and I assume she wouldn't be the only one with that knowledge – much like the Hermes-Dynamis point, I can hardly believe an entire civilisation of immortal academics wouldn't share scientific knowledge with each other, which is one of the reasons why "Hermes had to become Fandaniel!" just bothers me)? Or did she create them with the intent "hey, research space travel for me then build an ark for humanity", which they then did? In either case the end result is the same: logically, space shouldn't be this completely unknown thing for Ancients. But I guess they just willingly chose not to research it much?...

Speaking of, I had long headcanoned (oh no not another headcanon in this thread!) that the Seat of Nabriales had to do with astrophysics, what with his timey-wimey shenanigans and meteor rain. But Endwalker absolutely did not help out there.
Might also be that since a researcher was already looking into it, the others chose not to focus on it much. It's probably also fairly resource-intensive... which as Overseer of Elpis may have been less of an issue for him. But on the point as to why he'd be useful (mainly celestial currents, but also dynamis) as Fandaniel, again he's not the only person with that knowledge. It's strange that they wanted to present it with such a sense of inevitability to it, but did not actually write it in such a way as to cement that, e.g. the Watcher mentions it is scholars in the plural whose understanding it is to be be thanked for Zodiark.