Quote Originally Posted by Shookbeast View Post
You left out the part of the quote which got my ears up. Emet says, “And as fortune would have it, the seat of Fandaniel lies empty and waiting.”

It’s that first “fortune” part which got me interested. It’s possible that line implies the lack of an available Fandaniel is a recent one - and Emet considers himself lucky to have found Amon.

It’s also possible the Ascians just didn’t bother with old troublesome Hermes before finding Amon.

But I do wonder… something prompted them to decide that was the time to snag them a new Fandaniel.

As far as starting new threads at the end of an old storyline - the writers got to seed for future stories somehow (besides having Emet rattle off the DLC). And if there were another Hermes shard out there, perhaps he’d make an appearance in the 6.X patches to help tie up some of those loose ends.
The problem with your idea is that it's at least four 'what if's deep, and none of them really have any evidence in their favor. 'What if there was a Fandaniel shard before Amon, and what if he was more like Hermes, and what if he peacefully left the Ascians, and what if he went on to be Deryk specifically?' You're getting too excited about something EXTREMELY unlikely--the only storylines that ever get that wild outside of an expansion MSQ are normal raids, and this would be a long bow for even those.

Your only real evidence is a very specific and selective reading of a single line by Emet-Selch. Not only will I point out that Emet picks his words for maximum emotional manipulation--and framing something as 'fortunate' is a great way to both make the intended audience feel special and like the opportunity presented might be very slim--but that you're picking apart language choice from the English version, which is known to be particularly loose and flowery. I'd suggest checking the script for other languages if your evidence is right down to linguistic semantics; I've fallen into the same mistake myself, with a Fandaniel line from 5.2 that turned out to only be eyebrow-raising in English and of course turned out to be nothing.