The 8th umbral calamity

[Jandor]

The 8th UC world split from the Source, similarly to the other reflection except a century in the future instead of millennia in the past, and it only exists within the mess of thoroughly sliced and diced space-time where Etheirys is.

It's all part of one big time loop, the 8th UC world included. That's my theory at least.

[Iscah]

The 8th UC world split from the Source, similarly to the other reflection except a century in the future instead of millennia in the past, and it only exists within the mess of thoroughly sliced and diced space-time where Etheirys is.

It's all part of one big time loop, the 8th UC world included. That's my theory at least.

I think we may have had this debate before, but that doesn't make sense at all to me. It's shown that both the 8UE timeline and ours have (or had) their individual copies of both Source and First, and presumably all the other shards as well. It's not just another shard that has splintered away and exists in isolation, equal to the Source and First we know.

[Jandor]

I think we may have had this debate before, but that doesn't make sense at all to me. It's shown that both the 8UE timeline and ours have (or had) their individual copies of both Source and First, and presumably all the other shards as well. It's not just another shard that has splintered away and exists in isolation, equal to the Source and First we know.

All I can remember seeing of the 8UC is a few empty locations in a flashback or short story, can't remember which. Nothing of the wider universe/multiverse.

Makes sense to me that the Source would splinter when the Ironworks time machine set off. They were trying to create a paradox by undoing events that led to them going back in time, timeline doesn't like that, world fractures and the 8UC branches off, the time machine travels back in time on the Source to before the calamity and we get to have our second attempt.

And yes, we've had this conversation before, a few times I think.

[Iscah]

All I can remember seeing of the 8UC is a few empty locations in a flashback or short story, can't remember which. Nothing of the wider universe/multiverse.

We don't see it, but we are told that their scientists have done their research and know that it is the First which was rejoined to their world, which is the Source, which is the only shard that other shards are rejoined to rather than being obliterated into pure aether.

If they have the technology to work that out, then they should also have the technology to notice that they aren't actually on the Source but a weird splintered version while the real Source is fine. That does not appear to be the case.

We have never at any point had the story suggest the possibility of shards being sundered by events other than the original Sundering, and the story has presented it as purely about diverging timelines. I don't see a good reason to reject the reason they gave us and invent one that relies on a different mechanism.

[Jandor]

We don't see it, but we are told that their scientists have done their research and know that it is the First which was rejoined to their world, which is the Source, which is the only shard that other shards are rejoined to rather than being obliterated into pure aether.

If they have the technology to work that out, then they should also have the technology to notice that they aren't actually on the Source but a weird splintered version while the real Source is fine. That does not appear to be the case.

They would be on the Source at that time. They're only not the Source after the split.

We have never at any point had the story suggest the possibility of shards being sundered by events other than the original Sundering, and the story has presented it as purely about diverging timelines. I don't see a good reason to reject the reason they gave us and invent one that relies on a different mechanism.

I wouldn't either, if they had given us a reason. They haven't though.
We know the 8UC survived, and that is pretty much all we know for certain.

----

You were right by the way, we have had this conversation before, a couple times actually. Seeing as we have no new information to work with since the last time we had this conversation, maybe we should just skip the back and forth and agree to disagree instead of doing it all again?