What aligments would future calamities even have had?

[Eisi]

So the first eight calamities would have a nice balance of aetherial aspectations wouldn't they, all six elements plus umbral and astral, I assume because if we just had for example a second fire-aspected calamity it would have shifted the source's balance too far in that direction?

So what would the final four calamities have looked like? Would they just have taken that little imbalance, perhaps do another fire, lightning, wind and darkness calamity cause they are more closely aligned with Zodiark (umbral pole)? Is that even true?

Could they have done dual-aspected calamities like we summoned Ifrit and Garuda as a combo for Eden?

Would an unaspected calamity be possible?

[Cleretic]

The fact we got one Calamity of all respective elements is probably just coincidence or convenience on the part of the Ascians (and, of course, aesthetic appeal on the part of the writers); there is absolutely nothing resembling a law we know of that said they had to do that.

In fact, we actually don't know if they were being balanced like that; there's no information whatsoever about the First Calamity, it's just theorized by in-universe scholars that it's wind because every single other element is accounted for. If the event that brought Good King Moggle Mog XII to descend was indeed the first Calamity that would be evidence, but moogles aren't exactly the most reliable historians (and I'm pretty sure they never claimed that correlation anyway).

All of this is to say, the other Calamities would have looked like 'whatever superweapon the Ascians could get someone to detonate for them'; hard to put forward contenders there since we've neutralized most of the ones we've found. It's possible that it would be influenced by the elemental alignment of the shard they're melting down, but given we have no information on that either, it's not exactly something we can use to derive conclusions.

[RyuDragnier]

Due to how all the other Calamities sounded, they were likely all Astral charged. There's a good chance that they were planning to redo the elemental rejoinings, but with an Umbral charge, starting with the 8th Calamity.

[Alien_Gamer]

My impression was there wouldn't be further rejoinings after this one. The ascians stated a few times that this was the final calamity to weaken Hydaelyn enough to allow Zodiark to escape his prison and take back control of the world. Given he had already rewritten the rules of the world before to save them from Meteion's influence, once Hydaelyn is gone then he'd just erase the shards and remake the world as the ascians wanted without having to go through the trouble of a rejoining.

[Iscah]

My impression was there wouldn't be further rejoinings after this one. The ascians stated a few times that this was the final calamity to weaken Hydaelyn enough to allow Zodiark to escape his prison and take back control of the world.

Do you have sources for those claims? I don't think it has ever been an in-game statement, just a vague promotional thing the devs said pre-Shadowbringers about it dealing with the "eighth and final calamity", which fans came up with all sorts of theories over – and it was never touched on within the game itself as to why it would have been the last.

Unless you have direct quotes, this sounds like a case of fan theories getting disconnected from their origins and passed around until people think they're true.

[Iscah]

In fact, we actually don't know if they were being balanced like that; [...] All of this is to say, the other Calamities would have looked like 'whatever superweapon the Ascians could get someone to detonate for them';

It's quite possible that their overall plan would be to engineer the full spread of possible elemental imbalances across the shards so that at all times, whichever of their plans comes to fruition in the Source, there will be a shard ready to spill over and rejoin because of it.

If that was the case, then they would have eight aspected shards and a few leftovers, and then once (say) a Calamity of Wind has occurred, they will start building up a new wind imbalance in one of the leftover shards.

There might still be some effort to do "one of each" just to get older ones triggered sooner, before the situation on the shard becomes unstable

[Alien_Gamer]

Do you have sources for those claims? I don't think it has ever been an in-game statement, just a vague promotional thing the devs said pre-Shadowbringers about it dealing with the "eighth and final calamity", which fans came up with all sorts of theories over – and it was never touched on within the game itself as to why it would have been the last.

Unless you have direct quotes, this sounds like a case of fan theories getting disconnected from their origins and passed around until people think they're true.

I honestly have no idea what fan theories are out there, its not something I follow. I get all my info from the game and live letters but I don't keep clips saved on my computer.

[Seraphor]

I don't believe the balance of aspects for the calamities has anything to do with overall aspect balance on the Source?
It's not like a Flood was required because the Source was too low on water aspected aether, the Flood occurred because one of the shards was overaspected towards water, making it a prime candidate for a rejoining, and so a Flood was orchestrated on the Source to facilitate that rejoining. That Flood was in turn amplified by the rejoining of predominantly water aspected aether so in fact, it could be argued that the calamity tipped the scales too far towards water, for a time. The Flood waters receded, implying that aspect imbalance had righted itself.
Aspects aren't immutable, they change and shift, that's HOW shards end up becoming overly aspected one way or another, their aspect changed towards Water, until it was too much. So the same can be said for the Source, that aspects can rebalance.

The First was already overly aspected towards Umbral aether, prior to the plan to cause an Umbral calamity ti trigger a rejoining. So the shards aspect is what decided the form of calamity.
So any subsequent calamities would be aspected according to the aether imbalance present on their respective rejoined shards. If Shard no. 9 was a world overly aspected towards Earth, we'd get another Quake-related calamity.
The Source would then become overly Earth aspected in turn, which would BE the calamity itself asserting it's effects, until that 'Umbral Era' ended and the balance returned to normal levels.


As for not needing any further calamities. It's an assumption, but it's not an unreasonable one. The Thirteenth was written off, so we already know that it's not required for ALL shards to be rejoined, a partially rejoined Source would be sufficient. It's just a question of how much would be sufficient, and with no other info to go off, >50% seems like a sensible assumption. You go above 50% and you're tipping the scales more one way than the other, so half of the worlds being rejoined +1 would be a decent prediction of what would be sufficient to free Zodiark.

[Cleretic]

I honestly have no idea what fan theories are out there, its not something I follow. I get all my info from the game and live letters but I don't keep clips saved on my computer.

Then can you provide where you think you got that?

This has come up a few times recently, and there's only two things we could find that look like anything resembling direct evidence:
1. Shadowbringers pre-release stuff that called the Eighth Calamity 'the final Calamity', but provided no real context or explanation, and never came back, so we really have absolutely no idea whatsoever what they were trying to get at (or even if they were trying to get at anything at all). Maybe related to G'raha's future, possibly?
2. The post-Antitower scene with Minfilia-Hydaelyn, where she explains the reasoning behind the Calamities; she tells us to stop the Eighth, and begins to say 'this is my final--' before being cut off; there's no indication what she would've ended her sentence with, but it's the sort of thing where a lot of people trick themselves into thinking she did finish that sentence.

You might recognize that neither of these sources are Ascians, so either you've got something we don't, or you're misremembering something. Understandable in both cases, it's a big game and there's a lot of stuff in it, sometimes we either forget a scene that happened or misremember a factoid until it becomes a scene that didn't. But when we hit things like that, it's in everyone's best interests to figure out what exactly we're dealing with and dig up whatever evidence there is. So if an Ascian did say it, we'd love to hear it, but if one didn't, then it's just as important to recognize that.

Seraphor's hit the nail on the head for why this theory probably got pretty common and had a few different breeds, though: reasonably speaking, there would have been a point where the Ascian plan changes, either because Zodiark becomes usable or because natural forces shift. If one then agrees this is an inevitability, then... well, why wouldn't the Eighth be that turning point? It's just as arbitrary and justifiable as any other number, but it also makes that 'point of no return' pretty soon, which is nice and dramatic.

[Iscah]

The Thirteenth was written off, so we already know that it's not required for ALL shards to be rejoined, a partially rejoined Source would be sufficient.

We still don't know for certain whether it was not required, or simply put in the "too hard" basket while they work on rejoining the other shards.

For all we know so far, it's possible that they were manipulating Golbez into eating the local Zodiark shard and then breaking through the barrier into the Source, bringing Zodiark's missing piece with him. Or maybe that shattering of the barrier would be enough to hook the Thirteenth back up to the Source's lifestream. Those are certainly the sorts of plot holes I'd be trying to fill as a writer at this point.