I need an Umbral Calamity refresher as Dawntrail has me confused

[Cleretic]

So I'm pretty much certain this is an unrejoined reflection.

An unlost world, if you will.

[Ayche]

Ok but are we even sure Alexandria is all that's left of a potential rejoined shard? Also, how can people who fled the 5th calamity land in a shard before the second calamity happened? Time travel despite nobody ever mentioning it's part of the artifact power?
Why wouldn't the Ascian do something about a rejoined shard that still has life (and potential Ancient souls) in it?
Why does that reflection still have a lifestream and new souls granted to newborn, if everything except Alexandria is gone?
Living Memory still has a breathable atmosphere after the dome disappeared, clouds in the distance, showing there's aether around the dome as well. We know the moon only has air in Mare Lamentorum due to Loporrits building their refuge here.
Most importantly, Living Memory has a moon: it's a bit more aether than what a city represent, and would probably be the main thing they want to rejoin since that's where Zodiark is. It's the same moon asset, and they could have done like Elpis and made sure there was none. It's also in the same position as the moon in the Source.

So I'm pretty much certain this is an unrejoined reflection.

In all sincerity, the way the game presents the "facts" or the history of the shard of Alexandria is messy, but... it just makes for a really weird "coincidence" to have a non-rejoining "end of the world" happen in a shard. I am very sure that the NPCs both in Everkeep and Living Memory say it pretty explicitly that everything outside of the bubble got absolutely vaporized. It is like every beat of the rejoining process is repeated, but actually this time is just a coincidence. That we get a planet that is overflowed into a single aether element, that then is goaded into a war, that then has its "Wave of X" even. We get that reference directly in a dialog choice from us, they have so many things spotlighting it. And what, it just failed? Is it a Void thing where if you fly your mount outside of the Living Memory, there is just a whole planet of purple thunder goo everywhere? Or just a barren rock?

In all honesty, how the game presents it, you are meant to assume the shard got rejoined. It would be a weird for the expansion to so heavily play on that and then suddenly just switch it up. That is how I feel about it.

[Alenore]

In all sincerity, the way the game presents the "facts" or the history of the shard of Alexandria is messy, but... it just makes for a really weird "coincidence" to have a non-rejoining "end of the world" happen in a shard. I am very sure that the NPCs both in Everkeep and Living Memory say it pretty explicitly that everything outside of the bubble got absolutely vaporized. It is like every beat of the rejoining process is repeated, but actually this time is just a coincidence. That we get a planet that is overflowed into a single aether element, that then is goaded into a war, that then has its "Wave of X" even. We get that reference directly in a dialog choice from us, they have so many things spotlighting it. And what, it just failed? Is it a Void thing where if you fly your mount outside of the Living Memory, there is just a whole planet of purple thunder goo everywhere? Or just a barren rock?

In all honesty, how the game presents it, you are meant to assume the shard got rejoined. It would be a weird for the expansion to so heavily play on that and then suddenly just switch it up. That is how I feel about it.

Ascian methodology is literally creating an aetheric imbalance so that it would break the world between dimensions so they're pulled back in the Source. We know they have been messing with shards to prime them for Rejoining at least as early as when the Void was created, so at the very minimum before Allag (I don't think we have mentions of Voidsent before that?), so a Shard being close to a calamity state isn't a stretch at all. They're most likely all already somewhat unbalanced and near the tipping point to be merged if the occasion presents itself on the Source. Black Rose succeeded in fucking up the Source in an alternate timeline.

The lightning devastation on the continent was triggerd by Lindblum's superweapon. It was described as engulfing the continent, not the whole world. Not sure how Alexandria would know that, though.
Either it was an Ascian plan, or Lindblum went overboard with it and just caused widespread mass destruction. It's not unheard of: Koryu almost caused a mass destruction event on the Source, unrelated to any Ascian plot as far as we know.

I'm not sure where you gathered that the rest of the world was vaporized, but Sphene says in one of the first quest in Heritage Found that they had no idea what happened outside of the dome before Zoraal Ja went through. If you have a specific NPC dialog or quest mentioning it, I'm very interested, that might put things in a new light.

However, I disagree that the game makes you assume the shard got rejoined:

• Y'shotla directly mentions it leads to one of the Reflection ;
• We're told since the beginning that rejoined Reflections are totally gone ;
• At no point do they speculate it could be a rejoined shard, and all Scions know that one shard fell to lightning ;
• The interdimensional fusion is described as being able to merge a reflection with another, not drifting part of land in the interdimensional rift ;

They actually make sure you understand it's not one of them. The only link is Lightning, and since there's only 6 elements plus Light / Darkness, they will obviously overlap at some point.

[Masekase_Hurricane]

According to the endgame zone the South Sea Lalas evacuated to the shard Sphene is from and invented Electrope on that shard. The world went to war and Emet or someone caused a rejoining by tricking probably Cid into using the Lightening weapon.

Only thing I take from that is SE is listening to us and they are working on a fix to delete lala's :P I mean they removed them once in the past lol

[Ayche]

I'm not sure where you gathered that the rest of the world was vaporized, but Sphene says in one of the first quest in Heritage Found that they had no idea what happened outside of the dome before Zoraal Ja went through. If you have a specific NPC dialog or quest mentioning it, I'm very interested, that might put things in a new light.

I'll try to remember some out of memory. Lot of the Living Memory sidequests reminiscent about the lost cities, especially the Lindblum lady. And the way Otis recounts the history. Since by now nothing has been documented online, I cannot really refresh my memory of all sidequests where I got my impression.

I can see how I can be wrong, but something about the vagueness of it all makes me disbelieve it all. What on earth is Living Memories *on top of*? If the planet survived after all, why they never ventured outside the bubble? They can, that is self-evident, I refuse to believe Zoraal Ja invented that piece of tech for them. Just strong fear and incuriosity for over 400 years? Maybe I created my own answers in hopes of not having to think of all the other questions the vagueness of the situation creates in me.

[kaynide]

So, it might be worth reviewing the calamities and calamity mechanics to keep in mind what's going on.

Based on what we know, we assume that for a calamity to occur, A) a host shard must have an over-abundance of a specific element, then B) a catalyst event of the same element occurs on the source, causing C) an aether-cascade flowing into the source.

That's fine for the first 6 calamities, BUT, it is important that the final 2 are not just one specific element. For the 7th, ALL elements need to be in abundance and in an Astral state (read: active, aka dark aligned), whereas the final 8th would have been Umbral (read: Static, aka Light).

Wild Speculation, then:

If I'm not misunderstanding something, the Ascians were figuring things out as they went (The first rejoining attempt with Dark failed), so it would not surprise me if the Alexandria shard was another failed attempt at Dark-Rejoining. Especially with the Alexandrians having Electrope and easy conversion from one element to another- it sounds very "active" indeed. I get the feeling they still hadn't quite perfected the Astral-Aether rejoining thing yet when this happened.

Even MORE Wild Speculation (put on your tinfoil hats!)

Alexandria's shard is Shard #9. It still exists and is a failed rejoining. I believe it's #9 because EACH shard's calamity has a strong connection to their respective FF game, either in the opening or as a major theme. I would have guessed 13 if it wasn't already WoD because come on, Lighting Returns!

Calamity 1 (Wind): Shard 5
Final Fantasy 5 begins in with something wrong with the wind. King Tycoon goes to check the Wind Shrine; Ferris says "The wind...just stopped"

Calamity 2 (Lightning): Shard 12
Final Fantasy 13 (Lightning returns) but 13th was already the failed dark shard This one puts a huge wrench in my conspiracy. I didn't play 12...is there a lightning connection...?

Calamity 3 (Fire): Shard 2
Final Fantasy 2 begins as the protagonists escape their home, which is on fire.

Calamity 4 (Earth): Shard 3
Final Fantasy 3 introduces the Crystal Tower...which is the cause of Calamity 4's earthquake.

Calamity 5 (Ice): Shard 6
Final Fantasy 6 begins with the a main character meeting Tritoch (Valigarmanda) who is also encased in ice. The entire opening scene is in a frozen/icy place.

Calamity 6 (Water): Shard 10
Final Fantasy 10 has a lot of water themes/motifs; Spira is mostly water; people naturally seem to breathe underwater; Blitzball.

Calamity 7 (Dark): Shard 7
Final Fantasy 7 has a major plot point of bringing down a meteor; it's even the icon/backsplash of the game. Obvious parallels to FFXIV's project Meteor.

Calamity 8 (Light): Shard 1 (Dark Timeline)
I mean, come on. Final Fantasy 1 begins with the LIGHT warriors presenting their ORBS OF LIGHT and starting their epic quest.

Current Status of Shards:
1: "Being Defragged"
2: Gone
3: Gone
4: ???
5: Gone
6: Gone
7: Gone
8: ???
9: ??? (I believe it's Alexandria's)
10: Gone
11: ??? (Possible location for our 24 man raids)
12: Gone
13: Failed Rejoining; World Of Darkness.

[EdwinLi]

Current Status of Shards:
1: "Being Defragged"
2: Gone
3: Gone
4: ???
5: Gone
6: Gone
7: Gone
8: ???
9: ??? (I believe it's Alexandria's)
10: Gone
11: ??? (Possible location for our 24 man raids)
12: Gone
13: Failed Rejoining; World Of Darkness.

Unlosted World may have been one of their earliest attempt to rejoin as well.

As Emet said, they did not know much about the whole rejoining process in the start and as a result they rushed a lot of things or put too much into a shard that it became too potent in a specific element. This lead the 13th to be their first mistake in a process they did not understand.

Unlosted World may have been the 2nd attempt to rejoin a shard after they failed world of darkness and from there they may began measuring how much is too much and too little so they do not repeat the 13th shard mistake again.

[Alenore]

Unlosted World may have been one of their earliest attempt to rejoin as well.

As Emet said, they did not know much about the whole rejoining process in the start and as a result they rushed a lot of things or put too much into a shard that it became too potent in a specific element. This lead the 13th to be their first mistake in a process they did not understand.

Unlosted World may have been the 2nd attempt to rejoin a shard after they failed world of darkness and from there they may began measuring how much is too much and too little so they do not repeat the 13th shard mistake again.

Millala joined the shard during the 5th successful rejoining, and the lightning event hadn't happened yet. So Ascians knew what they were doing at that point.

[Cleretic]

Millala joined the shard during the 5th successful rejoining, and the lightning event hadn't happened yet. So Ascians knew what they were doing at that point.

Or at least, they knew what they were doing according to the guy that had a vested interest in making it look like they knew what they were doing.

[kaynide]

We don't know, of course. And my list is very speculative at best...

But, we know that when the Milala jaunted to Ancient Alexandria it was a green, comfortable world.

In all sincerity, the way the game presents the "facts" or the history of the shard of Alexandria is messy, but... it just makes for a really weird "coincidence" to have a non-rejoining "end of the world" happen in a shard…
(Snip)

Another possibility is that they jaunted to the 12th Shard's PAST and did in fact cause the Lightning Calamity, but Solution 9 jaunted -again- to some other shard entirely to avoid the lightning calamity. There is nothing saying they didn’t harvest some other shard before jaunting -yet again- to the Source in DT.

-or- they jaunted to the aethereal sea in a sorta pocket-dimension like Omega and were "stranded" there post Lightning Calamity.

Too many unknowns to peg it down. Shard-travel seems to have some weird time distortion that we're just not sure about.