[Spoilers] The Device in DT msq

[Cleretic]

A problem with adding the device (or anything similar) into the history of the Source and Reflections at this point is there should be a good reason the Unsundered were unaware/unconcerned with it. Having it be an Azem thing can ameliorate that, since it's not out of the question that Azem could have had a way to conceal his creation(s) from the Convocation or lock them out of usage.

I keep saying this, and I haven't seen a single decent argument to refute it: The Ascians do not need this key, because it does a thing they could already do. They could already cross over into other shards, and by all appearances it was a lot easier for them! The one advantage it had is probably transporting people en masse, and the Ascians don't need that, because they only ever needed one-person transport.

Why would they even care that the mortals pulled this off?

The fact that the key's aesthetic doesn't fit with any of the cultures we are familiar with suggests it is from a culture we are unfamiliar with. Which seems like a very appropriate bread crumb to leave players with as we start a new 10-year saga of the game's story.

And yeah, I think that we're ultimately running ourselves into walls by thinking we have all the answers to this already. This is very clearly a breadcrumb for future stories, there's no way that we can just intuit every single major figure in its history at this point.