Revelations from Patch 7.3: The Promise of Tomorrow

[Shookbeast]

This is what I’ve got worked out.

1) Are we Azem?

If this theory hold true, then no, we are not. Azem is instead, us. There is no Azem. Azem is our character, and we remain our character, while the “lie/fable/ruse/cover story” of Azem grows around us as we cavort back in the time of the Ancients during some future expansion.

2) We don’t look like Azem though, so how is this possible?

I mean… how hard would it be to do a glamour? So just like Emet makes us big so we don’t stand out in Elpis - someone in the past (probably just for a little bit) dresses us up as an Ancient during part of the story. It’s just a glamour - so you’re not fated to stay that way. In fact, I’d bet our disguise drops at a dramatically inopportune time, exposing us for the pointy-eared and be-tailed weirdos we all are.

3) What about the sundering? What happens to our WOL if we’re present for the sundering?

This is the million dollar question.

A: If this is the last expansion, then we probably get sundered while saving all our Scion friends by sending them back to the future while we stay in the past. Then after we get sundered, the game loops back to us in the kart and we wake up and smile at the Twins.

B: If this isn’t the last expansion - then something or someone else gets sundered to make up our soul shards - while we get beamed back to the future after punching out a fully formed Zodiark. That something/someone could literally be anything. Even a villainous Azem shard who has collected 14 soul pieces (obviously not all Azem pieces in this case). That would be a real comeuppance for a bad Azem - getting broken apart to eventually make us.

So in short, for this theory, I accept the premise that:

-There is no Azem, it’s just us playing as the WOL in the past, via time travel, and people just call us Azem. At the end of the story, we either get sundered or we don’t. Works both ways.

[Dikatis]

This is what I’ve got worked out.

1) Are we Azem?

Just... no though. The Warrior of Light isn't Azem and can't even pass for being Azem. Their aether is so thin that they were almost completely invisible in the time of the ancients until Emet-Selch deigned to offer up enough of his aether to render WoL visible and tangible. Even then, they're still so thin that all of the traps that Hephaistos laid out for anyone coming to investigate the happenings of Pandaemonium failed to trigger because it's like having a mote of dust fall on a land mine.

The glamour argument falls completely flat when Emet-Selch and Hythlodaeus both possess a keen sense of soul sight that lets them look straight through glamours and examine the shape and color of one's soul. There's no reason they wouldn't recognize their friend Azem on sight. While WoL's soul is the same color as Azem's, they are most assuredly not them.

It also ignores the hundreds or even thousands of years of history that Azem likely would have had with their friends. Even if you assumed that WoL would be as long-lived as ancient once fully rejoined (note, there's no actual evidence to this. It's faint hope that the Unsundered are clinging to), they would have to keep up an enormous lie that they don't know Emet-Selch or Hythlodaeus or Venat, who are all trained specifically to spot virtually any deception. This would also require Lahabrea, the master of creation magicks that form the foundation of ancient society, to not notice that Azem is constantly wearing a glamour.

Not only that, but WoL would have had to travel tremendously far back in time to create this stable time loop of yours, requiring aether well in excess of Elidibus', one of the greatest and most powerful members of the Convocation and a genius mage in his own right. WoL does not have access to that kind of aether without inflicting ruinous environmental devastation.

Your theory requires too many assumptions to be plausible and undermines the message that WoL, for all their similarities to Azem, is still their own person, hence their decision to kill Azem's best friend Emet-Selch in favor of the present world.

It also has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH PATCH 7.3, which means this is derailing the point of the thread.

[Shookbeast]

Just... no though. The Warrior of Light isn't Azem and can't even pass for being Azem. Their aether is so thin that they were almost completely invisible in the time of the ancients until Emet-Selch deigned to offer up enough of his aether to render WoL visible and tangible. Even then, they're still so thin that all of the traps that Hephaistos laid out for anyone coming to investigate the happenings of Pandaemonium failed to trigger because it's like having a mote of dust fall on a land mine.

The glamour argument falls completely flat when Emet-Selch and Hythlodaeus both possess a keen sense of soul sight that lets them look straight through glamours and examine the shape and color of one's soul. There's no reason they wouldn't recognize their friend Azem on sight. While WoL's soul is the same color as Azem's, they are most assuredly not them.

It also ignores the hundreds or even thousands of years of history that Azem likely would have had with their friends. Even if you assumed that WoL would be as long-lived as ancient once fully rejoined (note, there's no actual evidence to this. It's faint hope that the Unsundered are clinging to), they would have to keep up an enormous lie that they don't know Emet-Selch or Hythlodaeus or Venat, who are all trained specifically to spot virtually any deception. This would also require Lahabrea, the master of creation magicks that form the foundation of ancient society, to not notice that Azem is constantly wearing a glamour.

Not only that, but WoL would have had to travel tremendously far back in time to create this stable time loop of yours, requiring aether well in excess of Elidibus', one of the greatest and most powerful members of the Convocation and a genius mage in his own right. WoL does not have access to that kind of aether without inflicting ruinous environmental devastation.

Your theory requires too many assumptions to be plausible and undermines the message that WoL, for all their similarities to Azem, is still their own person, hence their decision to kill Azem's best friend Emet-Selch in favor of the present world.

It also has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH PATCH 7.3, which means this is derailing the point of the thread.

Then why argue so hard to defend your POV in this thread? Your opinion, based on hand-wavy assumptions that writers could easily work over, are simply not the gospel you proclaim them to be.

I like the Azem theory. Other people do too. We could spend all day going back and forth on it.

For the sake of this thread I will quiet down on the Azem stuff though, but I find this constant “oh that’s impossible” to be gate-keepy and exhausting.

Edit:
(But I do think Calyx might be an Azem shard)