Universe Mechanics Conflict Often [Spoilers]

[Cleretic]

Similar to how I'm sitting here today curious why a second lightning calamity was on the Ascians' to-do list when it came to the Ninth. I can come up with my own excuses ("The planned astral calamity went off-balance and we got the element closest to Darkness instead!") but a little nod and/or lampshade to the oddity would be neat.

I mean, my vibe on that one is simply 'there's only so many elements so they were gonna double up EVENTUALLY'.

If I'm really gonna nerd out there's a few extra arguments to bring in (namely 'we don't even know the list we've got is accurate, the Calamity of Wind is just an educated guess'), but that's kinda the big one to hit for me: with a plan that would eventually call for thirteen Calamities, and a setting that only has six elements, you're eventually gonna need to double dip.

[Zero-ELEC]

I always assumed the plan was to double dip, just the opposite polarity. Like astral lighting vs. umbral lightning.

[mallleable]

There's always the possibility that The Ninth was not part of the Ascian's plan, and something else messed it up.

7.3

Recent interviews with YoshiP suggest that the remaining Ascians are not going to be involved in a Rejoining-like plot so there could be other reasons for The Ninth's shift towards lightning. I might be wrong, but it was suggested that when The Thirteenth flooded with darkness, it caused a ripple effect to the other shards, corrupting them. It just might be the case with The Ninth, and the Ascians didn't bother with it because their focus was on the The First.

[Anonymoose]

'there's only so many elements so they were gonna double up EVENTUALLY'.

I guess in my brain there's always been a ... "Doylist trapdoor" on that issue. In the current lore, is there any established (or even suggested) Watsonian reasoning for why the Ascians cycled the elemental wheel in the first place? To only do one of each? In order? To move to batched astral and umbral after the first set of six was complete? The fact that that's what happened felt very "because that's how the writers wanted the big picture mythology to look" (Thanks for the heads-up tho, Mezaya!) ... so I never even concerned myself with rejoinings beyond the eighth; it didn't feel like the writers would ever let that happen, anyway, lol.

But if we set aside the 30 year oscillation wobble and take the Ninth at its word that their calamity-scale war was about 1,000 years ago, the Ascians at that time were just moving past (wind, lightning, fire, earth, ice...) water (Sixth Umbral Era). Lightning being prepped then just sparks my curiosity from a Doylist perspective is all I was saying. Astral would end up being the ultimate winner. Was lightning being prepped for the next cycle? Was wind being prepped somewhere else? Or did an attempt to move things astrally just pool at lightning accidentally? (See Also: All the references to ice having the closest relationship with Light.)

I've had silly curiosities like this all along, and maybe about three-quarters of the time there's a contextual quotation somewhere that addresses it someday, if not right at the start.

The other 25% Oda-san just laughs and says, "Please do not think too hard about this." (Also fair.)

Why was your first crystal of Light always water regardless of where you started the story? [Because blue is the Final Fantasy brand-appropriate color; please don't overthink it.]

[Cleretic]

I guess in my brain there's always been a ... "Doylist trapdoor" on that issue. In the current lore, is there any established (or even suggested) Watsonian reasoning for why the Ascians cycled the elemental wheel in the first place? To only do one of each? In order? To move to batched astral and umbral after the first set of six was complete? The fact that that's what happened felt very "because that's how the writers wanted the big picture mythology to look" (Thanks for the heads-up tho, Mezaya!) ... so I never even concerned myself with rejoinings beyond the eighth; it didn't feel like the writers would ever let that happen, anyway, lol.

I definitely dip into Doylist thought first and then backfill with Watsonian reasoning myself with these. So for me it always read as 'this is what we wanted the mythology to look/feel like', doubly so when you factor in, again, the fact this is literally the thought process behind the Calamity of Wind in-universe.

That said, there actually is an implied reasoning, I believe in one of the Emet-Selch Lodestone stories: it's mentioned that Ultima Weapon actually wouldn't have worked as a spark for another Rejoining, because another dark-aspected calamity that close to the last one just would've prolonged the effects instead of starting a whole new one. From that, we could reasonably intuit that the need for variety was that part of the Source's aspecting needs time to 'calm down', that they couldn't have just flooded the world thirteen times and called it there. But Ultima Weapon was always atypically soon for a Rejoining attempt anyway, so it's possible that wouldn't have been a factor for earlier Calamities.

[Lunair]

I'm a bit late to this, but hopefully I can help elucidate upon some of these issues.

Let's start with the easy one. The Primals thing.

You're right that from all appearances, a Primal feeding on aether when aether doesn't seem to run out seems inconsistent, but there's two main factors to keep in mind. Firstly, a LOT of the "Primals will sap the land dry." mentality stems from in universe beliefs, at least some of which on this topic are pushed by the Garleans who are explicitely using the Burn as evidence, which is later explained to NOT be a result of aether being drained at all but rather it being stopped from flowing in, and the story about it being just propoganda to justify the conquests. The real issue from Primals, as demonstrated with the Eden raid series, is that they Aspect or Polarize aether to their associated aspects/polarity, which can lead to major issues in an environment. Remember, it was Eden forming and proceeding to do just that that led to everything else that happened in The First.

The next one is the Valigarmanda fires. This is actually a REALLY interesting case, because it ties into something that doesn't get talked about nearly enough, which is the impact that Regional faith has on the environment! Those fires are eternal because The local people believe that they are eternal. What I mean by that is that those fires, like Valigarmanda and other Tural Vidraal, or like Auspices, or Kami, or Tsukimogami, or Primals like the Twelve, are being influenced, and to an extent defined by, the collective regional faith of a whole region. in this case, the New World. Getting into the fine details on this one would necessitate an entire document on the matter (which is why i've been working on one.) so I won't go into fine detail right here, but if Valigarmanda were to be fully forgotten, and folks forgot the fires are supposed to be eternal, they'd likely go out. They're essentially enchantments that burn perpetually, rather than being "natural" fire.

As for the Voidsent and Sin eaters thing, you're actually right that there seems to be no loss of energy between them. their hunger is a result of an instinctive response to the aetherial imbalance they're formed by, but otherwise they don't NEED more aether to continue existing exactly, but they ARE noted to diminish in power over time if they don't feed SOMEWHERE. The fact they can reform after death given enough time is likely due to a reduction in the aetherial loss in the interim.

The rules aren't as inconsistent as you might think, they're just fed to us from a LOT of in-universe perspectives and views, and so are sprinkled all over hell and back rather than being any one collective place that'd be easy to parse. it's pain for those who don't spend hours researching it all, but for those of us who do, there's a lot more consistency than it looks at first glance. it's just SO NOT WELL LAID OUT. T.T

Also, on the Ninth thing, there's a LOT of uncertainty about the Ninth and the entire timeline surrounding it, even for those of us well versed in all the random bull that lore has. the Time dilation shenanigans of the Shards make it REALLY hard to say anything conclusive about the shards.

[RedLolly]

But the Storm Surge wasn't just lightning, it was also rain. Lots and lots of rain. We've had multiple instances referencing flooding that was occurring all over the 9th. The castle was fortified against the rising waters, and the past memory of Alexandria after the dome was erected was filled with water high enough to encompass whole buildings.
I would argue the lightning sickness might have been a bigger issue because of the rise of technology that relied entirely on ambient lightning aether. Water is *considered* more passive (oh hey, stasis) unless under the right conditions, while lightning is always volatile by nature. The tech they started using for everything, and even relied on for survival, was making them sick. I mean, it's not that far removed from how radium and LEAD used to be incredibly common in day-to-day products.

[Cygnia]

The first crystal is water blue as a brilliant masterstroke in long term foreshadowing, alluded to in 'Essences and Permutations - A Treatise of the Six Elements'. Within that text it states the following: - 'Lightning boils Water. Clearly a nod towards one certain scene which occurs post Dawntrail.
...Or perhaps just an amusing coincidence.
I'll uh, be takin' my leave now.