Quote Originally Posted by Cleretic View Post
I think you might be thrown off by an ambiguous use of 'we'. Which is fair, I think everyone assumed the meaning you're taking at first, and we're realigning our assumptions based on that.
I appreciate the responses because this one bit had me scratching my head hahaha!

I had certainly considered the possibility of Robor using 'we' in that way, but the very next line in that same flashback, "Alas, no matter what we tried, we couldn't invoke its power. We had all but given up when Preservation approached us with an offer of partnership." made it sound especially self referential, 'us' being himself and Alayla, and it would be very weird phrasing otherwise. Being descendants of the Speaker, it would make sense for them to have had and tried using the key too.

I distinctly remember that bit about time being inconsistent and constantly in flux across the reflections from SHB, which is probably why I was basing the assumption of the 9th's time being much faster off of the dome discrepancy, but I suppose you're also right in that it could have caused a third, entirely separate, crunched time scale when the fusion occurred, and the 9th's flow of time is only slightly faster than the Source's.

Assuming this is all correct and Robor and Alayla were alive much more recently than 400 years ago, it does beg the question why those sentences were phrased in such a way, or why it took Preservation hundreds of years to reach out and look into the key if the Milalla coming from another world was common knowledge? I'm curious how Robor's dialogue is laid out in other versions/languages now too, I'm not sure if that might provide any insight either.