Gerun Oracles

[Nalien]

It didn't start to seem like they were originally more than lords of the void until Zodiark and the revelation that they were fleeing to a space between the worlds (the interdimensional rift); that perhaps they became associated with void from somethng... "before".

I'm somewhat reluctant to associate The Void with The Interdimensional Rift. Crystal Tower makes it seem more likely that it is The World of Darkness, which if I'm remembering my Dissidea correctly, ExDeath considered separate (and inferior) to The Void... Add to that how prominent The Void has been in this game, granted it isn't Main Scenario material, but it's still very much something that comes up time and time again, while The Interdimensional Rift has always been "endgame" material, if that.

I'll be honest though, the idea mostly came about because my OCD will not allow Belias/Zodiark to be "Primals", while Cuchulainn is a Voidsent... That is not how references work, either they're all Primals or they're all Voidsent dammit! Belias (and Zodiark) being something like a Void Primal seems to work quite nicely as far as that goes, with Tristan "learning" Belias-Egi through the Ascians and effectively giving us a corrupted Ifrit-Egi (purple colour scheme screems Void to me, I'm sure it was just the devs cutting corners and being unable to reskin Ifrit-Egi red though). Ultimately it would make for a nice mirror to Hydaelyn, with the twelve Ivalice Espers potentially being The World of Darkness versions of the Twelve, also building on the Ascians naming/sigils somewhat. I imagine there would be more fanfare over us slaying Cuchulainn were that the case though, granted his Ascian counterpart is already gone...

I do still find it odd though, that from all the Eras we know, we had problems (Civil unrest, War of the Magi, Garleans), followed by a Void problem (Cloud of Darkness, Mhach, Atomos), followed by a Calamity... The Ascians coming through The Void from their world, or their world being consumed by The Void already are certainly other possibilities, with it cropping up around Calamities just being a side effect of whatever "much chaos, such disaster, wow" is meant to achieve, but then Nabriales makes it seem like The Void is very much a part of their plans. He stole Tupsimati and was very keen on starting the next Rejoining, then he goes on about having The Void devour all light... Likely just a good source of chaos, but if their world is/was separate from The Void, wouldn't that make it a common threat? Wouldn't their world be (or have been) equally at risk of Voidsent? If you have two worlds, with The Void in the middle, and you burn out one, wouldn't the other bare the full brunt of the Voidsent from then on? The only sense I can make there is that we have a reverse Final Fantasy V going on; Rather than a planet being split to seal The Void, we have a planet being split allowing The Void through... Though even then, if The Void is meant to be some common enemy, which could put us in agreement with Elidibus... Nope, can't make sense of that... They make far too much use of the Void for it to be a problem for them...

No, I think I'm going to go back to my original hypothesis on "not of this world"; There is no other world, the Ascians are very much of this world. They've got a Planet of the Apes thing going on, and we're the Apes. Would fit nicely with Lahabreas comment that the laws of existence are being warped beyond all recognition. They're not of this world because the laws of existence have been warped such that the world is now alien to them. That warping is what prevents them easy access, Lahabrea and Elidibus are "new" so they're "of this world" in the sense that it is more familiar to them, but if allowed to worsen they'd be in the same boat as Nabriales et al.

Granted, Final Fantasy doesn't shy away from just pulling another world out of no where, I'd rather it didn't though.

Granted, that rogue element could very well be Lahabrea, but so long as seemingly all the major problems in the world end up traced back to Ascian instigation, it kind of sends the message that the evils plaguing humanity are external, even without meaning to.

Well, we have a few evils which (so far) aren't traced back to Ascians... Ilberd seems to have no involvement with them, and it's unknown whether Thordan I did. Heck, something like the civil descent of Allag would almost have to be mans fault, rather than Ascians. Ascians perhaps just pushed them in that direction...