Thread: Revelations from Patch 3.4

I'm pretty sure Alexander is the final nail in the coffin for players ever being able to summon a primal.

Alexander, a self-aware primal created for the express purpose of bringing utopia, engineers his own defeat. He acknowledges that, with his off-the-charts power and ability to move though time, he could do a great amount of good - stopping the Calamity, for one - but the aether drain does not justify doing so.

Granted, Alexander is an extreme case - he's supermassive compared to most primals and directly feeds on Hydaelyn's aether - but repeatedly summoning smaller ones will ultimately have the same effect. We could throw Alexander at Garlemald and end it pretty much right there, but doing so would shave half the world's lifetime off. Hypothetically speaking. Summoning a bunch of smaller primals to turn the tide of battles is functionally identical.

Yes it would be really cool but if an intelligent, self-aware primal is telling us it's a bad idea... it's a bad idea.

On the Void -

A "dark" Void and "light" Void would be fundamentally different. I'm not sure a "light" Void could even produce Voidsent.

Let me elaborate. The thing about Darkness is that it's always treated as all-accepting. Good and evil people alike can use it. Darkness is, in other words, the root of everything - cosmologically, it is the melding of all elements. The Cloud of Darkness herself says something along the lines of "In darkness, all is as one. Be it hope or despair, all is mine to consume." This explains, to some degree, how Voidsent are able to exist - a slight imbalance can give rise to a being.

Light, on the other hand, is the barrier that separates souls. As Darkness at its extreme is the melding of all, Light is the separation of all - a zero world, in other words, just as Arbert describes ("blank white perfection") where there is no life and no way to produce new life. Even necromancy is impossible because it's not so much "light" as it is nothingness. Ergo... "light"-type Voidsent seem logically impossible - and even if a Light-type Voidsent were to exist, it would be pathetically weak. More accurately, it may start out very powerful, but grow weaker and decay over time as a facet of its very nature - exactly the opposite of Dark-type Voidsent, who start out weak but consume to grow ever more powerful.

From this one can speculate that were we still able to exist if / when Zodiark arises, he would be accepting of us though not necessarily loving as Hydaelyn is. At the very least, it does explain why Elidibus wants balance and to avoid the scale tipping too far towards Light, as well as conclusively tell us he does seek cosmic balance. Whether or not cosmic balance is a good thing for us mortals, however...

So now that I've finished Alexander...

Okay, temporal singularity. If I can put it together, it goes like this:

1. Mide and Dayan are returned to the distant past by Alexander along with Roundrox' Codex fragment and live out their lives as the founders of the Hotgo tribe. The legend of Alexander is passed down within the tribe until it reaches near past Mide and Dayan, who plan to use the Sharlayan ruin as Alexander's body.
2. Mide gets the horn from Travanchet and integrates it into Alexander's core.
3. Mide, Dayan, and the others summon Alexander, which is actually Roundrox returning Alexander to the past so Mide can see Dayan. Schrodinger knocks Backrix' journal out of his hands while we're standing on top of Alexander, tumbling to the ground with it. The Auri treasure hunters are all killed or absorbed by Alexander save Mide, Alexander is sealed in the lake, the Enigma Codex is shattered, and Quickthinx acquires Backrix' prophetic journal and adopts Schrodinger as his pet, whom he renames "Shanoa."
4. The events leading up through A10 occur. We're sent back to the present and defeat Ark the Cruise Chaser.
5. Quickthinx attempts to force Alexander to use Judgment on us while we're frozen in a time bubble, only for the time bubble to burst at the last moment. We enter the Soul of the Creator and engage Alexander Prime.
6. After proving ourselves worthy by surviving his Divine Judgment, Alexander Prime sends four party members into the past so they can burst the time bubble and save us from Quickthinx' forced Judgment. We defeat Alexander Prime.
7. Alexander is shut down, ultimately, by Mide throwing herself into the core.
8. Roundrox gives Schrodinger her Codex Fragment, who returns it to within Alexander, leading to 1 above.

Did I get it all in order? I'm not even going to ask where Alexander and Schrodinger / Shanoa began to exist. Temporal singularities are logically impossible to work out. See, this is why I hate time travel.

Well! Quickthinx was no mere gobbie; he was gobbieclank. Cyborg goblins? Christ... hey, do they have neuropozyne? Otherwise I'm going to ask why Quickthinx' body didn't reject his implants. Well, he was more machine than gobbie, twisted and evil.

Disappointed Ark wasn't a primal. I mean, the Cruise Chaser is definitely cool, but Ark is my favorite summon and I was hoping he'd be a fully-fledged primal in his own right. The Cruise Chaser is a reference to a very early Squaresoft game called Cruise Chaser Blassty, which Ark was also based on, for those who didn't know.

Anyway, Alexander is pretty much definitive proof that we'll never summon a primal. Alexander himself viewed all timelines and came to the conclusion that him intervening at any point in history was unjustified due to the aether he consumes, and so sealed himself away. While summoning smaller primals may place less strain on the world, doing so repeatedly will ultimately have the same effect. Ergo, no matter how cool or epic it would be, it ain't happenin'.

Very nice to get the Orchestrion Rolls for all of Alexander's themes as a reward for finishing the quest. And can I just say I'm stoked I got the Toy Alexander on my first clear?!

Can someone clarify one thing for me:

Did the derplander die? He said he wanted to go home but Alphinaud said something after about them actually returning to the lifestream?

Originally Posted by PotatoTree

Can someone clarify one thing for me:

/10char Post

If I remember right yes, Darklander and co. did end up dying as a result of returning to the First Shard... though I'm not sure why.