Light and Dark

[Anonymoose]

I've been digging into this (along with how these often get conflated with astral and umbral) without really finding the concrete walls, even after looking through every mention of the words in the game. It's probably up to Oda-san and Koji to lay it out more clearly, if indeed they'd like it to be clear at all.

The one thing I can say is that Darkness and Light do not seem to be equal to darkness and light.

Most NPCs seem to refer to lower case light and darkness as aether and lack thereof, while most instances of capitalized Light and Darkness seem to be the wills of Hydaelyn and Zodiark, the "star" and the "soul". The void seems to be of the lower case variety of darkness; a vast, hungry emptiness that seeks to devour all light (the life-giving force of aether). While Zodiark seems to be of the upper-case variety, aetherial in His own right having once shared the Sea with the will of Light.

I'm having a hard time understanding if this tendency that I'm noticing is actually there, and whether it reflects reality, or just an Eorzean worldview developed over thousands of years.

But there is (upper case) Darkness-aspected aether; the Dark Crystals used by the Ascians, for starters. But according to the art book, Darkness makes up the crystal seen at the end of 2.00 and the entirety of the Chrysalis, as well. This is kind of fringey, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Heart of Sabik itself turned out to be Darkness-aspected aether in auracite form (going by the Japanese dialog calling it a holy stone).

The two polarities are discussed as if related to these phenomena while maintaining some degree of separation. The "upper" three elements are primarily associated with astral, the "lower" three primarily with umbral. Back in 1.0, astral was just Wind, Lightning, and Fire mixed together, but it might be more accurate to say that those three elements naturally possess slightly more of the "astral force", while Water, Ice, and Earth possess slightly more of the "umbral force", and perhaps those forces are what are linked into Light and Darkness. Is that to say that astral and umbral are not equal balances of those three elements together? Not at all. They might still be just that, as that's what we've seen in the past taken in a very literal sense.

Also, all six elements can exist in either polarity, but when we think of fire, we tend to think of it in its astral state (burning, consuming) rather than its umbral state (warmness, dryness). I wouldn't be surprised if, to pull its opposite from the wheel, water "naturally" exists in a more umbral state (coolness, wetness) and more rarely assumes the astral state (surging, flooding). That might just be the "force" behind the polarity at work.

Corrupted aether, at least, seems to just possess so intense of an elemental charge that it's the aetherial equivalent of radioactive.

So that's like five paragraphs, but it all still amounts to, "I have no idea."