Elemental Calamities

[YianKutku]

Calamities can absolutely be astral or umbral, as can all aether. While I do admit what the Seventh Umbral Calamity would look like is speculation, there is some smidgens of clues in the game. Hydaelyn is weakening. She is less and less able to speak, let alone act or exert her power in any way. She is becoming more passive, which is the key word that designates umbral. Dalamud's descent clearly triggered a huge upset of aether in the short term. What the above quotes partially reference is that this imbalance was not just short term, but long term or even permanent. That's the Seventh Umbral Calamity.

Do you mean the Eighth Calamity, or that the Seventh Calamity is still happening?

[Linadae]

I'm new to lore crafting so please be gentle but Eorzea is very cyclic based when it comes to lore. It's frankly a pattern SE likes using. They like it when things come full circle. So, there's 13 shard worlds, right? And each Rejoining results in a Calamity of sorts on the Source world.

My theory is the first 6 Calamities were in fact Astrally attuned but now with Bahamut's release being the ultimate Astral Element Calamity; we will now see a turn to Umbral aspected Calamities, building up to a Bahamut-level ultimate Umbral Element Calamity. It may not be as visually epic as a giant dragon wrecking the place but it could easily be more devastating.

For instance...the Warrior of Light and others like him...loosing the Echo. Loosing that ability that allowed us to channel the Blessings of Light, that protected us from Primal influences. We would be forced to face Zodiark, not as a great champion bolstered by some god given magical blessing but as a regular men and women, as we were as the game began, before we were touched by Hydaelyn.

Of course it's just a theory and who knows if we'll ever really stop Zodiark I mean really this is the sort of thing they can dangle out of reach for years like with Blizzard and the Burning Legion. Finally let us stop him for the very last expansion of the game with the way they've been building him up so much.

[YianKutku]

Judging from the past Calamities, I think a Calamity has to at least significantly change the geography (physical or aetherial) of Eorzea, if not other continents.

Presumably the Seventh Umbral Calamity is Dalamud/Bahamut rather than the Battle of Silvertear Lake because Bahamut is flashier and more direct. Silvertear Lake did release all that aether and made it easier to summon primals, which continue to plague Eorzeans to this day, but Bahamut caused a greater immediate change.

[UAnchovy]

The fire and lightning calamites, by contrast, happened relatively quickly and resulted in widespread rapid destruction.

Nitpick: the Calamity of Fire was a drought. It was slow, painful destruction, not a sudden onslaught.

Anyway, my take on this topic is basically "not enough data". Do we even have a solid reason to think that the succession of elementally-aligned calamities is systematised in this way, rather than a pattern seen in retrospect? The people of Eorzea believe there are six basic elements, and this appears to be true in their world... but it doesn't follow that there is an inherent pattern of elementally-aligned calamities. Do we need to posit an elemental mechanism for the fact that there have been disasters every fifteen hundred years or so?

After all, the calamities that we know of are all very different in nature. Five of them are natural disasters, and two are man-made. Is it inherently implausible that Eorzea might suffer the occasional drought, flood, or ice age, even without a broader framework?

Moreover, we already know a mechanism for the calamities. When the Ascians succeed in destroying or rejoining one of the thirteen planes, it causes some great disaster on Hydaelyn, the central plane. I don't know the exact details - perhaps the rejoining of one plane causes a surge in aether, and if that aether is strongly elementally aspected, disasters linked to that element occur until the world is able to rebalance itself? - but it seems plausible enough on the face of it. It may be that the other worlds are themselves strongly elementally-aspected. It may be that the Ascians themselves are following some pattern, intending to subject Hydaelyn to elemental stresses in order to revive Zodiark. Without knowing the precise mechanics of Zodiark's return or the nature of those other worlds, I can't say much more.

[Aosha]

From a historian's viewpoint, I'll just mention that people have a great tendency to assign cyclical or repeated, connected titles to things that happen. For us, it's often naming something a revolution, be it during it happening or in hindsight. Or giving different times arbitrary names such as "the middle ages" or "ancient history." For Eorzeans, the same could be the Calamities, and the Astral and Umbral Eras.

So essentially, it could just be people saying "Eh, this looks like a calamity, which number are we on again? Seven? Ok, the Seventh Umbral Calamity just happened."

To go with this, our current, seventh, Astral Era supposedly began when we Warriors of Light beat Baelsar and Ultima Weapon. And who decided that it happened then and in that way? The leaders of the city states. Politicians. People who could use the morale boost the people get from that.