Can someone explain the calamities/shards/source thing?

[Anonymoose]

When [a Calamity] happens, Hydaelyn desperately needs aether to heal the damage and maintain balance. The only readily available source of sufficient aether are the parallel Shards--Hydaelyn is forced to reabsorb the Shard back into our world.

Beware: This has not been confirmed. While it is often presented as cold, hard fact by redditors and YouTubers, it's several layers of assumptions built on top of one layer of confirmed fact. The extrapolations are (a very popular) theory alone, just rarely presented as such.

The main qualm I have is that the Ascians said the rejoining (calamity) occurs when one of the shards (1 of 13 parallel worlds) is destroyed. But I thought a calamity was when some planet-wide elemental disaster struck, (flood, tornado, meteor, etc) caused by previous civilizations.

It's both. Here's all of the information we know for sure (or think we know but have perhaps been lied to (but we probably know)):

When Hydaelyn expelled Zodiark, the fabric of the cosmos buckled. Not unlike the multiplied reflections in a broken mirror, the original "Source" dimension was copied into thirteen newly-born dimensions, scattering the energies of Light and Darkness into those worlds.

These fourteen dimensions are separated by boundaries, while also overlapping, while also sequentially stacked. I'm not sure there's a way to explain or comprehend it in three-dimensional framework. Think about it this way: Arbert claimed that the Source is "closest" to the First and "farthest" from the Thirteenth, but the Source and Thirteenth overlap all the time, causing incidental voidsent intrusion.

The "cracks in the mirror" are the boundaries between worlds - nigh impossible to penetrate without using a crystal of Light or Darkness to slip out of one dimension and into another through a cosmic rift. I speculate that this is because both sides of the rift are rigid and aetherially reinforced by some kind of incidental static cosmic equilibrium that the dimensions just happened to fall into at the division, hence why the void (a dimension that has been hollowed out) is so much "easier" to break through into, and even that takes a prodigious amount of energy.

The Ascians see this cosmic status quo as more than just an insult to Zodiark, but an affront to the natural cosmic order. A broken mirror, compromising the integrity of the universe itself and surely damning it to eventually be overwhelmed by oblivion - a faint spark of "existence" snuffed out forever. But that's just, like, their opinion, man. Nothing suggests that our beautifully broken world is any more or less damned to eventual oblivion than any other. And more important, it's ours now. GTFO.

Anyway, both Hydaelyn and Zodiark are impotent to influence the energies of Light and Darkness on their own. They need agents to enact Their will. The Ascians try to raise such a confluence of aetherial chaos that it messes with aetherophysical law and order and compromises the integrity of the boundaries between worlds.

When the chaos hits a certain crescendo and the barrier finally gives way, the "crack in the mirror" is "healed" - the two pieces become one, the "extra" dimension is essentially deleted from existence, reduced to aether, and rushes back into the Source dimension's Lifestream system as the Source itself experiences a catastrophe resulting from the chaos and aetherial imbalance hitting its peak.

This is where some theorize that Hydaelyn has been leaving out part of the story - that She is deliberately eating the worlds to survive because she's pushed to the brink she has no other choice. It might end up being true, it might not. Something about it doesn't sit right with me - not the least of which that it seems as though Elidibus's narrative about balance would crumble if She's bring pushed over that brink.

So Zodiark's agents try to make this happen, Hydaelyn's agents try to thwart these efforts. However, Hydaelyn and Zodiark also have no control over the efficacy of their agents or the consequences of their actions. We've seen Ascian and Warrior of Light alike beckon a Flood, and nobody wants a flood.

Zodiark has assigned Elidibus to babysit the Ascians and ensure His resurrection takes place by preventing Floods. Zodiark needs that aether intact if He is going to be resurrected. Unlike the red-masked, black-robed overlords who yell things like that Hydaelyn must be "burned out like a parasite," Elidibus just claims he wants to save the planet and make Hydaelyn and Zodiark one again.

Whether you trust he's telling the truth and things are more complicated than they seem, or whether he's a snake deliberately over-complicating already-complicated things is up to you. (I'm unabashedly #TeamHydaelyn / #ElidibusIsASnake.) (What if making Them one again allows Him to Burn Her out anyway, because He was stronger at the division?)

What's the significance of them all being different elements?

Unknown. Everything plays into the elemental themes in some way; why specifically the Calamities do doesn't seem to be known. Maybe it plays into the "Seven Heavens" and "Seven Hells" mythology in some way.

Some have also pointed out that the Calamities might be seen as elemental in nature, but are also kind of a grab bag of hypothetical apocalypses. Large-scale super-storms, the sun growing too hot, volcanic and geologic upheaval, the great ice age, the great flood, a meteor impact. Perhaps they were convenient tropes, and conveniently aligned to the need for elemental-themed plot scaffolding.

So the 7th calamity was non-elemental? Meteor/bahamut?

It was all elements at once, but with a high-astral charge. (Confirmed by lore book.)

Even if the sun doesn't turn out to be "astral" energy, Bahamut was essentially being used as a conversion transistor, so perhaps he affected the aspect and charge, as well.