Thoughts on how we might go from WoL to WoD

[Theodric]

Kain started out as a good guy though, it's not his fault he got brainwashed after a bomb exploded right before an earthquake. Then got re-brainwashed because dark luminary magics while being super jealous of his best friend.

That's correct. He isn't to blame for what happened to him, though it wouldn't have been easy for either Rosa or Cecil to deal with the aftermath - and he felt extremely guilty about it all.

Elidibus isn't a friend, though that doesn't mean that the story couldn't play out in a way to have him become an ally in the future. Perhaps there will be revelations regarding Zodiark that will shake even his faith. Perhaps there will be revelations about Hydaelyn that will shake the faith of the protagonists. There's a lot that could happen and I don't see it as an impossibility for Elidibus to change his tune later on.

[Cilia]

Well, it's very simple.

You see, time travel may be involved, and Hydaelyn will refuse to observe us in the attempt as it's breaking one of Her laws. Thus, we will be forced to turn to Zodiark and have Him observe us while we're messing around in the past. This is why the forces of Light are attacking us in the Shadowbringers teaser.

Maybe. Possibly. Who knows.

[Cybylt]

I'm not sure it'd be that seeing as the Warriors of Darkness never lost their crystals or connection to Her when they tried to cause calamity or kill Her chosen. As events so far have shown, she's got a pretty high priority on free will.

[Anonymoose]

It can also be all of the above; are any of these things really all that mutually exclusive?

Hydaelyn and Zodiark can't control much directly, and can't stop their agents from going overboard. If empyrean horrors are flooding in from elsewhere, or even spontaneously generating due to the abundant Light, there's not much She can do about it unless Minfilia steps in. And not only does Hydaelyn probably want the world Her children are thriving in the keep on being a thing, Zodiark probably doesn't want the cosmos He (allegedly) wants power over wrecked before He gets there there. Hypothetically, why wouldn't He offer to break down the barriers of time and space to prevent it? We could worry about beating the figurative and perhaps literal hells out of one another later. And if wielding Darkness saves our world, what is She gonna say about it? Zodiark could be top-shelf evil and if we defeat Him all signs still point to that Hydaelyn would just go back to sleep like She does every Astral era if we shut Him up.

Don't fight for either of them; fight for the reins of history in the hands of man and with anyone who has mortals' backs.
(Which feels weird to say. "Don't fight for Hydaelyn, but as far as allies go, clumsy as She can be, I trust Her as far as things She can control to control them in our favor.")

Light, Dark, it doesn't matter. What matters is how you use it.

[ObsidianFire]

For a deity that could potentially have a lot of control over the way history ends up working out, Hydaelyn is never shown to be interested in that. She'd much rather leave that up to the normal everyday people who want to live out their lives as they see fit. Unfortunately, her counterpart (or people who claim to work for her counterpart) seem to want to be involved in directing history every chance they get...

There seems to be a lot of reasoning here that depends on what Hydaleyn could do rather then what she has been doing (or not doing as the case often is). In fact, I could easily see this being something that gets discussed in-game. Up until the Battle of Silvertear Skies, it seems the Garleans' reasoning was running on what they thought eikons could do, rather then what eikons had been doing. I can easily see them extending this kind of reasoning to Hydaelyn and Zodiark as a way for the Ascians to still keep messing with them.

Varis wants history in the hands of humanity, but aside from Ascian involvement, I'm hard-pressed to think of an incident when history wasn't in the hands of humanity to begin with. Finding out that there are gods out there that really do have some measure of control over the world is probably not going to go over well. Nevermind that one of them is imprisoned and the other barely interacts with the world at all. I would not be surprised if Varis ends up messing with Hydaelyn or Zodiark to get rid of their influence on humanity (he thinks) only for that to massively break something.

[LineageRazor]

Obsidian's post just above lead me to a bit of an epiphany. Some folks have been suggesting that Light and Dark represent Order and Chaos, rather than Good and Evil, which is fair enough to suggest. But it suddenly occurred to me that Hydaelyn (who is, in theory, the bastion of Light) wishes for people to do what they want (she espouses FREEDOM, a trait typically associated with Chaos rather than Order). The Ascians, on the other hand, representing Darkness, wish for the people to do what THEY want (they desire CONTROL, a trait typically associated with Order, rather than Chaos). The Ascians guide mortals down a narrow path, quite forcefully at times. Hydaelyn wishes for mortals to choose and follow their own path.

Confusing the issue, of course, is the fact that the path the Ascians want folks to walk down leads to MOAR CHAOS, generally in the form of rampant death and misery. Still, I thought it was an interesting enough contrast to point out.

[Anonymoose]

It all depends on your definition of ORDER and CHAOS, as well.

In the sense of cosmogony, chaos is a state of lacking distinctions. Chaos is a singular, formless mass; the universe in potentia. It takes an act of distinction, of separation, for the universe to come into being in esse. To return to chaos is to unmake the divisions and merge the opposites. This is why Hydaelyn and Zodiark are so often linked not just to order and chaos, but genesis and entropy. Genesis creates distinctions and puts things into ordered bits. Entropy is the gradual breakdown of those bits into chaos, the removal of distinction towards a state of disorder. Many fans theorize that these concepts are vaguely or explicitly in play somewhere. The state of mortal souls, the corporeal world, the elements, etc. etc.

These are one definition of order and chaos.

However, the more distinctions you make (order) the more there is difference and conflict, which gives rise to chaos by a different definition.

If you try to understand order and chaos as both definitions at once, you're gonna have a bad time.

[SannaR]

That's correct. He isn't to blame for what happened to him, though it wouldn't have been easy for either Rosa or Cecil to deal with the aftermath - and he felt extremely guilty about it all.

Elidibus isn't a friend, though that doesn't mean that the story couldn't play out in a way to have him become an ally in the future. Perhaps there will be revelations regarding Zodiark that will shake even his faith. Perhaps there will be revelations about Hydaelyn that will shake the faith of the protagonists. There's a lot that could happen and I don't see it as an impossibility for Elidibus to change his tune later on.

Yet both of them forgave him rather quickly. I mean heck Cecil forgave the brother he just found out about putting him through everything up to that point. Anyway I don't see us working with Elidibus because I think he'd have offered it by now than just saying hey we both really want the same thing and oh btw you should learn how to use your echo during our first meeting with the guy. The only time we see that he isn't as bad as he's been shown to be is near the end of the waring triad story. If he really wanted us to work with him I'd think he'd of offered to show us how to use the echo more instead of just kinda going ok this talk was fun but now I gotta go.

[ObsidianFire]

To add to the Order and Chaos discussion, there are other dichotomies that involve Chaos, but involve something other then Order. We see Rahmu link the Warrior of Light's cause to Harmony instead of Order for instance. And Harmony fits well as an opposite of Chaos and describes Hydaeyn's general disposition pretty well.

[EdwinLi]

Order and Chaos seems to be a very big story and how too much of either side will lead into a very bad result unless a balance is achieved.

FF14 is now entering this story since the introduction of the WoD and been building up on this.

Makes me wonder if Garlean Empire locations may end up being like the Collective in FFMobius where they focus on Absolute Control (Complete Order) of lower ranking citizens resulting in the higher elites of society dictating the life people of lower birth from the day they are born to the day they die with absolute no freedom to choose what they want to do with their life unless they are of the few higher ranking families of society.

The Alliance been representations of Freedom and Garleans been represented as Order (despite their actions resulting in chaos from behind the scenes to create events so they can justify why they need to take control and bring Order to the locations) to the public as their goals in this constant war against the Garlean Empire.