Where is [Spoiler]?

[ObsidianFire]

The 13th Shard is broken on a fundamental level. So how the 13 Shard works probably isn't how the rest of the Shards work. However, even Voidsent follow a very similar process to the Ascians when they come to the Source.

Voidsent can't make a portal to the Source without someone on the Source summoning them. They don't just travel to the Source randomly. Once they are on the Source, all Voidsent have to posses some kind of physical form from the Source so they can interact with it. Different kinds of Voidsent like different kinds of bodies. So you'll get everything from Voidsent possessing eyeballs to Voidsent possessing sculptures to Voidsent possessing humans. "Killing Voidsent" isn't actually killing Voidsent; instead, we kill the physical form they are possessing which sends the voidsent back to the Void.

The "portal" we used to get into the 13th Shard is a result of Xande making a pact and trying to summon the Cloud of Darkness. Only the portal for a Voidsent that powerful required so much energy from Dalamud that the Crystal Tower couldn't contain it and caused the 4th Umbral Calamity in the process. And the goal of that was for the Cloud of Darkness to absorb all the aether from the Source to destroy it. At the end of the Crystal Tower raid, Xande's pact with the Cloud of Darkness is undone and the portal is finally shut.

In order to get to the Void, we'd probably have to re-summon a Voidsent on par with the Cloud of Darkness again and then somehow find enough energy to open a portal to the 13 Shard. Only... the last time that was done... we got an Umbral Calamity in the process...

[QT_Melon]

The problem with including other Shards is that so far all methods of traveling between shards stem back to having the Echo and using it to keep your soul together past your first bodily death and then use it to posses other people's bodies (dead or alive) on the Shard you are traveling too. It's not some nice convent thing you can just do on a whim for the heck of it (like to do random open world content like we do in the current zones). I'm not saying that SE can't come up with different ways to travel between Shards that don't involved essentially commuting suicide. But so far, all travel between Shards has been presented as something that involves going against the natural order of the world and at the moment, that's not something I'd want to be doing. The world is broken enough as it is; I don't want to break it even more. If we do travel between Shards (or back in Time) there had better be one hell of a good explanation as to why we are doing it.

Even we could go to different Shards though, nothing in the new zones we have seen looks like anything we couldn't find on Hydaelyn. Ilsabard is as big as Othard is. And we know even less about what exactly is in Ilsabard then we knew about what was in Othard. The only thing I'd say we know for sure about Ilsabard is that Garlemald is in the far north of it and we've yet to even make it into southern Ilsabard. The entire continent is essentially one giant question mark. And that goes for the New World as well.

While I agree with the sentiment about not wanting to break the world further, once you had CG party WoD come over to greet a now 1 WoL (what the heck happened to CG party on our realm??? - which has me irritated story wise but that's besides the point) it already gave viewers an idea of wanting to see more of this.

That said, it shouldn't become a regular part of the plot where you can just willy nilly your way through shards.

I'm not sure about the second part of the argument, just because you can find it on the source, we shouldn't visit another world? Isn't the shard just reflections anyways? Either or is neither here nor there for an argument one way or the other. I mean should the WoD come in with dayglo subligars, 8 arms and hammer pants because they were just another shard world and we shouldn't see the same kind of thing we could find on Source world?

It being extremely difficult is one thing, saying that we shouldn't go because we can find it on the Source is another thing.

Also as far as Gaius goes, yes sure if it comes to a good arc, but I think people were still upset about a little leader that took some weird turn from the end of 2.0 into HW.

Right now this invasion of the body snatchers plotline is a bit much as well.

[KageTokage]

I'm mostly wondering where Elf Zenos is at. You teased him like three patches ago SE, where is he? Hope he shows up in part 2 of 4.5 msq.

The trailer more or less confirmed he's going to show up when we go to confront Elidibus in part 2...though considering that he's on the floor in one of the scenes things probably aren't going to go too swimmingly for him.

I hope he goes out with a bang instead of a whimper in any case.

[Anonymoose]

I'm not sure the void counts as inter-shard travel. The shard that was there is now not; that's the point. Usually, the dimensional planes have a membrane between them that's reinforced from both sides by two separate aether-rich worlds. Breaking through that barrier is nigh impossible, and (as far as we know), the instant you actually manage to break through, the distinction between the worlds is undone, the membrane collapses, and the "reflection" is "deleted".

The way we've seen this circumvented thus far is to die, transcend the flesh, and somehow ride through the crystals outside of the Source, into a transitional something and then into another shard.

With the Thirteenth, you only need to cut through the Source-side membrane and swagger directly into the empty, and even that takes a profound amount of energy.

[Iscah]

I hope he goes out with a bang instead of a whimper in any case.

I think he has to go out with a bang, or there wasn't a point to having him "survive" in the first place.

[KageTokage]

I feel like transcending the flesh might be the only actual requirement for inter-shard travel considering what happened to the Scions and that the "having to die" part was just something the Ascians made up because getting rid of more WoLs is always a plus if it's not going to throw off the balance.

I'm curious about what exactly happened to the Scions after they arrived at their destination considering their disembodied state, though...

[ObsidianFire]

"Transcending the flesh" is a euphemism for dying. Or at least, the first requirement of death in the FFXIV world; that is, a souls becoming separate from its material body. The second part of death is when the soul goes back to the Aetheria Sea/the Lifestream. The Ascians and the WoD (and anyone else who would travel between Shards) would not do the second part. Preventing the second part is probably impossible if the soul in question does not have the Echo.

The Scions have not "transcended the flesh" as their bodies are still attached to their souls and are sill properly alive. Their souls just aren't in their bodies at the moment. Which suggests they are still on the Source. What is very weird is that their souls are not anywhere souls usually are (lost in the Aetherial Sea like when Y'shtola used Flow, or something of that nature). There's also the fact that the Scions do not have the Echo, so even if they were to "transcend the flesh" their souls would probably do what everyone else's souls do when they die and just go back to the Aetherial Sea and be turned back into raw aether. That is what Krile was looking for with Matoya's Crystal Eye in 4.5 Part 1 and found that the Scions souls had not dissipated into aether; they'd "simply" somehow left the Aetherial Sea.

[Iscah]

"Transcending the flesh" is a euphemism for dying. Or at least, the first requirement of death in the FFXIV world; that is, a souls becoming separate from its material body.

It seems to be used as a euphemism, but I'm not sure that death is actually required.

The lorebook (vol.1, p.15) uses the term "transcend" to describe the powers of the Echo.

"The Power to Transcend Words" and understand all languages.

"The Power to Transcend Time" and witness visions from the past.

"The Power to Transcend Worlds" - "Though rare, there have also been cases reported of individuals who, through the manifestation of Hydaelyn's very Light, can walk the aetherial plane and communicate directly with the planet Herself."

So it seems that our visions of the Mothercrystal may be at least part of the way towards inter-shard travel, with our spirit moving out of our body. It seems that we remain physically in place during these visions, according to other characters who witness them.

[Kalise]

Voidsent can't make a portal to the Source without someone on the Source summoning them. They don't just travel to the Source randomly.

While many Voidsent are summoned to the Source, not all of them are.

There's things such as during the SB WHM quests where Voidsent portal themselves in to try and feed of the Padjal's uncontrolled Aether. There's places like Haukke Manor which become infested with Voidsent without anyone actively summoning them (Unlike, say, Tam-Tara hard), you have open world areas such as Northern Thanalan where Voidsent appear and gather seemingly at random.

This suggests that Voidsent CAN come to the Source of their own volition, though, I suspect there's some limitations to it, such as them being unable to CHOOSE to come to specifically the Source and instead just sense high levels of Aether and go to it completely oblivious to what shard it is on. Meanwhile summoning would be more direct travel, allowing specific entities to be brought to specific shards (As seen by the many times people summon big bad demons to fight against us)

As far as the "needing to possess a body" thing goes, I'm a little confused on that. Since, for example, in BLM and RDM quests, there are times when enemies open up portals and giant Chimera's come through. With no evidence of having any bodies around (Certainly not giant Chimera ones). I mean, these instances of summoning suggest that these Voidsent are coming through the portals body and all (Though, I suppose it could be a case of artistic licence where devs didn't feel the need to keep putting various bodies around the place for Voidsent to inhabit)

[Iscah]

The lorebook section on voidsent explains how the "needing a body" thing works. There are basically two ways that a voidsent can leave the void: coming through a voidgate (whether naturally formed or deliberately created to summon a voidsent) in its own body, or just its soul can pass through and possess "a 'vessel' provided by the summoner". The "soul method" requires a smaller hole than an entire body, so larger voidsent are easier to summon this way.

Natural aetherial tears are rarely large enough to let major voidsent through, although "in the years leading up to and following the Calamity, the barrier between the two planes has grown weak, resulting in larger and more frequent tears".