Revelations from SHADOWBRINGERS

[dragoelete]

i was never much a fan of smt since they made the alignments wierd... law was on par but chaos in smt... they just made chaos essentially evil... which its not chaos is free spirited they will follow laws if they feel like it (usually depending on the state of there chaos(so chaotic good would mostly follow "good" laws but completely ignore "evil" laws with chaotic evil being the opposite)) but smt made no real distinction in the different forms of chaos.

[Alleo]

Just some funny thoughts I had yesterday: You know I always wondered why Elidibus called himself the emissary and yet never really tried to be one. (I mean he never even told us much about the war itself) And at the end of the last expansion was fully ready to kill us. Now we know that he just calls himself that because that was his job at the old time. For me at least this is another point to show how they stick to the past.

And isnt it kinda telling that all the 13th are still alive and that it was only others that sacrificed themselves?

[Jandor]

And isnt it kinda telling that all the 13th are still alive and that it was only others that sacrificed themselves?

To be fair, if Emet is anything to go by, they are pretty gung-ho about undoing that bit and bringing them all back.

10chars...

[ExKage]

Could someone give me a refresher on Flood of Darkness/Light, The 13th, and what that means for the First?

What caused the 13th to be considered a lost cause? What happened? What's difference of the Flood of Light? Wouldn't the flood of light have been just as bad so that it too could not be rejoined and the stoppage of the flood was actually a good thing to knock it back into a better way to rejoin the First?

[Dualblade]

Could someone give me a refresher on Flood of Darkness/Light, The 13th, and what that means for the First?

What caused the 13th to be considered a lost cause? What happened? What's difference of the Flood of Light? Wouldn't the flood of light have been just as bad so that it too could not be rejoined and the stoppage of the flood was actually a good thing to knock it back into a better way to rejoin the First?

The 13th was the Ascians first attempt at trying to rejoin a shard to the Source before they really knew what they were doing. We don't know all the details and if anything might know less now, but based on what we know:

Igeyorhm was in put in charge of the 13th. She began doing her part, and ended up using Darkness to overwhelm the 13th.

People on the 13th including Warriors of Light began using Auracite to trap and use Primal powers but this turned them into the first Voidsent (tipping things even further to Darkness.)

A Flood of Darkness probably started which would turned even more people into Voidsent, HOWEVER unlike the Flood of Light the Ascians didn't have a Calamity ready on the Source to cause a "crack" for the aether from the 13th to be drawn into, and by the time they realized they needed to do this it was too late and the Flood of Darkness completely overtook the Shard.

Whatever aether was left after the complete fall to Darkness was then eaten up by all the various Voidsent and their voracious appetite meaning it is now completely useless.

Meanwhile in the present the Ascians know what they are doing and have even done a successful Darkness-aspected Rejoining going by the explanations we have. In G'raha Exarch's timeline they succeed in the Light-aspected Rejoining resulting in the 8th Rejoining, but due to his time travel we have (for now) managed to stop it from the Shard side and thus Elidibus needs to hold off with the Calamity on the Source so he doesn't have to rebuild things over hundreds of years before trying again.

As an aside while the 13th is no longer usuable for them our understanding is that the Ascians don't need to rejoin every shard to bring back Zodiark, they just need to bring back enough of his power to break from his prison, at which point they believe he could destroy Hydaelyn and make everything as it once was.

[QT_Melon]

The 13th was the Ascians first attempt at trying to rejoin a shard to the Source before they really knew what they were doing. We don't know all the details and if anything might know less now, but based on what we know:

A Flood of Darkness probably started which would turned even more people into Voidsent, HOWEVER unlike the Flood of Light the Ascians didn't have a Calamity ready on the Source to cause a "crack" for the aether from the 13th to be drawn into, and by the time they realized they needed to do this it was too late and the Flood of Darkness completely overtook the Shard.

Whatever aether was left after the complete fall to Darkness was then eaten up by all the various Voidsent and their voracious appetite meaning it is now completely useless.

As an aside while the 13th is no longer usuable for them our understanding is that the Ascians don't need to rejoin every shard to bring back Zodiark, they just need to bring back enough of his power to break from his prison, at which point they believe he could destroy Hydaelyn and make everything as it once was.

Just wanted to stress your point since this is what is missed in a lot of recaps. It's not the aspected flood that is bad and not needed. Its a flood with no outlet on the source to successfully rejoin that is bad for the Ascians. This is why disasters of the same element(s) happen - it's rejoining and releasing the same energy that flooded in.

The name BLACK ROSE is actually misleading, as people are apt to assume its dark aspected and attributed to Dark Qualities what we on the source would think as Umbral/Dark. However, research in the elements is that we got this flipped. Black Rose is actually LIGHT aspected. Umbral/Light.

Black rose was intended for the rejoining of light from the first. It's light aspected properties would cause stillness in bodies, death.

AND

[Vayanne]

The 13th was completely flooded with Darkness. A completely flooded shard cannot be joined with the source, so a Flood of Light is just as bad as a Flood of Darkness. It is in the Ascians' (and everybody's) interest to prevent a Flood from happening.

[CaesarCV]

Sure I can give a quick refresher.

Basically, different shards have different aetherial balance. An aetherial balance can be pushed to greater heights, which causes aether to flow back towards the source. Ascians attempt to manipulate events to cause this imbalance. In the case of the 13th, they sowed chaos and destruction through the faulty Auracite. On the first they had their mysterious plan with Ardbert and pals. When imbalanced, the shard can be Rejoined with the source by causing a calamity on the source.

However, if the aetherial balance tips too far, it can cause a Flood. A flood royally messes up a shard, usually leaving it an aether deprived wasteland and causing all kinds of other issues. When this happens, there's basically nothing left to rejoin. Causing a flood is never really the Ascian's plan. It can make a Shard useless. Still, they're far from perfect, and they basically messed up twice. If the 1st's Flood had completed, there wouldn't be a shard left to rejoin. That's probably why they rushed to have Ardbert cause a calamity, so they could rejoin the 1st before it was destroyed. However, Minfilia stopped the Flood, which left them an opening. They just had to tip the Aetheiral balance just right and then cause a calamity on the first. Something they would have been successful in if not for our heroes intervention.

[Ilenya]

Two random trains of thoughts.

I see a lot of comments talking about how Hydaelyn/Zodiark needed a constant source of aether, but do we know this is the case beyond "Other Primals require it"? It's entirely possible the Creation magic used to summon them made that not happen, and the lesser magics used to summon our Primals made them bleed the aether that would otherwise keep them fine and require them to constantly consume aether to stay around. This is just a random theory, but I'm curious.

The other train of thought about the two is how things went down between them. By all appearances, as a whole Zodiark should have a higher potential level of strength over Hydaelyn, I think. I'm wondering if, when the two ended up fighting, it was less a fight and more an agreement. If both are supposed to be the will of the Star, both would want life to go on, right? Zodiark may not have wanted the sacrifice the Ascians were planning to happen, either due to wanting the new life to have a chance, or because he just couldn't do what they asked. Hydaelyn gives him an out. Seal Zodiark, his power is now out of reach, and with enough fudging of history and the passage of time, hypothetically Zodiark will be forgotten, but there would be a means of bringing him back if required (AKA, another Calamity like the First one). Unfortunately for the two Primals, some Ascians remember everything, but remember it in a one-sided manner or were not involved with the conversation. Hydaelyn then has to tap into people (WoLs) to try and stop the plan both Primals wanted to avoid.

The other thought...

So maybe I am misremembering the White Aetheryte, but why did we never stuff the Light into it? I mean, obviously the Light from Lakeland's Light Warden would have been absorbed by the WoL/D, but every Light Warden after we were aware of the Aetheryte, but just...Never used it. Is there some specific reason that couldn't have worked? Did no one think "Hey, this can hold Aether. Why don't we try using this on the Light and see what happens?" Was the plan that reliant on the WoL/D that they never tried to think of an alternative?

Or am I overestimating what the thing can do?

[Eyvind]

A few things I haven't seen mentioned in the 31 pages so far of this lore thread.

The first is Seal Rock of all things...

I realize that the island that popped out of the waves was the opposite side of Vylbrand from Amaurot, but that city is so huge and Vylbrand so small by comparison that I honestly wonder if Seal Island is another part of the city. For those who don't know, the PvP area was on the bottom of the ocean until one day ot decided to rise out of the waves with no notice shortly before Dalamud fell. There were Allagan ruins on it, a stone tablet written in Sahagin...and a curious horn that the Ascians were obsessed with. Known as a "key" to the Sharlayans, it was one of several horns - another is in Louisoix's staff which we used to kill our first Ascian. The Ascians stole it, and the lore book itself hints that the horn was used in the summoning of Titan and Leviathan. I'm now wondering in ruins of Amaurot were still there in the days of Allagan, and if the ruins were built on top of them to study it. I also wonder if the "keys" were made to summon Zodiark, and that's why the Ascians know of them and repurpose them for summoning primals.

I also did not see anything about the name of a certain chatty shadow:

Outside FF14, Hythlodaeus only appears in one other piece of media I know: Thomas More's Utopia, written more than 500 years ago. There he is the one who tells the narrator how things work in the perfect society, but there has always been a question of whether More intended us to take him seriously. You see, his name means "dispenser of nonsense"

While we're getting literary, how about those Shakespeare references:

If anyone has any doubts that The Tempest refers to the Shakespeare play, two of its regions are named for two of the characters, Caliban and Trinculo.

For anyone who has not read the play or seen it, it is about an elderly wizard named Prospero who used to rule the Italian city of Milan, but who was forced out and exiled with his baby daughter to an island. He hones his magic to get off the island, and get his revenge...but when his enemy's ship gets close enough to his island to shipwreck, and he takes him prisoner, he is moved to mercy by his daughter Miranda. See, Miranda has never met any humans but her father and his two weird servants. When she sees the passengers of the ship, she is moved to wonder, saying "What strange new world that has such people in it," and she falls in love with the enemy's son. Prospero is moved to mercy, makes peace with his enemy, and returns to his city.

Prospero here is clearly Emet-Selch, and I'd argue that Miranda is Hythlodaeus...but Emet-Selch will not be moved, can't find any love or mercy for the "strange new world that has such people in it." So it becomes a tragedy rather than a comedy.

Those were the things I did not see talked about in the thread.