Uh, why did the flood of light happen, again?

[Big-Isaac]

I must have missed a line or three early in the expansion, because at some point we learn that everyone blames Ardbert's party for the flood, Ardbert included, and I have no clue why.

From what I can gather, the First getting threatened by light has been going on for some time now. Eventually Ardbert's party was approached by the Ascians, who tricked them into coming to the Source, thinking that killing us would save their world. Instead we kick their asses and they go back to the First together with Minfillia.

So far so good, but what about all of this caused the flood to happen, and why does everyone on the First know that Ardbert's party is at fault?

[Anonymoose]

We've heard multiple sides of the story from multiple parties, each have their own assumptions and biases, and some may even have been deliberately misled.

When we first meet Ardbert, he puts forward his understanding that when the Great Sundering occurred and the strength of Light and Darkness was scattered to the shards, each shard ended up with its own unique proportions of those two energies. (Perhaps this inherent difference of initial conditions is part of why the worlds butterfly-effected so far apart.)

Alphinaud
Across ten and three they were divided. Reflections of the Source, each possessed of shards of Light and Dark...

Ardbert
Just so. One of those reflections─the one nearest to the Source─is our home. And we were the heroes blessed with Her Light. But not all worlds hold Light and Dark in equal measure. In ours, the power of Light was greater by far. So the Ascians who once threatened our home were no match, and they fell before us, one after another, till none were left. Victory, we thought...
...And then came the Light─a flood of pure, blinding radiance, annihilating shadow and color and life itself. Ere long, it will consume our world, leaving naught in its wake but blank perfection.

From this perspective, the narrative is that the First was always Light-heavy, but its tenuous homeostasis was undone by the Ascians rocking the boat and Hydaelyn sending Her champions to sort them out. The forces of the Dark stood no chance, and thus was the balance suddenly and dramatically shifted in favor of the Light by Ardbert and his party.

This is the source of his anger - Hydaelyn chose Ardbert and his friends to help drive back the Darkness threatening to Rejoin their world, they did what they thought She wanted, and damned his world for it because She cannot control the Light directly.

This jibes with the events which gave rise to the void - the Thirteen was always Dark-heavy, Igeyorhm was reckless, and Zodiark couldn't control the Dark any better than Hydaelyn can control the Light.

The best hope either Will of the Planet has for controlling its primordial force is to create agents for that force to gather around; Ascians and Warriors of Light are like gravity wells for those primordial forces.

In truth, Ardbert's party was damned if they did and damned if they didn't. If the Ascians had won, the First would have been Rejoined. When Ardbert slew the agents of Darkness, it tipped the scales too hard too fast for Light and triggered the Flood. Because it was by his hand, he got the blame.

This is where they're at when we meet them in Heavensward; they blame themselves, as well. Elidibus convinces them that there are no options but the Rejoining or the Flood, and the Rejoining is the lesser evil. Blaming themselves for the worse outcome's manifestation, they defect. Urianger throws a wrench in this plan and sacrifices their Crystals of Light to Hydaelyn so that She might have the energy to resurrect Minfilia as an Emissary to the First, thereby blazing a third path towards its eventual salvation.

However, Shadowbringers gives us a different narrative, by way of the Shadowkeeper.

FINAL ROLE QUEST SPOILERS BELOW

The Shadowkeeper was the first great nemesis of Ardbert's party, the source of the woes that would eventually give rise to the Rejoining. The Ascians Mitron and Loghrif schemed to destabilize that tenuous homeostasis of the First by adding suddenly more Light, creating an unnatural umbral charge to all of the elemental forces in that dimension. This would cause that elemental energy to trickle into the Source, and then triggering a Calamity on the Source would cause the First to be rejoined.

The Ascians very rarely do their own dirty work, especially the more-vulnerable sundered. In this case, the agent of their scheme was Cyella, an Echo-revenant of one of Hydaelyn's chosen from the Thirteenth (the one that fell to Darkness) - the same as Unukalhai.

Cyella was told that the First being so Light-heavy was her fault. Because the Warriors of Light on the Thirteenth so utterly failed to play their part, the Flood of Darkness irrecoverably destroyed their home. According to Mitron and Loghrif, because the universe likes balance, the First, which is at the opposite pole as the Thirteenth, was now damned to suffer a Flood of Light and be likewise irrecoverably destroyed. They offered her the chance to help them rejoin the First, instead, as her redemption, and she took it.

By becoming the Shadowkeeper, she started the wheels in motion which would lead to a Calamity. This led Hydaelyn to choose Her defenders and create Warriors of Light. The Light-heaviness of the First then flowed towards that gravity well (Ardbert's party) and the feedback loop worked as intended - the elements skewed umbral, the rejoining grew near. The Shadowkeeper was supposed to kill Ardbert's party at the last moment, thereby stalling the Light while the Ascians blew out the dimensional barrier on the Source.

She failed, and Ardbert couldn't find it within himself to kill her. Instead, he gunned right for Mitron and Loghrif, annihilated the agents of the Dark, tipped the balance, and triggered the Flood.

Who is really at fault? Whose story is "most true"? Who knows. But history remembers Ardbert's party as the ones who pulled the trigger.

And going by what we've seen so far, we might even get a third narrative perspective on this via Eden.

[EdwinLi]

We will learn the full truth in Eden Raid since Eden is the First Sin Eater and the source of the Flood.

How and why it is in the First is currently unknown but from what we can gather it cannot be actually called a Sin Eater as it is more of a "Creation" manifested similar to the horrors that was created during the Original Calamity.

It is currently unknown who created Eden and why did that person send it to the First but all should be reveal over time in Eden Raid.

[Rakshazi]

I must have missed a line or three early in the expansion, because at some point we learn that everyone blames Ardbert's party for the flood, Ardbert included, and I have no clue why.

From what I can gather, the First getting threatened by light has been going on for some time now. Eventually Ardbert's party was approached by the Ascians, who tricked them into coming to the Source, thinking that killing us would save their world. Instead we kick their asses and they go back to the First together with Minfillia.

So far so good, but what about all of this caused the flood to happen, and why does everyone on the First know that Ardbert's party is at fault?

"Ok, kids, sit around and let us tell the tale of the Flood and Eather in the world. Tell me, little one, what keeps our world alive? Aethaer, that's right. But how? That's right, every one in this world are made of BALANCED EATHER. A bit of this and a bit of that... Everyone have a fire in their hearts and earth in the bones. That's the way of nature here. But what will become of person if the balance will be broken? Yes, my dear... The person will be forever changed. It will become the like of sprites and elementals. Saneless and midless. That's how the Flood has come to be. Those cursed Warriors of Light disrupted the balance of our world and destroyed all the Dark in it... And without the Dark to balance out the Light - this Light has become our bane".
Something like that will suffice for you to understand how the Flood was born?
P.S. the english is not my language, so bear with the mistakes and grammar.

[Alleo]

What I do wonder the whole time: Would the shard be another failure for the Ascians if Minfilia had not stopped the flood of Light or would the world still be ready to rejoin because unlike the void the aether itself was still there just not flowing?

It does seem like the Flood was another mistake and also just happened because the Ascians were killed again but why would Elidibus then take his time with the WoDs on the source? We know that the time worked different between them, something even Elidibus should have known. His plan on causing a calamity on the source with Ardberts party really feels quite slow. The amount of time needed to kill these primals again and again in a hope that one bigger primal will be summoned felt like it would fail quite well..it was (if I remember it correctly) Urianger that then told the WoDs that they should go against us (or was it the WoD themselves that did it on their own?) and kill us. Which then lead to Minfilia going to the first and barely being able to stop the flood from consuming the last continent. Why would Elidibus take his time if the rejoining needed to be done right now?

For me it just feels that maybe this flood was different and would have left the shard behind still ready to be consumed.

[Seraphor]

What I do wonder the whole time: Would the shard be another failure for the Ascians if Minfilia had not stopped the flood of Light or would the world still be ready to rejoin because unlike the void the aether itself was still there just not flowing?

It does seem like the Flood was another mistake and also just happened because the Ascians were killed again but why would Elidibus then take his time with the WoDs on the source? We know that the time worked different between them, something even Elidibus should have known. His plan on causing a calamity on the source with Ardberts party really feels quite slow. The amount of time needed to kill these primals again and again in a hope that one bigger primal will be summoned felt like it would fail quite well..it was (if I remember it correctly) Urianger that then told the WoDs that they should go against us (or was it the WoD themselves that did it on their own?) and kill us. Which then lead to Minfilia going to the first and barely being able to stop the flood from consuming the last continent. Why would Elidibus take his time if the rejoining needed to be done right now?

For me it just feels that maybe this flood was different and would have left the shard behind still ready to be consumed.

I think it's most likely that,

after the First's WoL's defeated their two Ascians, the other's, or specifically Emet-Selch, saw it as an opportunity to cause a Light aspected calamity, because at this point the Light was already the strongest aspect.

We know that Eden was the cause of the Flood in some respects, but that there was already a tipping towards the Light anyway.

[Ilenya]

What I do wonder the whole time: Would the shard be another failure for the Ascians if Minfilia had not stopped the flood of Light or would the world still be ready to rejoin because unlike the void the aether itself was still there just not flowing?

Discussions elsewhere have led me to believe that they had messed up, or rather, Ardbert didn't do what they expected. Hydaelyn-fillia going to the first was by all appearances part of Elidibus's plan to save the First until the time for the Rejoining was right. I think the whole thing with Ardbert and the Warriors of Darkness was just part of a plan to maybe get lucky and score a kill on the WoL, which would almost certainly have caused some major issues as a whole, but I imagine he was doing some planning to set up Urianger to get Hydaelyn to stop the flood...Potentially killing two birds with one stone (Stop the Flood from the early trigger, force Hydaelyn's attention elsewhere).

[Alleo]

Discussions elsewhere have led me to believe that they had messed up, or rather, Ardbert didn't do what they expected. Hydaelyn-fillia going to the first was by all appearances part of Elidibus's plan to save the First until the time for the Rejoining was right. I think the whole thing with Ardbert and the Warriors of Darkness was just part of a plan to maybe get lucky and score a kill on the WoL, which would almost certainly have caused some major issues as a whole, but I imagine he was doing some planning to set up Urianger to get Hydaelyn to stop the flood...Potentially killing two birds with one stone (Stop the Flood from the early trigger, force Hydaelyn's attention elsewhere).

Well the Elidibus really got lucky that Urianger was there at the fight and that everyone reacted that way too otherwise sending Minfilia or someone else later might have been too late to stop the flood, especially since they had a time difference until we got there.

[JeanneOrnitier]

Elidibus was the one who clued Urianger in on the First stuff, wasn't he? It was definitely part of his plan to have Minfilia intervene.

[TankHunter678]

What I do wonder the whole time: Would the shard be another failure for the Ascians if Minfilia had not stopped the flood of Light or would the world still be ready to rejoin because unlike the void the aether itself was still there just not flowing?

It does seem like the Flood was another mistake and also just happened because the Ascians were killed again but why would Elidibus then take his time with the WoDs on the source? We know that the time worked different between them, something even Elidibus should have known. His plan on causing a calamity on the source with Ardberts party really feels quite slow. The amount of time needed to kill these primals again and again in a hope that one bigger primal will be summoned felt like it would fail quite well..it was (if I remember it correctly) Urianger that then told the WoDs that they should go against us (or was it the WoD themselves that did it on their own?) and kill us. Which then lead to Minfilia going to the first and barely being able to stop the flood from consuming the last continent. Why would Elidibus take his time if the rejoining needed to be done right now?

For me it just feels that maybe this flood was different and would have left the shard behind still ready to be consumed.

Not really. If ALL the aether stopped flowing altogether, which is what would happen when the flood completed, then there would be no Aether flowing towards the source at all, because all the Aether is in stasis. Eden is likely unable to be controlled by the Ascians who are heavily darkness aspected themselves, and they needed someone aspected towards light to control it.

The problem was that Ardbert and his party was too good at their jobs, which is why they had to rush when the flood was beginning. They were on a very short time limit before the First would become a Void and the source was nowhere near ready for a rejoining. After all, the plan was to eliminate Ardbert and his party to stall on the precipice of a Flood so that the Source can be setup to be rejoining and then they would trigger it.