Something doesn't add up regarding the connection between Amdapor and Norvrandt...

[geekgirl101]

On a side note, something curious to me is that none of the "Gargoyle" statues in Amdapor Keep are identical to the gargoyle-type Sin Eaters (Tesleen's model). In fact, they are actually quite different if you examine them. Here's an album I put together comparing some of them.

Tesleen's transformation was different from the other sin eaters, that may have been down to her being instantly transformed by a more powerful sin eater rather than the lesser ones that take days to slowly transform.

[geekgirl101]

Okay so the thing is you got to look into the war of the magi for the answer as to why there were striking similarities between the guardian Angel Statue and the Sin Eater we killed in the first Shadowbringers dungeon. and really it has nothing to do with any time gazing shenanigans or pulled from the first hijinx. We already know that Sineaters were normalbeings that had thier Aether suddenly corrupted to pure light aspected aether thus causing transformations that eventually ended with a painful change into a full blown aether consuming sin eater.

Now during the war of the Magi Amdapor and Mhach were at war with each other as well as against Nym. One thing about war is it is the father of invention as the Mhachi were coming up with new and terrible ways to lay low thier enemies with demons they pulled from the void the Amdapori wielders of white magicks likely would have invented new ways to harness white magick including twisting light aether in ways that it simply wasnt meant to be Sineaters as we understand them would have surely been the result but without such a HUGE flood of light their damage would not have been as widely spread it was mentioned through the scholar quests that the Amdapori were not friendly to Nym and jealously held their white magicks in secret,I offer the supposition that it wasn't just the magicks they held and guarded but the Sineaters that were created through their experiments.

That sort of makes sense. There was a great flood as result of abuse of white magics that it's entirely possible that their dabbling inadvertedly created sin eaters.

[Ouen]

Okay so the thing is you got to look into the war of the magi for the answer as to why there were striking similarities between the guardian Angel Statue and the Sin Eater we killed in the first Shadowbringers dungeon. and really it has nothing to do with any time gazing shenanigans or pulled from the first hijinx. We already know that Sineaters were normalbeings that had thier Aether suddenly corrupted to pure light aspected aether thus causing transformations that eventually ended with a painful change into a full blown aether consuming sin eater.

Now during the war of the Magi Amdapor and Mhach were at war with each other as well as against Nym. One thing about war is it is the father of invention as the Mhachi were coming up with new and terrible ways to lay low thier enemies with demons they pulled from the void the Amdapori wielders of white magicks likely would have invented new ways to harness white magick including twisting light aether in ways that it simply wasnt meant to be Sineaters as we understand them would have surely been the result but without such a HUGE flood of light their damage would not have been as widely spread it was mentioned through the scholar quests that the Amdapori were not friendly to Nym and jealously held their white magicks in secret,I offer the supposition that it wasn't just the magicks they held and guarded but the Sineaters that were created through their experiments.

It's possible that they were able to "manufacture" Sin Eaters, but that would mean many volunteers chose to give their lives to become monsters, they were converted by force, or they were using wildlife and mangling them to suit their own ends. I always got the impression that, as healers, and of the "light" they were about virtue and kindness, so the latter options two seem very unlikely. If they performed any of those actions, it still wouldn't really explain why their golems look like Sin Eaters and there's no evidence that there were ever any of them present. If they could make the real thing, why protect their most valuable areas with stone golems and not Eaters? The core of the city's towers and sanctums are perfectly preserved and seemingly undisturbed, so what we come up against in Amdapor should be exactly as it was thousands of years ago. We find nothing but statues, zombies of the Mhachi and Amdapori soldiers, and some insects/wildlife.

Tesleen's transformation was different from the other sin eaters, that may have been down to her being instantly transformed by a more powerful sin eater rather than the lesser ones that take days to slowly transform.

Tesleen's circumstance was different, yes, but those winged eaters are among the most common we find (although only? Tesleen has the crying face variant). They all look very distinct; nothing like the statues in the Lost City like you would think. They share arm and leg features but that's where it stops. My first reaction looking at the statues was of confusion... the only thing we know that looks like that are voidsent. Why would Amdapor have statues venerating the enemy they're at war with? Conversely, they don't look like the similar eaters on the first when you examine them. I'm confused about that whole thing.

[ObsidianFire]

Sin Eaters can be a natural consequence of absorbing too much light aether. They were not necessarily invented on the first, but they are the first to suffer such on a cataclysmic scale. I would also argue voidsent are in the same position but being devoid of any aether well beyond simply draining the body of aethers.

Where in-game is this info from? We know what Voidsent are and they don't just crop up where-ever Darkness is strong. They are specifically summoned from the Shard that was Flooded with Darkness. And Voidsent were corrupted by the Darkness and are really just the corrupted life from the 13th Shard. Any time we see someone "turning" into a Voidsent in-game, a Voidsent from the Void is possessing their corpse. Sometimes the person's soul is still in there, most of the time it isn't.

So a completely valid explanation is Amdapor seen random sin eaters, maybe not from the first, maybe just in magic hammer space, and they copied it. I would assume getting something to become completely aspected to one aether is particularly hard, especially given cross contamination is possible. Maybe they didn't have the means to infuse something with pure light aether and instead chose to imbue a preformed block and statues with light aether to mimic it as best as they could.

Like it or not, the Eden Raid calls Eden the First Sin Eater and says it's the origin of all the Sin Eaters. This is a bit of a problem when you have what looks like things that originated from Eden existing before Eden ever sent the Flood of Light off.

I say sin eaters are a natural thing as the little boy in Amh Araeng in the Inn at Journey's End is slowly turning into a sin eater, it was not a forceful encounter. His aether was locked so only light could enter and everything else slowly seeps away or is being converted. Once anyone passes a thresh hold they are transformed into a sin eater. Normal people just wandering about don't chance because they can still regulate their aethers normally.

Sin Eaters are no more a natural thing then Voidsent are. Everyone in the 1st Shard will turn into a Sin Eater due to the Flood of Light infecting all of them with "seeds" of light which is exactly how Voidsent were created in the 13th Shard when it Flooded with Darkness. Being transformed into a Sin Eater doesn't speed up unless a person get really close to one of the high rank sin ethers though. Tesleen's transformation is show as being rather typical of how Voidsent "speed up" Sin Eater creation if Holmister Switch is anything to go by.

Allag did create artificial Voidsent... by cloning real Voidsent they summoned from the Void. They never actually "made" new original concept Voidsent. If Amdapoor were to be doing something similar, they would have to get a Sin Eater from a non-existant Flooded World of Light and then somehow copy that. The Source has never been so elementally tipped towards Astral or Umbral as the Void or the 1st Shard have gotten. So I highly doubt finding such a strong influence of Dark or Light on the Source would be possible.

I'm just saying... when the only source of a phenomena is someone Flooding a Shard with Light or Dark... none of that is how a world "normally" works. And in-game citations for a lot of these sin eater claim would be appreciated.

[TankHunter678]

I'm just saying... when the only source of a phenomena is someone Flooding a Shard with Light or Dark... none of that is how a world "normally" works. And in-game citations for a lot of these sin eater claim would be appreciated.

The raid storyline makes it clear that if they stayed in the Empty for too long they would turn into Sin Eaters. The Empty was created by Eden passing through and passively performing its function of transitioning all aether in its vicinity to extreme astral polarity. Minfilia stopped the Flood by asserting control over it with the help of the First WoL souls and putting it to sleep.

Given that Ardbert says that their world had always been tipped toward light then it makes sense that it was so due to the presence of Eden. Though by the way things look is that while Eden is slumbering it takes a lot to get it to wake up and start performing its functions. Which means it could have been passively sleeping for a long time, ever since the Sundering, but even while it is sleeping it is still performing its passive functions. Which means that any entity that wandered near it would see itself become a sin eater as its elemental balance gets disrupted and goes all towards astral. Which is how people get converted into Sin Eaters, by all of the elements that make up their body going astral. This is why victims hit with "light seeds" turn into Sin Eaters, because thanks to a cluster of light sending their entire elemental balance towards astral their body struggles to stabilize its elemental balance, so long as they kept receiving light aether the body would eventually be overwhelmed.

[Seraphor]

I find it hard to believe Sineaters never existed until a few weeks ago, relative to the source.

Sineaters weren’t an invention conceived at the Flood on the First, they’re a ‘natural’ consequence of an overabundance of unaspected umbral aether.
It’s not inconceivable that such circumstances could have happened at some point, on some world, that could have resulted in Sineaters, without going to such lengths as an entire world-consuming flood of light.

Or alternatively, to go by kidalutz's theory that Amdapoor created their own Sineaters. It seems conceivable to me that they could initiate a transformation into a Sineater via their light aspected magicks, but, without the background of a flood of light to fuel such a being, the stasis aspect of light aether simply runs its course, and the created 'Sineaters' they produced simply froze.
Perhaps they created Sineaters, but these Sineaters immediately petrified and crumbled, and this resulted in a sort of rapture mythos, that a person who was transformed in this way was pure of heart and somehow whisked off to a heaven somewhere, producing this sort of reverence. Therefore, the statues depicting this, and magicks to attempt to 'bring them back' to return those called to heaven, to fight against the dark forces of Mhach arose.

[MrThinker]

The raid storyline makes it clear that if they stayed in the Empty for too long they would turn into Sin Eaters. The Empty was created by Eden passing through and passively performing its function of transitioning all aether in its vicinity to extreme astral polarity. Minfilia stopped the Flood by asserting control over it with the help of the First WoL souls and putting it to sleep.

On the off chance that this wasnt a typo, Eden turned all aether in its vicinity to the umbral polarity in order to cause the flood.

[TankHunter678]

On the off chance that this wasnt a typo, Eden turned all aether in its vicinity to the umbral polarity in order to cause the flood.

Astral is the Light Element which is stasis, slowness, and stability. Umbral is the Dark Element which is chaos, change, and creation. As stated in the ShB MSQ in Il Mheg.

Eden as a Guardian Force made of Light by design slows everything to a standstill where it enters stasis. What we are doing with Eden in the raid is using its ability to affect polarities to move everything towards an Umbral charge, speeding it back up.

This is also why periods of Peace in history where everything is stable are called Astral Eras, while periods of chaos and rapid change are called Umbral Eras.

So no, that is not a typo.

[Seraphor]

Astral is the Light Element which is stasis, slowness, and stability. Umbral is the Dark Element which is chaos, change, and creation. As stated in the ShB MSQ in Il Mheg.

Eden as a Guardian Force made of Light by design slows everything to a standstill where it enters stasis. What we are doing with Eden in the raid is using its ability to affect polarities to move everything towards an Umbral charge, speeding it back up.

This is also why periods of Peace in history where everything is stable are called Astral Eras, while periods of chaos and rapid change are called Umbral Eras.

So no, that is not a typo.

No, Umbral is stasis, which is Light.

Astral is creation and Darkness.

This is stated... in the MSQ, in Il Mheg...

I don't think you were paying close enough attention.
There's a reason why Shadowbringers has turned our understanding of Astral/Umbral on its head, why we now realise that the naming of Astral/Umbral era's is a misnomer.

[LineageRazor]

In regards to the Amdapori, I'm on board (and have mentioned as such in the past) with the folks who don't think that the mages of Amdapor witnessed the Sin Eaters on the First. They saw them somewhere else. Perhaps another shard tipped dangerously close to a Flood, but was reined in by the Ascians because the Source wasn't ready for a Rejoining. Perhaps the Sin Eaters occurred naturally in a Light-rich environment, and were mistaken by the Amdapori as being from a "higher plane" - the folks on the First made this mistake themselves, after all, originally believing Sin Eaters to be holy beings come to punish them for their sins. Another possibility, perhaps they were manufactured deliberately by way of Light-aspected experimentation, much as the Allagans created artificial Voidsent.

It's possible that wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey shenanigans allowed the Amdapori to peek at present-era First, but I think it's more likely they saw Sin Eaters elsewhere.

Another possibility is that there really IS a light-suffused plane that is apart from all the fourteen shards, but I find that less likely than the time shenanigans, to be honest. It's still on the table, however! The writers have many avenues they could take, if they ever bother to explain the situation.

No, Umbral is stasis, which is Light.

Astral is creation and Darkness.

Yes, this is correct, and was confirmed in the MSQ. We are all well aware that it runs contrary to the REAL LIFE meanings of Umbral and Astral (the former meaning "shaded" which lends itself more to darkness, and the latter meaning "starlike" which lends itself better to light). In-game Light is Umbral, and Darkness is Astral.