Tales from the Shadows

[YianKutku]

So the new tales is out... I wont post anything about it yet since its early morning here in FL... but I will say this.... OMG!!!!

First I smiled at your reaction, then I read the story, and now I'm actually laughing at how fitting that reaction is.

OMG indeed.

[Berteaux_Braumegain]

but I will say this.... OMG!!!!

I see what you did there.

Is it weird that I'm glad Omega survived?

Honestly, after reading the Tale, the whole thing is reminding me of an Episode of Warehouse 13.

Personally it reminds me of Virtue's Last Reward and Zero Time Dilemma. Only there are less stupid complex motives.

[Ilenya]

Personally it reminds me of Virtue's Last Reward and Zero Time Dilemma. Only there are less stupid complex motives.

Unfortunately I do not have context for this, so I will take your word on it.

[Berteaux_Braumegain]

Unfortunately I do not have context for this, so I will take your word on it.

They're visual novel games that are part of the Zero Escape trilogy (Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors/Virtue's Last Reward/Zero Time Dilemma). If you want context, here it is (keep in mind that the following detail is a major spoiler for the second game, VLR):

A killer virus gets released on Earth and kills most everyone, creating a terrible situation for the planet. While I think about two million manage to live and get life back to being somewhat sustainable, circumstances are still pretty bad. The main "villains" of the game, who are admittedly not exactly the most ethical people even if they are well-meaning, want to send someone's consciousness back to the past in order to prevent this future from happening.

[Iscah]

OMG. I called it.

Yay for confirmed theories!

[Alleo]

This tale was really beautiful (in a sad way). To learn abit about the fate if we would not have changed the future, to learn about the suffering, the deaths and at the same time the hope that our character gave people. Just to read that it was not them giving the past people a better future that created the help but them wanting to save the WoL that brought people together. To have the Namazu and all the other races just come together because of our deeds and wanting to save us. It really was beautiful and shows that we do touch the hearts of many many people.

I guess this also confirms that we were there. They do talk about the scions being at the battle, which probably was the reason for Eorzea winning (even if Omega does not believe in that) and it also kinda confirms that Eorzea had seemingly not planned to conquer Garlemald, that they just wanted to secure and be ready for another attack but it never came to that because Garlemald used the weapon which in turn does destroy more than just lifes and reached Garlemald regions too.

[Mieck]

I think it might be my favourite from all the Tales they have ever posted.


One thing I did think about during reading (and, I suppose, while playing 5.0) was that the Eighth Umbral Era lasted a significant period of time - enough for several generations. I've had a quick glance through the EE again, but we only get vague ideas about how long it takes to recover. It's mentioned that the first 400 years of the 6AE were called the Age of Restoration, but that'd the only clear picture we get. At just 5 years, the Seventh seems to be a significant outlier to this pattern?


Would the Source have recovered again, if left alone? Or was the act of a Light-aspected Calamity after the other seven, enough to start the full Rejoining? But what of the other Shards - surely they all need to be Rejoined for Zodiark to free himself, which again opens the question of the Void...


It all seems a little unclear - deliberately so, I think.


Oh, and I was happy to see Nero stuck by Cid until the very end.

[Alleo]

The 7th calamity seems to be different because Bahamut was stopped before he could do too much damage and phoenix released the aether back to the world. (I do wonder how the Ascians would have stopped Bahamut from destroying the whole world otherwise...I mean they still need people and the planet to still be there to have their future..)

The ones before took some time to recover because they often destroyed the civilizations with it but I also wonder if the source would have ever gotten over that. 200 years in the future the people still thought it would be better to kill themselves by changing the future than continuing to exists. We knew already that it would turn the soil bad but seemingly it even went after other ressources and destroyed that too...so maybe this would have been another mistake by the Ascians (since they too did not know 100% what the weapon would do in combination with a rejoining) because even if some survived and rebuilt, more and more parts of the planet would be uninhabitable and thus bad for the Ascians too.

And no I think this future has shown that there would need to be more rejoinings to happen before Zodiark is free.

[LineageRazor]

Nice to see that the fan theory regarding OMG has panned out. Always thought it was a waste for Omega to have its epiphany only to die moments after. I have to admit, though, that this story focuses on my least favorite part of the ShB plotline: the whole "send someone to the past to prevent a dark future" thing. I don't like the idea that, no matter how bad things get, we always have time travel as a back-up plan. The fact that all kinds of unlikely things had to come together to make it possible doesn't matter; the fact that it's possible at all cheapens our accomplishments, in my mind. It also tends to ignore the fact that the BAD GUYS could use this kind of cheap trick, as well - and being immortal, they have plenty of time to figure out how to do it WITHOUT the handful of MacGuffins the heroes had to cobble together to get the job done.

It also leaves a bad taste in my mouth that Cid would just give up. "Nup, things are just too awful. Time travel is the only option!" This isn't the first Calamity the world has gone through, and even if it's the worst of them, it seems too early to assume that it's impossible to recover. The time travel option should have been, at most, a side project, while they focused on the true task of guiding what they can of civilization through the Umbral Era. Of course, WE know that the Ascians plan to revive Zodiark has succeeded, and everyone will eventually be doomed no matter what they do, but THEY didn't know that - all they could see is that the world was a crapsack. The world has crawled back from the brink seven times previously; why were they so sure that, nope, wasn't gonna work this time?

And maybe I'm a cold-hearted curmudgeon, but the efforts of the story to tug at my heartstrings fell flat. Probably a large part of that is because this is all an erased timeline anyway, so nothing that happens in it really matters.

And no I think this future has shown that there would need to be more rejoinings to happen before Zodiark is free.

Well... Not necessarily. We don't know the time scale that Zodiark works at. Stopping the Calamity? Healing the world? We're never given any estimate of how long those things took to do, and the Ancients are immortal beings. If he were to be revived right now - well, Hydaelyn left him an AWFULLY big mess to clean up. I could easily see the Big Z spending a few hundred of years cleaning up all those Shards while the folks on the Source stew in their squalor and wipe themselves out. Just because we don't see any evidence of Zodiark for a full two hundred years does not mean that he's not awake and active.

Basically, just because Zodiark isn't doing stuff on the Source, right now, doesn't mean that he's not out there doing his thing. Powerful as he might be, we don't know that Zodiark can simply snap his fingers and do anything he wants in an instant. Additionally, he wouldn't be at full power, with only eight-fourteenths of him rejoined. It could be that eight was enough to free him, but not fully restore him - eight was enough to give him enough agency to finish the job himself, but it doesn't have to be a quick process.

[Ilenya]

It also leaves a bad taste in my mouth that Cid would just give up. "Nup, things are just too awful. Time travel is the only option!" This isn't the first Calamity the world has gone through, and even if it's the worst of them, it seems too early to assume that it's impossible to recover.

Honestly, after reading the Tale, the whole thing is reminding me of an Episode of Warehouse 13.

In it, Pandora's Box gets destroyed, literally destroying all hope in the world. Everything basically goes to hell, and time travel is used to fix it, because things are that broken.

It's a similar train of thought. There aren't enough people *willing* to listen to Cid at this point. It points out that Cid and company were trying to fix things the normal way, but they kept losing people. "While their deeds earned them the support of many like-minded individuals, the number of comrades gained paled in comparison to those lost in the days which followed."

It's not surprising Cid gave up hope.