Sundering and specific character questions. [Spoilers]

[RyuDragnier]

Interesting, so if the Shards never get hit by Meteors, would that mean none of the Black Mages (or whatever is analogous to them) on the Shards would call their Level 3 Limit Breaks "Meteor" then? (since no one would have ever seen/experienced a meteorite hitting their planet?)

For some reason the idea that the Shard's planets would have never experienced a meteor impact is what I find too unbelievable (don't know why this specifically), that's why I think non-living things would "duplicate" upon coming into impact with the Source/Shards.

It would fit with the alternate names for spells. Instead of summoning a Meteor, the LB3 would be Comet.

The problem with the idea of a non-living thing duplicating is that it means Omega would have been duplicated, and it's something I'm sure Omega would have noticed, considering it's not a living being but a robot with no soul (at first).

[Theozilla]

It would fit with the alternate names for spells. Instead of summoning a Meteor, the LB3 would be Comet.

The problem with the idea of a non-living thing duplicating is that it means Omega would have been duplicated, and it's something I'm sure Omega would have noticed, considering it's not a living being but a robot with no soul (at first).

I figured Omega could be the single exception to the non-living thing duplicating, something like the fact it had the ability to travel through the Rift to different dimensions/including Shards potentially, would make it immune to duplication, unlike other non-living things like meteors and other space junk.

[Vyrerus]

Interesting, so if the Shards never get hit by Meteors, would that mean none of the Black Mages (or whatever is analogous to them) on the Shards would call their Level 3 Limit Breaks "Meteor" then? (since no one would have ever seen/experienced a meteorite hitting their planet?)

For some reason the idea that the Shard's planets would have never experienced a meteor impact is what I find too unbelievable (don't know why this specifically), that's why I think non-living things would "duplicate" upon coming into impact with the Source/Shards.

No, you can chock all meteor spells in game up to the first Final Days bestowing a racial memory to all souls of the terrifying power of meteors, and then those souls passing on said terrifying magic to the new souls. Remember, the Echo vision for people is that meteor shower.

Alternatively, if we wanted to get like... hella less messy and sorta meta... we could chock the shards up to actually being in the same physical space but on entirely different orbits, as though they themselves were meteors/comets/asteroids. Not catalogued as normal stars either from the aetherial interference or by having their orbits be so far out of sink an in a weird direction in 3-D space around the sun that we could only see them physically with a telescope like every 1,000 years or something. Of course, that calls into question the idea that they'd be too far away at some point and all their inhabitants should freeze to death, but I suppose it's also theoretically possible for a planet's orbital to go in any degree direction around a sun, such that they could all at one point have had the same physical space, but due to different velocities they only ever pass through it after that. It's wild to think about, and there's probably something in astrophysics that goes against it, but trust me, we can make this wonky fiction make sense. Just gotta think about it hard enough.

[Theozilla]

On a slightly different subtopic, when Varis said back in 4.5 that his goal was continue the the rejoinings all the way in order to create “one race” to defeat the Ascians, did he mean that metaphorically or literally in the biological/physiological sense?

Like I know Emet-Selch did say in 5.0 that if we (the WoL) were to hypothetically survive all the remaining rejoinings we would become “equal” to the unsundered Ascians in the new “Completed World”.

And I do understand in this hypothetical scenario that would mean any survivor’s on the recompleted Source would then have full effectively unsundered souls (and presumably be nigh immortal), but was that also implying that all the different sapient races/species (native to the planet of Hydaelyn) would somehow magically transform into the same species/race (presumably whatever the Ancients were), or is that not the correct interpretation? And if the latter is so, AND Varis was being literal in the “one race” stuff being biologically/physiologically the same, was he just misinformed/misinterpreting what he learned from the Ascians?

[Rosenstrauch]

Varis probably has no idea what he's talking about. Viera and Roegadyn probably won't stop being Viera and Roegadyn just because seven more Rejoinings happened. At most they'd become twenty feet tall, with nigh limitless aether reserves and borderline immortality. Same as everyone else, really. Perhaps those nigh limitless aether reserves would grant them the ability to reshape their physical body any way they saw fit. And perhaps that would explain the development cost saving decision to make all of the Amaurotine NPCs identical.

[KageTokage]

I feel like they're being deliberately vague about the origin of the races so they can properly go over the matter in 6.0.

The way unsundered referred to their now-sundered brethren as "malformed creatures" in the immediate aftermath of the Sundering does kind of suggest their bodies were warped from the incident, though I also doubt the races would just suddenly disappear were the rejoinings to be completed like Varis was suggesting.

[Theozilla]

So you guys do think Varis was indeed being literal in his “one race” spiel in 4.5? Not just metaphorical, in like everyone being part of his neo-Nation/Empire would be “one race” because they would be “united” under one socio-political entity?

[Vyrerus]

It's one of those things that's fascist coded, but with the information we got in SHB we learn that he was indeed being literal. It just sounds like dictatorial madness at the time, because it was supposed to, sort of like a, "Is the villain actually a villain sleight of hand maneuver?"

I saw it for what it was at the time, because it's a magical world and they don't insert that stuff just for the sake of it, usually.

[Theozilla]

It's one of those things that's fascist coded, but with the information we got in SHB we learn that he was indeed being literal. It just sounds like dictatorial madness at the time, because it was supposed to, sort of like a, "Is the villain actually a villain sleight of hand maneuver?"

I saw it for what it was at the time, because it's a magical world and they don't insert that stuff just for the sake of it, usually.

Oh I completely understood/saw the fascist coding/subtext for his spiel too. I just was also wondering if from the Watsonian level of text, he meant it literally or metaphorically/politically?

And it seems you do think Varis was being literal though?
Do you believe Varis’ presumption was correct though? That if all the rejoinings had been allowed to occur, would all the (native) sapient races in The Source be magically turned into the same physiological race/species?

[Vyrerus]

Oh I completely understood/saw the fascist coding/subtext for his spiel too. I just was also wondering if from the Watsonian level of text, he meant it literally or metaphorically/politically?

And it seems you do think Varis was being literal though?
Do you believe Varis’ presumption was correct though? That if all the rejoinings had been allowed to occur, would all the (native) sapient races in The Source be magically turned into the same physiological race/species?

If they lived through the process, yes. It's clear blow for blow in the game text, and you even see some of the Eorzean Alliance leaders' main beef be, "There will be no one left!"

Of course, though, the Sundering occurred after the Final Days, and they still haven't given us any missing link for the, "New Life" that Zodiark made/caused, so I assume if what races there are now were post Final Days but pre-Sundering we might also stay the same, physically.

Of course, all of the playable races and even a few of the ones that aren't are capable of breeding with each other, so we already are the same species, really. We just look different cause this magical world is magically jank like that, yo.