Time traveling and a certain pair of goggles.

[Riastrad]

Time is not a loop - at least that's not the intent of the Alexander storyline. Quite the opposite. Loops can be formed within the timeline, but it's more like a knot in a string than a closed loop - nothing (to our awareness) is trapped repeating the same path over and over. There is a single flow of time from past to future, but some people have existed in a particular moment of time more than once in their life.

Also - unless we're up for a real shock in the future of the story - the current state of Shadowbringers seems to indicate that a time traveler can change the past by altering events to the point that their future 'origin point' cannot occur, although this presumably also means they can't return to it and are "stuck" on the new path they've created.

Of course, it also tells us that inventing time travel in the first place required such a specific combination of elements that not even the Ascians conceived of it... which makes it unlikely to be achievable simply by using the Echo.

With the exception of Mide and Dayan. They are released from with the core of Alexander to found the tribe known as Hotogo. The Hotogo tribe eventually produces two children. Mide and Dayan, who go on to summon Alexander to begin with. That is absolute and cannot be changed as it would literally kill the WoL now that it (the Wings of Time) has been used to save(?) them. Cause and effect. Time is a loop that only makes sense the less you think of it. Which is something I have failed at this entire expansion due to time traveling stories always making me try to attempt to find paradoxes...


I subscribe to the Prince of Persia line of thinking. "Most people think time is like a river that flows swift and sure in one direction. But I have seen the face of time, and I can tell you: they are wrong. Time is an ocean in a storm. You may wonder who I am or why I say this. Sit down and I will tell you a tale like none you have ever heard..." and as such certain events must conspire to happen or the time line begins to unravel. So you have people sucked out of time to be placed in a position to make sense of the timeline. Contradicting itself in order to repair what should be an impossible order of events.