Quote Originally Posted by Naria View Post
Eli goes from, "hey isn't the WoL interesting with how gifted they are with the Echo" and "we should be on the same side" in the ARR patch story to personally trying kill them in the Stormblood patch story. So whatever changed his attitude had to happen between those two points. From what we know, Lahabrea's death does seem like a good candidate, but since the WoL wasn't the direct culprit it makes me wonder if there is more significance to it beyond simply the death of one of the unsunderd Ascians.
He very specifically changes tack at the end of Heavensward - from memory, declaring "the Warrior of Light has grown too strong; their power encroaches on the gods". We just obliterated Igehyorhm and then went on to fight Thordan who was charged up with both Nidhogg's eyes and Lahabrea's aether. We're clearly not going to join his side and we're too dangerous to be allowed to continue.


Quote Originally Posted by Vyrerus View Post
No, it actually doesn't. If Lahabrea or Elidibus could have taken Tupsimati at any time before the WoL, then why didn't they? It's best not to try and divest the plot of every little thing, because it will fall apart. Villains that start out leagues beyond the hero could have killed us at any turn, but chose not to, for completely unspecified and no real good reason.
Yeah, it definitely sounds like Nabriales couldn't physically approach the Scions' base to steal Tupsimati until we lost the Blessing, or why wouldn't he have done that before?

I'm inclined to think they were just working from a completely different concept of what Ascians might be and what rules they might be governed by at that time. The cosmology of the setting, from the statements they make, seems to be the "real world" and "the void", with the Ascians allied to the void and trying to drag the world into chaos.

From memory, Nabriales also talks about the staff being some kind of "key" and it all seems like something from a different plot to the one we ended up with.