Calamities explained

[SKgaming]

So I have read various Reddit and forum posts on the shattering, the calamities and the rejoining and I think I have a basic understanding of the general motive that the Ascians have in relation bringing about the rejoining of all the shards to the source to re-summon Zodiark in order to for him to return the world to what it was before the sundering.

I know that each calamity was marked with a certain element, such as fire or earth, which manifested itself in the type of calamity that occurred on the source. However, I have not seen much information about what exactly happens on the shards themselves when a calamity occurs on the source.

I know they are essentially absorbed by the source, but what exactly was done on the shard's to bring about the various umbral calamities?

Does a natural disaster like a flood occur on the shard wiping out all life for like a water based calamity to occur on the Source?

Or is there a perfect balance of light and darkness that occurs on the shards for a rejoining to occur? and if that is so, how are the various umbral calamities determined if the same balancing occurred on all previous seven shards that been rejoined to the source thus far?

[Edax]

As explained by the Exarch:

To begin at the beginning, then... In the ancient past, a single star was divided into fourteen worlds. [...] Though physically separate, they retain a connection to each other, and the Source especially. Now, let us assume that a given element in one of the shards attains abnormal ascendancy. Just as water will flow from the highest point to the lowest, the excess energy will begin trickling into the Source... And such an influx of aether will of course exert a palpable influence. If the element in question were fire, then drought and wild fires might ensue. If it were ice, one might expect the weather to turn bitterly cold. As aether continues to pour in, such phenomena will become more and more extreme, until eventually, a single untimely event triggers a disaster which "cracks" the barrier dividing the two worlds. What was once a trickle now becomes a deluge, sweeping the shard along to be rejoined with the Source. At the same time, the element which held sway in the shard is unleashed in full, its energies amplifying the original disaster to truly catastrophic proportions. An earthquake thus magnified might strike with enough force to shatter continents; a tidal wave might swell to a size capable of drowning entire nations. These devastating events are what we refer to as "Umbral Calamities."

What happens I believe is that a shard is deliberately unbalanced with it's aspect. As explained by the Exarch, it seems to be a slow process as the shard is drained into the Source until a great increase brings about a calamity.

As for what was suppose to happen on the First:
"Their battles brought them knowledge of a hidden mastermind behind the realm's woes, named the Shadowkeeper. The Warriors of Light were accompanied by an elf swordswoman named Cylva who unbeknownst to them, had her own dark agenda. She eventually revealed herself as the Shadowkeeper, who by instructions of the Ascians Mithron and Loghrif, tempered Ardbert and his companions into becoming the Warriors of Light and obtaining their crystals so that they could push the First to the brink of destruction and bring about the Umbral Calamity by killing her."

So perhaps on a fire heavy world, the Ascians might have someone slayed related to Leviathan or someone trying to maintain the water aether on that shard.

[SKgaming]

Ok thanks for this.

But what elemental unbalance would have occurred in the first if the Warriors of Light had indeed killed Cylva (The Shadowkeeper)? Would it have been a Shadow Calamity on the source then?

Is it that the timeline where the black plague was unleashed on the Source the result of Cylva actually dying? and the current timeline is one where she lived, hence avoiding the calamity from occurring on the source?

Sorry I still find this all very confusing.

[Edax]

Ok thanks for this.

But what elemental unbalance would have occurred in the first if the Warriors of Light had indeed killed Cylva (The Shadowkeeper)? Would it have been a Shadow Calamity on the source then?

Is it that the timeline where the black plague was unleashed on the Source the result of Cylva actually dying? and the current timeline is one where she lived, hence avoiding the calamity from occurring on the source?

Sorry I still find this all very confusing.

It's the other way around, the First was very light heavy. Killing the shadowkeeper should have resulted in too much light, which should have been the event for a light-based calamity in the Source. Eventually the First would have been consumed by the Light due to the machinations of Eulmore over the course of decades.

"Urianger finds that the Source's understanding of active aether as "astral" and static aether as "umbral" is the reverse of what the people of the First believe. As the color white is produced by the absence of other colors, the First came to call static aether "light," while the color black is produced by the absorption of all colors, so they call the active aether 'darkness'

With this new information, Urianger deduces that since the Black Rose operates by bringing its victims' aether to a standstill, it must have a strong affinity with static or "light" aether. Having uncovered the process of Umbral Calamity, Urianger explains that as the First reaches true stasis, the Flood of Light would begin leaking light aether to the Source. He concludes that in the future, the Empire's use of the Black Rose coincided with the First being completely consumed by the light and Rejoining with the Source. This unleashed a massive amount of light aether on the Source, resulting in Black Rose's unexpected potency and causing the Eighth Umbral Calamity." - https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki...al_Fantasy_XIV)

[Anonymoose]

Part of the confusion here is that Light can't cause a Calamity directly because Light is not an element. Calamities are elemental. The presence of imbalanced Light, however, skews the elements towards an unnatural umbral charge (astral and umbral are on the elemental energy spectrum). The Seventh Calamity was all elements skewed astrally. The eight would have been the opposite.

[YianKutku]

One of the weirder aspects of the cosmology is that apparently the Ascians need to unbalance a shard in a specific manner, while also causing the same (type of) unbalance on the Source, or at least a close attempt thereof, in order to create a Calamity.

The Source unbalance doesn't have to be huge or dramatic, since it will feed on the effects from the unbalanced shard anyway, but it does seem like it has to actually exist, and be close enough to the same aether-state as the unbalanced shard.

Which means the Ascians have some means of quite impressive project management, to line these up well enough to cause seven Calamities and almost an eighth.

I can just about imagine Elidibus trying hard to get everyone on the same page with SMART and Gantt charts, and the ominous meetings they have are basically their versions of daily scrums, and there's a Kanban board languishing somewhere on the moon.

[SnowVix]

Which means the Ascians have some means of quite impressive project management, to line these up well enough to cause seven Calamities and almost an eighth.

I can just about imagine Elidibus trying hard to get everyone on the same page with SMART and Gantt charts, and the ominous meetings they have are basically their versions of daily scrums, and there's a Kanban board languishing somewhere on the moon.

Having done a small amount of project management myself, this is the most unbelievable part of the universe of XIV. That a project could be so well organized that the only failures were brought about by incomplete information on the first attempt, and direct intervention on the most recent, and the other 7 all happened perfectly.

[Morningstar1337]

Having done a small amount of project management myself, this is the most unbelievable part of the universe of XIV. That a project could be so well organized that the only failures were brought about by incomplete information on the first attempt, and direct intervention on the most recent, and the other 7 all happened perfectly.

It kinda reminds me ofthe whole "Batman prep time" meme TBH,and the Ascians had a a LOT of prep time.

[Crushnight]

Having done a small amount of project management myself, this is the most unbelievable part of the universe of XIV. That a project could be so well organized that the only failures were brought about by incomplete information on the first attempt, and direct intervention on the most recent, and the other 7 all happened perfectly.

I don't think that all attempts happened perfectly but those 7 did , I believe the Ascians made more attempts than the successful calamities and fail void shows, my basis for this is Hydelyan tends to not make WoLs until she senses Ascian involvement in some way or another great threat to her like Ultima. Why would she need to she is currently in charge and making WoLs is giving up some of her power, to do that when there is no threat seems pointless. The WoLs myth has existed for a very long time, earliest I believe we know is the tailend of the Allagan Empire, Allagan Empire existed for a very long time as well, suspiciously long compared, they were around long enough to undergo cultural collapse, I think Emet-Selch when he created the Allagan Empire didn't intend for it to last as long as it did initially (parallels to Garlean Empire is pretty apparent and he wanted a civil war to happen by not naming an heir) but something went wrong either Source side, or shard side where their plans were put on hold until both were ready.

It wouldn't be a stretch to think past WoLs succeeded occasionally in preventing a Calamity either Source or Shard weren't ready, but never destroying the root cause that is the Ascians, so Ascians can just come back with plan B-Z as and when they want, heck they were doing just that with us with ARR-ShB.

The question I want to pose is why have they seemingly sped up their plans so much since the 7th Calamity? Could the 8th Calamity really be all that is needed for Zodiark to get enough power to dethrone Hydelyan, if so it would explain their haste for it.

[MirronTulaxia]

The urgency doesn’t make any sense to me either. If anything if this is the last one needed they should be more careful, not less. They keep losing members but don’t seem to see that as a concern. It just all seems strange. Without any time limit on their end they really shouldn’t be moving so rashly.