Thread: Revelations from Patch 5.3

Originally Posted by Naria

The Fourteenth

The fact that Azem is called a "defector" is intriguing. We know that they left before Zodiark's summoning but didn't join Venat's rebels. Who then, were they defecting to? Elidibus seems to have completely forgotten Azem's existence. Considering that they both have "together but apart" positions on the convocation I have to wonder what their relationship was, and if the person that Elidibus swore an oath to but can't remember is Azem. I wonder when the player character will realize that they are Azem?

I honestly expect the 5.4 to 5.55 story focus partly on the Azem and our character beginning to see memories and possible some vision phantoms through the storyline. With 6.0 to 6.3 being the finale of Season 1 storyline, it seems fit for the prologue of 6.0 storyline (being 5.4 to 5.55 MSQ) to prepare us for what our character may experience in 6.0 to 6.3 and what may awaken within him/her now he/she has the Soul Crystal

Are we dropping spoiler tags now? I don't think anyone this deep in the discussion wouldn't have finished the MSQ yet.

Originally Posted by Naria

The Fourteenth

The fact that Azem is called a "defector" is intriguing. We know that they left before Zodiark's summoning but didn't join Venat's rebels. Who then, were they defecting to? Elidibus seems to have completely forgotten Azem's existence. Considering that they both have "together but apart" positions on the convocation I have to wonder what their relationship was, and if the person that Elidibus swore an oath to but can't remember is Azem. I wonder when the player character will realize that they are Azem?

They don't have to defect "to" anything - the act of turning away is the defection itself. They have defected from "with the Convocation" to "against the Convocation".

I understood Elidibus's oath to have been sworn to the group, not to a specific individual.

And I think the player-character has already come to their realisation during the climax.

Just had a few thoughts on the 14th and a certain word.

With the reveal that we're Azem The Traveler, we're represented by the Sun, and Azem means Sun in many languages, I have a theory on why that word is used for Sun. Considering our job was basically traveling the world and helping people, after Zodiark's summoning and the birth of new races, we did our usual thing and traveled and helped. This would lead many of the new races to see us as a savior or god, depending on what we were helping with. If we wore that crystal on our person and it was visible at all times, they would associate our name with the Sun itself, leading to the word's use and the people considering us the god of the Sun.

This would eventually lead to the naming of Azim Steppe (likely a place we had visited in the past), the Sun's Throne (which probably was created via our doing), and the naming of the Dawn Father as Azim.. This does however lead to another important question...who was Nhaama? Was she one of the new races we fought against and fell in love with, was she another Ascian, or is the story completely overblown in usual fashion by the passage of time?

Originally Posted by Alleluia

I dunno if anyone's brought this up b/c spoiler tags might have led me to skip it, but do we need to rethink the Echo now?

Previously, it was assumed that the Echo was a sign of an Ancient's soul. But now Alisaie, who does not apparently have the Echo since she didn't hear Hydaelyn, claims that she feels loss when looking at the starshower, implying she has the soul of an Ancient who saw the Final Days. Unless she's just feeling like that cus she actually knows the true story and is empathizing?

But Ali is of course not the only one to feel that way while simultaneously not hearing Hydaelyn, as there are two nameless NPCs in Eulmore near the balcony that say much the same thing if you talk to them once the sky turns star showery.

This kind of effects previous speculation on Zodiark and whether the new life he created was the new races/new souls that people have, too. Since the Echo was considered an Ancient watermark, lack of it could have been considered to be a sign that that soul was descended from the new life. Now, not so much. Basically, is everyone an Ancient soul now???

The current lore is that everyone has the soul of an Ancient, albeit sundered. The source is a Letter From The Producer (non-Live) archived somewhere on the forum, I believe.

Of course, this kind of causes issues with previous text, where we learn souls can be formed/developed, eg with Alpha. Also we don't know if by "everyone" they mean "every Spoken", or "every living thing", or "every sapient being", or "every player character race. (Obviously we'll leave extraterrestrials like dragons and Omega aside.) For example, would our Chocobo have the soul of an Ancient? Would Seto?

So apparently what Elidibus did with the starshower was attempt to awaken another part of this Ancient soul-ness, namely what we know of as the Echo. Some people got it, some people did not, and we don't know what the criteria is, or even if it's just random chance. But everyone (on-scene, conveniently) somehow managed to pull from ancestral memory of Amaurot and Amaurot-like architecture as something that was lost.

I don't know if this "everyone has the soul of an Ancient" thing is leading somewhere, or if it's one of those "it sounded nice and dramatic in storyboarding, don't think too hard about it.

Ten Character Jin

Originally Posted by RicaRuin

I'm not too sure about that...

I mean, they wanted to sacrifice the new life on the planet to restore Amaurotines, and that was before the Sundering. So not every soul is a sundered Amaurotine, going by the all creation had been sundered, some must have a sundered soul of a sundered non-Amaurotine.

Remember Amaurotine is the name given to Amaurot's populace not a race name, think like Americans and British rather than Human/Homo Sapien.

So might be possible other sundered people inherited soul fragments from people from other cultures of the same race as Amaurotines who also witnessed the final days and may have been in the Underworld at time of the Sundering.

There is still a lot we don't know about what happened prior to Zodiark but also the Sundering itself.(like how did Emet-Selch and Lahabrea escape it? etc)

Now that I think on it Emet/Lahabrea/Elidibus didn't want to bring back the entire planet just 1 city's worth of people, kinda nasty that they only viewed their culture as the only one significant enough to warrant the destruction of 13 shards and the Source to bring back.

Originally Posted by RicaRuin

Ah, yes, my bad. However...

I think that it's because of how Zodiark came to be. They never talk about how to bring back the dead, but rather those that sacrificed themselves for Zodiark. And those were only Amaurotines (correct use!).

Or it's because of the tempering. The Amaurotines prayed to Zodiark to save them, so His purpose is to save Amaurotines, going by what we know about Primals.

In general, Zodiark seems to be a made in Amaurot thing, without input from the other cities.

However, I still stand by there are sundered souls that don't originated from Ancients. Since there was new, non-Ancient life pre-Sundering

Anything pre-Sundering is still an Ancient (probably?). New life post-Zodiark should have still been of the same fundamental nature as pre-Zodiark Ancients like the Amaurotines.