Thread: Revelations from Patch 5.3

Originally Posted by ObsidianFire

Hythlodaeus hints that what race/gender/etc. a being is has... very little to do with what makes a specific soul and specific soul. What makes us and Ardbert similar (and compatible for a soul melding) has nothing to do with the fact that Ardbert is a male Hyur. We were part of the same soul at one point. The same soul that genuinely liked traveling around the world and helping people out.

Part of why our friendship with Ardbert works so well in Shadowbringers is because we can connect with him about everything we were both doing on our own shards. We're connecting with him over random fetch-quests we did, the group of people we met up with and partied with, our faithful animal companions who carried us around everywhere, how neither of use wanted to be heroes but found ourselves in the role anyway, etc. It's because of all of those things that Ardbert tells us in the Tempest that he'll be with us to the end. And then makes good on that promise by willingly melding his soul with ours so our soul can contain the aether of the Lightwardens. We see each other as the kind of person we want to be with because we are soulmates in the most literal way possible.

It's also confirmed as canon that the Lifestream doesn't really change the souls that are in it. Azem's soul has the desires of Azem's soul even when it's split up across different Shards or is reborn into the bodies of very different beings than an Ancient.

SPOILER below

Yep this is certainly the part most people seem to be confused with being that our character and the other fragments of the original soul are not exact copies of who and what Azem looked like. The only similarities that are carried from the original soul into the fragmented soul, revealed in 5.3 MSQ, is the desire to explore the world and help others. The appearance, species, personality, interests, and gender will all be completely different from each other. Heck, if I remember right, the only reason why Emet recognized our character was because he looked into our soul's color since our character's appearance is completely different from what the Original Soul looked like. Thus we can assume Azem appearance, personality, and interests will be completely different from our character's appearance and the personality we gave them with the only similarities being our passion to explore the world and help others even if we choose our character to have a personality that don't like helping but still do it anyways.

This actually brings up more questions into who IS the Original Soul Azem and it appears from what we have seen in 5.3 that next part of the storyline may also focus on exploring into who Azem is and potentially finally revealed what Azem looked like before he was sundered into our character and the other sundered fragments.

I honestly won't be surprised if at some point in 5.4 to 6.3 that we have a moment to talk with Azem thus seeing how different our character is with him while also noticing the only similarities we have with Azem is passion to explore the world and help others even if those reasons we have for doing so are just far too different.