Quote Originally Posted by Iscah View Post
I'm not sure about that. I thought we were following our aetherial trail back across the rift?

Of course, the whole rift vs aetherial sea thing is sort of vague and we probably need to ask for a new map of the system. The first lorebook talks about there being a physical realm and an aetherial realm (aka the Lifestream, they state) and the deeper into the planet you go, the more blurred the boundary gets until you reach the aetherial sea at the centre.
Honestly, it's all pretty grey. They pick and choose so readily, because the explanation of how or why isn't super important to the story being told. Like back when they give us that first aetherology lesson that leads up to the white auracite and how we're gonna kill the Ascians, they speak of Ascian's rift as a place at the shore of the aetherial realm, and they use realm and sea interchangeably.

In my mind's eye the way I picture it, since we know that the 13 shards are bound aetherically to the Source, hence why Rejoinings work, it's kind of like a web of trees that all share the same root system. In the Omega quest line I'd taken Rift to mean physical space, since that's what Midgardsormr and Omega seemed to have traversed. Yet when we are pulled through the Rift by G'raha Tia, it seems like the Rift exists outside of time and space, since we see those crystal fragments with like, events we'd already experienced pass by us.

All in all, it's a wibbly wobbly timey wimey mess. To make matters worse, I don't think they use the term Aetherial Sea after 3.2. And I don't think they ever equate the Rift to the Lifestream... so I'm kinda just scratching my head here. I guess if it is what the lorebook says that it is, then it makes sense that Omega would have had to burrow deep into the ground in order to congeal his interdimensional rift, something about proximity to the Aetherial Sea being important to create a pocket dimension? But then the Ascians are shown to be able to make Rifts to their pocket dimension above sea level... and the idea that you need to go deep into the planet to be closer to it would seem to be supported by the Antitower being underground and going down, but like... it's underground a mountain plateau? and the tower's not taller than the plateau so... Though the entrance to the Antitower does seem to go into a sort of aetherial pocket itself where all that furniture is floating about and what not.

But I mean, then there's voidgates and all that they imply... they definitely need to give us an update one what all this is, even if it's in another lore book.