Thread: Revelations from Patch 5.5 (Part 1)

Originally Posted by WhiteArchmage

I mean, it's... very different. The Ascians' plan involves literal genocide to bring back people who were sacrificed, making a horrible cycle of sacrifices over and over to retain something that is lost. The "Ironworks of the Future"'s plan involves going back in time and preventing the Calamity from happening in the first place, making a better Future. It's even mentioned IN that side-story, once G'raha is sent to the past, that the leader wonders (too late, he thinks) if they'll be erased from existence if G'raha suceeded (will succeed, Time Travel Tense Problem). He refuses to believe that G'raha failed, so he concludes they must have created an alternate timeline and resolves to do the best with the Present they got.

Even if, in the discussions of the theory in Time Travel, G'raha's involvement would have deleted POSSIBLE lives (not existing ones, like the Ascians), they would have saved infinitely more by averting a Calamity in the first place.

Basically, the Ascians are "Sacrifice the Present and live in the Past forever because 12 people don't like the Present", the Ironworks' is "Go back to the Past and Give those people a fighting chance"

Ironwork side : we go back in time, and everybody who should have existed now don't, but we "fixed" the timeline.
The Ironworks did what they did because they thought what happened to their world a mistake that needed to be fixed : the Light-aspected Calamity, which resulted in the death of many people and an almost unhabitable world for their standards.

Ascian side : we rejoin everything and bring back the world the way it was by sacrificing everything that was born after we summoned Zodiark to fix the Star.
The Ascians did what they did because they thought what happened to their world was a mistake that needed to be fixed : the Sundering and the whole Sound thing, which resulted in the loss of memory, debilitating changes to their physiology (aether reserves, creation magic, ...), and multiple reflection of a single world, far from what they knew.

It's the same, except the Ascians don't directly manipulate the timeline, but try to go back the way it was by reverting changes, instead of erasing them : they want to bring back their dead, want to bring back their civilisation. The distinction between "possible lives" and "current lives" is slim : you could even argue that in the Ascian's plan, they let that life flourish for a time which brought changes and evolution to the planet (after all, we discovered things that the Ancients didn't know!), whereas in the Ironworks plan, they simply nipped it in the bud. Who knows if the 8th Astral Era wouldn't have been a golden age of prosperity?

Would their plan be OK if they actually meant to go back in time before Hydaelyn was summoned and prevent it? Emet-Selch very well might have done that had he enough time to learn how G'raha did it. The final result would be the same, and the Scions would have opposed it as vehemently as they did the original plan. And who knows? Maybe the world would have stayed the same! But the Scions would certainly not have gambled their world's very existence on a coin flip of "multiple universe or paradox".

Both result in the same thing : everyone born after the Sundering would disappear through the Rejoinings and the feeding to Zodiark, or everyone born in the different timeline could have disappeared (and were expected to, but didn't to their surprise).

Alexander decided that instead of manipulating timelines, it should do absolutely nothing and seal itself. We literally stopped the Illuminati from doing so because it was way too dangerous for anybody to change things the way they wanted.
However when it's the "good guys" turn to use that forbidden power, it's OK because "it's for the greater good". Except the greater good is a point of view.