Thinking about Elidibus

[Mieck]

I know Moose will have this covered and will provide vastly more detail than me, but we do see Elidibus being questioned by Nabriales in 2.x, wondering at his motivation. The payoff for that is in his 5.3 exposition - after the 7th rejoining, the realm was listing dangerously towards Darkness. He needed to get the Source back to a less risky state, as he has done before at many points in history across all the Shards.

[Anonymoose]

The payoff for that is in his 5.3 exposition - after the 7th rejoining, the realm was listing dangerously towards Darkness.

Bingo. Zodiark doesn't want a Flood. Elidibus didn't lie about that. He cared a lot about balance. A certain kind of balance. That is required for calamities.

[Catapult]

Another thing to recall is Elidibus' status as a primal avatar of Zodiark. The exact mechanics of this are a bit murky, but the point is that he is effectively himself a Primal of Salvation, be it as a part of Zodiark or as something bound to Zodiark.
It therefore follows that the wish and intent with which Zodiark was summoned is itself a part of Elidibus' inherent nature, right up to his death. That nature being the charting of restoration for this Star which brings it salvation and restores order.
It therefore follows that Elidibus is inherently meticulous, his plans are comprehensive, and he doesn't tolerate chaos beyond where it is useful to his/Zodiark's objectives. In the big picture, restoring balance matters once the likes of Lahabrea have inflicted some necessary imbalance in service to the cause.

As I see it, in order to beat Elidibus, we had to exhaust him of his options. By the time we fight Elidibus, he is genuinely out of other options to deal with us. The other originals are gone, most of the unoriginal ascians are off the board or missing, and those who aren't seem to not be particularly reliable (Fandaniel).
He had no other options but to beat us then and there if he had any way of salvaging The Plan.

And he lost.

[Vyrerus]

As far as Elidibus and balance of The Source goes... I kind of inferred that it had much to do with needing the Source to be ready to be tipped either way. Communication between Convocation Shard pairs and The Source seemed to be somewhat bad, and considering just how close the First came to also being a ruined Flood state, you'd think there'd be some oversight (or that the Ascian pairs would at least not face their respective WoL challengers at the same time). Just a fun thought: -Come to think of it, in HW we face Lahabrea and Igeyohrm at the same time, and that's just before the WoDs come here... With the time difference shenanigans, it's entirely possible that Ardbert and co. fought Mitron and Loghrif at the same time that our WoL fought Lahayohrm.-

Like sure, they met up in 2.3 to be all confusing and exposit some vagaries, but as shown by Emet when he first offers peace to the Scions, it's entirely possible for Ascians to speak through a double. I can't help but wonder if some of those Ascians were at the meeting via a magical sort of teleconference, considering that time and stuff is all weird between the Source and the Shards.

Anyway, my point is, is that the Convocation pairs on each shard probably have to start pushing a shard towards an alignment, and then they kind of report the result, eventually, as well as the progress. Then it's up to Team Source to prime the Source for the Calamity and bring the hammer down.

I'd really love to see even just one of the prior calamities from setup to fruition on both Source and Shard. How long it took. What the communication between Team Source and Team Shard were. It sounds so easy when Emet explains it, but it's actually a monolithic undertaking that's not easily reversed on either end.

Also I suppose that they can't ignore the WoL, not just because they've become such a big direct threat to them, but because they've also become a big problem for their periphery empire and other organizations that they shadow run. They can't exactly stay hidden if the WoL trounces their entire empire, can they?

Imagine that the Ascians decide to all retreat to the rift or to the shards, and let the WoL run roughshod over all the chaos in the world. When they come back once the WoL's life has ended, what's become of the world? What foothold in a powerful nation do they have? What keys for calamities must they now forge anew? What might seem like a quick 100 year nap might actually have several hundred to upwards of thousands of years of consequence for the Ascians. The WoL and the Scions might even develop a nation that keeps and disseminates the knowledge on how to kill them. "We know they're not gone, because they're waiting for us to die. When they come back, be ready." or something like that.


Couple that with the fact that they are still a threat to us and to people we care about. Emet's plan to let us proceed and then strike at the opportune moment was nearly perfect. If he'd wanted to kill us, he could have, at least before our fusion with Ardbert and before Catboi Sage Deluxe did his thing. Even after all of that, it was still a near thing.

So them thinking that we're a big problem, but they can and should deal with us, plus their pride as Ancients and the Convocation... I think the story is justified in the Ascians squaring off with us.

Of course, everyone of them has also seemed to think that Hydaelyn's expiration is eminent. They've been feeding us that line for eons now. What happens to our blessing when she does, if she does?

[PangTong]

Imagine that the Ascians decide to all retreat to the rift or to the shards, and let the WoL run roughshod over all the chaos in the world. When they come back once the WoL's life has ended, what's become of the world? What foothold in a powerful nation do they have? What keys for calamities must they now forge anew? What might seem like a quick 100 year nap might actually have several hundred to upwards of thousands of years of consequence for the Ascians. The WoL and the Scions might even develop a nation that keeps and disseminates the knowledge on how to kill them. "We know they're not gone, because they're waiting for us to die. When they come back, be ready." or something like that.

This is a pretty good explanation I think. Although it doesn't seem like it's THAT difficult for them to build up from nothing. As soon as one plan for a calamity gets shot down, they always seem to have another ready to go pretty much immediately. Emet-Selch built the Garlean Empire in like 50-60 years and actually managed to get a calamity out of it too. Almost two! The possibility of us cautioning future generations against the Ascians does seem like a significant enough problem that they'd want to nip it in the bud now. But on the other hand, there will always be greedy men tempted by power. They're pretty good at hiding their involvement, usually they just pull the strings a little and the mortals end up ruining themselves. Even with a 1000 year setback, what is 1000 years to an Ascian? They have all eternity to complete their mission (unless they don't and we just don't know about it).

I think pride and hubris is indeed a big part of why they choose to fight instead of play it safe.

[Bright-Flower]

I wonder, with them going for another calamity so soon after the Bahamut one, if they only did that because of Louis going phoenix allowing the realm to recover far faster than normal, and in general stopping the calamity from being as catastrophic as prior ones. (I'm sure it was bad for those five years we skipped, but considering prior calamities undid entire civilizations, the 7th really wasn't that bad by comparison.)

[PangTong]

I wonder, with them going for another calamity so soon after the Bahamut one, if they only did that because of Louis going phoenix allowing the realm to recover far faster than normal, and in general stopping the calamity from being as catastrophic as prior ones. (I'm sure it was bad for those five years we skipped, but considering prior calamities undid entire civilizations, the 7th really wasn't that bad by comparison.)

I think this is a big reason for why the Ascians got back at it again so quickly too. The way the lore book describes the other calamities, it's like mankind is sent back to the stone age with each one. The level of death and destruction is such that it probably takes hundreds or thousands of years before mortals are numerous enough and capable of wielding enough power that another calamity is possible. By comparison Bahamut wasn't nearly as destructive, most likely due to Phoenix.

[Veloran]

Throughout the entire game all the way up to Shadowbringers, Elidibus says his objective is to maintain the balance between Light and Darkness. The story goes to lengths to portray him as different from the other Ascians. He saves Unukalhai, who describes him as his master and who goes on to decide he wants to save the world, and helps defeat the Warring Triad for good, which seems opposed to the Ascians' goals.

Elidibus would rather the world wasn't devastated through the rejoinings. He wanted the perfect aetheric balance that would allow for the worlds to be rejoined, but not for the Source to be destroyed in the so doing.

For example, early in the game he encourages WoL's growth because that contributes to the aetheric light necessary for the rejoining with the First. But as time went on WoL grew too powerful and began tipping the balance too far towards the light, which led to him bringing in the Warriors of Darkness and then joining Garlemald as Zenos to try and tip it back the other way. We may actually see the effects of what he was trying to ward off in the Eighth Umbral Calamity timeline, where the Alliance and WoL win the war all the way to Garlemald's doorstep, presumably in so doing defeating Elidibus-as-Zenos, throwing the balance wildly into the favor of light to the point that when the rejoining occurred the world was utterly suffocated with umbral aether and all but obliterated.

Elidibus didn't want such an outcome, which is why he was plainly at odds with the more extremist Ascians like Lahabrea and Nabriales, who just wanted the ardor at any cost.

[Larirawiel]

One thing i do net get about Elidibus: was he a primal from begin of his existence? Or was he a normal Amaurotian and then he sacrificed himself to become Zodiark's heart which transformed him into a primal? I guess, he was always a primal but i am not sure and the revelations in the game confused me.

Cheers

[Cleretic]

One thing i do net get about Elidibus: was he a primal from begin of his existence? Or was he a normal Amaurotian and then he sacrificed himself to become Zodiark's heart which transformed him into a primal? I guess, he was always a primal but i am not sure and the revelations in the game confused me.

Cheers

The general structure of that is:

1. Elidibus is a normal Ancient.
2. End of Days happens, he steps up to become the heart of Zodiark (and isn't even the first choice, but that's not important). Elidibus becomes that heart, part of a primal.
3. Elidibus gets lonely/needy/sees people need help/whatever, and descends as Elidibus again, whose form is also a primal.
4. Hydaelyn hits Zodiark with a leg drop from the top rope. Elidibus remains one of the few intact Ancients afterwards, his consciousness down with them instead of up in Zodiark, but Zodiark's body isn't doing much so it's inconsequential.
5. Elidibus, Lahabrea and Emet-Selch make the crystals of the Convocation, and elevate the rest of them as the Ascians.
6. Elidibus starts fading, because he's powered by literal hero worship since that's what Zodiark was made to be. At this point either the Source or at least one shard is in a roughly medieval-era age of heroism, and he possesses a guy that looks like the FFI WoL, and plays hero to both feed himself and manipulate the world.
7. All Known History goes here.
8. A Realm Reborn starts and we show Elidibus that he's a chump-tier hero no matter how many times he's worn the mask for sustenance reasons, and is equally chump-tier at picking good hosts or pawns.

5 and 6 could be the other way around, it's unclear, but also not important right now. So to answer your question, Elidibus has been a primal since the End of Days, but has been 'the primal Elidibus' since an unclear amount of time after that.

And chances are, the primal Elidibus was... well, the person Elidibus' idea of the person Elidibus rather than anyone else's, with some broken bits because primals have different needs. So he's mostly accurate, but not completely, in the same way that if you drew a self-portrait of yourself, you'd probably get a few things wrong.