Quote Originally Posted by ArmaDragkun View Post
So we find out pretty late that two of the ancient ascians became the heart of Zodiark and Hydaelyn. The heart of Zodiark being Elidibus. Now I know in a sense we didn't kill Elidibus as we merely trapped him inside the crystal tower. That being said wouldn't that cause some level of damage to Zodiark? I know that it's not like a human heart ect but still I would of thought us sealing away his heart would cause some issues.
The Elidibus walking around ingame is not Zodiark. He is a separate entity. He is either a familiar or the actual original Elidibus' soul that has been regurgitated and sent out to go check out the disturbance among the Convocation. Zodiark is currently incapacitated, having been chopped up into bits.

This next question is more of a general thing. If the main purpose of the Ascians was the rejoining why did they spend so much time in the source when they could of just spent all of their time on the other shards where the Warrior of Light couldn't foil their plans? If it wasn't for the fact of our awesome cat lad summoning us to the first there would of been nothing we could of done to stop it. And even if we still stopped the first. If they were doing all sorts of crazy stuff on all the other shards we would of had no way of stopping them right?
The story was not planned out. The writers didn't know what to do with the Ascians until they released Stormblood 4.0 and began writing the story of ShB.

Realistically there is no reason why the Ascians shouldn't have won. An Ascian could have teleported high into the sky above the WoL and chucked a rock down and split open the WoL's skull and the WoL wouldn't have known what hit him. The Ascians could've learned to take a hint and stop messing with the serial Primal and Ascian slayer. They could have teleported to literally any other continent (the New World, Meracadyia, etc) to start their plans for the rejoining anew without any interference from the WoL, or waited a hundred years until the WoL died of old age.

Not really a story related question but. How strong are we?
As strong as the plot demands. ARR-HW writing makes the WoL out to be not particularly strong, pretty much an unusually skilled mortal, on par with Estinien and Raubahn. During ARR-HW, the WoL requires powerups and outside intervention to defeat strong foes like the Ultima Weapon or Nidhogg. 3.3 has you fight Nidhogg - who has both of his eyes - and you need Hraesvelgr's eye to stand a chance. But then in Stormblood there is a ridiculous power escalation where the WoL inexplicably solos Shinryu - a primal that also has both of Nidhogg's eyes - without any powerups whatsoever (not to mention somehow beating Omega, a being that fought Midgardsomr in his prime to a standstill, who was far stronger than Nidhogg).

Back to the story based questions. Y'shtola's aether vision is basically killing her right? Or is it just shortening her life span? If so have we ever been told how long she's got?
The "aether vision is draining her lifeforce" line was tossed out in HW and then they never came back to it. She has never suffered visibly from this supposed illness so it's pretty much just lip service until the writers decide to remember and decide to have consequences kick in. Decent chance she will live to teleport back to the First and retire with Runar for at least a few years.

Are there any other Ascians left apart from Fandaniel? Is so what are they up too? Are they like him where they are now free to do as they please or are they still trying to cause the rejoining? As Fandaniel has gotta be making their life harder too.
We don't know what happened to the other Ascians. You can headcanon them as being coerced by the fanatical Unsundered and having just waltzed off to do their own thing once they realized their overlords were gone.

This might not make much sense but did the ancient ascians bring about their own destruction? During the dungeon where Emet-Selch is showing us the final days I believe he mentions about their nightmares coming to life and in a side quest we find out that an ascian I believe made a chimera as he was trying to create a lion but saw a bird during the process and thus mixed up the two animals together. If all it takes is a moment of distraction to create that could the panic of their world ending have caused them to create monsters or made what was happening even worse by their own thoughts and magic coming to life? Or could like rumours all it could of taken was one paranoid ascian thinking "oh god the world is ending" to start the chain of events that then caused everything?
It appears that there was something wrong with the very heart of the planet (presumably where the Lifestream is located). A sound emanated from it which made the Ancient's magic spiral out of control, causing a mass spawning of Terminus beasts. The ancients recreated the heart of the star as a primal under their control - Zodiark - which stopped more Terminus beasts from appearing. A popular theory is that the source of the sound is a Lavos like alien parasite, though we don't know.