So... Is Lahabrea REALLY dead-dead?

[WhiteArchmage]

I don't think "the Minfilias" were reincarnations, either. She just hopped to the next girl that was to be born. And when Minfilia gave her remaining powers to Ryne I don't think it was even implied to be a rejoining, either. If anything it was Minfilia entrusting whatever made her the "Oracle of Light", her connection to the Light, and dispersing her own aether and finally allowing herself to die properly. She mentions that the other option would be to remove Ryne's Ego and full on body-snatching her, which wouldn't be anything close to a rejoining.

[Veloran]

I don't think "the Minfilias" were reincarnations, either. She just hopped to the next girl that was to be born. And when Minfilia gave her remaining powers to Ryne I don't think it was even implied to be a rejoining, either. If anything it was Minfilia entrusting whatever made her the "Oracle of Light", her connection to the Light, and dispersing her own aether and finally allowing herself to die properly. She mentions that the other option would be to remove Ryne's Ego and full on body-snatching her, which wouldn't be anything close to a rejoining.

I mean Emet-Selch literally describes Ryne as a reincarnation and characterizes their conundrum as one needing to consume the other.

[Rosenstrauch]

Given that G'raha declares the WoL rejoining with Ardbert was impossible—while not so much as mentioning Minfilia or Ryne—I'm inclined to believe that they did not rejoin. Rather, that it's as Emet-Selch said: Ryne "consumed" Minfilia. Their relationship may be more akin to Hraesvelgr and Shiva, or Diabolos and Scathach, than the WoL and Ardbert's or Lohgrif and Gaia's.

[Veloran]

Given that G'raha declares the WoL rejoining with Ardbert was impossible—while not so much as mentioning Minfilia or Ryne—I'm inclined to believe that they did not rejoin. Rather, that it's as Emet-Selch said: Ryne "consumed" Minfilia. Their relationship may be more akin to Hraesvelgr and Shiva, or Diabolos and Scathach, than the WoL and Ardbert's or Lohgrif and Gaia's.

Clearly G'raha doesn't know everything, since it happened. Also Emet additionally says that Ryne and Minfilia must "become one, body and soul". In conjunction with calling her a reincarnation this seems quite clearcut as a rejoining.

I think the comment about "one consuming the other" was just a glib and insulting way of outlining the idea that only one of them could remain the true personality. The other one would basically die.

[Rosenstrauch]

Clearly G'raha doesn't know everything, since it happened.

This is irrelevant to the point I was making: That G'raha sees Minfilia and Ryne's shenanigans as fundamentally different from the WoL and Ardbert's.

In conjunction with calling her a reincarnation this seems quite clearcut as a rejoining.

This is a bit hard to unpack, but I interpreted Emet-Selch's words as follows:

He thought Ryne was a reincarnation of the Oracle of Light. He is surprised at how poorly she's performed under that metric. What he's just learned about her needing to awaken the true Oracle made him reexamine her, and he discovered that Minfilia's soul is actually laying dormant inside of Ryne, rather than being Ryne's soul.

In other words: He was mistaken about Ryne being a reincarnation.

As for being a rejoining, like I said... G'raha says nothing about it. He was there for Emet-Selch's breakdown of the matter. He's seen the results of Ryne's alleged rejoining. He's also seen the results of our rejoining with Ardbert. And his commentary on that matter is "well that should have been impossible". Not "I can't believe that happened twice". To me, that says he views Ryne's situation and ours as fundamentally different.

There's also the little matter of Ryne explicitly having never heard Hydaelyn's voice, despite being present for every single star shower we've witnessed on the First. This shouldn't be the case if she were Minfilia's reincarnation or a shard of the same soul, since Minfilia explicitly had the Echo.

[Veloran]

This is irrelevant to the point I was making: That G'raha sees Minfilia and Ryne's shenanigans as fundamentally different from the WoL and Ardbert's.

Strictly speaking, we have no way of knowing that. As he simply doesn't mention their situation. It may be he considers them in precisely the same camp.

He thought Ryne was a reincarnation of the Oracle of Light. He is surprised at how poorly she's performed under that metric. What he's just learned about her needing to awaken the true Oracle made him reexamine her, and he discovered that Minfilia's soul is actually laying dormant inside of Ryne, rather than being Ryne's soul.

In other words: He was mistaken about Ryne being a reincarnation.

That is one interpretation, but I find it lacking. Nowhere does Emet say he was mistaken or under a misconception, that must be inferred. Moreover as I noted earlier, we have no mechanism for one soul merging with another outside of being a rejoining. Not to mention the question of why in the world Minfilia would exclusively possess young girls from very early childhood or even from birth, when it would make far more sense to simply possess a fully-grown warrior. Years and years were wasted in the bodies of these girls as they aged, developed, and were found to be the next Minfilia. And they seemingly all shared Ryne's predicament of not having memories of their past lives and their powers transferred to them, really making Ryne not so underwhelming in comparison to that metric.

There's also the little matter of Ryne explicitly having never heard Hydaelyn's voice, despite being present for every single star shower we've witnessed on the First. This shouldn't be the case if she were Minfilia's reincarnation or a shard of the same soul, since Minfilia explicitly had the Echo.

We know the awakening of the Echo can be quite fickle. It may be not all shards share the same aptitude for it. It could easily be random chance that Minfilia awakened and Ryne didn't.

I assume this didn't happen, because if it did he wouldn't have lost. He wants Loghrif back and was doing the whole 'fairy voice' thing to do it. The WoL and Ryne were the only real reason that failed, so we can reasonably assume that if he was able to try earlier than with Gaia, he could've awoken Loghrif way earlier and we wouldn't have even had a Gaia.

As I said, there are too many unknowns to simply conclude that he was always capable of it as he was at the time the game takes place. Hell, for all we know he did and several Gaia's walked off into the Empty to die of aether poisoning.

[vormela]

Minor reminder: Those probably can't be restored anymore. At least, not without immense difficulty. We trashed the soul crystals by throwing them into the First's Crystal Tower with Elidibus; whether that's salvageable or not is still an open question, but it's an open question that hasn't been asked in-universe, which leads me to assume we probably aren't meant to be asking it ourselves.

Why shouldn't we be wondering? It's divisive enough to ask whether the originals are dead-dead. Wouldn't it be kind of weird if we got all those cryptic messages and didn't use them? They gave us vague insight into the thought process of each member, but all we really did with the stones was make baby Elidibus cry.

Maybe it will be our having read them that turns out to be more important than their ability to instill memories in the seat holders' minds. Hmm.

[Cleretic]

Why shouldn't we be wondering? It's divisive enough to ask whether the originals are dead-dead. Wouldn't it be kind of weird if we got all those cryptic messages and didn't use them? They gave us vague insight into the thought process of each member, but all we really did with the stones was make baby Elidibus cry.

Maybe it will be our having read them that turns out to be more important than their ability to instill memories in the seat holders' minds. Hmm.

To clarify what I mean, the fact we disposed of Elidibus and the crystals has never been even off-handedly discussed as a thing that may not be permanent, and it's been two-and-a-half patches since then--all three of those patches including at least one Ascian in a starring role (5.4 including either two or three, depending on how you count Loghrif). They've had ample opportunity to discuss that subject, and they haven't--especially notable around Fandaniel, since a huge part of his current motivation is that everyone above him in the organization is dead. Which reads to me as 'that's done, let's move on'. Which is fine; it's not feasible to just keep leaving that stuff open.

I absolutely think the crystals will come up again, but not in a 'we got these back, it's Ascian Time again' way; you're right that the fact we know about and listened to them is more important than what they were capable of. After all, they want to close the book on the Ascians, bringing back the crystals after they were very plausibly disposed of is kinda just the writers making more work for themselves.

[Jojoya]

To clarify what I mean, the fact we disposed of Elidibus and the crystals has never been even off-handedly discussed as a thing that may not be permanent, and it's been two-and-a-half patches since then--all three of those patches including at least one Ascian in a starring role (5.4 including either two or three, depending on how you count Loghrif). They've had ample opportunity to discuss that subject, and they haven't--especially notable around Fandaniel, since a huge part of his current motivation is that everyone above him in the organization is dead. Which reads to me as 'that's done, let's move on'. Which is fine; it's not feasible to just keep leaving that stuff open.

I absolutely think the crystals will come up again, but not in a 'we got these back, it's Ascian Time again' way; you're right that the fact we know about and listened to them is more important than what they were capable of. After all, they want to close the book on the Ascians, bringing back the crystals after they were very plausibly disposed of is kinda just the writers making more work for themselves.

They brought Gaius back 13 patches later after presumably dying in the Praetorium explosions. I wouldn't consider something not being mentioned for a couple of patches as proof it's done.

To be honest, I'm expecting (meta-role quest spoiler)

the Crystal Tower on the First to end up playing a key role in the plans to save the Thirteenth. I highly doubt SE will neglect to continue that story. Memories contained within the stars could be useful in determining exactly what went wrong and how to correct it. It's doubtful the memories would be limited to pre-Sundering, they would be updated with the memories of the shards that died before being passed to the next shard raised to the Seat so they would be up to date on everything going on..

There's always the chance we could gain the cooperation of what Ascians are still left at the end of 6.0 but the stars in the Tower would be a very useful backup. Closing the book on the Ascians as an organization doesn't necessarily mean closing the book on its individual members.

[atheistcanuck]

They brought Gaius back 13 patches later after presumably dying in the Praetorium explosions. I wouldn't consider something not being mentioned for a couple of patches as proof it's done.

To be honest, I'm expecting (meta-role quest spoiler)

the Crystal Tower on the First to end up playing a key role in the plans to save the Thirteenth. I highly doubt SE will neglect to continue that story. Memories contained within the stars could be useful in determining exactly what went wrong and how to correct it. It's doubtful the memories would be limited to pre-Sundering, they would be updated with the memories of the shards that died before being passed to the next shard raised to the Seat so they would be up to date on everything going on..

There's always the chance we could gain the cooperation of what Ascians are still left at the end of 6.0 but the stars in the Tower would be a very useful backup. Closing the book on the Ascians as an organization doesn't necessarily mean closing the book on its individual members.

especially as several showed up for the post-2.0 Official Ascian Conference and were never heard from again. I can't imagine SE won't do something with at least a few of the unaccounted for Ascians.