Alexander Questline Question

[Necrotica]

I am thinking I missed something major lore wise somehow.

I am still going through the questline, but is there a reason we cannot kill the leader of the illuminati?

Cause he just came up to me, out in the open at the camp, with only two guards, talked about his unstoppable evil plan, and then just walked away.

Why did I let him do this? Why did I not just walk up and kill him and his guards right there? They are a clear threat. They are activating a primal that could wipe out the planet if it became mobile.

So I can only assume I missed some dialogue or earlier comment/note that said "If you kill the leader of the illuminati the planet will explode" or something to that effect.

[Cilia]

Aside from cutscene incompetence? The story of Alexander takes place within a temporal loop (albeit one most of the players can exit), so Quickthinx can't be defeated / killed until his fated demise after A12 because that would cause a temporal paradox.

[Iscah]

Cause he just came up to me, out in the open at the camp, with only two guards, talked about his unstoppable evil plan, and then just walked away.

Why did I let him do this? Why did I not just walk up and kill him and his guards right there? They are a clear threat. They are activating a primal that could wipe out the planet if it became mobile.

Simple cutscene incompetence. We let Gaius fire up his doomsday robot too.

Aside from cutscene incompetence? The story of Alexander takes place within a temporal loop (albeit one most of the players can exit), so Quickthinx can't be defeated / killed until his fated demise after A12 because that would cause a temporal paradox.

That's spoilers for where they're up to, but seeing as it's out of the bag... there's nothing that strictly requires his presence in the later part of the story, especially if it's the sort of time loop where the details of what actually happened are flexible until the protagonist personally witnesses them.

[Necrotica]

Ouch. Double whammy of writing no no's. Time travel and requiring the protagonist to be an idiot for the plot to work.

[Iscah]

Ouch. Double whammy of writing no no's. Time travel and requiring the protagonist to be an idiot for the plot to work.

The time travel logic was done quite well, actually.

I do like a good stable time loop story.

[Necrotica]

Trying to figure out the timeline for it.

Alexander is summoned, something goes wrongs, summoners killed. Now there is just an Alexander sitting there.
Illuminati gain entrance to it, activate it. Start the time loop, maybe.
We go in to stop them, but travel back in time to just before Alexander was summoned, thus replacing the original summoning. Then we travel back to future. But this means there would not longer be an abandoned Alexander for the illuminati to gain access to.

EDIT: I know the illuminati rode Alexander back to kill the summoners the second time, but something had to have gone wrong at the original summoning still. Otherwise the loop could not have started cause the Aura would have just used Alexander as they planned.

[Cilia]

Trying to figure out the timeline for it.

Alexander is summoned, something goes wrongs, summoners killed. Now there is just an Alexander sitting there.
Illuminati gain entrance to it, activate it. Start the time loop, maybe.
We go in to stop them, but travel back in time to just before Alexander was summoned, thus replacing the original summoning. Then we travel back to future. But this means there would not longer be an abandoned Alexander for the illuminati to gain access to.

Hide boxed for spoilers - don't click if you don't want it. (Or have finished A12 and its accompanying denouement quests.)

The story of Alexander takes place entirely within a closed temporal loop, albeit one most of the players can exit.

The earliest point in time is [X] hundred (thousand?) years ago, wherein Mide and Dayan are spat out by Alexander. Carrying a fragment of the Enigma Codex, they return to the Azim Steppe and found the Hotgo tribe and tell the tale of Alexander until it becomes legend.

3 years ago, Mide, Dayan, and other like-minded Au Ra ventured to the Dravanian Hinterlands and "summoned" Alexander, even though it was really the party from A10 going back in time due to Roundrox engaging Alexander's time travel mechanism in delirium. This ends up with the summoners being killed by the Illuminati except for Dayan, who is absorbed into Alexander's core; additionally Backrix' journal chronicling the tale of Alexander from A1 - A10 is dropped in the confusion, as well as Shanoa / Shrodinger falling from the top of the machine into the lake shore. Both are found by past Quickthinx, who uses them as guides to engineer the plot of Alexander up to that point.

A1 - A10 play out as per "prophecy." Now outside what's written in Backrix' journal, the party succeeds in defeating Alexander's last line of defense (Cruise Chaser) only to be confronted by the soul of Alexander, who freezes them in time and attempts to blast them on Quickthinx' orders. They're freed from the temporal stasis at the last second; the PC engages Alexander Prime in the Soul of the Creator, wherein upon surviving his Divine Judgment Alexander opens portals to the past to allow them to save their past self / selves from annihilation at his hands detailed earlier. Alexander Prime is defeated.

However, Quickthinx is still alive due to extensive cybernetics and makes one last play at controlling Alexander, only for Alex himself to reject and kill Quickthinx. Mide throws herself into Alexander's core to stop it from going critical and is absorbed like Dayan, only to later be spat out [X] hundred (thousand?) years ago (see first point) with him. The party leaves Alexander, who then seals himself outside of space-time to prevent anyone from abusing his power.

EDIT

If what you're looking for is a specific point of origin for the whole thing, there is none we can observe. Don't think too hard about it.

[Necrotica]

But it still doesn't work even if you ignore point of origin for Alexander.

Summoned/Travels back in time. It is now physically there. The summoners are killed by the illuminati. The cut scene then shows it disappear and travel/return to 3 years in the future. What was left behind for people to discover and go inside of to start the loop?

[Iscah]

But it still doesn't work even if you ignore point of origin for Alexander.

Summoned/Travels back in time. It is now physically there. The summoners are killed by the illuminati. The cut scene then shows it disappear and travel/return to 3 years in the future. What was left behind for people to discover and go inside of to start the loop?

In the present day, prior to the summoning, there are Sharlayan ruins in the lake. (From memory it was referred to in passing as a "defence mechanism" or something like that.)

The Illuminati (guided by Backrix's lost journal) summon Alexander into the structure somehow, and it emerges from the river as we see in the initial post-credits cutscene.

It briefly teleports back to three years ago, where Mide thinks she's summoned it and raises the barrier to seal it away – but then it vanishes back to the present time and nothing else is left behind to see.

In any case nothing needs to be left behind from the earlier "summoning", which wasn't a summoning at all. The Hotgo group intended to summon Alexander but were interrupted by the arrival of the Illuminati-summoned Alexander arriving from the future, and thought it was the result of their own work.

[Necrotica]

So in that scenario the time travel back 3 years alexander is actually standing atop the original version of itself still below the water. Makes more sense since it leaves an Alexander there to be explored.

Aura 'Summoning' with codex-never actually happens, just Goblin summon travelling back.
Goblin Summoning guided by journal
Goblin Summoning travel back 3 years and drops off journal.

The first goblin summoning would need to have been done without the journal. And the first Aura summoning would still need to fail in a vacuum without the time travel.

Aura attempt and fail. Codex broken.
Goblins find codex and fix, use to summon.
Goblins have it rough, time travel, drop journal allowing for a much smoother attempt the next time starting the loop.

Aura attempts, Goblins travel to this point to make sure codex breaks, provide journal to past selves.
Goblins with journal get codex bits and summon Alexander. Repeat as necessary to get desired result.

Pet cat interferes with journal handoff, causing the time loop to break down. It can be guessed that the original journal was way more complete for the Illuminati leader to use, but the cat caused it to be dropped earlier than if the gobin had kept to the point of dieing at the control room.

So each time the illuminati let the invaders get farther so that they can get another chapter of the book filled out, travel back, repeat.