How do Sundered Ascians work? Or Alternatively: Is Reincarnation possible or not?

[Elecrom]

I recently stumbled onto something that might be a plothole (provided I did not forget or misunderstand something which might be the case).

As we know since 5.0 there are Unsundered and Sundered Ascians (and the Unnamed ones that were never actually explained).
Unsundered can continue to exist because their Soul does not disperse when their Body perishes, so they can possess other Bodies to continue living.

But as far as I know the Sundered cannot do that, so if the time of the Ancients was such a long time ago, how can any Sundered still exist after their natural lifespans ran out?
When a human dies, their Soul instantly exits their Body and disperses into Aether, which confirms their is no reincarnation so the last Sundered should have perished a long time ago without getting reborn.

Coming from this fact, it is an equally huge coincidence that 2 shards of the same Ancient would exist in the same time (WoL and Ardbert), but that as far as I have seen, there have been no Ascians with the same name at the same time (no 2 Loghrifs for example)

So, have I misunderstood anything, or have I discovered an unexplained plothole?^^

[Cilia]

Hide-boxing this because though I see you are Lv80 I don't want to presume you've done 5.X.

The black-masked underling Ascians are, presumably, just normal Echo-users that sided with the Ascians and were granted greater knowledge of how to wield the Echo.

Thanks to the Echo all Ascians can cheat physical death, but killing them on a metaphysical level is much more difficult (the whole "Blade of Light" + soul container bit), and they also have a way around that - jumping into an interstitial rift between the worlds via a Dark Crystal, though that takes a little bit of preparation to use. The only difference is the black-masked underlings lack the power to possess a living host, so they must possess corpses; Dark Crystals also appear to be at a premium, and so they do not make use of them.

The unsundered Ascians are simply using the power of the Echo to unnaturally extend their lifespans. It's implied in one of the short stories that without memory crystals to keep their minds together the unsundered would have lost their identities long ago; indeed, both Elidibus and Lahabrea are no longer who they once were (Lahabrea having given himself over to a lust for destruction and Elidibus abandoning his humanity in favor of his directives as a primal) and only Emet-Selch still bears a resemblance to who he was in the days of Amaurot (due to regularly using his soul crystal and taking long "naps" besides).

The sundered Ascians you meet throughout the story are not the original, but a reincarnation raised up to their former office via memory crystals created by the unsundered Ascians. (Though they don't need to be a reincarnation of the former Ascian, those are preferable.) We don't see 2+ sundered Ascians because the unsundered only raise up one sundered at a time; after being freed (to an extent) in the last tier of Eden Mitron implies this might be done so if a sundered Ascian is killed or otherwise disposed of they can just go grab another fragment and raise it up to fill the slot.

Addendum: sundered Ascians (former Convocation seat holders) are no different from ordinary mortals before being restored to their office by the unsundered. Their powers and memories are restored via crystals containing the identities of the former Convocation seat holders as remembered by the unsundered.

[RyuDragnier]

Yes, the Sundered reincarnate. The following is spoilers for the end of the Eden raids and 5.3, don't look unless you've done them.

Sundered Ascians are merely given power and memories of their office through the soul crystals the Unsundered possess. Upon death, they lose access to the memories. Lohgrif herself was one such individual raised in the past to her position, and upon being slain by Ardbert's crew, was tossed into the lifestream of The First and reborn as Gaia. Those memories of her past were sealed until Mitron attempted to raise her up again to her position.

[Veloran]

Body and disperses into Aether, which confirms their is no reincarnation

Suffice to say that when the Scions in 2.X labor under the assumption that souls disperse into transient aether upon death and that the Lifestream simply creates entirely new souls out of pure energy wholecloth, they were not correct. We know now that reincarnation is the cycle of life and death, and frankly I'm fairly certain that it's actually impossible to truly destroy a soul to the point that the aetherial sea will not claim and reincarnate it.

[KageTokage]

That first short story about Emet Selch states that new souls are just spontaneously formed within life born through natural means, but at the same time makes no mention of reincarnation.

It could just be that they left out that bit, but it also makes me wonder if maybe something changed about the cycle in the wake of the Final Days and/or the Sundering because if reincarnation and generation of souls co-exist, what would determine which occurs whenever new life is born?

The pro-Zodiark crowd intended to sacrifice new souls to bring back those lost in the Final Days, but I'm curious as to how they were going to go about doing that if they potentially had to worry about the reincarnated souls of those who were lost getting caught up in the process.

[Recon1o6]

Judging by what we know of reincarnation and how life works in ff14, its certainly possible for reincarnation to happen and for outside processes to interfere- see the dotharl and how the allagan siphon can take away the aether of someone which is what they know is removing oneself from the cycle of death and rebirth.

another dotharl sidequest also goes over one dotharl who thinks he isn't the soul whose name he bears. Turns out he is but was unclear on the exact history of his name. (namely each reincarnation had a preference for a different weapon than the last)

additionally the buduga also comment that had they would happily wait for a xaela wol to be reborn as a man had they been a dotharl. So at least two tribes there think its possible.

We also have at least 2 examples of reincarnations: the player and the one revealed in eden.


tldr: its possible, but new life does get formed as well

[Veloran]

It could just be that they left out that bit, but it also makes me wonder if maybe something changed about the cycle in the wake of the Final Days and/or the Sundering because if reincarnation and generation of souls co-exist, what would determine which occurs whenever new life is born?

Right, it would raise the question of why all life is sundered at all.

Judging by what we know of reincarnation and how life works in ff14, its certainly possible for reincarnation to happen and for outside processes to interfere- see the dotharl and how the allagan siphon can take away the aether of someone which is what they know is removing oneself from the cycle of death and rebirth.

another dotharl sidequest also goes over one dotharl who thinks he isn't the soul whose name he bears. Turns out he is but was unclear on the exact history of his name. (namely each reincarnation had a preference for a different weapon than the last)

additionally the buduga also comment that had they would happily wait for a xaela wol to be reborn as a man had they been a dotharl. So at least two tribes there think its possible.

We also have at least 2 examples of reincarnations: the player and the one revealed in eden.


tldr: its possible, but new life does get formed as well

There's also Mide and Dayan, who are clearly reincarnations of themselves. Side note, I also strongly suspect that those two are actually incarnations of Gaia and Artemis, considering that their interactions and the thrust of their story (with the whole inseparable love across lifetimes and coming together in a bubble of compressed eternity thing) are exactly the same.

[Recon1o6]

Right, it would raise the question of why all life is sundered at all.


There's also Mide and Dayan, who are clearly reincarnations of themselves. Side note, I also strongly suspect that those two are actually incarnations of Gaia and Artemis, considering that their interactions and the thrust of their story (with the whole inseparable love across lifetimes and coming together in a bubble of compressed eternity thing) are exactly the same.

I didnt include that one admittedly because Alexander's time magic made it a bit unclear if it was reincarnation, or if it was a stable time loop. Its certainly within Alexander's remit to deage them and release them out into the world at the start of the hotgo history

[atheistcanuck]

That first short story about Emet Selch states that new souls are just spontaneously formed within life born through natural means, but at the same time makes no mention of reincarnation.

It could just be that they left out that bit, but it also makes me wonder if maybe something changed about the cycle in the wake of the Final Days and/or the Sundering because if reincarnation and generation of souls co-exist, what would determine which occurs whenever new life is born?

The pro-Zodiark crowd intended to sacrifice new souls to bring back those lost in the Final Days, but I'm curious as to how they were going to go about doing that if they potentially had to worry about the reincarnated souls of those who were lost getting caught up in the process.

Possibly the lack of mention of reincarnation is simply because death was uncommon enough that reincarnated souls were an unusual exception. Although it may in fact be that the rules changed after the Sundering.

There's an interesting case with Alpha in the Omega questline where he gained a soul, but we don't know whether it was a new soul.