[Spoilers] On Meteion's powers

[Antoine_Lenheim]

Unmarked spoilers below.

Was it ever explained in the story how Meteion obtained her abilities to wipe out everything? Or she actually was a weapon of mass destruction in disguise from the moment she was created?

I mean, from our time in Elpis we learned that Meteion is an entelechy and their abilities are basically feeling emotions of people around and being emphatic to them (which was covered in her report where she said her sisters came in contact with denizens of a star), mind reading and ability for a telephatic connection. These all sound quite harmless to me. So did they just carelessly shoved ability to cause havoc and catalcysm on a planetary scale to the pool if her skills?

I don't remember them explaining it, like what, emotions and wishes of people around empowers her and her sisters so much that she gains ability to "satisfy" them by bringing down calamities capable of wiping the whole universe? Like, woah, Hermes, you massively screwed up. Does it really work from writing perspective to give your antagonists such abilities without properly explaining them firstly?

And then it makes me wondering, what if there were no despair, fear and suffering and only joy. Would Meteion then ascend to the edge of the universe to sing "Song of Happiness" instead? If these emotions make her THAT powerful.

I really missed out on that part.

[Gerel]

It's because she's an Entelechi, which are largely made of Dynamis energy. She's able to tap into that vast amount of power to effectively manipulate reality much like how Creation Magicks can do so with aether--just on a more massive scale given her natural properties and because Dynamis is the more plentiful of energy.

[Cleretic]

Beyond the fact that she can interact with and wield the power of dynamis, it's also mentioned that she's been poisoning its flow with those trapped souls in Ultima Thule. That's more of a long-term thing, explaining why she has the powers she does now rather than then, but that is important for how things play out.

[Antoine_Lenheim]

It's because she's an Entelechi, which are largely made of Dynamis energy. She's able to tap into that vast amount of power to effectively manipulate reality much like how Creation Magicks can do so with aether--just on a more massive scale given her natural properties and because Dynamis is the more plentiful of energy.

Oh, okay. I mean, I don't remember them mentioning that she can wield creation magicks and utilize Dynamis for that purpose on top of everything. But sure.

[h-alpha]

Oh, okay. I mean, I don't remember them mentioning that she can wield creation magicks and utilize Dynamis for that purpose on top of everything. But sure.

Likely for the reason that, as it was stated, very little was known by even the ancients about dynamis. They knew that emotions are comprised of dynamis, are dynamis. They knew that aether and dynamis interfere with one another, and that beings with an overabundance of aether like themselves cannot manipulate dynamis well, if at all.

Did they know that dynamis could be used in powerful, dangerous ways? Probably not.

What happened with Meteion was entirely unaccounted for and unexpected. Hermes did not know what was going to happen when he sent out Meteion's sisters to visit other stars. Nobody could have known that she would see the sheer amount of terror and desperation that she did. Hermes himself had said that he had given her wings to fly but had not taught her to walk the earth - and suddenly, this being that came from a world that knew only happiness and prosperity is faced with uncountable numbers of cold, lifeless planets? Of peoples who rip each other limb from limb? Of war and death and disease and emptiness? She had no knowledge of these things, and had no understanding of how to deal with seeing those things or how to cope with it. It makes sense to me that she was driven to madness by it.

My theory on your question:

We know already that large amounts of aether = more powerful results. More aether, more powerful magic.

We weren't explicitly told much about dynamis, since even the characters themselves don't know that much, but it does stand to reason that it might work in a similar way. Large amounts of dynamis = more powerful results. And because emotion is comprised of dynamis, it also stands to reason that the more ambient emotion is present, the stronger it is felt, the stronger the influence of dynamis.

With the sheer intensity of the despair Meteion felt by what she saw (and to point out, not just her despair, but also of her many, many sisters with whom her consciousness was linked with when they gave their report) it's not a far cry to think that it turned her once harmless powers of mind-reading and emotion sensing into something far more powerful and far deadlier.

[Gerel]

Oh, okay. I mean, I don't remember them mentioning that she can wield creation magicks and utilize Dynamis for that purpose on top of everything. But sure.

They didn't know what she was truly capable of. Not even Hermes had the faintest clue. Dynamis, even for the Ancients, was a mysterious force that they knew only so much about. Much of their knowledge was conjecture and theory. Meteion's very nature as a being composed of Dynamis meant she was far more adept in its use and could mimic what her creators were capable of by drawing on emotions and the ambient Dynamis that came of the Meteia's travels and experiences.

We only figure it out because it was pretty much stated by Hydaelyn, and later, the rest of the Scions.

[Antoine_Lenheim]

Well, yeah, how nice it would be if they actually explained all of these instead of utilizing "soft magic" systems and then making us theoretize and speculate. This is one of the complaint I have. Soft magic systems are lazy. And FF deserves better than this. My take on magic systems is, limitations forces you to think cleverly about how you approach your scenario. I really dislike it when someone breaks the rules established so far because "it's magic, deal with it". On this principle, you could solve any situation with a deus ex machina.

Now, maybe they will explain it a bit further, but I doubt it.

[YianKutku]

They didn't know what she was truly capable of. Not even Hermes had the faintest clue. Dynamis, even for the Ancients, was a mysterious force that they knew only so much about. Much of their knowledge was conjecture and theory. Meteion's very nature as a being composed of Dynamis meant she was far more adept in its use and could mimic what her creators were capable of by drawing on emotions and the ambient Dynamis that came of the Meteia's travels and experiences.

We only figure it out because it was pretty much stated by Hydaelyn, and later, the rest of the Scions.

I'm reminded of the comparisons people make between dynamis and "dark energy" as per the current theoretical understanding of our universe. Primarily because Hermes's number for the amount of dynamis in their universe (68.3 percent) is more or less the current guess for the percentage of dark energy in the total energy of the universe.

The reason it's called "dark" energy is we have no way of directly measuring it. Instead, dark energy is measured by its indirect effects on other things; its very existence was theorized because based on what we know, the universe should be expanding at a certain given rate, but instead it's expanding way faster, and so physicists ended up attributing that to a strange, unknown, and undetectable form of extra energy, in order to make their equations work. And given adding this "dark energy" to the equations does make them work, there's clearly something happening, but we don't know what or why.

Compare to dynamis in FFXIV's setting, which the Ancients can't measure quantitatively, or even detect... up until Hermes created Meteion the entelechy, based off his studies of the Elpis flowers. But Meteion wasn't even created to study dynamis, but rather simply to use it for interstellar travel. While we eventually learn that dynamis is somehow the root cause of the despair that caused creation magic to go haywire and Sundered beings to transform, we still don't know how it does that, and I would say the Ancients would not have known either, even if they deigned to research the matter. Which, going by what we saw in Elpis, would have been highly unlikely, because of the sheer inertia of Tradition in Amaurotine society.

Dynamis is a cosmological black box. Nobody knows how it works, nobody knows how to quantify it, and nobody knows if the effects it has on anything else are primary or secondary. For all we know, dynamis is present only to make a certain flower species change colour, and all the "broadcasting emotions" and "limit breaks" stuff is unintended side effects.

[Brightamethyst]

Well, yeah, how nice it would be if they actually explained all of these instead of utilizing "soft magic" systems and then making us theoretize and speculate. This is one of the complaint I have. Soft magic systems are lazy. And FF deserves better than this. My take on magic systems is, limitations forces you to think cleverly about how you approach your scenario. I really dislike it when someone breaks the rules established so far because "it's magic, deal with it". On this principle, you could solve any situation with a deus ex machina.

This game has always used "soft magic" systems. Aether is like that as well, where it can theoretically do anything under the right conditions.

[Gerel]

Well, yeah, how nice it would be if they actually explained all of these instead of utilizing "soft magic" systems and then making us theoretize and speculate. This is one of the complaint I have. Soft magic systems are lazy. And FF deserves better than this. My take on magic systems is, limitations forces you to think cleverly about how you approach your scenario. I really dislike it when someone breaks the rules established so far because "it's magic, deal with it". On this principle, you could solve any situation with a deus ex machina.

Now, maybe they will explain it a bit further, but I doubt it.

Except we've a fairly good understanding that Dynamis is, for lack of a better word, the reason why we continue to defy the odds; it's the source of our unyielding strength when the chips are down (our buffs in solo instances), and our blade and shield against the most dire of threats (Limit Breaks). Dynamis is honestly just another path to the same conclusion as aether. Just with more emotions. David Cage would love it.