[Spoiler] Isn't Dark Knight using Akasa ?

[Lyth]

Sanderson's first law is not 'Thou shalt not introduce in new world-building lore in the sequels of a serial work.' It's a principle of foreshadowing, in which you plant plot elements well in advance of them becoming plot significant so that the reader/viewer gets an 'aha' moment when you stab them with a plot twist. (Otherwise you'd know the complete ideals of all the Knights Radiant by now and not just be fed them during climactic plot moments, but I digress.)

On the subject of Limit Breaks, there's no clear cut line on what exactly is Aether and what is Dynamis. Emet, for example, uses the line 'Mine is the Aether!' when he uses a Caster Limit Break. Likewise, it's never definitively stated what Elidibus uses to power his Limit Breaks. There is, however, this unresolved bit of dialogue from your showdown with him (Hope's Confluence):

What of it?! I have my mission! I am Elidibus! And it is my duty to steer mankind and the very star upon their true course. This I swore to... to someone. We spoke, and I swore... what? What did I...?

Ah, poor old amnesic Elidibus. I really can't help but wonder if his Warrior of Light, his summoning magicks, and his 'Limit Breaks' all draw inspiration from a certain chance encounter on Elpis, countless years before. I'll laugh if he makes that promise after discovering the cause of the terrible cry from within the earth that set off the Final Days. Perhaps in a place in the depths with lots of Creation magic.

So now let's look at the A12 example that you put out. If Hermes is to be believed, the unsundered Amaurotians were too aetherically dense to perceive, manipulate, or interact with Dynamis in a meaningful way outside a few observations made about entelechies. So how did the Final Days as a Dynamis based phenomenon have any effect on the Ancients? It affected their creation magic. And what is the modern day derivative of creation magic? Primal summoning. Meaning that if Meteion can warp an Ancient's creation magicks on Etheirys from the edge of the universe, then it wouldn't be a stretch for us to unconsciously use Dynamis inside a primal.

Part of the difficulty here is that we don't have the rules, so there probably isn't enough here for you to go off of show a contradiction just yet. Can you utilize Dynamis miles beneath the veil of Zodiark's moving celestial Aether currents? It would seem that way, otherwise the Elpis flower from Sharlayan wouldn't change colour in the present era. Does Dynamis have a mass-like property similar to Aether, or is it completely intangible? What are the Aether thresholds at which you can use/not use Dynamis effectively? If the Garleans are unable to manipulate aether but their Reapers are capable of summoning Voidsent, does that mean that Void magic is based off of Dynamis? Are there any civilizations that are actually based off of utilizing Dynamis (the Amaurotian quest Debate and Discourse, for example, alludes to another civilization co-existing at the same time as the Ancients 'across the pond' that had the capabilities to build a metropolis and a calamity of their own to deal with.) As you can see, this doesn't just have implications for Endwalker, but future storytelling as well.

[Veloran]

Sanderson's first law is not 'Thou shalt not introduce in new world-building lore in the sequels of a serial work.' It's a principle of foreshadowing, in which you plant plot elements well in advance of them becoming plot significant so that the reader/viewer gets an 'aha' moment when you stab them with a plot twist.

Yes, but as Sanderson says he had already foreshadowed the existence of a secondary magic system in the first book, but still recognized that introducing it at the very end of that book to resolve the plot was erroneous writing. In the context of XIV, this is where I think the "missing expansion" between Shadowbringers and Endwalker, the original 6.0, would have significantly smoothed out the story. Introducing Dynamis there and allowing us to stew and learn more about it for a couple of years would have integrated it much more seamlessly into the narrative before we went into the final chapter.

On the subject of Limit Breaks, there's no clear cut line on what exactly is Aether and what is Dynamis. Emet, for example, uses the line 'Mine is the Aether!' when he uses a Caster Limit Break. Likewise, it's never definitively stated what Elidibus uses to power his Limit Breaks.

As you point you, we lack the rules about any of this, and so are left with nothing but headcanon to fill the blanks. For example, all player Limit Breaks are observed as aetherical by the characters in-universe through the EE, which would suggest that, if LBs are indeed partly Dynamis, that both aether and Dynamis are combining to produce the effect. Which runs in contradiction to the notion that they are incompatible.

So how did the Final Days as a Dynamis based phenomenon have any effect on the Ancients? It affected their creation magic. And what is the modern day derivative of creation magic? Primal summoning. Meaning that if Meteion can warp an Ancient's creation magicks on Etheirys from the edge of the universe, then it wouldn't be a stretch for us to unconsciously use Dynamis inside a primal.

As above, there is no explanation. We don't know how the Ancient's magicks were warped, only that concepts were seemingly siphoned from their minds and made real by creation magics taken from their control. We have no idea how Dynamis could be capable of this. And with the issue of the Primals, there's also the fact that they are formed partially through faith and prayer - Something that, now, we could easily conceptualize as Dynamis. But if so, that raises the question of how Hydaelyn and Zodiark could even exist, given the Ancients evident inability to manipulate Dynamis.

While I am interested in the ways Dynamis could factor into the story in the future, at the moment I have my doubts as to the question of whether or not they'll get around to explaining some of the oddities surrounding it, such as what is and is not Dynamis on a basic level. To do so in-game we might need to return to ARR-levels of exposition dumps. Otherwise we'll be left awaiting a potential new EE in the future.

[Lyth]

...

The Mistborn analogy doesn't apply well here. The central problem is 'main villain is immortal, nobody can defeat him.' When the resolution to that conflict is 'The protagonist was secretly more powerful than she realized', then there never was a conflict to begin with. It doesn't really matter when you introduce that fact. Deus Ex Machina eliminates the central conflict by sidestepping it. Sanderson's point about having a 'victory condition' is important. He contrasts Helm's Deep and Pelennor Fields in that the solution to both problems is similar (big army shows up, we win), but one has a foreshadowed victory condition (survive for five days) and the other does not. Without that victory condition, there is no dramatic tension, because you can just win at any point that you feel like. You can, however, distract the audience from that condition, which is why its to your advantage to introduce the rules of the game earlier rather than later.

None of this really applies to Dynamis. I think if you want to see a better example of this principle, look at Ultima Thule. As you progress through the area, you're given some bits of information on how it works:
- Meteion can unmake people at will.
- Emotions govern the land, allowing a soul to stand up in defiance of Meteion even if she unmakes them. She has to break their spirit to win.
- You can use Azem's magic to summon your friends souls back at any point, but that resets your way forward. (this effectively sets the terms for the victory condition and hints at the solution - your 'friends' are more than the people that you're travelling with)
- When people return to the star, they regain the memories that they've lost.

All the pieces are on the table beforehand. The main conflict is an ideological one. Stand up to Meteion, and show her your will to live. If you wanted to discuss whether this setup works or not using the above framework, it would be relevant. Is it contrived? Anything can be if you choose to be critical enough. That's really up to individual interpretation. Maybe you liked it, maybe you didn't. I thought it was clever.

But as for the explanation of Dynamis that we get? I don't think that it has any impact on dramatic tension outside of pure symbolism. It's a world-building element. It's not the MacGuffin that solves the conflict. If you're going to blame anything, it should be Azem's soulstone.

When you have limited information to go on, you have to be careful not to infer more than you actually can. Aether interferes with Dynamis somehow. Does that mean that the two are incompatible? Meteion is still made up of Aether, even if it is a little thin, so they're not 'incompatible' per say. Is it that Dynamis transmits less effectively through Aether? Or is a better analogy to compare Electromagnatism and the Strong interaction, where the dominant effect depends on something like scale, causing one to 'drown out' the other? Can you use the two together, by say creating a box of Aether and opening it to stuff it full of Dynamis so that it can't escape? Break in case of emergency. What if the Flame in the Abyss refers to an interplay between Aether and Dynamis?

I don't think that Limit Breaks need to universally be one thing. In times of emotional duress, people can surpass their limitations. Perhaps some of these cases involve just Aether. Perhaps some involve just Dynamis. Perhaps they involve both. What we do know is that there are a lot of jobs out there that draw on forces that are not entirely aetherical in nature. Wrath, Darkside, and so on. Perhaps these have something to do with Dynamis. Perhaps there are other forces out there that we're not aware of. Either way, it adds a bit of nuance to our understanding of these things. Emotions are powerful in this universe.

I'm sure that we'll learn more as we go. For one, there is a lot about Void Magic and the Voidsent that we still yet don't know, and this is probably the one thing that I'm the most curious about. I wouldn't be surprised if we get a referential tie in here somewhere, especially given that Diabolos was the creator of Dynamis in FFXI. Second, as powerful as Amaurot was, it was isolationist, and it sounds like their contemporaries from 'across the pond' were quite technologically advanced as well. I doubt it was the center of the universe that its denizens made it out to be. I wouldn't be surprised if there was an 'Esthar City' lurking out there in the 'wastelands' of Meracydia or even in the New World. If Dynamis exists, there are surely people out there who have mastered its use, and yet others who would find our current powers to be underwhelming. There should always be room for growth, learning, and the promise of a journey to that next horizon.

[KariTheFox]

But as for the explanation of Dynamis that we get? I don't think that it has any impact on dramatic tension outside of pure symbolism. It's a world-building element. It's not the MacGuffin that solves the conflict. If you're going to blame anything, it should be Azem's soulstone.

Even Azem's soulstone didn't quite resolve the conflict with Meteion. It allowed the scions and the WoL to move into a position where we could confront the Endsinger directly. But immediately after that, the scions were all blown away into space, and the WoL was forced to use the teleportation device to get them all to safety.

After that point, there were two central conflicts to be solved. The first was the physical confrontation with the Endsinger. The second was the matter of reaching Meteion on an emotional level.

The first was solved by Zenos showing up in a manner that kind of was a deus-ex-machina, but in a good way in my opinion. He literally breaks into the scene and gives the WoL the means to fight the Endsinger directly, but doesn't actually resolve the conflict directly. And this where FFXIV's nature as video game differentiates it from other forms of literature, you're allowed to solve violent conflict by directly asking the player to do it through gameplay.

And even the fight itself has a narrative. After the Endsinger seemingly destroys you, the prayers and hopes of the scions reach you, and gives you the strength to finally defeat the Endsinger (represented by the enormous potency buffs you get after that.) And that mirrors both the prayer scene of the scions in the very first cutscene of ARR, and reinforces the themes of Ultima Thule that state that even if your friends aren't physically with you, their hopes and prayers can propel you forward.

As for the second, emotional conflict. That was resolved by showing compassion and kindness to Meteion directly, and sharing with her both your pain and your hopes. Sure, kind of simple, but sometimes the answer to despair is to just reach out and give someone comfort.

The point being that neither dynamis, nor Azem's soulstone actually ever resolved the conflict. They were just there to help move the WoL to be in a position where they could solve the conflict themselves.

[Brightamethyst]

As retroactive lore goes, Dynamis does a fantastic job of explaining some mysteries and filling in odd holes and shining new light on old concepts (limit breaks, DNC and DRK, etc.) It's a very interesting addition and doesn't feel at all out of place in the lore.

However, that doesn't change the fact that it was introduced VERY late in the story. It's easy to see why many people are frustrated that everything gets fixed by a new tool that is somehow the perfect answer to all the problems, rather than using all the existing tools in clever or unexpected ways.

[Ryaz]

I am personally interested in the following up on Dynamis and I really hope they delve into it in more detail and give it a more consistent structure. I just ask that they don't pull a WoW and completely forget about it as a plot point given its importance to the EW plot. They don't even have to base a main story around it, but have side stuff that helps explain it and ground it more in the rules of the game more. Show how it interacts with Aether in sundered beings and the like.

[Cleretic]

I should say that, while Dancer definitely seems to some degree aware of dynamis, I don't think they're actively using it to nearly the degree that Dark Knight and, yeah, probably Warrior are. They definitely recognize it going wrong better than most, but they themselves don't seem to really use it. They don't wield emotions in any tangible way.

I'd say that other than those two, Bard seems to be the most likely to be manipulating dynamis, but probably not deliberately. They're likely just seeing big dividends from 'inspiring people in battle' and have never seen that as anything more than 'people are just getting really pumped'. There's also some Black Mage ability descriptions in the Encyclopedia Eorzea that read a little dynamis-y, too.

[WhiteArchmage]

Honestly, with the context of the Dancer quests and that Ground Zero was Thavnair. I'm a little disappointed no Dancer was within earshot for a:
DNC: What do you say causes this? Emotional despair? Why that sounds like the Toten-... WAIT! One second! *starts dancing, smoke comes out of people and materializes elsewhere as an enemy* Now! Kill it!

[Veloran]

The Mistborn analogy doesn't apply well here. The central problem is 'main villain is immortal, nobody can defeat him.' When the resolution to that conflict is 'The protagonist was secretly more powerful than she realized', then there never was a conflict to begin with. It doesn't really matter when you introduce that fact. Deus Ex Machina eliminates the central conflict by sidestepping it. Sanderson's point about having a 'victory condition' is important. He contrasts Helm's Deep and Pelennor Fields in that the solution to both problems is similar (big army shows up, we win), but one has a foreshadowed victory condition (survive for five days) and the other does not. Without that victory condition, there is no dramatic tension, because you can just win at any point that you feel like. You can, however, distract the audience from that condition, which is why its to your advantage to introduce the rules of the game earlier rather than later.

But all of that does apply to Dynamis? All of the pieces are only set on the table in the final 90% of the story, and then are only moved into position in the final zone, equivalent to like the last page of the book. In terms of "victory condition", Dynamis is like if Aragorn was getting ready to charge out of the hall at the end of Helm's Deep when a bird flies in through the window with a note saying "you've survived five days of suffering, the Elves could never have done this, look to the East!" It's an element introduced at the very end that provides both the impetus and resolution to the central conflict. Beforehand we could not have even guessed that this would be the central conflict because neither Meteion nor Dynamis had been revealed to the audience.

The main conflict is an ideological one. Stand up to Meteion, and show her your will to live.

But it isn't an ideological conflict, not strictly speaking. The conflict, indeed the entire history of the world up until this point, revolves around the physical capability to utilize Dynamis. Simply showing Meteion a will to live means nothing because she is perfectly willing to suffocate such a will with her overwhelming power. And that overwhelming power can only be counteracted with Dynamis. The main conflict is that the villain is undefeatable without this deus ex machina entered into the plot in the final moments of the story.

When you have limited information to go on, you have to be careful not to infer more than you actually can.

The issue here is that we are being asked to look in on critical plot elements, character motivations, and decisions/actions that exist, effectively, within a void of knowledge. As Sanderson notes, a magic's integration into the story is reliant on how well the reader understands it. As it is we don't understand it at all, and neither do the characters in the story, so a very large part of the narrative is reliant on the reader not thinking critically about something that we have very limited information about.

I'm sure that we'll learn more as we go. For one, there is a lot about Void Magic and the Voidsent that we still yet don't know, and this is probably the one thing that I'm the most curious about. I wouldn't be surprised if we get a referential tie in here somewhere, especially given that Diabolos was the creator of Dynamis in FFXI.

This is currently the most interesting aspect of Dynamis to me as well, as it could potentially explain various things about the Voidsent or why the Void reads as having no aether despite clearly containing matter and energy. To clarify, the reason why I have no issue with this is because the Void and Voidsent are mostly unexplained or at least have some clear contradictory workings at the moment, while numerous other elements (certain jobs, Omega situation, LBs, etc) already had various other explanations that were at least as sufficiently explained as being one type of energy versus a new one. That, and unlike the Void many of these other elements were already thought to be well understood beforehand, in the sense that characters had recognized them to be aetherical in nature. The Void, however, has much more mystery to it and therefore more room for new explanations.

[Lauront]

This is currently the most interesting aspect of Dynamis to me as well, as it could potentially explain various things about the Voidsent or why the Void reads as having no aether despite clearly containing matter and energy. To clarify, the reason why I have no issue with this is because the Void and Voidsent are mostly unexplained or at least have some clear contradictory workings at the moment, while numerous other elements (certain jobs, Omega situation, LBs, etc) already had various other explanations that were at least as sufficiently explained as being one type of energy versus a new one. That, and unlike the Void many of these other elements were already thought to be well understood beforehand, in the sense that characters had recognized them to be aetherical in nature. The Void, however, has much more mystery to it and therefore more room for new explanations.

I share your reservations about how Dynamis was utilised ultimately. I don't have a problem with the idea, as such, as there has long been a suggestion that souls have something irreducible about them that can survive even aetheric destruction - albeit not the corruption wrought by the latest version of the Final Days. Moreover, prayer and the like as a component of primal summoning has long been a thing. I'd just like to see what the writers do with it when less pressed by time and without a giant legacy plot to address in such a short timespan. My impression of it is that it isn't so much antithetical to aether (in the sense of one cancelling out the other - it's more of aether being like a buffer) but that its comparative subtlety makes it harder to notice and thus manipulate if you're dense in aether, as aether can negate it by virtue of a buffer effect. Elsewhere, you've mentioned some potential workarounds the ancients had to this (even if by proxy methods, e.g. familiars) and it would be interesting for that to be explored in the future. Oddly enough, it appears to be so elusive that in spite of all the stars she encountered, Meteion is surprised by seeing it manipulated. Whether that is because you hail from Etheirys, or because it is just that elusive, is unclear. Even in Ultima Thule, the beings you interact with readily understand the concept of aether but I only recall the Ea mentioning dynamis and even then, being impressed by the application of it, so it suggests even for exceedingly long-lived civilisations, it is something of a mystery.

As to the Void, it's an interesting case as there's both things militating for and against it. We know the Void ultimately fell due to auracites being rather bad at bottling up a primal, and eventually an ensuing flood of darkness. Knowing now that the rites the Ascians taught the beast tribes are not quite the same as their own creation magicks, the requirement that a primal constantly feed on aether may be unique to those, so I do wonder if a lot of the higher order Voidsent that we see are in fact primals, whether in the usual or the bodysuit sense. Assuming the measurement tools used to track the movement of aether are not up to the task at measuring dark aether, and the world is saturated in dark aether, they could feed off that. Darkness is a highly energetic form of aether, so a world saturated in it and primals fed from it could simply be highly potent as a consequence.

On the other hand, Primals are formed of a mixture of incorporeal and corporeal aether, as well as prayer (willpower etc. also suffice), the latter of which is hinted to tie into dynamis as well as supplying the incorporeal aether. Yotsuyu struggled to sustain her primal form until she managed to tap into that wellspring of hatred inside her. This may mean Primals may end up being capable of hybrid energy consumption, if one knows how to utilise the construct to wield both energy sources infused into it (sort of like Elidibus seemed to do if we take the LB surges to be dynamis), and irrespective of how the two energies would interact in a regular mortal being. If we say that dark aether becomes a little boring as your sole source of nourishment for thousands of years (and this will apply across the board as all living creatures apparently require nourishment to replenish their corporeal aether), it is understandable why you'd want something purer and more varied, be it aether or otherwise. A primal may have a further recourse (even if it does not realise it consciously) and begin drawing on dynamis. Alternatively, if the world is bereft of aether, then dynamis becomes an alternative power source in its own right. It is also of note that Voidsent hunger for aether and, for some, their victim being in a state of terror or despair can improve the pleasure they derive from it. The workings of it are vague, but they’ll even devour each other for power, as is known from both Dun Scaith and the reaper quests. So to me there’s an either/or here, because the workings of both Voidsent (beyond being the dark and more wilful mirror to Sin Eaters) and Primals are not fully laid out. We simply know that there are ways to mirror their creation, via the tank role quest in SHB, involving stimulation of the subject's aether.

One thing that muddles matters is that magic consists in being able to manipulate one's corporeal aether (Garlean inability to use it is ascribed to a general inability to do this), and so it is logical that emotional states might force it one way or another, and interact with aether to produce darkness, with or without dynamis. Dynamis as I recall it is weaker but more prevalent than aether, as well as prone to surges. The Mhachi were using Voidsent to do things like power the Void Ark (didn’t end well, of course, but because Scatthach was so powerful and they lacked proper means to control her.) So for the time being I would hesitate to tie everything back to dynamis just because it involves emotions or force of will, although it would be feasible to write it in such a way if one chose to. With the Void they do have a lot of leeway and a story arc to continue from SHB with Beq Lugg.