Aether vs. Dynamis [FULL E.W SPOILERS]

[AutumnHarvestwind]

I had some thoughts so forgive me if theyre all kind of unorganized.
So the entire 1.0-6.0 we defined the laws of Eorzea by Aether. How Aether works into the machinisms of everyday living. While there is discussion that Dynamis sounds like a cheap dues ex machina; I feel like this will be the new set up for possibly 6.0 and onwards.

Everything is Aether, but what if, Aether completely disappeared?

What about Dynamis?

There are some things we know of Dynamis:

Our current world is able to be affected by Dynamis because sundered peoples are reduced to a fraction of their unsundered counterpart. This explained why the people of Eorzea became Blasphemies in Our Final Days as compared to the Ancient's.


One of the major themes of our later quests is that Everything Is Finite. I believe this ALSO includes Aether. Zodiark and Hydaelyn are dead gods of an old world, and it's suggested even Zenos "gorged upon the mother crystal"; what does this mean for Eorzea?


There's a possibility as this Saga coming to a close; our companions will come to face issues with Aether shortages and they might have to come and resolve issues concerning Dynamis--which is also the alleged reason as to why people are becoming Blasphemies( They turn during stagnant currents of Aether; and Meteoin draws off despair to put the pin in).



The ascians goals are null; Zodiark is dead; Hydaelyn has sacrificed herself; The Mothercystal has been "devoured". They were all beings of Aether and consumed it--- and perhaps too much of it.


(Also I don't recall our stagnation of aether being resolved so let me know if it has, I stormed through MSQ when twitter spammed with spoilers.)

It will be exciting to see how Dynamis will play into this as a "anti-matter" to Aether; it's almost synomous with dark aether; but dark aether STILL is aether, no? I also adore that it shares the name with FFXI dynamis; a shadowrealm where beastmen and nations got sucked into--corrupted by nightmares.


All job classes use aether to work; but if SE were to rework any designs; I'd be curious to see if Dynamis will become a main factor in energy consumption. It also makes me wonder if there will be correlation between the ?13th shard and Dynamis.

[Connor]

I wonder, considering the standard FF theme of ‘balance good’, if the same could apply to Aether and Dynamis.

We’ve seen what happens to an individual when their internal aether is corrupted and skewed towards a single element (death, transformation, etc). But what kind of effects would it have on us, and the star itself, if the balance of Aether and Dynamis became skewed towards Dynamis?

We know the Sundering ‘thinned’ our aether, but it’s unclear at what point aether needs to be ‘thin enough’ for Dynamis to actualise. I’d predict that the sundering created an equilibrium between the Aether and Dynamis we can interact with, and as such, if this equilibrium were to be broken in any way, I’d assume it’d have some interesting consequences.

I feel like, whatever they have in store for Dynamis in future, the balance of Aether and Dynamis is going to become something of significance at some point. Maybe lol

[Theozilla]

Dynamis is not the same as, or similar to, dark aether (remember Light and Darkness are just the primordial forces that drive the charges/attunement to the two different polarities (active/passive)), and Dynamis is not analogous to antimatter either.

Also the WoL never had stagnated aether, there was the Light-corrupted aether, but that was cured in 5.0

Also aether is essentially analogous to standard matter and energy (which includes antimatter), and matter and energy cannot be created and/or destroyed, just changed to different. So aether likely follows a similar property (especially since the Ea said the FFXIV universe also started with a Big Bang/cosmic expansion).
So I doubt there will be any danger of aether having limited amounts/shortages and "disappearing".

Dynamis is almost certainly meant to be analogous to Dark Energy, the game even citing the same percentage composition of the universe that Dark Energy represents. Also both are major factors behind the acceleration of the expansion of the universe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_energy

[AutumnHarvestwind]

@Connor : I would love to see something along the lines of our heroes realizing their aether abilities start to wane. There might be too much exposition and ingame mechanic breaks; since even our HUD is based off aether :P. I think it's a good opener to a new world; our hero would be reduced to a zero. We also resolved issues with tempering too. Dynamis offers new and refereshing perspectives and no one to wield it ( except for how it was mishandled by metoin.)

@Theozilla I likened Dynamis to anti-matter; but IRL dark energy does sound more simialar to Dynamis in its relationship to aether ( as a quick glean). Still, I would like to see them branching away from Aether. I want to see how Dynamis how it affects living beings in a more indepth way and more exposition in blasphemies in general. I still do believe there's a possibility our way of aether could be affected; and Dynamis might be needed as a replacement of sorts.
Also a quick google search for the TL;DR

a theoretical repulsive force that counteracts gravity and causes the universe to expand at an accelerating rate.

( which Metion and her hivemind was trying to do except it was w/ despair.

[Cleretic]

Dynamis is almost certainly meant to be analogous to Dark Energy, the game even citing the same percentage composition of the universe that Dark Energy represents. Also both are major factors behind the acceleration of the expansion of the universe.

Honestly, I applaud them for managing to find a term that avoids the inherently adversarial vibe that a lot of people get from 'dark matter' or 'dark energy'. Even if it is roughly analogous to what you'd term 'dark aether' in a strictly scientific sense, a neutral name like 'dynamis' or 'akasa' does exceptionally well at painting it as just 'another thing that exists', rather than something to distrust.

...also, if they called it 'dark aether' then I'd just think of Metroid Prime. Which is hardly a bad thing, but it would make me sad when we didn't end up fighting a Quadraxis.

[Fenral]

...also, if they called it 'dark aether' then I'd just think of Metroid Prime. Which is hardly a bad thing, but it would make me sad when we didn't end up fighting a Quadraxis.

And now my only takeaway from this thread is that instead of FFXIV discussion, I could be replaying Prime Trilogy for the 10^64th time, and I'm suddenly really conflicted.

[RyuDragnier]

And now my only takeaway from this thread is that instead of FFXIV discussion, I could be replaying Prime Trilogy for the 10^64th time, and I'm suddenly really conflicted.

You wouldn't be as conflicted if they would just port it to Switch already so you could play both at the same time!

[TaleraRistain]

Also the WoL never had stagnated aether, there was the Light-corrupted aether, but that was cured in 5.0

Haha, technically we did in the timeline where Black Rose killed us since that halts your aether, but we fixed that

[AutumnHarvestwind]

@taleraristain
I think my phrasing was typed wrong ( I wrote that idea blurb after a post 12 hour shift); I meant stagnated as in what the Watcher was indicating; as in the WORLD had parts of stagnated aether which was where the first blasphemy transformations occured.
I hope I make sense!

[Theozilla]

I don’t think FFXIV will branch away from aether though. That’s essentially like asking to branch away from matter and energy, aether is the building block of FFXIV’s world.

Also keep in mind despair doesn’t equal dynamis, dynamis interacts with all emotions positive and negative (as the Elpis flower showed us over the game), and drives the acceleration of the expansion of the universe regardless of what type of emotion is interacting with it, Meteion just acclimated and suffused vast amounts of dynamis with despair to create her Ultimatum and used that to further contribute to the acceleration of the expansion of the Universe because she was hoping for the Heat Death of Universe to happen as fast as possible (which in real life will take an astronomical amount of time, exponentially/logarithmically more than the current estimated age of the universe).