*Spoilers* The Past and After the Endwalker MSQ End

[Hezzlocks]

Yes. G'raha took that same chance.

G'raha also came from a timeline that was basically all but doomed, with the world devastated and the people mostly simply trying to survive. Even his role model, the Warrior of Light, lay dead and buried.

He basically had nothing to lose. Meanwhile, our timeline honestly could not be in a better state atm. Garlemald is no longer an enemy faction, the world is in relative peace, the beast tribes are slowly becoming allies and have even been shown how they could summon Primals without that nasty tempering business if they felt they needed to, and we've even put a permanent end to the Final Days.

Would you risk throwing all that away?

[Cilia]

More pointedly G'raha never intended even to survive the events of Shadowbringers, and spent the remainder of his time on the First as the Crystal Exarch trying to find a way to send the rest of the Scions home. He can't do it on the Source either, since that Crystal Tower isn't retrofitted for spacetime travel, and doesn't know if it's possible at all. We don't either.

Our journey to unsundered Elpis was made affirming we would come back, and thus wouldn't be able to effect meaningful change. The implicit rule therefore is that if you effect meaningful change you won't be able to return to the (relative) present or the (relative) present will reflect said changes, creating a paradox. In other words, either way you won't be able to return to the "now" you know.

Again, would you risk that?

[Veloran]

Would you risk throwing all that away?

Again, would you risk that?

Because saving people who you can potentially help is the heroic thing to do.

[EaraGrace]

Because saving people who you can potentially help is the heroic thing to do.

We’ll then we need only two things.

1. We need to rediscover time travel magicks. It’ll take centuries of work, and lots of blood, sweat and tears. You’d also need to an Ancient to help improve and empower the process.

2. You need a massive amount of aether and a way to store it. You can use the crystal tower again, but you’d need to supplement the Aether in some way as even the amount from the Calamity of Earth will be lacking. Might need to summon a primal, one equivalent to the heart of Zodiark.

Then when you get there, you better hope someone with the ability to perceive aether like Emet and Hyth are around, not just anyone can see the weakened form you’ll arrive with. Thereafter it’s up to you. You can try convincing them of what’s about to happen, most won’t believe you without proof and you won’t be at Elpis in time for the proof to reveal itself. You’d also need to avoid being captured and interrogated.

But let’s say you convince them of Meteion. At that point you’re basically opening a black box. Based on Venats judgement many Ancients would fall to despair, Hermes will rebel and fight against you, Zodiarks summoning is likely ruined and you have no Ragnorak or Mothercrystal to get to Ultima Thule.

IF you manage to forestall the Final Days, you’d still be alone to fight against Meteion, no dynamis controlling friends with you. Unless the Ancients try to make them, which may be a hard sell given you’re basically creating a group of empathy beings to send off to hell. They’ll not have the bonds you have with the Scions, nor memories of past trials to give them strength.

But maybe. Just maybe. You’ll do so. And then you’ll likely die as you’ll not have allies to call, or dying Ancient friends that are waiting for your word.

[LystAP]

We’ll then we need only two things.

1. We need to rediscover time travel magicks. It’ll take centuries of work, and lots of blood, sweat and tears. You’d also need to an Ancient to help improve and empower the process.

2. You need a massive amount of aether and a way to store it. You can use the crystal tower again, but you’d need to supplement the Aether in some way as even the amount from the Calamity of Earth will be lacking. Might need to summon a primal, one equivalent to the heart of Zodiark.

Then when you get there, you better hope someone with the ability to perceive aether like Emet and Hyth are around, not just anyone can see the weakened form you’ll arrive with. Thereafter it’s up to you. You can try convincing them of what’s about to happen, most won’t believe you without proof and you won’t be at Elpis in time for the proof to reveal itself. You’d also need to avoid being captured and interrogated.

But let’s say you convince them of Meteion. At that point you’re basically opening a black box. Based on Venats judgement many Ancients would fall to despair, Hermes will rebel and fight against you, Zodiarks summoning is likely ruined and you have no Ragnorak or Mothercrystal to get to Ultima Thule.

IF you manage to forestall the Final Days, you’d still be alone to fight against Meteion, no dynamis controlling friends with you. Unless the Ancients try to make them, which may be a hard sell given you’re basically creating a group of empathy beings to send off to hell. They’ll not have the bonds you have with the Scions, nor memories of past trials to give them strength.

But maybe. Just maybe. You’ll do so. And then you’ll likely die as you’ll not have allies to call, or dying Ancient friends that are waiting for your word.

1 and 2 are already done. We can teleport to Elpis at a specific point in time - where people acknowledge us as Azem's familiar. There doesn't need to be a complex rationale behind it. Some weird timely wimy thing has us linked to this particular Elpis in space and time. Do recall that the First wasn't always temporally balanced with the Source. The other Scions spent years in the First whereas only a few months have past on the Source when you went back. The rest will depend on SE writing the plot. The quickest way is to just have the Convocation use the Echo on you. The Ancients also have ways to determine if your lying.

Venat judged that many would fall to despair when faced with 'reality', but that's also her own presumption. That's an assumption Vauthy made of people of the First as well, but we've seen how that turned out. In this expansion, Vrtra was convinced (based off his eons of experience) that everyone would hate him, but it didn't turn out that way either. As is noted in the story, Venat as flawed as much as everyone else.

[EaraGrace]

1 and 2 are already done. We can teleport to Elpis at a specific point in time - where people acknowledge us as Azem's familiar. There doesn't need to be a complex rationale behind it. Some weird timely wimy thing has us linked to this particular Elpis in space and time. Do recall that the First wasn't always temporally balanced with the Source. The other Scions spent years in the First whereas only a few months have past on the Source when you went back.

Issues remain, the door to Elpis limits us to a very specific period of time, and you’d still have the issues I mentioned if you don’t attempt to replicate those magicks.

The rest will depend on SE writing the plot. The quickest way is to just have the Convocation use the Echo on you. The Ancients also have ways to determine if your lying.

Exactly how effective the echo is with finding specific memories is difficult to say. Ultimately, the problem is that even if you convince them, you still have Hermes sabotage to deal with, and given he isn’t there to help with Zodiark now, it’s unlikely you’ll succeed at forestalling the first final days. It was SE who wrote that limitation.

Venat judged that many would fall to despair when faced with 'reality', but that's also her own presumption. That's an assumption Vauthy made of people of the First as well, but we've seen how that turned out. In this expansion, Vrtra was convinced (based off his eons of experience) that everyone would hate him, but it didn't turn out that way either. As is noted in the story, Venat as flawed as much as everyone else.

And yet we are shown why we should believe her judgement the correct one, if their reaction to the Final Days is indicative.

[AlysanneVrannai]

Because saving people who you can potentially help is the heroic thing to do.

You have no idea if there are even people to save to begin with if you truly consider the implications of what we have learned about time travel.

There is no sign that the different timelines exist before we "create them" by splitting the timeline through time travel. To go back to Elpis and avert the calamity could potentially be you creating a whole new reality just to save that reality from a calamity you technically created by splitting the timeline, and you dont even know if you can truly save their timeline or not, or whether they will suffer more in the future.

My earlier post says this is a can of worms you dont want to open for a good reason.

[Rosenstrauch]

You have no idea if there are even people to save to begin with if you truly consider the implications of what we have learned about time travel.

There is no sign that the different timelines exist before we "create them" by splitting the timeline through time travel. To go back to Elpis and avert the calamity could potentially be you creating a whole new reality just to save that reality from a calamity you technically created by splitting the timeline, and you dont even know if you can truly save their timeline or not, or whether they will suffer more in the future.

My earlier post says this is a can of worms you dont want to open for a good reason.

It's a can of worms that has already been opened, scooped out, and used to bait the hooks. See: Shadowbringers.

[AlysanneVrannai]

It's a can of worms that has already been opened, scooped out, and used to bait the hooks. See: Shadowbringers.

Except the circumstances and motivations are completely different.

Going back to Elpis to "save" the ancient world will quite literally change nothing for the reality you are trying to save, you just create another timeline to save while the world you initially wanted to save remains to be doomed in the final days. You just create an entirely new reality to save instead, with no guarantee that you will even be able to keep that new timeline safe. There is NO WAY to save the Ancient World of our timeline, because without their final days we would not exist to save their world from the final days.

Now, if your goal is just to create as much life in the multiverse as possible then sure, go ahead, open the can. But trying to sell it as "saving" people seems kind of disturbing to me. It comes off as creating an entire universe just to fulfill a hero fantasy.

[Rulakir]

Does it matter? I mean, unless someone hates the Ancients, saving them in an alternate timeline that we'll likely never see (same as the 8UC one) doesn't seem like a big deal. It makes the people who wanted to save them happy and has zero effect on anything else.