Sundering stuff established in the Q&A

[sidurgu-12]

Unlike Zodiark, Hydaelyn drained all the souls used in her summoning of Aether completely, destroying them forever. By the time we fight her, only her soul remains, which is also destroyed after the fight.

ive always hated this aspect of the lore.

edit: the soul aspect i mean. it also makes it hard to look forward to myths of the realm.

[Absimiliard]

The Q&A did leave me with one interesting thought, though it's less to do directly with said Q&A and more to do with having a few more blank filled in. The pursuit of perfection never ended; Venat, ultimately, failed in this regard. People now have less power with which to seek it, but we see quite clearly through in-game events an undeniable attempt on the part of many leaders to reach such a conclusion, however long and however many generations it might take.

Then we have general growth. It may take eons, but the people of the Source will eventually reach or at least begin to approach the level of the Ancients again, and history will either repeat or come to an end. We've already seen first hand in the story that evolution will not be denied its due.

[Kozh]

Remember that she directly stated that she did try to stop things--and in fact we confirmably saw her stop at least one Calamity (plausibly two, with the Zodiac Braves against Ultima) with great difficulty and contrived circumstances, so we can reason that doing so is really hard. She knew this plan was needed, but did her best to make it as painless as possible; it's just that she had very little ability to do so compared to the Ascians' ability to make it worse.

Did Ultima even used for calamity? I don't think so. Considering the WoL regale her with their story, might be that she thought not sealing Ultima will affect the timeline. Either that or simply because ultima threatens the Source, and She can't have that can she, since the final fight against meteion hasn't happened yet.

And the prevented calamity you mentioned, the First? She definitely knew how crucial it is in order for us to defeat emet and elidibus there and for the time travel technology. So of course she's going to prevent it. But the other seven calamites? rip to those shards.


Speaking of venat's motivation, since it's confirmed that her sole reason of sundering is because of dynamis, what caused her to sunder the world in the 8UC timeline then? Because at that timeline the WoL died and the time loop never happen.

[Alleo]

Did Ultima even used for calamity? I don't think so. Considering the WoL regale her with their story, might be that she thought not sealing Ultima will affect the timeline. Either that or simply because ultima threatens the Source, and She can't have that can she, since the final fight against meteion hasn't happened yet.

I mean I really doubt that we would tell her every little detail about the history of our planet. Maybe we simply said that the world was sundered, Emet, Lahabrea and Elidibus escaped the sundering and that right now x amount of shards got rejoined. Also that seemingly Emet recreated Amaurot and that we defeated him there. So maybe she knew that the First was important but I doubt that she knew exactly which shard would get a rejoining and when it would happen. (I am not even sure if our WoL knows that)

Of course she could have sat there, counting the amount of rejoinings and the remaining time until we are born and be like "welp time to help or it will be out of order" but I really doubt that.

[Cleretic]

Did Ultima even used for calamity? I don't think so. Considering the WoL regale her with their story, might be that she thought not sealing Ultima will affect the timeline. Either that or simply because ultima threatens the Source, and She can't have that can she, since the final fight against meteion hasn't happened yet.

And the prevented calamity you mentioned, the First? She definitely knew how crucial it is in order for us to defeat emet and elidibus there and for the time travel technology. So of course she's going to prevent it. But the other seven calamites? rip to those shards.

I say Ultima was plausibly another Calamity that she stopped because Ultima generally checks the boxes of other confirmed Calamity-capable things we've seen and stopped that weren't actually causing Calamities at the time (Ultima Weapon, King Thordan, Alexander, Shinryu, Eden). Granted, those boxes are basically 'big, scary and conspicuously timable', but it's also notable that the situation around her was fairly close to the time of the Fourth Umbral Calamity, and she appears largely earth-elemental from her fight and concept. All that suggests that she might possibly have been planned by the Ascians to be a potential catalyst for the Calamity eventually caused by the Crystal Tower. Which, again, is a big reason why Hydaelyn would've had trouble; the Ascians had the capacity to get a lot of balls rolling and don't really mind how many don't hit the mark as long as one eventually does, while Hydaelyn would have needed to block every single goal.

But again, I say 'plausible', because while it sounds legit if you were to say that was what was going on, there's no actual evidence for this.

[Absimiliard]

I say Ultima was plausibly another Calamity that she stopped because Ultima generally checks the boxes of other confirmed Calamity-capable things we've seen and stopped that weren't actually causing Calamities at the time (Ultima Weapon, King Thordan, Alexander, Shinryu, Eden). Granted, those boxes are basically 'big, scary and conspicuously timable', but it's also notable that the situation around her was fairly close to the time of the Fourth Umbral Calamity, and she appears largely earth-elemental from her fight and concept.

Ultima's element is light. It was holy in prior appearances, but FFXIV lacks a proper holy element.

[ReynTime]

- The Unsundered released from Zodiark/Emet and Hythlo may be reborn later with some kind of special powers, but probably not creation magic.

Translation: We know twitter thinks they're hot and they don't want to think they'll never see the characters again so we have a safeguard in case we need to bring them back.

Goes to show that A) Papalymo would be brought back if he had been popular enough and B) It doesn't matter how much of a freaking genocide that involves even those who had nothing to do with your losses. Even Vaultry would get a legion of fawning fans if he looked hot and had a tragic motive.

[Rannie]

I mean I really doubt that we would tell her every little detail about the history of our planet. Maybe we simply said that the world was sundered, Emet, Lahabrea and Elidibus escaped the sundering and that right now x amount of shards got rejoined. Also that seemingly Emet recreated Amaurot and that we defeated him there. So maybe she knew that the First was important but I doubt that she knew exactly which shard would get a rejoining and when it would happen. (I am not even sure if our WoL knows that)

Of course she could have sat there, counting the amount of rejoinings and the remaining time until we are born and be like "welp time to help or it will be out of order" but I really doubt that.

I doubt our character even knows all the little tidbits of and histories of ALL the calamities. Take the Encyclopedia Eorzea for instance, written from what they are saying the point of view of an eorzean, and it can't even really tell us when the first calamity happened. So the knowledge she had would have been limited to what the WoL knew and what the WoL told them.

[Cleretic]

I doubt our character even knows all the little tidbits of and histories of ALL the calamities. Take the Encyclopedia Eorzea for instance, written from what they are saying the point of view of an eorzean, and it can't even really tell us when the first calamity happened. So the knowledge she had would have been limited to what the WoL knew and what the WoL told them.

Assuming the WoL knows all the side quest chains, the stuff they were actually told about the Calamities from my recollection...

1-3: Absolute zip-nothing.
4: Earthquake caused when the Crystal Tower launched Dalamud, by Emet-Selch and Fandaniel. That sounds like a lot of info, but nothing actually useful for stopping it.
5: ???
6: Caused by the Elementals, probably. This is more just accepted public assertion rather than actually evidenced, but there's not much else around the War of the Magi that could've caused a flood like that.
7: This one we've got good intel on: the Dalamud drop, caused by Lahabrea with some distant aid by Emet-Selch, through the Seventh Legion. However, also remember that this Calamity didn't actually cause widespread destruction on the Source, thanks to the actions of--hold on this might be important--a group of Hydaelyn worshippers.

So we don't have anything useful about most of the Calamities, and the only one we do have actionable info on... well, she might've already acted to lessen the impact.