Question regarding aetherytes

[Voross]

Hello all,

I've had some...showerthoughts regarding aetheryte travel. How exactly are we or others moving around without constantly knocking people over, or worse, fusing with them when we re-materialize at the target location?

Are we in some sort of "ghostly" state that lets us move around the aetheryte and decide where we become tangible again?

Are there Star Trek-esque Transporter accidents?

Please share your knowledge, I'd like to be able to sleep tonight.

[Rongway]

I'm loath to try to in-universe every aspect of something that is an abstraction of "you arrive at your destination safely", but in the same way that the aetheryte is a beacon along the lifestream to which you are drawn, you probably have enough of a feel for the aether of people and objects near the aetheryte when you arrive that you can avoid, consciously or unconsciously, rematerializing inside someone or something.

[HexyCyana]

I would not think those accidents happen. Maybe in early tests of aetherytes when they were working out the kinks, but I do not think they would be in every major area if they were prone to killing their transporties. And as user Rongway has stated, it's probably some magic "lol you won't die".

[shadowclasper]

They're designed to reestablish your aetherisl essence safely. Given their entire purpose is around detecting and manipulating aether, they don't need much explanation beyond 'put this in the lowest concentration of any aether within a certain range'

Shadow fingers established very well how aetherial travel functions and why we can bring shit with us (also explaining in the process, iirc, how weapons end up locked to one player), and you can extrapolate from there

[funkman]

My theory is the fact that so many living/animated things in the game can be passed through must mean that the clipping is diegetic; therefore it is completely possible in Eorzea for multiple, independent organisms to occupy the same space simultaneously without any sorts of issues at an atomic level.

[Recon1o6]

Its a combination of two factors, first the person is aware and concious even while reduced to aether so they can definately get around someone or something.

Second return and teleport are spells that are tried and tested over many years and chances are extremely high those spells and the aetherytes have some built in safety measures. there's a couple of sharlayan leves that explain that in the course of experimenting with wood for aethrytes they accidentally lost a member mid teleport and thus the second leve asks for another wood so they can retrieve him.

[Lyth]

The bigger issue is that aetherytes are notorious places for pickpockets to find their marks. You're busy rematerializing from the lifestream, only to suddenly discover that your coinpurse now has a hole and is 1000 gil lighter.

Jokes aside, I wonder how the attunement process itself works. I would have guessed that you were forming a memory of the place much like you would with a soul crystal, but then again you can also attune two crystals to each other to travel to new destinations.

[JeanneOrnitier]

I think the only aetheryte accident we know about is when one was destroyed in the war between Sil'dih and Ul'dah, and the entire army teleporting to that one specific one was lost forever in the lifestream (like Y'shtola briefly was in Heavensward).

[YianKutku]

I think the only aetheryte accident we know about is when one was destroyed in the war between Sil'dih and Ul'dah, and the entire army teleporting to that one specific one was lost forever in the lifestream (like Y'shtola briefly was in Heavensward).

To be pedantic, that wasn't exactly an accident, but rather enemy action. Specifically, Sil'dih (or at least the faction that would later found Sil'dih) use aetherytes to transport troops right into Ul'dah's bases, and Ul'dah destroyed the aetherytes while the troops were en route. This sequence of events pissed off Sharlayan enough that Sharlayan de-activated the entire aetheryte network of Eorzea until the Belah'dian civil war was resolved.

While that was the one time there was confirmation of such a thing happening, we do see at least one more occasion where there was preparation to do the same: the Ala Mhigan Resistance lookout at Rhalgr's Reach back in Stormblood had orders to destroy the aetheryte there the moment they got word that Garlemald was going to push troops through. The implication was that the XIIth had tried that same tactic before (successfully), regardless of the loss in troops from forcing them through to an unattuned aetheryte.

For that matter, we were almost the victim of being lost in the aetherial sea due to forcing ourselves to an unattuned aetheryte, in pursuit of Iceheart. Moenbryda carefully did not tell us until after the fact that her experimental technique for doing so was not a guaranteed success.

[Kakurady]

My theory is the fact that so many living/animated things in the game can be passed through must mean that the clipping is diegetic; therefore it is completely possible in Eorzea for multiple, independent organisms to occupy the same space simultaneously without any sorts of issues at an atomic level.

Eorzea, a world where antelopes can fly, and glamour magicks are used in war... I love the idea that clipping is canon, it wouldn't even be the first instance where gameplay abstractions ended up being diegetic.