Thread: The rift, the crystal tower, and the seat of sacrifice (Spoilers up to 6.0)

Originally Posted by Cleretic

With the Spectral Heroes making their appearance before Elidibus even got to the point of controlling the tower, time travel isn't even remotely possible.

I think you're confusing the order of things – as I recall it, we first see the spectral heroes appear without precedent, but then we get an "earlier in the Ocular" flashback that reveals Elidibus has gotten hold of the Exarch's memory crystal, granting him control of the tower, which must be the point where we first get attacked by them.

Originally Posted by Iscah

I think you're confusing the order of things – as I recall it, we first see the spectral heroes appear without precedent, but then we get an "earlier in the Ocular" flashback that reveals Elidibus has gotten hold of the Exarch's memory crystal, granting him control of the tower, which must be the point where we first get attacked by them.

Probably true (can't exactly check right now), but he still didn't know dip about the tower's abilities despite this access--we know that for a fact, because he was ultimately defeated by a function of the tower that he didn't know existed despite all this control and ostensible knowledge. And even that function wasn't actually very obscure; he was defeated by the fact that a tower that's essentially a giant battery had aether intake capabilities.

There's pretty much no way that the Spectral Heroes could have come about via time travel, simply because for Elidibus to do that, he would've needed to come up with an unforeseen use of a function of the Tower that he never knew it had. And given we're talking about a man who walked into a trap while carrying a crystal that contained full details of that trap, I don't think he's that clever!

Originally Posted by Cleretic

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I agree that the spectral heroes are being taken across space rather than time, as they are being drawn by the shard-crossing spell and not the time machine (assuming there is a distinction between the powers).

However, I think it is misleading to say that Elidibus "didn't know anything" about the tower's abilities. The memory crystal gave him the Exarch's knowledge of what the tower was capable of; he simply didn't assemble the ideas into the realisation (which the Exarch presumably thought of after placing his memories in the crystal) that the tower could be used like auracite.

There's also the question of exactly how Elidibus would experience those memories once he picked up the crystal. We simply don't think of all our memories at every moment, so perhaps he only learns things as he actively has reason to think about them. Say, if he thinks "now, how do I perform the summoning spell?" and that incantation comes to mind.

Syrcus Tower was originally built to function as a giant aether conduit. When Xande had captured Bahamut and encased him in Dalamud, he channeled the limitless energy of the elder primal into the tower in order to try to tear open the veil to the Thirteenth and bring the Cloud of Darkness into the Source. The resulting surge of energy from the spell broke the foundations under the tower which were not fortified as well as as the tower itself, causing it to sink into the ground, and the resulting shockwaves that spread across the land caused the Fourth Umbral Calamity (of Earth), destroying Allag. Xande does love that Quake magic. G'raha is pointing out that Elidibus has failed to consider the tower's most obvious and primary function (i.e. the one that everyone actually remembers it for).

'Elidibus. So fixated were you on my memories of the future, that you failed to heed the lessons of the past.'

To answer an earlier question, this same elder primal form of Bahamut, who was originally summoned in Meracydia under Tiamat's guidance after he died during the war with Allag, is the one that everyone is familiar with, both from the Battle of Carteneau as well as his fight from the end of the Coil storyline. He's just been floating out in Dalamud for about five thousand years until Nael called him back down.

Originally Posted by Lyth

Syrcus Tower was originally built to function as a giant aether conduit. [...] G'raha is pointing out that Elidibus has failed to consider the tower's most obvious and primary function (i.e. the one that everyone actually remembers it for).

'Elidibus. So fixated were you on my memories of the future, that you failed to heed the lessons of the past.'

Exactly. He failed to consider the implications of how it could be used against him, which is not the same thing as not having access to the knowledge that it could be used that way.

He probably doesn't even need the Exarch's memories to know the base fact of what the tower does. It all comes down to the Exarch having the specific tactical idea to use it to trap Elidibus, while Elidibus failed to consider it in his counter-plans.

Originally Posted by Cleretic

Your first reply

I like your explanation. Add to it Hildibrand not being a real fighting hero, so maybe him being the "weakest?" of all WoLs in terms of fighting prowess led him to being unintentionally fully summoned (Since if we follow traditional fantasy rules, the less powerful the being, the easier you can summon them).
But yeah, I really like your explanation

Originally Posted by Iscah

Also your first reply

You have to note that Elpis time-loop is actually what gave rise to Hydaelyn and literally every single thing that came after, without which Venat would probably fight back or do something else entirely as she has no way to know what happened to the future. In fact, it may seem less likely that there would be a future. Imagine yourself in the middle of an apocalypse, I'm pretty sure the thought of: "ten thousand years from now. Life will still exist on the planet everywhere with myriad spoken races and different nations" would not cross your mind at all.
Now with that in mind, Blackrose was about to happen before anything related to Endwalker did. This means the Elpis time-loop could not have happened at all, especially when to get to Elpis in the first place, we had to use the Crystal tower from the first (Aka the alternative timeline Crystal tower packed with Alexander and Omega stuff into it) to get there. Resulting in us having a fine mess of time-traveling on our hands.

Originally Posted by Lyth

Syrcus Tower was originally built to function as a giant aether conduit. When Xande had captured Bahamut and encased him in Dalamud, he channeled the limitless energy of the elder primal into the tower in order to try to tear open the veil to the Thirteenth and bring the Cloud of Darkness into the Source. The resulting surge of energy from the spell broke the foundations under the tower which were not fortified as well as as the tower itself, causing it to sink into the ground, and the resulting shockwaves that spread across the land caused the Fourth Umbral Calamity (of Earth), destroying Allag. Xande does love that Quake magic. G'raha is pointing out that Elidibus has failed to consider the tower's most obvious and primary function (i.e. the one that everyone actually remembers it for).

'Elidibus. So fixated were you on my memories of the future, that you failed to heed the lessons of the past.'

To answer an earlier question, this same elder primal form of Bahamut, who was originally summoned in Meracydia under Tiamat's guidance after he died during the war with Allag, is the one that everyone is familiar with, both from the Battle of Carteneau as well as his fight from the end of the Coil storyline. He's just been floating out in Dalamud for about five thousand years until Nael called him back down.

The whole time the WoL was being overwhelmed with Light power I was practically screaming at my screen to just put that power into the giant aether battery tower.

I am glad it was eventually used in a later patch, but it literally would have solved the WoL turning into a sin eater problem in 2 minutes.

Originally Posted by Necrotica

The whole time the WoL was being overwhelmed with Light power I was practically screaming at my screen to just put that power into the giant aether battery tower.

I am glad it was eventually used in a later patch, but it literally would have solved the WoL turning into a sin eater problem in 2 minutes.

That was literally the Exarch's plan. He put a bit more dramatics about it and had a plan for disposing of it afterwards, but yes, that was his plan. So, blame Emet-Selch for ruining it.

It was not possible for the WoL to do said plan themselves, because the Tower can only be used by people of Allagan royal bloodline, which these days is pretty much the Exarch and that's it. Elidibus could do some stuff with it because he swiped the Exarch's blood-crystal, but that didn't exist until 5.3.

You probably don't want to be pouring a deluge of umbrally-aspected aether into the Crystal Tower at a time when the Ascians are specifically trying to force a Light-aspected rejoining. You need a way to safely disperse it. Fortunately for us, we just so happened to have an astrally-aspected opponent to channel all that aether through. Just think of it as Chekhov's light power.

'One brings shadow, one brings the light.'

That's why both Y'shtola and Ryne can see that our aether is back to normal again afterwards. Same principle as when we rebalanced the aether in Eden one element at a time, really.

Originally Posted by Kranel_San

You have to note that Elpis time-loop is actually what gave rise to Hydaelyn and literally every single thing that came after [...]
Now with that in mind, Blackrose was about to happen before anything related to Endwalker did. This means the Elpis time-loop could not have happened at all

The thing you have to wrap your head around with a time loop is that no part of it comes first.

The events at Elpis cannot happen unless we travel back there from our present.

Our present cannot exist without the events at Elpis occurring first to set everything in motion.

Therefore you can't start from any one point and say that "this part needs to happen in isolation before the other parts of it can occur". They just, somehow, perfectly interlink and always have, with no version of events in which only one half of it happened without the other.


The other big thing is that the Black Rose timeline is not a roadblock to the Elpis loop, because the state of things partway through it ("before" the second timeline is created) is irrelevant, only the end result: that while there is a timeline in which the WoL dies, side-by-side with it is the timeline where the WoL survives and continues onwards to play their part in later events.

To put it simply, there is never a point in our timeline where we are dead.

The consequences of Elpis still exist in the Black Rose timeline (because we did that part of it in their past), but the time loop cannot and does not need to be resolved in that timeline. All that matters is that it was completed in our timeline.

Originally Posted by Necrotica

The whole time the WoL was being overwhelmed with Light power I was practically screaming at my screen to just put that power into the giant aether battery tower.

I am glad it was eventually used in a later patch, but it literally would have solved the WoL turning into a sin eater problem in 2 minutes.

That is essentially what the Exarch's original plan was: to absorb all that Light power into himself (being an extension of the tower) and flee into the rift to destroy it or at least isolate it.

While we didn't explore the technicalities of the plan in detail, the fact that he couldn't simply absorb it and stay put suggests that there could have been some danger in that course of events. Perhaps the Light could only be contained for a short while and would leak out eventually, or perhaps the tower itself - and/or the Exarch as a living extension of it - would become a Lightwarden once filled with their power.