The Ascians going forward

[kaynide]

I don't think that's accurate. That was our pre-Endwalker understanding, and even then I'm not sure of the source of the explanation, while I can remember a couple of instances of people talking about souls as immortal and cycling through the aetherial sea.

The only people where we know of specific reincarnations are sundered Ancients (not necessarily Ascians) but that's all been in the context of Endwalker reframing our understanding of how souls work, and there's no reason to think it's exclusive to them.

Anonymoose would have had the references for where we get the "aetherial blender" idea but it seems we've lost him here.

It's kind of hard to keep track of tbh; The game tends to give contradictory information, or retcons things.

Originally in like...2.x it was the lifestream situation (Die -> Break down -> new soul). We're talking Minfillia days...but I think Endwalker had it that all souls technically don't break down, but instead have no memories and entirely different/new Aether.


The lore gets weird, and I don't think it's ever clear whether memory is tied to the soul, aether or something else (Dynamis?!)

I think it's currently something like:
A) Ascian aether/memory doesn't necessarily dissipate upon body-death, and they can possess/remake a body.
B) Unless the soul is trapped and flooded it with aether (a la white auracite)
C) ...except that even then the soul lingers/can be recalled (Emet helps out; Fandaniel in Aitiascope)
D) Future unsundered do not necessarily remember all their Ascian-self without the memory crystals (Amon/Gaia), but they might have some bits

Even then, I wouldn't say any of it is conclusive as the game tends to pull the carpet out from under us at this point (Hello Dynamis...).

As you said with Endwalker- we're at a point where different writers are changing established lore/concepts to fit their story, so I wouldn't be surprised if concepts are just thrown out the window/retconned.

[Iscah]

I think it's currently something like:
A) Ascian aether/memory doesn't necessarily dissipate upon body-death, and they can possess/remake a body.

I think it is (and has always been the case) more that "something" happens to the soul at the body's death, and regardless of what the something is, the Ascians have the ability to sidestep it by abandoning their body and retreating to the rift before that natural process happens.

Endwalker has reframed what the something is, but I don't think the rest of that explanation has changed since ARR.

Sometime I'd like to do a deep playthrough of the game, noting what gets said about these things at every turn and how our understanding got built up.

[MikkoAkure]

Spoilers below!

It's been awhile, but I was under the impression that the case in Eden storyline was only because of an (un)healthy amount of mental and magical conditioning from another ex-Ascian.

Fandaniel's past life never showed actual Ascian powers before becoming an Ascian and it seemed to me that with his case and the case before in ShB that sundered Ascians across the shards and the Source are completely normal people until given memories from the crystals and possibly powers either through them or other means. The black-masked Ascians would also have had to receive their powers from somewhere after all. Other than the fact that their past lives were on the Convocation, there's nothing at all different from sundered Ascians and other sundered people who happen to have an Ancient past life. Unless I'm missing something somewhere.

[Cleretic]

I think it's currently something like:
A) Ascian aether/memory doesn't necessarily dissipate upon body-death, and they can possess/remake a body.
B) Unless the soul is trapped and flooded it with aether (a la white auracite)
C) ...except that even then the soul lingers/can be recalled (Emet helps out; Fandaniel in Aitiascope)
D) Future unsundered do not necessarily remember all their Ascian-self without the memory crystals (Amon/Gaia), but they might have some bits

This is all about right, but I would note with point 4 that it takes rather extreme circumstances to recall anything; Amon only remembered because of Kairos. From what we can tell Gaia actually likely didn't remember anything at first, it was all manipulation by Mitron.

It's hard to say if any of this is different from how it 'originally' worked, though, because there's not actually a single counterexample. Sometimes we can point to something from early in the game that doesn't make sense with what we learned later where we can tell something got rewritten (Lahabrea's Praetorium speech comes to mind), except with this one... well, there just isn't; there was never actual focus on or discussion about the afterlife or the aetherial sea until basically Eden. The closest we ever got were the various stories about necromancy, none of which put a solid theory forward; Edda and her husband, Alaqa in the White Mage story (although that one's definitely just reanimating corpses), Nybeth Obdilord and his experiments. We've seen a couple ghosts that suggest it's possible beyond Ascian magic to just not go and have your soul linger (that one Delubrum Reginae boss, Ivon Coeurlfist in the Temple of the Fist, I think a couple others), and that seems to be the classic ghost thing of 'spirits with unfinished business stick around'. Which incidentally seems to be true of the less recent spirits around the Aitiascope dungeon, so that sits pretty comfy into our current understanding.

I can't find a source for the notion of souls breaking down on death; the closest I can find is the first Encyclopedia Eorzea describing souls going back to the Lifestream, but there's no indication that they don't remain intact. It might be a classic case of mistaken assumptions: that NOTHING told us that's how it works, we just collectively convinced ourselves that it worked like that. Probably a bit of collective memory from FFX, where it did indeed work exactly like that (FFVII isn't too far off either). It's far from the only time the community fell into that: remember the 'Black Mages replace their eye with materia', or 'miqo'te have shorter lifespans'.. This community is VERY susceptible to 'sounds legit, I'll buy it'; I'm not immune to that either, although these days I try to check my sources.

So yeah, I'm pretty sure it never worked differently to how it works now, we just defaulted to a different assumption than ended up being true.

[kaynide]

I think it is (and has always been the case) more that "something" happens to the soul at the body's death, and regardless of what the something is, the Ascians have the ability to sidestep it by abandoning their body and retreating to the rift before that natural process happens.

Endwalker has reframed what the something is, but I don't think the rest of that explanation has changed since ARR.

Sometime I'd like to do a deep playthrough of the game, noting what gets said about these things at every turn and how our understanding got built up.

Ditto; (Unless Cleretic is around with a video in the wings on it!)

It feels like Zenos might have been on the cusp of discovering/being able to survive without a body/body hop, but not quite able to endure death.

On the soul, I'm curious what function it actually serves in lore.

Since they are an actual thing in this world and are measurable (The Ancients could confirm if things had or didn't have souls), what does that actually mean?

If the soul generally retains no memory, what's the point of it being recycled at all?

We already know via Meteion that there was some kind of means of blocking the natural progression of the soul...but can new souls be created when all old souls are used up? Or do Is there some critical mass where new births are without souls? With Metion doing her thing was there really no way to make a new soul (and if not, why…do souls require Dynamis?)

I had kind of hoped Ultima Thule might talk on that more.

[Cleretic]

Ditto; (Unless Cleretic is around with a video in the wings on it!)

For what it's worth, I have considered a 'review playthrough' of sorts where we really start picking through stuff from back then, although it feels more like a streaming project than a video project.

If what you're suggesting is a video on 'what happens after someone dies in this universe', going over everything we've got on that? That... actually sounds like a really interesting subject, I might do that! The main idea I have for my next video actually involves a lot of broad research and might take some but time, that one would be relatively more focused.

[kaynide]

For what it's worth, I have considered a 'review playthrough' of sorts where we really start picking through stuff from back then, although it feels more like a streaming project than a video project.

If what you're suggesting is a video on 'what happens after someone dies in this universe', going over everything we've got on that? That... actually sounds like a really interesting subject, I might do that! The main idea I have for my next video actually involves a lot of broad research and might take some but time, that one would be relatively more focused.

I’m curious on:
1) What actual established lore says happens to the soul and/or myths related (like the 12’s heaven/hells, the Azem reincarnation, etc).
2) If any of that changed over the game (like how the concept of Dynamis changed our notions on Aether)
3) Mostly, I’m interested in anything contradictory. As in real life there can be a lot of that regarding the afterlife!

Either way, thanks for the work on the videos! Always some new perspective to be had.

[Rannie]

When you talk to Cool Old Man Professor in Sharlayan after the tribunal near the beginning of Endwalker. He schools us on Memory and memory erasure due to the spell the 99 have on them. He also brings up that the world was of two thoughts behind what happens to the soul after death. One being the aether blender and rebaking to make a new soul. The second being the soul just being erased of memories and being Reborn. Mind all of you that it's interesting to know that between the end of ShB and EW with the stories, specifically Through His Eyes Emet was able pick apart all the souls in the underworld. It never mentioned exactly what happened. There's also the fact that he, Hythlodeaus and our Past life had plans to give up the ghost and be Reborn (same souls) together again.

Also with Azem's soul Hythlodaeus (the recreation by Emet) mentions he'd recognize the color no matter how thin it was in ShB.

[Cleretic]

I’m curious on:
1) What actual established lore says happens to the soul and/or myths related (like the 12’s heaven/hells, the Azem reincarnation, etc).
2) If any of that changed over the game (like how the concept of Dynamis changed our notions on Aether)
3) Mostly, I’m interested in anything contradictory. As in real life there can be a lot of that regarding the afterlife!

Either way, thanks for the work on the videos! Always some new perspective to be had.

This video will take a while to make anyway (for various reasons I won't start writing it until January), but I did do some quick checking to see what the basis for this would generally be, so I can at least answer these questions.

The big thing to keep in mind is that until about 5.2, we had absolutely nothing resembling direct information on this, and I'd say it took until Endwalker for the Shadowbringers information to fully make sense. Everything was basically either incomplete information or a religious belief; we didn't have any facts, so it's impossible to say if anything actually changed on the writing side of things.

There are plenty of contradictions between faiths, but most of them get at least something right; the Amal'jaan beliefs resemble the Aetherial Sea, the Dotharl got pretty close on the reincarnation, the Twelve's religion somehow figured out the seven heavens and hells. I think the only one that completely and utterly whiffs is the Garleans' (they seem to have a faith in ancestral spirits but it's hard to tell how much they believe it), but given exactly what the next patch's dungeon is I'm not willing to say we have the whole picture there either.

[Vyrerus]

It feels like Zenos might have been on the cusp of discovering/being able to survive without a body/body hop, but not quite able to endure death.

Wasn't on the cusp. It was exactly what he did throughout Stormblood into SHB. He slit his own throat, died, and then body hopped into an Elezen resistance soldier. And he discovered the means to do that incidentally. He legit thought he was just gonna die when he slit his throat.

The only real question about it, is did his soul persevere in the world, or did he jet into the Rift due to the Resonant Echo?

Whatever happens, it seems that souls with agency(Echo) can freely observe the living. As evidenced by Hades and Hyth observing us in death still, in spite of being somewhere in the aetherial sea. Coming into our dreams and such.

All and all though, this is kind of one of the realms where I don't like what we got in game. The Aetherial Sea goes from being this non-corporeal afterlife space, to just being the literal core of Etheirys. It begs the question, "What's the true afterlife in Etheirys's universe?" Because the place where souls go is physically tangible to anyone who can withstand the sheer amount of aether down there. It makes looking back on the whole, "Soul goes from the dead body to the Aetherial Sea" powerpoint that the Scions give the WoL in ARR 2.1+ a lot less meaningful. Like, the Scions even commentate, "Guess we better not let people know that they could potentially just go visit their loved ones dead spirits directly in the Aitiascope."

What a mess.