(Wildly speculative) idea about the next overarching threat - *spoilers*

[Necrotica]

Villains make the game. Without a compelling villain to face, it becomes dull and meaningless.

[KageTokage]

Only if you assume he's the 6.5 trial. If he's in 6.4, there's only one dungeon along the way.

(For that matter, hypothetically they could go completely unpredictable and throw us the trial first, or put the dungeon in Pandæmonium, or something wild like that. Probably not, but they could.)

Everyone was expecting the Lunar Subterrane to be a thing in 6.0, so I feel like they're liable to use it for the 6.4 dungeon.

[Iscah]

Everyone was expecting the Lunar Subterrane to be a thing in 6.0, so I feel like they're liable to use it for the 6.4 dungeon.

I expect so, yes. It's too obvious a thing to not use.

[Cleretic]

I suspect that's where they're hitting with the fact Golbez's throne is in the Zodiark Hole.

[sidurgu-12]

It feels really weird not seeing the burrow on the moon.

[Calysto]

My spoilery speculative guess is that there's going to be at least a partial rejoining with the 13th.
We'll get a second orange moon in the sky and it may also trigger a FFIX heavy reference expansion.
As for the villain probably Tataru.

[SaitoHikari]

My spoilery speculative guess is that there's going to be at least a partial rejoining with the 13th.
We'll get a second orange moon in the sky and it may also trigger a FFIX heavy reference expansion.
As for the villain probably Tataru.

Actually, this is a fairly interesting idea. A rejoining happens but its physical effects are only seen on the moon from the Source. The 13th shard gets destroyed in the rejoining and all of the souls get funneled through to the Source, but the Source itself escapes physical destruction due to the rejoining occurring on the moon itself. And it eventually results in a side effect of blowing open portals to the moons on the other shards.

Something like this could also explain why Golbez had to wait until Zodiark was gone to make his move (if this is indeed why he is putting his plan into motion now). Zodiark, the Ascians, AND the Watcher would have prevented all previous attempts at rejoinings on the moon, uncertain of how such a thing would affect Zodiark and his prison, even if moon rejoinings may be easier in theory since it's probably the epicenter of the sundering to begin with.

[Heroman3003]

Actually, this is a fairly interesting idea. A rejoining happens but its physical effects are only seen on the moon from the Source. The 13th shard gets destroyed in the rejoining and all of the souls get funneled through to the Source, but the Source itself escapes physical destruction due to the rejoining occurring on the moon itself. And it eventually results in a side effect of blowing open portals to the moons on the other shards.

Something like this could also explain why Golbez had to wait until Zodiark was gone to make his move (if this is indeed why he is putting his plan into motion now). Zodiark, the Ascians, AND the Watcher would have prevented all previous attempts at rejoinings on the moon, uncertain of how such a thing would affect Zodiark and his prison, even if moon rejoinings may be easier in theory since it's probably the epicenter of the sundering to begin with.

Wasn't a big thing about 8th rejoining that if it happens, all remaining shards also will naturally rejoin because balance of 'sundered' vs 'rejoined' shards would tip too hard?

[Iscah]

Wasn't a big thing about 8th rejoining that if it happens, all remaining shards also will naturally rejoin because balance of 'sundered' vs 'rejoined' shards would tip too hard?

There was never anything remotely like that. It might have been someone's theory as we tried to make sense of the very-pre-Shadowbringers "eighth and final Calamity" statement, or however exactly they worded it.

[Cleretic]

There was never anything remotely like that. It might have been someone's theory as we tried to make sense of the very-pre-Shadowbringers "eighth and final Calamity" statement, or however exactly they worded it.

Yeah, this is generally an explanation for why it was framed (I think in Heavensward's patches but I'm not certain) that the eighth Calamity was basically the 'last chance' to stop the Ascians. I remember seeing justifications like this, if not exactly this. If I had to guess, it sounds like something someone who generally sides with the Ascians would say to lessen the amount of active atrocities they'd be pulling the triggers on; that no, they won't be performing more acts of mass death after this because then it'd just happen naturally.

My reading of this around Shadowbringers was just that after the eighth Calamity there would be enough Zodiark put together to be able to sacrifice things to him to get the rest to happen, rather than doing it the long way; reasonably there had to be a point where this was plausible, because they weren't completely screwed after the Thirteenth was ruined, so who's to say it's not after #8? But now I think the 'last chance' angle actually makes sense because it came from Hydaelyn, who had a vague map of how everything goes after the Sundering because of us. It wasn't that there was literally no way to stop them after the eighth Calamity, it was that if they pulled off that one then she's completely in uncharted waters, and possibly out of resources to keep trying.