6.4 Heavy Spoilers: Ascian Culture theory

[Corvus_V]

I just figured I'd throw my theory out there; I don't know if anyone has said the same or similar things.

A lot of this hinges on the upcoming patch and the end of the alliance raid where (hopefully) the truth is revealed about the twelve. Venat and collaborators, etc. I guessed that they were concepts when I saw "the twelve wonders" in Elpis; but I've kinda rethought it.

I've been thinking a bit about why Ascians or the ancients felt the need to "return to the star once their work is completed." How it relates to the way Emet Selch, and Elidibus turned out in ARR and beyond.

My theory starts with assuming that the twelve are all Ascians in their "naked" state. Venat's collaborators. It's already been said ingame that the reason they are the way they are is because prayer affects them over time. e.g Halone becoming more war-like, or Dalamud.

If this is infact the case, then, to me, it could explain why things all ended up the way they did that isn't just Hades being consumed by grief; etc:

Ascians are not supposed to be able to use dynamis for the most part. When they transform, they get bigger; etc. Elidibus uses it, allegedly because he can do so when he summons shades of heroes. What if they just get stronger because they become less aetherically dense (explaining their size) and they use it even if they don't realize it? It would explain why they're supposed to keep their masks and robes on and never run around in that form. Hermes doing it so casually as he demonstrates to you when trying to teach the Sanuwa how to fly (iirc?) could even explain why he's such a depressed character.

Whether they do or don't become less aetherically dense when they're "naked," I think the possibility remains that the reason they're encouraged to self-terminate is because if they live too long they become warped by dynamis. The twelve test the WoL because they want to know that they can be slain; because I believe they are Ascians who are afraid of becoming warped into something that would be disastrous to the star.

Additionally, this would explain the differences between characters like Elidibus and Emet Selch to me. I feel like we're made to draw parallels between the adventuring parties of the unsundered's Convocation, and the Scions (additionally, Venat:Louisoix and the Circle of Knowing). It's hard for me to imagine any of them becoming evil, and Hades becomes upset when you tell him so. It kind of wouldn't really be out of line with SE's story-telling to make you want to feel like a lot of these villains are redeemable for one reason or another, including ones that have apparently destroyed 7 reflections and everyone living on them.

So my theory kind of concludes with that: because Emet Selch had a knack for creating civilizations and taking very active roles in their advancement and governance (Allag, Garlemald, whatever else) he was directly a target of thousands of being's dynamis; or the subject of their emotions. Whether he was a savior, which he likely was to some, early on; or a tyrant like he was for Garlemald. I think the view of the people of those nations and the people who opposed him warped him into the person he became. If you look at some of his conversations and admissions with his son Varis compared to how he talks as Hades there's a pretty clear difference in how he'd transformed into a bit of a sadist. In the same way myth and legend can distort the image of people in the real world into monsters. He even transforms in front of Drusila's mentor when the Reapers attempted to assassinate him; so it's possible his hand was forced into stripping on more than one occasion as well.

Meanwhile, Elidibus basically doesnt exist for most people; and consequently considers himself nothing more than an emissary and rarely ever becomes involved in giant sadistic plots like deliberately causing a civil war in the nation he created, or oppressing multiple nations as a sovereign. He generally only reveals himself to people who have the Echo. Or if he does get involved, it's only by using one or very other few people as actors; i.e) The Griffin, etc. For most people, there is no one to hate or target and they never even see him. It's possible that if everything the WoL witnessed was common knowledge, Elidibus and Hades may have turned out much more similar as far as their villainy was concerned, for better or worse.

As for Lahabrea, if you've completed the raids, then you can also guess why he ended up how he did and that there's a possibility he's an outlier there due to other circumstances.

It may also be why Hydaelyn is the name of not only the primal, but the world itself. e.g) 'map of Hydaelyn.' Maybe as a sort of "answer to the question" that despite their abysmally short lifespans compared to ancients; the denizens of the Source didn't overall succumb to despair as the Meteia found.

[Cleretic]

Elidibus doesn't use dynamis, and I'm not sure why you seem to take it as just a raw, unquestioned fact that he does. Is this a 'he uses LBs which are dynamis' thing? Because LBs aren't dynamis. We've had explanations for most LB3s for years in the Encyclopedia Eorzea, and few to none of them sound like they're dynamis; on top of that, EE3's previews include a look at Gunbreaker's pages, including its LB3, showing that even in writing after the introduction of dynamis, they don't attribute limit breaks to it.

You also don't really have Hermes' interaction with the Elpis flower right, but this one I've seen a couple times (and accidentally contributed to myself once or twice, unfortunately): Hermes isn't manipulating dynamis through the Elpis flower. Instead, the Elpis flower is an entelechy like Meteion, reflecting his emotions like a mirror. The reason it responds to him isn't because he's manipulating dynamis, it's because his emotional state is so strong and abnormal that it can be reflected. Think of it like reflections in a really murky pond: Elpis doesn't really provide enough contrast to make out much of anything in the surface of the water, but Hermes' emotional state is such a big difference that you can actually see its reflection.

Beyond that... honestly, I can't really say your theory holds much water beyond 'being a neat but extremely unlikely idea'. It seems like it's just suppositions on top of suppositions without any real evidence, and I just don't really agree enough with the steps you took to get anywhere near the conclusion you're landing on. Seems like it'd be a neat story, but I don't think it's the story we're actually reading.


EDIT: Also, in re-reading Teah's post after making mine, I agree that Emet's denial on our story isn't actually evidence he can't become that. It's evidence that he doesn't want to. He seems to know we're right (or at least, knows we think we're right) and doesn't really have any sort of counterargument, he just really doesn't like the idea, which is fair enough. And to be completely honest, I see exactly the guy we met in Shadowbringers in Elpis; it's a long road to get there, but I see the seeds of it, especially when you take into account that little testimony in his soul crystal in Etched in the Stars.

[MikkoAkure]

I was under the impression that we were told after the latest alliance raid that the Twelve are just like The Watcher (who is the 13th described to among their group) and are all Hydaelyn’s creations based on people Venat knew. They’re not actual Ancients and never were, just shades.

The Twelve are probably affected by dynamis because while they’re not mere concepts, they’re not full Ancients with near limitless aether either. It also took 1000 years of prayer from thousands upon thousands of people to make Halone act and appear more warlike. But they’re all able to stay somewhat true to their original purpose due to that tablet thing in their realm keeping them centered to their purpose.

We also know Azem never joined Venat or the Convocation, yet a being called Azeyma is with The Twelve. And I was also under the impression that Hydaelyn’s supporters had their souls used up in the summoning and like Hydaelyn Herself, are gone forever and never returned to the Star. So the beings likely don’t have their original souls anyway, if they have any at all.

None of them are the actual people, just constructs based on them given the role of divinity.

[Corvus_V]

Elidibus doesn't use dynamis, and I'm not sure why you seem to take it as just a raw, unquestioned fact that he does. Is this a 'he uses LBs which are dynamis' thing? Because LBs aren't dynamis. We've had explanations for most LB3s for years in the Encyclopedia Eorzea, and few to none of them sound like they're dynamis; on top of that, EE3's previews include a look at Gunbreaker's pages, including its LB3, showing that even in writing after the introduction of dynamis, they don't attribute limit breaks to it.

I believe it's been explained in game somewhere that the reason we're capable of limit breaks is dynamis in text; but beyond that even during Endsinger's fight, she says "dynamis?" If you Tank LB3 properly to survive her attack. IIRC, it's what sets the less aetherically dense denizens of the Source and its reflections more capable of feats, because it flows through them easier; ala limit breaks.

Elidibus also uses limit breaks in Seat of Sacrifice, and the Wikipedia that anyone can edit says this:



I don't have the encyclopedia, but if it says otherwise, then there are still things officially that kind of pull it in either direction.

You also don't really have Hermes' interaction with the Elpis flower right, but this one I've seen a couple times (and accidentally contributed to myself once or twice, unfortunately): Hermes isn't manipulating dynamis through the Elpis flower. Instead, the Elpis flower is an entelechy like Meteion, reflecting his emotions like a mirror. The reason it responds to him isn't because he's manipulating dynamis, it's because his emotional state is so strong and abnormal that it can be reflected. Think of it like reflections in a really murky pond: Elpis doesn't really provide enough contrast to make out much of anything in the surface of the water, but Hermes' emotional state is such a big difference that you can actually see its reflection.

I think there might've been a misunderstanding about Hermes.
I actually misremembered 2 things there:
I called it a sanuwa when it just shares a model, it's actually a charybdis.
I said Hermes transformed in front of them, but he(or Meteion) merely threatened to. IIRC, there is a reason he threatened to do so in the first place but I don't have the time to go through NG+.

I wasn't saying anything about the Elpis flower, really. I know it sort of "reads the room" so to speak, which we established ingame. What I was saying was that it was possible we were meant to infer that his casual transformation(which was actually only threat instead, and made by Meteion) in front of Hades and Hythlodaeus was akin to standing out in the sun with no sunscreen; in a way that can change you and affect your emotional state itself. Something I was insinuating he was more likely to do to save creatures whilst no one was watching.

...

Well, it's a guess. I'm definitely not saying he couldn't have just became twisted like that, I guess I was just implying that there's at least more than one route for us to arrive at the scenario where he didn't become kind of objectively evil and cruel on his own; even if he "justifies" it by saying we're basically machines. And it explains why ancients could be convinced so well that they're meant to die when their work is complete, and/or their insistence on not transforming. I know that Emet was tempered as well, but he's much different than everyone/everything you encounter that is. I just feel like a lot of the writing is meant to have kind of scientific undertones for their explanations of things. Even going back to explain tempering as a stagnation of aether, etc. In addition to trying to redeem its villains in some way. 7 reflections full of people is a lot of people. I feel like the only way to come back from that is to not have been in control in the first place.

We also know Azem never joined Venat or the Convocation, yet a being called Azeyma is with The Twelve. And I was also under the impression that Hydaelyn’s supporters had their souls used up in the summoning and like Hydaelyn Herself, are gone forever and never returned to the Star. So the beings likely don’t have their original souls anyway, if they have any at all.

None of them are the actual people, just constructs based on them given the role of divinity.

Azem is the 14th seat of the Convocation, it was a title Venat held as she mentored the current Azem(you) pre-sundering. A lot of the ancients were consumed in the summoning of both primals allegedly, even those close to Zodiark's creation like the Convocation members managed to slip past that sacrifice, as they remained alive and whole during the ensuing sundering, I think. Though its possible they could be just like the Watcher as well. I was just inclined to think that this was a hint that their previous names may be different from their current ones:

he refused to look at his memory crystal to remind himself who he was like Emet did.

But they’re all able to stay somewhat true to their original purpose due to that tablet thing in their realm keeping them centered to their purpose.

I feel like there might be more to this as a habit, but I'll stop making suppositions here. I'm sure we'll see soon enough, more than anything I just wanted to get my thoughts out there and dated lol

[MikkoAkure]

I believe it's been explained in game somewhere that the reason we're capable of limit breaks is dynamis in text; but beyond that even during Endsinger's fight, she says "dynamis?" If you Tank LB3 properly to survive her attack. IIRC, it's what sets the less aetherically dense denizens of the Source and its reflections more capable of feats, because it flows through them easier; ala limit breaks.

Elidibus also uses limit breaks in Seat of Sacrifice, and the Wikipedia that anyone can edit says this:

I don't have the encyclopedia, but if it says otherwise, then there are still things officially that kind of pull it in either direction.

Your first problem is looking at the wiki which is very often wrong and tainted by people's theorycrafting. This community has a bad habit of making educated guesses that get thrown back and forth so many times they get accepted as "canon" despite no actual explicit source being in the game or the encyclopedias and it gets pasted into the wiki. No one has the 3rd Encyclopedia Eorzea, but the preview pages are free to all to see and it explicitly states that Gunbreaker's Limit Break is aether.

My best guess for Endsinger is that we used dynamis for THAT specific limit break because we were fighting her in a realm completely made of dynamis. I don't think such a thing would be possible at home and the fact that the crew we're with in Elpis can limit break disproves "limit break = dynamis" anyway.

Azem is the 14th seat of the Convocation, it was a title Venat held as she mentored the current Azem(you) pre-sundering. A lot of the ancients were consumed in the summoning of both primals allegedly, even those close to Zodiark's creation like the Convocation members managed to slip past that sacrifice, as they remained alive and whole during the ensuing sundering, I think. Though its possible they could be just like the Watcher as well. I was just inclined to think that this was a hint that their previous names may be different from their current ones:

Zodiark's summoning and Hydaelyn's summoning were different beasts. Both required sacrifices from volunteers, but Hydaelyn's must've been more frantic because it did not seem to leave souls intact and she is all spent up at the end. She will not return to the Star like Hythlodeus, Elidibus, or Emet-Selch. In the Tales from the Dawn regarding The Watcher's previous self, he "fades into oblivion" after partaking in the summoning ritual despite wishing to be Her eyes. In his Watcher self, he can't even recall anything before the Sundering. Zodiark's summoning meanwhile seemed to keep the souls hanging around for later. It could've been that recovering them could have been a plan, but that was a completely different plan from Hydaelyn's since Venat and her followers were utterly against that anyway.

Unless something changes, the game already states that The Twelve are the same as The Watcher and that The Watcher is the 13th member of the same group. We already know that The Watcher isn't exactly himself and was created by Hydaelyn using the personality of one of Venat's followers. If we already know how he was made and that he's a member of another group made together, it would stand to reason that they're the same as he is. I think the quote from the 2 in Elpis is just showing us people who eventually followed Venat and whose personalities made it into Hydaelyn's creations. They're not actually them any more than Emet-Selch's fake Hytholdeus is truly Hythlodeus. Probably really dang close, at least at one point, but not the actual person.

[Enkidoh]

Yet it was also stated that the Unsundered Ancients could not utilise Dynamis themselves (due to their immense aether reserves in their bodies outright cancelling it out and preventing it from affecting them) yet Emet, Venat and Hyth can all use the Limit Break during Ktisis Hyperboria, proving that Limit Breaks are not Dynamis at all (the line uttered by the Endsinger was not referring to the Limit Break at all, but the power of the Scions back on the Ragnarok empowering you through their hopes and prayers through the Dynamis that the area was virtually bathed in, effectively turning her own powers against her).

This is one of the reasons why Etheirys was sundered by Venat, to allow people to actually be able to directly use Dynamis which was the key to ultimately defeating Meteion for good.

Ignore the FF Wiki, it's long been filled with innaccurate info or even things made from whole cloth, and that is especially true about Dynamis and Limit Breaks.

[Cleretic]

Yet it was also stated that the Unsundered Ancients could not utilise Dynamis themselves (due to their immense aether reserves in their bodies outright cancelling it out and preventing it from affecting them) yet Emet, Venat and Hyth can all use the Limit Break during Ktisis Hyperboria, proving that Limit Breaks are not Dynamis at all (the line uttered by the Endsinger was not referring to the Limit Break at all, but the power of the Scions back on the Ragnarok empowering you through their hopes and prayers through the Dynamis that the area was virtually bathed in, effectively turning her own powers against her).

On top of that, Emet's LB line in Ktisis explicitly credits aether with his, and everyone else's lines certainly suggest that this is a pretty normal part of their kit. If Ktisis' environment suddenly made them dynamis capable, they'd be rather caught by surprise by it, since none of them had ever been there before.

If the baseline requirement of your theory is 'maybe the Ancients actually could use dynamis' then your theory is bunk, I'm sorry. One of the base facts we have about dynamis is that the Ancients were too dense to use it, and this was a core component of their fall and their inability to actually oppose Meteion; if they have no ability to manipulate it, then they had absolutely no way to face Meteion, which was kind of the point of the sundering. This is not a game that casually refutes its own facts in the same moments it's stating them. So instead of deciding that limit breaks refute this plainly stated fact, you're gonna need to review what you think limit breaks are in light of that plainly stated fact.

Corvus, you're gonna need to go back to the drawing board, I'm afraid.

[Iscah]

I It may also be why Hydaelyn is the name of not only the primal, but the world itself. e.g) 'map of Hydaelyn.'

I don't think many people outside of the Sharlayans and those familiar with their research call the planet Hydaelyn anyway. My understanding is that they made contact with Hydaelyn the entity, understood her to be the will of the planet, and so began to refer to the planet by her name. So that idea has been around for a few hundred years at best, and not universally.

Elidibus is literally just the Heart of Zodiark and was bound to be warped by the process of becoming the Heart of a primal. He became Zodiark and was probably not able to deviate much from the will of Zodiark's summoners even if he wanted to, plus he refused to look at his memory crystal to remind himself who he was like Emet did.

I don't think Emet had to use the crystal to remember who he was. His crystal was effectively a contingency plan so the Ascians as a group could raise a new person to his position if he was defeated, and give them his memories and identity – though it never actually worked out that way. But in the meanwhile, he was still the same person he was from the beginning.

Elidibus, on the other hand, was an amalgamation of Themis and all the other souls within Zodiark, and could not naturally hold onto Themis's memories in the haze of all the others – so he should have been referring back to his crystal to basically keep reapplying the identity of Themis to himself. But he didn't and he lost all identity and memory of being a specific person beyond his mission.

[KageTokage]

The way Ericthonios describes his transformation in optional dialogue implies it at least has something to do with your perception of yourself as he describes the Lahabrea mask on his form as though it's an involuntary feature he originally attributed to being a symbol of his inferiority complex towards his father, but decides it might have more of a positive connotation then that in the wake of Abyssos.

It does seem to be a rather basic thing in Ancient society considering they have established protocol around it (It's seemingly viewed as a display of excess and not something to be done save for when it's deemed absolutely necessary) and Hythlodaeus feels inadequate due being unable to perform it.