Originally Posted by
Absurdity
But yes, from my cursory knowledge the implication seems to be that by foiling the Ascian's plans they shifted the aetheric balance too far towards umbral (or was it astral since that same story flipped them around?). But don't ask me how or why our actions haven't caused the source to turn into the same hellhole yet.
This is what I've pieced together over years from random dialogue lines, side quests, external lore, interviews, etc... so I don't have concrete sourcing, and I don't recommend going on record at a jury trial based on this summary here.
But my understanding is as such (if you only read EN client it's probably easier to be confused, because EN localisation is really just awful, and omits or arbritarily-changes information constantly).
It requires a lot of backgrounding to sort it all out, so this will take a while.
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1.
The Source itself sits at the heart of the little mini-universe that Hydaelyn created when she decided to ruin the world for lulz, and so the Source is naturally pretty balanced.
The different Reflections, though, spread out on a spectrum in the little vibro-space that they all occupy, and some are more inclined towards one Aspect or another.
The 13th, being on "one end" of the spectrum, was naturally-inclined towards Darkness — so when Igeyorhm started messing around there, it all went to hell a lot faster than even the early Ascians were expecting, resulting in an out-of-control Flood that Voided the Reflection and made it useless for Rejoining.
Since all the Reflections are metaphysically connected, the 13th tipping completely to Darkness caused an imbalance that made its spatial opposite, the 1st — which already had a natural inclination towards Light — begin to slowly careen towards its own Flood of Light. This would have happened either way, eventually — it was a slow, degenerating situation, ultimately caused by the 13th Voiding.
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2.
Eventually, the 1st reached a point where Elidibus realised that yes, it was definitely going to Void (to Light) on its own.
And that was really the last thing the Ascians needed — another whole 1/14 of Zodiark getting Voided — so Elidibus decided to red-tag the 1st, and mark it next-in-line for demolition.
That's when the mass-murder clubhouse on the Source (Lahabrea / Elidibus / Emet-Selch) started looking for ways to trigger an Umbral/Light Calamity (for example, by turning a megalomaniacal pope into a world-conquering Light Primal, or manipulating Goblins into creating a time-traveling Light Primal, or restarting production of a Light-aspected Garlean WMD gas, or...).
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3.
Meanwhile, the sleeper-agents stationed on the First (Loghrif / Mitron) were given orders to stop sipping piña coladas, and start finally prepping the 1st for Rejoining.
Doing that means bringing the world right to the very brink of a Flood, then holding it there until the Source gets an appropriately-large and correctly-Aspected disaster set up by the Source Ascian crew.
If done correctly, the "pressure" between the almost-Flooded Reflection and the "aspected disaster" on the Source will break the barriers that Hydaelyn created, and cause the Reflection to get sucked back into the Source — along with its Shard of Zodiark.
That's basically Rejoining 101.
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4.
So Loghrif and Mitron needed to bring the First just to the very edge of a Flood of Light, without tipping it over too soon.
And Elidibus had decided that it was better to just get this over with right now — while it could still be done under intentional Ascian control — rather than wait for the First to degenerate to that point on its own.
Think of the difference between a controlled-burn to remove dangerous dry-brush near a neighborhood, vs. just waiting for lightning to spark a wildfire while everyone is sleeping.
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5.
But, how to make the First start tipping to Light at the rate that the Ascians wanted?
The problem is that the First had, overall, always been a relatively-chill place — as much as the 13th was naturally-inclined to become a hellhole, the 1st was naturally-inclined to be pretty mellow. It had its problems and heroes over time, like any world, but overall, it didn't naturally have any major disasters to manipulate or play off of.
So, it also wasn't a huge nexus of attention for Hydaelyn or her "blessings".
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6.
At some point, Loghrif+Mitron (and/or Elidibus) twigged to the idea of just deliberately forcing the creation of Warriors of Light on the First — reasoning that causing enough Crystals / Blessings of Light to manifest on the First would help to concentrate Light there, and quickly get it right where the Source Ascian crew wanted it to be.
This was where they brought in Cylva — one of the failed heroes from the 13th.
(Who was also retcon'd into being a Memoriate in throwaway 6.2(?) consolation-prize dialogue — but this is basically irrelevant, because apparently, crossing the Rift somehow conveniently caused her to lose the ability to turn her foes into pink dildos)
Cylva ended up getting manipulated by Elidibus (and/or Loghrif+Mitron — it's a little ambiguous) the same way that Ardbert & crew eventually would: "Hey, really sorry that your world melted. But you know, if you just help us break this other world over here, then there will be a Rejoining, and at least the Souls of all your loved ones can be saved..."
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7.
So Cylva — who was empowered by being, basically, an Ascian/Minfilia-like entity herself (ie, she's traveling between worlds because she's a loose Soul) — was given the task of pretending to be an everyday adventurer on the First, and luring Ardbert and his group to meet each other, band together, become famous adventurers, and turn into Warriors of Light.
To do this, Cylva simultaneously assumed an alter-ego, the Shadow King (changed to "Shadowkeeper" in EN, for whatever reason), and began causing all manner of unusual chaos all over the world of the First — so she could then use her place in Ardbert's group to quietly influence and manipulate the crew to go fix the very same problems that she was deliberately creating for them.
This is why Cylva quietly smirks in all the cutscenes from the Role Quests whenever one of Ardbert's crew triggers a Crystal of Light / Blessing of Light — each one is a step forward in Cylva+Loghrif+Mitron's plan to bring the First to the very brink of a Flood, prepping it for Rejoining.
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8.
At some point, Loghrif/Mitron/Elidibus decided "Ooooookay, whoa, that's enough, you can stop now, please," about the state of the First's precarious balance, since it was getting pretty Light-y over there.
So Cylva got the go-ahead to reveal herself as the Shadow King and kill Ardbert & crew — which would halt the progress toward a Flood, and leave the First right on the very brink... just where the Ascians wanted it.
It was then intended to just "hold" the First like that, until the appropriate disaster could be triggered over on the Source (which you, the Source WOL, kept messing up — causing scheduling delays).
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9.
The problem is that Cylva was a wee bit arrogant (Elezen problems, right), and kind-of underestimated Ardbert & crew.
So, rather than stopping them, Cylva ended up being the one who got overpowered — even after she unleashed the full power of Darkness to P2W herself into a 25 dollar cash shop product.
Even worse, Ardbert — who still considered her a friend, and couldn't bring himself to kill her, or maybe couldn't afford the price — decided to forgive Cylva, and spare her life.
To the best of my knowledge, it's never explicitly-stated where Ardbert got his Crystal of Light — but I "feel" like it's implied that his sparing of Cylva's life resulted in him finally receiving his own Crystal / Blessing.
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10.
...So, at that point, everything promptly went off-the-rails.
Ardbert getting his own Crystal of Light (I think?), plus Cylva failing to kill the First WOLs, meant that rather than being "held" in place, the First's Flood of Light was now free to continue barreling forward unabated — and with even more force than ever before.
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It gets vague again here, but I think that we're meant to infer that after Cylva was spared, she was probably interrogated, and spilled the plot about the Ascians employing her.
Either way, Ardbert & crew somehow learned about Loghrif+Mitron, and went off to hunt them down — believing the Ascians to be the "real villains" of the story, who had been manipulating the "Shadow King" (Cylva). You know, a typical Final Fantasy endgame plot-twist. (Ardbert's entire pre-Flood story is meant to feel like an oldschool JRPG plot)
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11.
Loghrif+Mitron weren't expecting this at all, and got caught with their pants down (possibly literally, all things considered about them).
They were also caught off-guard by how accidentally-powerful they had made the First WOLs — ie, kind of like Igeyorhm on the 13th, Cylva had done her job "a little too well".
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So Loghrif+Mitron tried to go Ascian Prime as a countermeasure, but this is a kind-of risky manoeuvre — as you saw from both the HW finale, and the Pandaemonium storyline — and left their Souls a bit "exposed" while merged.
They lost, Ardbert powered up an Axe of Light just like our own ARR finale at the Porta Decumana, and then splattered Loghrif+Mitron Prime just like we splattered ARR Lahabrea and Dying Gasp Emet-Selch.
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12.
(I think it's implied that?) Loghrif seemed to bear the initial brunt of the attack, so she just straight-up instantly died, and her Soul got vacuumed down into the Lifestream on the First, from which it would eventually be reincarnated ~100 years later as "Gaia" in Eulmore.
Mitron, meanwhile, was "left behind" — not hit hard enough to straight-up die, his Soul instead just got severely-"wounded" by Ardbert's Light.
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Under normal (or as "normal" as the vengeful immortal ghosts of a dead supercivilisation can be) circumstances, that would just be that — Mitron would probably go run away to the Rift like Overlords usually do when they get smacked around too hard.
But between collecting 5 Crystals of Light / Blessings of Light, and then channeling it into the Axe of Light thing, and then also wiping-out the pretty potent Darkness provided by two entire Ascian Overlords... Ardbert had just taken the already-borderline First and basically pushed its Aspect all the way over the edge into a flat-out Flood.
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13.
And you saw during ShB what happens when someone gets injured by too much Light on the Flooded First — the environment is so supersaturated with Light that it can't allow aether to "stabilise" naturally, so a victim's body and Soul will both just tip out-of-control into a Sin Eater instead.
That's basically what happened to Mitron, who got warped into Eden, and became the hyperaspected point around which the First's already-compromised aether began to coalesce and corrupt outward, like a slowly-spreading infection — becoming / triggering the Flood of Light that began to radiate out from that location.
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That was around the time that Ardbert & crew realised that, uh... something just went really, really wrong and definitely not according to plan.
However, by then, it was way too late to stop it.
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14.
(It seems to be implied?) That's why Elidibus was in such a hurry to try to force the Source towards another Rejoining ASAP after you defeated Thordan — the Ascians were on borrowed time, with the First starting to Flood into a Void of Light.
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It's probably also why Emet-Selch basically left Mitron to rot — not only could he just Uplift another one (as Mitron speculates in the Eden finale), but he was probably also not-impressed by the mess that had just been made by Loghrif+Mitron's complacent bumbling.
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And yeah, this also implies that you and Urianger basically saved the Ascians's butts in "Soul Surrender" by sending Minfilia over to hit the "pause" button on the Flood of Light — which ironically gave them time to try to figure out another way to both keep the First on the brink (but not tipped all the way over), and engineer a suitable Umbral/Light disaster on the Source in parallel.
Which ended up being a) create Vauthry on the First, and b) restart Black Rose production on the Source, and provoke events so that the Garlean Empire would be pushed into a desperate enough corner to unleash it.
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