Who on the 13th?

[ICountFrom0]

Given that the 13th is without lifestream, whoever the warrior of light that is us on the source is there, is still there, somewhere.

They might be consumed and splintered, a little bit in everything still alive there... or it could be that it resides in somebody important enough to be named.

Anybody want to try a guess and make up a reason?

[Cilia]

Common theory is that

the original Golbez

was the Azem fragment incarnation at the time of the Contramemoria. 5.4/5.5 gives a pretty clear picture of their fate.

[Cassar]

6.5 MSQ spoilers

As I said in a previous thread, the fact that the original Golbez was a shard of Azem is all but confirmed. Not only did we see through his eyes in 6.4, with the non-textbox type of subtitles, but also in 6.5 Durante was certain that we were Golbez during the Memoria section of the dungeon. If you do that dungeon with duty support, the team even emphasizes how "He seems certain that you [the warrior of light] are Golbez".

Knowing how that dungeon ends, Durante kills Golbez (Azem) and traps his soul in the crystal. So, the 13th's Azem is currently trapped in a Memoria crystal. Whether we'll ever rejoin with it, I don't know.

[Cilia]

As I said in a previous thread, the fact that the original Golbez was a shard of Azem is all but confirmed. Not only did we see through his eyes in 6.4, with the non-textbox type of subtitles, but also in 6.5 Durante was certain that we were Golbez during the Memoria section of the dungeon. If you do that dungeon with duty support, the team even emphasizes how "He seems certain that you [the warrior of light] are Golbez".

Knowing how that dungeon ends, Durante kills Golbez (Azem) and traps his soul in the crystal. So, the 13th's Azem is currently trapped in a Memoria crystal. Whether we'll ever rejoin with it, I don't know.

While all of that is true, there's reasonable doubt enough to conclude the contrary. This game's messaging and foreshadowing are rarely subtle, but we don't know how the Memoria crystals work exactly; it could be that anyone holding / viewing Golbez' memories could be interpreted therein by Durante as Golbez.

For the record I'm not saying I disagree, just that there's reason enough to do so.

[LilimoLimomo]

6.5 MSQ spoilers

in 6.5 Durante was certain that we were Golbez during the Memoria section of the dungeon.

I agree that it seems likely that Golbez is an Azem shard, but I feel like I recall this same treatment being given to the Warrior of Light in other contexts as well. Didn't Ultima think that the WoL was Ramza? And Suzaku definitely thought the WoL was Tenzen. The commonality I notice is that the WoL tends to be mistaken for other Warriors of Light. Whether this is meant to imply that they are literally of the same soul seems up in the air to me.

Durante kills Golbez (Azem) and traps his soul in the crystal.

Perhaps a nitpick, but did he actually get killed? My interpretation of that scene was that Durante was saying that he couldn't bear to kill Golbez, so instead he sealed him in the Memoria.

Regardless, I think there's a high probability of the writers inventing a way to unseal Memoria, since at the end of 6.5 they explicitly mentioned giving the 2 Archfiend Memoria to newGolbez. I have a feeling that means we'll be seeing all those characters again at some point within the next decade.

[Cleretic]

I hope it's nobody. We got through the entire Thirteenth questline without that ever coming close to coming up, and I think we were better for it, because the resulting storyline was very deliberately narrow-focused. (Whether you liked that storyline is a different question, but I think its intention there is very clear.)

I don't think the 6.5 theory actually holds water, because all the 'evidence' just doesn't read as anywhere near conclusive to me; hell, some of it reads as counter.

Golbez isn't the only first-person flashback scene in the game, and I don't see anyone arguing that G'raha Tia is an Azem shard. I think the 6.4 memoria flashback being first-person was just a narrative and dramatic choice, that also subtly sets up for the 6.5 Siege of Baron segment, which is also first-person from Golbez's perspective, just through different ideas.

I've seen people pull out that they hide Golbez's face because of this; I think that's actually a resource management thing, because Golbez is a non-human model, so giving him a face would require sculpting a whole new one, which isn't worth the effort since sort of the whole point of Golbez was that he was more figure than man.

I also don't think that the memoria crystal was responding to us to make the Siege of Baron segment happen; if it was, it would've done that when we found the thing, and probably not brought everyone else. I actually think Golbez's crystal was responding to Durante; it wasn't speaking to us, it was Golbez trying to help his friend. Remember that the express purpose of the Lunar Subterrane dungeon was to get in our way and stop us from getting to Zeromus, but that most of the dungeon is actually the memoria memory.Durante did a terrible job keeping us out, it was Original Golbez that stepped up.

[Rongway]

I also don't think that the memoria crystal was responding to us to make the Siege of Baron segment happen; if it was, it would've done that when we found the thing, and probably not brought everyone else. I actually think Golbez's crystal was responding to Durante; it wasn't speaking to us, it was Golbez trying to help his friend. Remember that the express purpose of the Lunar Subterrane dungeon was to get in our way and stop us from getting to Zeromus, but that most of the dungeon is actually the memoria memory.Durante did a terrible job keeping us out, it was Original Golbez that stepped up.

But

by Durante's accounts, True Golbez wasn't the kind of person who would condone Durante's mass murder plot. I don't believe True Golbez would try to delay WoL&co from saving the world. If it was somehow True Golbez's desire for WoL&co to spend time in the Siege of Baron memory, it would have been for something less nefarious, like helping WoL&co understand what part of Durante they needed to appeal to to get him to reverse course.

Personally I'm in the camp of "the implications that [spoiler] is [spoiler] were heavy enough that the intent was clear". Regardless of whether it's true, it's what the writers currently want us to believe.

[ICountFrom0]

Lets assume that what they want us to belive is true....

Crushing the memoria and consuming it... probably STILL a bad idea, right?

[Cilia]

Lets assume that what they want us to belive is true....

Crushing the memoria and consuming it... probably STILL a bad idea, right?

Well, it got dropped into Zeromus' cloud back in 5.4, which is presumably why we got pulled into Golbez' memories during the Lunar Subterrane. We never find it later, either, so the most likely case is that it got subsumed into Zeromus and is now irrecoverable so long as Zeromus remains sealed in its giant Memoria crystal. Which, as per the MSQ, is likely to be planted somewhere out in the Empty to help restore the land, unleashing Zeromus would be a bad idea Azdaja or no, and we don't know any way to filter Golbez out from Zeromus anyway.

Plus... it's probably still really Dark-aspected... which would be bad...

So yeah, probably not going to happen based on what we know.

[fulminating]

Lets assume that what they want us to belive is true....

Crushing the memoria and consuming it... probably STILL a bad idea, right?

It’ll be right, use the zodiark stuff memoria to induce a localised calamity in the wol then shove the golbez one down their throat. They must be being stored in the same place for chekov’s reason.

Ps. Is Durant meant to be implied as the zenos counterpart? I’m not sure if he’s eligible for soul shards or if his grandfather blocks that.

Does it require text outside the hbhb