It Hydaelyn sundered herself, why doesn't First Hydaelyn handle the flood of light?

[Yuella]

It could be that each time Zodiark was rejoined, Hydaelyn needed to spend more and more power to keep the seal intact. That's why she's weaker.

[Katish]

Also a possibility: each Hydaelyn from a reflection that saw demise just gets absorbed into Zodiark. So if by the end of it, if the Ascians achieved their goals, Zodiark could have theoretically become even stronger than it was once formed because it has all this transient aether. Leaving Hydaelyn in a much worse state than when she was, by not having her reflection returned and having to fight off the more powerful Zodiark as mentioned above.

[AnimaAnimus]

Also a possibility: each Hydaelyn from a reflection that saw demise just gets absorbed into Zodiark. So if by the end of it, if the Ascians achieved their goals, Zodiark could have theoretically become even stronger than it was once formed because it has all this transient aether. Leaving Hydaelyn in a much worse state than when she was, by not having her reflection returned and having to fight off the more powerful Zodiark as mentioned above.

Edit: this turned into rambling sorry, everything just kept compounding until I realized our easy defeat of Zodi really makes 0 sense.

If this were the case after 7 calamities Zodi would be stronger when we fought him than when he was originally sundered due to having 15 shards collected. His shard on the first + 7 of his and 7 of Hydi's shards. And even if Hydi's shards were not a aetherially dense, with 15 god shards he still would have been much stronger than us and our measly 8 ascian shards. As his heart Fani, someone who has been around thousands of years and was intimately familiar with Zodi and a myriad of other things, would have wiped the floor with us just by blinking. And why didn't he take Zodi to the other shards after he was free and had full control then come back and finish the job? The dude was a brilliant mind and tactician. It was already a stretch that he was such a pushover being x7 rejoined, add another x7 on top of that and it would have been a major plot hole instead of just a small one.

Remember Zodi came into being by thousands if not hundred of thousands or even millions of ascians sacrificing themselves and their aether to create him. So even x7 rejoined we are facing likely hundreds of thousands worth of ascian powered battery. The simple fact we struggled so hard against 1 unsundered, which would technically be the equivalent of only 14 shards, just an expansion prior already makes us defeating Zodi with barely more than a slight flick of the wrist questionable, add in those 7 Hydi shards, and well...that would just be really poorly thought out story telling. And how was Hydi so weak she couldn't talk to us anymore, but Zodi was still weaker yet after 7 rejoinings? And why, when she was at full power, didn't Hydi just delete the Zodi shards herself instead of letting m(b)illions of her children be gruesomely slaughtered over thousands of years when she had full knowledge of what caused the end days and 3 fully unsundered to help her out? Cause the timeline? That is some pretty weak story telling and makes the goddess we are supposed to revere not look too good. This is why we really should have had a timeline split, that would have solved a lot of issues...

We also have to consider that with Zeromus, that was only 1 fragment of Zodi, powered up by a single dragon and it was monumentally stronger than Zodi. So unless a single dragon, even though being first brood, was just so powerful that she was even more of a threat than a lil over half of Zodi, the whole thing falls to pieces. And if she is, why was Tiamat and Bahamut so easily captured by the Allagans? How was Ishgard able to still exist after the onslaught of an angry god-like being and thousands of his children? And why are we not worried about a large brood of dragons that could wipe us out with barely any effort just chilling in the world and even running nations?

So much about this story really makes no sense.

[Vyrerus]

We know Hydaelyn is weak due to her helping us with Ultima Weapon and from enduring 7 calamities, but the reflections of Hydaelyn on the other shards shouldn't be as weakened?

The answer's really very simple. You've encountered years of changed and changed for the worse writing. i.e. Bad writing.

Basically, Hydaelyn's just lying. She wasn't weakened by anything. She was always keeping just enough power to fight to the death with us in Endwalker, as she tells us at the end of her trial. She was always hoarding aether for the mothercrystal.

Her being "taxed" or "too weak" is literally just her feigning it, because it interrupts her hoarding.

There's a dialogue response in English where you get to choose a response as the WoL, "So she was lying to me?" And The Watcher's response was more or less, "Yeah, she lies occasionally, just like everyone else."

It literally comes right after the dialogue you've clipped, lmao.

[Anonymoose]

Basically, Hydaelyn's just lying. She wasn't weakened by anything. She was always keeping just enough power to fight to the death with us in Endwalker, as she tells us at the end of her trial. She was always hoarding aether for the mothercrystal.

Her being "taxed" or "too weak" is literally just her feigning it, because it interrupts her hoarding.

I would disagree with the premise, "The Watcher confirms Hydaelyn lies," leading to the conclusion, "Hydaelyn claiming She's taxed and weak is a lie," in light of the same source in the same reference claiming that Hydaelyn was taxed and weak.

The Watcher refers to Hydaelyn's "gross embellishment" being in regard to the tale of Hydaelyn and Zodiark being two gods who existed in harmony until Zodiark's greed broke the balance - an obfuscation that concealed that they were both imperfect creations of man, as well as the existence of the lost history of the planet that the Ascians would sacrifice the present and future of every dimension in a futile attempt to reclaim.

His next line affirms that the brands (holding back a greater and greater volume of Darkness with every rejoining) were a burden that threatened to utterly consume Her.

Citation

Maintaining the brands taxed Her greatly. With what power She dared spare, She cried out to any who might listen, and offered Her blessing to those who heeded Her call.

Die Erschaffung und Aufrechterhaltung der Siegel drohte, auch das letzte Quäntchen ihrer Kräfte aufzuzehren. Und so machte sie es sich zum Ziel, ein Gefolge um sich zu scharen, und schenkte all jenen ihren Segen, die dem Ruf folgten.
Creating and maintaining the seals threatened to drain every last ounce of her strength, so she set out to gather a following around her and bestowed her blessing on all who answered the call.

Hydaelyn consacre ainsi quasiment toutes ses forces au maintien du sceau, et avec le peu d'énergie qui lui reste, elle accorde sa protection à ceux qui entendent son appel, lancé depuis le cœur de la planète.
Hydaelyn thus devotes almost all of her strength to maintaining the seal, and with the little energy that remains, she grants protection to those who hear her call, launched from the heart of the planet.

彼女の力のほとんどは封印の維持に使われ、地上に対してできることといえば、星の内から危機を訴え、応じた者に加護を与える程度だった。
Most of her power was used to maintain the seal, and all she could do for the surface world was to warn of danger from within the planet and grant divine protection to those who responded.

[Lyth]

There are quite a few unknowns here.

Given that Hydaelyn and Zodiark were locked in combat at the time of the Sundering, you would expect Elidibus to be inside of Zodiark, and thus at the very epicenter of the whole thing. In order for him to escape unsundered, Elidibus would have had to have bailed mid-fight. Granted, that wouldn't be entirely surprising, given that Elidibus similarly turned tail and fled Zenos' body when confronted by Imperial Soldier A. Perhaps there's just a natural self-preservation instinct that usually kicks in and makes him go hide under a table when confronted by a sufficiently hardened battle-maniac.

If Elidibus wasn't inside of Zodiark at the time of the battle, then it opens up all sorts of interesting questions about Zodiark's 'will' in the absence of a 'Heart', as well as what fighting without one would have cost Him in terms of power. So either way, you can see plausible reasons why the power difference potentially didn't matter when they fought.

As far as Rejoinings are concerned, it's worth also asking how the souls of a shard actually find and merge with their equivalents on the Source. In the EE Vol.3 (p.13), there is a footnote to the diagram which states 'It is theorized that the worlds actually overlap each other in position, each occupying a separate, displaced layer of reality.' This suggests that the shards are all superimposed at the same physical spatial coordinates (but displaced in a parallel dimensional space.)

Having shards of Zodiark rejoin seems relatively straightforward, because all of them exist on topologically equivalent points in space (i.e. they're all imprisoned in the same spatial coordinates, on the moon). As a result, the shard and source equivalent would automatically map onto each other during each rejoining, causing the soul fragments to merge.

It becomes a bit more complicated when you start talking about souls in general, because people move around. Let's look at some cases.

Case 1: Source soul dead, shard soul alive
After the rejoining, neither soul has a body. The source soul is already within the lifestream. The soul on the shard that has just died should be drawn by the pull of the lifestream, and both souls will rejoin inside of it. The +1 effect only applies to their next rebirth.

Case 2: Source soul alive, shard soul dead
In this case, the shard soul is already inside of the lifestream. It shouldn't be able to break the pull of the lifestream to rejoin with its living source equivalent. When the source soul completes their life and enters the lifestream, then the souls will rejoin. The +1 effect only applies to their next rebirth.

Case 3: Both souls alive, but in different physical places
During a rejoining, the people on one of the shards die, so those souls are left without a body. Now comes the question of proximity. If the two souls are in close proximity, then you might expect them to merge directly (the Zodiark case). But if the source and shard equivalents are on 'the other side of the world' from each other, then you'd probably expect the pull of the lifestream to win out. Then you effectively have Case 2 again.

I don't think we'll ever have answers to these questions, simply because the more layers of detail you add to an explanation, the more convoluted and complicated it ends up becoming. Sometimes it's better to have a slightly less accurate/consistent explanation that is more palatable.

[Cleretic]

I think a lot of people would do well to remember that FFXIV isn't written in the same way as any other FF game but XI, and hasn't been since, if we're going to be completely honest, somewhere in 2010. Writing for a live service game requires a fundamentally different approach that's more akin to a long-running comic book or manga than anything else; because you can't perfectly predict where the future will go, and you can't easily edit what's already out there, a key part of the writing involves rewiring the parts of the story that were already there to serve the story that you're telling now. The fact that they're doing so isn't a failing of anything or anyone, because a story outline that exists across ten years and multiple writers is inevitably going to change, be refined, and be influenced by newer (and you would hope largely better) ideas.

I think the way that XIV did it with the Zodiark and Hydaelyn story especially was extremely smart, because they used it to accentuate the parts of characters that were needed for the story to work: namely, their flaws. Hydaelyn's info was unreliable because she's been hiding uncomfortable truths and acts for twelve thousand years for a greater good that she can only hope happens. The Scions' info wasn't always accurate because a core part of their story has always been to learn, to become better people with a greater understanding of others. And the Ascians went through more transformations of writer's intent than we can probably count, as they transformed from megalomaniacal monsters to, essentially, horribly broken people trying to bring back an idyllic past that they didn't truly understand.

Could you possibly write a form of FFXIV's story where all of the 'final forms' of those characters were present from the start? Yeah, probably. But the nature of a game like XIV is that they just can't edit those earlier chapters, so those refinements instead have to be written to work with those earlier ideas. And I think a crucial element of what makes all of it work is that they respect what came before, even as they reframe it: Hydaelyn's previous statements are never thrown in the dirt and rejected, even as they're shown to be lies, partially because they're shown to have elements of the truth. I actually think the best example of this is Lahabrea; it would've been so easy to just dismiss him as a completely unhinged raving lunatic who's lost touch with everything just so that we could easily dismiss his whole rant, and other writers might well have done that. But instead they went to great lengths to show how he got to that point, and to give him elements of truth that we can trace.

All that is to say, I hardly think that being able to recognize when something's changed is a flaw of anything. It just means that you can recognize how the game is written.

[AnimaAnimus]

I think a lot of people would do well to remember that FFXIV isn't written in the same way as any other FF game but XI, and hasn't been since, if we're going to be completely honest, somewhere in 2010. Writing for a live service game requires a fundamentally different approach that's more akin to a long-running comic book or manga than anything else; because you can't perfectly predict where the future will go, and you can't easily edit what's already out there, a key part of the writing involves rewiring the parts of the story that were already there to serve the story that you're telling now. The fact that they're doing so isn't a failing of anything or anyone, because a story outline that exists across ten years and multiple writers is inevitably going to change, be refined, and be influenced by newer (and you would hope largely better) ideas.

I would argue that XIV and XI are not written in the same way at all. XIV has had a running narrative with the same protagonists and antagonists from day 1. XI on the other hand was a collection of stories that shared a world but outside a camio here and there, were not really related to one another at all, Rhapsodies being the exception of course. Each individual expac could be a seperate game in and of itself and lose absoutely nothing.

One of the things that, imo, holds XIV back is the fact that is has a running narrative. They do not let us see the world for ourselves because the same group of scholars is whispering in our ears the entire time, informing us of the world the way they see it. We do not get to leave our little bubble at all really, so they have to change and retcon and act like things never happened, like all those minor ascians that just disappeared suddenly. In XI that was not the case for a large majority of the game. We got to know about the Far East through the eyes of ppl from the far East. We got to know the times of the crystal war through the eyes of the ppl who experienced it. They didn't have to do a lot of retconning because the narrative was different and a lot of things that we were experiencing were sometimes taking place in new areas, with new ppl, new lore and new everything, allowing them to tell new stories without taking away from what was. They were also not scared to get really dark while maintaining that hope exists and should be held dear. The end of days in XI would have looked incredibly different than just a handful or 2 of fights in some far off land we had never been to before that we deal with alongside of the same few npcs we have been dealing with things with since the beginning. The same NPCs who are telling us exactly what is going on because theirs is the only way we are allowed to see the world of XIV. The story telling is night and day between the two games, and saying they are on the same level is an incredible disservive...to XI.

[Vyrerus]

His next line affirms that the brands (holding back a greater and greater volume of Darkness with every rejoining) were a burden that threatened to utterly consume Her.

His next line doesn't matter. If he tells us straight up that Hydaelyn lies when it suits her, particularly about the very important reason for us to adventure and do our deeds under her auspices, then that makes any information about her suspect. (This was the drive of the story at the time, too)


Keep in mind that the full context of this scene is the WoL and co. asking him questions after Zodiark has been killed. You've gone from the top of the The Watcher's palace to the bottom, looking into memory crystals at his records of his vigil over Zodiark. One of the crystals makes the same claim that maintaining the brands tax Hydaelyn greatly, while another states that The Watcher and The Lopporits perform regular maintenance on the brands.

There is still another that is the recording of The Watcher's musings on why the Ascians, possessed of the ability to come to the moon, do not assault the brands.


Stepping further into the story, we have Krile saying that she felt Hydaelyn weakening and that she was barely hanging on, but when we confront her in The Aitiascope, it is revealed that she's just fine and has been hoarding aether for 12,000 years. She is not weak. She is not near death (other than the fact that we're about to kill her in a fight to the death). She is not some frail entity.

Ultimately The Watcher is a shade she made, and apparently occasionally corresponded with. But we know the idea that she grew weaker being the reason for why she stopped talking to him wasn't true either, because she literally manifests as Venat twice to initiate communication with the WoL at the end of SHB and the beginning of Endwalker. SHB's there's few words vague words about darkness coming, because it was done to build hype, but in Endwalker on the boat, she makes this same claim levied in our contentious dialogue. That as Zodiark's strength grows, her own diminishes.

Supposedly this is also why she can't just draw our mind into the rift to tell us things. Keep in mind though, that this is also a lie, and an obvious one at that, because no more Rejoinings have occurred since our conversation with her through Minfilia and the rift in The Antitower. Then also keep in mind that we haven't been taxing her since Heavensward, and that she communicated with us by drawing our mind into the rift after supposedly being taxed severely by powering us up for Ultima Weapon and Lahabrea. She also shuts her eyes completely when paying lip service to the idea, a body language indication that she is lying to us.

So drawing back to my original statement, she was willing to lie about her entire struggle against the other Ascians and Zodiark. The Watcher confirms that Hydaelyn lies. Why wouldn't it follow that we are being lied to about how taxed she is by actions taken to go against her opposition? i.e. Why are we assuming that she told The Watcher the truth in this singular instance?

[Cleretic]

So drawing back to my original statement, she was willing to lie about her entire struggle against the other Ascians and Zodiark. The Watcher confirms that Hydaelyn lies. Why wouldn't it follow that we are being lied to about how taxed she is by actions taken to go against her opposition? i.e. Why are we assuming that she told The Watcher the truth in this singular instance?

The Ascians were also shown to be willing to lie, even about base things such as who they are, with Emet-Selch probably the most prolific and committed to the long-con of them all.

Doesn't it also, then, follow that we were being lied to all the way through Shadowbringers, possibly even before? Did you believe Amaurot? Why would you have assumed he told the truth in this singular instance?