I need an Umbral Calamity refresher as Dawntrail has me confused

[Alenore]

This, and let me add

It is specifically said the time under the bubble was forced in sync with the Source when people crossed from Vanguard. And it apparently extended to the other Reflection since time seems to flow the same way when we crossed over.

As for how much time it was, I think Otis says he has been in his body for something like 380 years. Given he was the first successful case of memory and soul preservation, Endless (and Sphene) can't be older than that. Given that Krile's parents defected Preservation when they realized they wanted access to other Reflections to plunder their aether for the Endless, these events took place in that timeframe.

Replying to myself because something doesn't add up.

Huk Tuy had visions of the Golden City over a thousand years ago. Even if the gate wasn't there at the time (Gulool Ja Ja says their records doesn't mention glowing stones), it means they had visions of Alexandria after the Electrope was included to it since this is what gives the city its golden hue.

So does that mean :
- Lalafels left the source for Alexandria millenias ago (Source Time), and integrated with the other reflection people ;
- Electrope is discovered ;
- Multiple wars for electrope erupt, race to arms ;
- Lindblum triggers their superweapon, forcing Alexandria to build the dome to protect themselves (2nd part of the dungeon) ;
- Preservation manages to make Endless (-380 Alexandria Time, 3rd part of the dungeon), Everkeep is being built. There's no more than say, 50 years between both since Otis was a Royal guard while Sphene was alive, and he served as final test subject ;
- Over the years, Everkeep becomes what we see in Living Memories ;
- Giants have visions of Alexandria over a millenia ago Source time ;
- 20 years ago Source time, Galuf, Gulool Ja Ja and Kettenram study the gate, Krile arrives along with the key and earring.

I can't reconcile the timeline here. Everkeep seems to be in construction about the same time they manage to preserve Sphene's memories, if I understand the dungeon correctly.
So -380 Alexandrian time. The city is being ruined and there's what appears to be a prototype dome in the sky.
1000 years ago, giants dream of a time after that, when Living Memory is already finished, but before the gate appears on the Source.

Krile's parent describe that their people were trying to find a way to move to another dimension when Lightning threatened the world, so that would be... Around when the Lindblum superweapon was triggered, supposedly? Which would bring their alliance with Preservation soon after. The gate was clearly built during the lifespan of Krile's parents.

So Giants dream of -380 AT in -1000 ST, and let's say 50 Alexandrian years later it's -20 ST?

That's doable if time flows reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally fast in Alexandria between when Living Memory finishes being built, and the Gate is taken over by Krile's parents, but then slows down so that the remaning centuries are compressed in 20 years of our time, to finally accelerate a lot again when they're brought back.

[Alleluia]

The word “calamity” was just used in the definitional sense of “something really bad happened”. Umbral calamities aren’t generally a concept on shards. They only apply to the source cus the source is the only one to survive to create that classification when one happens.

… though having said that, it’s also possible the Milala brought the phrasing with them, as they *would* have had knowledge of Calamities with a capital c. But it’s still a case of that phrasing being used to describe the lightning flood as just something really bad. It’s not referring to the 2nd umbral calamity on the source.

[Alleluia]

Replying to myself because something doesn't add up.

Huk Tuy had visions of the Golden City over a thousand years ago. Even if the gate wasn't there at the time (Gulool Ja Ja says their records doesn't mention glowing stones), it means they had visions of Alexandria after the Electrope was included to it since this is what gives the city its golden hue.

So does that mean :
- Lalafels left the source for Alexandria millenias ago (Source Time), and integrated with the other reflection people ;
- Electrope is discovered ;
- Multiple wars for electrope erupt, race to arms ;
- Lindblum triggers their superweapon, forcing Alexandria to build the dome to protect themselves (2nd part of the dungeon) ;
- Preservation manages to make Endless (-380 Alexandria Time, 3rd part of the dungeon), Everkeep is being built. There's no more than say, 50 years between both since Otis was a Royal guard while Sphene was alive, and he served as final test subject ;
- Over the years, Everkeep becomes what we see in Living Memories ;
- Giants have visions of Alexandria over a millenia ago Source time ;
- 20 years ago Source time, Galuf, Gulool Ja Ja and Kettenram study the gate, Krile arrives along with the key and earring.

I can't reconcile the timeline here. Everkeep seems to be in construction about the same time they manage to preserve Sphene's memories, if I understand the dungeon correctly.
So -380 Alexandrian time. The city is being ruined and there's what appears to be a prototype dome in the sky.
1000 years ago, giants dream of a time after that, when Living Memory is already finished, but before the gate appears on the Source.

Krile's parent describe that their people were trying to find a way to move to another dimension when Lightning threatened the world, so that would be... Around when the Lindblum superweapon was triggered, supposedly? Which would bring their alliance with Preservation soon after. The gate was clearly built during the lifespan of Krile's parents.

So Giants dream of -380 AT in -1000 ST, and let's say 50 Alexandrian years later it's -20 ST?

That's doable if time flows reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally fast in Alexandria between when Living Memory finishes being built, and the Gate is taken over by Krile's parents, but then slows down so that the remaning centuries are compressed in 20 years of our time, to finally accelerate a lot again when they're brought back.

Do we know for a fact the dome even existed around Alexandria when it was on its home shard?

[Alenore]

Do we know for a fact the dome even existed around Alexandria when it was on its home shard?

I think it was mentionned as initially being a defense against the lightning during MSQ. But we also see the dome over our heads in the 2nd and 3rd part of Alexandria, although it looks more like a shield than a dome of lightning energy.

[17cupsofcoffee]

I think it was mentionned as initially being a defense against the lightning during MSQ. But we also see the dome over our heads in the 2nd and 3rd part of Alexandria, although it looks more like a shield than a dome of lightning energy.

Yes, Sphene mentions just after we arrive in the Outskirts that the dome was built several hundred years before they came to our shard, to protect against the lightning.

You can actually see the dome in the 1st part of Alexandria too - it's just less obvious because it's fully sky-coloured (and not glitching) at that point.

The main bit I'm unclear on is at what point they started having lightning storms inside the dome as well - I'm guessing that either it became less effective over the course of those few centuries, or they intentionally started letting more energy in to meet the power demands of Everkeep. Maybe I missed an explanation for that though!

[Alleluia]

Well I asked b/c the dome’s current function seems to be to keep IN the lightning, for power purposes. Everkeep is one sunny Turali day from disaster, cus there is no way anything currently on Etherys meets that place’s power consumption requirements.

Also I’m not sure how reliable the visuals of that dungeon are. We can see in heritage found that there is a glaringly obvious well of lightning energy in the middle of the upturned old city. And, given where the old Alexandria walls are, everkeep isn’t based anywhere inside the old bounds. Yet the dungeon doesn’t show bad weather or a lightning well in part 3 and seems to be rebuilding/building stuff inside the now half-submerged city.

[Alenore]

You can actually see the dome in the 1st part of Alexandria too - it's just less obvious because it's fully sky-coloured (and not glitching) at that point.

The main bit I'm unclear on is at what point they started having lightning storms inside the dome as well - I'm guessing that either it became less effective over the course of those few centuries, or they intentionally started letting more energy in to meet the power demands of Everkeep. Maybe I missed an explanation for that though!

Oh hey you're right about the first part! I totally missed it because I'm usually too taken by seeing how they used electrope and listening to Sphene being Sphene.

I don't think there has been an explanation, but I headcannon'd that they were letting thunder pass to feed the huge lightning rod all around Everkeep. What was a curse must have turned into a blessing at some point.

Well I asked b/c the dome’s current function seems to be to keep IN the lightning, for power purposes. Everkeep is one sunny Turali day from disaster, cus there is no way anything currently on Etherys meets that place’s power consumption requirements.

Also I’m not sure how reliable the visuals of that dungeon are. We can see in heritage found that there is a glaringly obvious well of lightning energy in the middle of the upturned old city. And, given where the old Alexandria walls are, everkeep isn’t based anywhere inside the old bounds. Yet the dungeon doesn’t show bad weather or a lightning well in part 3 and seems to be rebuilding/building stuff inside the now half-submerged city.

The third part of the dungeon takes place south east of Everkeep. We can see parts of the electrope bridge leading to Everkeep on our left / west.



Additionaly, the landscape we can see from Alexandria when looking south seems to match the northern limit of Heritage Found.



When looking at the landscape around Everkeep, we can match both the northern mountains and western moutains to those you can see in Heritage found out of the north bound.

I can't see any trace of rebuilding going on in that part, though, except Everkeep itself, around the ruined castle.

This would place the part of Alexandria in the lake we can't reach, especially since the area seems to be prone to be flooded / is currently flooded. There's no ruins at this place in Heritage found though.

The Sightseeing log for Archeo Alexandria (plus the fact Otis resides here) would tend to say it's the same town, it's just... Malms away. Either the dimensional fusion sucks and move things out of place, or the Alexandria projection we had wasn't accurate, or the Archeo Alexandria we have was an even older city.

[TheRealQuah]

It's correct that Alexandria is a shard that hasn't been rejoined, as they don't exist once rejoined. It kinda doesn't matter which shard it is, though if you think about it for more than 2 seconds it's most probably the 9th. I would assume that every shard is slightly over aspected in one element so each element would have had 2 shards each.

It was definitely pushed to the brink of calamity by an ascian, personally I think that it will turn out the original Sphene was said ascian in question, they died at some point and never got raised again (due to us killing off the unsundered), and they lost the key to the source, so the computer recreation of Sphene couldnt enact the plan.

2 more things:

They showed Sphene's special crown regulator at the end, so she's definitely coming back, and it's probably going to be the original Sphene reborn.
Second, the key itself - so that's Azem's key right? Azem had some use for it back in ancient times I guess, probably quick travel to the grape volcano. Guessing it was a teleporter of some sort, but in the sundered reality it opens up portals to shards because of how powerful it is.

[Ayche]

I find it easy to assume that in the rules of the rejoining, missing a big city worth of landmass does not invalidate the process considering just how ... insignificant part of the planet one city is. Make a circle around Berlin, count its area in relative to the rest of the planet and how many zeroes would you- actually let me put that into a query machine and I got 7.4×10^-9 % of the Earth's surface. It is perfectly fine to me that Alexandria was left hovering in space in their bubble city while rest of the planet got turned into a puree.

[Alenore]

I find it easy to assume that in the rules of the rejoining, missing a big city worth of landmass does not invalidate the process considering just how ... insignificant part of the planet one city is. Make a circle around Berlin, count its area in relative to the rest of the planet and how many zeroes would you- actually let me put that into a query machine and I got 7.4×10^-9 % of the Earth's surface. It is perfectly fine to me that Alexandria was left hovering in space in their bubble city while rest of the planet got turned into a puree.

Ok but are we even sure Alexandria is all that's left of a potential rejoined shard? Also, how can people who fled the 5th calamity land in a shard before the second calamity happened? Time travel despite nobody ever mentioning it's part of the artifact power?
Why wouldn't the Ascian do something about a rejoined shard that still has life (and potential Ancient souls) in it?
Why does that reflection still have a lifestream and new souls granted to newborn, if everything except Alexandria is gone?
Living Memory still has a breathable atmosphere after the dome disappeared, clouds in the distance, showing there's aether around the dome as well. We know the moon only has air in Mare Lamentorum due to Loporrits building their refuge here.
Most importantly, Living Memory has a moon: it's a bit more aether than what a city represent, and would probably be the main thing they want to rejoin since that's where Zodiark is. It's the same moon asset, and they could have done like Elpis and made sure there was none. It's also in the same position as the moon in the Source.



So I'm pretty much certain this is an unrejoined reflection.