Where's the aether? (Spoilers)

[Jeeqbit]

Magic seems to be a mix of internal and external aether. White and black mages use external aether through the job stones while red mages use internal aether.

Yes, I forgot to mention that. Their best option for using magic might be trying to use outside sources and break the rules that we normally stick to in the Source in most teachings.

[Rookie1]

if you think about it as a pool of aether (soul or corporeal or memory) then it has to be spread out amongst all life. If you get a rejoining that doesn't mean the million people on etherys get denser. It means you can now support a population of 2 million people.

[Jeeqbit]

if you think about it as a pool of aether (soul or corporeal or memory) then it has to be spread out amongst all life. If you get a rejoining that doesn't mean the million people on etherys get denser. It means you can now support a population of 2 million people.

The problem with that logic is that it's mentioned clearly in the MSQ that the reason we can respond to dynamis is because we are less aetherially dense than the Ascians, that we got denser when merging with Ardbert and Krile expressing curiousity over why she wasn't less aetherially dense.

It's also constantly implied, even in Dawntrail, that souls are meant to be rejoined - with alternative versions of people we've met being found in the First and in Shaaloani and Heritage Found. The implication seems obvious - that if there was a rejoining, those souls would rejoin with the versions we know on the Source. Whether that's meant to be immediate or not I have no idea, but Emet-Selch once said that if there's a full rejoining "you have nothing to lose" because you're "of the Source" implying the Warrior of Light wouldn't have to die.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

Whether that's meant to be immediate or not I have no idea, but Emet-Selch once said that if there's a full rejoining "you have nothing to lose" because you're "of the Source" implying the Warrior of Light wouldn't have to die.

He was attempting to sell the WoL on becoming an Ascian. Remember, the Ascians know how to pull souls and memories from bodies effectively making you immortal. Given six more calamities would likely take several thousand more years, when he says "should you survive" he meant as an Ascian, otherwise old age would get the WoL if nothing else did.

[kaynide]

He was attempting to sell the WoL on becoming an Ascian. Remember, the Ascians know how to pull souls and memories from bodies effectively making you immortal. Given six more calamities would likely take several thousand more years, when he says "should you survive" he meant as an Ascian, otherwise old age would get the WoL if nothing else did.

Minor point here-

My understanding is that there was only a need for one more calamity to cause a full rejoin, which we stopped in Shadowbringers; my understanding is once #8 happened, everything would cascade to full rejoin. I could be wrong though!

Annnd 2, very importantly, the Bahamut calamity revealed to the Ascians that calamities didn't require a full map-wipe (and therefore thousands of years). Rather, they could do Calamity causing massive damage but not reset humanity; they were planning to do calamity #8 (Flood of Light in Shadowbringers) about 5ish years from #7 (The Meteor project; some 5ish? 10ish? years pre ARR).

So, even if they DID need to do 6 more calamities, it could be easily done in like.. 30-50 years tops.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

Minor point here-

My understanding is that there was only a need for one more calamity to cause a full rejoin, which we stopped in Shadowbringers; my understanding is once #8 happened, everything would cascade to full rejoin. I could be wrong though!

Annnd 2, very importantly, the Bahamut calamity revealed to the Ascians that calamities didn't require a full map-wipe (and therefore thousands of years). Rather, they could do Calamity causing massive damage but not reset humanity; they were planning to do calamity #8 (Flood of Light in Shadowbringers) about 5ish years from #7 (The Meteor project; some 5ish? 10ish? years pre ARR).

So, even if they DID need to do 6 more calamities, it could be easily done in like.. 30-50 years tops.

While there is a line from Hydaelyn saying she will lose her grip if one more calamity happens in around 3.5, I believe? Shadowbringers has G'raha waking up hundreds of years after the calamity and Zodiark is not free and the world is not rejoined. So either she was mistaken about how many rejoinings it'd take to free him or the writers simply retconned that. And given even 200 years after the 8th calamity the world wasn't rejoined, we know most WoL (unless you play a young Viera) wouldn't make it even that long. So yeah, he was totally attempting to sell us on that Ascian life.

Also, the reason why the 7th umbral calamity didn't reset humanity is because of the twins grandfather. He wasn't around for the 8th and that did reset humanity. So the Ascians can't really just keep slamming shards into the Source or there will be no people left alive to cause the next calamity. They really do have to wait for people to rebuild.

Based on the story so far, I am with the Ascians. I think we should rejoin all of the shards. Endsinger is done and souls will be reborn/rejoined.

Who cares if you kill people? They come back from the ethereal stream.

I don't think killing is bad in this game anymore. There is really no justification for the continuation of hardship and suffering.

Rejoining the shards will not turn us into Ancients and/or end suffering. We'll just have the trauma of another half dozen brutal deaths etched into our souls. I'm sure that'll make us kinder to one another as species.

While it does look like some sort of rejoining is the direction the story is going. Just murdering everyone is a terrible plan. If not for moral reasons (which yes, for moral reasons) then because trauma impacts the soul for thousands of years and so far the only uses we've found for having a dense souls is holding a lot of aspected aether and curing someone else's soul corruption.

[Somnolence]

The problem with that logic is that it's mentioned clearly in the MSQ that the reason we can respond to dynamis is because we are less aetherially dense than the Ascians, that we got denser when merging with Ardbert and Krile expressing curiousity over why she wasn't less aetherially dense.

It's also constantly implied, even in Dawntrail, that souls are meant to be rejoined - with alternative versions of people we've met being found in the First and in Shaaloani and Heritage Found. The implication seems obvious - that if there was a rejoining, those souls would rejoin with the versions we know on the Source. Whether that's meant to be immediate or not I have no idea, but Emet-Selch once said that if there's a full rejoining "you have nothing to lose" because you're "of the Source" implying the Warrior of Light wouldn't have to die.

My theory is that original ancient population was not that big (no need to have lots of children when you are functionally immortal) and majority of all souls in Source or reflections are new.

Only those whose souls are portion of reincarnated ancients would survive full rejoining, all others would be used as energy by Zodiark.

Even on source only us and some characters like Zenos have half of original ancient soul, the rest are 1/14 density scrubs.

[Voidmage]

Whether that's meant to be immediate or not I have no idea, but Emet-Selch once said that if there's a full rejoining "you have nothing to lose" because you're "of the Source" implying the Warrior of Light wouldn't have to die.

I always took that as twofold:

The source soul is the one who always comes out on top.

It was less about „us“ and more about our soul.
He mostly saw us as Azem not as the WoL.
If we died and been reborn in his eyes we would still be us. He looked at the color of the soul first and foremost.
Or it was an attempt to Ascianicize us as death doesn’t matter to them.

I wholeheartedly agree on all your other points here.

[ApolloGenX]

Based on the story so far, I am with the Ascians. I think we should rejoin all of the shards. Endsinger is done and souls will be reborn/rejoined.

Who cares if you kill people? They come back from the ethereal stream.

I don't think killing is bad in this game anymore. There is really no justification for the continuation of hardship and suffering.

[Voidmage]

NOOOOOO! You misunderstand me. When I said I suspect we might be going in the direction of rejoining the shards, I meant because we now have a safe means to do it with the hourglass thingy. A part of Alexandria was merged into the Source with zero casualties are far as I'm aware. And given that the Sundered world is unstable and might crash into itself if we stop praying to an answering machine, putting the world back together without murdering anyone might be our next arc. After all, we wouldn't have met Otis without the merge either.

And then Ryne could be with her daddy and Y'shtola could be with Ru...wait, nevermind, that's never happening. The men would riot.

Ah yeah. Guess I misread that, tehe.

It’s an interesting notion doing that but wouldn’t that undermine our efforts with Eden and the void if we just yoink those people to the source now?
Would they even be happy in some cases? It is their home with its own history after all.

I find the idea of Solution 9 good tbh. An “ark” for survivors and some kind of “anchor” for a shard to allow travel.
It’s like some kind of floating continent from ff3.