Where's the aether? (Spoilers)

[Lady_Silvermoon]

Actually, Emet-Selch states outright in Shadowbringers that (part) of the reason why the WoL "towers above their peers" (in terms of might, in context) was because he was "seven times rejoined".
Ofc we also know the last Azem was very powerful and aetherically dense (I recall Venat using the figure "twice as powerful" as her)- putting both together, Emet seems to be have been stating "you've been rejoined seven times" as "your soul is denser/has more aether" to a being which had a dense soul to begin with.

At the time he said that the WoL had a soul of the same density as everyone else on the Source. What made Emet-Selch care about the WoL wasn't the density of their soul, but whose soul it was. The added lore from DT does show that jamming a bunch of souls in you does increase your strength, but you can crack like a vase by doing that.

So I accept YoshiP's explanation that having a 14/14 soul might make you a little cooler, have a bit more mana. But it wouldn't make you an Ancient because they are essentially another species. They had physical vessels capable of doing more than ours, so even you jam pack us with soul aether we'll explode before we become Ancients.

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.

Given a bunch of lightening came with the merge with the shard that was falling to lightening, it makes sense that the 1st and 13th would need some restoration before being restored. But if you talk to players, you can see a lot of them dislike the idea of being broken people, they want to be whole. They want their WoL to be whole. You don't think that mentality wouldn't extend to the people in the actual game world? That they'd be content with their world and themselves being both fractured and threatening to crash in on itself at any moment as the god of stability is no longer there to manage it's fractured state? If you told me I'm a fraction of who I am meant to be and at any moment I might die from a planet crashing into me, I'd be like...uh...maybe we should look into fixing that.

[Voidmage]

Given a bunch of lightening came with the merge with the shard that was falling to lightening, it makes sense that the 1st and 13th would need some restoration before being restored. But if you talk to players, you can see a lot of them dislike the idea of being broken people, they want to be whole. They want their WoL to be whole. You don't think that mentality wouldn't extend to the people in the actual game world? That they'd be content with their world and themselves being both fractured and threatening to crash in on itself at any moment as the god of stability is no longer there to manage it's fractured state? If you told me I'm a fraction of who I am meant to be and at any moment I might die from a planet crashing into me, I'd be like...uh...maybe we should look into fixing that.

I actually do think that they are happy as they are now.
Regarding the WoL. Most players probably don't even care about all that stuff and I personally don't want them to be "complete" because that would mean the death of other shards of our soul.
The WoL themself probably don't want that anyway.

Same as the citizens of the first.
Even ignoring that most of them probably don't even have a shard counterpart... yes I bet most of them don't want to change their life they have right now, they may not even be aware of the source and other shards as was the first.
They are just shards. Their personality probably wouldn't survive a rejoining, even a not calamity one (look at Ardbert).
There is no happy rejoining between people. One of them will have their personality and memory erased and mostly this seems to be the case for the reflections. I don't see them wanting that.
I also don't think they see their world in a fractured state anyway. Ryne and the others were not really concerned with that notion, as was Sphene or even the Golbez (he just wanted to die).

The shards are for all intents and purposes complete worlds just not as dense.
Nothing suggests that they are unstable right now. If anything they should be more stable then ever before because:
> The Ascians are not there anymore to collapse them
> The new ex dungeon with the cactuars implies that there were far more rifts in the past then today between worlds so the source shouldn't have such a pull on them anymore.

Right now we have seen no instability of the remaining shards even though I also see that we know not in what state they are right now.
At most I agree for a save haven for them like Solution 9. A halfway rejoining or something but nothing more and even here we don't know yet if that won't have problems later.

[Vyrerus]

Runar really got her with that stew back at my place pickup line.

[LilimoLimomo]

It's certainly a plot hole that the people of the Source are not meaningfully different from the people on the First. Especially since the 7th Umbral Calamity tangibly changed people: before the Calamity, only those with the Echo could communicate with the various tribes, but after the Calamity everyone suddenly could. If I recall correctly, it's the same with being able to see Moogles.

That said, as far as plot holes go, it's thankfully not particularly impactful.

[ApolloGenX]

I don't see why rejoining wouldn't unsunder souls and renew the ancients.

Other races are just forms that the ancients created or variants. Who cares about them? They have souls, they would be reborn.

Knowing that there is life after death in the lifestream and about soul rebirth kind of makes death pointless. In fact, poor people would probably just kill themselves.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

I don't see why rejoining wouldn't unsunder souls and renew the ancients.

Other races are just forms that the ancients created or variants. Who cares about them? They have souls, they would be reborn.

Knowing that there is life after death in the lifestream and about soul rebirth kind of makes death pointless. In fact, poor people would probably just kill themselves.

The Ancients wouldn't return because a soul can go into numerous species and the Ancients as a species aren't on the star anymore. A dense soul doesn't create a new species.

Think of the Sundering as having turned people into literal cats. Over the years, those cats re-evolved into cat people. They build yarn cities, prayed to cat nip gods and created a whole different life for themselves. Rejoining them wouldn't turn them back into the destroyed humans, it's just make them really awesome cat people.

Also, death still matters because you don't come back as you. Some new being ends up with some of your personality traits. That's the reason why even though 75% of the Ancient population is now in the lifestream, we won't be getting any Ancients, they'll be coming back as the current races.