Thread: 7.0 What if WoL rode the train?

The characters moving into a time that runs faster than the source is always to their benefit, it’s why it doesn’t matter if living memory is still running faster than the source or has aligned because it only benefits the protagonists relative to source time

If the WOL had travelled on the train and did or didn’t summon the scions they would have fixed the problem of Alexandria in seconds by source timekeeping

The only problem they could run into with time dilation is if they move to a shard that runs slower than the source because then time spent in the shard would be amplified on the source

Originally Posted by Cleretic

My bet: Zoraal Ja doesn't last a week, and the invasion never happens. And in doing so, the entirety of the Source is doomed.

I don't think that, without the immediate threat of the invasion, Tural breaks into the dome as quickly and forcefully as they do, so we're probably there for longer than thirty years. This doesn't shorten the thirty year timeline: it lengthens it. But that doesn't actually factor that much to my reckoning; it's Oblivion that gets the Origenics infiltration plan together, and all we really provided was the impetus to put it into action. However, I can reason that everything afterwards still happens: once Zoraal Ja's out, Sphene takes the key and retreats to Living Memory. And we follow, right?

...well, no, we don't; the gate to the golden city is off in the Skydeep Cenote, which we can't access because it'll take more than thirty years for us to get out. ...and we just truncated Sphene's timeline of erasing her memories and going ahead with dimensional fusion by about thirty years. Meaning, nobody stops the Queen Eternal.

If we defeat zarool ja inside the barrier Sphene can’t “retreat” to living memory because under the dome living memory is connected to the everkeep because at the time they are inside the same shard, tural does nothing to break the dome, the dome is forced back into the shard by zarool ja completing vanguard

It’s only when vanguard forces the dome into the source that living memory becomes disconnected existing alone within the shard Alexandria originally came from so Sphene can use the key to force the gate closed

1. We follow the movement of troops to find the location of Zoraal Ja.

2. We find Zoraal Ja, nowhere near as powerful as he was after the time jump, and we rip his head off his shoulders.

3. We take the chalice off his corpse. Sphene starts to complain, we tell her we might cooperate if she opens the front door.

4. We, as well as the now-displaced residents of Yyasulani, walk out the front door.

5. Three expansions later, Sphene gets tired of waiting and starts the invasion herself, only for it to be a poor leadup to a non-MSQ trial. Living Memory becomes a new Bozja.

Originally Posted by Cleretic

But... those thirty years had to have elapsed specifically in the period between when the orb appeared, and when we broke into Vanguard; that thirty year period is specifically from the perspective of Yyasulani, we're essentially putting the WoL on a seat right next to Namikka. Meaning that in the hypothetical posed by this thread, the WoL can't be at the Everkeep before it becomes part of Heritage Found, rather than the Unlost World, meaning that yes, the portal's there in this hypothetical.

The way that the WoL theoretically could've gotten to the Everkeep pre-Heritage Found is if they instead went through the Skydeep gate, like Zoraal Ja did.

During the 30 years yassoulani experienced that the source didn’t the everkeep and heritage found were one whole however they were in Alexandria’s shard; not the source. So yyasoulani, the everkeep and living memory (the 12th floor of the everkeep) were all in Alexandria’s shard during the 30 year period. In that time the everkeep doesn’t change, only yyasoulani does

So if the WOL defeated zarool ja by being pulled into the dome by taking the first train Sphene couldn’t retreat to living memory because it’s all part of the same shard. The reason zarool ja used the skydeep portal to find Sphene was because before the dome appeared skydeep’s gate was the only thing that connected the source to Alexandria’s shard

So if the WOL took the first train it would have only benefited the WOL/scions as zarool ja wouldn’t have been able to invade and sphene wouldn’t have been able to retreat

Originally Posted by Cleretic

Can you provide a source for this? Because honestly that doesn't sound like anything I've seen, as well as sounding unnecessarily complicated as a plot beat; why write that Yyasulani got removed form the Source, merged with Alexandria and then plopped back down into the Source over the course of forty seconds of a cutscene, when it could instead just be 'Alexandria got grafted onto Yyasulani at the moment that a big lightning orb appeared around it'?

The key taking yyasoulani into Alexandria’s shard is precisely why the citizens of yyasoulani experienced 30 years of time passage the rest of the source did not

It’s when vanguard is completed physically connecting the two that it forces yyasoulani back into the source

If yyasoulani wasn’t in Alexandria’s shard it never would have experienced time dilation, the dome appearing is when the everkeep and yyasoulani fuse by sending it to Alexandria’s shard via the key