Thread: 7.0 What if WoL rode the train?

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.

Originally Posted by Supersnow845

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

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.

Originally Posted by Supersnow845

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

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'?

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.

First off, I think this is a good read. ^^ That said, a few points:

Even if we can't get to the Golden City, we can get to Living Memory through the giant sky vortex that Sphene uses to get there. We have flying mounts, and if for whatever reason those don't work because of wind currents or whatever, the Warrior of Light would be able to make new friends who construct something that can go up a lot (like a simple rocket, Electrope lift, etc) in the same way that we repeatedly demonstrated during Shadowbringers.

But that said, I don't even think that would be necessary. Because when we beat up Zoraal Ja, he drops the device that's necessary for dimensional fusion. And without Scions or Wuk Lamat there to paralyze us with a monologue, we would simply go pick it up, meaning that Sphene doesn't get it.

Originally Posted by Cleretic

The WoL is just as weak to 'listening to heartfelt/informative monologues' as anyone else in this universe; the moment Sphene starts talking about her ultimate plan, they're glaring along and unwilling to do anything. (Not that it's easy to stop Sphene, given that she's every single sentry.) In fact I'd argue that the WoL is below average in this field; at least Y'shtola took some shots. Not that I even think this is a viable angle in this context anyway, because we weren't 'paralyzed by speeches' in that scene; there's literally one line between when Zoraal Ja drops the key and when Sphene turns up to take it, and she takes it via telepathy.

But it's not like the road is clear if you do get to Living Memory, I actually think there's an insurmountible barrier that I just didn't bring up because my hypothetical didn't even get to that point: Cahciua's not there, so we have no plan of attack. Sphene's plan is going to be much the same as it was in the game itself, but without Cahciua to give us any direction at all--especially not the way to get into the Meso Terminal--we just can't actually stop Sphene once we're there. Your best hope is that maybe Robor and Alayla have an idea, but because this hypothetical actually means we never learn Krile's backstory, we don't know who they are either, and they're probably not opening up to us without a Krile to pour her heart out.

These are all decent points. There is one factor that could aid the WoL in this matter though and ironically for your argument it's time. There were 30 years of power spent by Living Memory before the WoL originally shows up. Sure Sphene is actively seeking out solutions now, but if it could hold out another 30 years then it's a possibility that she would be open to negotiation. You do a rather good job of painting the deck against the WoL though lol.

Originally Posted by Xirean

You do a rather good job of painting the deck against the WoL though lol.

The thing with FFXIV is that it's a character-driven story with a lot of characters; the end of a story is ultimately the culmination of a lot of people's individual journeys. As a result, it becomes really hard to pose a 'what-if' that doesn't end worse, because we tend to be faced with only problems this particular lineup of characters can solve.

Stopping Sphene is ultimately the culmination of multiple character journeys: most prominently Krile, Cahciua (and therefore Erenville by extension), and a couple we never mentioned, like Gulool Ja and Wuk Lamat; the fact that the Queen Eternal is even beatable when we do get there is because Wuk Lamat connects with Sphene enough to get her to actually stop. That does mean that the problems in front of us are often very specific problems, that can't just be dismissed or easily done by someone else, because Character X doing Thing Y is an important part of their journey.