Revelations from Patch 7.2: Seekers of Eternity

[mallleable]

I think the person who got turned to dust was someone wearing a Neo Regulator, and I think that's their sinister purpose: kill the wearer, and send their aether, and memories somewhere to turn them into an Endless. Which is my point of I think there are unforeseen consequences, potentially of the Necron variety of killing 5000 people to turn them into Endless that I'm not sure Calyx has accounted for. I think it's gonna be more like 'oops I made Necron' instead of 'at last, I made Necron!'

I think Calyx's potential miscalculation is gonna come from his overly clinical view of death as just a process, not realizing, not caring that it means something to the people he will to kill to make them Endless.

[Kranel_San]

I think the person who got turned to dust was someone wearing a Neo Regulator, and I think that's their sinister purpose: kill the wearer, and send their aether, and memories somewhere to turn them into an Endless. Which is my point of I think there are unforeseen consequences, potentially of the Necron variety of killing 5000 people to turn them into Endless that I'm not sure Calyx has accounted for. I think it's gonna be more like 'oops I made Necron' instead of 'at last, I made Necron!'

I think Calyx's potential miscalculation is gonna come from his overly clinical view of death as just a process, not realizing, not caring that it means something to the people he will to kill to make them Endless.

When I was watching the cutscene, the first thought that crossed my mind about the corpse turning to dust was due to the neo regulator already uploading the person's memories to the cloud. However, since he is still alive and to prevent his memories and existence from being deleted in others' minds then the person has to be reduced to dust before the regulators can finish. As such, what people will see with their eyes is a permanently dead person (Whom they haven't seen before) that they used to know. This new dread of seeing dead people, plus the attacks, will ultimately further people's despair into escaping death.

This is just my interpretation of what happened.

[fulminating]

As far as we know this should be ten characters.

recombining souls requires a (mini) calamity, aspecting them in the direction appropriate to the shard. As seen with ardbert and light. Calyx did a big electrope strike with probably lightning element on the player and was a bit surprised it didn’t work.

Since we’ve already had a couple of heritage dungeons, meta knowledge states that the 7.3 dungeon will probably be in living memory, an (admittedly deactivated) electrope place through the electrope rift in the calamity-stricken ninth. I wonder what calyx could possibly try here. Apart from accidentally summoning necron as a primal or big soupy soul or whatever.

This does look like could be potential set up for reattaching another shard, but so did zeromus and the memoriate crystal (more so with hindsight since zeromus punched through the dimension walls and that seems to be the running theme of azem’s magic). [Edit: also I have no idea who if anyone would have the wol soul, maybe outis do he can have yet another death scene]

Also still hoping that m11 is the underbomber and the wol is the only person not in on the joke. Two child geniuses in one patch seems a lot, but if calyx is a fabled figure, nor-black-cat-nor-wicked-thunder could be riffing on that for the alexandrians entertainment.

[Iscah]

recombining souls requires a (mini) calamity, aspecting them in the direction appropriate to the shard. As seen with ardbert and light.

Where are you getting this from? The only thing we can say for certain about merging with Ardbert is that it was triggered by touching him. We did it once earlier by accident and pulled away, though I can't recall what point in the story that happened.

[fulminating]

Where are you getting this from? The only thing we can say for certain about merging with Ardbert is that it was triggered by touching him. We did it once earlier by accident and pulled away, though I can't recall what point in the story that happened.

I am reasonably confident that it was after we started eating the lightwardens. I want to say it was after holminster switch, but I can’t check at the moment. If soul recombination just requires the soul to be sloshing around in reasonable proximity to the other bit, that has pretty large implications with Alexandria.

As souls recombine automatically upon shard recombination/calamity, I don’t think we have evidence either way besides that - none of the scions have increased soul density as of their soul trip to the first, although there’s no guarantee that their counterparts exist/ed and were shared the first life stream with them for any duration. Similarly with voidsent, would the reaper pact not put the two entities into close enough contact to fuse? If the ee3 reaper avatar shard speculation is way off base then it would be pretty unlikely for a reaper to find their voidsent counterpart by happenstance.

Given what we’ve seen it requires less hoop jumping to conclude some degree of alignment is required. I don’t know if the zodiark restoration project information would apply here too or if that is unique to those circumstances.

[Iscah]

If soul recombination just requires the soul to be sloshing around in reasonable proximity to the other bit, that has pretty large implications with Alexandria.

There's no "sloshing around in reasonable proximity" involved. We spent plenty of time standing within a few yalms of Ardbert with no effect, even at the height of being Light-aspected, and it did absolutely nothing until we made physical contact.

I don't see what particular implications this should have for Alexandria unless someone happens to come into contact with or possession of their other shard-soul by chance.

[fulminating]

Plenty of alexandrians died (again), alexandria is still on the source. They will have ended up in the main lifestream along with quite a few unsundered that were in zodiark. The time bubble will probably stop anything coming of it though.

If it’s purely physical contact then why did nothing happen in 3.4? He was already without his real body and there was a whole instanced duty where the wol punched him until alisae charged up the interactable text.

[Cleretic]

Plenty of alexandrians died (again), alexandria is still on the source. They will have ended up in the main lifestream along with quite a few unsundered that were in zodiark. The time bubble will probably stop anything coming of it though.

If it’s purely physical contact then why did nothing happen in 3.4? He was already without his real body and there was a whole instanced duty where the wol punched him until alisae charged up the interactable text.

Have you considered that maybe it happened in that final moment because it was voluntary? That Ardbert willingly gave his (after)life to give us strength in our time of greatest need, which is why our soul got amped up at that specific moment and not before?

Because that seems like the most likely in-universe-scientific reason for why that happened at that particular point... and by extension, would suggest that Alexandrian souls going to the Aetherial Sea probably wouldn't be doing the same very often.

[fulminating]

If it’s voluntary then why does everyone on the source automatically get bumped up 1/14th during the 7th calamity then?
Are you discounting the player overflowing with light, the aspect of the scheduled 8th calamity during this process as nothing but coincidence?

[Carin-Eri]

I'd like to add that if I'm not mistaken. There's a line that mentions he was severely sick from birth and didn't have much time to live. As such, I believe physically he died during his teen years and is the reason why he look very young and childlike. He's probably the same age of Alphinaud/Alisaie prior to his death.

This takes me back to a comment I made in another (since derailed) thread in response to someone saying that Calyx likely has a tragic backstory that hasn't been fully explored yet.

I thought it noteworthy that the Endless from Living Memory based their visual appearance on the happiest moment of their lives; it seems to me that, judging by his appearance and the facts you've mentioned, Calyx doesn't have a 'happiest moment in his life' to base his appearance on.