Thread: Revelations from Patch 7.3: The Promise of Tomorrow

Well here is what i thought

right so going in i knew this wasn't going to be the end of it. We still have a shard on the brink. But to bring in it back to the ascians come on. All that's left of them is severed. There are like us but we have one more shard than they do. They can no longer go between shards like lahabrea themis or emet selch did. Their god is only a shard strength. There is no way for them to bring about a calamity. And yet we go back to old foes whom aren't even that relevant anymore. And these past few expansion have bread crumbs pointing to the thirteeth and you golbez and zero wandering around the thirteenth hoping to bump into someone..... overall calx is pretty lame not surprised the lack of dev time went into yawntrail. Necron was nice but i couldn't help notice the trail was a lot simpler than 4mans which is bs. 4 mans should NOT be harder that trials. Nor should four mans have more mechs than trials. This is no turning point it is more of the same of yawntrail.

I think with context 7.0 to 7.3 makes more sense at least in terms of Heritage Found and Solution Nine. As they played with a lot of themes, which many got caught beforehand. 7.3 is the bow the neatly ties the themes together.

What themes? Well, to elaborate

1. It was very early on noticed by users in 7.0 that the Queen Sphene is basically a ghost that body hops from robot bodies that are basically her personal undead soul-sucking army.
2. The whole thing revolving around souls and how souls were treated as expendable regardless of who the soul belonged to in life and that in turn the citizens were willingly acting as if they are soul-eating liches in order to preserve their own existences.
3. How the arcadion's main form of entertainment is through combatant's using beast souls to become more powerful yet in the process each usage effectielly shortens their lifespan.
4. That of the real sphene, after her data self is gone, is released, effectivelly a resurrection of her yet with none of the memories that her body-hopping self accumulated over centuries.
5. How Calyx and like-minded researchers sought to become endless, basically digital ghosts so as to live forever, and that Data Sphene and Calyx's plans is to create endless ghosts that seeked to harvest aether across the stars and shards.
6. How from 7.1 to 7.3 the ramp up of a cult that is obsessed with death and wanting to live forever thanks to the data ghost that is Calyx.
7. That the deaths the citizens experienced from 7.0 to 7.3 was only meant to sow fear but specificially the fear of death, to reinforce belief for Calyx's cult to work.
8. Necron itself, its name, the arena being called the ageless necropolis, how they get stronger from experiencing death as the primal fears it, how they fight in a very necromancy sort of way. Its all basically the writers yelling to the people in the back that haven't noticed.
9. Especially when they intentionally have the robots moving around like one of the various undead enemies in how they lurch and stand, of the backwards head turning.

All of that is to say, beneath the dressing of technology and science-fiction, its just effectively a necromancy-centric civilization. The reason the writers do it this way? To obfuscate and to turn into a slowburn as they probably didn't just want to do a complete copy-paste of Mhach again.

I wouldn't be surprised if the writers had at one point saw one of those video essays that went over how undead might fuction as a labor force. Especially with the plot point revealed that the robots couldn't simply be shut off as they handle much of the labor required to keep the city running.

Especially given how this will make the second time Duskwights, when given more of a spotlight, are associated with a society that has necromancy themes. The first being Palace of the Dead, aka Gelmorra. A shame this still advances nothing about Duskwights of the source and only those of Solution Nine.

I know I left out some aspects but they just kind of reinforce what they were going for, like the dungeon for 7.3.

Originally Posted by Thighland

I'm sure there are other things they can do. My prediction is that they can use things like the Azem Crystal or the Key, since the signature of their souls is the same as ours.

There's actually no evidence that other people can't use the Azem crystal, nobody else has tried.

The key is even funnier, because we actually have no evidence that we can use the key! We've never tried. In fact, we also know that Preservation can and has used it, they're just not very good at it.

It's also important to remember that...

1. All we know is that an Ascian is involved, that's it. We don't know anything about their plans, and it would be wrong to assume it has anything to do with what they've done before (i.e. Rejoining, reviving Zodiark, wanting to destroy the world). Basically this Ascian or group of Ascians could have completely unique and interesting backgrounds/motivations that we don't know about. What we should be thinking about is how in any way would creating a massive Endless society be interesting to an Ascian.

2. It would be absurd to expect them to be shelved forever. Like it or no, the Ascians and the reflections are one of the main plot threads that are still hanging in the air, of course it's going to come back eventually. If anything, I'm glad they revealed it now instead of stalling and trying to surprise us later. Again, we know since 7.0 that whatever happened in the Storm Surge war it was orchestrated by an Asican (ok we didn't know know, but come on, it couldn't have been more clear) and since 7.2 we know that Calyx calls his reflection the Ninth, a nomenclature he could only have known by getting this information from an Ascian (according to Y'shtola in 7.0). So Ascians have been written all over this story.

Now, about the post credit scene...

1. Calyx was sweating and out of breath when he spawned in this unknown area, so does that mean that he managed to escape before we destroyed the terminal? And if not, then what the hell happened, did he have a backup and lied about it?
2. Calyx mentions "At long last, I was to open a new path!". A path to what?!
3. He also says he made rash decisions perhaps influenced by "the others and their developments" - I think this implies that the Winterers, whoever they are, seem to be getting desperate? Or maybe they're fighting amongst themselves? Tell me if I'm misinterpreting this line.
4. Assuming Calyx is still an endless, I think it's safe to say that he can only project his image somewhere that the terminal's signal can reach, meaning if his terminal in on the Ninth, he can only project himself on the Ninth (or the source, if the portal is open). Does that mean his meeting with this mysterious Ascian happened somewhere on the Ninth? Basically I think we can rule out them meeting at their usual place on the thirteenth.
5. This is a wild one but do you think "Winterer" could have anything to do with Blindfrost? We also had that line from Gossan "It's as if we were frozen in time, but now the ice has begun to thaw", could this also be a very subtle foreshadowing? If so we might be looking at a Blindfrost 8.0 expansion, truly fulfilling the Heavensward 2.0 prophecy. Again, this is wild speculation but I think it's fun.

Let me know what you think

Originally Posted by Cassar

2. Calyx mentions "At long last, I was to open a new path!". A path to what?!

My brain zoomed in on this as well... It might just be referencing something we're already aware of: his idea of a new path for humanity's evolution via Endless. But even if that's his goal, I don't get the sense it's the whole picture (whether it's Calyx who has additional motivations, or his Ascian/Winterer friends). The key can trigger interdimensional fusion, but it can also open what appear to be relatively stable paths to other reflections. There's another object that can do both of those things: the Crystal Tower, at least once it's augmented after the 8th Umbral Calamity. And the very reason it was augmented to do those things was so that it could be used to create a new path in which a specific event doesn't occur. So I would not be surprised if "open a new path" means something more for Calyx and those he's working with. It could also just mean nothing though lol.

We do know that Living Memory has existed for at least 1,000 years of Source time based on the Yok Huy's visions. It seems very much like the Ninth was getting prepared for a rejoining, but it's weird that it was brought so close to the brink and not rejoined, considering there's never been mention of a similar lightning cataclysm occurring on the Source during the appropriate timeframe. I don't know why they'd risk bringing a reflection so close to the brink, considering how careful they tried to be after the Thirteenth, if they didn't intend to rejoin it soon. The Storm Surge and construction of Everkeep/Living Memory would have occurred while the Unsundered and Zodiark were still in play, so I feel like events on the Ninth at least started for typical Ascian purposes... and Calyx makes it sound like he's been affiliated with the Winterers and trying to accomplish the same goal since Preservation's founding. There's much to think about, at least!