Thread: Revelations from Patch 7.4: Into the Mist

Originally Posted by Cleretic

[...] 7.3 confirmed for us that the Key is just the crystal, and the chalice was some kind of additional system added on by Preservation; to this day we don't have a great idea what the chalice is doing, save that--again, going by Preservation's track record--it seems to be working.

Going on what we've seen, the chalice is clearly designed to be a way to focus the Key and get it to act more reliably. It's original Milalla owners were only able to get it to work once through prayer but Preservation's housing (chalice), which was seen in various stages of development in the lab during 7.3, was able to get it to graft Everkeep and the surrounding area onto the Source in addition to Endless Sphene closing the bridge to Living Memory at will. We don't know how to use it, but clearly Preservation (Calyx) figured out how to use it at will - little else explains his extensive efforts to get it back during 7.2 / 7.3. (With or without Ascian benefactors isn't super relevant, but like I said it's basically a grander application of Halmarut's power...)

Originally Posted by mallleable

There's always the 'it's Auracite' angle.

Auracite hasn't played a significant role in any storyline outside of the Ivalice-adjacent content, and considering it is a known material wouldn't take as long as it has to identify. White Auracite is basically "blank," the Heart of Sabik was essentially shoehorned into Pandaemonium to tie up that loose end from A Realm Reborn (and, as noted by Lahabrea, wouldn't have made a difference in the long run regardless), and the synthetic auracite used in The Sorrow of Werlyt is more or less a "loaded" variety of White Auracite. While it remains a possibility I don't think it's probable, seeing as Ultima is dead, auracite wants to be used, and making (even an adaptation of) the Tactics Big Bad so integral to XIV's story going forward doesn't seem very original. I know they're basically just doing bizarro incarnations of other installments' worlds at this point, but even so.

Originally Posted by Diclonius

Correct me if I'm wrong but was it not established that Azem had some sort of extreme future sight?

I vaguely recall a line Themis says in the Pandaemonium questline heavily implying so (and I always thought it was the off hand excuse for why our WoLs can foretell mechanics.) My point being that perhaps Azem created, or set in motion plans to create the key, foreseeing that he/she would not survive the Sundering, because they were aware of another, bigger/concurrent/produced problem to the Final Days. I find it hard to believe they weren't doing anything during that time, and it would almost line up with what Halmarut was saying too. Potentially the key's purpose *is* to fuse the shards, and they're trying to imply that's some kind of necessary evil now with the lack of Zodiark and Hydaelyn being around. Maybe they were suppressing something, or maybe the Source would wither in their absence if left not whole ("silence left by the will of the star" as Halmarut put it.)

Ramblings aside, I think the key's activations by Preservation were also a result of Sphene's presence (Azem's shard in the 9th perhaps?)

A couple things to note:

Azem hasn't ever been stated to have exceptional precognitive abilities; how s/he knew about "our" arrival on Elpis for Pandaemonium remains unclear, assuming s/he wasn't just joshing Themis (a very in-character thing for them to do knowing what we do). That said it has been confirmed that AoE markers are an aethersense related to the Echo - ironically, despite all the hubub about Fordola's Resonant Echo - by the Guardian Arkveld, whose attacks can be predicted due it consuming enough aether to leave telegraphs (cf. Rathalos, who does not leave these markers due to having not actually devoured much prey before we could kill it). Beyond that is just speculation, but why would Azem create the Key if s/he knew s/he was going to lose their memories in the Sundering (and by extension both what the Key was and how to use it properly)?

Sphene being an Azem reflection hasn't been confirmed or even hinted at, and either way it doesn't explain how the Milalla got it to work the first time and Endless Sphene (a soulless data construct) was able to use it when the real Sphene was on another plane of existence so...

Originally Posted by Cilia

That said it has been confirmed that AoE markers are an aethersense related to the Echo

This is false. AOE markers are just a product of reading the flow of aether (which any half-decent mage/fighter/general adventurer can do) and reading your opponent's body language for tells. We know this because of commentary in the Hall of the Novice and the fact that we can see tells even when playing characters who explicitly do not possess the Echo like Thancred and Alphinaud. Kefka also references this in our fight with him, as does Nero when he's trying to advise us on how to beat Kefka. We also see other characters feeling an attack incoming before it happens because of discrepancies in the flow of aether. See Meryall's interaction with Lovro in "Demented Mentor", where she tells her entire unit to get back immediately because she can sense that Lovro is about to cast Crimson Scourge in an effort to wipe out the entire party.

Fordola's Resonance is special in that it bypasses even this by directly reading her foes' intent, with it manifesting as visions of her opponent's intended movements. But this can be disrupted by sudden flashes of random aether that muddle this ability.

I do just want to say that while I think we technically can't rule 'Azem made the crystal' out (although I do think their case is exceptionally weak), I do think it's by far the least interesting option.

Raw chronology says that whoever made the key had to exist before the Fourth Calamity; that knocks out all but a few societies, basically just leaving us with Allag, the general 'Matsuno-penned nations' (mainly Ivalice and Bozja), whatever was going on in Meracydia, technically Thirteenth nations like Baron and Troia... and, yes, the Ancients. Or, of course, a group that we don't even know exists from any point in that period of time, that may or may not still live in some form. Now, some of those would be weird picks--I feel like we're all ignoring Allag as an option for good reason, and we'd mostly just be confused if it turned out it was Baron.

But out of all those candidates, the Ancients feel like the dud option to me, because they don't have any skin in this game. After the End of Days hit they had some more directly relevant problems to deal with, and 'let's create something that, after our destruction, could be used to travel to alternate worlds that don't exist right now' doesn't just sound like something they can't do, it sounds like something they wouldn't do; that sounds like a nonsense plan. At least post-Sundering civilizations could come up with this thing to travel to places that actually exist in their time; Allag and the Thirteenth's people in particular definitely knew that as a fact, and would have active reasons to want to pursue it, but there's no reason that, say, Goug wouldn't be interested; Ivalice and Bozja certainly already had vested interest in the type of Magic Rock that we all generally believe this is. And that's without factoring in unknowns; for all we know, Meracydia has/had a civilization that would both come up with something like this and would've had reason to bridge the unusual gaps like 'why did it show the Azem symbol'.

Every other option seems a damn sight more likely and more interesting than 'an Ancient made a thing to solve a problem that didn't exist yet', primarily because then we don't just have questions of 'who' and 'what' to answer, but 'why', the pressing personal reasons these people made the thing in the first place. There's story potential in a place like Damcyan realizing their world is doomed, but that the very people dooming it have given them a shot at evacuation. There's potential in an Ivalician scientist realizing that there's something else out there, and they want to see it. There's potential in a Meracydian clan that worships some abstract, mythical 'traveler' whose story is passed down through the ages, who were just crazy enough to make something that let them follow in their footsteps.

Theoretically the way to bridge that would be to flesh out Azem, the person who supposedly could have done this; I don't believe that they could have made this thing, but theoretically the developers could tell that story. ...except they can't; Azem has never been seen because they are a very player insert standin, molded in a very specifically nonspecific way; they are a cipher for you to decide what your interpretation of Azem would be, with no information ever given that could possibly refute that. (Venat's crew not being able to contact them is a good example of that; it's not explicit rejection, it's 'they didn't come to the phone', you're meant to decide why... while the writers get to dodge actually depicting them.) That's a cool idea and evidently a very successful execution by how many people love writing their own Azem... but it's not a character. And it can't be written like one, because to do so would break the illusion. Writing the story of how Azem made the key would only work at the cost of throwing away why a lot of people even like Azem in the first place.