Thread: 8.0 speculation

Originally Posted by Cleretic

Except Venat's knowledge of the events of the world was actually extremely limited. Her understanding of the events of the entire twelve thousand years of future history is one sit-down meeting with us. That information can only be extremely limited, because our own knowledge is limited even if we're given all the time in the world to convey it. And that information is something she was working outside of anyway, as evidenced by us learning that the moon plan we thought was Plan A was actually Plan B all along, so she's already not just working off of that intel.

We also only learned she had that knowledge about a zone and a half before she died. So not only did Venat's limited foreknowledge not cast a shadow over the storyline for long, it also had a clear finishing point; 'everything is Venat Venat-ing across history' was already a tenuous statement, but as a plot reading, it clearly has an expiration date after which that can't be true--or at the very least, it takes an extremely different form. So while there was a point where you could have had this read on the whole game, even that read changes structure and cadence over time.


That's not true for Azem, because not only is their future sight nebulously defined but evidently consistent (the Ancients seem to see this as a pretty typical thing for them to do), but they have always been dead. If they can tell that the key is needed twelve thousand years after their life, and be good enough at those required skills to then make the key, then obviously their future sight and their capacity to do something with that information is EXTREMELY precise, EXTREMELY far-reaching and EXTREMELY consistent, and by nature cannot change in state, because Azem's always has been, and most likely always will be, exactly as involved in the story as they always have. If this turned out to be true, there is no possible limiter for this, and no possible 'finish line'; if Azem can see far enough and well enough to make the key specifically because we'll need it now, then there is nothing that already happened, or could happen in the future, that Azem can't have also seen.


EDIT: For what it's worth, my eyeballing on Azem's future sight is that it might just have a limit of, like, two days, but was consistent enough to rely on. They didn't know where we came from in Elpis, but they did know we'd turn up and be helpful to Themis' investigation.

I think we should forget about Azem's 'future sight' and focus on the key. Based on what know, the key is a creation of Azem. But why was it created? Was it an plan of Azem to use the key to send their people away to escape the final days? And it almost look like white auracite, so we also need to wonder if it the same auratice like the heart of sabik? And if so, did Azem made contect with Ultima as well?

Originally Posted by Pimsan20

I think we should forget about Azem's 'future sight' and focus on the key. Based on what know, the key is a creation of Azem. But why was it created? Was it an plan of Azem to use the key to send their people away to escape the final days? And it almost look like white auracite, so we also need to wonder if it the same auratice like the heart of sabik? And if so, did Azem made contect with Ultima as well?

If we're looking this in a different way: the why Azem didn't join neither the Convocation of Fourteen or Venat's faction. And the key might be the reason why. It's possible that Azem is facing an being that is final days level threat. So it's possible that beat this being, seal it and used the key to send it in the rift. Which would explain why it can travel between the rift.

Originally Posted by Pimsan20

Based on what know, the key is a creation of Azem.

We don't know that. We have no evidence of that whatsoever, actually; the only 'evidence' we have is that the key looks a bit Ancient-y (it's more of a 'looks more like them than any other suspect' than anything clear), and that it has responded to the Azem crystal.

This is why I keep underlining what we do and don't have and know; because people have an awful habit of jumping to conclusions and deciding to just draw their favorite line between Point A and Point D without checking if we even know Points B and C. Which not only breaks a lot of speculation and discussion because people start taking this as fact like you are, but also leads to a lot of dissatisfaction when we get what the truth is because people convinced themselves they were getting something else.

I've been witness to the debacle of people convincing themselves that both Endless Sphene and the Arcadion had Ascian sigils on them and any other ideas or reading being completely counted out of the conversation; if I can do something to stop that happening again, I will.

Originally Posted by mallleable

So the Azem summoning spell basically makes a feature like Duty Finder diegetic so a thing that is really not sitting right with me about those scenes with the WoL opening a portal with The Key is that it would effectively be giving players the ability to open portals to anywhere. Which would be game breaking. It would negate walking, aethernets, mounts, teleporting, or even waiting on expansions with new zones. The ability to open portals to anywhere would remove the journey from our adventures.

And like the scenes show the WoL opening the portal alone, and walking though the portal alone, and we know that The Key is capable of allowing the Millala, a small nation to flee to The Ninth.

But the key doesn't always listen to the wielders. If it was then the Milala would have return to the source lickty split.

Originally Posted by Cleretic

We don't know that. We have no evidence of that whatsoever, actually; the only 'evidence' we have is that the key looks a bit Ancient-y (it's more of a 'looks more like them than any other suspect' than anything clear), and that it has responded to the Azem crystal.

This is why I keep underlining what we do and don't have and know; because people have an awful habit of jumping to conclusions and deciding to just draw their favorite line between Point A and Point D without checking if we even know Points B and C. Which not only breaks a lot of speculation and discussion because people start taking this as fact like you are, but also leads to a lot of dissatisfaction when we get what the truth is because people convinced themselves they were getting something else.

I've been witness to the debacle of people convincing themselves that both Endless Sphene and the Arcadion had Ascian sigils on them and any other ideas or reading being completely counted out of the conversation; if I can do something to stop that happening again, I will.

Okay, that is fair. I kinda jump the gun since the key show the mark of Azem on it.

Originally Posted by Pimsan20

But the key doesn't always listen to the wielders. If it was then the Milala would have return to the source lickty split.

This is still an unanswered question, and one where the clues we have are... inconclusive.

We know Speaker Loquloqui made it work once, and that later on, Preservation got it to successfully Do Its Thing a few times (how many depends on how you define 'success'). 7.5 will include us finally getting to make it do something, too. So all we really know is that successfully using the key cannot be contingent on the Azem crystal, because we're the only person that's ever been able to add that to the equation; so whatever makes this run isn't the crystal, but something else entirely.

My best guess is what some other people have echoed; that the 'key' is just a facilitating tool for a greater system--perhaps one built off of something similar to the spell in the Azem crystal. We can make it happen without much struggle because we already have the thing that it's facilitating, while the millala and Preservation had to figure out the other half of this equation from base principles.

Originally Posted by Cleretic

This is still an unanswered question, and one where the clues we have are... inconclusive.

We know Speaker Loquloqui made it work once, and that later on, Preservation got it to successfully Do Its Thing a few times (how many depends on how you define 'success'). 7.5 will include us finally getting to make it do something, too. So all we really know is that successfully using the key cannot be contingent on the Azem crystal, because we're the only person that's ever been able to add that to the equation; so whatever makes this run isn't the crystal, but something else entirely.

My best guess is what some other people have echoed; that the 'key' is just a facilitating tool for a greater system--perhaps one built off of something similar to the spell in the Azem crystal. We can make it happen without much struggle because we already have the thing that it's facilitating, while the millala and Preservation had to figure out the other half of this equation from base principles.

If that theory is true, it makes me wonder what this greater system is and who made it and why.