Thread: 8.0 speculation

Originally Posted by Cleretic

See, my read (and the way I read 17cupsofcoffee's post) is that it's not a need to rejoin or a need for balance, because those two things imply agency that the planet just doesn't have. I think it's essentially weird transdimensional gravity; it's not a need, it's an inevitability.

Which I don't think is necessarily related to elemental imbalance

I think you are taking too narrow a read of aetheric imbalance. Aether in the game is a stand-in for energy systems, both actual energy and potential. This has always been something that has tickled me since ARR because they have been so consistent in this. Yes aether has elemental aspects but those are just specialised systems, the same as we have electrical energy, and heat energy, and kinetic energy, and yes gravitational energy. Ceruleum - liquid aether, food - aether that you eat, bodies in FFXIV have aether (energy), are powered by aether (food).

Gravity is a form of energy. Therefore gravity can be reduced to aether in the world of FFXIV. We know that the reflections have elemental imbalance, but they also have aetheric imbalance because right now the Source has what 8(?) times the aether of each of the individual reflections, which in a balanced system is more aether than all the reflections put together. So the Source has 8 times the gravity of the other reflections.

This alone wouldn't be enough if Hydaelyn and Zodiark still existed the barriers being held by Hydaelyn and the aether being animated by Zodiark then the aetheric (gravitational) change wouldn't matter as much because the light barriers would prevent rejoining and the dark would animate the aether such that the reflections were either a) lifted to a higher orbit, or b) had an increase in momentum to sustain the same orbit, thus balancing the aether (gravity) in the system.

The solution then is to balance the aether, of which balancing the elements is one part.