Quote Originally Posted by Turtledeluxe View Post
Well that leaves us a few likely cases. One is said person left them a very specific outline for the original arc that happened to be good. One is this team has lost their touch. The last is someone had overhwhelming influence on DT who was more concerned with telling their own story than one about our main cast.
No. Stop.

I pointed out the continuity of writers to make it clear to you that your conspiracy theory is objectively and measurably WRONG and you should drop it. There is not some lost and exiled master who is the only person capable of making 'Good FFXIV'; the same people made the entire thing.

You need to accept and reckon with the fact that, rather than some grand conspiracy, writers that you liked made a story that you didn't. Deal with that fact, rather than making up your own.

Quote Originally Posted by Cilia View Post
Why the Ascians never scooped up the Key is a big question mark, but time differentials may play a part in why they did nothing about Alexandrian society; plus they would have no reason to do so, since it was just a reflection and thus doomed to rejoining sooner or later if their plot ever came to fruition. Is it perfect writing? No, but that's what happens when you don't have a plot mapped out from start to finish.
Moving into actual discussion, what we can say at this point is that the Ascians had some level of fingers in the pie of Alexandria. They weren't mentioned for most of that time because it just wasn't really important or necessarily clear to anybody for most of that story; Alexandria and Preservation were the main problem, regardless of how they got there. It was only when Calyx used some straight-up creation magic that the question of the Ascians became relevant, and the Scions jumped on that one real fast, albeit without much of an active pursuit angle. Knowing what we do now, we can reason that Calyx has likely been in contact with Halmarut since before Plan Zodiark fell apart; what exactly that means isn't clear, but the question is more on Halmarut's head than anything.

The Ascians--or at least Halmarut--do seem to know about the key, what it is and does. However, crucially, the Ascians wouldn't actually have reason to care except as an interim tool. The Ascians can already cross dimensions; they don't need the key to do it, so to them the key's instead a trick to throw at a pawn to further their own plans, like the Heart of Sabik or the treasure of Seal Rock. It would make complete sense that they'd just leave it with Preservation and then later Tural, because it's just not important to them by itself.