Hello all, late to the game i know. Please forgive me for getting a little lengthy.

I have always worked under the assumption that Sthalmann was on Hobs ship in "Civvies" as he was searching for what i would say are accomplices. Since i would say it agreeable that he has been working on taking over admiral for quite some time. I feel that its safe to say for whatever reason Sthalmann is commodore at the very beginning.

As far as the Trident goes i have always seen it as like what the Gotei 13 did in olden days Bleach. It was used when it was needed. For example if someone dies or their is a consensual challenge.

I do agree with a lot of stuff in this thread (though it is getting quite a bit along now). I Personally believe that at least Y'shtola has the power of the echo as well or something close to it. I have my suspicions of Thancred and i do not believe Yda and Papalymo have it.

On a related wild tangent, I think a lot of problems with continuity is us. I'm a firm believer that we are the proverbial thorn in the side on most everything we see.

Bear with me if you will that Limsa's and Ul'dah's plots could have easily played out way different had we not been there. I think that because we threw our "spanner" into the mix we caused issues. Since we are supposed to be viewing the past of someone else (how they remembered it) since we are there now, things are not quite right.

We are explained various powers of the echo through the storyline, but that really does not encompass what we see. The way i have it figured is that after the big aether explosion 10 years ago people started cropping up with echo powers. Certain people sensitive to these types of things gained various abilities. Seen as how some people can see the past and some can understand languages such as mooglespeak. Though we are very different as our powers are a direct gift from the mother crystal.

The example that alludes me to this.

In the Gridania story when dealing with the Pad'jal they speak to us outside the echo of things we need to do in the past mainly pertaining to dunstan and Fye. At the time we do not know we are going to the past so it nothing to us. Now if what Minfillia says is true and we can not change the past then why are these kids telling us to do so? I think that is what makes us so important is that we can affect the past and thats why stuff is hard to understand. It's Because we are fumbling like idiots trough the past cause we do not know any better.

Another thing that i think of is that we can not use the echo directly on the Pad'jal they know and block us. (Not sure where this was said but i remember it in the game somehwere.) So someone had to be leading us around to do stuff and the pad'jal had to be doing it knowingly since we can not do it ourselves to them.

Take it for what you will, though this is kinda my thoughts on it. The whole thing makes me think that the guy who made twin peaks is writing an episode of quantum leap...

Sorry for commenting and kinda derailing love what you guys have been doing here. Also cannot wait for official lore area on the new site so we can see what really happened.