The Echo - Mechanics and Boundaries

[Anonymoose]

If we do literally go into the past...

That would be accepting that time is actually linear in the first place. That's one of the fun-but-frustrating things about time travel fiction. Time can be seen as a dimension of space, so is time really "moving" and "linear" or is that how we perceive it? Sounds aren't really sounds, they're just the way our brain interprets vibrations in the air to give us an advantage in our common material surroundings. Color isn't really color, it's just the way our brain interprets electromagnetic radiation around the same wavelenth as our sun's peak to give us an advantage in our common material surroundings... etc. Time could be anything.

For that matter, if you were able to comprehend everything that has ever happened, you would be able to predict everything that will ever be. Ultimately, there's probably no such thing as free will or choice, just an endless stream of cause and effect whose seemingly infinite and miniscule variables of influence will never be comprehended by an individual, thus giving us the illusion that we're making decisions when in reality it's just testing our hardware.

Put those together and you might basically argue that all time is happening at once, everything contained in the timestream is already decided, and the nature of the medium is both fluid and (in an extra-three-dimensional sense) traversable, allowing closed loops and visitations that don't affect the overall nature of it. Perhaps it was even created this way by extradimensional beings, thus instilling an innate mechanism of destiny.

LONG STORY SHORT: When dealing with time travel, unless the fictional medium makes radically obvious paradoxical mistakes, it's best to just take it at face value as "functional."

Shame you're not on the localization team Moose.

The only thing holding me back from a cushy future of translating the Japanese language is a crippling inability to read the Japanese language.

Also, he would be able to sleep more soundly at night due to KNOWING.

I'd be like the Overly Attached Girlfriend of the lore team's meetings.

"Don't... don't you have some localizing to do?"

"Oh, no, I stayed here after you went home and wrapped that up already. I've got nothing but time to listen. You want me to leave? ... But then who would give you the antidote to what I put in the coffee maker a few hours ag- YOU CAN HAVE IT AFTER THE MEETING. Jeez. Touchy."

[Lady]

That would be accepting that time is actually linear in the first place. That's one of the fun-but-frustrating things about time travel fiction. Time can be seen as a dimension of space, so is time really "moving" and "linear" or is that how we perceive it? Sounds aren't really sounds, they're just the way our brain interprets vibrations in the air to give us an advantage in our common material surroundings. Color isn't really color, it's just the way our brain interprets electromagnetic radiation around the same wavelenth as our sun's peak to give us an advantage in our common material surroundings... etc. Time could be anything.

If were going down that path, the same can be said for truth. Truth can simply be a persons viewpoint/interpretation. IE. The Blind Men and the elephant.
That being said, when it comes to what Echo is, the NPC's that make statements about it only know what it is and what it is capable of from their own experiences with it. Its truth to them, but not necessarily fact. So what we can do with echo, might not be just what they state it can do.

I miss my lurking cave, returning to it now... ^_^

[Anonymoose]

the NPC's that make statements about it only know what it is and what it is capable of from their own experiences with it. Its truth to them, but not necessarily fact. So what we can do with echo, might not be just what they state it can do.

This would be what I think is happening with Minfilia when we compare her quotations to, for instance, Ferne's (where the latter has more in-game event support, as one might expect). As for truth, Ferne's said some very similar things about The Twelve and their nature - how, based on the evolution of mythology, they could truly be anything from actual deities all the way down to people with misunderstood technology and/or just great figures of ages past who've been "mythified."

All as irrelevant to the in-game experience as quantum physics when compared to... you know, the planet being a giant, sentient crystal made of pure "aether," of course, but that's why I stick to my "It's assumed functional until it's flat out broken" principle, lol.

/em tosses a pack of juiceboxes into the lurking cave

[Catapult]

Perhaps you can change how characters understand or relate to one another, or how they understand the situation as it unfolds, but will absolutely not cause a snowball effect, like, for instance, you make friends with one person so they ditch lunch with their other friend who gets sad and goes off into the shroud alone and takes it out on some opo-opos whose tribe flees for safety and ends up outside a Garlean base where they leave their half-eaten trash everywhere and some of it gets stuck in the gears of a Juggernaut on its rounds and then when it eventually returns to Garlemald for maintenance, the trash is pulled out of the gears and His Radiance shows up to raise troop morale on-base and slips on one of those opo-opo's tossed banana peels and impales himself on his gun-croissant. That probably won't happen.

I interpret things slightly differently. I see that mind-splitting headache as a symptom of you being kicked out of the echo, because something has substantively changed this time and history needs to slightly realign itself. The changes are small, but significant, broadly reflecting why they do what they do rather than reflecting their actual circumstances.

History would need to give Fye a new reason to wander the wood (becomes a senior conjurer maybe?), give Khrimm a new reason for his Hermitage and rebrand Dunstan in the eyes of many as harmless rather than a wildling, even though his supposed mission hasn't changed. It's enough to make your head spin.

[Anonymoose]

I interpret things slightly differently.

I've only been over it once, so your POV is definitely most credible analysis de facto for now. Though, your analysis makes me wonder if maybe we're not safe from Ashton Kutcher's influence after all...

[Anonymoose]

STARSHOWER TRIANGULATION
V.1


[Click Here for Full Sized Image]

This is my first attempt at triangulating the starshower locations as they are seen in-game.

I ENCOURAGE FACT-CHECKING, ERROR CALLING-OUT, AND GENERAL MOOSE-BASHERY

Operational Definitions:
Awakening Starshower - First Quest, personal, personal vision (confusingly mentioned by NPCs on occasion)
Public Starshower - Fourth Quest, seen by many including the Archon partner for that arc

• Purple Circles - Awakening Starshower APPARENT Locations
• Red Circles - Public Starshower APPARENT Locations
• Yellow Arrows - Direction in which the public starshower is seen
• Blue Arrow - Assumed path of Hob's ship across the Rhotano
• Red Arrow - Direction of Papalymp/Yda's crashing airship
• Red Line - Path of the chocobo carriage in Ul'dah

Initial Note of Interest

• Many presently assumed locations fall near beastmen camps.

• Awakening Starshowers
  • Gridania's in the opposite direction of the airship crash (East Shroud; Sylph area)
  • Ul'dah's outside Gate of Thal's entrance hallway (Paglth'an; Amalj'aa area)
  • Lominsa's directly overhead of the Rhotano (Underwater; Sahagin area)
• Public Starshoweres
  • Gridania's in the direction of Natalan? (Ixal camp)
  • Lominsa's near U'ghamaro? (Kobold camp)
  • Ul'dah's ..... ???
    

• If you draw a line from where the NPCs are standing in the fourth quest towards the starshower, you eventually end up in Sharlayan... is it possible that the starshower is very big and far away?
  • This is iffy; all three showers look localized with the shower between the NPCs and a distant landmark.

• Barring errors on my part, neither set of showers seem to uniformly aim towards the Fall of the Keeper.
  

[Catapult]

Interesting connection regarding the beastmen camps.

Now that I look it up, this is what Yda actually said:
Yda: They're falling towards the lake, Papalymo. Are you thinking what I'm th―
Meaning I'm now curious what difrection the other comets fell in.

[Anonymoose]

Yda: They're falling towards the lake, Papalymo. Are you thinking what I'm th―

If you line up the in-game maps instead of the world map, Mor Dhona would be in that direction, and Silvertear Lake much closer to Mor Dhona's label. However, the others would still not line up to Silvertear...

More questions than answers, I'm afraid - but at least we do have a little more information. The fact that the awakening and public starshowers take place at different angles is something I find very, very interesting.

[Mjollnir]

Do you think that, chronologically, the Echo within the Echo is the first Echo ever Echoed?

[Orophin]

You know Ferne has to be dying to jump into this convo after that map.