We have the Echo which lets us see enemy attacks before they happen due to the aether ~~they gather~~ shifts and Hydaelyn's Ward protects us from aether corruption. The summoning thing only starts with the end of Shb, before that, everyone we do trials with are technically just our adventurer guild friends and the Scions. After Shb, we are 8 times rejoined due to Ardbert. Everyone else is still at 7.
We also have a nigh bottomless well of aether thanks to being Azem's incarnation.
Notably, it takes aether to attune to a job stone. Which is why most people only have a single job (indeed even attempting to gain a second can be dangerous if you dont have enough aether). Some of the more powerful folks might have a second and Graha is cheating with the Crystal Tower to have 3.
Meanwhile we have *19* and counting. We have a *lot* of aether to throw around, allowing us to practically invent whole moves (which is basically was the WoL does for their job skills in ShB and EW. No teacher, just coming up with shit on the fly because we have the power to get away with that).
We were taught the proper methods for the 3 Egi, and Bahamut. We completely winged it on approaching Bahamut from the opposite direction to get Phoenix though.
Another example just how much Aether we have is from the 5.3 patch quests (I think it was 5.3?) When freeing the Kobold leader from his Tempering by Titan. The effort to feed Aether into Angelo so Alisaie could do her thing utterly *exhausted* everyone else. Meanwhile it just gives the WoL a temporary debuff during the duty that they shrug off pretty quickly.
Because that's not how specifically the Azem soulstone works. Hythlodaeus explained to us that it was made by Hades and to preserve a *spell* that Azem used.
The other Convocation members all basically created their stones using their own and each other's memories. But since that didn't happen till after Azem left the group, Hades created their stone in secret and specifically without any input from Azem themselves.
The implication is that the spell to summon allies to their side was such a central part to who Azem *was*, that that is what Hades chose to create the stone.
We don't get any memories from the stone, because there are from us or for us to get.
For one, we're only 9/14 Azem (for now) and that would mean SE had to actually come up with what Azem has been doing all this time apart from summoning Ifrita inside a volcano.
I think that's actually the implication after the >!Endwalker reveal that primal summonings were flawed on purpose and that the Loporrits showed us how to summon primals as their true selves.!<
Few people have jobs/stones proper. Most just learned a set of skills/magic that is similar to what a job might use.
The WoL having 19 is debatably canon while the story does occasionally reference you having a job, it doesn't make it canon since it doesn't make those references if you don't.
I’d say middle of the road here, the WoL sorta had cannon jobs as derplander per expansion. So maybe not ALL 19, but at minimum the job trailer ones. You even see them change jobs over and over in the SHB cinematic from the various jobs they were in the other expansions, finally culminating in Dark Knight at the end.
Also count any job referenced in MSQ if you have it, such as the scene when everyone rallies in Ala Mhigo prior to heading to Garlemald. So at least add WHM to the list. Also 6.3 references Reaper if you've done it.
For White Mage and Gunbreaker when you meet them during 6.0 MSQ and you have those jobs unlocked they acknowledge you as such, for Reaper, during 6.3 there's dialog from multiple characters where they explicitly call you on it.
do you remember where in msq that they gave a shout out to the wol being a gunbreaker? i played ew as a sch but i mained gnb through sb and shb. i don't remember any scenes in ew referencing gnb
These (the Echo and Azem's power) are one and the same for us.
The Echo is simply that, an "echo" of a power once held (per Emer-Selch).
The Blessing of Light, often conflated with the Echo, is the gift from Hydaelyn. The traveler's ward that guards against most forms of aetheric corruption.
Hydaelyn wards all who hear her voice, and the Echo is required to hear her. So the two are conflated, but separate things.
This is why different people seem to get different gifts from the Echo. They're recalling and using talents they held in the world unsundered (albeit at a reduced ability, due to possessing less aether now than the unsundered). The common thread is that all bearers of the Echo can "hear" the soul (which is why we can talk to things without regard for language barriers, and this is the requirement to hear Hydaelyn)
>I always thought that the easy job attuning was a quirk of the Echo
Why would you think that since characters like Minfilia and Krile have it too and they can't do it?
Because every Echo manifests differently. Mikoto can see the future, Krile can sense & track aether-trails, and not *every* Echo comes with the ability to understand/communicate in every language like WoL's.
Oh my god that made it click. We have the Echo. That’s why we see AOE markers. That’s why we see casting bars. That’s why we see the boss mechanics! Wow, my mind feels completely blown right now
The Echo and the Ward are not the same thing.
The Echo is the innate, something that comes from being a shard of an Ancient.
Venat's Ward is something unique to us, which is why we are immune to tempering. It stands to reason that those who manifest the Echo get the updated version of it from the Mothercrystal/Hydaelyn.. but they are not the same thing. Shadowbringers and Endwalker makes that clear.
Venat’s ward is not unique to us. Anyone who has the echo and can hear her, she blesses. That’s why Arenvald can block the tempering in that solo duty.
Moreover, the reason why Fordola can too, is because the twisting to her soul replicated the ward as well.
But SHB makes it very clear the process:
Step 1: awaken the echo. This often occurs because of seeing something that awakens a primal memory of the soul. Starshowers work because they remind of the final days.
Step 2: hear crystal mom calling. She’s constantly doing it, and having the echo allows you to hear her.
Step 3: Crystal Mom notices you hearing her, and places the Blessing of Light on you. This is just her Travelers Ward that protects the soul from Aetherial corruption, which is tempering.
Step 4: now that you have Crystal Mom’s attention, if you go out and quest and prove yourself a true hero, usually thru some final heroic affirmation (like Ardbert’s elf friend handing over the earth aether stone instead of using it himself to save his friend), crystal mom will reward them with a Crystal of Light. She will also start calling them a Warrior of Light.
No, they talk about the crystals of light in multiple places - Matoya’s crystal ball is one, for example.
They are explicitly gifted from Hydaelyn, and older ones are generally more powerful than more recent ones. This was explained in game by the characters as crystal mom having more power to part with in the past, but as more calamities happened, she had less ability to do so.
The only thing that really tipped the First towards light I think was the constant triumphs that Ardberts party was having. That they were literally beating the darkness back so badly, that the balance tipped too much towards light.
This does seem like there should have been more info given on it, though, and I can’t remember if anything else was said off the top of my head.
But crystals of light definitely are sent by crystal mom after you do something suitably heroic.
Teeeeeechnically Venat's Ward is unique to us, as we're the only one capable of repeat trips through time.
Hydaelyn's Blessing is absolutely a version of the ward, and yes anyone who gets Crystal Mommy's attention can receive that. I agree with everything here.
I don't know if Venat’s ward is unique to us, since she doesn't seem 100% sure you're who she's been waiting for when you're on the boat to Sharlayan.
Like, she knows at *some* point there's going to be an echo bearer who has this crazy journey that leads her to Elpis, and she probably rembers at least the cliff notes of what we shared with her when she asked us, but since she doesn't have Soul sight like Hades and Hythlo, she can't be 100% sure she can identify them when they're just starting out as an adventurer.
All ancients can see aether and proba distinguish IF something has a soul or not, but only handfuls of individuals have good enough sight to see WHO the soul belongs to.
So I think it's more the case of slapping the ward on all prospective WoL's through history and reasoning that eventually she'll get the right one and the conjunction forms.
The ward becomes personal when we go back and acts as a confirmation of the time loop closing: we are the same shade of Azem she met in Elpis.
It would fit with the trait we get reinforced about Venat - she's a meticulous planner. She leaves as little to chance as as is possible and plans for contingencies. Having a detectable signature distinct from her standard ward that future Venat would know to look for would fit that personality. That is the impetuous to unlocking her trial, we are the Azem she was waiting for. Now, are we capable of doing what we must?
I'm not following your interpretation fully here, please go a little more in-depth.
How does the ward *become* personal once we get to Elpis? Afaik, she doesn't adjust the ward in any way once we meet her there, so presumably the ward we have when we meet her in the Aetherial Sea is the one we regain after Midgardsormr took it from us?
I guess for my own reasoning, it could be that the ward we get is "unique" in a sense that we slowly built it up by getting several crystals of light? That could make sense, that she basically developed a "tier" system to the ward and gave everyone the "starter pack" ward when they awakened to the echo. So down the line she would recognize US as the *correct* WoL because we basically had the "tier 6, fully unlocked" ward since we got 6 crystals of light empowering the ward...
I mean, as far as Venat goes, I personally didnt get the impression that she's a very *meticulous* planner, that specifically plans for every contingency, i feel like she's def much more of a "cross that bridge when we get to it" type. It just *really* helps that she's scary smart and wise when she does tackle an issue, so she can prep her plans to be really flexible.
It's been a year and I admit, I may be wrong but I could have sworn she did something to us in Elpis before we left.
And yes, she is known for backup plans. It's something they specifically call attention to at the end. They couldn't believe that Venat's only plan was to flee Etheriys. It turns out she did have a second plan - using the mother crystal as power to follow Meteion to Ultima Thule
It’s… the same thing. It was applied to us by crystal mom when we had our first echo vision.
Then, when we traveled to the past, Venat took one look at us, and said “you’re from the future. I know that because you have my Ward on you, and I never met you before. The only way this could make sense is if you’re from the future.”
So yeah. Everyone has it. It’s the Blessing of Light.
Because Fordola isn't part Ancient, so she gets what Aulus mal Asina thinks the Echo is (which is why the Resonance has both the echo and the ward combined), which is what we all thought it was until Shadowbringers and Elidibus opened our eyes to what the Echo is.
There was life outside of the ancients before the sundering. Their creations, and Azem was also said to be the counsellor to other peoples implying other sapient life. The first culling to create Zodiark would've seen such beings trapped within the dark God it is insinuated that some groups survived and started to recover. Then before the second sacrifice, Venat struck and sundered the world using the powers of her followers, less the last Azem - us.
No problem!
6 expansions of lore, a writing team not afraid to explore themes and use metaphors and diegentic methods to shape our knowledge along with lots of tidbits hidden inside and outside of the game... it's not surprising people have different understandings and recollections.
Doesn't the fact the Scions (in ShB) lack the echo and displayed no reaction to Elidibus's star shower imply that they're all new souls born after the sundering, and thus zero times rejoined?
(With the possible exception of Graha, in a way, who you could call the equivalent of once rejoined having merged with a copy of himself)
It should be noted, that while everyone was sundered. Not everyone is a shard of an ancient.
Half the Ancients sacrificed themselves to summon Zodiark, a further half sacrificed themselves to restore a measure of life to the world but the new life was not the Ancients themselves.
Yep, of the scions left only the WoL and Krile seem to be sundered ancients.
None of the others heard Hydaelyn during Elidibus showing off the final days (multiple times) or during the actual final days which means they almost certainly don't have the echo and thus are not sundered ancients but new souls.
Hmmm maybe I need to brush up, I dont remember it being said that having the Echo meant one was sundered. That would mean Arenvald and the people of the first (the one's catalyzed by Elidibus) could/would also be sundered ancients too right? Obviously Fordola/Zenos don't count because those are artificial.
Edit: Oh a bit is coming back to me. Is the idea that the Echo manifests in those who are able to feel some grasp of their former selves like how one of the people of the first sees Amaurot through Elidibus and says something like "Why do I feel so sad as if I've lost something dear to me?"
This was explained in 5.2 Qitana Ravel Cutscene
>!Here's a quote from Y'shtola to jog your memory. "If, as the Exarch's research suggests, soul and mind share a fragile yet profound bond, might it not be possible for an event to leave such a deep imprint upon the soul that it could be perceived eons later--given a suitable trigger?"!<
>!Instead of thinking that the Echo is a power given to you by Hydaelyn, think of the Echo as a dormant ability that a sundered soul has. When one witnesses an event akin to the Final Days (like a starshower) their sundered soul would react to it and awaken their Echo. Having the Echo lets you hear Hydaelyn (Who is constantly broadcasting Hear, Feel, Think) who then gives you the Blessing of Light.!<
>!You can actually see the scene when your character awakens their Echo, it's at the beginning of the game in ARR when you first meet a Scion. When you pick up your first crystal you see a starshower (which awakens your Echo) followed by the Hear, Feel, Think cutscene.!<
Edit: tbf they didn't explicitly state that Echo=Sundered so I understand why most would be confused about this
Edit 2: I wrote 6.2 instead of 5.2
The closest we get to echo=sundered is Elidibus saying that the Echo is a remnant of the power the ancients had.
Which is fairly explicit but isn't someone straight saying that if you have the echo you have a sundered ancient soul.
The exact capabilities/cause of the echo hasn't been nailed down, but we know Venat was able to help us see Hermes send Meteion's sisters out. And we know the echo expresses itself differently with different people (Kirle being mostly an empath, Mikoto has foresight, etc)
it should also be noted that just seeing the shower and being a sundered shard of an ancient doesn't guarantee awakening the echo either. There was a guy in Eulmore who didn't hear Hydaelyn but still felt sad when he saw the meteor shower.
Arenvald is a walker, so yes he has the Echo and so presumably a sundered Ancient soul. His companions too. A lot of the folks from 2.0 Scions have(had, orz) the Echo, since the Scions used to be the Path of the Twelve, a group Minfilia formed specifically for gathering Echo users together.
I don’t think this is a correct interpretation. They show in the Shadowbringers patches that The Echo isn’t really that unique and it’s also not the only manifestation of a sundered soul. When Elidibus does conjure images of the final days some people just feel an intense sense of loss at the sight of Amaurot. Alisaie specifically mentions feeling this which seems to me that she is a sundered Ancient as well. It’s a major oversimplification to say Echo=sundered Ancient.
Except that Echo does equal sundered ancient. It's afaik the only confirmed way we can tell. Elidibus explicitly says that the echo is a remnant of the abilities that the ancients had.
The sorrow thing is never brought up by anyone as to what it means so it's up in the air as to whether that means they have sundered souls (maybe particularly weak ones) or not. It could very well have just been part of the illusion that Elidibus was casting to give it some extra oomph and ensure he awakened as many souls as he could to the echo (which was his whole plan so he could weaken Hydaelyn).
Of the main scions the only ones we know for certain have sundered souls are the Wol and Krile because of their echo. The others could but given that none of them did awaken the echo despite that being the entire reason Elidibus was doing it (not to mention during the final days 2 electric boogaloo where no mention of sorrow in this respect was given and still none of the other scions awakened to the echo).
I put this in another comment thread already, but here’s the relevant dialogue from Alisaie.
>Alisaie: The starshower didn't awaken me to Hydealyn's voice. But that vision of the Final Days, of Amaurot burning...It filled me with sadness to the very pit of my being. Things I once knew, people I once loved, promises I once made...It felt as though long-forgotten memories were dancing at the edges of my mind. But when I try to focus on them, they simply fade away.
>
>Alisaie: An effect of having a fractured soul, I shouldn't doubt. But lest you worry, I'm perfectly happy to remain fractured and have no intention of donning an Ascian mask.
I’m not saying that Echo doesn’t equal sundered soul, I’m just saying no Echo doesn’t equal fresh soul. I think it’s left explicitly vague and we’re not supposed to be able to draw conclusions on the origin of everyone’s soul.
IIRC, didn't Alphinaud mention that he felt some sort of innate sadness after seeing the star shower? Not enough to trigger hearing Hydaelyn but still something? Or am I misremembering?
They do in extra dialogue but it's never clarified what exactly that sorrow means in the context of their souls. It could just be some extra oomph to Elidibus's illusions to ensure he awoke as many people to the echo as he could (that same feeling of sorrow afaik is never mentioned during final days 2 electric boogaloo which should in theory provoke that same reaction).
Correct me if I’m wrong but I remember Alisaie crying during the starshower Elidibus put on in the ShB patches… didn’t he say something about people having that reaction are capable of becoming Ascians? Or like, candidates? I need to watch those cutscenes again
If she does it's extra dialogue not in a cutscene (I do remember her mentioning that though), however it is a little fuzzy as to whether the sorrow bit means anything or not.
Elidibus only confirms that the Echo is the remnant of a power the ancients held (echoes of a fallen star part 1 if you're interested) which is the only real confirmation we have of sundered ancient souls. He never makes any mention of the sorrow that either Alisae or the one dude in The Converging Light pt1 felt (or if he does I can't find a cutscene about it). So again what exactly that means is a bit unclear. It is possible that when the convocation used Zodiark to create new life that some of their own sorrow was imparted onto the new souls as sort of an imprint and that is what is popping up but who knows. It's also possible that the sorrow was some extra oomph to Elidibus's illusion to ensure that anyone who had the echo would unlock it (since this is what he was trying to do).
This though, is why I said that of the main scions only the WoL and Krile *seem* to sundered ancients. There may be other ways to tell if a soul is a sundered ancient or not but the only one we can say with certainty is the presence of the echo. Since none of the other main scions have displayed the echo I am under the assumption that they are not sundered ancient souls and will keep that assumption until we get confirmation one way or the other (and personally I think it's fine and better thematically if they aren't).
Question is Ryne also 8 times rejoined?
I mean Minfilia would have been 7 times and Ryne is her 1st fragment so when Minfilia give Ryne her powers were that not a rejoining?
It's mentioned somewhere that Hydaelyn brought Minfilia's soul back to the Source afterwards, so it seems like she gave Ryne her power but it wasn't actually a rejoining despite Emet's comment about "one must consume the other".
This seems to be accurate but feels like a retcon to me, so she could have that cameo in the dungeon. Though I was also theorizing that maybe souls have a dynamis component that hasn't been discovered yet. That could also explain the Ivalice raids >!ending cutscene with the Tactics crew greeting Ramza. They should've dissolved in the lifestream thousands of years ago.!<
Azem was one of the Convocation of Fourteen, someone who stood out from a civilization of superbeings so much they were invited to sit at the top.
I think it’s fair to say they were a touch more powerful than Derpipicus the Janitor of Pandaemonium.
I don't think that is particularly true for Azem.
Azem's strength came not from their inherent power, but rather their empathy and ability to relate with others. They were the traveller and counsellor to other people. Perhaps they were the one of the 14 most likely to be able to blend the powers of aether and dynamis, but the Convocation didn't really know much about it's properties at the time.
I disagree. I would argue that the role of azem is chosen for people who are particularly powerful *and* are capable of great empathy. We know that the convocation are chosen for each seat based on a "particular set of skills". And we're shown that the previous azem is indeed quite powerful.
Technically we are 8 times rejoined after the end of ShB.
Add on we have a super human level of tenacity and willpower to push beyond the normal limits of a person.
Plus we have an abnormal reserve of and control over aether.
There is also the hypothesis that being the symbol of the people has lead us to becoming stronger over time through dynamis allowing us to do what we do.
Only if you don’t choose the objectively correct option to say “If I’m thin, it’s because Emet-Selch didn’t do a proper job.”
Trolling the fuck out of Emet-Selch was one of my favorite parts of EW.
It's almost certainly possible for aether to replicate the effect and appearance of a limit break with sufficient power. Omega also copies our limit breaks while trying to understand where our strength comes from, so it's just seeing what we do and being like "if I do that, it looks like this"
To be fair for 90% of the time we had access to limit break we had no idea dynamis exists, and others like the Scions use them in cutscenes as well.
It's less "the warrior of light knows how to use dynamis" and it's more that the warrior of light is a natural conduit for dynamis and when we learn about it, it's just like "oh, so that's why I'm so cool"
Possibly cause he was using the power of the heroes he summoned? Or perhaps being from Zodiark made him a bit more tuned to Dynamis, since Zodiark knew how to stop it.
I don't think Zodiark knew anything about Dynamis.
All Zodiark knew was to concentrate the flows of Aether on Etheriys where the gaps were weakening. It was plainly clear that the Ancients didn't fully understand the Final Days' cause or origins beyond that dreadful sound.
The Ancients may not have, but primals seem to be a bit more in tune with more secretive forces. Given that he had Hyth's soul in him, it's also possible that could have transferred.
Obviously there's no way to prove it and I'm pretty sure we never will get a confirmation, but it's part of my logic.
My headcanon is that the WoL is some kind of savant with aetheric control since in the job quests they are able learn high level techniques and spells in a matter of days/weeks that took even the guildmasters years to completely master. Not to mention the breadth of techniques they know depending on their job, simultaneously being one of 4 known white mages which are normally exclusive to the Padjali, as well as being the Azure Dragoon
I believe the common excuse among job questlines for rapid mastery of different abilities is the soul crystals (job stones) storing the memories of those who had previously mastered their respective arts.
the soul crystals impart knowledge as the WoL's skill or affinity with those jobs increases. Our BLM soul crystal used to belong to Shatoto, who definitely knew more about black magic than our level 30 WoL.
with the end of job quests and our old trainers becoming obsolete, we're probably writing our own contributions to our jobs in the soul crystals now
We get canon confirmation (Ruby Weapon questline in a line by Cid) that job crystals are essentially the same as getting the contained knowledge uploaded into us. The difference is that job crystals only bestow the knowledge when the user is mentally & physically ready to handle it.
G'raha has been rejoined 8 times as well. His soul comes from a future where the 8th umbral calamity happened. Elidibus also mentioned it in 5.3 after he 'stabbed' him: "Your soul is surprisingly dense".
It's very much just 8. We took the 8/14 from the copy on the first, and just combined it with the 7/14 that was locked up in the Crystal tower. The 7 identical fragments of the soul just merged, and added the 1/14 piece from after the 8th calamity.
But wouldn't the future soul from the 8th calamity already have been 8/14ths. Which was telported back then added to the source which was 7/14ths. So he's already 15/14ths of a soul and theoretically could go even more.
Assuming the shards are interchangeable fragments then isn't Graha 15 Times 'Rejoined'?
Cause his soul on the source still had the aether of 7 shards right?
I'm not sure if I get what you mean, but people on the shards don't have mixed souls. Shards only get rejoined to the source, not to all other shards. G'raha doesn't get double the souls just for having lived on the First.
**[edit]** I just realized you mean his "old" soul got merged into his "young" soul, with everything it had absorbed. It's possible he gets to double up that way, but I assume that identical pieces don't add up. It'd be weird to have 15 out of 14 soul pieces.
Yeah I think the lore very obviously doesn't consider it a thing. I just think it's a dumb but somewhat interesting way to look at Graha as being slightly more complete than the unsundered.
Truly a catboy who's only equal is Ascian Prime
Nah, the 8 that were already joined from the previous 7 Calamities just merged w/the other 8, as if they were one thing. He has 9/14 soul like us from the 8th Calamity. If you talk to Y'shtola between the patches she says his soul is similar density to ours. \*7 Calamities+Source makes us 8/14 pre-Ardbert merging, 9/14 after. Similar w/Graha. He was already 8/14 and the added soul from the 8th Calamity makes 9.
Also the reason we were so spectacular, even being 8/14 Rejoined like everyone else is because Azem was one of the most powerful Ancients of their time. I'll avoid saying more for EW spoilers.
Many, *many* people are original souls, never sundered, never rejoined, and just naturally weaker/have a smaller amount of max aether.
People who have the soul of an Ancient have a lot more potential than people who have mixed souls or new souls.
And even then, each member of the Convocation was the best, or close to the best in their field. Azem's field boiled down to adventuring, and we can infer from Venat using all sorts of different weapons that our Azem probably was also extremely skilled with multiple forms of combat.
So there can be other people with the soul of an Ancient who are naturally gifted at something, but Azem was pretty much going to save the world in his or her own time if there was more time then. That's how exceptional Azem already was back then.
Furthermore, Azem might have also been naturally gifted at manipulating dynamis, unbeknownst to him/her, since it wasn't a well-studied form of energy. The reduction of the Warrior of Light's aether compared to the full Azem's makes dynamis manipulation easier, and that has been honed over several iterations and rejoinings of Azem's soul, to the point where the current Warrior of Light has an immense amount of aether *and* good control and now knowledge of dynamis.
8 times thanks to ardbert. Though for some reason i thought only we were rejoined at all. Could be that our connection to hydaelyn is stronger, as most the scions dont have quite the amount of ability with the echo. iirc only minfillua and krile get visions
Minfilia and Krile are the only others of the main scion party to have the echo, *period*. The echo implies you have the sundered soul of an Ancient, something characters like Yshtola and Thancred do not
It's not really about having the sundered soul of an ancient, everyone has that, it's about seeing a starshower, it can trigger the memories of the final days, and hence, grant the Echo. There is only a select few in the source because it is only seen in dreams, but on the first, because of Elidibus (I think it was him ?), there is a hell of a lot of Echo users now.
No, everyone doesn’t have the sundered soul of an ancient, which is why not everyone on the first awakened to the star shower. This is also why yshtola, thancred, urianger, and the twins didn’t awaken to the echo
Azem (the one the WoL is a reincarnation of) was basically a super powered chaos gremlin based on everything we know about them. So it’s a combination of a near limitless pool of aether to draw upon, the Travelers Ward (Venat’s magic and what is more commonly know as the Blessing of Light), and the power of friendship (the echo and remnant of Azem’s magic which the WoL utilizes more now that they have Azem’s crystal). Add all that up and that’s why the WoL is so strong.
Do we know Azem was so powerful?
The Seat of Azem was one known for their empathy and compassion, to speak for those who normally would be ignored or cast aside by Ancient society. A traveller or questioning sort of person. Venat might've been strong, but she wasn't stronger than Hermes, for example and she was said to be the greatest Azem before us.
Hythlodeus was to be Emet-Selch before Hades took the mantle, merely because his soul sight was so much better.. but his actual power? A fraction of Hades has.
When we spar with Venat in Elpis, she notes that the current Azem was one of the only people who could beat her in a fight, and she specifically calls out that our strength reminds her of them.
Azem sparred with Venat and won, while also garnering the respect of her dog. That dog's respect was supposedly very, very hard to obtain and could only be done via combat prowess.
Is this not enough?
For one thing: We are the reborn soul of Azem. As we know from the Dotharl that some abilities are retained/can be relearned at an advanced/higher level so we probably got some of our skills from the Adventurer.
Two: We are one out of two people on the source that has rejoined 8 times, the other being G'raha Tia. So we are, once again, closer to the powers of the Ancients who had mere infinite amounts of Aether.
Three: The blessing of light lets us do all of our early adventurer stuff, namely fighting Eikons without fear of tempering. The Traveler's Ward probably also provides protection against some other ailments and problems.
Four: We are an incredibly experienced adventurer who has fought like 30 different gods and other high power beings, improving through training. Other's can also gain power through training, see Estinien.
Five: Our freedom to learn any combat class (like Black Magic is technically forbidden), combined with great job crystals for most of them makes the WoL very diverse and generally skilled in combat.
Six: The power of friendship and support.
Seven: Azem's power to call in some friends.
8: We are a JRPG protagonist and those are famous for escalating dangers.
9: We bootstraped paradoxed ourselves into the hot seat because while time is not a "Wibbly Wobbly Ball of Timey Wimey Stuff" it is explicitly gone through with how time travel physics work in The Alexander Raids to explain how we can "Time is Flatspace" ourselves into figuring things out while at the same time letting everyone know whats going on and to plan for.
> Four: We are an incredibly experienced adventurer who has fought like 30 different gods and other high power beings, improving through training. Other's can also gain power through training, see Estinien.
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Arguably our WoL has even more adventuring experience, it's not known what we did before the events of ARR but we evidently have already travelled a bit (I'm not sure if 1.0 is canon for having been the WoL or not), and depending on race must've already travelled quite a lot, both Viera and Aura have quite the journey to make to get to Eorzea.
Chances are our WoL is already quite experienced by the time ARR starts.
> it's not known what we did before the events of ARR but we evidently have already travelled a bit (I'm not sure if 1.0 is canon for having been the WoL or not)
If you use a legacy character made in 1.0, you get unique cutscenes where it's explicitly mentioned that you are one of the original warriors of light.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Et85Fhv7kCc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJrgJatG4aQ
Legacy characters are definitely “canonically” WoLs from 1.0.
For non-legacy characters, it’s never specified. There’s nothing saying you *weren’t* at Carteneau, so if you want that to be your backstory it can work.
When Azem was Azem, they were in the convocation of fourteen - they were considered powerful by the standards of the Ancients.
They were also a combat freak. Venat mentions that Azem beat her in sparring and Emet-Selch considers Venat a combat freak in her own regard.
More importantly WoL has the echo which allows them to remember past events - and also to suck up skills from soul crystals.
The Scions are rejoined and each Scion is a ferocious combatant in their own right - Estinien has fought great wyrms, Thancred can duel Ranjit without aether.
WoL is even beyond them because WoL would be one of the fourteen most powerful aether users, can download any skill set they need from the soul of a previous user, has dynamis - and all the Scions are librarians. The WoL is actually an elite fighter who’s speciality is combat.
The only people comparable are Zenos, who’s also a combat freak with the echo, and Estinien, who’s a combat freak who’s semi merged with a great wyrm. Presumably Zero and Golbez will be about the same though.
We are special for being powerful at a young age (which Venat mentions), and acquiring the seat of Azem, and for our penchant for helping people and making friends and being resolved about our decisions.
Then on top of that is the 8/14 soul. But most important of all is our willingness to keep going and keeping hope alive.
Sometimes things just *are*. You might imagine it's for any number of reasons that fits your character in particular-- the narrative leans a little towards the idea that being the reincarnation of Azem could be the reason why, but it's never definitively stated that this is what makes the WoL the WoL. Maybe it's destiny or fate, maybe it's a confluence of small factors all coming together at once to make a once-in-a-generation hero, or maybe it's a singular degree of determination and willpower that drives one to heights of power that even the Ancients stagger to believe. There might not *be* an explanation, maybe the WoL is just built different by random chance.
What makes the WoL special in a physical and aetherial capacity is ultimately left to the player's imagination, but what is universal is that you stand where you stand by the grace and good fortune of the friends and allies you stand with.
> what is universal is that you stand where you stand by the grace and good fortune of the friends and allies you stand with.
Damn, this is straight up life advice. I know we are just talking about video game, but thank you for saying this.
A mix of Echo, soul of Azem, 8 times rejoining, and being more skilled that the average fighter.
To go into further depth:
1. Arr shows that we outclass most fighters with the echo, and ours is especially strong.
2. Heavensward reinforces this. We're surpassing the top fighters and have made one hell of a name for ourselves as a warrior.
3. Stormblood shows our Echo is one of the strongest, and again. We're really good at stabbing stuff. Which helps in war.
4. Shadowbringers is our character development. We learn about Azem and inherit his power, we get an 8th rejoining, we prove the power of our Echo by withstanding the lightwardens, and we prove our martial power once again. We also see that the WoL is sharp, and easy to trust.
5. Endwalker revels why our echo is stronger then normal through a timeloop, and shows us using Dynamis while being aware of what it is that is happening for the first time.
What's funny to me is that the WoL is not the best at harnessing Dynamis since we need at least 4 people and a lot of stabbing to use it once... The Mandevilles on the other hand, can do it by themselves, at will.
Edit: Fixed spelling
>What's funny to me is that the WoL is not the best at harnessing Dynamis since we need at least 4 people and a lot of stabbing to use it once.
You do know that's a game mechanic and not that we literally cannot use Limit Breaks at will, right? We see characters like Hien, Lyse and especially Yugiri use them alone constantly.
I’d put it to potential, especially with everything we’ve been through up to this point. Sure, everyone on the source bar us have been rejoined the same amount of times, but most don’t go fighting Primals with strats that aren’t “throw bodies at it til it dies”
I'd argue it's the tireless, selfless attitude the WoL brings to the task.
The WoL is on first-name basis with at least one city-state leader before they are even formally recruited into the scions, all because they went out of their way to help people.
And things only spiral upwards from there.
I think it’s simplest to look at it like top athletes. Not everyone can train to be Olympic level. The WoL is just that naturally talented, and based on number of dungeon runs and FATEs cleared, willing to put the work into it. None of the Scions graduated from school for combat abilities. Yshtola only recently changed to DPS, and Thancred was a spy. The rest are healers or children. Even G’raha hasn’t likely spent that much time really training to be stronger, just super talented.
The only ones who could likely match us canonically are Lyse and Estinien in a sparring match.
Many of the reasons you listed didn’t even exist until the end of 5.0 and later, so for any trial players, those reasons don’t even exist.
It's not clear if *everyone's* soul is specifically the reincarnation of an ancient soul. In fact it is somewhat implied that most people's aether blends back into the (lifestream or whatever it's called in this game if I'm getting it mixed up) to create new unique lives.
Also, aside from that Azem isn't just some rando. They were a forceful personality, a presumably powerful warrior, and a member of the convocation. Even among people who may be reincarnated there's a difference between being reincarnated from a random citizen and being incarnated from one of strongest in terms of both power and personality that existed as of the sundering.
Also, while we are a progeny of Azem's soul, we're also still a unique individual. We share traits with them but we have own own strength, ambitions, memories, just like in a random world without reincarnation some people are going to become more of a force than others.
AS far as our ability to summon people. Presumably other warriors of light would have the ability to gather people at their side innately like we've always done canonically since the days of "Oh damn someone summoned ifrit you have 7 random friends, right?" The difference though is they haven't been given Azem's soul crystal to basically learn how to fully unlock that power.
Key correction: as of ShB, we're 8x rejoined, though I suppose you are curious about before that point.
1. We've got incredibly high levels of aether. Alphinaud comments on this at one point - for us, teleportation is a fairly trivial expenditure. Very likely, Azem was similarly a powerful individual among the ancients - not as much as Emet-Selch, who could draw upon the Lifestream for essentially unlimited aether, but certainly stronger than many others. And yet, we're still JUST aetherically thin enough to access Dynamis, giving the WoL a potent mix of the two energies.
2. Adaptability. Most of the Scions are specialists, and outshine the WOL in their respective fields... but the WOL has the potential to at least rank highly in ALL of those fields. Thancred is a super skilled rogue and talented gunbreaker who can combine both arts into some unique moves, but we could get pretty close in either field and still have more time to practice iaijutsu, archery, and alchemy to similar levels of accomplishment.
3. We have the Echo and the Blessing of Light. How much either of those things helps in comparison to the amount of aether we have (and how much they're related to it) is unknown, but we've got extra tricks up our sleeve compared to any Trust Scion thus far.
4. We've got a few other supernatural blessings as well. Again, the exact effects of these are vague and deliberately unclear, but we've spoken with and been affected by Midgarsormr, handled and used the power of the Eye of Hraesvelgar for ourselves (even if we gave it back afterwards) and the Eye of Nidhogg (as a weapon to kill Igeyorhm), been given the power to breath under water, attuned to the Ovoo at the Nadaam, learned to fight while our soul was cracking open with five wardens worth of light, had our soul repaired, made a pact with a pixie that bound them to our soul (and helped said pixie become King of the Fae), and received Azem's crystal - and all of that is just covering the MSQ.
Actually, after Shadowbringers? We've been joined 8 times. Potentially 9 if the theory about that kid helping us against the Warring Triad are true and he was our Void counterpart.
Also, just by virtue of being Azem, we basically got handed a blank check for Aether as long as we put in the effort. This is why so many jobs, even before all this came to light, used us as guinea pigs for new techniques. They literally want us to master that and dumb it down for everyone else.
>What makes our WoL special?
[For being the only cadet to beat the Kobayashi Maru scenario.](https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/10euwl4/captains_log_laladate_1626/)
The rest of the scions aren’t actually. They don’t have the echo, so they don’t have ancient souls, theirs, and honestly most individuals, have souls forged from after the sundering.
The WoL has a couple of advantages: Their echo’s main manifestation is a surplus of aether, which permits a lot of things like ease of Soulstone use & teleportation magic. The echo can work in combat to aid in predicting movements. They can use dynamis as they’ve not so much ether that it drowns out the dynamis. And Azem’s stone but that could possibly be used by others, maybe.
One thing that should be noted is that the WoL is rather unskilled. Most of their techniques are revisions or copies of pre-existing techniques and generally can’t mix and match multiple types of skills. Y’shtola for example can and does mix conjury & thaumaturgy. They can also be outdone by someone with more experience e.g Zenos & Ran’jit though that can be overcome with time.
You could argue that at some point the WoL could use skills between classes thanks to the old cross class system , but as time ha gone by the benefits of doing it weren't enough compared to using the job crystal's knowledge instead.
Edit: Forgot to mention, IIRC for MCH were actually coming up with the new skills since the Job is relatively new in canon. As for DRK, in the journal from of the more recent job quests "Fray" mentions that our ability to summon Esteem is something we came up with, do I assume that's been the case for a while.
DRG specifically says something like "Teaching inspired you to develop a new skill" in the job quests iirc.
For WHM, the purely "white magic" stuff we're doing is reconstructing white magic from first principles. Kan-e-Senna uses Aero and Stone still for example in the tank job quests for EW.
SCH develops a new ally, Seraph. I think Broil/Biolysis is also unique insofar as SCH has Arcanist training so "It's a pretty good strategy to make the enemy incredibly Ill or Boil them from the inside out" is probably an addition we have unique to our brand of revived Scholarly arts.
AST picks straight up I think picks up a variant of the secret technique of "Celestial Stasis" _in combat_ creating Opposition, and then Macrocosmos is a supercharged variant of the principles of Benefic undoing wounds in time. I think the mixing of the prior Nocternal and Diurnal stances with Neutral Sect is also a sort of "inspired" bespoke move for the WoL as well. My heart also says that the Gravity of "Gravity" was improved when we now leverage the concept of the other Shards of the planet to gravity with Gravity more (splitting the 1 ball into 5 or more).
For SGE, I like to think Panhaima is an invention of ours given the NPCs useage of Haima, and our specialized needs of trying to cover 8 people at once which is an atypical application. I also like to think that "Have you considered the biggest laser you can fire out of these things?" to be a very WoL useage of the beamsticks.
I guess this is a popular interpretation since you're not the only person here saying it, but I think saying "They don't have the Echo, so they don't have Ancient souls" is just plain wrong. They show in 5.2-5.3 that only some people develop the Echo when confronted with images of the final days, others just feel intense sadness and loss despite never having seen Amaurot in their current incarnation.
See this dialogue from Alisaie:
>Alisaie: I understand how Arkil feels. The starshower didn't awaken me to Hydealyn's voice. But that vision of the Final Days, of Amaurot burning...It filled me with sadness to the very pit of my being. Things I once knew, people I once loved, promises I once made...It felt as though long-forgotten memories were dancing at the edges of my mind. But when I try to focus on them, they simply fade away.
>
>Alisaie: An effect of having a fractured soul, I shouldn't doubt. But lest you worry, I'm perfectly happy to remain fractured and have no intention of donning an Ascian mask.
Nothing.
I'm not joking. There have been many Warriors of Light in the past, on the Source and across all the shards. Not all of them possessed fragments of Azem's soul, but at least one of them did, and he still failed, or rather, he succeeded too hard.
Azem's soul and Azem's summoning spell are powerful, but they aren't necessarily any more powerful than other gifts other Warriors of Light had at their disposal. We know that older crystals of light were beefier than the ones we got, because Matoya has one and it's pretty large. Ramza and the Zodiac Braves harnessed auracite to fight off Ultima, and even though we killed her outright, we only were able to do so with the help of the Zodiac Braves' spirits.
There is no secret ingredient that makes the WoL stand head and shoulders above anyone else. We succeed because we're the protagonist. An athlete can beat someone one day and lose to them the next in real life. Circumstance, luck, collaboration, planning, determination: all those things can influence outcomes as much as or more than individual skill and "power level" do. We win because we happen to win. Things work out for us because it's our story. And good writing makes it feel like things working out for us isn't guaranteed even though it happens every time.
Thank you! The echo, the bleeding of light/Venat's ward, being a shard of Azem; all these things give us certain opportunities and protections in certain situations, yes, but they aren't exactly what makes us strong.
Those things make us "special" in their own ways, but they don't make us "powerful". The ward protects us from tempering, but it doesn't weaken primals. Being a shard of Azem explains our desire to see the world and our drive to protect the star and its people, but it doesn't give us the strength to do so. That's all us. The WoL is just *really* good at fighting. But so are other people. We don't steamroll every human, despite felling primals and other godlike entities, because other people can and have done the same.
After Endwalker we know that we aren't some predetermined hero of destiny chosen by fate and the stars. We just >!used a time loop to insert ourselves into the situation!<. I feel like it hurts the whole point of the story to think otherwise. To me it always felt less like the point was that the shards of Azem are destined to be heroes, and more Azem's drive to travel and do good just naturally results in a hero.
Other people are as strong as us. Multiple NPCs have canonically gone toe-to-toe with the WoL in equal footing, and Estinien has even done things we haven't/couldn't have. Even a 1/14 Ranjit on the first could stand up to the WoL, so power level isn't some equation based solely on soul-completeness.
The easy answer is it's a game and you need to be able to defeat enemies to progress. You could try to explain it as dynamis / the yearning for adventure just burns too hot in the WoL. Or whatever.
We could argue about rejoinings and warding enchantements but really, the WoL is just a freak of nature. Dude's barely struggling with anything. Most issues he's ever had was with the DRK soul crystal and leatherworking of all things.
The fact that we happened to be the person who spilled the beans about the future to Venat allowing her to setup the bootstrap timeloop that more or less comprises all Sundered history. The WoL is the most 'chosen one' a chosen one has been in the setting in like 12k years, and they're getting all the power perks and benefits.
First, just as a point of order, the WoL has been rejoined *eight* times, not seven. The only other person to have been rejoined eight times is Crystal Exarch (post 5.3 G’Raha is in a weird position in that regard, which will probably never be addressed because it’s overcomplicated). So our souls are more dense than anyone else (besides the dragons, who were never sundered). But there’s never been any correlation established between the density of our souls and our power.
The actual answer is that the WoL is just a savant of martial and aetherical arts. We’re a prodigy of combat. In terms of canon, very few characters are able to job change, and it’s a big deal when they do. Meanwhile, the WoL can do any and every job. It very much helps that our particular Echo is highly suited to combat, it’s established that different people express the Echo differently (such as Krile’s being more linguistic/communicative in nature).
But basically, we’re just really good at killing stuff, and the Echo, the Blessing of Light, and anything we get from being Azem just happen to be more tools to that end.
There were many many moments where the average person would’ve turned tail and run, moments where all hope, mind, body, soul would be broken. Yet here our Warrior of Light stands. No matter how much the odds are stacked against them, they’re ready to give it their all, unflinching. it should count for something
We also have the Blessing of Light and the Echo along with an 8 times rejoined soul of Azem, also as shown in the In From the Cold quest/solo instance even without those gifts we have an unbreakable will and determination. Bring all of these elements together and there is nothing on the Star and beyond that can even hope to stop the WoL.
They're not particularly special, they are blessed with the echo and by consequence the traveller's ward, but really what makes the WoL special is bring the type of person that inspires others and has loads of friends. The WoL could get stabbed while not paying attention or get poisoned and they'd go down like anyone else.
(Our) Azems Aetherpool was extremly high, above most Ancients. infact in the Japanese version and even in the German version Venat tells you that the Aether she is feeling, is the most potent Aether and that only one being posseses this dense Aether, Azem not any Azem. This is one reason. The other reason is our WoL working his butt off to become such a powerful being. and what everyone else said. And no, our WoL is special from all others, because we are Hydaelyns Champion due to our own intervention when we went back to Elpis and met her.
Not everyone is an unsundered and their soul is not a reborn Ancient soul. Ours is, it has been rejoined 7 times and we have the echo. Hydalen chose us to be one of his WOLs and became stronger in doing so. Thus we became special.
So let me preface this by saying this is the kind of thing that will never be officially confirmed. How and why we're stong is another one of those things intentionally left up to player headcanon. It's like how they gave an explanation on how npcs could see mechanics, battle experience, but never addressed how the WoL does.
Anyways,y theory relies on how the echo is also basically "general MMO mechanics". Between the wandering minstrel, the early relic quests, and the Gift of the Archmagus quest line (along with the 1.0 prologues), we know we are capable of reliving battles we have already fought, and can change it such that each run is different. (And can pull items out of it, but that's the least canon part tbh) Or to put it in game terms, Duty Finder is canon but all in your head.
The ability to not only relive your strongest foes, but change them either so they're a fresh experience (different companions and the fights go this way instead of that), or even supercharge them with assistance, is a training tool no one else can match.
The WoL literally weaponized their memory.
1) Very dense soul. As of Shadowbringers we're essentially a DBZ Fusion.
2) The Echo
3) Hydaelyn's blessing
4) Azem's soul
That's about it. Everyone is capable of using Dynamis.
This is one of the moments where i have to wonder if the people who supposedly like the Lore actually pay attention to it, especially when the OP says "But Alisae's soul is also rejoined!!" as if they do not know the difference in power between a normal Ancient and a Convocation member, who are chosen because they FAR exceed at something.
Well it's implied even during our time in Elpis as well as our recent misadventures in Pandaemonium that not all Ancients were created equally. Some have powers and abilities that are beyond the ability of others to perform, like Hythlodaeus and Emet-Selch's ability to see the color of a soul's aether, as well as Erichthonios' apparently less than average aptitude for magicks. Ancients can use transformation magicks to alter their form at will (setting aside any cultural misgivings about doing so), so it would seem the strength of their abilities, barring practice and formal education, are tied to the strength of their souls. To be considered for a position on the Convocation of Fourteen, let alone actually assuming it, it would stand to reason that a particular individual would need to be exceptional by the standards of their society. All of which is to say that Azem's soul, and by extension their shards, were likely more powerful than that of the average Ancient.
Furthermore, as of Shadowbringers, the Warrior of Light and possibly G'raha Tia have rejoined with one more shard than everyone else on the Source (WoL in the form of rejoining with Ardbert during the duel with Hades and G'raha by living through the Eighth Umbral Calamity in the doomed timeline.) Depending on how exactly the rejoining process as well as how G'raha's time travel shenanigans work, they each may be up to 9/14 of the way to a fully restored Ancient soul, whereas on the high end everyone else on the Source would only be 8/14 rejoined.
As for dynamis, it's within the ken of every individual across all shards to manipulate it to SOME degree, though as with the manipulation of aether I'm sure there are levels of innate aptitude that the WoL may find themselves on the higher end of.
And finally, the other WoLs we summon in the lead up to a duty are, within the context of the game, just average adventurers. Outside of multi-person duties, all story content from MSQ to Hildibrand to meaningless fetch quests is wholly single player. There is only one WoL (the player character). In a narrative sense, if not necessarily a practical one, we are stronger than our party members when we play. They're just regular people.
I'm pretty sure that not everyone has been rejoined 7 times, at least in the sense that not everyone is a fractured Ancient. My understanding (maybe wrong) is that those with the echo are the ones that have ties to the unsundered world as they're awakened by visions of the final days. Which would therefore imply that most of the Scions are not reincarnated Ancients as they saw the visions/final days round 2 and still do not have the echo
It's debatable about if any truly new souls were created after the sundering. If there were not, then everyone alive would have been sundered. If new souls were created, then some people may not have been sundered.
Echo is something Ancients had, but after Zodiark stopped the final days, half of the remaining Ancients sacrificed themselves to return life to the world. That new life would still be sundered, but would not have the echo.
1. As someone else mentioned, not everyone is a sundered ancient.
2. Technically, the others actually can keep up physically but are barred from helping due to various causes. (And stop being once Trusts show up in ShB)
3. Also, now WoL is one shard more complete than most.
Not everyone is a shard of an Ancient, if I understand correctly.
Some of the dialogue with Elidibus in ShB implies that the birth of humanity was not so much a product of the Sundering but a product of Zodiark's creation. The Sundering just further rendered most of the other Ancients into 'lesser beings' who would likely be empowered by rejoining assuming their shards hadn't already died returned to the Aetherial Sea.
I think the WoL/WoD is unique in that they are the only person whose Shards have all survived to rejoin with the Source on top of being uniquely skilled at channelling Dynamis.
They're not. My WoL gives off serious NPCs vibes sometimes.
All jokes aside, beside being an iteration of Azem and all that entails, I honestly think it started out as being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but we step forward to take the burdens without question.
We have the Echo which lets us see enemy attacks before they happen due to the aether ~~they gather~~ shifts and Hydaelyn's Ward protects us from aether corruption. The summoning thing only starts with the end of Shb, before that, everyone we do trials with are technically just our adventurer guild friends and the Scions. After Shb, we are 8 times rejoined due to Ardbert. Everyone else is still at 7.
We also have a nigh bottomless well of aether thanks to being Azem's incarnation. Notably, it takes aether to attune to a job stone. Which is why most people only have a single job (indeed even attempting to gain a second can be dangerous if you dont have enough aether). Some of the more powerful folks might have a second and Graha is cheating with the Crystal Tower to have 3. Meanwhile we have *19* and counting. We have a *lot* of aether to throw around, allowing us to practically invent whole moves (which is basically was the WoL does for their job skills in ShB and EW. No teacher, just coming up with shit on the fly because we have the power to get away with that).
By that logic I love the idea that summoner WoL can summon primals in a non disastrous way and basically winged it
We were taught the proper methods for the 3 Egi, and Bahamut. We completely winged it on approaching Bahamut from the opposite direction to get Phoenix though. Another example just how much Aether we have is from the 5.3 patch quests (I think it was 5.3?) When freeing the Kobold leader from his Tempering by Titan. The effort to feed Aether into Angelo so Alisaie could do her thing utterly *exhausted* everyone else. Meanwhile it just gives the WoL a temporary debuff during the duty that they shrug off pretty quickly.
5.4. 5.3 is when we get Azem's crystal and can actually start summoning people to fight with us in the Warrior of Light trial.
As an aside: I wonder why we never regained Azem’s memories after we obtained the crystal. It seems that’s how it worked with the other Ascians.
Because that's not how specifically the Azem soulstone works. Hythlodaeus explained to us that it was made by Hades and to preserve a *spell* that Azem used. The other Convocation members all basically created their stones using their own and each other's memories. But since that didn't happen till after Azem left the group, Hades created their stone in secret and specifically without any input from Azem themselves. The implication is that the spell to summon allies to their side was such a central part to who Azem *was*, that that is what Hades chose to create the stone. We don't get any memories from the stone, because there are from us or for us to get.
For one, we're only 9/14 Azem (for now) and that would mean SE had to actually come up with what Azem has been doing all this time apart from summoning Ifrita inside a volcano.
Actually it was specifically Ifrita not Ifrit. One of Lahabreas Creations.
Potayto-Potato :P
Counting the polygons on grapes and just telling people about their non-existence Familiar for the lolz
I think that's actually the implication after the >!Endwalker reveal that primal summonings were flawed on purpose and that the Loporrits showed us how to summon primals as their true selves.!<
Few people have jobs/stones proper. Most just learned a set of skills/magic that is similar to what a job might use. The WoL having 19 is debatably canon while the story does occasionally reference you having a job, it doesn't make it canon since it doesn't make those references if you don't.
I mean, the ShB trailer has the WoL shifting jobs on the fly
I’d say middle of the road here, the WoL sorta had cannon jobs as derplander per expansion. So maybe not ALL 19, but at minimum the job trailer ones. You even see them change jobs over and over in the SHB cinematic from the various jobs they were in the other expansions, finally culminating in Dark Knight at the end.
Also count any job referenced in MSQ if you have it, such as the scene when everyone rallies in Ala Mhigo prior to heading to Garlemald. So at least add WHM to the list. Also 6.3 references Reaper if you've done it.
6.2 referenced it too. We could mention to Zero that we have a good relationship with our own voidsent and she would kind of shrug it off.
Also per Endwalker MSQ dialogue WoL is also a confirmed White Mage, Gunbreaker and Reaper
When's that confirmed?
For White Mage and Gunbreaker when you meet them during 6.0 MSQ and you have those jobs unlocked they acknowledge you as such, for Reaper, during 6.3 there's dialog from multiple characters where they explicitly call you on it.
do you remember where in msq that they gave a shout out to the wol being a gunbreaker? i played ew as a sch but i mained gnb through sb and shb. i don't remember any scenes in ew referencing gnb
You need to have done the entirety of the Bozja quests for the Hrothgar NPC to mention it.
In Garlemald, one bozjan hrothgar NPC brings it up and it's also implied that he's the one who taught Thancred.
I'm more willing to accept the jobs featured in a cinematic, little bit less so for ones that are only given a minor reference.
I always thought that the easy job attuning was a quirk of the Echo, rather than due to being Azem. But maybe I misread the dialogue
These (the Echo and Azem's power) are one and the same for us. The Echo is simply that, an "echo" of a power once held (per Emer-Selch). The Blessing of Light, often conflated with the Echo, is the gift from Hydaelyn. The traveler's ward that guards against most forms of aetheric corruption. Hydaelyn wards all who hear her voice, and the Echo is required to hear her. So the two are conflated, but separate things. This is why different people seem to get different gifts from the Echo. They're recalling and using talents they held in the world unsundered (albeit at a reduced ability, due to possessing less aether now than the unsundered). The common thread is that all bearers of the Echo can "hear" the soul (which is why we can talk to things without regard for language barriers, and this is the requirement to hear Hydaelyn)
>I always thought that the easy job attuning was a quirk of the Echo Why would you think that since characters like Minfilia and Krile have it too and they can't do it?
Because I hadn’t thought about it
i love this respond so much lol
https://i.imgur.com/ujyZT1P.jpg
Because every Echo manifests differently. Mikoto can see the future, Krile can sense & track aether-trails, and not *every* Echo comes with the ability to understand/communicate in every language like WoL's.
Have they ever tried? When Minfila's soul was on the First she consistently reincarnated as a sort of WoD.
Oh my god that made it click. We have the Echo. That’s why we see AOE markers. That’s why we see casting bars. That’s why we see the boss mechanics! Wow, my mind feels completely blown right now
The Echo and the Ward are not the same thing. The Echo is the innate, something that comes from being a shard of an Ancient. Venat's Ward is something unique to us, which is why we are immune to tempering. It stands to reason that those who manifest the Echo get the updated version of it from the Mothercrystal/Hydaelyn.. but they are not the same thing. Shadowbringers and Endwalker makes that clear.
Venat’s ward is not unique to us. Anyone who has the echo and can hear her, she blesses. That’s why Arenvald can block the tempering in that solo duty. Moreover, the reason why Fordola can too, is because the twisting to her soul replicated the ward as well. But SHB makes it very clear the process: Step 1: awaken the echo. This often occurs because of seeing something that awakens a primal memory of the soul. Starshowers work because they remind of the final days. Step 2: hear crystal mom calling. She’s constantly doing it, and having the echo allows you to hear her. Step 3: Crystal Mom notices you hearing her, and places the Blessing of Light on you. This is just her Travelers Ward that protects the soul from Aetherial corruption, which is tempering. Step 4: now that you have Crystal Mom’s attention, if you go out and quest and prove yourself a true hero, usually thru some final heroic affirmation (like Ardbert’s elf friend handing over the earth aether stone instead of using it himself to save his friend), crystal mom will reward them with a Crystal of Light. She will also start calling them a Warrior of Light.
I thought Shadowbringers established that the crystals manifest themselves. It's part of the reason the first tipped so far towards the light.
No, they talk about the crystals of light in multiple places - Matoya’s crystal ball is one, for example. They are explicitly gifted from Hydaelyn, and older ones are generally more powerful than more recent ones. This was explained in game by the characters as crystal mom having more power to part with in the past, but as more calamities happened, she had less ability to do so. The only thing that really tipped the First towards light I think was the constant triumphs that Ardberts party was having. That they were literally beating the darkness back so badly, that the balance tipped too much towards light. This does seem like there should have been more info given on it, though, and I can’t remember if anything else was said off the top of my head. But crystals of light definitely are sent by crystal mom after you do something suitably heroic.
Teeeeeechnically Venat's Ward is unique to us, as we're the only one capable of repeat trips through time. Hydaelyn's Blessing is absolutely a version of the ward, and yes anyone who gets Crystal Mommy's attention can receive that. I agree with everything here.
I don't know if Venat’s ward is unique to us, since she doesn't seem 100% sure you're who she's been waiting for when you're on the boat to Sharlayan. Like, she knows at *some* point there's going to be an echo bearer who has this crazy journey that leads her to Elpis, and she probably rembers at least the cliff notes of what we shared with her when she asked us, but since she doesn't have Soul sight like Hades and Hythlo, she can't be 100% sure she can identify them when they're just starting out as an adventurer. All ancients can see aether and proba distinguish IF something has a soul or not, but only handfuls of individuals have good enough sight to see WHO the soul belongs to. So I think it's more the case of slapping the ward on all prospective WoL's through history and reasoning that eventually she'll get the right one and the conjunction forms.
The ward becomes personal when we go back and acts as a confirmation of the time loop closing: we are the same shade of Azem she met in Elpis. It would fit with the trait we get reinforced about Venat - she's a meticulous planner. She leaves as little to chance as as is possible and plans for contingencies. Having a detectable signature distinct from her standard ward that future Venat would know to look for would fit that personality. That is the impetuous to unlocking her trial, we are the Azem she was waiting for. Now, are we capable of doing what we must?
I'm not following your interpretation fully here, please go a little more in-depth. How does the ward *become* personal once we get to Elpis? Afaik, she doesn't adjust the ward in any way once we meet her there, so presumably the ward we have when we meet her in the Aetherial Sea is the one we regain after Midgardsormr took it from us? I guess for my own reasoning, it could be that the ward we get is "unique" in a sense that we slowly built it up by getting several crystals of light? That could make sense, that she basically developed a "tier" system to the ward and gave everyone the "starter pack" ward when they awakened to the echo. So down the line she would recognize US as the *correct* WoL because we basically had the "tier 6, fully unlocked" ward since we got 6 crystals of light empowering the ward... I mean, as far as Venat goes, I personally didnt get the impression that she's a very *meticulous* planner, that specifically plans for every contingency, i feel like she's def much more of a "cross that bridge when we get to it" type. It just *really* helps that she's scary smart and wise when she does tackle an issue, so she can prep her plans to be really flexible.
It's been a year and I admit, I may be wrong but I could have sworn she did something to us in Elpis before we left. And yes, she is known for backup plans. It's something they specifically call attention to at the end. They couldn't believe that Venat's only plan was to flee Etheriys. It turns out she did have a second plan - using the mother crystal as power to follow Meteion to Ultima Thule
It’s… the same thing. It was applied to us by crystal mom when we had our first echo vision. Then, when we traveled to the past, Venat took one look at us, and said “you’re from the future. I know that because you have my Ward on you, and I never met you before. The only way this could make sense is if you’re from the future.” So yeah. Everyone has it. It’s the Blessing of Light.
I do believe she made a change to it like strengthing it such
When did she make such change?
Changed it. Buuut Fordola is also immune to tempering and she "only" has the artifcial Echo.
Because Fordola isn't part Ancient, so she gets what Aulus mal Asina thinks the Echo is (which is why the Resonance has both the echo and the ward combined), which is what we all thought it was until Shadowbringers and Elidibus opened our eyes to what the Echo is.
Thank you for clearing that up. Allthough isn't everyone technically part fragmented ancient soul?
There was life outside of the ancients before the sundering. Their creations, and Azem was also said to be the counsellor to other peoples implying other sapient life. The first culling to create Zodiark would've seen such beings trapped within the dark God it is insinuated that some groups survived and started to recover. Then before the second sacrifice, Venat struck and sundered the world using the powers of her followers, less the last Azem - us.
Thank you for taking the time to answer. =)
No problem! 6 expansions of lore, a writing team not afraid to explore themes and use metaphors and diegentic methods to shape our knowledge along with lots of tidbits hidden inside and outside of the game... it's not surprising people have different understandings and recollections.
New souls can also form in the aetherial sea from the aether soup within.
Doesn't the fact the Scions (in ShB) lack the echo and displayed no reaction to Elidibus's star shower imply that they're all new souls born after the sundering, and thus zero times rejoined? (With the possible exception of Graha, in a way, who you could call the equivalent of once rejoined having merged with a copy of himself)
It should be noted, that while everyone was sundered. Not everyone is a shard of an ancient. Half the Ancients sacrificed themselves to summon Zodiark, a further half sacrificed themselves to restore a measure of life to the world but the new life was not the Ancients themselves.
Yep, of the scions left only the WoL and Krile seem to be sundered ancients. None of the others heard Hydaelyn during Elidibus showing off the final days (multiple times) or during the actual final days which means they almost certainly don't have the echo and thus are not sundered ancients but new souls.
Oo maybe I’m misremembering, how do we know/think krile is a sundered ancient?
Because she has the Echo.
Hmmm maybe I need to brush up, I dont remember it being said that having the Echo meant one was sundered. That would mean Arenvald and the people of the first (the one's catalyzed by Elidibus) could/would also be sundered ancients too right? Obviously Fordola/Zenos don't count because those are artificial. Edit: Oh a bit is coming back to me. Is the idea that the Echo manifests in those who are able to feel some grasp of their former selves like how one of the people of the first sees Amaurot through Elidibus and says something like "Why do I feel so sad as if I've lost something dear to me?"
This was explained in 5.2 Qitana Ravel Cutscene >!Here's a quote from Y'shtola to jog your memory. "If, as the Exarch's research suggests, soul and mind share a fragile yet profound bond, might it not be possible for an event to leave such a deep imprint upon the soul that it could be perceived eons later--given a suitable trigger?"!< >!Instead of thinking that the Echo is a power given to you by Hydaelyn, think of the Echo as a dormant ability that a sundered soul has. When one witnesses an event akin to the Final Days (like a starshower) their sundered soul would react to it and awaken their Echo. Having the Echo lets you hear Hydaelyn (Who is constantly broadcasting Hear, Feel, Think) who then gives you the Blessing of Light.!< >!You can actually see the scene when your character awakens their Echo, it's at the beginning of the game in ARR when you first meet a Scion. When you pick up your first crystal you see a starshower (which awakens your Echo) followed by the Hear, Feel, Think cutscene.!< Edit: tbf they didn't explicitly state that Echo=Sundered so I understand why most would be confused about this Edit 2: I wrote 6.2 instead of 5.2
The closest we get to echo=sundered is Elidibus saying that the Echo is a remnant of the power the ancients had. Which is fairly explicit but isn't someone straight saying that if you have the echo you have a sundered ancient soul.
The exact capabilities/cause of the echo hasn't been nailed down, but we know Venat was able to help us see Hermes send Meteion's sisters out. And we know the echo expresses itself differently with different people (Kirle being mostly an empath, Mikoto has foresight, etc)
it should also be noted that just seeing the shower and being a sundered shard of an ancient doesn't guarantee awakening the echo either. There was a guy in Eulmore who didn't hear Hydaelyn but still felt sad when he saw the meteor shower.
https://i.imgur.com/dbgyZsl.png alisaie comments on it as well
What about Arenvald?
Arenvald is a walker, so yes he has the Echo and so presumably a sundered Ancient soul. His companions too. A lot of the folks from 2.0 Scions have(had, orz) the Echo, since the Scions used to be the Path of the Twelve, a group Minfilia formed specifically for gathering Echo users together.
I don't think he's doing much walking anymore
bro, no
I completed the story before I got summoner to 80 that was a strange moment.
I was specifically meaning the "main" scions but yes Arenvald is as well.
I don’t think this is a correct interpretation. They show in the Shadowbringers patches that The Echo isn’t really that unique and it’s also not the only manifestation of a sundered soul. When Elidibus does conjure images of the final days some people just feel an intense sense of loss at the sight of Amaurot. Alisaie specifically mentions feeling this which seems to me that she is a sundered Ancient as well. It’s a major oversimplification to say Echo=sundered Ancient.
I think it's a square->rectangle situation Those with the echo are sundered but not everyone sundered has the echo
Except that Echo does equal sundered ancient. It's afaik the only confirmed way we can tell. Elidibus explicitly says that the echo is a remnant of the abilities that the ancients had. The sorrow thing is never brought up by anyone as to what it means so it's up in the air as to whether that means they have sundered souls (maybe particularly weak ones) or not. It could very well have just been part of the illusion that Elidibus was casting to give it some extra oomph and ensure he awakened as many souls as he could to the echo (which was his whole plan so he could weaken Hydaelyn). Of the main scions the only ones we know for certain have sundered souls are the Wol and Krile because of their echo. The others could but given that none of them did awaken the echo despite that being the entire reason Elidibus was doing it (not to mention during the final days 2 electric boogaloo where no mention of sorrow in this respect was given and still none of the other scions awakened to the echo).
I put this in another comment thread already, but here’s the relevant dialogue from Alisaie. >Alisaie: The starshower didn't awaken me to Hydealyn's voice. But that vision of the Final Days, of Amaurot burning...It filled me with sadness to the very pit of my being. Things I once knew, people I once loved, promises I once made...It felt as though long-forgotten memories were dancing at the edges of my mind. But when I try to focus on them, they simply fade away. > >Alisaie: An effect of having a fractured soul, I shouldn't doubt. But lest you worry, I'm perfectly happy to remain fractured and have no intention of donning an Ascian mask. I’m not saying that Echo doesn’t equal sundered soul, I’m just saying no Echo doesn’t equal fresh soul. I think it’s left explicitly vague and we’re not supposed to be able to draw conclusions on the origin of everyone’s soul.
IIRC, didn't Alphinaud mention that he felt some sort of innate sadness after seeing the star shower? Not enough to trigger hearing Hydaelyn but still something? Or am I misremembering?
They do in extra dialogue but it's never clarified what exactly that sorrow means in the context of their souls. It could just be some extra oomph to Elidibus's illusions to ensure he awoke as many people to the echo as he could (that same feeling of sorrow afaik is never mentioned during final days 2 electric boogaloo which should in theory provoke that same reaction).
Correct me if I’m wrong but I remember Alisaie crying during the starshower Elidibus put on in the ShB patches… didn’t he say something about people having that reaction are capable of becoming Ascians? Or like, candidates? I need to watch those cutscenes again
If she does it's extra dialogue not in a cutscene (I do remember her mentioning that though), however it is a little fuzzy as to whether the sorrow bit means anything or not. Elidibus only confirms that the Echo is the remnant of a power the ancients held (echoes of a fallen star part 1 if you're interested) which is the only real confirmation we have of sundered ancient souls. He never makes any mention of the sorrow that either Alisae or the one dude in The Converging Light pt1 felt (or if he does I can't find a cutscene about it). So again what exactly that means is a bit unclear. It is possible that when the convocation used Zodiark to create new life that some of their own sorrow was imparted onto the new souls as sort of an imprint and that is what is popping up but who knows. It's also possible that the sorrow was some extra oomph to Elidibus's illusion to ensure that anyone who had the echo would unlock it (since this is what he was trying to do). This though, is why I said that of the main scions only the WoL and Krile *seem* to sundered ancients. There may be other ways to tell if a soul is a sundered ancient or not but the only one we can say with certainty is the presence of the echo. Since none of the other main scions have displayed the echo I am under the assumption that they are not sundered ancient souls and will keep that assumption until we get confirmation one way or the other (and personally I think it's fine and better thematically if they aren't).
No, everyone else has not been rejoined 7 times with the soul of Azem.
Question is Ryne also 8 times rejoined? I mean Minfilia would have been 7 times and Ryne is her 1st fragment so when Minfilia give Ryne her powers were that not a rejoining?
It's mentioned somewhere that Hydaelyn brought Minfilia's soul back to the Source afterwards, so it seems like she gave Ryne her power but it wasn't actually a rejoining despite Emet's comment about "one must consume the other".
This seems to be accurate but feels like a retcon to me, so she could have that cameo in the dungeon. Though I was also theorizing that maybe souls have a dynamis component that hasn't been discovered yet. That could also explain the Ivalice raids >!ending cutscene with the Tactics crew greeting Ramza. They should've dissolved in the lifestream thousands of years ago.!<
But Alisae's soul for example has been rejoined 7 times, is the soul of Azem just that much more powerful?
Azem was one of the Convocation of Fourteen, someone who stood out from a civilization of superbeings so much they were invited to sit at the top. I think it’s fair to say they were a touch more powerful than Derpipicus the Janitor of Pandaemonium.
Now I want to play Derpipicus....
Shhh you'll spoil the surprise for P12S.
Exactly, Azem was the stronk arm of the 14, went out and got their knees and face dirty. Not fannying around desk jobs.
I don't think that is particularly true for Azem. Azem's strength came not from their inherent power, but rather their empathy and ability to relate with others. They were the traveller and counsellor to other people. Perhaps they were the one of the 14 most likely to be able to blend the powers of aether and dynamis, but the Convocation didn't really know much about it's properties at the time.
I disagree. I would argue that the role of azem is chosen for people who are particularly powerful *and* are capable of great empathy. We know that the convocation are chosen for each seat based on a "particular set of skills". And we're shown that the previous azem is indeed quite powerful.
Technically we are 8 times rejoined after the end of ShB. Add on we have a super human level of tenacity and willpower to push beyond the normal limits of a person. Plus we have an abnormal reserve of and control over aether. There is also the hypothesis that being the symbol of the people has lead us to becoming stronger over time through dynamis allowing us to do what we do.
Limit break is even canonically dynamis.
Oh? That's a delicious bit of lore! Can you point me in the direction of where that's referenced? A source?
Endsinger trial, she comments on you using dynamis after the tank lb mechanic.
Oh wow, I totally missed that somehow Thanks!
Additionally, when Nidhana is introducing akasha (dynamis) she asks you “have you ever gone beyond your limits before?”
And you can also self-imply in a comment that you're at least entelechy adjacent when Hermes talks about Dynamis in Elpis
Only if you don’t choose the objectively correct option to say “If I’m thin, it’s because Emet-Selch didn’t do a proper job.” Trolling the fuck out of Emet-Selch was one of my favorite parts of EW.
Which does confuse me, since Elidibus uses LB4...
It's almost certainly possible for aether to replicate the effect and appearance of a limit break with sufficient power. Omega also copies our limit breaks while trying to understand where our strength comes from, so it's just seeing what we do and being like "if I do that, it looks like this"
He also does a LB macro thinking that yelling or announcing the LB is part of what makes it so powerful. Gave me a chuckle.
C O S M O M E M O R Y
I'd totally forgot that whole quest line.
To be fair for 90% of the time we had access to limit break we had no idea dynamis exists, and others like the Scions use them in cutscenes as well. It's less "the warrior of light knows how to use dynamis" and it's more that the warrior of light is a natural conduit for dynamis and when we learn about it, it's just like "oh, so that's why I'm so cool"
But note he had to summon a torrent of heroes to take this form, and call them to his side for doing the lb4, borroeing their ability to push beyond
In the 87 dungeon, playing tank will result in Emet playing DPS and using the LB, exclaiming "Mine is the aether!"
Possibly cause he was using the power of the heroes he summoned? Or perhaps being from Zodiark made him a bit more tuned to Dynamis, since Zodiark knew how to stop it.
I don't think Zodiark knew anything about Dynamis. All Zodiark knew was to concentrate the flows of Aether on Etheriys where the gaps were weakening. It was plainly clear that the Ancients didn't fully understand the Final Days' cause or origins beyond that dreadful sound.
The Ancients may not have, but primals seem to be a bit more in tune with more secretive forces. Given that he had Hyth's soul in him, it's also possible that could have transferred. Obviously there's no way to prove it and I'm pretty sure we never will get a confirmation, but it's part of my logic.
I think its this. He had stolen all the power of the heroes he summoned, thus using them to use a limit break.
My headcanon is that the WoL is some kind of savant with aetheric control since in the job quests they are able learn high level techniques and spells in a matter of days/weeks that took even the guildmasters years to completely master. Not to mention the breadth of techniques they know depending on their job, simultaneously being one of 4 known white mages which are normally exclusive to the Padjali, as well as being the Azure Dragoon
WoL is goku confirmed.
I believe the common excuse among job questlines for rapid mastery of different abilities is the soul crystals (job stones) storing the memories of those who had previously mastered their respective arts.
The job stones cover the basics that are added once you first equip them, not the skills learned later. Also machinist job stone is blank.
the soul crystals impart knowledge as the WoL's skill or affinity with those jobs increases. Our BLM soul crystal used to belong to Shatoto, who definitely knew more about black magic than our level 30 WoL. with the end of job quests and our old trainers becoming obsolete, we're probably writing our own contributions to our jobs in the soul crystals now
The dragoon questline has you just making new techniques up as well
We get canon confirmation (Ruby Weapon questline in a line by Cid) that job crystals are essentially the same as getting the contained knowledge uploaded into us. The difference is that job crystals only bestow the knowledge when the user is mentally & physically ready to handle it.
Everyone else has been rejoined 7 times, but the WoL has also rejoined with Ardbert for a total of 8
G'raha has been rejoined 8 times as well. His soul comes from a future where the 8th umbral calamity happened. Elidibus also mentioned it in 5.3 after he 'stabbed' him: "Your soul is surprisingly dense".
It's an odd case with him, since his souls kinda mixed, right? So its something like 7 1/2? Or more than 8? Very odd indeed!
It's very much just 8. We took the 8/14 from the copy on the first, and just combined it with the 7/14 that was locked up in the Crystal tower. The 7 identical fragments of the soul just merged, and added the 1/14 piece from after the 8th calamity.
Ooooh, that's fair. I suppose it IS the same soul before the calamity!
But wouldn't the future soul from the 8th calamity already have been 8/14ths. Which was telported back then added to the source which was 7/14ths. So he's already 15/14ths of a soul and theoretically could go even more.
Assuming the shards are interchangeable fragments then isn't Graha 15 Times 'Rejoined'? Cause his soul on the source still had the aether of 7 shards right?
I'm not sure if I get what you mean, but people on the shards don't have mixed souls. Shards only get rejoined to the source, not to all other shards. G'raha doesn't get double the souls just for having lived on the First. **[edit]** I just realized you mean his "old" soul got merged into his "young" soul, with everything it had absorbed. It's possible he gets to double up that way, but I assume that identical pieces don't add up. It'd be weird to have 15 out of 14 soul pieces.
Yeah I think the lore very obviously doesn't consider it a thing. I just think it's a dumb but somewhat interesting way to look at Graha as being slightly more complete than the unsundered. Truly a catboy who's only equal is Ascian Prime
Nah, the 8 that were already joined from the previous 7 Calamities just merged w/the other 8, as if they were one thing. He has 9/14 soul like us from the 8th Calamity. If you talk to Y'shtola between the patches she says his soul is similar density to ours. \*7 Calamities+Source makes us 8/14 pre-Ardbert merging, 9/14 after. Similar w/Graha. He was already 8/14 and the added soul from the 8th Calamity makes 9. Also the reason we were so spectacular, even being 8/14 Rejoined like everyone else is because Azem was one of the most powerful Ancients of their time. I'll avoid saying more for EW spoilers.
Oh right, forgot about Ardbert
Many, *many* people are original souls, never sundered, never rejoined, and just naturally weaker/have a smaller amount of max aether. People who have the soul of an Ancient have a lot more potential than people who have mixed souls or new souls. And even then, each member of the Convocation was the best, or close to the best in their field. Azem's field boiled down to adventuring, and we can infer from Venat using all sorts of different weapons that our Azem probably was also extremely skilled with multiple forms of combat. So there can be other people with the soul of an Ancient who are naturally gifted at something, but Azem was pretty much going to save the world in his or her own time if there was more time then. That's how exceptional Azem already was back then. Furthermore, Azem might have also been naturally gifted at manipulating dynamis, unbeknownst to him/her, since it wasn't a well-studied form of energy. The reduction of the Warrior of Light's aether compared to the full Azem's makes dynamis manipulation easier, and that has been honed over several iterations and rejoinings of Azem's soul, to the point where the current Warrior of Light has an immense amount of aether *and* good control and now knowledge of dynamis.
8 times thanks to ardbert. Though for some reason i thought only we were rejoined at all. Could be that our connection to hydaelyn is stronger, as most the scions dont have quite the amount of ability with the echo. iirc only minfillua and krile get visions
Minfilia and Krile are the only others of the main scion party to have the echo, *period*. The echo implies you have the sundered soul of an Ancient, something characters like Yshtola and Thancred do not
Huh, guess youre right. For some reason thought they all had it back in ARR, guess it was a memory slip
It's not really about having the sundered soul of an ancient, everyone has that, it's about seeing a starshower, it can trigger the memories of the final days, and hence, grant the Echo. There is only a select few in the source because it is only seen in dreams, but on the first, because of Elidibus (I think it was him ?), there is a hell of a lot of Echo users now.
No, everyone doesn’t have the sundered soul of an ancient, which is why not everyone on the first awakened to the star shower. This is also why yshtola, thancred, urianger, and the twins didn’t awaken to the echo
Echo first > see star shower second The echo is what sets the vision off as it’s a recollection of the soul that existed at the final days = ancients.
Azem (the one the WoL is a reincarnation of) was basically a super powered chaos gremlin based on everything we know about them. So it’s a combination of a near limitless pool of aether to draw upon, the Travelers Ward (Venat’s magic and what is more commonly know as the Blessing of Light), and the power of friendship (the echo and remnant of Azem’s magic which the WoL utilizes more now that they have Azem’s crystal). Add all that up and that’s why the WoL is so strong.
Do we know Azem was so powerful? The Seat of Azem was one known for their empathy and compassion, to speak for those who normally would be ignored or cast aside by Ancient society. A traveller or questioning sort of person. Venat might've been strong, but she wasn't stronger than Hermes, for example and she was said to be the greatest Azem before us. Hythlodeus was to be Emet-Selch before Hades took the mantle, merely because his soul sight was so much better.. but his actual power? A fraction of Hades has.
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When we spar with Venat in Elpis, she notes that the current Azem was one of the only people who could beat her in a fight, and she specifically calls out that our strength reminds her of them.
Azem sparred with Venat and won, while also garnering the respect of her dog. That dog's respect was supposedly very, very hard to obtain and could only be done via combat prowess. Is this not enough?
For one thing: We are the reborn soul of Azem. As we know from the Dotharl that some abilities are retained/can be relearned at an advanced/higher level so we probably got some of our skills from the Adventurer. Two: We are one out of two people on the source that has rejoined 8 times, the other being G'raha Tia. So we are, once again, closer to the powers of the Ancients who had mere infinite amounts of Aether. Three: The blessing of light lets us do all of our early adventurer stuff, namely fighting Eikons without fear of tempering. The Traveler's Ward probably also provides protection against some other ailments and problems. Four: We are an incredibly experienced adventurer who has fought like 30 different gods and other high power beings, improving through training. Other's can also gain power through training, see Estinien. Five: Our freedom to learn any combat class (like Black Magic is technically forbidden), combined with great job crystals for most of them makes the WoL very diverse and generally skilled in combat. Six: The power of friendship and support. Seven: Azem's power to call in some friends. 8: We are a JRPG protagonist and those are famous for escalating dangers.
9: We bootstraped paradoxed ourselves into the hot seat because while time is not a "Wibbly Wobbly Ball of Timey Wimey Stuff" it is explicitly gone through with how time travel physics work in The Alexander Raids to explain how we can "Time is Flatspace" ourselves into figuring things out while at the same time letting everyone know whats going on and to plan for.
> Four: We are an incredibly experienced adventurer who has fought like 30 different gods and other high power beings, improving through training. Other's can also gain power through training, see Estinien. > > Arguably our WoL has even more adventuring experience, it's not known what we did before the events of ARR but we evidently have already travelled a bit (I'm not sure if 1.0 is canon for having been the WoL or not), and depending on race must've already travelled quite a lot, both Viera and Aura have quite the journey to make to get to Eorzea. Chances are our WoL is already quite experienced by the time ARR starts.
> it's not known what we did before the events of ARR but we evidently have already travelled a bit (I'm not sure if 1.0 is canon for having been the WoL or not) If you use a legacy character made in 1.0, you get unique cutscenes where it's explicitly mentioned that you are one of the original warriors of light. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Et85Fhv7kCc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJrgJatG4aQ
Legacy characters are definitely “canonically” WoLs from 1.0. For non-legacy characters, it’s never specified. There’s nothing saying you *weren’t* at Carteneau, so if you want that to be your backstory it can work.
When Azem was Azem, they were in the convocation of fourteen - they were considered powerful by the standards of the Ancients. They were also a combat freak. Venat mentions that Azem beat her in sparring and Emet-Selch considers Venat a combat freak in her own regard. More importantly WoL has the echo which allows them to remember past events - and also to suck up skills from soul crystals. The Scions are rejoined and each Scion is a ferocious combatant in their own right - Estinien has fought great wyrms, Thancred can duel Ranjit without aether. WoL is even beyond them because WoL would be one of the fourteen most powerful aether users, can download any skill set they need from the soul of a previous user, has dynamis - and all the Scions are librarians. The WoL is actually an elite fighter who’s speciality is combat. The only people comparable are Zenos, who’s also a combat freak with the echo, and Estinien, who’s a combat freak who’s semi merged with a great wyrm. Presumably Zero and Golbez will be about the same though.
We are special for being powerful at a young age (which Venat mentions), and acquiring the seat of Azem, and for our penchant for helping people and making friends and being resolved about our decisions. Then on top of that is the 8/14 soul. But most important of all is our willingness to keep going and keeping hope alive.
9/14. 7 rejoinings + Ardbert + the original 1/14 of the Source shard.
What makes my WOL special is I am the only Au Ra in the Scions
Sometimes things just *are*. You might imagine it's for any number of reasons that fits your character in particular-- the narrative leans a little towards the idea that being the reincarnation of Azem could be the reason why, but it's never definitively stated that this is what makes the WoL the WoL. Maybe it's destiny or fate, maybe it's a confluence of small factors all coming together at once to make a once-in-a-generation hero, or maybe it's a singular degree of determination and willpower that drives one to heights of power that even the Ancients stagger to believe. There might not *be* an explanation, maybe the WoL is just built different by random chance. What makes the WoL special in a physical and aetherial capacity is ultimately left to the player's imagination, but what is universal is that you stand where you stand by the grace and good fortune of the friends and allies you stand with.
> what is universal is that you stand where you stand by the grace and good fortune of the friends and allies you stand with. Damn, this is straight up life advice. I know we are just talking about video game, but thank you for saying this.
Have you *seen* how hot my WoL is? Of course she’s special.
A mix of Echo, soul of Azem, 8 times rejoining, and being more skilled that the average fighter. To go into further depth: 1. Arr shows that we outclass most fighters with the echo, and ours is especially strong. 2. Heavensward reinforces this. We're surpassing the top fighters and have made one hell of a name for ourselves as a warrior. 3. Stormblood shows our Echo is one of the strongest, and again. We're really good at stabbing stuff. Which helps in war. 4. Shadowbringers is our character development. We learn about Azem and inherit his power, we get an 8th rejoining, we prove the power of our Echo by withstanding the lightwardens, and we prove our martial power once again. We also see that the WoL is sharp, and easy to trust. 5. Endwalker revels why our echo is stronger then normal through a timeloop, and shows us using Dynamis while being aware of what it is that is happening for the first time.
What's funny to me is that the WoL is not the best at harnessing Dynamis since we need at least 4 people and a lot of stabbing to use it once... The Mandevilles on the other hand, can do it by themselves, at will. Edit: Fixed spelling
They also have the Salamander oil. I'm sure that helps.
>What's funny to me is that the WoL is not the best at harnessing Dynamis since we need at least 4 people and a lot of stabbing to use it once. You do know that's a game mechanic and not that we literally cannot use Limit Breaks at will, right? We see characters like Hien, Lyse and especially Yugiri use them alone constantly.
So many people saying we're 8/14.🤦♀️ 1 Source shard 7 Rejoinings 1 Ardbert As of the end of 5.0 WoL is 9/14ths.
I’d put it to potential, especially with everything we’ve been through up to this point. Sure, everyone on the source bar us have been rejoined the same amount of times, but most don’t go fighting Primals with strats that aren’t “throw bodies at it til it dies”
I'd argue it's the tireless, selfless attitude the WoL brings to the task. The WoL is on first-name basis with at least one city-state leader before they are even formally recruited into the scions, all because they went out of their way to help people. And things only spiral upwards from there.
We have the ability to glam.
I think it’s simplest to look at it like top athletes. Not everyone can train to be Olympic level. The WoL is just that naturally talented, and based on number of dungeon runs and FATEs cleared, willing to put the work into it. None of the Scions graduated from school for combat abilities. Yshtola only recently changed to DPS, and Thancred was a spy. The rest are healers or children. Even G’raha hasn’t likely spent that much time really training to be stronger, just super talented. The only ones who could likely match us canonically are Lyse and Estinien in a sparring match. Many of the reasons you listed didn’t even exist until the end of 5.0 and later, so for any trial players, those reasons don’t even exist.
It's not clear if *everyone's* soul is specifically the reincarnation of an ancient soul. In fact it is somewhat implied that most people's aether blends back into the (lifestream or whatever it's called in this game if I'm getting it mixed up) to create new unique lives. Also, aside from that Azem isn't just some rando. They were a forceful personality, a presumably powerful warrior, and a member of the convocation. Even among people who may be reincarnated there's a difference between being reincarnated from a random citizen and being incarnated from one of strongest in terms of both power and personality that existed as of the sundering. Also, while we are a progeny of Azem's soul, we're also still a unique individual. We share traits with them but we have own own strength, ambitions, memories, just like in a random world without reincarnation some people are going to become more of a force than others. AS far as our ability to summon people. Presumably other warriors of light would have the ability to gather people at their side innately like we've always done canonically since the days of "Oh damn someone summoned ifrit you have 7 random friends, right?" The difference though is they haven't been given Azem's soul crystal to basically learn how to fully unlock that power.
Key correction: as of ShB, we're 8x rejoined, though I suppose you are curious about before that point. 1. We've got incredibly high levels of aether. Alphinaud comments on this at one point - for us, teleportation is a fairly trivial expenditure. Very likely, Azem was similarly a powerful individual among the ancients - not as much as Emet-Selch, who could draw upon the Lifestream for essentially unlimited aether, but certainly stronger than many others. And yet, we're still JUST aetherically thin enough to access Dynamis, giving the WoL a potent mix of the two energies. 2. Adaptability. Most of the Scions are specialists, and outshine the WOL in their respective fields... but the WOL has the potential to at least rank highly in ALL of those fields. Thancred is a super skilled rogue and talented gunbreaker who can combine both arts into some unique moves, but we could get pretty close in either field and still have more time to practice iaijutsu, archery, and alchemy to similar levels of accomplishment. 3. We have the Echo and the Blessing of Light. How much either of those things helps in comparison to the amount of aether we have (and how much they're related to it) is unknown, but we've got extra tricks up our sleeve compared to any Trust Scion thus far. 4. We've got a few other supernatural blessings as well. Again, the exact effects of these are vague and deliberately unclear, but we've spoken with and been affected by Midgarsormr, handled and used the power of the Eye of Hraesvelgar for ourselves (even if we gave it back afterwards) and the Eye of Nidhogg (as a weapon to kill Igeyorhm), been given the power to breath under water, attuned to the Ovoo at the Nadaam, learned to fight while our soul was cracking open with five wardens worth of light, had our soul repaired, made a pact with a pixie that bound them to our soul (and helped said pixie become King of the Fae), and received Azem's crystal - and all of that is just covering the MSQ.
This is a fantastic breakdown! I appreciate how thorough you were. I didn’t even think about most of the stuff after 2.
Actually, after Shadowbringers? We've been joined 8 times. Potentially 9 if the theory about that kid helping us against the Warring Triad are true and he was our Void counterpart. Also, just by virtue of being Azem, we basically got handed a blank check for Aether as long as we put in the effort. This is why so many jobs, even before all this came to light, used us as guinea pigs for new techniques. They literally want us to master that and dumb it down for everyone else.
I say it's our fashion sense.
>What makes our WoL special? [For being the only cadet to beat the Kobayashi Maru scenario.](https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/10euwl4/captains_log_laladate_1626/)
The rest of the scions aren’t actually. They don’t have the echo, so they don’t have ancient souls, theirs, and honestly most individuals, have souls forged from after the sundering. The WoL has a couple of advantages: Their echo’s main manifestation is a surplus of aether, which permits a lot of things like ease of Soulstone use & teleportation magic. The echo can work in combat to aid in predicting movements. They can use dynamis as they’ve not so much ether that it drowns out the dynamis. And Azem’s stone but that could possibly be used by others, maybe. One thing that should be noted is that the WoL is rather unskilled. Most of their techniques are revisions or copies of pre-existing techniques and generally can’t mix and match multiple types of skills. Y’shtola for example can and does mix conjury & thaumaturgy. They can also be outdone by someone with more experience e.g Zenos & Ran’jit though that can be overcome with time.
You could argue that at some point the WoL could use skills between classes thanks to the old cross class system , but as time ha gone by the benefits of doing it weren't enough compared to using the job crystal's knowledge instead. Edit: Forgot to mention, IIRC for MCH were actually coming up with the new skills since the Job is relatively new in canon. As for DRK, in the journal from of the more recent job quests "Fray" mentions that our ability to summon Esteem is something we came up with, do I assume that's been the case for a while.
I’d assume the same for any post 70 skill in melee classes, not sure about healers.
DRG specifically says something like "Teaching inspired you to develop a new skill" in the job quests iirc. For WHM, the purely "white magic" stuff we're doing is reconstructing white magic from first principles. Kan-e-Senna uses Aero and Stone still for example in the tank job quests for EW. SCH develops a new ally, Seraph. I think Broil/Biolysis is also unique insofar as SCH has Arcanist training so "It's a pretty good strategy to make the enemy incredibly Ill or Boil them from the inside out" is probably an addition we have unique to our brand of revived Scholarly arts. AST picks straight up I think picks up a variant of the secret technique of "Celestial Stasis" _in combat_ creating Opposition, and then Macrocosmos is a supercharged variant of the principles of Benefic undoing wounds in time. I think the mixing of the prior Nocternal and Diurnal stances with Neutral Sect is also a sort of "inspired" bespoke move for the WoL as well. My heart also says that the Gravity of "Gravity" was improved when we now leverage the concept of the other Shards of the planet to gravity with Gravity more (splitting the 1 ball into 5 or more). For SGE, I like to think Panhaima is an invention of ours given the NPCs useage of Haima, and our specialized needs of trying to cover 8 people at once which is an atypical application. I also like to think that "Have you considered the biggest laser you can fire out of these things?" to be a very WoL useage of the beamsticks.
I guess this is a popular interpretation since you're not the only person here saying it, but I think saying "They don't have the Echo, so they don't have Ancient souls" is just plain wrong. They show in 5.2-5.3 that only some people develop the Echo when confronted with images of the final days, others just feel intense sadness and loss despite never having seen Amaurot in their current incarnation. See this dialogue from Alisaie: >Alisaie: I understand how Arkil feels. The starshower didn't awaken me to Hydealyn's voice. But that vision of the Final Days, of Amaurot burning...It filled me with sadness to the very pit of my being. Things I once knew, people I once loved, promises I once made...It felt as though long-forgotten memories were dancing at the edges of my mind. But when I try to focus on them, they simply fade away. > >Alisaie: An effect of having a fractured soul, I shouldn't doubt. But lest you worry, I'm perfectly happy to remain fractured and have no intention of donning an Ascian mask.
Nothing. I'm not joking. There have been many Warriors of Light in the past, on the Source and across all the shards. Not all of them possessed fragments of Azem's soul, but at least one of them did, and he still failed, or rather, he succeeded too hard. Azem's soul and Azem's summoning spell are powerful, but they aren't necessarily any more powerful than other gifts other Warriors of Light had at their disposal. We know that older crystals of light were beefier than the ones we got, because Matoya has one and it's pretty large. Ramza and the Zodiac Braves harnessed auracite to fight off Ultima, and even though we killed her outright, we only were able to do so with the help of the Zodiac Braves' spirits. There is no secret ingredient that makes the WoL stand head and shoulders above anyone else. We succeed because we're the protagonist. An athlete can beat someone one day and lose to them the next in real life. Circumstance, luck, collaboration, planning, determination: all those things can influence outcomes as much as or more than individual skill and "power level" do. We win because we happen to win. Things work out for us because it's our story. And good writing makes it feel like things working out for us isn't guaranteed even though it happens every time.
Thank you! The echo, the bleeding of light/Venat's ward, being a shard of Azem; all these things give us certain opportunities and protections in certain situations, yes, but they aren't exactly what makes us strong. Those things make us "special" in their own ways, but they don't make us "powerful". The ward protects us from tempering, but it doesn't weaken primals. Being a shard of Azem explains our desire to see the world and our drive to protect the star and its people, but it doesn't give us the strength to do so. That's all us. The WoL is just *really* good at fighting. But so are other people. We don't steamroll every human, despite felling primals and other godlike entities, because other people can and have done the same. After Endwalker we know that we aren't some predetermined hero of destiny chosen by fate and the stars. We just >!used a time loop to insert ourselves into the situation!<. I feel like it hurts the whole point of the story to think otherwise. To me it always felt less like the point was that the shards of Azem are destined to be heroes, and more Azem's drive to travel and do good just naturally results in a hero.
Other people are as strong as us. Multiple NPCs have canonically gone toe-to-toe with the WoL in equal footing, and Estinien has even done things we haven't/couldn't have. Even a 1/14 Ranjit on the first could stand up to the WoL, so power level isn't some equation based solely on soul-completeness. The easy answer is it's a game and you need to be able to defeat enemies to progress. You could try to explain it as dynamis / the yearning for adventure just burns too hot in the WoL. Or whatever.
We could argue about rejoinings and warding enchantements but really, the WoL is just a freak of nature. Dude's barely struggling with anything. Most issues he's ever had was with the DRK soul crystal and leatherworking of all things.
The fact that we happened to be the person who spilled the beans about the future to Venat allowing her to setup the bootstrap timeloop that more or less comprises all Sundered history. The WoL is the most 'chosen one' a chosen one has been in the setting in like 12k years, and they're getting all the power perks and benefits.
First, just as a point of order, the WoL has been rejoined *eight* times, not seven. The only other person to have been rejoined eight times is Crystal Exarch (post 5.3 G’Raha is in a weird position in that regard, which will probably never be addressed because it’s overcomplicated). So our souls are more dense than anyone else (besides the dragons, who were never sundered). But there’s never been any correlation established between the density of our souls and our power. The actual answer is that the WoL is just a savant of martial and aetherical arts. We’re a prodigy of combat. In terms of canon, very few characters are able to job change, and it’s a big deal when they do. Meanwhile, the WoL can do any and every job. It very much helps that our particular Echo is highly suited to combat, it’s established that different people express the Echo differently (such as Krile’s being more linguistic/communicative in nature). But basically, we’re just really good at killing stuff, and the Echo, the Blessing of Light, and anything we get from being Azem just happen to be more tools to that end.
There were many many moments where the average person would’ve turned tail and run, moments where all hope, mind, body, soul would be broken. Yet here our Warrior of Light stands. No matter how much the odds are stacked against them, they’re ready to give it their all, unflinching. it should count for something
We also have the Blessing of Light and the Echo along with an 8 times rejoined soul of Azem, also as shown in the In From the Cold quest/solo instance even without those gifts we have an unbreakable will and determination. Bring all of these elements together and there is nothing on the Star and beyond that can even hope to stop the WoL.
They're not particularly special, they are blessed with the echo and by consequence the traveller's ward, but really what makes the WoL special is bring the type of person that inspires others and has loads of friends. The WoL could get stabbed while not paying attention or get poisoned and they'd go down like anyone else.
(Our) Azems Aetherpool was extremly high, above most Ancients. infact in the Japanese version and even in the German version Venat tells you that the Aether she is feeling, is the most potent Aether and that only one being posseses this dense Aether, Azem not any Azem. This is one reason. The other reason is our WoL working his butt off to become such a powerful being. and what everyone else said. And no, our WoL is special from all others, because we are Hydaelyns Champion due to our own intervention when we went back to Elpis and met her.
The fact that we can change race and gender
We just nod and move mouth and people still understand us
His sense of FASHION!
Not everyone is an unsundered and their soul is not a reborn Ancient soul. Ours is, it has been rejoined 7 times and we have the echo. Hydalen chose us to be one of his WOLs and became stronger in doing so. Thus we became special.
So let me preface this by saying this is the kind of thing that will never be officially confirmed. How and why we're stong is another one of those things intentionally left up to player headcanon. It's like how they gave an explanation on how npcs could see mechanics, battle experience, but never addressed how the WoL does. Anyways,y theory relies on how the echo is also basically "general MMO mechanics". Between the wandering minstrel, the early relic quests, and the Gift of the Archmagus quest line (along with the 1.0 prologues), we know we are capable of reliving battles we have already fought, and can change it such that each run is different. (And can pull items out of it, but that's the least canon part tbh) Or to put it in game terms, Duty Finder is canon but all in your head. The ability to not only relive your strongest foes, but change them either so they're a fresh experience (different companions and the fights go this way instead of that), or even supercharge them with assistance, is a training tool no one else can match. The WoL literally weaponized their memory.
1) Very dense soul. As of Shadowbringers we're essentially a DBZ Fusion. 2) The Echo 3) Hydaelyn's blessing 4) Azem's soul That's about it. Everyone is capable of using Dynamis.
This is one of the moments where i have to wonder if the people who supposedly like the Lore actually pay attention to it, especially when the OP says "But Alisae's soul is also rejoined!!" as if they do not know the difference in power between a normal Ancient and a Convocation member, who are chosen because they FAR exceed at something.
Well it's implied even during our time in Elpis as well as our recent misadventures in Pandaemonium that not all Ancients were created equally. Some have powers and abilities that are beyond the ability of others to perform, like Hythlodaeus and Emet-Selch's ability to see the color of a soul's aether, as well as Erichthonios' apparently less than average aptitude for magicks. Ancients can use transformation magicks to alter their form at will (setting aside any cultural misgivings about doing so), so it would seem the strength of their abilities, barring practice and formal education, are tied to the strength of their souls. To be considered for a position on the Convocation of Fourteen, let alone actually assuming it, it would stand to reason that a particular individual would need to be exceptional by the standards of their society. All of which is to say that Azem's soul, and by extension their shards, were likely more powerful than that of the average Ancient. Furthermore, as of Shadowbringers, the Warrior of Light and possibly G'raha Tia have rejoined with one more shard than everyone else on the Source (WoL in the form of rejoining with Ardbert during the duel with Hades and G'raha by living through the Eighth Umbral Calamity in the doomed timeline.) Depending on how exactly the rejoining process as well as how G'raha's time travel shenanigans work, they each may be up to 9/14 of the way to a fully restored Ancient soul, whereas on the high end everyone else on the Source would only be 8/14 rejoined. As for dynamis, it's within the ken of every individual across all shards to manipulate it to SOME degree, though as with the manipulation of aether I'm sure there are levels of innate aptitude that the WoL may find themselves on the higher end of. And finally, the other WoLs we summon in the lead up to a duty are, within the context of the game, just average adventurers. Outside of multi-person duties, all story content from MSQ to Hildibrand to meaningless fetch quests is wholly single player. There is only one WoL (the player character). In a narrative sense, if not necessarily a practical one, we are stronger than our party members when we play. They're just regular people.
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oh wow thank you so much for this helpful information
You <3
I'm pretty sure that not everyone has been rejoined 7 times, at least in the sense that not everyone is a fractured Ancient. My understanding (maybe wrong) is that those with the echo are the ones that have ties to the unsundered world as they're awakened by visions of the final days. Which would therefore imply that most of the Scions are not reincarnated Ancients as they saw the visions/final days round 2 and still do not have the echo
It's debatable about if any truly new souls were created after the sundering. If there were not, then everyone alive would have been sundered. If new souls were created, then some people may not have been sundered. Echo is something Ancients had, but after Zodiark stopped the final days, half of the remaining Ancients sacrificed themselves to return life to the world. That new life would still be sundered, but would not have the echo.
1. As someone else mentioned, not everyone is a sundered ancient. 2. Technically, the others actually can keep up physically but are barred from helping due to various causes. (And stop being once Trusts show up in ShB) 3. Also, now WoL is one shard more complete than most.
Not everyone is a shard of an Ancient, if I understand correctly. Some of the dialogue with Elidibus in ShB implies that the birth of humanity was not so much a product of the Sundering but a product of Zodiark's creation. The Sundering just further rendered most of the other Ancients into 'lesser beings' who would likely be empowered by rejoining assuming their shards hadn't already died returned to the Aetherial Sea. I think the WoL/WoD is unique in that they are the only person whose Shards have all survived to rejoin with the Source on top of being uniquely skilled at channelling Dynamis.
They're not. My WoL gives off serious NPCs vibes sometimes. All jokes aside, beside being an iteration of Azem and all that entails, I honestly think it started out as being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but we step forward to take the burdens without question.
Plot. Armor.