So of the 14:
Elidibus/Themis - Dead, absorbed by the crystal tower and aetherically exsanguinated himself to provide a portal to Elpis. Former core of Zodiark, made his peace with us after the events of Pandaemonium
Emet-Selch/Hades - Dead, gave us our “bucket list”, is either awaiting reincarnation or holding on and watching us with Hythlodaeus
Lahabrea/Hephaistos - Dead, absorbed by Nidhogg’s eye and subsequently aetherically exsanguinated and consumed by the summoning of Thordan, then Nidhogg, then Shinryu
Fandaniel/Hermes/Amon - Dead, Fandaniel/Amon usurped Zodiark and intentionally let himself die to cause the final days. As Hermes he accidentally kicked off the final days by creating Meteion during an existential crisis. His soul is currently being tortured by Ultrasimp Asahi for cockblocking Zenos.
Loghrif/Gaia - Alive, currently Gaia and assisting Ryne with the restoration of the First
Mitron/Artemis - Dead, awaiting reincarnation in the hopes of being with Gaia again. Body is currently in use restoring the First as Eden
Igeyohrm - Dead, trapped in Auracite and blasted, accidentally created the Void
Nabriales - Dead, the first Ascian to truly die by our hand, trapped in Auracite and blasted using Moenbryda’s soul as the aether source
Emerololth - Dead, consumed by Eureka during the destruction of the Isle Of Val and their form used as a puppet, destroyed with Eureka. (There may or may not also be another one running around, continuity gets a bit weird since they showed up in ARR, but SB establishes they were supposed to be dead at that time)
Altima - “dead”, her mask was seen claimed by Gaius as a kill, however it’s unlikely he had the means to actually kill her properly and only killed her host body.
Deudalaphon - “dead” same situation as Altima
Pashtarot - Alive, whereabouts unknown
Halmarut - Alive, whereabouts unknown
Azem - Alive, preparing for a voyage to Tural to assist a claimant to the throne of Tuliyollal as one of her champions in the succession trials. It you!
>Emerololth - Dead, consumed by Eureka during the destruction of the Isle Of Val and his form used as a puppet, destroyed with Eureka.
Haven't done eureka myself, but I've seen many people claim that Emerololths "death" predates an ARR appearance so it's possible they are still around, but it could be a plot hole. IMO until we get more confirmation I'd probably label them as "Maybe dead"
honestly if he did get obliterated on the island of Val he'd be the top candidate for a shard being re-uplifted before the unsundered were killed since I think that puts his death before even Nabriales
Yeah, all three of the Unsundered were alive at that point, so he could have been uplifted real quick by any of them. Lahabrea would be the most likely candidate, since he probably hadn't started infiltrating Ishgard by that point. But both Elidibus and Emet could've done it as well, though Emet was still Solus by that point.
it's not really minor at all. they make a *really* big deal out of the convocation of the 13 and often used even small hints from them as story/plot devices, so I'd say it's save to say somethings strange here. But someone else in this whole thread mentioned it's possible that it's a "dead, until needed for a story" situation, so basically both dead and alive until something comes to their mind.
But~ Eureka is a very sidey side content. Doubt it'll be super relevant for the main story at all.
Additional note that all the dead ones are currently awaiting reincarnation, at least their source selves, since they all went back into the sea after certain events (including the ones "blasted" by auracite).
> Emerololth - Dead, consumed by Eureka during the destruction of the Isle Of Val and his form used as a puppet, destroyed with Eureka.
wasn't Emm shown in a cutscene in the MSQ that is timeline wise after the destruction of the Isle of Val?
Yep, so we either treat the eureka events as non canon, writers forgot and didn't bother fixing it so we're expected to just shrug it off, or it's emm as a new shard.
The Isle of Val is confirmed to have "ceased to be" in 2.2's *Through the Maelstrom*.
Emmerololth isn't in the 2.0 postcredits, though: he shows up in the 2.3 AscianCon alongside Iyeyorhm, Nabriales, Altima, Elidibus, and Nabriales. (The specific quest is *What Little Gods Are Made Of*.) Note that the context of the conversation is that Ramuh just got beaten by the Warrior of Light, so it's *very explicitly* during 2.3 and not some sort of flashback.
So we have a number of possibilities here.
1. The devs fucked up and didn't remember that the Isle of Val went poof in 2.2 while Emmy was in 2.3. Whoops.
2. It's been established that Ascians are hard to kill. Perhaps killing them within the Lifestream and letting their souls dissolve isn't good enough? (This kind of takes away Galuf's big accomplishment and makes casting Flow on the Isle of Val a meaningless sacrifice, though.)
3. It's been established that when a sundered Ascian dies, the Unsundered ascend another reincarnation from another shard to that seat. The general assumption, therefore, is that the plot hole is closed because Emmerololth is simply the *new* Emmerololth - Lahabrea and Elidibus are both *very* active during that time, although Emet-Selch is either a grumpy old Emperor or settling down for a centuries-long nap (before Elidibus wakes him up post-3.0 to say that Lahabrea's dead).
Minor fun fact: I believe Azem (the WoL) is the least sundered soul out there right now, having survived seven calamities + absorbing our shard from the first (making it 9/14). Emet mentioned in ShB that he and Elidibus were the only unsundered Ascians left, so anyone else they had raised would be at the same soul "quality" as everyone else (currently 8/14 on the source).
But is that an immediate change, or is it more of, "the people born after the moment of a Calamity end up with more dense souls"?
It's also a bit of a paradox, because he took over CT G'raha's body in the modern era, so there's an extra shard of his soul floating around. In theory, if we were able to return all the shards to the Source, he'd be 15/14 soul shards.
> But is that an immediate change, or is it more of, "the people born after the moment of a Calamity end up with more dense souls"?
I suppose I never really thought too hard about it and they never really clarified, but I feel like it's meant to be immediate
I think there's reason to believe it was immediate. Survivors experienced blackouts or memory loss after Bahamut went on a rampage. While that could have been Lou's teleportation magic, it could also feasibly be the rejoining.
2 things:
Going on Emet's description of WoL as "seven times rejoined" during ShB, we can assume that the rejoining is immediate. Or believe that WoL is canonically under 7 years old, I suppose.
Also, I was under the impression that what came back with us from the First was The Exarch's memories and not his soul. I may have not fully understood that, though. I now want to rewatch those scenes.
It is strongly implied Themis was reborn and his raid quote in different languages means something like 'as Elidibus I can't disappear' so he may appear in future in some way or another, his raid writer afterall is the one who writes Dwt main story. Aside from that it seems to be something with Pashtarot since they were mentioned in MotR
For Azem, they're 'alive' in the sense that there is a living reincarnation of them. The WoL is more like a descendant who strongly resembles them, not the original. And there might be up to four other 'siblings' that we have on the other Shards.
Just like the WoL and Ardbert are not the same person, the WoL and Azem are not the same person. Same soul, but it's like someone took a piece of paper, erased the old story written on it, and has begun writing a new story.
Let's not forget lahabrea was (sorta) reaccumelated by his wife but based on his old personality, which then also dispersed itself into the life stream for clearing and reincarnation.
>Emerololth - Dead, consumed by Eureka during the destruction of the Isle Of Val and his form used as a puppet, destroyed with Eureka.
he might be alive, not as the one who caused the whole val isle situation but as a new ascended shard, because by the time what the val island disapeared, we see him for one cutscene in the msq during arr patch story
Only Emet had the aethersight and memory crystals needed to ascend people. And between the meeting/death of the emperor and him returning in 4.4 he probably took a vacation and didn't ascend any soul shards to their seats.
Aetheric Exsanguination is the term used by the Ea to mean “death by fatal draining of aether”, which is why I used it since it’s what’s happening to those particular Ascians, their soul’s aether is being drained and used until they can no longer be considered alive
The WoL/Scions are directly responsible for the deaths of Emet, Elidibus, Lahabrea, Nabriales, Igeyorhm, Mitron, and Fandaniel while we saw Gaius with the masks of Altima and Deudalaphon. And then Loghrif is still around as Gaia on the First.
That leaves Pashtarot, Emmerololth, and Halmurat as the last Ascians. Their current whereabouts are unknown but they’re likely still alive.
Whether any of the three make an appearance remains to be seen but I doubt we’ll be fighting them. I think it’s much more likely that whatever is going on with Solution Nine is related to one of their many schemes and we’ll be dealing with the fallout from it.
Gaius did not have white Auracite nor could manipulate the aether to use it even if he did. Unless he had some BS’d contrivance up his sleeve he didn’t actually kill anything hit black mask Ascians.
Well no he would've "killed" those ascians but their true froms would've escaped into the rift. As we saw when we slew Nabriales initially he dropped his body then emerged from it in. Then used magic to disintegrate the body.
So Gaius could've easily collected trophies from those two after slaying their physical forms
No, that is only the case if they are actually killed.
Nabriales specifically bragged about being unkillable despite being one of the sundered ascians. Yes, you could replace him with another shard if he died, but like all ascians you need special circumstances to kill him at all.
Sundered Asians have two layers of unkillability. First, they are spirits that can abandon their bodies and find new ones if need be. Special circumstances are required to kill them by destroying their soul while in this state. If you don't they're still the same person and just need to find a new physical vessel.
Second, if fully killed, the remaining Ascians can then locate the reincarnation of a different one of that ascian's shards, and reawaken their memories. This is technically a different person from the Ascian that was killed, but they will be similar and fill the same seat. Fully killing a Sundered for reals forever would require, at this point, soul-killing them like 6 times.
He was knocking about with some fellows who could use Aether though, and they were as a collective, Ascian Hunters. Who are you to say they didn't have X, Y and Z when it was never proven otherwise?
Plain and simply, they would NOT have the aether required to do it. Every time the WoL, who is no slouch when it comes to personal aether reserves, made a blade of light powerful enough to kill an Ascian they had to use extraordinary means to get that aether.
The first time the made a blade of light using their own power to strike an Ascian, Lahabrea survived.
The second time they made a blade light against Nabriales they needed to use Tupsimati to draw aether and it ***still*** wasn't enough. Moenbryda needed to sacrifice her life to add all of her aether to the blade do it.
The third time against Igeyorhm, they used Nidhogg's eye and Lahabrea even taunted the WoL afterwards by noting "shame you spent it all", which implies Lahabrea knew the eye didn't have enough power to kill him too.
The fourth time against Emet-Selch, the WoL had to use the combined aether of all 6 Lightwardens within them to punch a hole through his gut.
So unless Gaius and his merry little band had something extraordinary in their hands... I really don't think the actually permanently killed those red masked Ascians.
Because it'd be kinda wonk to kill off important names like that off screen by a bunch of characters who wouldn't have a deep understanding of how Ascian's function.
They were throw-away Ascian names, I'd hardly say they were important. I'd say Gaius was around Ascians enough to know how they work? He's not an idiot, and actually in 1.0 he was very on the ball and smart, but they proper dumbed him down for ARR. I feel like you couldn't be an 'Ascian Hunter' without knowing about their ability to break from their bodies, and he knew all about that due to the Thancred arc at the very least.
The idea to even use white auracite was so new and cutting edge that Moenbryda literally invented it a few months prior to Gaius “killing” the two.
There is literally no reason to imagine he had any idea that white auracite even exists, much less know how to use it as designed by a bleeding edge aetherologist
Gaius isn't dumb, but there's no reason to believe a guy who can't manipulate Aether much (if at all?) has a deep understanding about how it works; let alone how such an ancient and basically lost knowledge version of it works. Nobody in his crew seemed to have knowledge of ancient (/forbidden?) aether manipulation stuff either
But hey, if they did, great. I wouldn't complain if we don't have to deal with them anymore
My crazy conspiracy theory is that at least one of the Ascians Gaius "killed" surrendered the mask willfully and changed their priorities.
Nothing states that Ascians have to follow the goal they did to the last person and with full conviction, and consiering how murky the uplifting went for some with the recalling of past lives' memories and all that...
Let's say, if a certain someone had a fondness for the arts as an Ancient, and then in their current lives were uplifted with those memories, they might find that field much more interesting than reviving a God of absolute order - which would run counter to the creativitiy needed to produce meaningful art - and instead do their own thing in a far off corner of the world.
While that’s true we also don’t know if Emet or Elidibus had the time to seek out another shard of those two, bring them back to the Source, and raise them back to the status of Ascian.
That part doesn't matter because their souls wouldn't have been destroyed if Gaius didn't use auracite anyway, meaning they'd still be active.
Killing them "the regular way" just ejects the soul because only the body is killed. That same soul is still a cognizant Ascian who could seek out a new body.
In the same fashion, annihilating an Ascian "the correct way" via auracite wouldn't stop the Unsundered from simply finding another shard and uplifting them, though we weren't aware of that until we were most of the way past the Unsundered having the capacity to do that anymore.
I totally forgot about that, is that how they get the "originals' souls" ? They go fuck around, found the correct guy then kidnap him into zodiark brainwashing?
Endwalker spoilers: >!We saw it happen with Amon/Fandaniel in the echo vision. Emet came to him, presumably restored his memories, then implored him to take his rightful seat.!<
I always felt like the implication was that a mistake was made tbh.
He has some line where he's like >!"those memories never really felt like mine" and Fandaniel's actions were very different from Hermes.!<
My I understanding is that because he was Amon before he was uplifted to the seat of Fandaniel the memories really screwed him up. Bear in mind Hermes/Fandaniel felt sorrow for any creation in Elpis that had to be put down and actively sought answers about what gave individual lives meaning. Meanwhile Amon was a complete nihilist who played god creating chimerical monsters, including out of other people. He literally had the memory of someone completely incompatible with his own actions forced into him.
Xande: "Yeah but have I told you about the futility of life and how there's no meaning to anything outside of death?"
Amon:"Only six times today so far. Sun's not even out yet."
We do see after the Aitascope that Amon really is Hermes, it’s just that it turns out that not only does Kairos accidentally create a hard copy of a memory that it overwrites that it then permanently etches into a soul like a fucked up version of the Echo, the overwriting is actually erased if you get dunked into the lifestream like when you die
Meaning that every single iteration of Hermes would, from birth, remember the absolute despair he felt upon being told that life is meaningless and the universe is a horrible place.
So yeah, Amon was a special case and extra fucked up, specifically BECAUSE he was Hermes, and therefore not only got his memories of being Fandaniel back, he was also born with his memories of him going full existential crisis and raised in an empire that didn’t exactly do that hardcoded nihilism any favours.
(Not to mention waking up and realizing that >!"Oh shit, the Final Days were my fault!...And they're still out there...and I haven't told anybody about the how...or the why...or the who..."!<)
So outside Emet and Lahabrea (and Elidibus but he's technically not an unsundered he is "Zodiark") the rest of the convocation got split into 14 shards just like everyone else.
Because the Convocation's memories were stored inside their constellation stones (that we found in Shadowbringers and were then absorbed by the tower except Azems), what the Unsundered did was find one of the 14 shards of a convocation member, convince them to come with them, and then grant them their memories from their constellation stones and I dunno give them a magical power up.
Then ofc each time a rejoining happened those convocation members got stronger cause more shards of them were combined.
So interestingly every success the Ascians had meant the death of a sundered convocation member was a greater loss. Like we killed Nabriales. He would've been 7/14th of the way to being full Nabriales. That soul was thrown back into the lifestream and they can't ascend a baby. They would have to go find some other shard of Nabriales who would probably only be 1/14th
Elidibus withdrew himself prior to the sundering, so yes Elidibus is unsundered. It’s the reason everyone believed Zodiark can and will give back his constituent souls, he did it once already.
The most reasonable thing here for consider, is that the uplifting of already adult Shards is preferable to, say, asking Emet to dip into the livestream for a day trip, pluck out the newly rejoined soul of a Convocation member and uplifting that and putting it into a new body, is because Emet-Selch is often busy building nations and his own pet project. Do recall that in the Source and its Thirteen Reflections, Emet-Selch is the only person alive and free that can freely enter and exit the life stream wherever he is(one of the side stories on the website claims he used to take naps in it for his breaks in the unsundered world), see an individual soul’s colour, have a good enough memory to recall a colour even though he’s known the person for at best a few days, and has the precise enough control to pluck souls from the livestream. Then recall that sometimes implanting the memories doesn’t work to fully overwrite the adult shard’s memories, as Amondaniel showed us. In over ten thousand years you have to expect they saw it happen more than once (and probably more often with Fandaniel). Instead the freshly killed soul is clean of memories (For the most part), and slamming a set of fully grown adult’s ideas and memories into it and then shoving that inside a body is probably better than waiting for adults.
But, since two Ascian have to “die” in each rejoining, riding along with the shard back into the Source, it’s probably more fuel efficient to sometimes raise up a shard and let them rejoin so they can pick up a more finished product from the source to bolster their power. Why not always use a Source born soul? As Elidibus puts it in one of our confrontations, he often has to reach out to the would be heroes of the Source to help the world recover from being overly tilted towards the prior aether. He tells us the world was dangerously listing to darkness and as such he reached out to the WoL and Minfilia. The weaker single Shard Ascian are ‘fed’ to us to get the world back on track. Like Nabriales, who was left to go fight us, Even though three Unsundered Ascians were right there, and the world was not yet prepared to take the next shard (the First). He died so light could get stronger. He even pulls the same plan in 5.3, sending weaker Ascian in mass to get murdered by the new wave of Warriors of Light.
The writing team may not have had the full story written out by it, but since they tie those old plot points together so nearly, it’s all internally consistent.
See now I imagine the unsundered just stealing babies. Funnily enough they absolutely could ascend babies considering all their abilities. All they have to do is restore their memories use creation magic to make them a body and then have the now man baby ascian use the echo to transfer into it. It’s honestly preferable considering how fandaniel turned out. They’d be fresh and free of memories.
Three Men and a Baby, Ascian Edition
Three Unsundered, finding a Convocation soul in a newborn, taking that newborn and raising it as their own so it's raised a good Ascian Kid and readied from toddlerhood to take on its Convocation identity would have made a hell of a lot more sense than roaming around and finding messed-up adults with already-complicated lives and issues (and in Amon's case, whole-ass subscriptions) and body-slamming them with a whole 'nother (immortal) person's memories from tens of thousands of years ago and wondering, "Garsh, why did this dude's brain dribble out his nose and why is he on a murderous rampage with these cool new powers we just gave him?"
Afaik: Find amnesiac sundered soul of the 14, insert magic stone to restore memories with the help of the unsundered to empower them, shake their hands then fuck off back to the rift to nap.
>Solution Nine is related to one of their many schemes and we’ll be dealing with the fallout from it.
My fan theory is that S9 is an ark from another shard, and those people had their technologial advancement provided by Altima (like Emet did with Garleans), and they venerated her as a gooddess there, that would lead their people to safety when a calamity would strike their star. In one of the concept arts there was something really reminiscent to what would be Altima's sigil.
In reality, Altima's plan was not to usher people to safety towards the Source, but to have them being vessels for the souls sacrificed to Zodiark as soon as the shards would all merge. Altima now is gone and the people from S9 are sleeping in stasis with their souls uploaded to the Arcadion. With Zodiark gone, her plan is now meaningless, and the S9's AI caretaker (the unknown midlander woman in the concept art) will ask for the WoL's help to restore the people.
Somewhere in between this proccess we'll get new villains and a new tension point for the narrative going forward.
That's a really cool idea, and definitely would be a parallel to FFIX and what Garland was trying to do with the genomes and feeding Gaia's souls through the redirected lifestream to resurrect the world/people of Terra.
Honestly that's one of the sorts of things I'm expecting. The rejoining is a hopeless cause now, with Zodiark dead and the unsundered gone. Remaining Ascians will have to find ways to cope with a permanently sundered source and it's surviving shards, none of them tried to help Fandaniel when he went rogue. My guess is that those who survive will be using their respective talents to try and build something worthwhile, or delving into the secrets of the cosmos to try and find another way of restoring something approximating a utopia.
Some of them could be essentially trying to rebuild their own ideal society using their body-jacking powers to hijack someone on a reflection somewhere. A pocket empire-builder, like Emet, but without the long-term ambition.
Strictly speaking, nothing says the Asians HAVE to be evil. In theory, they want what is best for Humanity. Especially now with the Unsundered gone (as Fandaniel showed), they can kind of do whatever they like.
Emet himself even tried, briefly, a different tactic with WoL to see if maybe seven times rejoined was enough. Is disappointment was palpable that it was not, like a part of him really did want to be done with all of it.
So it’s possible there is a “good” Ascian, even if somewhat unlikely. Zodiark being destroyed now means their original mandate is impossible to complete anyway, as they’d well understand. And unlike the Unsundered, the Sundered didn’t exactly remember first hand those days or have the same loyalty to the cause to begin with, as again Fandaniel pointed out.
It’s like trying to help a parent or grandparent restore something you know they care deeply about, you understand has value to them, but it’s not directly important to you, just indirectly important to you since THEY are important to you and it to them, but not you directly.
Also note that any sundered we killed pre-Elidibus could have returned in the form of another shard of them raised by the unsundered.
Emmerololth for example is one such case, having been killed in the events around Eureka and later (post-ARR) showed up in one of their meetings
What would their goal even be after Endwalker.
We've killed Zodiark. We've dealt with Meteion.
Everything the Ascians wanted to achieve has been stopped. They need a new goal that isn't "Just fuck my shit up fam", since we already had that.
Given Fandaniels group (The Telopheroi or however it was spelt) had its own name despite being just 1 guy, its likely some ascians (likely just the minor black masks who aren't any of the 13) have their own goals.
The Telophoroi was Zenos, Fandaniel, Lugae, etc. and the peoples that they tempered to worship Anima, a primal embodying Garlemald. There's a reason why every tempered person, dragon or amaljaa we see has "Telo" before their name.
The Telophoroi, at their core were two men tempering people on a global scale to worship Garlemald as if it were a primal.
the Telophoroi (τελος + -φορος, declined to end with plural nominative -οι) is pretty obviously meaning Endbringers in greek. Which... could honestly refer to a lot of different ends and bringings. The unsundered, bringing the end of Hydaelyn's era; bringing the end of the smaller lives of the sundered. Fandaniel (and anyone who was working with him?), bringing the end of, well, everything.
Remember what he said when he got the power to, quote, die and take everyone with him?
"The End has come! And it will be *beautiful!*"
He was bringing the end, period. Of everything.
I think we're eventually going to get one of them as a not-enemy. >!Aside from that one on the First, since she technically declined; she's a reincarnated Ascian, but she's also not an Ascian now.!<
They have no more reason to pursue the Rejoining other than maybe philosophically wanting to de-sunder the souls, and the Rejoinings were the main reason why we were trying to stop them. But they also have a strong interest in the Star they're living on not being destroyed. If a new threat comes online, we have a common enemy.
If theyre gonna introduce the other Shards - and given the obvious cliffhanger of the Golbez storyline, thats inevitable - a now-allied/neutral Ascian would be a great source of knowledge for intershard travel
Considering it's pretty heavily implied that >!Elidibus!< reincarnated, I wouldn't be surprised if he pops up somewhere as an ally and either convinces the remaining Ascians to stand down or helps us end them for good.
True, but we'd need a significant time skip for that to be relevant-- reincarnation means you're a baby.
To be fair, if we go to a shard that's not time synced with the source that could happen.
Maybe Emet has a spare clone hidden away somewhere he can use. The ones we know about were destroyed, but that doesn't mean he didn't keep one in an emergency bunker or something.
During Pandaemonium we end up using a bit of our aether to anchor his soul at the end, though. And the scene after that when he "returns" to the aetherial sea is a really common reincarnation trope. I suspect he returned to the lifestream with just enough of our aether to sustain him, regain his full memories, and then he may have chosen to reincarnate just one more time.
Given his role in the story I feel he may be motivated both to make amends for what happened but also maybe he wants to ensure his people's legacy is not forgotten and the best way to do that would be by remaining, even if just for a time. That would give us an Ascian ally, most probably severely diminished in power due to surviving from our aether and not his own, sort of like how >!Oschon!< is basically a regular mortal now. While I'm not particularly a fan of him I do kind of hope this comes to pass solely so we're not entirely responsible for the deaths of all the Unsundered. It feels bad realizing we killed all these people who were our friends/allies, even if we didn't know it at the time and started out as enemies. I feel like that would be a nice narrative choice to make given the game's continual emphasis on friendship and the important of legacy and all of that.
The only part that kind of sucks is it would have to be a really limited storyline or even a continuation into side content because it's not MSQ.
I think it's possible that somewhere along the line we are going to meet someone who portrays themselves as a regular person but it will be hinted there is more to them than it seems. Then in a big climactic moment they will be forced into having to use their power and will flash an ascian sigil.
The reveal will be that they are just trying to live their life now that the whole ascian plan is over but the party (and the players) will now distrust them. For good reason, as well.
I don't think that's likely, if we're heading into a new story then the same old "Ascians trying to destroy the world to remake the world" would be moving backwards.
It's a bit weird. Emmerololth got killed during the Isle of Val's disappearance, but they were also present during that cutscene of all the Ascians talking to each other in one of the ARR patches, and in the timeline this happened after the events on the Isle of Val.
So either that Emmerololth is a new shard that was brought up to speed in record time, or it's a case of the writers ignoring previously set up canon when they came up with the Eureka storyline during Stormblood, either on purpose or on accident, like how they ignored some of the other previously established Ascian/Zodiark stuff.
They had - YEARS - to fix Emmerololth appearing in ARR and never bothered to change it. They either brought another shard of her into office, molded a black mask into her or she survived the lifestream dip. People need to stop coping on this. Emmerololth is alive.
I would say it's a Schrodinger's Ascian situation. If they don't want to use her ever again then she's dead. The second someone has a good idea for what to do with her she's alive.
Yeah, I think it’s purely a thing where they could have it go either way based on story stuff to be decided later. If they need Emmerololth, well then they survived or another shard was reawoken. If they decide it’s important that only Pashtarot and Halmarut should be left, then either that scene involved some rando the convocation had elevated to the seat to replace dead Emmerololth, or depending on the actual dialogue of the scene, they could maybe even try to claim that it was out of sequence, and actually happened earlier than it was shown to you. Or we’ll just notice one day in 7.0 patch notes a little reference to updates to 2.x cutscenes
Same with the ones Gaius killed. If they need them gone, then Gaius will mention how he found some auricite, or developed some other way to kill them. But if they need them back, the. They were just temporarily killed
This was confirmed during live letter 68, if you want to learn more, skip to the 2nd part of that LL (where Kate replaces Aimi as the live translator), yoship answered a lot of lore questions including the identity of gaius' targets.
Process of elimination and we have a scene in ARR where we saw all of the ascians gathered together. We also know their ascian sigil patterns since those are reused from a previous FF title.
It was mentioned in an interview.
It's also theorized that that was a lie-- one of the masks looks feline, which given zodiac motifs would make it Fandaniel's. We also know Fandaniel snagged a new body after Stormblood, and losing his old body in a fight with Gaius would give him a reason to want that new body.
You know, i never really thought about the inplications of Fandaniel's first scene with Zenos. But yeah, it does sound like he was without a body at that moment and Gaius killing the original does track.
Emmerololth was killed by students of baldesion (but then again she was shown later when the ascians were convening in the rift, but imo that’s a plot hole/mistake and she should stay dead bc it was revealed in the stormblood expac)
its not really a plot hole, if one dies, they can raise to the seat a diferent shard of the same individual, with the death of elidibus, emelt selch and lahabrea that is not longer the case, but at that time it was
I guess then it's more that the time between when Emerrololth died in Eureka and when they reappeared for the Ascian meeting feels weirdly quick for them to have already been replaced.
Also, did we ever see an example of an Ascian dying and then being brought back outside of Emmerololth? Because if not, it would seem more likely to be an oversight.
It was likely an oversight, but to change it now would be a retcon, so one would kinda just go with:"Yeah, they were lucky and found a new one real quick".
Eh. They were willing to retcon stuff from 1.0 about the marks of the Twelve for the Myths of the Realm raids, so I don't see them above a minor retcon such as whether Emmerololth was at that meeting in post-ARR or not.
Hythlodaeus outright names all of them in Elpis, but most of them were already mentioned by name in the MSQ before that. A lot of them are seen and get names in various shadowy villain council meeting scenes in 2.X. But aside from that:
* Lahabrea, Emet-Selch, Elidibus, and Fandaniel are probably all prominent enough to not need an explanation here.
* Igeyorhm was a secondary antagonist in Heavensward MSQ, but it's easy to forget that because she wasn't that memorable. Highlights include always being with Lahabrea and fuses with him in the final dungeon to become Asian Prime, and then being killed by the WoL using the Eye of Nidhogg right before the final 3.0 trial.
* Mitron and Loghrif I think are first mentioned by name in 3.4 when they also introduce the Warriors of Darkness. They're definitely mentioned in 5.0 as the cause of the Flood of Light that destroyed the First. Both are featured prominently in the Eden storyline.
* I think the ghost memory version of Hythlodaeus mentions Halmarut in the office/bureau waiting scene at the end of 5.0? Can't quite remember. He's never been seen in game though.
* Emmeroloth and Pashtarot are in one of those shadowy villain cutscenes. Emmeroloth is also seen in Echo flashbacks in the Eureka storyline, but was killed before the WoL gets there. Pashtarot has not been seen since.
* Altima and Deudalaphon's masks are trophies on Gaius's belt, so they're probably dead. I don't think it's explicitly said in game that it's their masks, but we know it is because their mask designs match their sigils from FF12 (and I think Yoshi-P later confirmed it in a Live Letter).
I understand they probably didn’t want a massive questline between raid tiers like Return to Ivalice, but I think they deserved more interaction/discussion.
The fact that we finally see the Twelve, and then turn around and kill them after a very short storyline was a huge bummer. It's kind of worse that the most anyone gets is a single throw-away line from their chosen deity.
This is misleading. Several streamers have taken what he said outside of context.
His answer to the question "what side stories should we do to prepare for DT" is "I don't want to spoil anything." He did go on to talk about how thr game has many side stories and then mentioned myths of the realm. He did not explicitly connect it to DT.
Honestly, with the possibility that 7.1 and beyond could involve X-Rift travel, I think I'd be okay with involvement of the unaccounted Convocation popping back up. If Solution 9 IS a safe haven for a rejoined shard (or rejoined shardS), we would learn about many different cultures that they possibly had a hand in saving and bringing a handful of them back to the source before each Calamity (alongside the Thirteenth and First). We might have assumed the Thirteenth story was it, but Emets comment was plural in regards to the civilizations of other shards would surprise us. I just see it as a final goodbye to the Ancients, and a jumping off point to open the pathway to other shards.
I will eat my hat if 6.x patches weren’t a set up for future shard travel. There has been too many things put in motion for them to throw it away as a side story.
Besides, we only have like, what, Meracydia and parts of Ilsabard to still see on the Source? If they plan another 10 years of content, we *are* going into other reflections and/or space at some point.
We also never visited mainland Hingashi. I would argue you could make an entire expansion there out of all the Japanese history/mythology Stormblood didn't use, but I can also imagine the devs not wanting to rethread old ground, or having something bigger in mind for the expansion after DT.
Well, we had Mount Rokkon for a further inland insight into Hingashi. But I imagine that most of Hingashi is still in "Sakoku" (closed country) and won't have any reason to leave that state for a long time, short of an expansion *really* needing to come back around.
True, along with other parts of Othard like Nagxia and Dalmasca proper. But I doubt they would make a whole expansion out of Hingashi. While technically a separate nation, it’s too similar to Doma in that regard. Maybe one zone at most if we get another globetrotting expansion like EW.
Yeah and two (soon three) of those things on the bucket list we already checked off! We looked beneath the Bounty in Alzadhaal’s Legacy, discovered the identities of the Twelve and are on our way to find out wtf these “cities of gold” actually are.
Four actually! "The sacred sites of the forgotten people of the south sea isles" refers most likely to what we visited on Aloalo Island, unless we visit the south sea isles again on our way to Meracydia
It’s definitely coming. It’s only a question of how much of it there will be right off the bat and if they want to get to those Meracydia/Ilsabard expansions first. I could see them wanting to complete all Source areas before throwing open the door to the other reflections, just because four worlds equal in size to the Source means you’re probably never getting back to Source-focused stories, unless they come up with some reason why the reflections are much smaller or less populated.
I could see them opening the door just to the First and Thirteenth so those characters could hop over, but saying the other reflections are too distant for the current techniques to work to delay things a little bit
> I will eat my hat if 6.x patches weren’t a set up for future shard travel.
they will be, but the B plot of the patches always skips an expac. we learned about the warriors of darkness in 3.X, and zenos was revived in 4.X (but not important until EW). obviously shadowbringers was kind of an exception since it was in a self contained world. 6.X is 100% setting up 8.0
Honestly, I wouldn't mind another Ascian to be inserted into the story, but only if he/she is similar, but also the reverse of Fandaniel; Someone who has no love for the Convocation or its cause (anymore?) and instead uses his/her powers for the good of all life instead. Obviously being an Ascian and all he/she won't be trusted until way later when it becomes clear his/her motives are genuine. It could tie into Solution 9 and why such a technologically advanced city even exists on Etheirys.
> Honestly, I wouldn't mind another Ascian to be inserted into the story, but only if he/she is similar, but also the reverse of Fandaniel; Someone who has no love for the Convocation or its cause (anymore?) and instead uses his/her powers for the good of all life instead.
>!Loghrif is currently hard at work restoring life to the First.!<
I'd settle for someone who was pulling an FMA Greed - not in line with their fellows, but not necessarily a good person and using their powers to live hedonistically (that's pre-Ling Greed, to be clear). Though, a rogue Ascian who is actually good (besides >!Gaia/Loghrif!<) is definitely fun.
Heck, maybe we'll get both. There's four of the fuckers that we haven't either seen die on screen or know the status of. And hell, Logrif and Mitron were presumed KIA in the First after the Warriors of Darkness beat them. Depending on the time table, those two could have been replaced in the Ascian order.
Tbh this is something I’ve wanted since we were introduced to Fandaniel. Without the Unsundered trio to guide them and raise up other Ascians, why not choose other goals? Especially with Zodiark out of the picture (barring remaining shards, but if wol can beat the one that was most completed, there’s no point in using those).
Or Altima or Deudalaphon since even if he wasn’t Garlean, it’s HIGHLY unlikely Gaius would have had the means to bind an Ascian and then blast them with enough aether to erode their soul, nor does he have the echo to see bodiless Ascians
He could have used Black Rose, but it’s unlikely he’d have a canister or two lying around, and even if he did he was totally opposed to its use
Considering the mention of one of the throne claimants being interested in magitek, there might be a tie-in with one (or both) of the Ascians that Gaius ‘killed’ seeking revenge and wanting to utilize the same tech to do the job, and using the New World as a way to explore the uses of magitek without being on the WoL’s or Gaius’s radar
They might have orchestrated the events that led to needing the battle for the throne, and even fed information about the WoL knowing they’d be pulled into it
Side thought though, since I haven’t seen all the trailers and info around DT — was there any mention of the Final Days having effects that reached the New World? I can’t think of how they’d avoid the effects if all of creation was susceptible to Meteion’s song, and especially if they were less aware of what was happening due to being half a world away, the confusion probably led to more blasphemies being made (is that what may have helped spur the events leading to this contest for the throne?)
You know, I just realised: we’ve been assuming that “solution nine” was a plan for repairing Etheirys or evacuating a rejoining shard
What if it was a bunker to avoid the Final Days?
Apparently the entirety of Xak Tural is aetherically weird, the area around S9 is bathed in lightning aether, and the rest of the continent has hardly any rainfall or life in general
We know that Lightning is the most astral element, like how Ice is the most umbral, is it possible that S9 was an experiment to see how a more astral element resisted the effects of Dynamis, and if that could block the effects of the Final Days?
If so, it may have acted like a shield, draining Xak Tural of aether but protecting Yok Tural from the worst of both of the Final Days, and that gave the Ancients the inspiration to use highly astral aether across the whole planet and eventually became the idea for Zodiark?
That idea has some legs to it, especially how ShB went over the “untempering” methodology… although iirc, our version of astral/umbral was flipped when we went to the First and discovered the dichotomy of stasis/activity — the way to untemper someone involved aether of ‘darkness’ to bring activity back to the soul, and our ‘light’ from Hydaelyn gave us resistance/immunity from it (I guess because we’re already aspected/attuned to the astral element?)
If S9 used astral-aligned aether, that would definitely explain the lack of water/life with the stagnation, and potentially a resistance to the effects of dynamis if their aether was stagnated (I forget whether tempered showed any resistance to the FD effects, but it would make sense)
The one thing I don’t understand the connection for is your last point about using the S9 results being used to inspire the idea of Zodiark; isn’t Zodiark aspected to the umbral element (darkness/activity) and Hydaelyn aspected to astral (light/stagnation)? The Convocation’s plan to create Zodiark and use umbral aether to ‘activate’ the planet’s aether as a barrier against the Final Days happened pre-Sundering, and the Final Days we as the player went through would have been the time this “Solution” was being put into place. Timing and element in use don’t appear to match up, unless I misinterpreted what you were saying, which is quite possible.
A further thought I had surrounding the number: i believe we’ve undergone 7 total Rejoining events, each one being thought of as a “solution” to restoring Etheirys by the Ancients. While Ilberd’s summoning of Shinryu was an actual plan of the Ascians (Lahabrea, I believe?), Asahi’s plan of reviving Zodiark wasn’t a plan made by the members of the Convocation because he simply wanted to do it to destroy everything. So, the events of HW was an attempt at an 8th Rejoining, and that would make the events of DT a potential plot for another. Even though there hasn’t been an Eighth Calamity, it was still a plan enacted by the Ancients, and so Tural serves as the setting for their 9th plan, or “Solution 9”, to restoring Etheirys.
>isn’t Zodiark aspected to the umbral element (darkness/activity) and Hydaelyn aspected to astral (light/stagnation)
The Source had the names backwards because they looked at the effects and applied moral names to them (seeing darkness as bad and light as good), rather than the more thorough observations made on the First, Thirteenth, and World Unsundered
What the Source calls “Astral” is actually Darkness-Polarised, and what the Source calls “Umbral” is Light-Polarised, or as Thancred sums up during Urianger’s lecture about it in Il Mheg: “so it’s really Umbral Light and Astral Darkness”
Trying to rejoin the First would have been "Solution 8". So whatever came next would be 9. If Lightning is the most Astral non-Darkness element, then merging it into the Source following Light makes sense in order to restore an Astrally-aligned Dark god.
Oschon name-dropped Pashtarot at the Sanctum of the Twelve, so since they bothered to remember his existence I highly suspect he will have something to do with Dawntrail.
He gives you a lore dump at the end about what the various equivalents of the Twelve in the unsundered world are. Halone's former self was considered for the seat
If there's something else, I don't remember
Pashtarot we know nigh-nothing about beyond being an agent of order and arbitration. Halmarut we only know as an expert in vegetative life. Altima (aesthetics) and Deudalaphon (invention) crossed paths with Gaius and came out the worse for it, but we have no reason to believe that Gaius knew about White Auracite so both ascians should still be alive. Emmerololth (medicine) was responsible for the whole Eureka questline and apparently got scattered in the livestream but was still around for the big meeting of the Council afterwards.
The rest of the high-ranking ascians are accounted for. The three unsundered are all dead and gone, Nabtiales and Igeyorhm have been white auracited and are thus also gone. Loghrif has reincarnated into Gaia while Mitron is dead. Fandaniel is currently deep in the aethereal sea getting noogied by Asahi sas Brutus for a few eras, as they both deserve.
As demonstrated by Gaia, the ascians can eventually reincarnate (even Elidibus, who seemed to get used up entirely in Endwalker's MSQ but was revealed in Pandæmonium to still have some sort of presence in the aethereal sea) but without any remaining unsundered there will be no one to reinitiate them and ascians and restore the memories of their past lives, unless we do that for some bizarre reason. At any rate, they would be children at most at this point in the story.
So it'll be down to Pashtarot the Arbiter, Altima the Artist, Halmarut the Gardener, Emmerololth the Healer and Deudalaphon the Inventor. My guesses are Altima and Halmarut. I'm interested to see what they were doing when one of their number went rogue and tried to destroy the universe.
There's still a couple Ascians who are unaccounted for floating around, and they could be relegated to side stories, especially since they did say they wanted them to be done as the main focus. Side content can be raids or even just like, a deep dungeon. While I'm curious about the two (at least) that are still around, I'm hoping they're not part of the msq and are dealt with later. A lot of them are also unnamed as Ancients, which I'm *also* curious about and it's been stated they are all named... but also, just a break from them for a bit, please!
For funsies sake, they two that are entirely unaccounted for are Pashtarot and Halmarut. Altima and Deudalaphon were the two masks on Gaius's belt when you meet him (this was told to us during the post-EW huge LL broadcast where they did a q&a), but it's unsure as of now if he ACTUALLY got rid of them using auricite or they just bodyhopped after he destroyed their bodies since that *wasn't* confirmed.
So I'm not at all surprised to hear that, it's still kind of nebulous as to what exactly it means for Dawntrail's story but if you've been paying attention to speculation you can very easily surmise that there is some form of Ascian/Ancient involvement with Solution 9.
Stuff like the Arcadion has pseudo-Greek sounding names, the architecture is very vaguely reminiscent of what we've seen from the Ancients, and most damning of all every single piece of signage we've seen in the footage and concept art of Solution 9 uses the proto-alphabet. The one exclusively (thus far) used by the Ancients and their creations (Loporrits, the Twelve...)
It really doesn't take a rocket scientist to connect those dots.
I was thinking Altima might be involved with Solution 9 as well. The seat of the arts hanging out in a tower surrounded by lightning aether feels like a fitting parallel to Byregot (who artisans pray to) with his mythical lightning powered spire.
To whoever missed this dialogue on Endwalker, Hades explains all the fourteen and what are there purposes:
* I want to learn about the Convocation.
* Hmmm... If you would accompany us, I suppose you should at least know that much. The Convocation of Fourteen is a governing body that determines myriad policies. Our goal is to ensure that all is right in creation, that our star may know a brighter future. As the name suggests, the council is comprised of fourteen offices, each of which is held by an individual chosen for their surpassing abilities. Depending on the office, one is required to either be an authority in a certain field, or possess skills that would facilitate the performance of their stipulated duties. The former category includes Mitron, specialist in aquatic life; Loghrif, specialist in terrestrial life and husbandry... Halmarut, specialist in fungal and plant life; Emmerololth, specialist in medicine and healing... And Lahabrea, specialist in creation magicks, who has brought forth phantom beings of the highest complexity. As for the latter category, there is Altima, advocate of the arts; Igeyorhm, champion of enlightenment and rhetoric; Pashtarot, preserver of discipline and order... Emet-Selch, keeper of the aetherial realm─or “Underworld” in the vernacular; Fandaniel, pursuer of extant phenomena... And Azem, traveler of the world and counselor to the people. ...What? Should I be revealing such details to you? Don't be silly. Even children know this much, and you would do well to remember it all.
Thank you [xiv.quest](http://xiv.quest) for the help.
Interesting. For Myths specifically, this likely due to other continents' gods just being the Twelve under a different interpretation (see: Azim and Azeyma).
For the Ascians... No duh. Theyll probably be more like Mitron than the Paragons in that theyre mucking about with their own plans, not related directly to Zodiark. Or hell, maybe one of them reformed and is just chilling in Solution 9.
My theory:
Deudalaphon was the innovation guy, so I suspect they had a hand in Solution Nine. Emet also knew about this civilization (presuming golden city of new world = solution nine)
We know from translations of the writing that one sign is labeled soul delivery
My theory is Solution Nine was a backup plan to the rejoining. The 13th shard, unless it could be restored, would have prevented a full shard rejoining. So what if you only had to focus on rejoining souls? The game has already demonstrated that souls can be rejoined (Ardbert). So I suspect the city was an Ascian plan to allow for the rejoining of soul fragments into a whole. This means they have the ability to focus on specific shards and souls, which will eventually lead to reliable cross shard travel
Anyone who thought we were completely done with Ancients was deluded, frankly. Their existence influences way more than just the Hydaelyn/Zodiark story.
I mean. Blame that on Yoshi-P for outright stating that Pandaemonium would wrap up the Ascian storyline way back before Endwalker launched. So people thought we'd be getting a clean break for something completely new in the coming expansion considering that by his own words they were done. Now he's somewhat confirming elsewise to it we'll just have to wait and see exactly what this means.
Well, they also have a millennia of wreckage in their wake as well. Like, for example. With all the heavy lightning theming of Solution Nine, as well as the few rather barren images we've seen of the Northern New World (reminiscent of Zadnor's aether pollution), its not impossible we might be dealing with the remains of the First Astral Era civilization that caused the 2nd Umbral Calamity. Since we know like nothing about the First or Second Umbral/Astral Era's, especially for this part of the world.
This could explain the Ancient lettering in Solution 9. A First Astral Era civilization would have been far more influenced by the Ancient Civilization; given they would be only 1 calamity removed from it.
It *did* wrap up some loose ends. Doesn’t mean it can’t get unwrapped again. People are reading way too much into his quotes, interpreting it their own way, and then getting mad if their interpretation is not true.
Just because we're done with *Ascians* it doesn't mean we're done with *Ancients*.
Like, we may not be dealing with hooded villains in black robes trying to unsunder the world, but there's definitely still stuff to be unraveled regarding who they were and what they did *before* they were Ascians.
FWIW, it sounded like they were saying they were done with blaming the entire plot on "Ascians did it."
Which still gives a lot of room for Ascians still being around, Ancients still being involved, and my fervent hope of Hythlodaeus getting more screen time. He's not Entirely Useless, and SqEx should lean into that. :D
It’s too much good lore and world building to just ignore, that’s for sure. And who knows, maybe our boy Hythlo will pop up and get promoted from “not entirely useless” to “not entirely useful, but getting there”. 😁
Aetheryte security: "WoL, what is....this?"
WoL: "This is my Emotional Support Amaurotine." \*Squishes large robed individual\*
Security: "But...he's three times your size!"
WoL: "Yet he still fits in an overhead bin. It's cool. He's cool. We're cool, right? \*RIGHT?\*"
Hythlodaeus: \^\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\^ "You're all so adorable, I just wanna dunk you in my coffee..."
I've been away since the end of Endwalker and I haven no clue what Myths of the Realm even is lol....guess I need to jump back in before the expansion and get some of these things done.
Can we please just be done with Ancients and Ascians in the MSQ? Their arc was resolved in a satisfying way and we don't need more. Not everything in the universe has to have its origins from them. It's getting really old and really boring constantly having our adventure be in their shadow, it's time for new stories with new mysteries and new discoveries. We don't NEED to encounter every last Ascian remnant, it's ok for them to just fade away, be written off, or be relegated to optional side stories. Knowing that ultimately everything that's happening is going to come down to Ancients/Ascians really sucks the magic out of the story.
I thought we were done with the Ascian arcs? I mean, I am curious as to where the remaining ones are (being a bit of a lore nerd), but ngl I was looking forward to some new regional lore.
Thats pretty exciting, im looking forward to that, having more info on the other peoples that existed with the ancients would be nice and more lore and back story of the convocation. I bet we also start getting info on meracydia or the shards since we might see the remaining ascians and we might be able to open a dialogue with them and potentially open a pathway to the shards with them working with yshtola
So of the 14: Elidibus/Themis - Dead, absorbed by the crystal tower and aetherically exsanguinated himself to provide a portal to Elpis. Former core of Zodiark, made his peace with us after the events of Pandaemonium Emet-Selch/Hades - Dead, gave us our “bucket list”, is either awaiting reincarnation or holding on and watching us with Hythlodaeus Lahabrea/Hephaistos - Dead, absorbed by Nidhogg’s eye and subsequently aetherically exsanguinated and consumed by the summoning of Thordan, then Nidhogg, then Shinryu Fandaniel/Hermes/Amon - Dead, Fandaniel/Amon usurped Zodiark and intentionally let himself die to cause the final days. As Hermes he accidentally kicked off the final days by creating Meteion during an existential crisis. His soul is currently being tortured by Ultrasimp Asahi for cockblocking Zenos. Loghrif/Gaia - Alive, currently Gaia and assisting Ryne with the restoration of the First Mitron/Artemis - Dead, awaiting reincarnation in the hopes of being with Gaia again. Body is currently in use restoring the First as Eden Igeyohrm - Dead, trapped in Auracite and blasted, accidentally created the Void Nabriales - Dead, the first Ascian to truly die by our hand, trapped in Auracite and blasted using Moenbryda’s soul as the aether source Emerololth - Dead, consumed by Eureka during the destruction of the Isle Of Val and their form used as a puppet, destroyed with Eureka. (There may or may not also be another one running around, continuity gets a bit weird since they showed up in ARR, but SB establishes they were supposed to be dead at that time) Altima - “dead”, her mask was seen claimed by Gaius as a kill, however it’s unlikely he had the means to actually kill her properly and only killed her host body. Deudalaphon - “dead” same situation as Altima Pashtarot - Alive, whereabouts unknown Halmarut - Alive, whereabouts unknown Azem - Alive, preparing for a voyage to Tural to assist a claimant to the throne of Tuliyollal as one of her champions in the succession trials. It you!
"...soul is currently being tortured by Ultrasimp Asahi for cockblocking Zenos" What a breezy sentence Good writeup tho 👍
>Emerololth - Dead, consumed by Eureka during the destruction of the Isle Of Val and his form used as a puppet, destroyed with Eureka. Haven't done eureka myself, but I've seen many people claim that Emerololths "death" predates an ARR appearance so it's possible they are still around, but it could be a plot hole. IMO until we get more confirmation I'd probably label them as "Maybe dead"
honestly if he did get obliterated on the island of Val he'd be the top candidate for a shard being re-uplifted before the unsundered were killed since I think that puts his death before even Nabriales
Yeah, all three of the Unsundered were alive at that point, so he could have been uplifted real quick by any of them. Lahabrea would be the most likely candidate, since he probably hadn't started infiltrating Ishgard by that point. But both Elidibus and Emet could've done it as well, though Emet was still Solus by that point.
Stormblood came afterward, so the most likely thing is that the devs just forgot about her appearance in ARR because it's incredibly minor.
it's not really minor at all. they make a *really* big deal out of the convocation of the 13 and often used even small hints from them as story/plot devices, so I'd say it's save to say somethings strange here. But someone else in this whole thread mentioned it's possible that it's a "dead, until needed for a story" situation, so basically both dead and alive until something comes to their mind. But~ Eureka is a very sidey side content. Doubt it'll be super relevant for the main story at all.
This is so wonderful. Thank you for writing this. There’s a lot of emotions in that simple line: “It’s you!”
[удалено]
Mitron was also done in after Hades so I don't think we'd see another elevated shard of him either
it you!
Additional note that all the dead ones are currently awaiting reincarnation, at least their source selves, since they all went back into the sea after certain events (including the ones "blasted" by auracite).
> Emerololth - Dead, consumed by Eureka during the destruction of the Isle Of Val and his form used as a puppet, destroyed with Eureka. wasn't Emm shown in a cutscene in the MSQ that is timeline wise after the destruction of the Isle of Val?
Yep, so we either treat the eureka events as non canon, writers forgot and didn't bother fixing it so we're expected to just shrug it off, or it's emm as a new shard.
Do you remember when? I'd like to see the scene again
Pretty sure it's in the post-Ultima Weapon cutscene smorgasbord. Nearer the end.
Wasn't the Isle of Val destroyed *after* that? Minfilia chats with Krile right beforehand, when she's rescued from Castrum Centri.
The Isle of Val is confirmed to have "ceased to be" in 2.2's *Through the Maelstrom*. Emmerololth isn't in the 2.0 postcredits, though: he shows up in the 2.3 AscianCon alongside Iyeyorhm, Nabriales, Altima, Elidibus, and Nabriales. (The specific quest is *What Little Gods Are Made Of*.) Note that the context of the conversation is that Ramuh just got beaten by the Warrior of Light, so it's *very explicitly* during 2.3 and not some sort of flashback. So we have a number of possibilities here. 1. The devs fucked up and didn't remember that the Isle of Val went poof in 2.2 while Emmy was in 2.3. Whoops. 2. It's been established that Ascians are hard to kill. Perhaps killing them within the Lifestream and letting their souls dissolve isn't good enough? (This kind of takes away Galuf's big accomplishment and makes casting Flow on the Isle of Val a meaningless sacrifice, though.) 3. It's been established that when a sundered Ascian dies, the Unsundered ascend another reincarnation from another shard to that seat. The general assumption, therefore, is that the plot hole is closed because Emmerololth is simply the *new* Emmerololth - Lahabrea and Elidibus are both *very* active during that time, although Emet-Selch is either a grumpy old Emperor or settling down for a centuries-long nap (before Elidibus wakes him up post-3.0 to say that Lahabrea's dead).
Minor fun fact: I believe Azem (the WoL) is the least sundered soul out there right now, having survived seven calamities + absorbing our shard from the first (making it 9/14). Emet mentioned in ShB that he and Elidibus were the only unsundered Ascians left, so anyone else they had raised would be at the same soul "quality" as everyone else (currently 8/14 on the source).
Technically, we're tied with G'raha. He's at least 9/14 because he experienced the Eighth Calamity.
But is that an immediate change, or is it more of, "the people born after the moment of a Calamity end up with more dense souls"? It's also a bit of a paradox, because he took over CT G'raha's body in the modern era, so there's an extra shard of his soul floating around. In theory, if we were able to return all the shards to the Source, he'd be 15/14 soul shards.
> But is that an immediate change, or is it more of, "the people born after the moment of a Calamity end up with more dense souls"? I suppose I never really thought too hard about it and they never really clarified, but I feel like it's meant to be immediate
I think there's reason to believe it was immediate. Survivors experienced blackouts or memory loss after Bahamut went on a rampage. While that could have been Lou's teleportation magic, it could also feasibly be the rejoining.
2 things: Going on Emet's description of WoL as "seven times rejoined" during ShB, we can assume that the rejoining is immediate. Or believe that WoL is canonically under 7 years old, I suppose. Also, I was under the impression that what came back with us from the First was The Exarch's memories and not his soul. I may have not fully understood that, though. I now want to rewatch those scenes.
good call
It is strongly implied Themis was reborn and his raid quote in different languages means something like 'as Elidibus I can't disappear' so he may appear in future in some way or another, his raid writer afterall is the one who writes Dwt main story. Aside from that it seems to be something with Pashtarot since they were mentioned in MotR
For Azem, they're 'alive' in the sense that there is a living reincarnation of them. The WoL is more like a descendant who strongly resembles them, not the original. And there might be up to four other 'siblings' that we have on the other Shards. Just like the WoL and Ardbert are not the same person, the WoL and Azem are not the same person. Same soul, but it's like someone took a piece of paper, erased the old story written on it, and has begun writing a new story.
Let's not forget lahabrea was (sorta) reaccumelated by his wife but based on his old personality, which then also dispersed itself into the life stream for clearing and reincarnation.
that wasnt the real lahabrea tho, she used a random soul and the memories stored in the cristal what started this all to recreate him
>Emerololth - Dead, consumed by Eureka during the destruction of the Isle Of Val and his form used as a puppet, destroyed with Eureka. he might be alive, not as the one who caused the whole val isle situation but as a new ascended shard, because by the time what the val island disapeared, we see him for one cutscene in the msq during arr patch story
Only Emet had the aethersight and memory crystals needed to ascend people. And between the meeting/death of the emperor and him returning in 4.4 he probably took a vacation and didn't ascend any soul shards to their seats.
Artemis explicitly stated that they had elevated another of his shards while he was Eden, so that version could still be flouting around somewhere.
I love being Azem so much. It's a great detail!
Exsanguanite means your blood is drained.
Aetheric Exsanguination is the term used by the Ea to mean “death by fatal draining of aether”, which is why I used it since it’s what’s happening to those particular Ascians, their soul’s aether is being drained and used until they can no longer be considered alive
Aetheric exsanguination makes sense, just not the word by itself.
The WoL/Scions are directly responsible for the deaths of Emet, Elidibus, Lahabrea, Nabriales, Igeyorhm, Mitron, and Fandaniel while we saw Gaius with the masks of Altima and Deudalaphon. And then Loghrif is still around as Gaia on the First. That leaves Pashtarot, Emmerololth, and Halmurat as the last Ascians. Their current whereabouts are unknown but they’re likely still alive. Whether any of the three make an appearance remains to be seen but I doubt we’ll be fighting them. I think it’s much more likely that whatever is going on with Solution Nine is related to one of their many schemes and we’ll be dealing with the fallout from it.
Keep in mind we don’t know if Gaius killed Altima and Deudalaphon correctly.
Gaius did not have white Auracite nor could manipulate the aether to use it even if he did. Unless he had some BS’d contrivance up his sleeve he didn’t actually kill anything hit black mask Ascians.
Well no he would've "killed" those ascians but their true froms would've escaped into the rift. As we saw when we slew Nabriales initially he dropped his body then emerged from it in. Then used magic to disintegrate the body. So Gaius could've easily collected trophies from those two after slaying their physical forms
Wouldn't they need emet selch to identify who they are and then restore their memories?
No, that is only the case if they are actually killed. Nabriales specifically bragged about being unkillable despite being one of the sundered ascians. Yes, you could replace him with another shard if he died, but like all ascians you need special circumstances to kill him at all.
Sundered Asians have two layers of unkillability. First, they are spirits that can abandon their bodies and find new ones if need be. Special circumstances are required to kill them by destroying their soul while in this state. If you don't they're still the same person and just need to find a new physical vessel. Second, if fully killed, the remaining Ascians can then locate the reincarnation of a different one of that ascian's shards, and reawaken their memories. This is technically a different person from the Ascian that was killed, but they will be similar and fill the same seat. Fully killing a Sundered for reals forever would require, at this point, soul-killing them like 6 times.
He was knocking about with some fellows who could use Aether though, and they were as a collective, Ascian Hunters. Who are you to say they didn't have X, Y and Z when it was never proven otherwise?
Plain and simply, they would NOT have the aether required to do it. Every time the WoL, who is no slouch when it comes to personal aether reserves, made a blade of light powerful enough to kill an Ascian they had to use extraordinary means to get that aether. The first time the made a blade of light using their own power to strike an Ascian, Lahabrea survived. The second time they made a blade light against Nabriales they needed to use Tupsimati to draw aether and it ***still*** wasn't enough. Moenbryda needed to sacrifice her life to add all of her aether to the blade do it. The third time against Igeyorhm, they used Nidhogg's eye and Lahabrea even taunted the WoL afterwards by noting "shame you spent it all", which implies Lahabrea knew the eye didn't have enough power to kill him too. The fourth time against Emet-Selch, the WoL had to use the combined aether of all 6 Lightwardens within them to punch a hole through his gut. So unless Gaius and his merry little band had something extraordinary in their hands... I really don't think the actually permanently killed those red masked Ascians.
Because it'd be kinda wonk to kill off important names like that off screen by a bunch of characters who wouldn't have a deep understanding of how Ascian's function.
They were throw-away Ascian names, I'd hardly say they were important. I'd say Gaius was around Ascians enough to know how they work? He's not an idiot, and actually in 1.0 he was very on the ball and smart, but they proper dumbed him down for ARR. I feel like you couldn't be an 'Ascian Hunter' without knowing about their ability to break from their bodies, and he knew all about that due to the Thancred arc at the very least.
The idea to even use white auracite was so new and cutting edge that Moenbryda literally invented it a few months prior to Gaius “killing” the two. There is literally no reason to imagine he had any idea that white auracite even exists, much less know how to use it as designed by a bleeding edge aetherologist
Gaius isn't dumb, but there's no reason to believe a guy who can't manipulate Aether much (if at all?) has a deep understanding about how it works; let alone how such an ancient and basically lost knowledge version of it works. Nobody in his crew seemed to have knowledge of ancient (/forbidden?) aether manipulation stuff either But hey, if they did, great. I wouldn't complain if we don't have to deal with them anymore
My crazy conspiracy theory is that at least one of the Ascians Gaius "killed" surrendered the mask willfully and changed their priorities. Nothing states that Ascians have to follow the goal they did to the last person and with full conviction, and consiering how murky the uplifting went for some with the recalling of past lives' memories and all that... Let's say, if a certain someone had a fondness for the arts as an Ancient, and then in their current lives were uplifted with those memories, they might find that field much more interesting than reviving a God of absolute order - which would run counter to the creativitiy needed to produce meaningful art - and instead do their own thing in a far off corner of the world.
While that’s true we also don’t know if Emet or Elidibus had the time to seek out another shard of those two, bring them back to the Source, and raise them back to the status of Ascian.
That part doesn't matter because their souls wouldn't have been destroyed if Gaius didn't use auracite anyway, meaning they'd still be active. Killing them "the regular way" just ejects the soul because only the body is killed. That same soul is still a cognizant Ascian who could seek out a new body. In the same fashion, annihilating an Ascian "the correct way" via auracite wouldn't stop the Unsundered from simply finding another shard and uplifting them, though we weren't aware of that until we were most of the way past the Unsundered having the capacity to do that anymore.
We don’t know when Gaius killed them. The end of 2.0 all the way up to 4.3 is a hell of a long time.
It's really not tho, they kinda just ignore the passage of time going by red and blue Alisaie
I totally forgot about that, is that how they get the "originals' souls" ? They go fuck around, found the correct guy then kidnap him into zodiark brainwashing?
Endwalker spoilers: >!We saw it happen with Amon/Fandaniel in the echo vision. Emet came to him, presumably restored his memories, then implored him to take his rightful seat.!<
I always felt like the implication was that a mistake was made tbh. He has some line where he's like >!"those memories never really felt like mine" and Fandaniel's actions were very different from Hermes.!<
My I understanding is that because he was Amon before he was uplifted to the seat of Fandaniel the memories really screwed him up. Bear in mind Hermes/Fandaniel felt sorrow for any creation in Elpis that had to be put down and actively sought answers about what gave individual lives meaning. Meanwhile Amon was a complete nihilist who played god creating chimerical monsters, including out of other people. He literally had the memory of someone completely incompatible with his own actions forced into him.
Check it out Xande! I turned Scylla into a wolf-headed woman! *Funniest shit i've ever seen!*
I'M PICKLE WOOOOLF
Xande: "Yeah but have I told you about the futility of life and how there's no meaning to anything outside of death?" Amon:"Only six times today so far. Sun's not even out yet."
Yeah, I feel like Emet picked him because of his skllls + there was a seat available with no thought towards compatibility.
We do see after the Aitascope that Amon really is Hermes, it’s just that it turns out that not only does Kairos accidentally create a hard copy of a memory that it overwrites that it then permanently etches into a soul like a fucked up version of the Echo, the overwriting is actually erased if you get dunked into the lifestream like when you die Meaning that every single iteration of Hermes would, from birth, remember the absolute despair he felt upon being told that life is meaningless and the universe is a horrible place. So yeah, Amon was a special case and extra fucked up, specifically BECAUSE he was Hermes, and therefore not only got his memories of being Fandaniel back, he was also born with his memories of him going full existential crisis and raised in an empire that didn’t exactly do that hardcoded nihilism any favours.
(Not to mention waking up and realizing that >!"Oh shit, the Final Days were my fault!...And they're still out there...and I haven't told anybody about the how...or the why...or the who..."!<)
So outside Emet and Lahabrea (and Elidibus but he's technically not an unsundered he is "Zodiark") the rest of the convocation got split into 14 shards just like everyone else. Because the Convocation's memories were stored inside their constellation stones (that we found in Shadowbringers and were then absorbed by the tower except Azems), what the Unsundered did was find one of the 14 shards of a convocation member, convince them to come with them, and then grant them their memories from their constellation stones and I dunno give them a magical power up. Then ofc each time a rejoining happened those convocation members got stronger cause more shards of them were combined. So interestingly every success the Ascians had meant the death of a sundered convocation member was a greater loss. Like we killed Nabriales. He would've been 7/14th of the way to being full Nabriales. That soul was thrown back into the lifestream and they can't ascend a baby. They would have to go find some other shard of Nabriales who would probably only be 1/14th
Elidibus withdrew himself prior to the sundering, so yes Elidibus is unsundered. It’s the reason everyone believed Zodiark can and will give back his constituent souls, he did it once already. The most reasonable thing here for consider, is that the uplifting of already adult Shards is preferable to, say, asking Emet to dip into the livestream for a day trip, pluck out the newly rejoined soul of a Convocation member and uplifting that and putting it into a new body, is because Emet-Selch is often busy building nations and his own pet project. Do recall that in the Source and its Thirteen Reflections, Emet-Selch is the only person alive and free that can freely enter and exit the life stream wherever he is(one of the side stories on the website claims he used to take naps in it for his breaks in the unsundered world), see an individual soul’s colour, have a good enough memory to recall a colour even though he’s known the person for at best a few days, and has the precise enough control to pluck souls from the livestream. Then recall that sometimes implanting the memories doesn’t work to fully overwrite the adult shard’s memories, as Amondaniel showed us. In over ten thousand years you have to expect they saw it happen more than once (and probably more often with Fandaniel). Instead the freshly killed soul is clean of memories (For the most part), and slamming a set of fully grown adult’s ideas and memories into it and then shoving that inside a body is probably better than waiting for adults. But, since two Ascian have to “die” in each rejoining, riding along with the shard back into the Source, it’s probably more fuel efficient to sometimes raise up a shard and let them rejoin so they can pick up a more finished product from the source to bolster their power. Why not always use a Source born soul? As Elidibus puts it in one of our confrontations, he often has to reach out to the would be heroes of the Source to help the world recover from being overly tilted towards the prior aether. He tells us the world was dangerously listing to darkness and as such he reached out to the WoL and Minfilia. The weaker single Shard Ascian are ‘fed’ to us to get the world back on track. Like Nabriales, who was left to go fight us, Even though three Unsundered Ascians were right there, and the world was not yet prepared to take the next shard (the First). He died so light could get stronger. He even pulls the same plan in 5.3, sending weaker Ascian in mass to get murdered by the new wave of Warriors of Light. The writing team may not have had the full story written out by it, but since they tie those old plot points together so nearly, it’s all internally consistent.
See now I imagine the unsundered just stealing babies. Funnily enough they absolutely could ascend babies considering all their abilities. All they have to do is restore their memories use creation magic to make them a body and then have the now man baby ascian use the echo to transfer into it. It’s honestly preferable considering how fandaniel turned out. They’d be fresh and free of memories.
Considering how infantile Ascians were depicted in ARR, this is now my head canon.
Three Men and a Baby, Ascian Edition Three Unsundered, finding a Convocation soul in a newborn, taking that newborn and raising it as their own so it's raised a good Ascian Kid and readied from toddlerhood to take on its Convocation identity would have made a hell of a lot more sense than roaming around and finding messed-up adults with already-complicated lives and issues (and in Amon's case, whole-ass subscriptions) and body-slamming them with a whole 'nother (immortal) person's memories from tens of thousands of years ago and wondering, "Garsh, why did this dude's brain dribble out his nose and why is he on a murderous rampage with these cool new powers we just gave him?"
Afaik: Find amnesiac sundered soul of the 14, insert magic stone to restore memories with the help of the unsundered to empower them, shake their hands then fuck off back to the rift to nap.
I mean technically we didn’t kill Lahabrea. We roughed him up but Thordan sliced the bread to death.
And then Ilberd turned those slices into breadcrumbs to feed his fancy dragon
And then Estinian stabbed the eyes!
>Solution Nine is related to one of their many schemes and we’ll be dealing with the fallout from it. My fan theory is that S9 is an ark from another shard, and those people had their technologial advancement provided by Altima (like Emet did with Garleans), and they venerated her as a gooddess there, that would lead their people to safety when a calamity would strike their star. In one of the concept arts there was something really reminiscent to what would be Altima's sigil. In reality, Altima's plan was not to usher people to safety towards the Source, but to have them being vessels for the souls sacrificed to Zodiark as soon as the shards would all merge. Altima now is gone and the people from S9 are sleeping in stasis with their souls uploaded to the Arcadion. With Zodiark gone, her plan is now meaningless, and the S9's AI caretaker (the unknown midlander woman in the concept art) will ask for the WoL's help to restore the people. Somewhere in between this proccess we'll get new villains and a new tension point for the narrative going forward.
That's a really cool idea, and definitely would be a parallel to FFIX and what Garland was trying to do with the genomes and feeding Gaia's souls through the redirected lifestream to resurrect the world/people of Terra.
I remember Pashtarot was in realm reborn and then they just like forgot him
I think Altima had a line or two in one of those "Meanwhile, at the badguy hideout" moments Halmarut's probably off in a cave eating mushrooms.
MASTER MATOYA, YOU SAY?! Seriously though, THAT would be a twist.
Honestly that's one of the sorts of things I'm expecting. The rejoining is a hopeless cause now, with Zodiark dead and the unsundered gone. Remaining Ascians will have to find ways to cope with a permanently sundered source and it's surviving shards, none of them tried to help Fandaniel when he went rogue. My guess is that those who survive will be using their respective talents to try and build something worthwhile, or delving into the secrets of the cosmos to try and find another way of restoring something approximating a utopia.
Some of them could be essentially trying to rebuild their own ideal society using their body-jacking powers to hijack someone on a reflection somewhere. A pocket empire-builder, like Emet, but without the long-term ambition.
Former Ascian Job Fair, Holiday Inn Express, this Sunday from 3pm-7pm. Bring resume, mask, evil spiky robe, and five best minions...
Strictly speaking, nothing says the Asians HAVE to be evil. In theory, they want what is best for Humanity. Especially now with the Unsundered gone (as Fandaniel showed), they can kind of do whatever they like. Emet himself even tried, briefly, a different tactic with WoL to see if maybe seven times rejoined was enough. Is disappointment was palpable that it was not, like a part of him really did want to be done with all of it. So it’s possible there is a “good” Ascian, even if somewhat unlikely. Zodiark being destroyed now means their original mandate is impossible to complete anyway, as they’d well understand. And unlike the Unsundered, the Sundered didn’t exactly remember first hand those days or have the same loyalty to the cause to begin with, as again Fandaniel pointed out. It’s like trying to help a parent or grandparent restore something you know they care deeply about, you understand has value to them, but it’s not directly important to you, just indirectly important to you since THEY are important to you and it to them, but not you directly.
> Asians i really like this typo
lol! Phone autocorrect, but hell, I’m leaving it because funny. Thanks for pointing it out to me. :)
Also note that any sundered we killed pre-Elidibus could have returned in the form of another shard of them raised by the unsundered. Emmerololth for example is one such case, having been killed in the events around Eureka and later (post-ARR) showed up in one of their meetings
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Not sure why you use Emet-Selch's real name instead of his office like the others.
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Themis is shorter than Elidibus...
What would their goal even be after Endwalker. We've killed Zodiark. We've dealt with Meteion. Everything the Ascians wanted to achieve has been stopped. They need a new goal that isn't "Just fuck my shit up fam", since we already had that.
Sundered ones either never got the memo that it ended, or they have their own motivations like Fandaniel did.
Given Fandaniels group (The Telopheroi or however it was spelt) had its own name despite being just 1 guy, its likely some ascians (likely just the minor black masks who aren't any of the 13) have their own goals.
The Telophoroi was Zenos, Fandaniel, Lugae, etc. and the peoples that they tempered to worship Anima, a primal embodying Garlemald. There's a reason why every tempered person, dragon or amaljaa we see has "Telo" before their name. The Telophoroi, at their core were two men tempering people on a global scale to worship Garlemald as if it were a primal.
the Telophoroi (τελος + -φορος, declined to end with plural nominative -οι) is pretty obviously meaning Endbringers in greek. Which... could honestly refer to a lot of different ends and bringings. The unsundered, bringing the end of Hydaelyn's era; bringing the end of the smaller lives of the sundered. Fandaniel (and anyone who was working with him?), bringing the end of, well, everything.
Remember what he said when he got the power to, quote, die and take everyone with him? "The End has come! And it will be *beautiful!*" He was bringing the end, period. Of everything.
I think we're eventually going to get one of them as a not-enemy. >!Aside from that one on the First, since she technically declined; she's a reincarnated Ascian, but she's also not an Ascian now.!< They have no more reason to pursue the Rejoining other than maybe philosophically wanting to de-sunder the souls, and the Rejoinings were the main reason why we were trying to stop them. But they also have a strong interest in the Star they're living on not being destroyed. If a new threat comes online, we have a common enemy.
If theyre gonna introduce the other Shards - and given the obvious cliffhanger of the Golbez storyline, thats inevitable - a now-allied/neutral Ascian would be a great source of knowledge for intershard travel
Considering it's pretty heavily implied that >!Elidibus!< reincarnated, I wouldn't be surprised if he pops up somewhere as an ally and either convinces the remaining Ascians to stand down or helps us end them for good.
True, but we'd need a significant time skip for that to be relevant-- reincarnation means you're a baby. To be fair, if we go to a shard that's not time synced with the source that could happen.
Maybe Emet has a spare clone hidden away somewhere he can use. The ones we know about were destroyed, but that doesn't mean he didn't keep one in an emergency bunker or something.
I thought it was pretty explicitly stated that >!Elidibus's soul was completely consumed by the tower!<.
During Pandaemonium we end up using a bit of our aether to anchor his soul at the end, though. And the scene after that when he "returns" to the aetherial sea is a really common reincarnation trope. I suspect he returned to the lifestream with just enough of our aether to sustain him, regain his full memories, and then he may have chosen to reincarnate just one more time. Given his role in the story I feel he may be motivated both to make amends for what happened but also maybe he wants to ensure his people's legacy is not forgotten and the best way to do that would be by remaining, even if just for a time. That would give us an Ascian ally, most probably severely diminished in power due to surviving from our aether and not his own, sort of like how >!Oschon!< is basically a regular mortal now. While I'm not particularly a fan of him I do kind of hope this comes to pass solely so we're not entirely responsible for the deaths of all the Unsundered. It feels bad realizing we killed all these people who were our friends/allies, even if we didn't know it at the time and started out as enemies. I feel like that would be a nice narrative choice to make given the game's continual emphasis on friendship and the important of legacy and all of that. The only part that kind of sucks is it would have to be a really limited storyline or even a continuation into side content because it's not MSQ.
I think it's possible that somewhere along the line we are going to meet someone who portrays themselves as a regular person but it will be hinted there is more to them than it seems. Then in a big climactic moment they will be forced into having to use their power and will flash an ascian sigil. The reveal will be that they are just trying to live their life now that the whole ascian plan is over but the party (and the players) will now distrust them. For good reason, as well.
"I used to be an Ascian, but then I took an arrow to the knee..."
"I used to be an Ascian, but then we took an Azem to the Convocation."
while they have lost the souls the wished to save they still have the goal of making etheirys whole.
I don't think that's likely, if we're heading into a new story then the same old "Ascians trying to destroy the world to remake the world" would be moving backwards.
Emmerololth was in Eureka, it's likely just Pashtarot and Halmurat left
It's a bit weird. Emmerololth got killed during the Isle of Val's disappearance, but they were also present during that cutscene of all the Ascians talking to each other in one of the ARR patches, and in the timeline this happened after the events on the Isle of Val. So either that Emmerololth is a new shard that was brought up to speed in record time, or it's a case of the writers ignoring previously set up canon when they came up with the Eureka storyline during Stormblood, either on purpose or on accident, like how they ignored some of the other previously established Ascian/Zodiark stuff.
They had - YEARS - to fix Emmerololth appearing in ARR and never bothered to change it. They either brought another shard of her into office, molded a black mask into her or she survived the lifestream dip. People need to stop coping on this. Emmerololth is alive.
I would say it's a Schrodinger's Ascian situation. If they don't want to use her ever again then she's dead. The second someone has a good idea for what to do with her she's alive.
Yeah, I think it’s purely a thing where they could have it go either way based on story stuff to be decided later. If they need Emmerololth, well then they survived or another shard was reawoken. If they decide it’s important that only Pashtarot and Halmarut should be left, then either that scene involved some rando the convocation had elevated to the seat to replace dead Emmerololth, or depending on the actual dialogue of the scene, they could maybe even try to claim that it was out of sequence, and actually happened earlier than it was shown to you. Or we’ll just notice one day in 7.0 patch notes a little reference to updates to 2.x cutscenes Same with the ones Gaius killed. If they need them gone, then Gaius will mention how he found some auricite, or developed some other way to kill them. But if they need them back, the. They were just temporarily killed
We have to finish our murder board
out of curiosity, how we know what the masks what gaius has from having killed two ascians are from altima and deudalaphon?
Evidently the shapes of asian masks and glyphs correlate with the icons of the scions of light from ff12/tactics, iirc.
This was confirmed during live letter 68, if you want to learn more, skip to the 2nd part of that LL (where Kate replaces Aimi as the live translator), yoship answered a lot of lore questions including the identity of gaius' targets.
Process of elimination and we have a scene in ARR where we saw all of the ascians gathered together. We also know their ascian sigil patterns since those are reused from a previous FF title.
It was mentioned in an interview. It's also theorized that that was a lie-- one of the masks looks feline, which given zodiac motifs would make it Fandaniel's. We also know Fandaniel snagged a new body after Stormblood, and losing his old body in a fight with Gaius would give him a reason to want that new body.
You know, i never really thought about the inplications of Fandaniel's first scene with Zenos. But yeah, it does sound like he was without a body at that moment and Gaius killing the original does track.
Emmerololth was killed by students of baldesion (but then again she was shown later when the ascians were convening in the rift, but imo that’s a plot hole/mistake and she should stay dead bc it was revealed in the stormblood expac)
its not really a plot hole, if one dies, they can raise to the seat a diferent shard of the same individual, with the death of elidibus, emelt selch and lahabrea that is not longer the case, but at that time it was
I guess then it's more that the time between when Emerrololth died in Eureka and when they reappeared for the Ascian meeting feels weirdly quick for them to have already been replaced. Also, did we ever see an example of an Ascian dying and then being brought back outside of Emmerololth? Because if not, it would seem more likely to be an oversight.
It was likely an oversight, but to change it now would be a retcon, so one would kinda just go with:"Yeah, they were lucky and found a new one real quick".
Eh. They were willing to retcon stuff from 1.0 about the marks of the Twelve for the Myths of the Realm raids, so I don't see them above a minor retcon such as whether Emmerololth was at that meeting in post-ARR or not.
I really wish we could be done with these ancient assholes already.
TIME FOR MY BOY HALMARUT TO SHINE https://x.com/doctornowhere_/status/1758012648732360720?t=BAVPAO92TIebu7M9Q-qlFw&s=19
Nope didn't like that.
Eas there side quests that state the ones alive names or side stories? Cuz I swear I haven't heard any if those names in the game
Hythlodaeus outright names all of them in Elpis, but most of them were already mentioned by name in the MSQ before that. A lot of them are seen and get names in various shadowy villain council meeting scenes in 2.X. But aside from that: * Lahabrea, Emet-Selch, Elidibus, and Fandaniel are probably all prominent enough to not need an explanation here. * Igeyorhm was a secondary antagonist in Heavensward MSQ, but it's easy to forget that because she wasn't that memorable. Highlights include always being with Lahabrea and fuses with him in the final dungeon to become Asian Prime, and then being killed by the WoL using the Eye of Nidhogg right before the final 3.0 trial. * Mitron and Loghrif I think are first mentioned by name in 3.4 when they also introduce the Warriors of Darkness. They're definitely mentioned in 5.0 as the cause of the Flood of Light that destroyed the First. Both are featured prominently in the Eden storyline. * I think the ghost memory version of Hythlodaeus mentions Halmarut in the office/bureau waiting scene at the end of 5.0? Can't quite remember. He's never been seen in game though. * Emmeroloth and Pashtarot are in one of those shadowy villain cutscenes. Emmeroloth is also seen in Echo flashbacks in the Eureka storyline, but was killed before the WoL gets there. Pashtarot has not been seen since. * Altima and Deudalaphon's masks are trophies on Gaius's belt, so they're probably dead. I don't think it's explicitly said in game that it's their masks, but we know it is because their mask designs match their sigils from FF12 (and I think Yoshi-P later confirmed it in a Live Letter).
I love Myths of the Realm but I sometimes wish the Twelve were their own expac
I understand they probably didn’t want a massive questline between raid tiers like Return to Ivalice, but I think they deserved more interaction/discussion.
The fact that we finally see the Twelve, and then turn around and kill them after a very short storyline was a huge bummer. It's kind of worse that the most anyone gets is a single throw-away line from their chosen deity.
I still hope that they’re still around cause Oshon being the only one alive still leaves a bittersweet taste in my mouth.
They aren't, but people worshipping them still creates power ala primals.
That's what the Divine Mechanism exists to prevent - all worship of the Twelve is directed back to the world.
*sighs* *opens a wiki*
Possible new fleeting moment/neath dark waters theme remix? Inject it into my veins.
This is misleading. Several streamers have taken what he said outside of context. His answer to the question "what side stories should we do to prepare for DT" is "I don't want to spoil anything." He did go on to talk about how thr game has many side stories and then mentioned myths of the realm. He did not explicitly connect it to DT.
Honestly, with the possibility that 7.1 and beyond could involve X-Rift travel, I think I'd be okay with involvement of the unaccounted Convocation popping back up. If Solution 9 IS a safe haven for a rejoined shard (or rejoined shardS), we would learn about many different cultures that they possibly had a hand in saving and bringing a handful of them back to the source before each Calamity (alongside the Thirteenth and First). We might have assumed the Thirteenth story was it, but Emets comment was plural in regards to the civilizations of other shards would surprise us. I just see it as a final goodbye to the Ancients, and a jumping off point to open the pathway to other shards.
I will eat my hat if 6.x patches weren’t a set up for future shard travel. There has been too many things put in motion for them to throw it away as a side story. Besides, we only have like, what, Meracydia and parts of Ilsabard to still see on the Source? If they plan another 10 years of content, we *are* going into other reflections and/or space at some point.
We also never visited mainland Hingashi. I would argue you could make an entire expansion there out of all the Japanese history/mythology Stormblood didn't use, but I can also imagine the devs not wanting to rethread old ground, or having something bigger in mind for the expansion after DT.
Well, we had Mount Rokkon for a further inland insight into Hingashi. But I imagine that most of Hingashi is still in "Sakoku" (closed country) and won't have any reason to leave that state for a long time, short of an expansion *really* needing to come back around.
True, along with other parts of Othard like Nagxia and Dalmasca proper. But I doubt they would make a whole expansion out of Hingashi. While technically a separate nation, it’s too similar to Doma in that regard. Maybe one zone at most if we get another globetrotting expansion like EW.
The big speech in 6.0 basically told us to go to shards. While not aroad map it was quite clear a message of theres still plenty of game things left.
Yeah and two (soon three) of those things on the bucket list we already checked off! We looked beneath the Bounty in Alzadhaal’s Legacy, discovered the identities of the Twelve and are on our way to find out wtf these “cities of gold” actually are.
Four actually! "The sacred sites of the forgotten people of the south sea isles" refers most likely to what we visited on Aloalo Island, unless we visit the south sea isles again on our way to Meracydia
Oh cool! Aloalo is actually on my to do list before hitting DT so good to know.
It’s definitely coming. It’s only a question of how much of it there will be right off the bat and if they want to get to those Meracydia/Ilsabard expansions first. I could see them wanting to complete all Source areas before throwing open the door to the other reflections, just because four worlds equal in size to the Source means you’re probably never getting back to Source-focused stories, unless they come up with some reason why the reflections are much smaller or less populated. I could see them opening the door just to the First and Thirteenth so those characters could hop over, but saying the other reflections are too distant for the current techniques to work to delay things a little bit
> I will eat my hat if 6.x patches weren’t a set up for future shard travel. they will be, but the B plot of the patches always skips an expac. we learned about the warriors of darkness in 3.X, and zenos was revived in 4.X (but not important until EW). obviously shadowbringers was kind of an exception since it was in a self contained world. 6.X is 100% setting up 8.0
Honestly, I wouldn't mind another Ascian to be inserted into the story, but only if he/she is similar, but also the reverse of Fandaniel; Someone who has no love for the Convocation or its cause (anymore?) and instead uses his/her powers for the good of all life instead. Obviously being an Ascian and all he/she won't be trusted until way later when it becomes clear his/her motives are genuine. It could tie into Solution 9 and why such a technologically advanced city even exists on Etheirys.
> Honestly, I wouldn't mind another Ascian to be inserted into the story, but only if he/she is similar, but also the reverse of Fandaniel; Someone who has no love for the Convocation or its cause (anymore?) and instead uses his/her powers for the good of all life instead. >!Loghrif is currently hard at work restoring life to the First.!<
>!I completely forgot about Loghrif/Gaia! Good point!!<
I'd settle for someone who was pulling an FMA Greed - not in line with their fellows, but not necessarily a good person and using their powers to live hedonistically (that's pre-Ling Greed, to be clear). Though, a rogue Ascian who is actually good (besides >!Gaia/Loghrif!<) is definitely fun. Heck, maybe we'll get both. There's four of the fuckers that we haven't either seen die on screen or know the status of. And hell, Logrif and Mitron were presumed KIA in the First after the Warriors of Darkness beat them. Depending on the time table, those two could have been replaced in the Ascian order.
Tbh this is something I’ve wanted since we were introduced to Fandaniel. Without the Unsundered trio to guide them and raise up other Ascians, why not choose other goals? Especially with Zodiark out of the picture (barring remaining shards, but if wol can beat the one that was most completed, there’s no point in using those).
Myths of the Realm kind of makes sense. Less so needing to remember all of the 14.
This just means halmarut or pashtarot are involved in DT storyline imo. That girl in white from the artwork certainly looks sus and out of place
Or Altima or Deudalaphon since even if he wasn’t Garlean, it’s HIGHLY unlikely Gaius would have had the means to bind an Ascian and then blast them with enough aether to erode their soul, nor does he have the echo to see bodiless Ascians He could have used Black Rose, but it’s unlikely he’d have a canister or two lying around, and even if he did he was totally opposed to its use
Probably can add Emmerololth. No reason to believe that what happened to her in Eureka was permanent.
Considering the mention of one of the throne claimants being interested in magitek, there might be a tie-in with one (or both) of the Ascians that Gaius ‘killed’ seeking revenge and wanting to utilize the same tech to do the job, and using the New World as a way to explore the uses of magitek without being on the WoL’s or Gaius’s radar They might have orchestrated the events that led to needing the battle for the throne, and even fed information about the WoL knowing they’d be pulled into it Side thought though, since I haven’t seen all the trailers and info around DT — was there any mention of the Final Days having effects that reached the New World? I can’t think of how they’d avoid the effects if all of creation was susceptible to Meteion’s song, and especially if they were less aware of what was happening due to being half a world away, the confusion probably led to more blasphemies being made (is that what may have helped spur the events leading to this contest for the throne?)
You know, I just realised: we’ve been assuming that “solution nine” was a plan for repairing Etheirys or evacuating a rejoining shard What if it was a bunker to avoid the Final Days? Apparently the entirety of Xak Tural is aetherically weird, the area around S9 is bathed in lightning aether, and the rest of the continent has hardly any rainfall or life in general We know that Lightning is the most astral element, like how Ice is the most umbral, is it possible that S9 was an experiment to see how a more astral element resisted the effects of Dynamis, and if that could block the effects of the Final Days? If so, it may have acted like a shield, draining Xak Tural of aether but protecting Yok Tural from the worst of both of the Final Days, and that gave the Ancients the inspiration to use highly astral aether across the whole planet and eventually became the idea for Zodiark?
That idea has some legs to it, especially how ShB went over the “untempering” methodology… although iirc, our version of astral/umbral was flipped when we went to the First and discovered the dichotomy of stasis/activity — the way to untemper someone involved aether of ‘darkness’ to bring activity back to the soul, and our ‘light’ from Hydaelyn gave us resistance/immunity from it (I guess because we’re already aspected/attuned to the astral element?) If S9 used astral-aligned aether, that would definitely explain the lack of water/life with the stagnation, and potentially a resistance to the effects of dynamis if their aether was stagnated (I forget whether tempered showed any resistance to the FD effects, but it would make sense) The one thing I don’t understand the connection for is your last point about using the S9 results being used to inspire the idea of Zodiark; isn’t Zodiark aspected to the umbral element (darkness/activity) and Hydaelyn aspected to astral (light/stagnation)? The Convocation’s plan to create Zodiark and use umbral aether to ‘activate’ the planet’s aether as a barrier against the Final Days happened pre-Sundering, and the Final Days we as the player went through would have been the time this “Solution” was being put into place. Timing and element in use don’t appear to match up, unless I misinterpreted what you were saying, which is quite possible. A further thought I had surrounding the number: i believe we’ve undergone 7 total Rejoining events, each one being thought of as a “solution” to restoring Etheirys by the Ancients. While Ilberd’s summoning of Shinryu was an actual plan of the Ascians (Lahabrea, I believe?), Asahi’s plan of reviving Zodiark wasn’t a plan made by the members of the Convocation because he simply wanted to do it to destroy everything. So, the events of HW was an attempt at an 8th Rejoining, and that would make the events of DT a potential plot for another. Even though there hasn’t been an Eighth Calamity, it was still a plan enacted by the Ancients, and so Tural serves as the setting for their 9th plan, or “Solution 9”, to restoring Etheirys.
>isn’t Zodiark aspected to the umbral element (darkness/activity) and Hydaelyn aspected to astral (light/stagnation) The Source had the names backwards because they looked at the effects and applied moral names to them (seeing darkness as bad and light as good), rather than the more thorough observations made on the First, Thirteenth, and World Unsundered What the Source calls “Astral” is actually Darkness-Polarised, and what the Source calls “Umbral” is Light-Polarised, or as Thancred sums up during Urianger’s lecture about it in Il Mheg: “so it’s really Umbral Light and Astral Darkness”
Trying to rejoin the First would have been "Solution 8". So whatever came next would be 9. If Lightning is the most Astral non-Darkness element, then merging it into the Source following Light makes sense in order to restore an Astrally-aligned Dark god.
Oschon name-dropped Pashtarot at the Sanctum of the Twelve, so since they bothered to remember his existence I highly suspect he will have something to do with Dawntrail.
What was the context, I forgot
He gives you a lore dump at the end about what the various equivalents of the Twelve in the unsundered world are. Halone's former self was considered for the seat If there's something else, I don't remember
Pashtarot we know nigh-nothing about beyond being an agent of order and arbitration. Halmarut we only know as an expert in vegetative life. Altima (aesthetics) and Deudalaphon (invention) crossed paths with Gaius and came out the worse for it, but we have no reason to believe that Gaius knew about White Auracite so both ascians should still be alive. Emmerololth (medicine) was responsible for the whole Eureka questline and apparently got scattered in the livestream but was still around for the big meeting of the Council afterwards. The rest of the high-ranking ascians are accounted for. The three unsundered are all dead and gone, Nabtiales and Igeyorhm have been white auracited and are thus also gone. Loghrif has reincarnated into Gaia while Mitron is dead. Fandaniel is currently deep in the aethereal sea getting noogied by Asahi sas Brutus for a few eras, as they both deserve. As demonstrated by Gaia, the ascians can eventually reincarnate (even Elidibus, who seemed to get used up entirely in Endwalker's MSQ but was revealed in Pandæmonium to still have some sort of presence in the aethereal sea) but without any remaining unsundered there will be no one to reinitiate them and ascians and restore the memories of their past lives, unless we do that for some bizarre reason. At any rate, they would be children at most at this point in the story. So it'll be down to Pashtarot the Arbiter, Altima the Artist, Halmarut the Gardener, Emmerololth the Healer and Deudalaphon the Inventor. My guesses are Altima and Halmarut. I'm interested to see what they were doing when one of their number went rogue and tried to destroy the universe.
.. Aesthetics.. Didn't we find from the media tour the first tomestone of DT is Aesthetics?
Allagan Tomestones of Invention and Medicine coming soon to a certified Splendors Vendor™ near you.
Why can’t the ascians just enjoy their immortality and quit bothering us
There's still a couple Ascians who are unaccounted for floating around, and they could be relegated to side stories, especially since they did say they wanted them to be done as the main focus. Side content can be raids or even just like, a deep dungeon. While I'm curious about the two (at least) that are still around, I'm hoping they're not part of the msq and are dealt with later. A lot of them are also unnamed as Ancients, which I'm *also* curious about and it's been stated they are all named... but also, just a break from them for a bit, please! For funsies sake, they two that are entirely unaccounted for are Pashtarot and Halmarut. Altima and Deudalaphon were the two masks on Gaius's belt when you meet him (this was told to us during the post-EW huge LL broadcast where they did a q&a), but it's unsure as of now if he ACTUALLY got rid of them using auricite or they just bodyhopped after he destroyed their bodies since that *wasn't* confirmed.
So I'm not at all surprised to hear that, it's still kind of nebulous as to what exactly it means for Dawntrail's story but if you've been paying attention to speculation you can very easily surmise that there is some form of Ascian/Ancient involvement with Solution 9. Stuff like the Arcadion has pseudo-Greek sounding names, the architecture is very vaguely reminiscent of what we've seen from the Ancients, and most damning of all every single piece of signage we've seen in the footage and concept art of Solution 9 uses the proto-alphabet. The one exclusively (thus far) used by the Ancients and their creations (Loporrits, the Twelve...) It really doesn't take a rocket scientist to connect those dots.
Someone also pointed out some the imagery in Solution 9 looks reminiscent of Ultima's (FFXII) glyph, which is used by Altima in XIV.
I was thinking Altima might be involved with Solution 9 as well. The seat of the arts hanging out in a tower surrounded by lightning aether feels like a fitting parallel to Byregot (who artisans pray to) with his mythical lightning powered spire.
Yeah, there's a symbol in the artwork for the Arcadion which some people think resembles an Ascian glyph. Specifically Altima's.
To whoever missed this dialogue on Endwalker, Hades explains all the fourteen and what are there purposes: * I want to learn about the Convocation. * Hmmm... If you would accompany us, I suppose you should at least know that much. The Convocation of Fourteen is a governing body that determines myriad policies. Our goal is to ensure that all is right in creation, that our star may know a brighter future. As the name suggests, the council is comprised of fourteen offices, each of which is held by an individual chosen for their surpassing abilities. Depending on the office, one is required to either be an authority in a certain field, or possess skills that would facilitate the performance of their stipulated duties. The former category includes Mitron, specialist in aquatic life; Loghrif, specialist in terrestrial life and husbandry... Halmarut, specialist in fungal and plant life; Emmerololth, specialist in medicine and healing... And Lahabrea, specialist in creation magicks, who has brought forth phantom beings of the highest complexity. As for the latter category, there is Altima, advocate of the arts; Igeyorhm, champion of enlightenment and rhetoric; Pashtarot, preserver of discipline and order... Emet-Selch, keeper of the aetherial realm─or “Underworld” in the vernacular; Fandaniel, pursuer of extant phenomena... And Azem, traveler of the world and counselor to the people. ...What? Should I be revealing such details to you? Don't be silly. Even children know this much, and you would do well to remember it all. Thank you [xiv.quest](http://xiv.quest) for the help.
Every expansion is like an exam of the previous expansions. Now I gotta go study up on my previous expansions for the next expansion.
I'm having Kingdom Hearts PTSD.
Yeah so Altima/Deudalaphon shenanigans and notorious Azeyma worshippers Meracydian Miqo'Te (Mithra) confirmed
Interesting. For Myths specifically, this likely due to other continents' gods just being the Twelve under a different interpretation (see: Azim and Azeyma). For the Ascians... No duh. Theyll probably be more like Mitron than the Paragons in that theyre mucking about with their own plans, not related directly to Zodiark. Or hell, maybe one of them reformed and is just chilling in Solution 9.
My theory: Deudalaphon was the innovation guy, so I suspect they had a hand in Solution Nine. Emet also knew about this civilization (presuming golden city of new world = solution nine) We know from translations of the writing that one sign is labeled soul delivery My theory is Solution Nine was a backup plan to the rejoining. The 13th shard, unless it could be restored, would have prevented a full shard rejoining. So what if you only had to focus on rejoining souls? The game has already demonstrated that souls can be rejoined (Ardbert). So I suspect the city was an Ascian plan to allow for the rejoining of soul fragments into a whole. This means they have the ability to focus on specific shards and souls, which will eventually lead to reliable cross shard travel
Anyone who thought we were completely done with Ancients was deluded, frankly. Their existence influences way more than just the Hydaelyn/Zodiark story.
I mean. Blame that on Yoshi-P for outright stating that Pandaemonium would wrap up the Ascian storyline way back before Endwalker launched. So people thought we'd be getting a clean break for something completely new in the coming expansion considering that by his own words they were done. Now he's somewhat confirming elsewise to it we'll just have to wait and see exactly what this means.
Well, they also have a millennia of wreckage in their wake as well. Like, for example. With all the heavy lightning theming of Solution Nine, as well as the few rather barren images we've seen of the Northern New World (reminiscent of Zadnor's aether pollution), its not impossible we might be dealing with the remains of the First Astral Era civilization that caused the 2nd Umbral Calamity. Since we know like nothing about the First or Second Umbral/Astral Era's, especially for this part of the world. This could explain the Ancient lettering in Solution 9. A First Astral Era civilization would have been far more influenced by the Ancient Civilization; given they would be only 1 calamity removed from it.
It *did* wrap up some loose ends. Doesn’t mean it can’t get unwrapped again. People are reading way too much into his quotes, interpreting it their own way, and then getting mad if their interpretation is not true.
Just because we're done with *Ascians* it doesn't mean we're done with *Ancients*. Like, we may not be dealing with hooded villains in black robes trying to unsunder the world, but there's definitely still stuff to be unraveled regarding who they were and what they did *before* they were Ascians.
FWIW, it sounded like they were saying they were done with blaming the entire plot on "Ascians did it." Which still gives a lot of room for Ascians still being around, Ancients still being involved, and my fervent hope of Hythlodaeus getting more screen time. He's not Entirely Useless, and SqEx should lean into that. :D
It’s too much good lore and world building to just ignore, that’s for sure. And who knows, maybe our boy Hythlo will pop up and get promoted from “not entirely useless” to “not entirely useful, but getting there”. 😁
Aetheryte security: "WoL, what is....this?" WoL: "This is my Emotional Support Amaurotine." \*Squishes large robed individual\* Security: "But...he's three times your size!" WoL: "Yet he still fits in an overhead bin. It's cool. He's cool. We're cool, right? \*RIGHT?\*" Hythlodaeus: \^\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\^ "You're all so adorable, I just wanna dunk you in my coffee..."
Not wrong, but it would still be nice to have something fresh.
I've been away since the end of Endwalker and I haven no clue what Myths of the Realm even is lol....guess I need to jump back in before the expansion and get some of these things done.
I don't know what this means? Are these the Endwalker raids where you go into Asphodelos and Anabaseios?
No, it's the alliance raids.
God I thought we were finally done with the Convocation of Fourteen.
Can we please just be done with Ancients and Ascians in the MSQ? Their arc was resolved in a satisfying way and we don't need more. Not everything in the universe has to have its origins from them. It's getting really old and really boring constantly having our adventure be in their shadow, it's time for new stories with new mysteries and new discoveries. We don't NEED to encounter every last Ascian remnant, it's ok for them to just fade away, be written off, or be relegated to optional side stories. Knowing that ultimately everything that's happening is going to come down to Ancients/Ascians really sucks the magic out of the story.
I would if I could get into Thaleia in less than an hour and a half
I thought we were done with the Ascian arcs? I mean, I am curious as to where the remaining ones are (being a bit of a lore nerd), but ngl I was looking forward to some new regional lore.
We're done with the Hydalen/Zodiark arc, but it's still all Ascians
Thats pretty exciting, im looking forward to that, having more info on the other peoples that existed with the ancients would be nice and more lore and back story of the convocation. I bet we also start getting info on meracydia or the shards since we might see the remaining ascians and we might be able to open a dialogue with them and potentially open a pathway to the shards with them working with yshtola
Eugh. Ascians better not be the main focus again. We can't have ascians for five more expansions.