The portal to Living Memory at the top of Everkeep, where all the memory data is taken, is an ACTIVE portal to another shard up until Sphene closes it. Y'shtola states as much. Living Memory and the Everkeep, and by association Alexandria, are from an un-rejoined shard we can presently visit. Moreover, when the dome appears in Heritage Found, it is a dimensional fusion between their shard and the source at that point in time, and until the dome is pierced by Zoraal Ja, the parts of the source within the dome operate on that shard's timeframe. This could not occur if that shard was already rejoined, because that shard's timeframe would be our timeframe. The only active shards remaining that could be The Unlost World are the 4th, 8th, 9th, and 11th. Alexandria belongs to one of them. That's why it's named The Unlost World to begin with - we know it's another active shard, we just don't know which and Y'shtola says only an Ascian would know for sure. As for why Y'shtola does not recognize Krile as having a less dense soul, it's because Krile is likely only 1/14th less dense than Source denizens. The Milala left after the Fifth Umbral Calamity, which would leave them 6/14ths vs. the Source's 8/14ths. However, we know from Ardbert's interactions with us that fragments of souls are attracted to one another and have the ability to merge, and it is entirely possible that in the thousands of years the Milala existed on The Unlost World, some of their 6/14ths rejoined souls merged with some of the 1/14th shards. If that happened, then that would put Krile at 7/14ths vs. everyone else's 8/14ths (and our 9/14ths). But Y'shtola's aether sight is also imprecise - she did not recognize our soul as having been repaired by merging with Ardbert, she only saw the corruption removed while Ryne saw deeper. It's likely that Y'shtola is unable to detect the minute difference in soul density a single rejoining creates.
Actually, with this explanation of "Krile's was a soul that came from the Source, and it had a mini-rejoining with its Shard from the Unlost World"... Krile should also be 8/14 of an Ancient's soul. Krile was left with Gadolf as a baby -- *before* the Seventh Umbral Calamity took place. So she experienced that rejoining alongside everyone else in the Source. She's equal to most every other Source-native now.
It does not add up simply because Emet was aware of the city of gold. Ascians do not have a capability to travel through time - this is why Emet abducts G'raha with him to use his knowledge of how he travelled through space AND time. If Emet is aware of Alexandria's existance, it has to exist in the timeline we're in physically. And it is very clearly stated in the game that in the current timeline 12th is rejoined. If ascians already would have had knowledge of things just appearing from other timelines, they would not be so puzzled with G'raha in ShB, as they already would have access to a society and knowledge that did it before events on the First. Unless somehow Emet gained knowledge of the golden city after dying to us in ShB and conveniently told us in EW about it.
Actually, Hades refers to "cities" of gold. Which I find very intriguing. Given that the two items on his list we've found so far relate to inter-shard travel, it's possible he's passing on a message from an old friend, one showed in the Pandaemonium raid series to have at least some degree of prescience...
@@NeilaNuruodo i feel the point, it's because we are technically Azem the explorer of the council and that even if we did seen a lot we didn't know everything that was possible in etherys. and he talk of a civilization with technology that will suprise us... but i feel alexandria don't fit, for the simple reason that the way to use soul is something the ascien will have hate a lot... every soul consumed is lost, it means one less ascien that can be revive to his full potential.
@@aSmolGoth This is exactly why the theory that ascians could just go to random timelines however they want is wrong. Elidibus is fused with the tower - he is not a separate entity, and no other ascian could do it. He only has access to use it because he is a part of the tower itself.
I personally have a suspicion onto the source of electrope's origins. I think that it is not a natural occurring mineral at all, but specific forms of rock and stone that have been aetherically tilted so far into levin (lightning) that the rock and ores metamorphize into something new, electrope. The lightning imbalance of Alexandria's aether, be it the 12th or one of the 4 intact shards besides the 1st and 13th, would have given rise to this metamorphic ore. With the planar overlay that Alexandria has done, fusing it to the Source, it brought what remained of the electrope to the Source, but also put an area of space that is very imbalanced towards lightning there. It then gave that space 30 years to cook in the couple of hours from the view outside. We see an electrope mine fully functioning, and even NPCs mentioning that there might be a surplus due to most of it being earmarked for the military. I suspect that the area below Heritage Found is now rich with new electrope, the ores that could metamorphize having done so. This may not mean electrope can just be everywhere and every city becomes S9 however, as the entire shard was lightning imbalanced to create that world war, so we might only see enough to see some new technological marvels from magitek engineers working with the engineers of S9, but unless the material can be synthesized artificially, it may remain a somewhat limited resource where recycling could become a real need.
It can't be from the 12th because the 12th fell before the Lalafells from the South Sea Isles went to Alexandria where they stayed for a few hundred years. The only shards that Alexandria can be from is the 10th or 7th. Originally I thought it was the 12th as well because of the description, but that was the 2nd Umbral Calamity. The Lalafell didn't go to Alexandria until the 5th Umbral Calamity.
I have 2 big problems with this theory. A - there's literally NO indication that the key also allows you to travel through time, and is just a "hey this fits my theory so I'm gonna use it." B - I refuse to believe there's ANYTHING that could allow a shard to escape a rejoining, unless the dome had already removed itself from the 12th before the rejoining. And I don't mean the dome was erected, thus cutting off its connection to the outside world. I mean physically already removed from existence on the 12th. We don't have enough information until the devs give us an indication that either, if not preferably both, of these are possible. Remember, there's more shards than there are elements. Having multiple calamities of the same element is entirely possible. In fact, we have the 13th, consumed by dark, and another shard that WAS successfully rejoined in a calamity of dark.
@@PetarBladeStrok that's fair, and it could very well be that you're right. But that's also a very flimsy argument for only half of my argument. All I'm saying is, until we get new information, we can't do any more than theorize.
yeah i don't get the time travel with that key theory either. it's clear it is only being used for shard travel, not time travel. didn;t the milala's traveled 2 times?
This is a great video! I love the details about the sky boxes and the elements in Zoraal Ja's battle arena. The question of where living memory is anchored is something that's beeing on my mind all the time since finishing the story and seeing the sun rise there. I was under the impression the whole place was digital when I first arrived, but then I realized it's built somewhere with electrope and then the whole paradise part is projected onto it. I wonder if we'll ever get the chance to explore the rest of that shard and find out what other places still exist there. And I think that now, with Azem's key, once we learn how to use it, we'll probably be able to go to the actual place where living memory is anchored without the need to use the Skydeep Cenote gate, which is very specific to that location. Having the freedom to choose where we're gonna land in another shard is gonna be key to be able to understand this whole thing better.
Quick tidbit to think about rq, you state that Sphene lied about not agreeing with Zoraal Ja's attack, but that might not be a lie. It's pretty much known that there are two sides to Sphene, her memory, and her directive as queen. The memory of Sphene is what we interact with majority of the time, and it's entirely possible that she truly does not wish for any more war or loss of life, and just wants her people to be preserved, but the queen's directive knows this is folly and would require the sacrifice of others to do.
I lean on it being another shard because there are not enough elements for all shards to be rejoined, but elemental alignment matters. Remember that the 2nd calamity was so devastating people only survived by hiding in caves. This leads me to believe it was Astral Lightning. Astral aspected Lightning would be much more destructive than Umbral aspected lightning. And the most common weather in Heritage Found is ...Umbral Static! That's my theory anyway, this also does not need time travel for the Milala, and explains why we can visit that reflection.
People need to pay more attention to this. I noticed the Umbral Static thing in HF, too. And there's only one way we can have 12 Shards Rejoined -- for there to be an Astral and an Umbral Rejoining for each of the six elements. The 13th is moot because the Ascians screwed that one up big time. Can they even succeed in bringing The Source back to its original form , considering they spoiled the Rejoining of the 13th?
@@HayTatsuko They can't until the 13th is recovered but my guess it's going to have to be taken from the Other shards to make the 13th Recoverable. Like Light from Shard 1 to the 13th and Dark from the 13th to 1 and the needed parts from the others but since there been Rejoins how to do that. If they ever do.
@@HayTatsukoZodiark didn't need all of the shards to be rejoined before he would be strong enough to awaken and then rejoin the 13th himself. The Ascians knew they couldn't rejoin the 13th, but they weren't worried in the long run, because they knew Zodiark could.
I've been also thinking a lot about the Dawn Key, because we know that it's mentioned in one of the Tales of the Dawn stories from before the expansion... It's interesting, because it says it's a crystal made to ease the burdens of travel, so I think probably Azem was trying to create a portable aetheryte that would allow them to think of a place and the key would pick up the signature and travel with the owner through the aetherial sea to said place, like Y'shtola's flow spell. I have two theories for it being able to travel the rift... one is that after the sundering, the places of the unsundered world ended up scattered through all shards, like we see in the First parts of the original Amaurot (the white buildings where ondo cups is) and the key would still be able to pick up these signatures, but would shard travel instead to get to them. The other theory is that Venat told Azem of our stay in Elpis, and Azem tried to create the key because they knew there was no way of saving the unsundered world and the only hope was sundering. This would explain why the only timeline in which Hydaelyn's timeloop worked was the one in which the lalas had the key in their hands and in which because of the key, krile ended up back in the source and served as an oracle for the WoL to reach Elpis and discover the true reason for the Final Days. Now, about the ability for the key to fuse shards... I think perhaps Azem made the spell so that it would "pull" the signature to itself, but since the unsundered world was aetherically dense, it would move the key and the bearer to the place it was pulling. Whereas, in the sundered world, when it attaches to a place and pulls it, the less dense shards end up being pulled instead, causing a fusion. This is just a theory though, and it would still not explain why the milala were able to travel to the other shard without actually fusing it with the source.
I think it isn't a rejoined shard but one Emet or the others were prepping for a rejoining. Due to the time not matching up this would have been the 9th or even tenth they tried. But with them in a mess after well the last two expanisions no one was there to cull it and prep the source for a second lightning. I say this because 13 rejoinings means some elements would need be repeating.
What if corrupted crystals are a mineral similar to electrope, just aspected to a different element? Study of electrope could potentially unlock a method to use corrupted crystals, though the crystals would be an even more limited resource...
@@HanabiraKage Electrope's behavior seems to be the exact opposite of corrupt crystals. If the corrupt crystals are what happens when one element is oversaturated, perhaps Electrope is when every element except Lightning is overstaturated, so the lightning goes in and gets converted to anything else.
@doctorcis3510 people keep making the assumption that Alexandria is from a lightning-aspected shard. But I think it's more like you say with regards to Electrope - a reflection that was noticeably absent of Levin that suddenly had Levin introduced when electrope was used as a weapon of mass destruction. This would account for the resulting fluctuations that gave rise to the levin storm we see in Alexandria. You take a world absent (or nearly absent) of levin with an atmosphere rife with electrope and introduce levin in large quantities and what do you get? One giant Solution Nine-esque billboard of uncontrolled lightning.
Wyrm Limion has a theory that I like and think is entirely likely. The first time you enter the "Strayborough Deadwalk" dungeon, it shows you the cutscene of traveling across the rift. This is never shown in any other context. His theory is that during the fight with Sphene, she did in fact succeed in merging living memory onto another shard and the reason we see a skybox now is because we are on a new shard, without even realizing it. His guess was that this is how they will tie in FF11 for the alliance raid.
This is interesting. I took MAD issue with the expansion, and really wanted to know WHERE the hell the Sunrise at the end came from? Of course, the toxic positivity kids crowded out any chance at a response chanting "dont think, just consume", but my current vote is its the 12th, because that wouldn't make sense without significant timey whimy, which is in keeping with many other DT plot elements =D Love this video, love your comment Frost.
@@LoreLinesXIV You need to reread the article since you are flat out incorrect. The statement is in two places in the article and the first time it IS in an exact quote. "We felt that we needed to make it authentically and we needed to do a proper job, otherwise the thoughts of those people who live in the ninth reflection wouldn't be properly conveyed.” While I agree it is still subject to change, it is wildly inappropriate to be denigrating people for sharing what is the official game devs position.
@@maxmax-pi7kw Well they did so already with secret of Zenos power and how Unsundered escaped the Sundering Yeah, not in MSQ, not in side quests, not even in encyclopedia Eorzea, the fucking Q&A in one on hundred of live letters Cool lore delivering
I love the lore in this expansion and all the questions we can nibble on. Thank you for doing your videos. They are very much appreciated among the 100 "Why Wuk Lamat ruined Final Fantasy" videos that you find on FFXIV UA-cam. Lorewise I still struggle with the gate to the golden city. Did that gate preexist Preservation's effort to displace shards? If so is there a gate like that to every shard hidden deep in some crevices of the source, possibly built by Azem? If not, then the gate must be the first successful attempt at shard displacement by Preservation; they must have placed it there?
Apologies if someone has already said this, but I think the name electrope comes from electric + -trope, from Greek tropos, in the sciences, something that turns, affects, changes, responds, or moves.
Electrope could be an ore that was made with dynamis. There seem to be strong connection in game about memory powers being related to dynamis such as logos actions from Eureka content or lost actions from Bozja and zadnor content. The power up using beast souls resemble arimata used by the auspices of the far east which was driven by emotion and in case of suzaku, her memory of love for tenzen triggering her power.
Nah, Dynamis is likely something Meteon discovered first, and not even the people of Elpis knew about despite their vast knowledge. Electrope in itself is really good, but ultimately it was an unknown group who applied the tech to it. One of these groups are called preservation who are the responsible of the regulators and dimensional fusion through the key.
It makes sense that where Alexandria comes from is the 11th. The Stormsurge sounds like leftover ambient aether from the second Umbral Calamity of the 12th rejoining. We still don't know if other reflections outside of the rejoining one experience calamities when they return to the Source, and that also might have something to do with the 13th having been turned into void instead of rejoining aside from the Ascians failed experimentations.
That's an interesting one. I was thinking 9 just for the symetry barring any other theory, this is the first theory for a shard other than that, that makes sense to me.
I am leaning on the theory Alexandria did hail from the 12th shard due to the lightning phenomena and the events that played out. As you said,t time does change between shards so via this it stands to reason they could be survivors of the 12th's rejoining. I'm sure we will see and learn more as the expansion presses on in future patches. This feels like preluding to much more to come.
I am of the opinion that Alexandria is not from the 12th. Time travel in FF gets muddy real fast. I believe the lala's ended up on another shard that was also lightning aspected. My reasoning is this, there are currently only 8 elements, and Etherys was split into 14 shards with, with one shard being the source. It stands to reason then, that some shards would share an elemental aspect with another shard. Hence why the Ascians were able to rejoin a shard of darkness, to bring about the 7th umbral calamity, and the 1st was to be the 8th. If we look back on the rejoinings: 1st Calamity - Wind 2nd Calamity - Lightning 3rd Calamity - Fire 4th Calamity - Earth 5th Calamity - Ice 6th Calamity - Water 7th Calamity - Dark or in Eorzean terms: Umbral The 1st was supposed to be a Calamity of Light or Astral. So stands to reason another shard that was not rejoined, but had a wave regardless, is lightning and we know the Ascians been trying to create elemental waves on all the shards. And our understanding of the rejoinings, is that they can only happen, when the entire shard gets consumed by the chosen element. Hence why our intervention in the 1st ruined everything for Emet-Selch. If not for G'raha's time travel to prevent the 8th calamity, then Norvrandt would of been consumed by light as planned and the rejoining would of commenced. The key point that changed the timeline, was Emet-Selch's death. That is what ultimately changed the history on the 1st. Anyways back on point, I believe that in order for a shard to be rejoined, they have to be completely consumed by their element. Hence why Emet created Vaultry, he knew leaving even 1 part of a shard unconsumed, would mean it could not be rejoined. So this theory that Alexandria is a shard that was already rejoined, is I believe, false, as the shard would be unable to be rejoined if it wasn't 100% consumed by it's chosen element. Like the 1st being saved first by Minfilia halting the wall of light, then us killing light wardens and Emet-Selch, prevented the 1st from being consumed fully by light and gave Ryne and crew a chance to restore the empty, to undo the damaged caused by the Ascians. Alexandria set up their own little barrier that ultimately prevented their own shard from being rejoined. But it still, much like the 1st, experienced its own wave, that got halted by the barrier they created. And we know that time on the shards flows far differently than they do on the source. We know from the time Minfilia went to the 1st, before we ourselves got summoned by G'raha, over a hundred years had passed on the 1st. And we know the lala's went to this shard Alexandria existed in, during the 5th umbral calamity. More than likely the shard they ended up on, was, much like the second shard that rejoined, was lightning aspected. Most likely it was set up to be the 9th umbral calamity. If anything, the 8th calamity going off, would of had the other calamities popping off much more rapidly than before, given the state we saw the source in from the glimpses into G'raha's past. But I agree, that the shard numbers do not match up with the game numbers. So it could be any one of the shards that were not rejoined yet.
My personal theory is that Alexandria is the Sixth Reflection, which Rejoined during the Fifth Umbral Calamity, the calamity of ice. The evacuation of Aloalo Island was explicitly called out to be during the Fifth Umbral Calamity. Lightning sits directly opposite of Ice on the Elemental Wheel. I believe that the Rejoinings are a form of balancing operation; it was alluded to as the reason the Thirteenth didn't Rejoin. I think that in order to rejoin between a Shard and the Source, each has to have an opposite aspect dialed beyond "safe" limits. I also think that it may need to be at a point where time synchronizes between the two worlds. So my thought is that while the Calamity of Ice was accelerating rapidly on the Source, the Imbalance of Lightning was relatively moving far slower in the Sixth. This would have given the Lallas time to apply their Arcanima skills to electrope. As an aside, I absolutely believe that electrope was furnished by the Ascians to push things along towards the "Storm Surge" (the Flood of Lightning) which would have collapsed most (if not all) of the Sixth. Anyway, that's my theory.
Seconding this idea. The Unlost World is an unRejoined Shard. Additionally, nothing we've been told about the Rejoinings indicates that elements have to happen in a specific order. Or that they can only be used once. What we are told that the balance between elements can shift; Ellidibus tells us that when he first met us, the Source was leaning way too much towards Darkness. In hindsight, this clearly means that right after a Darkness based Calamity, the Ascians didn't have another Reflection tilting towards Darkness ready to Rejoin. So Alexandria's Storm Surge was likely a failed attempt at a Rejoining because the Ascians couldn't engineer a corresponding Calamity on the Source before the Storm Surge abated And we know it abated because once Living Memory is shut down, what we see is natural clear skies. For all we know, the rest of Alexandria's reflection has recovered from the Storm Surge ages ago while Lost Memory and Everkeep hid under their protective dome.
You've got Astral and Umbral backwards. We're told in ShB that it's Astral Darkness & Umbral Light. Also Norvrandt getting consumed by light would've made it impossible to rejoin. The Ascians DO NOT want Floods. They want to take the Shards to the point where they're just shy of one happening, and no more. Flooded Shards are useless to them.
@@DarthSanguine On the contrary; the Ascians 100% want floods. The idea is to convert as much as the reflection into a single type of aether as possible. The catch is that they have to simultaneously engineer a like-aspected calamity on the Source in order to draw that aether in. This is why the 13th failed; it was consumed by darkness, but without a dark-aspected calamity there was nowhere for the aether to go and it mostly extinguished itself. The 1st absolutely would have finished flooding with Light had Hydaelyn not intervened (and her intervention was assuredly not part of the Ascians' plans), to be drawn into the Source by the unleashing of Black Rose that Emet-Selch was busy orchestrating (though my personal theory is that their original plan for the Eighth Umbral Calamity was Lahabrea and Elidibus setting King Thordan up to lead a holy crusade across Eorzea, hence why Emet-Selch had to step in and rush Black Rose as a plan B after plan A failed spectacularly due to "Lahabrea's crowning act of idiocy", while Elidibus hastily grabbed the Warriors of Darkness in the hopes they would trigger enough primal summonings to instigate something usable). With regards to Alexandria... I'm of the opinion that it's a new shard we haven't seen before, that one of the Sundered Ascians was prepping for a lightning flood that would eventually be met by another lightning calamity on the Source. My personal speculation on *that* is that whatever Ascian was in charge of setting up for a lightning flood realized that the Unsundered and Zodiark were all dead, making a rejoining impossible. Since things had already progressed to the point that he couldn't prevent the flood from happening, he instead formed Preservation in order to protect one part of the world, halting the flood from entirely consuming the shard, because A) there was no point in needlessly creating a lightning void, and B) given that the Ascians are immortal, he'd much rather live in civilization than exist in the aforementioned lightning void.
@@DarkTZeratul Honestly, I'm amazed that we didn't meet an Endless Ascian, ie, a memory copy of an Ascian that somehow got recorded by Lost Memory's immortality system, if only to explain what the hell happened to Alexandria's shard and identify which one it is. Of course, the Ascians have their crystals for memory storage, so they hardly need to use Alexandria's servers.
The more lore videos that come out from lore enthusiast, the more excited I am becoming for the story going forward. So much of Dawntrail's deep lore is just hiding in plain sight as we progress the MSQ. I am very curious what the devs are cooking.
Thanks for the theory on LM's skybox at the end of the MSQ. It's one of my top "huh?" things in DT. The sun coming out made no sense if it was still in Alexandria's lightning-infested world. We'll see if the MSQ in the future leads us to a clear answer!
I would like it to be another different Shard thought. Yes, there is the possibility that the Milalla not only shard-jumped but also timeskipped to the past when they used "The Key" to go to salvation. But that would require them to have gone extremely to the past of the 12th, as we know that not only Milalla's culture was very ancient and some of the better details had been lost but also how the Milallas were partly responsible for the the Electrope being used as miracle material. I believe that as with the First avoiding the rejoining by saving a small fraction of the world, the world of Alexandria also avoided the rejoining by saving a small fraction of it. It would also not be such a nuisance as we know for a fact that time traveling shenanigans in FF are not easy to be done, and the only ones able to properly do it, in the lore, were Alexander (a primal) and G'raha with the help of other-future-timeline scientists that studied Alexander and Omega. Some people theorize that the "Key" was simply one of Hyadelyn's crystals given to the Milalla, awakening their Echo and their secondary abilities that came with it, thus granting them shard-jumping. This took them to another X shard. Not the 12th as it had been already consumed. They support this with the fact that we required a gate akin to a Voidgate to travel to Living Memory, so they had to be in another shard to begin with. I believe though that time traveling being so hard to do, requiring either an epic primal like Alexander or the processing and aetheric power of the Crystal tower, would be really farfetched with just a simple item that we know the Milallas got but not why or how. It would still require vast ammounts of aether and great power. Both theories, and tbh any theory, would be farfetched until we are given more to it. I am just posing what I believe the most, but I would not say that Alexandria being the 12th is wrong, since it is possible, we have seen it possible. Just that in my scope, the idea of it being another shard that was about to die to Lightning, is the best of the two. Hopefully it is like you say and the devs will give us more details in the patches to come. Thanks for the Video. It did bring some light to stuff I had forgotten.
A lot of food for thought here. I kind of prefer the idea that Alexandria is from a shard that hasn’t been rejoined yet but was maybe being prepared for a future rejoining. Maybe the 9th rejoining. At this point we have gone through all the elements so some are bound to repeat. Maybe the Malala travelled to the future rather than the past. Maybe there is a version of Alexandria and it’s shard out there that can still be saved.
I also believe it's the 12th because at a point in the MSQ, they talk about the Everkeep levels, and how we fight Zoraal Ja on the 11th, with the 12th level being unknown, which we find out is the portal to the other reflection. I expected them to namedrop it right there and then but guess not.
It can't be from the 12th because of what we know about the lalafells. They left during the 5th Umbral Calamity and arrived in Alexandria. The 12th shard had already rejoined with the Source by then which happened in the 2nd Umbral Calamity.
@@iceman3317 It could still be the 12th - time travel is possible via the rift between worlds, so the gateway could've easily dropped off the lalafells into the past of the Twelfth.
2 things: Time travel is possible through the rift, but only because of Alexander. Alexander could have removed itself completely from the timeline and never existed, but it did not because it foresaw our need for that technology. Regardless if a bit of shard itself could survive a rejoining, the life and souls on that shard could not. The Ascians were nothing if not meticulous in their plans. We foiled their plan on the 1st because of the time travel technology, of which they were apparently unaware, else they'd have used it in some way. As for Krile's soul not being seen as thin, I feel like that's an oversight on their part, something that should have been addressed but was not.
Krile's soul isn't seen as less dense because it isn't. The Milala went to Alexandria's world during the 5th Umbral Era, which would make their souls 6/14 rejoined. Their souls would then be reincarnated on Alexandria's world, and would also merge with their soul fragments from said world, making them 7/14 rejoined. Krile is brought to the Source during the 6th Astral Era, and so is present there for the 7th Umbral Calamity. If she is the reincarnation of one of the Milala that came from the Source, then her soul would be 8/14 rejoined, like everyone else on the Source. Possibly even 9/14, if she's rejoined with the fragment of her soul that ended up on the Source due to the 6th Calamity.
@@DarthSanguine As far as we know only those on the source receive portions of their original soul in a rejoining/calamity; actually the rejoining wouldn't even be instant as far as we're aware, it would take place in the life stream the next time that soul was "born" but again according to what we've been told, only those ON the source are rejoined
My theory about electrope is it was introduced in the 12th reflection by ascian hands for 2 reasons, the very limited amount would fuel the world-wide fighting that we know now through lore and 2nd it probably sped the lightning-aspected imbalance in either which led to the rejoining. This would explain why the mineral is nowhere found on the source. (just a thought on that though, since we had a forced fusion with Alexandria, we might now have the possibility to get the mineral in future updates down the line).
There seems to be two major theories for Alexandria's origin. 1. The one proposed in this video, where Alexandria is a surviving part of the Twelfth, to which the Millala travelled using some sort of time travel. 2. Alexandria not being the Twelfth, but being some other shard which went through most of a Rejoining process but never actually got Rejoined through an Umbral Calamity I'm not convinced of either of them, because they both require some leaps of logic I'm not comfortable making. Theory one has the obvious leap of logic requiring time travel to be possible outside of Crystal Tower shenanigans, which the video squares away through the presence of the Historia Crux in Everkeep. This is better than I usual see, which just takes time travel for granted, but I'm admittedly still unconvinced, through a combination of in-universe and meta reasons. In universe, I'm simply not convinced that's the Historia Crux. It looks significantly different: the rings aren't jagged, the patterns are different, the color palette is different - the only 100% similarity is it's a tunnel of glowing, rotating rings, which is sort of a pretty standard sci-fi image. None of Zoraal Ja's attacks involve anything time-travel related that would require the Historia Crux to show up, either - he's more about reconstructing reality around him. The meta reasons I don't believe that whatever that thing is is significant is simply that it's not highlighted in any way. It just shows up in the background during the fight - the trust NPCs don't mention it, there's no line from one of the Scions along the lines of "What was that mysterious machine Zoraal Ja summoned? It seemed to contain great power...". If we're doing something as important as introducing a time travel machine that our plotline going forward is going to need to make sense, the writers sure as heck aren't letting it be in the background of a trial where players are more likely to be staring at the ground for indicators than paying attention to the Skybox, not without any line to make damn sure the audience knows there was something weird going on there beyond the usual flashy animations. Not pointing it out explicitly would be downright horrible writing. Without this, I just can't throw my weight behind theory 1. Until there's a reason for us to believe the Millala had a means of time travel, it seems like nothing more than speculation - speculation that I readily admit could easily be made more convincing and proven right, but speculation I'm not convinced by just yet. There's also the smaller leap of logic that a chunk of the Twelfth could exist after it's been rejoined. This isn't as big of a deal breaker for me, but I do think it'd make for unsatisfying storytelling after Shadowbringers being the story it was, and it would involve retconning the fairly explicit infodup about how rejoining works. It's the sort of bending of the rules I could see happening in order to tell a new story they want to tell - one I'd initially be unhappy about until the new story proved good enough to be worth the rule-bending. Theory number 2 is a little more solid, in that it doesn't require any one massive leap of logic like assuming time travel. Instead, it's a number of small leaps of logic that end up adding up. The Ascians were working on (and were close to accomplishing) several rejoinings at once. Alexandria's Calamity wasn't going to be Wind as one would assume after Light, but skip one ahead and straight to Lightning (or there's another Wind-flooded Shard out there somewhere, and the Ascians were working three Calamities in advance). Elemental Floods can be slow and steady like the Storm Surge rather than quick and immediate like the Flood of Light. People can just, like, figure out how to stop an Elemental Flood without Hydaelyn's intervention and every other Reflection before Alexandria just had a skill issue, I guess. None of these by themselves would be enough for me to discredit the theory, but there's so many little cracks in the theory that I end up not believing it either. Ultimately, I think the truth is going to be some insane new third thing that none of us could possibly predict, due to factors that are currently completely beyond our understanding. Part of is that neither major theory works for me at the moment, but part of it is also meta reasons, chief of which is how Dawntrail winks and nudges at the audience, discrediting both the theories. It initially leads us to assume it's theory 2, but at some point you hear about the Storm Surge and literally get the option to have the WoL say "wow, this sure sounds like it was an Umbral Calamity", pushing the audience toward theory 1. Then it throws an absolute curveball that destroys theory 2 with the Millala's travelling to Alexandria after the 6th Umbral Calamity, and then it basically tells you "there's some weird stuff you don't get going on" by revealing Azem's symbol on the Key. The game just straight up walks you to the two reasonable conclusions and debunks them for you before giving you a clue you can't fully grasp the significance of yet. My guess is that whatever caused Alexandria to go through the stuff it did is the new arc "big bad", in the same way the Ascians and the Garleans were for the Hydaelyn/Zodiark saga. It's either a malevolent force of some kind - maybe a malicious other reflection, or some new secretive organization, some antagonist - or it's something that threatens the fabric of existence now that Hydaelyn and Zodiark are gone - maybe a natural collapse of the reflections now that the two big forces directly and indirectly responsible for their existence are no longer present. Dawntrail was meant to be the start of a new arc, and other than this mystery it's not left us a thread for the overarching story to pull on, so I suspect whatever the big arc for the next few expansions is is directly related to these weird reflection shenanigans and the origins of the Key.
Fantastic response, and excellent analysis all around. I don't have much to add (I'm on the "not so sure" side of the LL crew but even I acknowledge the 12th isn't a possibility I can rule out lol). But I will point out that the mechanic Zoraal Ja is doing when the Historia Crux appears is the platforms that transpose onto the central one. I need to run it again to see if there's any text beyond his like "My will resonates within reality!" but... to me this indicates that he is using the key (which drops from his body after he dissipates) to access either other shards or other timelines (or both) to attack the players. I keep thinking back to Yoshida-san making that comment, "You guys really pay attention," (or whatever it was). I feel like they took that to heart this expansion, perhaps to the point where those who aren't willing to engage with the story on a deeper level think it's superficial and bad. I appreciate folks like yourself that want to dive into the meat of it! And while this expac wasn't without awkward moments, the core of it is pretty solid imo. Patches can't come soon enough...
Actually, I think theory 2 is the most likely. You think it's improbable that the Ascians would be working on several Rejoinings at once? I think that's the most likely thing they would be doing. Consider: The Ascians are essentially immortal and are playing the long game. What they want are Rejoinings and they don't care how many mortals have to die to achieve it. They also can't actually see the future. So they plot and plan and take advantage of opportunities as they appear. They engineer as many Calamities as they can on the Shards. Most attempts fail, but they only need one to succeed. And then once they have a Calamity going on a Shard, they need to try to get the Source to suffer a similar Calamity. And sometimes, THAT fails. But on a rare occasion (like every couple thousand years), they manage to get matching Calamities on Source and Reflection at the same time. And that's when a Rejoining happens. And I'm sure the reverse may have also happened. They get the Source imbalanced first and then try to get a Reflection imbalanced in the same way. Which is why they were always trying to get everyone and their brother to summon Primals.
What makes the 2nd theory improbable to me is that there's no reason that I can fathom that the Ascians would fail to rejoin that Shard. Additionally, that we were seeing zero signs of the Source being prepared for said rejoining. Remember that you cannot *just* cause a flood of aspected aether to bring about a rejoining, you need to prepare that Source as the endpoint for where that aether is going. Otherwise you end up with another Void. This is why the Ascians would be summoning primals on the Source, draining it of aether and giving it a specific need to replace that aether. And we've heard nothing about the aetherial balance of the Source being off, only that it was stagnating in ALL aether, because the First was going to be the next Rejoining, bringing in a surplus of Astral-aspected aether.
@@DrakeWurrum No reason? The Ascians are fallible. They can make mistakes. And they don't care about the lives lost in their attempts to Rejoin the worlds. The simple reason is that the Ascians attempt a Rejoining and FAIL. They start a calamity on one world and then try and fail to start a corresponding calamity on the other. On the Source, we only ever see the Ascians successes at Rejoinings, but how many times have they attempted Rejoinings and failed at it? We don't know. For all we know, Shadowbringers was just the latest in a long line of failed attempts at Rejoinings and the only difference from previous failures is that the Unsundered were killed off.
Incorrect. It is not in quotes, and it directly contradicts the established calamity of lightning being the 12th which yoshi P supposedly says is where Sphene is from. There was no second calamity of lightning. Additionally, an earlier interview has him responding to Alexandria being from the 12th. It's possible Living Memory is currently on the 9th, but until it's in the game, it's not canon.
@@LoreLinesXIV It was in the article in THEGamer published yesterday twice, once in quotes, once not. The second at the end referring to Sphene as being from the 9th reflection was not in quotes since the writer seems to be paraphrasing but there was a direct quote earlier, in the article's second paragraph. "We felt that we needed to make it authentically and we needed to do a proper job, otherwise the thoughts of those people who live in the ninth reflection wouldn't be properly conveyed.” Just because something was calamatous for the people of the 9th and they called it a Calamity, doesn't mean it was a Calamity on the source that marked a completed rejoining. If there is another interview you say directly contradicts this one, please provide a citation. I would like to read it myself. I have looked extensively since reading your comment and cannot locate any article that says this.
@@pll3827 I figured, I just thought if I was going to insist on LoreLines providing information on the source of their statement about Yoshi-P saying the 12th in another interview I ought to make sure I included the sourcing on my point.
@@NeilaNuruodo If you're taking about 6.X, don't call them the void quests - those are a separate questline featuring Unukalhai & the ShB Role Quest NPCs.
I posit that its on the 9th (fite me) my theory argument is that its never stated the ascians had to do one element only once. Also the fact that living memory on elpis (unsundered world) would be wuite the stretch as im sure someone would notice a massive flux in aether and send someone from the convocation to check like emet selch who would no doubt see living memory for all the thinest of aether it possesses.
I do want to point out-- I don't think that the milalla having denser souls has *anything* to do with their intelligence. That feels like a really random thing to state considering there is absolutely no reason to believe it to be true. They were extremely intelligent by the standards of the Source as well. It almost borders on Ascian logic of "my soul is 'more complete' therefore I am superior" which the entire first arc goes out of its way to show is bs.
Thanks for posting this, was coming here to say the same thing. It's a weird conclusion to reach. I'm happy to accept that they probably have a larger pool of ather to draw from but that doesn't equal intelligence.
So we know for certain that a shard is flooded with an element that is the same as the corresponding calamity on the source that aborbs it? What if its from a shard that was going to be absorbed in a future calamity? The 8th intending to be umbral, it is possible that Alexandria's shard was intended to be the second shard to fall to lightning? I mean Living Memory is still out there, the shard hasn't been absorbed yet outside of the bubble. I believe it was mentioned in game that Lindblum and other nations may have found a way to survive the storm surge as well and that Heritage Found was just soecifically how Alexandria survived it.
I'm so amazed that the devs put the historia crux in Zoraal ja's fight... its insane.... I knew they did SOMETHING cuz Dawntrail has ALOT of FF13 enemy types. Something is up for sure. As a 13 fan i'd be hyped if they add in more 13 stuff in some way... oh i hope a raid or trial against a time traveling Caius Ballad 😊
Whould be kinda cool if electrope was somehow linked to original Byregot, maybe like a concept he made? I mean it has the affinity to lightning and how you can morph the material like wicked thunder does. Not sure i how i feel about ascian influence in preservation or the electrope wars tho
Despite the understanding that Alexandria could be from any shard, particularly the 12th, I will be saying it is from the 9th until further notice. Because... c'mon, it's just too easy.
My question is still Krile's aetheric density and what that implies for the Lifestream. Krile isn't one of the Lalafel that came over in the 5th calamity, she's a descendent, but her density is similar to that of the Source. But not of the modern source, which is 7 times rejoined, but of the 5th calamity source, which sould be slightly less dense. Wouldn't Yshtola see the difference in a 5 time rejoined soul vs a 7 time? Moreover: are all Lalafel souls that enter the lifestream on whatever shard Alexandria is reincarnated at a 1:1 ratio maintaining density? If so...what does that imply for the slew of Ancient souls that have now entered our lifestream from the release of Zodiark? Will they be reborn as full Ancients? Why or why not? the mechanics are confusing.
@theegocollective2695 cobheran: I LIKE this question! This is exactly where my mind is at! We know the lifestream is sundered, so how do different density souls interact there? Do Fragments of souls come together to make up the shortcoming of a thinner aetheric density? Or do the children of rejoined pull from the same density lifestream as their parents? And if so then how do the souls overcome the barriers between worlds? And what will become of the millions of unsundered souls we dumped in the lifestream on the source? I want a story where a child is born with an unsundered soul, and accidentally uses creation magic and burns all their aether up and dies. And we have to investigate why all these children are dying only to realize OH...this is our fault. So how do we fix this? It's dark and morbid but I like that kind of thing
I think electrope comes from the source and that it has been discovered and used before. you guys remember the crystal in the azime steppe? it looks awfully similar in color and marbleling (is that a word) but shaped and inscriped to serve its purpose aka the allagans used it for azys lla if i'm not mistaken. But didn't the questline also reveal that there are SEVERAL of those crystals in use?
To make it clear, you are proposing that 1. The Milala traveled through time to pre-rejoined 12th. 2. The Alexandria we see in Living Memory and Heritage Found was a section that escaped the rejoining. (I am not entirely clear if this is what you are saying) While I was originally for “Alexandria comes from the 9th” I am leaning more towards point 1 now. It’s point 2 that I disagree with. If they did travel through time, I believe it created an alternate timeline, much like what occurred with G’raha and the First. We know the 2 time travel possibilities are closed time loops or branching timelines, in this case I see it more likely where there is reality where all the 12th was Rejoined and a different reality where the Milala saved a portion of the world and that’s what we traveled too in Living Memory. We don’t know what exactly lies beyond Living Memory’s borders yet, there still could be a world, while very destroyed much like the Empty, it could still exist. I’m led to this a bit because of Yoshi-P’s recent interview where he brought up the “doomed” timeline where the WoL is dead. To me that signals they are actively thinking about alt-timeline events as a way to explore the destroyed shard cultures and worlds.
Alternate timelines have been postulated since Heavensward and confirmed since Shadowbringers, so it's entirely possible that it is from an alternate timeline that diverged very early on. Even Elpis generated an alternate timeline, which became the prime timeline in which we experience the game (which yoshi p referred to as a close time loop, which, lol no. I'm glad he finally recanted that and admitted to the multiple timelines). If that's the case, though, it opens a very wide door that, in many ways, eliminates consequences. For example, th3 devs could pull the very much alive Emet Selch in the 8th umbral timeline and bring him back, diminishing his sacrifice and journey. Good time travel stories are hard to pull off. Multiple reality stories are harder. I'm not saying they won't go there, just that it makes me nervous.
@@LoreLinesXIVI think I trust them enough to not get incredibly stupid with bringing back characters like Emet or any of the Ancients. This possibility opens up a can of worms but I have enough faith they will not “undo” what had happened.
@@LoreLinesXIV elpis is not an alternate timeline... simply since every interaction with us was erased no one did know we was here. shadowbringer is the only time we had the timeline changed by an alternate futur. and in heavenward we simply had ardbert send by the ascien from the first shard. but sincet he time in the primal and the first shard don't go at the same speed... that why minfillia did arrive century ago before we do arrive. it's explain when we meet the scion in the shard like some was there for a few years when it was only a couple of days for us. and they can't go into graha timeline, it's explain in avenger endgame in a good way, if you go in the futur it's the futur of this timeline, for go to the other timeline, you need to move back in the past, stop what did change the timeline and then you can go into the futur of this alternate timeline. what will never happend thanks god it's a pain to explain. and an important point, this timeline can't really come back anymore since the only tool for this was the crystal tower.... means this tool in stuck in our timeline. ascien never did develop any time travel capacity, because it will have destroy any need for what they try to do... it was simpler to simply go before hyadelin create the shard and stop her! problem solved! people try to justify what have major hole into... it can't be the 12th shard, simply because at the end of the story we see that this shard still exist! with the sun rising... meaning the shard was never joined with the primal. and since the dome part is synchronize with the primal the time goes at the same time in both the primal and this shard. like with the first shard. by creating a link, both are synchronize and the time will move now at the same speed. that why we can return to the first shard and people don't have gotten older and remember us. i feel the whole lala of alola was extremely badly written and have left this with too many hole they haven't try to explain. and that why theory like time traveling and 12th shard emerge when it can't be this... because we already have rule concerning time in the game. and i don't see them coming and simply saying everything that did happend before dawntrail is not cannon and only what we have done in dawntrail is good. (that a blizzard move, not a SE move)
@@Beldhan "alternate" is a point of view. An "alternate timeline" is saying "Not my timeline". I'm sure from an objective point of view, Graha's bad future is no less or more a valid timeline than the one the main game takes place in, just as the timeline where the WoL never appeared in Elpis is just as valid. But the game and MSQ does not follow THOSE timelines.
@@LoreLinesXIV I appreciate your passion for lorecrafting but don't contradict the actual lore writers. Yoshida has never once gone back on the statement that the events of Endwalker operate in a closed time loop.
So let me see if I got this right after watching this. The lalafell from aloalo on the source traveled to 12th shard to a time before it had been rejoined? Even though by the time they traveled it was already absorbed. I guess time traveling in this game to a time before calamities struck is not a new concept but part of me is still confused as to how they managed to do that/why did the key answer their prayers in such a manner and why did the writers go in such direction of time traveling to a place/time before calamity has struck yet again. However, this time without causing a divergence in timeline as it has all seemingly transpired within the same timeline? Unlike the shadowbringers event which created a new timeline and maintained the old one.
Maybe the timetravel works a bit like steinsgate where an event has to be monumental enough to change worldlines otherwise the timeline tends to keep generally the same events save a few small details of insignificance. The crystal tower appearing on the first and the founding of the crystarium would be a fairly large event affecting many people compared to elpis especially with the memory alteration making it so only you and venat remember anything.
this is just speculation so take it as such, but Azem's powers seem to have a knack for bringing people to where they are needed. (I bring this up because the key shows Azem's symbol.) If the Milalla were simply trying to escape death by freezing, they likely had no destination in mind beyond "somewhere safe." Even more, they essentially prayed to this relic for salvation. So I could see it being that the key brought them to a place (and time, possibly, though I admit I'm on the "not convinced" side of the Lore Lines crew lol) they were needed, to Alexandria where their knowledge and rejoined soul-density helped them unlock the mystery of electrope.
@@NeilaNuruodo i also am a little on the "not convinced yet" side as well. like we've seen it done before and it is possible but i feel like if thats the case again it might over complicate things more (as much as they tend to already) i think its fully possible this was a different reflection that also began leaning on thunder aspect because this is still on the same timeline regardless of which side is right only time will tell and im interested to see the in-game explanation of it no matter what the case turns out to be!
@@NeilaNuruodo Azem power is a space power not time power. he call the other from far away. and we have no time travel between shard... it seems a lot of people misunderstood the time dilatation situation between the shard and the primal world. they don't go at the same time speed. and it create this false impression of time travel. the only entity that can time travel (and it stuck in a paradox by the way) it's alexander... the whole crystal tower of graha is based on alexander power. before a shard and the primal world is connected they go at different speed. an example for make it clear, let's say in the primal one day pass, in another shard 1 week pass in the same time. then after one years you have a time difference of 7 years and as the time ass this become more and more.... 2 years 14 and on and on and on... now after 1 century the two are link and synchronize on one side 1 century did pass and on the other one 7 century. it don't means we did time travel into the futur, simply that them present are not the same as us.
@@Beldhan I assure you, Lore Lines understands the shard time differences :D to say the *only* entity that can time travel is Alexander seems disingenuous though. The only currently known one, maybe. But the Historia Crux manifested when Zoraal Ja used the key in the battle. I personally am not convinced of the 12th theory, but even I acknowledge that we can't really rule it out at this point. Furthermore, the differences in the passage of time between shards doesn't remain constant. Time was going much faster on the First when the Scions were called there, but it stabilized to near-equivalency with the Source once the WoL arrived. I agree that's likely due to the Crystal Tower - but the Tycoon isn't Alexander. It's a recreation of his power. And if the Ironworks folks could do it, so could others, yes? Anyway it's all good food for thought, I think!
So, I just want to throw this out there. We have six elements, but there are thirteen Shards of The Source. I was just in Heritage Found and I noticed the weather there was _Umbral_ Static. Lightning is normally an _Astrally_ aspected Element. So might we be dealing with _two_ Rejoinings for each element? An Umbral _and_ an Astral one? That would cover 12; and since the 13th was spoiled by the Ascians' incompetence, that would be enough. (That the 13th became the Void, an interrupted Rejoining, also raises the question of whether the Ascians should even be bothering to press on, because that Shard can no longer be rejoined.)
I like this a lot, and honestly wonder why they didn't take this route. But the 7th calamity was dark/astral so that's already thrown it off unfortunately. It's something I've chewed on a lot and it's hard to find a definitive explanation of their plan. Given that they started with the Void, learned a lot from that failure, and then swapped to elements--but then went to dark (7th, successful) and then light (8th, attempted, nearly failed via flood, and then thwarted ultimately by the WoL), I think they were going to switch to alternating light and dark until finished. That's just a guess, but as much as I prefer the "other shard" theory myself this is one thing that could point toward the theory this video posits. If not, it's hard to predict simply because there are not enough, after the 8th rejoining, to hit every element again, even *if* the void were one of them. That said, it certainly doesn't rule it out either. I think the patches are going to be quite interesting. Possibilities are wide open, and hopefully we'll be diving into more details that will narrow it down!
Yeah I just assumed that whatever shard Alexandria was from was just primed for a calamity. Much like the first it's ready to go whenever but they just need the source to be ready
I hope the story explains this. Because right now, a lot of things dont make sense. According to the people of Alexandria, it has only been 400 years since the war. And based on the fact that 30 years passed in Alexandria in about...we'll say a week at most on the Source, then the war was just a few months ago, Source time. But that makes no sense because the gate to the city of Gold has been there for centuries, and just 20 years ago it was opened, which should have meant over 10,000 years had passes on Alexandria in just 20 years on the Source (maybe closer to 20,000 years...depending on how many days we assumed passes between Zoraal Ja entering the City of Gold, and when the invasion started). The math just isnt mathing. Also, whats up with the Dawnkey having the mark of Azem!?!
This assumes the relative passage of time between Alexandria and the Source is constant. It's possible the attempt at fusion is what made so much time pass (30 years) in such a short amount on the Source. I agree there's a lot we don't know, but the story is plainly setting up for more. We've got post patches yet to get through, and there are plenty of hooks :D
The time between the dome appearing and 30 years passing is nearly instant. As soon as Vanguard was completed and a connection was made between Alexandria and the Source time equaled out. That same connection also allowed the Alexandrian military out to attack Tulliyolal, so 30 years passed in the span of that single cutscene. Once a bridge is established between two shards, time passes at the same rate. We see this on the First as well. Time for Alexandria is extremely compressed, so where the source has 12,000 years since the sundering, the 13th has 20,000 (started by Koji fox when talking about Unukalhai) and the 12 apparently had roughly 1,000 years.
I'm pretty sure it's explicitly stated in Shadowbringers the relative flow of time between shards is not constant. We even have an explicit example of this: Minfilia went to the First only a little while ago by our timeline (time per expansion is fuzzy, but it was only about 1.5 expansions ago by the time we're on the First) yet she arrived on the First hundreds of years ago by the time we're there, meaning time was massively sped up. Meanwhile, while we're on the First time on the Source passes roughly at the same rate as it does on the First, meaning the relative speeds have changed pretty drastically between the Heavensward patches and the start of Shadowbringers. There's no reason why time on Alexandria can't also have been changing at different rates - it's possible it was slow relative to the Source for hundreds of years since the Storm Surge turning thousands of years on the Source into a couple hundred on Alexandria, and then massively sped up at some point before or during the creation of the Heritage Found dome (maybe due to the massive energy burst of the Rejoining-lite), passing 30 years in Alexandria in a matter of days on the Source. The only thing we can really be sure of in terms of order of events is that relative to the Source the calamities happened in a specific order. Assuming the Shards aren't completely destroyed it's possible the inhabitants of their remains perceive different amounts of time to have passed - maybe the survivors of the 3rd Umbral Calamity perceive it to have been 10 years ago and the 4th perceive it as having been a million years ago, despite on the Source the 4th having happened after the 3rd.
I think it's pretty clear from everything the game has told us thus far that the Milala didn't time travel, they were shepherded by an Ascian to an unknown still living shard. Emet knew about Alexandria, and the city of gold, and explicitly told us that we should find it and deal with it. The Milala museum has a chamber of ancient masks where the weird cultist that led them guided them to the shard. Emet selch makes it clear when a shard is rejoined it is gone. In Eulmore we see that shards on the brink usually have one kinda normal place where folks wait out the rejoining. The only way for any of this theory to be true is if we ignore previous characterization of a major npc, the established lore mechanics of the world, the moral importance of one of the most beloved expansions and the thematic weight of the zone we learn all of this from,. All that it gives us is a mechinism for time travel that the game's writers have already explicitly stated they want to avoid, and the potential for all the other rejoinings to be undone by having pockets of people left. The only logical leap you need to make for this being an unrejoined shard ready for rejoining is that the ascians were working more than one calamity ahead, and that Emet knew what the Azem crystal was before he gave it to us. In exchange it offers us an explanation on the four remaining ascians, allows us to have stable shard travel, and gives us the explicit goal of going to the remaining shards and sorting out their balance now that there isn't an organization holding them on the edge of becoming the void.
I've always thought that it's pretty likely the Ascians (or at least the Unsundered Ascians) aren't working directly together anyway. It never feels like they get along too well, and we never meet more than 1 of them attempting a rejoining at a time. Lahabrea's plan in ARR is completely independent of Elidibus and only related to Emet-Selch insofar as it makes use of the Garlean Empire - it doesn't even seem like it demands Solus' approval. Emet-Selch getting up to his shenanigans in Shadowbringers is - as far as we know - completely divorced from other Ascian activity until he dies and Elidibus comes in to try to finish the job for him. It's fully possible that each of the Unsundered Ascians is doing their own pet project, working on their own Shard to rejoin by themselves, and that what happened on Alexandria is a project that Elidibus (or whomever, it doesn't even have to be one of the Unsundered necessarily) left like 80% finished before we killed him on the First.
@@masterplusmargarita that's all well and good, but we know explicitly that Emet knows about Alexandria, and if one of the ascians figured out time travel, they would not have used it to move 500 people from the source to a shard and called it a day.
@bendonatier yeah wasn't the entire point of emet kidnapping graha to find out how to time travel and restore the 13th. If time travel was a readily available thing that'd open so many potholes
Maybe I'm crazy but where is the evidence of time travel with the Dawn Key? You say it with such confidence when I didn't see anywhere in game where it's made clear outside of speculation?
The presence of the historia crux while the key is actively being used at the top of Everkeep is the confirmation. Originally from FF13-2, The Historia Crux appears when an artifact is used to open a gate, which is what we saw during the fight with Zoraal Ja. What this tells me is that the key operates across time, linking the same place on different shards, but in different times. It's all but confirmed at this point by that fact alone. But in the game, we see the effect being the Milalla's traveling from the 5th umbral era to a point on the 12th during the 2nd Astral Era.
@@LoreLinesXIV We dont know if Alexandria comes from the 12th. This is pure speculation. There 13th shards, there is bound to be an element to be repeated.
well the ice calamity was the 5th we know this 100%, the lightning one was the second second calamity so its logical to assume the the shard being flooded with lightning would be from the age of the second calamity which was was before the 5th so some time travel must of happened or Alexandria was already in its own bubble in the rift and they happened to stumble into it then opened path back to source but either way time travel just the second option has less jumping around
@@koro_kokoro it doesn’t make any sense to be the 12th since to make it work you have to itroduce time travels that weren’t hinted anywhere in the story. Also if you read my response i said the 9th or any of the still active reflections. I don’t care (but still when in 7.1 drops and we find out that echoes of vana diel will be set on yet another reflection pls come back and tell me it’s not the 11th :) )
@@koro_kokoro that doesn't even matter, the calamity of lighthning came before the calamity of ice, and there's no time flow shenanigans that can chage that.
I'm not sure why you'd say that the First was 5 inspired, behind the Ronka Ruins reference The First is heavily inspired by 3, specifically the alternate world threatened by a flood of Light that was saved by Warriors of Darkness
imho the time travle is one of the themes for this expnsion or better the ark started with this expension. in shadowbringers we see a cutscnee where g'raha told, think it was urianger, that the idea for traveling with the tower threw time was made after an adventure with "us" with something about time travle
I believe it's indicated that their souls remained denser. Which is why Preservation was so interested in baby Krile (very interesting that they already knew she had the echo; people don't usually awaken to it until later in life), and why her parents felt the need to hide her beyond their reach.
nice theory but it doesnt stand up because of shadowbringers. all of the areas in a shard needs to be consumed by the specific element in order for it to be rejoined. First's rejoining was delayed because minfilia saved Norvandt by stopping the flood of light from consuming it whole, so the first wasnt able to rejoin. if assuming Alexandria is from 12th, its similar how Alexandria formed barrier and was saved from lighting storms, but in this case the 12th was still rejoined. that's a huge plot hole. plus there is no evidence anywhere in dawntrail that the key does time travel as well. there was no mention of everkeep/solution nine travelling to the future when they did interdimentional fusion. or the golden city gate as a portal to the past in 12th before its rejoining. both everkeep and golden city portals were told to be similar to void gates. we know void gates dont do time travel. also, if it's really from 12th, where is the ascian who caused the rejoining? why would they still do the rejoining since they know zodiark is gone. atleast the ascian in charge of 12th must have known about this key, and in turn Emet selch must have known about it. if the key does time travel, he would have just left it with lalas? and why was he surprised by time travel in shb then? my theory is that its another shard which is yet to rejoin but the rejoining process was already started some time ago by ascians but it was halted by the shb/ew events. that shard may have been planned to be next in line to rejoin after the first. remember, time goes faster in alexandria, so their 100 years is just few days/weeks in source. Also Emet selch told wol in shb that he looks forward to seeing him/her as his equal when all the rejoinings are done, so it means ascians were speeding up the rejoining process and expected full rejoining within wol's lifetime.
Even without the 13 reference, I still feel Occam's razor leans towards the 12th theory. The amount of assumptions one has to make for it to be Shard X is staggering: Shard X just so happens to be going through a Lightning calamity, that Ascians would bring another shards to the brink of collapse when the First was already on a knife's edge until recently, that a chuck of a shard can't survive a rejoining, that the Ascians were watching the shards soooo closely that they would notice a single tribe vanishing or appearing on a shard even though it took them a hundred years to notice an exact copy of the Crystal Tower appearing on a greatly reduced First, etc. We know the Dawn Key can access the Rift and we know that time travel is possible in the Rift. We even know it possible to visit a destroyed world via Elpis. It is such a small leap to say that both happened and Alexandria is the last of the 12th. One thing I rarely see mentioned is the Dawn Key displays Azem's sigil. We know the Hourglass container was added by the Alexandrians, but the stone itself was a sacred artifact to the Lalafell and is of unknown origins. The presence of Azem's sigil must mean the stone is pre-sundering. My pet theory is that the stone contains one of Azem's spell just like the Zodiac Stones. I believe this spell is a sort of companion to one in Azem's Stone. A spell that sends one to allies (or adoptive Grandfathers ;) instead of summoning them. I think the Lalafell ending up in the past of the 12th is a complete accident caused by the massive amount of aether pouring into the Source through the Rift when they're prayers for salvation activated the spell. The combination of pre-sundering teleportation magic and the chaos of an ongoing Calamity ripped a hole in spacetime. The spell continued to function in the rift and guided them to a Alexandria where they could help develop Electrope. I'd also like to point out that Lighting and Ice are opposite on the elemental wheel, holding North and South positions respectively. I'm not sure how this affects the Lalafell traveling from the Calamity of Ice to before the Calamity of Lightning but I thought I'd throw it out there.
I absolute agree with Occam's razor and that people are overcomplicating this. Additionally, it doesn't make sense from a business standpoint to limit established places we can go to by sacrificing an entire shard for a zone in an expansion, when you could have an entire expansion to explore said shard like Shadowbringers. And don't worry! We are going to be talking ALLLL about they key very soon because there are huge plot threads tied to it going back to ARR, as well as a lot of unknowns! It's pretty exciting and terrifying! Looking forward to what the future holds!
I think it’s a pretty huge assumption to assume that part of a shard *can* survive a rejoining. Additionally, the Lalafell who would become the milala traveled after the 5th calamity, but *before* the Alexandrian shard even began to be suffused with lightning. For it to be the 12th, you’d need to assume: that gates to other shards can also travel though time, that the protections made by the people of a shard can resist the forces of a rejoining (without knowing that that’s something that they’d even need to defend against), and that the Ascians would never begin work on multiple shards at the same time. And that Preservation figured out how all that worked. So far, gates to other worlds haven’t moved though time (no void gates do that, for example). Every time we time traveled, it was via examination of Alexander’s powers and deliberate action.
I would like to point out that this still doesn't explain where Living Memory is now, and why we require a gate akin to a voidgate to go there to begin with or why it seems like another world entirely. It either is another shard, which we would need an explanation as to why Living Memory ended there if they came from the 12th. I suppose it could be explained as the 12th fragment of living memory could simply end in another world, different from the source, but on the same dimension as the source. We do know that Alien Worlds exist. Yes, the theory is sound. And you explain in a way where the vast ammounts of aether that are needed for time travel could have come from as well as why a spell that seems to be complicated could have ended in a tiny crystal. I still support the theory of it being shard X. Is not so overcomplicated. Or rather, both theories are actually farfetched enough, so it's not like any theory is better rn. It would explain where living memory is, and would not add time-travel shenanigans to the already complicated explanation of the Milallas coming from the Source and existing in Alexandria.
@@lancevonalden5585 This is from datamining, but Living Memory is, in fact, another shard. It is listed among its own region and world categorization with its own unique code for teleportation cost calculations, similarly to Mare Lamentorum and Ultima Thule being the "Sea of Stars", Elpis being tied to "The World Unsundered" and Norvrandt being categorized under "The First", but it has a new code all its own. I won't get involved in the rest of the discussion however, as I think it being the Twelfth would be a cheap copout and ruin the history and intrigue of the calamities in a way that would destroy all my interest that I've had in the narrative; which is already waning with the prospect of Wuk Lamat appearing more. Undoing more than the eighth calamity or having a way to return to rejoined shards would be such a narrative slap in the face that I'd genuinely be tempted to skip scenes from that point onward. Its the "no one important ever dies" issue but on an inter-dimensional level.
This theorie works on the speculation of it Alexandria is the shard that fall to the Calamity of lighting and nothing suggest such. Worse. The people of Alexandria survive that Storm Surge and putted a barrier to avoid the constant lighting storms. So the climax already happened but the Shard was not rejoined? Yeah, this doesnt make sence. Remember, again 400 years until Zoraal Ja arrived.
There's nothing to suggest that this was not a part of the 12th and a great deal of evidence to suggest it was. Remember, Preservation had been experimentating with dimensional fusion, and it's extremely likely that Alexandria was already gone by the time the rest of the shard had been rejoined. You are also missing the entire time travel component confirmed by the appearance of the Historia Crux, as the Milalla traveled to a period before the 12th had been rejoined by using the Dawn Key.
@@LoreLinesXIV There is also another problem to the theory. Living Memory. The moon is still there, if there was a rejoining, it wouldnt be there. We are steaching far to much the time dilatacion on this case. Think on this. Lalafells went into a shard way before its gone? On a shard where time moves faster than the source. The Storm Surge happens but Alexandria is not rejoined. Krile's parents, for this was 300 years aprox, but for the Source is 20. Then Zoraal ja Arrives, it doesnt add up much to the weight here. There is to many cons, to many unanswered questions.
@@LoreLinesXIV Agree with people up, 1)from what i remember 12 floor isn't under the dome, 2)in Shadowbringers we seen what happen when element take uphold - it's permanent radiance from the sky, and yet here's the normal cloud, normal moon. If Alexandria saved itself from rejoining then they should be either standing on something or more likely, float in interdimensional rift like Strayborough. It's like people heard "Calamity" and instantly think it's should be 2nd umbral. Like we don't have different events in game named the same names (like Ancients calling Final Days the Great Calamity if i remember right)
@@LoreLinesXIV Not to mention it would be such an flimsy move, while having whole story about 8th umbral calamity, reverse engineering of 2 epic entities like Omega and Alexander, and Crystal Exarch story... ...to just have dropped in our hand a mcguffin that already can do it and probably more. It's not only copying, not only bad idea to again play with flow of time in this game, but also just feels like very much deus ex machina toy.
it's a possibility, I think. if they're pulling from FF9 themes, Terra had some number of fusions with new worlds which didn't yet have life that went successfully before trying to fuse with a young one that had early life and having it fail catastrophically. They say they hadn't had a successful fusion before, but I assume "success" is defined in terms of life force to harvest, so if they did fuse to some other shard... I don't know. It definitely doesn't map 1:1 with FF9, so I'm not sure how much to take thematically. I just wonder what an "unsuccessful" fusion would look like.
I'm still on the theory that time while it can flow at different rates for different shards, flows in the same direction for all of them. If that's true, it eliminates the 12th as a possible target cause the lalafels arrived in Alexandria before a lightning disaster befell them. I suspect Alexandria, like the first, to be an aborted calamity
Theirs a moment, I can't recall exactly where whwre wuk lamat comments on how everyone here would be trying to claim it if it was on the source and sphene does her "ehhhh subject" change if i recall correctly so I believe it has to be made when worlds join in some fashion.
I do not think the assertion that the key is capable of time travel is well-supported at this stage. this is not to say that assertion MUST be false, or that the story CANNOT support such a thing (as i see other people saying). In fact, i would quite like to see where the story would go in such a case-- but the evidence isn't there at present. there is still room for it to be established in the future, but the way i see it, the story withheld just enough information to render it impossible to draw a definite conclusion for now. Unless i have gravely misunderstood the logic presented in this video, the evidence being cited here seems to be the "fact" that the milalla have used the key to travel to the past-- an assertion which in turn relies on the assumption that they did in fact travel to the twelfth, which was never clearly established and unfortunately renders this argument somewhat circular. The possibility remains that another shard was in the process of being groomed for a rejoining via a calamity of lightning (a nigh certainty, given the number of shards), and that this rejoining was left incomplete by the deaths of the paragons, and therefore the shard was left in a permanent state of ascendant lightning without ever actually being rejoined. That said, the repeated use of the word "calamity" to describe the culminating event of the storm surge seems significant to me. It is, at the very least, meant to call to mind the *idea* of an umbral calamity, for one reason or another. And the fact that Alexandria never learned of what happened to the world outside the barrier strikes me as a very conspicuous gap in information. So i would argue that there *is* some *narrative* and *thematic* evidence that the unlost world could be the twelfth. but whether such a thing is even *possible* remains pretty firmly unclear, in my mind.
The Heroes Gauntlet features Necromancer Lenna and Berserker Bartz. Fort Gohn, the original home of the Night's Blessed is from FFV. The final boss of the Twinning is the Tycoon, named after the Kingdom of Tycoon in FFV.
@@LoreLinesXIV while I'm aware of those references, they don't really scream major. Not like all of the connecting FFIV references in Endwalker, or the major story beats from FFIX in Dawntrail. It's just 3 bosses and a location linked to Ronka. I'm not sure if we can pin an exact FF game that inspired The First, as there are various references in other locations. There are area references to 10 in Amh Araeng and Eden. Eden is the big 8 reference, and Vauthry and Eulmore are 7 references.
@@jaypro6269 The Warriors of Darkness and flood of Light plot points are both from FF3 too, plus the song Eternal Wind being used a lot and that is the overworld theme of FF3, I think The First is just a big amalgamation of multiple without any specific game tied to it.
I don't think the mallala were necessarily more intelligent to the inhabitants of the twelfth. As beings of the Source, we aren't necessarily more intelligent than the first's people. Were that the case, we probably wouldn't have been able to help them at all. I think it just so happened that the Mallala were experienced enough in their craft that they came to be known as Wise Sages, and that's all that was.
Isn't the First mostly FF1? It even has Mt. Gulug & FF1 Goblins in Kholusia. Many other FF1 references. But I agree with you, the Key for sure allows time travel. And for anyone who doubts it, it LITERALLY looks like an hourglass. That in itself says everything. People just hate the idea of time traveling so they don't wanna even imagine the possibility. lol
@@mickwayne3398 To make it an hour glass you'd need to chop off the base and add a second bowl to it. You'd think people had never seen a wine glass before.
Im gonna leave my 2 cents here since people seem to have missed a few key details. First the facts: 1. Milala are from the source, they fled the source during the FIFTH Umbral Calamity, which was an ICE aspected calamity. 2. Electrope is a RARE and SCARCE resource in whatever shard Alexandria comes from. Rare enough that a major war is started because of it. IF the shard Alexandria is from is Lightning aspected, how can electrope be rare? 3. A STORM SURGE is defined as A FLOOD of WATER due to, and during, a STORM. 4. The SIXTH Umbral Calamity causes a massive Flood in the source. 5. We know that the people of Alexandria, now Solution Nine, have effectively forgotten what exists outside the barrier since its creation. 6. in the lvl 100 Alexandria dungeon we clearly see WHAT threatens Alexandria and the rest of the shard by extension. It is not war. Alexandria survives their battle with whatever enemy we see them fighting, and survives the war. SAID WAR ENDS DUE TO A DISASTER CALLED A STORM SURGE. And what do we see happening to Alexandria as they preserve the queens memories in the last leg of the dungeon and are clearly fortifying Alexandrias defensive barrier? A flood. Alexandria is the last surviving remnant of the shard claimed by the 6th Umbral calamity due to an excess of WATER aka A FLOOD aka a STORM SURGE. Alexandria is the remains of the 10th shard now rejoined to the source, a part of which more than likely survived because of their efforst to fortify Alexandrias defensive barrier with Electrope technology. I am safe in making this assumption because while any of the shards denizens might not have forewarning or recognize a rejoining, THE MILALA WOULD. The Milala escaped the source because of the 5th Umbral Calamity and very clearly preserved much of their knoweledge of that time. Solution Nine is as advanced technologicaly as it is BECAUSE it has been going in synch with the Source since the war of the Magi. No timetravel shenaningans needed whatsoever. EVERYTHING fits logicaly AND chronologicaly. Electrope in this context is a red herring to distract any loreseeker, myself included. I too was stuck on assuming a lightning aspected shard UNTIL the very moment I reach the last 3rd of the Alexandria dungeon and saw Alexandria effectively flooded and on its last leg DESPERATELY fortifying their barrier against what one can only assume is the Milala recognizing "a rejoining". Or to them, an Umbral Calamity. And WHY is this important? Because in the elemental "wheel" of all Final Fantasy, 14 included, LIGHTNING DESTROYS WATER. THIS is why Alexandria survives. The calamity they are facing is Water aspected and their barrier is massive sphere of LIGHTNING. Quite possibly the ONLY thing that could "in universe" block the power of a water aspected rejoining. I rest my case. Yes but how does the last level survive without its barrier in what can only be the original location of the 10th I hear you asking? The rejoining happened in the aftermath of the War of the Magi. That was a "while" ago. Without a violent and destructive rejoining to contend with one can safely assume that a civilization of Solution Nines caliber would have little trouble erecting another barrier to keep everything in place, assuming one is needed in the first place and all remaining aether, air and everything else isnt kept in place by gravity. (Though my personal guess is that the developers forgot that detail and kinda just handwaived the problem away). TL;DR: Alexandria is the last surviving remains of the 10th Shard. Why? See above. As an additional bonus: Why does Emmet-Selch want us to look for the golden city? Because the WoL is now assuming the "Legacy he left us". We are now the sole protector of Etheirys. Emmet-Selch gave us veiled instructions in a language our "in lore accurate" WoL would understand, eventualy leading us smack dab in the middle of the Ascians latest fuckup and blunder: Here lies an Alexandrian AI with F*ING GOAL DRIFT leading to an all life consuming spiral of doom, please fix. Thanks Emmet! ...hang on, Emmet, whats waiting for us on the Treasure Isles in Othards norht? Hytholodeus stop laughing in the rafterst and drag Emmets ass back here! What mess is waiting for us on the Treasure Islands?!? HADEEEEES!!!
@@AyantanoAzem In either the Island Sanctuary questline or the Aloalo Island Criterion dungeon questline its stated that the people of the South Sea Isles disappeared during the 5th Umbral Calamity (dont remember which). Then in the Milala historical records in the Unlost World they describe how their Island and the waters surrounding it were forzen solid. During the MSQ it is then outright confirmed that the Milala are the descendants of the people from the South Sea Isles, thus Kriles ancestors are actualy originaly from the Source and not residents of the shard Alexandria comes from (which is the 10th as I try to prove in my post). There are multiple clues pointing to all of this before the MSQ just outright states this as fact. It should be pretty much impossible to miss unless you skip one of the cutscenes in the Asyle Volcane area and dont read any of the tablets (which are no longer there after you shut down the local memory reservoir).
Okay, I like your theory that the Storm Surge was a Calamity of water, but it has a problem: the Storm Surge is consistently described in the MSQ as a Calamity of LIGHTNING. The dome over Alexandria was made expressly to protect the kingdom from lightning storms. During the middle part of the Alexandria dungeon, the Kingdom is clearly getting blasted with lightning, not water, and Sphene's airship is disabled with lightning. Of course, this does leave Alexandria being flooded unexplained. But it seems to be a result of the Alexandria's protective dome, not the Calamity.
@@noppornwongrassamee8941 "The painful memories of war I lay to rest" is the quote Sphene says at the start of part 2. Her airship isnt getting blasted by a storm. It is getting hammered by ELECTROPE WEAPONRY. This is why the other airship, still able to move leaves when Sphene tells them to. Its not protecting Sphenes airship from random lightning blasts where it would be logical to roll the dice to save their queen. Its protecting her airship from directed enemy fire. They leave because its not a matter of luck if her ship gets hit again, it WILL get hit for as long as it takes to break the shield. ps. And like I said, a Storm Surge is specificaly "a Flood caused by a Storm".
This theory is thin, not quite I'll eat my hat, but I'd be very surprised if it is accurate. You say there is no reason to believe that Alexandria is from another active reflection, but Y'shtola, one of the Scion's two experts on cross-rift travel says it is. The Scions have been wrong before, but Occam's Razor still makes it more likely that the simplest answer is the most likely. It was an as yet unnamed reflection that was being prepped for a future calamity. Alexandria's situation seems much closer to the situation of Norvrandt at the beginning of Shadowbringers to me. And no, the key does not look anything like an hour glass there is no bottom receptacle for that. It looks like a chalice.
We also mention our team itself is divided on the theory for which shard it is! This is merely one of the possibilities. While Y'shtola is often the dev's mouthpiece, that isn't always the case. Y'shtola, as far as we know, also hasn't actually gone to Alexandria yet. She commented on the city of gold gate, and stated that it led to another reflection--but not which one. As far as the key; the crystal in the middle is what is roughly hourglass-shaped. According to the in-game text, everything else (the chalice-looking container, the wires, the electrope) were most likely added by the Preservation's researchers while trying to figure out how to make it work again. The original device itself is the white crystal inside, which is reminiscent of a concept crystal or Ancient aetheryte. -Arden (who also doesn't think Alexandria is the 12th. lol)
@@LoreLinesXIV I think this would have felt a lot better if it was presented as "the obvious explanation is that Y'shtola is right, but what if she's not, here's our crazy theory" but claiming time dialation is simpler than Y'shtola is right and everyone who doesn't agree is just blinded by their prejudice which people using the LoreLines login have been doing throughout the comments here is just infuriating. Nothing gets me angry faster than presenting speculation to the masses as definive lore. The Lorewatch podcast for WoW used to drive me up a wall doing it too. The crystal inside looks even less like an hour glass to me, it looks like a twist shape (the word I was looking for but was too tired to put my finger on last night is helix). I did show an image of the key to a bunch of non FF players asking them to describe the key using a real world object as a comparison. The answers I've gotten so far, a couple of people haven't responded yet, are candlestick, goth sippy cup, if an hourglass and a goblet had a baby, and "anything is a (adult toy) if you're brave enough. So I'll concede it is possible to see an hourglass there, but I think the people who do are at least as swayed by their theory that does involve time travel as I may be influenced by my inclination that they are overcomplicating things. I'd really recommend editing it for tone and reposting. ETA: hourglass, a torch and "a wizard tried to clean out his roomba and ended up with abstract art" are now added to the list.
I really like the idea that the Calamities happened in a different order on the Shards than they did for the Source. It makes the possibilities so complex that they could literally take us anywhere with the story and it would still make some degree of sense. It also leads into a wild theory that popped into my mind about Azem a while back: What if they aren't really from the Unsundered world? Azem seem to be leaving a trail for us to follow knowing when and where we will be before our Wol has any clue. My thought was the Azem we keep hearing about is really us, fully Rejoined and ended up in the distant past to set thing in motion for their younger self.
Just going to drop this here. I call this "endless circle theory" and it's also featured in the timeline video: ua-cam.com/video/9Z41oL5t6iw/v-deo.htmlsi=zNbeRxyIX2zUyZ21
My personal canon: the shard Alexandria came from still exists. It would have to, because Living Memory is there in the present. When a shard is rejoined, it ceases to exist. While there was some crazy lightning disaster in the shard of Alexandria, it was not enough to destroy or rejoin the shard. I would venture to say it is in a condition somewhat, but not entirely, similar to the first. Living Memory is like the Jetsons: it is simply above all the weather--or simply in an otherwise uninhabited region of the world unaffected by lightning. The sun rises at the end. If a world had been entirely consumed by lightning or otherwise destroyed or rejoined, there would be no sun--or at least no visible sun from anywhere on the shard. Your own explanations are extremely speculative, and have no explicit proof--just like mine. 😉 Thus, the shard of Alexandria is not one involved in any previous umbral calamity. My super-personal canon is that it is the Ninth Shard, because COME ON! 😂 I know the shards are not bound to be numbered based on the previous games. They were inspired by, but no other shard has taken so much over inspiration from another title (they even cited Lindblum's Festival of the Hunt for God's sake!). I would venture to say that that shared actually is Gaia, and we are looking at the future of the world of FFIX. Again, my own canon. If you call me wrong, that can only be your canon, because nothing I have said is disproven by anything in the game (as of 7.0).
hate to break it to ya but, the story told in 14 kinda torps this theory from the begining. because 2 things: first when the cataclysm that happened in thier shard is discussed, they never mention that lightning engulfed the world, they mention only "the continent", which indicates that there are multiple continents in that shard and they are VERY specific with that language second, and this is the substantially more damaging one, Alexandria, within its own timespace, existed for 800 years AFTER the cataclysm, which would not be possible in an integration event. the much more likely theory is that whichever shard alexandria came from had 1 of 2 things happen, either the ascians lost control of an experiment that was meant to cause an integration event in such a way that it did not successfully cause the requisit circumstances to complete, OR the people of the Continent alexandria was from independently got too high on thier own supply of lightning aspected aether and caused a localized cataclysm (similar to say the chernobyl event IRL) all evidence within the actual story told in 14 indicates that wherever alexandria originated from, it was still there AFTER the cataclysm that was the catalyst for its development. also the cutscene for Strayborough is explained in context as being seperated during experiments attempting to integrate, meaning it is in a pocket of dimensional space seprate from both the shard and the source, which would explain the cutscene. its like an asteroid floating in orbit.
Unrelated but I find funny the whole rejoining process was to revive Zodiark and make all the shards one again, yet with Metion around, what tf would Zodiark do? We know he has the power to reverse what Meteon has done but at the cost of so many lives. Point is, what would prebent Metion just do the same thing again? Zodiark wouldn't have enough lives/souls to operate so the whole concept of the rejoining is useless. Zodiark in itself is useless.
There is no question that the Milalla came from Aloalo island. They are remembering it through legend, and while there was some slight seasonal variance, by comparison to where they went it sure would *seem* like eternal summer. Hyperbole, legend, and all that.
@@NeilaNuruodo Why is there no question? Especially when we are serving up time travel and dilation would it not be possible they arrived there after the calamity thus skipping the results on the first? I do not doubt the lalafel came from Aloalo; but the subsequent renaming and the fact the seasonal change was referenced in game as significant enough to force them to frequently relocate works against that logic.
it can't be the 12th for a simple reason, if the 12Th have already join the primal world, how can we have the last zone of the whole expansion. worse at the end we see that the world still exist. when the sun rise. leading to the idea that it's another shard... another point about time traveler, outside alexander or the crystal tower in the first shard, no other entity or tool have the capacity to time travel (and the crystal tower was modify while using technology created based on alexander) the whole time difference it's because all the shard don't move at the same speed, in fact most of the shard before be synchronize move faster than the primal one. means the milala didn't arrive in the past, they have arrive in the present but the time did flow faster, we did seen that before we enter dome more than 30 years did pass in the dome in the time of a few minutes for the primal world. it's not time traveling it's time difference. anyway the whole trouble with dawntrail lore, it's.... all the hole they have left open, either they plan later to let us explore more, or it was written without care. we have tons of stuff that feel strange or not explored enough in dawntrail. and alexandria is one of them. we can try to find an explanation, but in the end it's not find the lore, it's try to justify the missing part of the lore. like when someone write a story full of hole and people try to find an explanation of what is missing... i feel they have drop the ball hard with all the lore about this part of the game.... one krill story feel lackluster, this whole part will have been better if the main focus was krill and erenville, but in the end both story feel rushed and underwhelming. like most of the last area, we have no time to really understand what we do... and why we do it. i means they are entity that have turn themself in data... we know of another race that have done this in the past.... the omicron...why our character never did mention it! at no point the whole last part is complet, it's rushed, lackluster and filled with plothole over plothole. like the ascien mask we see in the milala part and the fact that when the key is activate it's Azem symbol appearing on it. letting us think that maybe it's azem creation, but we have a trouble with this. the key will have no purpose before the shard was created... and outside a part of the council and hyadelin all ascien did become part of the shard.... but here we are asked to believe that Azem (our ascien past) have created with probably Hyadelin follower a key allowing the travel between shard...if that was the case the council will have used the technology for a long time. i hope the futur patch will clarify a lot of this point... because right now the key is a macguffin and the whole krill/erenville story are underwhelming for say the less. plus alexandria whole story feel weird like the person behind it didn't know that had already the lightning shard that have join the primal world.
Whatever the answers are, I suspect we'll find them in Meracydia. Emet-Selch directed us to multiple places before his end that are now seemingly all connected. He directed us under the waters of the Bounty, and we found a portal to the Void. He directed us north of Othard, where we have yet to visit, and supposedly treasure lies. He directed us to the golden city of the New World, and we found a portal to yet another reflection. He directed us to "the forgotten people of the south sea isles" which we now know to be the Milala that evacuated to that same reflection. He directed us to Meracydia, asking us if we knew about their "current affairs" at all. He even directed us to investigate the true identities of the Twelve, which we've since done. Although I also suspect we might find *another* portal to that reflection in the south sea isles...
I'm getting mad copium thay Gaia learns to use her Ascian powers and is our key to knowledge of other shards. Lmao I just want her and Ryne back to the MSQ
I find this interesting, and I have some.. issues with it. I'm not sure who you are that does these but you should come by the balance lore discussion channel sometime because I'd like to chat about this.
@@humgoesonforever I saw rather more bullying behavior, black-and-white thinking, and rude condescension than I believe belongs in a lore channel. I certainly wouldn't tolerate that kind of behavior and it disappoints me that the moderators there do. I've been in spaces where any sort of disagreement with group thinking was treated rudely or dismissed and I don't care to go back to that ; ; I don't doubt people know their stuff, don't get me wrong. It's only that the environment also matters.
@@NeilaNuruodo as someone who is a moderator of the balance I can definitely understand that there have been times that our moderation isn't perfect, and especially if your experiences came some time ago things are definitely different now than they used to be. we have put a lot of effort over the last year or so in making the balance a less toxic environment for everyone. things are never going to be perfect and we strive to do better every day. if you have had issues in the past, or if you do decide to try it again and see this kind of behavior please let the mod staff know and it will be dealt with. I know that I personally don't tolerate that kind of thing and the rest of the current moderation team feels likewise.
while it's entirely possible that the dome protected Alexandria from being rejoined, it does not explain time travel. Past that, the use of something that looks like a blue historia crux in Zoraal Ja's fight does not prove that time travel is part of how the key works. I do want to believe that it's the 12th, it'd be a fair bit unfortunate to get rid of one of the shards this way, and it is also worth considering that there is nothing outside the world of Living Memory except Living Memory. It is all well and truly gone. This suggests to me that Living Memory occupies the same place as a rejoined shard, because there is just emptiness all around it
I also feel that Alexandria is from the 12th, too. We know that time travel to previously rejoined reflections exists because G'raha was sent with the Crystal Tower to the First from a timeline where the First was rejoined with the Source. I believe that with the info from the Twinning, they reverse-engineered Alexander to achieve this based on the final boss, The Tycoon. (You can see this in its mechanics, design, and the displays on the walls of the arena.) Also, I want to point out that when the key was near Azem's Crystal in the 3rd DT trial, it bore the mark of the Seat of Azem, which to me means it's a relic of Azem. A key that allowed the user to travel not only space across the rift but time as well. At least, that's my interpretation. I hope they delve deeper into this, and I want to thank you for this amazing video! ^^
I think Heritage Found comes from the 12th, but Living Memory is whats confusing me. And i don't do any of this time travel stuff because my brain hurts but im thinking they used a crap ton of energy to transport Heritage Found to another shard since it's a surviving piece from the 12th before the rejoining. Surely they had to be in existence for a long while before being transported to the Source. My theory now is PERHAPS they consumed the souls on that shard before Zoraal Ja found them and later came to the Source for his campaign. As for Living Memory, they definitely have to be on a different shard. The sky is there and the sun rises, so it isnt rejoined. Im thinking it either got transported there directly (like Heritage Found) or that they built it from scratch with their electrope material. Altho it wouldnt make sense for Heritage Found to be on a different shard (before coming to the Source) than Living Memory (unless a portal is open there too) because when they die in Heritage they go to Living Memory (as to why Wuk Lamat's 'mom' was there). PERHAPS Living Memory took over that shard and made it their home instead, rich with souls and aether until they started to be nearly deplete of aether to run everything. (Cant forget that Sphene will invade other worlds so that her memory collection and aether supply keeps running. And if i remember correctly she was about to suck up the remaining energy in Living Memory to transport the city to the Source) Sure my theory has its flaws but thats all i know and what i believe until the next set of content to give us more lore.
It's a little bit weird. I have alwaya though Living Memory is in Alexandria's original place( pressumably the 12th) and it is entirely separated from EverKeep which it seems to be a interdimensional fusion between the source and a piece of Alexandria. I also think the lightning calamity engulfs all the sky from low to mid altitude while the very top is not affected. I say this because of how living memory functions and how in the Arcadion M4 you can see what it seems an holographic version of the top of solution 9 which does bot hsve thunderclouds as well
@@Yokai_Yuri I remember there being a huuuuuuuuuuge reactor with slow moving fan wings under Living Memory while the city was still golden, so it made me think the place was just seriously constructed on a massive level ontop of the planet. But it never crossed my mind that their city was built above the clouds. I'll have to check it out again and go there next time i log in, as well as the M4 hologram u mentioned^^ (As other comments have stated, since the 12th got rejoined the planet could still be there albeit starved of aether since its now in the Source. But do buildings and solid objects get rejoined as well? I have no idea. If living memory is in the 12th then its proof the city stayed orrrrrr maybe they transported the city back to the 12th after the rejoining. Idk, the lore in this game is intensely deep at times lmao)
I really hope there was some actual thought put into this by the writing team, and they didn't ass-pull it. Like how Tural mysteriously had not experienced the Final Days. Nobody even mentions it. Not a single utterance of, "Hey, remember when people LITERALLY STARTED TURNING INTO MONSTERS FOR NO REASON? THAT WAS WEIRD!"
It’s impossible that they came from a rejoined shard. Even with time travel and dilation btwn shards, it doesn’t work. Living Memory is on the other shard. When we shut it down, we are presented with a sunrise in a clear sky. No lightning storm, and clearly on a shard that still exists. So it can’t be time travelled before the rejoining of that shard cus it’s over aspect towards lightning is no longer present. And it can’t be an already rejoined shard in present day cus, you know, we’re there.
To be fairm LM, is way up on the sky, way pass the mandtle of lighting clouds and there is still raning. So that could be the reason. Yet it is right, there is normal weather, a sunrise, there is a moon. The shard was not rejoined.
I'm glad someone had a similar idea about it being the 12th. Granted my theory did involve time dilation kinda like how the whole us going to the first was was to prevent it's rejoining that happened in another timeline where Cid after we died and eorzea and garlemald were destroyed, awakened graha (though 100years too early) to prevent it from happening. But there were a few holes on my theory I didn't like, mainly the ascians and the fact that for us that timeline never happened cause we managed to prevent it vs in current time the twelfth had already been rejoined long ago so Eben if we did go back due to time dilation there was no saving it. I didn't think about the time machine in zoraal ja fight to glad the base of my theory is still popular but with different reasons and hopefully potentially different results in the future
The reason why i believe Alexandria is from the Source is because whem a reflection is overaspectsd towarss one element, jt begins to have an affect on the Source. Since we havent seen ANY kind of increase in Thunder activity on the Source, and the only time this happened was during the 2nd Umbral Calamity, its very possible that Alexandria is from the 12th.
im still saying that alexandria is from the 12th, and that the dome and electrope protected them from the rejoining, the storm surge sounds an awful lot like the flood of light
I thought it was pretty clear in msq that it was the 12th they came from. Not sure why anyone would think otherwise. My personal theory is that living memory is shielded floating along in the rift waiting to attach itself to any shard that opens entry.
There's a line of dialogue from G'raha which seems to suggest he, the interdimensional mage man, is not sure which shard it could be 'without asking an ascian'. If the answer was supposed to be obvious, it seems weird the writers would intentionally include a line from a knowledgable character meant to imply where its from is a mystery.
@@Janx14 While I do remember that specific dialogue, I think it would have been too forced for Graha to effectively go all in on naming the exact shard during that moment. Wouldn’t be very scholarly for him to assume. So while yes, it was left open to interpretation, I feel like it’s very much implied that it will more likely than not be the 12th. I could absolutely be wrong, but I consider it wierd and in poor form for them to start having elemental misdirections on what shard is what. For better or worse, we’re now getting knee deep in toward a criss crossing plot line of interdimensional, time traveling journeys with the WoL. Then again, the way Hiroi wrote DT, wierd and poor form could be the new norm. But I digress!
@@h0lyhandgrenade there are 4 active shards with unknown elements some of them will most definitly have a double element that has already past like the 12th. this all could still be from the 9th shard i mean are we forgetting solution 9??? isn't that a hint on it's own already?
Because assuming it's the 12th assume you can only have one Lightning based Rejoining/Calamity EVER and that logic fails as soon as you realize that there's 13 Reflections to be rejoined and only 8 elements (well, 6 elements and 2 poles) to do it with.
Welp looks like I was wrong, Yoshi-P just casually dropped at an interview at Gamescom that Sphene and Alexandria was from the 9th. And did so like it was common knowledge. Ok. Don't mind being wrong, Like I said in a previous post, I didn’t ‘assume’ anything. Just a take from an average person who likes the story. But hey, here we are watching this narrative spaghetti multiverse garbage begin to devolve into ****. Didn't realize I was going to end up playing along in an interdimensional time traveling adventure. I usually avoid those books and movies for a reason.
The portal to Living Memory at the top of Everkeep, where all the memory data is taken, is an ACTIVE portal to another shard up until Sphene closes it. Y'shtola states as much. Living Memory and the Everkeep, and by association Alexandria, are from an un-rejoined shard we can presently visit. Moreover, when the dome appears in Heritage Found, it is a dimensional fusion between their shard and the source at that point in time, and until the dome is pierced by Zoraal Ja, the parts of the source within the dome operate on that shard's timeframe. This could not occur if that shard was already rejoined, because that shard's timeframe would be our timeframe.
The only active shards remaining that could be The Unlost World are the 4th, 8th, 9th, and 11th. Alexandria belongs to one of them. That's why it's named The Unlost World to begin with - we know it's another active shard, we just don't know which and Y'shtola says only an Ascian would know for sure.
As for why Y'shtola does not recognize Krile as having a less dense soul, it's because Krile is likely only 1/14th less dense than Source denizens. The Milala left after the Fifth Umbral Calamity, which would leave them 6/14ths vs. the Source's 8/14ths. However, we know from Ardbert's interactions with us that fragments of souls are attracted to one another and have the ability to merge, and it is entirely possible that in the thousands of years the Milala existed on The Unlost World, some of their 6/14ths rejoined souls merged with some of the 1/14th shards. If that happened, then that would put Krile at 7/14ths vs. everyone else's 8/14ths (and our 9/14ths). But Y'shtola's aether sight is also imprecise - she did not recognize our soul as having been repaired by merging with Ardbert, she only saw the corruption removed while Ryne saw deeper. It's likely that Y'shtola is unable to detect the minute difference in soul density a single rejoining creates.
So the best person to ask about Krile would be Hythlodaeus... Who we can't exactly reach out to 😅 oh well
Actually, with this explanation of "Krile's was a soul that came from the Source, and it had a mini-rejoining with its Shard from the Unlost World"... Krile should also be 8/14 of an Ancient's soul. Krile was left with Gadolf as a baby -- *before* the Seventh Umbral Calamity took place. So she experienced that rejoining alongside everyone else in the Source. She's equal to most every other Source-native now.
Also I am pretty sure that only Ben Luq can judge “soul density “. I think yshtola uses a different word
Wibbly wobbly timey wimey
Until we're told otherwise I'm assuming that Alexandria will be the 9th reflection just because, well FF9 and that number is available.
I'm so glad this channel will have plenty of new lore videos thanks to Dawntrail.
You have noooo idea! We are buzzing!
It does not add up simply because Emet was aware of the city of gold. Ascians do not have a capability to travel through time - this is why Emet abducts G'raha with him to use his knowledge of how he travelled through space AND time. If Emet is aware of Alexandria's existance, it has to exist in the timeline we're in physically. And it is very clearly stated in the game that in the current timeline 12th is rejoined.
If ascians already would have had knowledge of things just appearing from other timelines, they would not be so puzzled with G'raha in ShB, as they already would have access to a society and knowledge that did it before events on the First. Unless somehow Emet gained knowledge of the golden city after dying to us in ShB and conveniently told us in EW about it.
Actually, Hades refers to "cities" of gold. Which I find very intriguing. Given that the two items on his list we've found so far relate to inter-shard travel, it's possible he's passing on a message from an old friend, one showed in the Pandaemonium raid series to have at least some degree of prescience...
@@NeilaNuruodo i feel the point, it's because we are technically Azem the explorer of the council and that even if we did seen a lot we didn't know everything that was possible in etherys. and he talk of a civilization with technology that will suprise us... but i feel alexandria don't fit, for the simple reason that the way to use soul is something the ascien will have hate a lot... every soul consumed is lost, it means one less ascien that can be revive to his full potential.
@@aSmolGoth He was not using just his own abilities, but abilities of the crystal tower, which used Alexander powers as well.
@@aSmolGoth This is exactly why the theory that ascians could just go to random timelines however they want is wrong. Elidibus is fused with the tower - he is not a separate entity, and no other ascian could do it. He only has access to use it because he is a part of the tower itself.
@@aSmolGoth yes, he knew how to do it - he read it in G'raha's memories when he took them and hijacked the tower.
I personally have a suspicion onto the source of electrope's origins. I think that it is not a natural occurring mineral at all, but specific forms of rock and stone that have been aetherically tilted so far into levin (lightning) that the rock and ores metamorphize into something new, electrope. The lightning imbalance of Alexandria's aether, be it the 12th or one of the 4 intact shards besides the 1st and 13th, would have given rise to this metamorphic ore. With the planar overlay that Alexandria has done, fusing it to the Source, it brought what remained of the electrope to the Source, but also put an area of space that is very imbalanced towards lightning there. It then gave that space 30 years to cook in the couple of hours from the view outside. We see an electrope mine fully functioning, and even NPCs mentioning that there might be a surplus due to most of it being earmarked for the military. I suspect that the area below Heritage Found is now rich with new electrope, the ores that could metamorphize having done so. This may not mean electrope can just be everywhere and every city becomes S9 however, as the entire shard was lightning imbalanced to create that world war, so we might only see enough to see some new technological marvels from magitek engineers working with the engineers of S9, but unless the material can be synthesized artificially, it may remain a somewhat limited resource where recycling could become a real need.
It can't be from the 12th because the 12th fell before the Lalafells from the South Sea Isles went to Alexandria where they stayed for a few hundred years. The only shards that Alexandria can be from is the 10th or 7th. Originally I thought it was the 12th as well because of the description, but that was the 2nd Umbral Calamity. The Lalafell didn't go to Alexandria until the 5th Umbral Calamity.
@@iceman3317that's the big question.
Is it time travel or is it something else?
Electrope acts kind of like the Empty does if M4S p2 is an accurate representation.
That change really made me think this is the 'sineater' of levin.
@@iceman3317 did you even watch the video? he literally addresses this in the first few minutes
@@pitta3114 he addresses his theory. That's all it is is a theory. And until we get new information, that's all it'll ever be.
I have 2 big problems with this theory.
A - there's literally NO indication that the key also allows you to travel through time, and is just a "hey this fits my theory so I'm gonna use it."
B - I refuse to believe there's ANYTHING that could allow a shard to escape a rejoining, unless the dome had already removed itself from the 12th before the rejoining. And I don't mean the dome was erected, thus cutting off its connection to the outside world. I mean physically already removed from existence on the 12th.
We don't have enough information until the devs give us an indication that either, if not preferably both, of these are possible.
Remember, there's more shards than there are elements. Having multiple calamities of the same element is entirely possible. In fact, we have the 13th, consumed by dark, and another shard that WAS successfully rejoined in a calamity of dark.
I mean, it literally looks like a hourglass. There's no way they chose that design accidentally.
@@PetarBladeStrok that's fair, and it could very well be that you're right. But that's also a very flimsy argument for only half of my argument. All I'm saying is, until we get new information, we can't do any more than theorize.
yeah i don't get the time travel with that key theory either. it's clear it is only being used for shard travel, not time travel. didn;t the milala's traveled 2 times?
@@AyantanoAzem no. They tried to, but I don't think they were successful the second time.
@@WolfmanXD Technically, the second time was Krile's parents bringing her to the Source.
This is a great video! I love the details about the sky boxes and the elements in Zoraal Ja's battle arena. The question of where living memory is anchored is something that's beeing on my mind all the time since finishing the story and seeing the sun rise there. I was under the impression the whole place was digital when I first arrived, but then I realized it's built somewhere with electrope and then the whole paradise part is projected onto it. I wonder if we'll ever get the chance to explore the rest of that shard and find out what other places still exist there. And I think that now, with Azem's key, once we learn how to use it, we'll probably be able to go to the actual place where living memory is anchored without the need to use the Skydeep Cenote gate, which is very specific to that location. Having the freedom to choose where we're gonna land in another shard is gonna be key to be able to understand this whole thing better.
Quick tidbit to think about rq, you state that Sphene lied about not agreeing with Zoraal Ja's attack, but that might not be a lie. It's pretty much known that there are two sides to Sphene, her memory, and her directive as queen. The memory of Sphene is what we interact with majority of the time, and it's entirely possible that she truly does not wish for any more war or loss of life, and just wants her people to be preserved, but the queen's directive knows this is folly and would require the sacrifice of others to do.
I lean on it being another shard because there are not enough elements for all shards to be rejoined, but elemental alignment matters.
Remember that the 2nd calamity was so devastating people only survived by hiding in caves. This leads me to believe it was Astral Lightning. Astral aspected Lightning would be much more destructive than Umbral aspected lightning.
And the most common weather in Heritage Found is ...Umbral Static!
That's my theory anyway, this also does not need time travel for the Milala, and explains why we can visit that reflection.
People need to pay more attention to this. I noticed the Umbral Static thing in HF, too. And there's only one way we can have 12 Shards Rejoined -- for there to be an Astral and an Umbral Rejoining for each of the six elements. The 13th is moot because the Ascians screwed that one up big time. Can they even succeed in bringing The Source back to its original form , considering they spoiled the Rejoining of the 13th?
@@HayTatsuko They can't until the 13th is recovered but my guess it's going to have to be taken from the Other shards to make the 13th Recoverable. Like Light from Shard 1 to the 13th and Dark from the 13th to 1 and the needed parts from the others but since there been Rejoins how to do that. If they ever do.
@@mattstansbeary3068 or maybe they hoped a 13/14 remade zodiac would've had the power to just pull in the last shard.
@@HayTatsukoZodiark didn't need all of the shards to be rejoined before he would be strong enough to awaken and then rejoin the 13th himself. The Ascians knew they couldn't rejoin the 13th, but they weren't worried in the long run, because they knew Zodiark could.
I've been also thinking a lot about the Dawn Key, because we know that it's mentioned in one of the Tales of the Dawn stories from before the expansion... It's interesting, because it says it's a crystal made to ease the burdens of travel, so I think probably Azem was trying to create a portable aetheryte that would allow them to think of a place and the key would pick up the signature and travel with the owner through the aetherial sea to said place, like Y'shtola's flow spell. I have two theories for it being able to travel the rift... one is that after the sundering, the places of the unsundered world ended up scattered through all shards, like we see in the First parts of the original Amaurot (the white buildings where ondo cups is) and the key would still be able to pick up these signatures, but would shard travel instead to get to them. The other theory is that Venat told Azem of our stay in Elpis, and Azem tried to create the key because they knew there was no way of saving the unsundered world and the only hope was sundering. This would explain why the only timeline in which Hydaelyn's timeloop worked was the one in which the lalas had the key in their hands and in which because of the key, krile ended up back in the source and served as an oracle for the WoL to reach Elpis and discover the true reason for the Final Days.
Now, about the ability for the key to fuse shards... I think perhaps Azem made the spell so that it would "pull" the signature to itself, but since the unsundered world was aetherically dense, it would move the key and the bearer to the place it was pulling. Whereas, in the sundered world, when it attaches to a place and pulls it, the less dense shards end up being pulled instead, causing a fusion. This is just a theory though, and it would still not explain why the milala were able to travel to the other shard without actually fusing it with the source.
I think it isn't a rejoined shard but one Emet or the others were prepping for a rejoining. Due to the time not matching up this would have been the 9th or even tenth they tried. But with them in a mess after well the last two expanisions no one was there to cull it and prep the source for a second lightning. I say this because 13 rejoinings means some elements would need be repeating.
Dawntrail lore, let's fucking go!
I'm just excited for when someone in game finally puts together that corrupt aether crystals could be used to run electrope on any aether source.
What if corrupted crystals are a mineral similar to electrope, just aspected to a different element? Study of electrope could potentially unlock a method to use corrupted crystals, though the crystals would be an even more limited resource...
If this happens, the side quest merchants in Urqopacha are gonna truly make bank. Like “ground floor investment in bitcoin” bank.
@@HanabiraKage Electrope's behavior seems to be the exact opposite of corrupt crystals. If the corrupt crystals are what happens when one element is oversaturated, perhaps Electrope is when every element except Lightning is overstaturated, so the lightning goes in and gets converted to anything else.
@@doctorcis3510 oho this is interesting. makes a lot of sense too.
@doctorcis3510 people keep making the assumption that Alexandria is from a lightning-aspected shard. But I think it's more like you say with regards to Electrope - a reflection that was noticeably absent of Levin that suddenly had Levin introduced when electrope was used as a weapon of mass destruction.
This would account for the resulting fluctuations that gave rise to the levin storm we see in Alexandria. You take a world absent (or nearly absent) of levin with an atmosphere rife with electrope and introduce levin in large quantities and what do you get? One giant Solution Nine-esque billboard of uncontrolled lightning.
Wyrm Limion has a theory that I like and think is entirely likely. The first time you enter the "Strayborough Deadwalk" dungeon, it shows you the cutscene of traveling across the rift. This is never shown in any other context.
His theory is that during the fight with Sphene, she did in fact succeed in merging living memory onto another shard and the reason we see a skybox now is because we are on a new shard, without even realizing it. His guess was that this is how they will tie in FF11 for the alliance raid.
This is interesting. I took MAD issue with the expansion, and really wanted to know WHERE the hell the Sunrise at the end came from? Of course, the toxic positivity kids crowded out any chance at a response chanting "dont think, just consume", but my current vote is its the 12th, because that wouldn't make sense without significant timey whimy, which is in keeping with many other DT plot elements =D Love this video, love your comment Frost.
Well Yoshi-P has now called the reflection that Living Memory is on, the Ninth Reflection, in an interview, so I guess that settles it.
He also said the calamity of lightning, and it's not in quotes. Regardless, it's not canon until it's in the game.
@@LoreLinesXIV You need to reread the article since you are flat out incorrect. The statement is in two places in the article and the first time it IS in an exact quote.
"We felt that we needed to make it authentically and we needed to do a proper job, otherwise the thoughts of those people who live in the ninth reflection wouldn't be properly conveyed.”
While I agree it is still subject to change, it is wildly inappropriate to be denigrating people for sharing what is the official game devs position.
@@LoreLinesXIVvery true, it’s really weird to have this be revealed in such way
@@maxmax-pi7kw Well they did so already with secret of Zenos power and how Unsundered escaped the Sundering
Yeah, not in MSQ, not in side quests, not even in encyclopedia Eorzea, the fucking Q&A in one on hundred of live letters
Cool lore delivering
I really hope we get an in-universe, Yshtola--provided run down of the exact details, because it hurts my head.
I love the lore in this expansion and all the questions we can nibble on. Thank you for doing your videos. They are very much appreciated among the 100 "Why Wuk Lamat ruined Final Fantasy" videos that you find on FFXIV UA-cam.
Lorewise I still struggle with the gate to the golden city. Did that gate preexist Preservation's effort to displace shards? If so is there a gate like that to every shard hidden deep in some crevices of the source, possibly built by Azem? If not, then the gate must be the first successful attempt at shard displacement by Preservation; they must have placed it there?
Apologies if someone has already said this, but I think the name electrope comes from electric + -trope, from Greek tropos, in the sciences, something that turns, affects, changes, responds, or moves.
Electrope could be an ore that was made with dynamis. There seem to be strong connection in game about memory powers being related to dynamis such as logos actions from Eureka content or lost actions from Bozja and zadnor content. The power up using beast souls resemble arimata used by the auspices of the far east which was driven by emotion and in case of suzaku, her memory of love for tenzen triggering her power.
Nah, Dynamis is likely something Meteon discovered first, and not even the people of Elpis knew about despite their vast knowledge.
Electrope in itself is really good, but ultimately it was an unknown group who applied the tech to it. One of these groups are called preservation who are the responsible of the regulators and dimensional fusion through the key.
@@Yokai_Yuri Hermes discovered or at least researched dynamis.. hence creating Meteion from it
It makes sense that where Alexandria comes from is the 11th. The Stormsurge sounds like leftover ambient aether from the second Umbral Calamity of the 12th rejoining. We still don't know if other reflections outside of the rejoining one experience calamities when they return to the Source, and that also might have something to do with the 13th having been turned into void instead of rejoining aside from the Ascians failed experimentations.
That's an interesting one. I was thinking 9 just for the symetry barring any other theory, this is the first theory for a shard other than that, that makes sense to me.
I am leaning on the theory Alexandria did hail from the 12th shard due to the lightning phenomena and the events that played out. As you said,t time does change between shards so via this it stands to reason they could be survivors of the 12th's rejoining. I'm sure we will see and learn more as the expansion presses on in future patches. This feels like preluding to much more to come.
I am of the opinion that Alexandria is not from the 12th. Time travel in FF gets muddy real fast. I believe the lala's ended up on another shard that was also lightning aspected. My reasoning is this, there are currently only 8 elements, and Etherys was split into 14 shards with, with one shard being the source. It stands to reason then, that some shards would share an elemental aspect with another shard. Hence why the Ascians were able to rejoin a shard of darkness, to bring about the 7th umbral calamity, and the 1st was to be the 8th. If we look back on the rejoinings:
1st Calamity - Wind
2nd Calamity - Lightning
3rd Calamity - Fire
4th Calamity - Earth
5th Calamity - Ice
6th Calamity - Water
7th Calamity - Dark or in Eorzean terms: Umbral
The 1st was supposed to be a Calamity of Light or Astral. So stands to reason another shard that was not rejoined, but had a wave regardless, is lightning and we know the Ascians been trying to create elemental waves on all the shards. And our understanding of the rejoinings, is that they can only happen, when the entire shard gets consumed by the chosen element. Hence why our intervention in the 1st ruined everything for Emet-Selch. If not for G'raha's time travel to prevent the 8th calamity, then Norvrandt would of been consumed by light as planned and the rejoining would of commenced. The key point that changed the timeline, was Emet-Selch's death. That is what ultimately changed the history on the 1st.
Anyways back on point, I believe that in order for a shard to be rejoined, they have to be completely consumed by their element. Hence why Emet created Vaultry, he knew leaving even 1 part of a shard unconsumed, would mean it could not be rejoined. So this theory that Alexandria is a shard that was already rejoined, is I believe, false, as the shard would be unable to be rejoined if it wasn't 100% consumed by it's chosen element. Like the 1st being saved first by Minfilia halting the wall of light, then us killing light wardens and Emet-Selch, prevented the 1st from being consumed fully by light and gave Ryne and crew a chance to restore the empty, to undo the damaged caused by the Ascians. Alexandria set up their own little barrier that ultimately prevented their own shard from being rejoined. But it still, much like the 1st, experienced its own wave, that got halted by the barrier they created. And we know that time on the shards flows far differently than they do on the source. We know from the time Minfilia went to the 1st, before we ourselves got summoned by G'raha, over a hundred years had passed on the 1st.
And we know the lala's went to this shard Alexandria existed in, during the 5th umbral calamity. More than likely the shard they ended up on, was, much like the second shard that rejoined, was lightning aspected. Most likely it was set up to be the 9th umbral calamity. If anything, the 8th calamity going off, would of had the other calamities popping off much more rapidly than before, given the state we saw the source in from the glimpses into G'raha's past. But I agree, that the shard numbers do not match up with the game numbers. So it could be any one of the shards that were not rejoined yet.
My personal theory is that Alexandria is the Sixth Reflection, which Rejoined during the Fifth Umbral Calamity, the calamity of ice. The evacuation of Aloalo Island was explicitly called out to be during the Fifth Umbral Calamity.
Lightning sits directly opposite of Ice on the Elemental Wheel. I believe that the Rejoinings are a form of balancing operation; it was alluded to as the reason the Thirteenth didn't Rejoin. I think that in order to rejoin between a Shard and the Source, each has to have an opposite aspect dialed beyond "safe" limits. I also think that it may need to be at a point where time synchronizes between the two worlds. So my thought is that while the Calamity of Ice was accelerating rapidly on the Source, the Imbalance of Lightning was relatively moving far slower in the Sixth. This would have given the Lallas time to apply their Arcanima skills to electrope.
As an aside, I absolutely believe that electrope was furnished by the Ascians to push things along towards the "Storm Surge" (the Flood of Lightning) which would have collapsed most (if not all) of the Sixth.
Anyway, that's my theory.
Seconding this idea. The Unlost World is an unRejoined Shard.
Additionally, nothing we've been told about the Rejoinings indicates that elements have to happen in a specific order. Or that they can only be used once. What we are told that the balance between elements can shift; Ellidibus tells us that when he first met us, the Source was leaning way too much towards Darkness. In hindsight, this clearly means that right after a Darkness based Calamity, the Ascians didn't have another Reflection tilting towards Darkness ready to Rejoin.
So Alexandria's Storm Surge was likely a failed attempt at a Rejoining because the Ascians couldn't engineer a corresponding Calamity on the Source before the Storm Surge abated And we know it abated because once Living Memory is shut down, what we see is natural clear skies. For all we know, the rest of Alexandria's reflection has recovered from the Storm Surge ages ago while Lost Memory and Everkeep hid under their protective dome.
You've got Astral and Umbral backwards. We're told in ShB that it's Astral Darkness & Umbral Light. Also Norvrandt getting consumed by light would've made it impossible to rejoin. The Ascians DO NOT want Floods. They want to take the Shards to the point where they're just shy of one happening, and no more. Flooded Shards are useless to them.
@@DarthSanguine On the contrary; the Ascians 100% want floods. The idea is to convert as much as the reflection into a single type of aether as possible. The catch is that they have to simultaneously engineer a like-aspected calamity on the Source in order to draw that aether in. This is why the 13th failed; it was consumed by darkness, but without a dark-aspected calamity there was nowhere for the aether to go and it mostly extinguished itself. The 1st absolutely would have finished flooding with Light had Hydaelyn not intervened (and her intervention was assuredly not part of the Ascians' plans), to be drawn into the Source by the unleashing of Black Rose that Emet-Selch was busy orchestrating (though my personal theory is that their original plan for the Eighth Umbral Calamity was Lahabrea and Elidibus setting King Thordan up to lead a holy crusade across Eorzea, hence why Emet-Selch had to step in and rush Black Rose as a plan B after plan A failed spectacularly due to "Lahabrea's crowning act of idiocy", while Elidibus hastily grabbed the Warriors of Darkness in the hopes they would trigger enough primal summonings to instigate something usable).
With regards to Alexandria... I'm of the opinion that it's a new shard we haven't seen before, that one of the Sundered Ascians was prepping for a lightning flood that would eventually be met by another lightning calamity on the Source. My personal speculation on *that* is that whatever Ascian was in charge of setting up for a lightning flood realized that the Unsundered and Zodiark were all dead, making a rejoining impossible. Since things had already progressed to the point that he couldn't prevent the flood from happening, he instead formed Preservation in order to protect one part of the world, halting the flood from entirely consuming the shard, because A) there was no point in needlessly creating a lightning void, and B) given that the Ascians are immortal, he'd much rather live in civilization than exist in the aforementioned lightning void.
@@DarkTZeratul Honestly, I'm amazed that we didn't meet an Endless Ascian, ie, a memory copy of an Ascian that somehow got recorded by Lost Memory's immortality system, if only to explain what the hell happened to Alexandria's shard and identify which one it is.
Of course, the Ascians have their crystals for memory storage, so they hardly need to use Alexandria's servers.
The more lore videos that come out from lore enthusiast, the more excited I am becoming for the story going forward. So much of Dawntrail's deep lore is just hiding in plain sight as we progress the MSQ. I am very curious what the devs are cooking.
Thanks for the theory on LM's skybox at the end of the MSQ. It's one of my top "huh?" things in DT. The sun coming out made no sense if it was still in Alexandria's lightning-infested world. We'll see if the MSQ in the future leads us to a clear answer!
Hind sight is 20/20 😆 YP gave us the answer
I would like it to be another different Shard thought. Yes, there is the possibility that the Milalla not only shard-jumped but also timeskipped to the past when they used "The Key" to go to salvation. But that would require them to have gone extremely to the past of the 12th, as we know that not only Milalla's culture was very ancient and some of the better details had been lost but also how the Milallas were partly responsible for the the Electrope being used as miracle material. I believe that as with the First avoiding the rejoining by saving a small fraction of the world, the world of Alexandria also avoided the rejoining by saving a small fraction of it. It would also not be such a nuisance as we know for a fact that time traveling shenanigans in FF are not easy to be done, and the only ones able to properly do it, in the lore, were Alexander (a primal) and G'raha with the help of other-future-timeline scientists that studied Alexander and Omega.
Some people theorize that the "Key" was simply one of Hyadelyn's crystals given to the Milalla, awakening their Echo and their secondary abilities that came with it, thus granting them shard-jumping. This took them to another X shard. Not the 12th as it had been already consumed. They support this with the fact that we required a gate akin to a Voidgate to travel to Living Memory, so they had to be in another shard to begin with.
I believe though that time traveling being so hard to do, requiring either an epic primal like Alexander or the processing and aetheric power of the Crystal tower, would be really farfetched with just a simple item that we know the Milallas got but not why or how. It would still require vast ammounts of aether and great power.
Both theories, and tbh any theory, would be farfetched until we are given more to it. I am just posing what I believe the most, but I would not say that Alexandria being the 12th is wrong, since it is possible, we have seen it possible. Just that in my scope, the idea of it being another shard that was about to die to Lightning, is the best of the two. Hopefully it is like you say and the devs will give us more details in the patches to come.
Thanks for the Video. It did bring some light to stuff I had forgotten.
A lot of food for thought here. I kind of prefer the idea that Alexandria is from a shard that hasn’t been rejoined yet but was maybe being prepared for a future rejoining. Maybe the 9th rejoining. At this point we have gone through all the elements so some are bound to repeat. Maybe the Malala travelled to the future rather than the past. Maybe there is a version of Alexandria and it’s shard out there that can still be saved.
I also believe it's the 12th because at a point in the MSQ, they talk about the Everkeep levels, and how we fight Zoraal Ja on the 11th, with the 12th level being unknown, which we find out is the portal to the other reflection. I expected them to namedrop it right there and then but guess not.
It can't be from the 12th because of what we know about the lalafells. They left during the 5th Umbral Calamity and arrived in Alexandria. The 12th shard had already rejoined with the Source by then which happened in the 2nd Umbral Calamity.
@@iceman3317 It could still be the 12th - time travel is possible via the rift between worlds, so the gateway could've easily dropped off the lalafells into the past of the Twelfth.
2 things: Time travel is possible through the rift, but only because of Alexander. Alexander could have removed itself completely from the timeline and never existed, but it did not because it foresaw our need for that technology.
Regardless if a bit of shard itself could survive a rejoining, the life and souls on that shard could not. The Ascians were nothing if not meticulous in their plans. We foiled their plan on the 1st because of the time travel technology, of which they were apparently unaware, else they'd have used it in some way.
As for Krile's soul not being seen as thin, I feel like that's an oversight on their part, something that should have been addressed but was not.
Krile's soul isn't seen as less dense because it isn't. The Milala went to Alexandria's world during the 5th Umbral Era, which would make their souls 6/14 rejoined. Their souls would then be reincarnated on Alexandria's world, and would also merge with their soul fragments from said world, making them 7/14 rejoined. Krile is brought to the Source during the 6th Astral Era, and so is present there for the 7th Umbral Calamity. If she is the reincarnation of one of the Milala that came from the Source, then her soul would be 8/14 rejoined, like everyone else on the Source. Possibly even 9/14, if she's rejoined with the fragment of her soul that ended up on the Source due to the 6th Calamity.
@@DarthSanguine As far as we know only those on the source receive portions of their original soul in a rejoining/calamity; actually the rejoining wouldn't even be instant as far as we're aware, it would take place in the life stream the next time that soul was "born" but again according to what we've been told, only those ON the source are rejoined
My theory about electrope is it was introduced in the 12th reflection by ascian hands for 2 reasons, the very limited amount would fuel the world-wide fighting that we know now through lore and 2nd it probably sped the lightning-aspected imbalance in either which led to the rejoining. This would explain why the mineral is nowhere found on the source. (just a thought on that though, since we had a forced fusion with Alexandria, we might now have the possibility to get the mineral in future updates down the line).
There seems to be two major theories for Alexandria's origin.
1. The one proposed in this video, where Alexandria is a surviving part of the Twelfth, to which the Millala travelled using some sort of time travel.
2. Alexandria not being the Twelfth, but being some other shard which went through most of a Rejoining process but never actually got Rejoined through an Umbral Calamity
I'm not convinced of either of them, because they both require some leaps of logic I'm not comfortable making. Theory one has the obvious leap of logic requiring time travel to be possible outside of Crystal Tower shenanigans, which the video squares away through the presence of the Historia Crux in Everkeep. This is better than I usual see, which just takes time travel for granted, but I'm admittedly still unconvinced, through a combination of in-universe and meta reasons. In universe, I'm simply not convinced that's the Historia Crux. It looks significantly different: the rings aren't jagged, the patterns are different, the color palette is different - the only 100% similarity is it's a tunnel of glowing, rotating rings, which is sort of a pretty standard sci-fi image. None of Zoraal Ja's attacks involve anything time-travel related that would require the Historia Crux to show up, either - he's more about reconstructing reality around him.
The meta reasons I don't believe that whatever that thing is is significant is simply that it's not highlighted in any way. It just shows up in the background during the fight - the trust NPCs don't mention it, there's no line from one of the Scions along the lines of "What was that mysterious machine Zoraal Ja summoned? It seemed to contain great power...". If we're doing something as important as introducing a time travel machine that our plotline going forward is going to need to make sense, the writers sure as heck aren't letting it be in the background of a trial where players are more likely to be staring at the ground for indicators than paying attention to the Skybox, not without any line to make damn sure the audience knows there was something weird going on there beyond the usual flashy animations. Not pointing it out explicitly would be downright horrible writing.
Without this, I just can't throw my weight behind theory 1. Until there's a reason for us to believe the Millala had a means of time travel, it seems like nothing more than speculation - speculation that I readily admit could easily be made more convincing and proven right, but speculation I'm not convinced by just yet.
There's also the smaller leap of logic that a chunk of the Twelfth could exist after it's been rejoined. This isn't as big of a deal breaker for me, but I do think it'd make for unsatisfying storytelling after Shadowbringers being the story it was, and it would involve retconning the fairly explicit infodup about how rejoining works. It's the sort of bending of the rules I could see happening in order to tell a new story they want to tell - one I'd initially be unhappy about until the new story proved good enough to be worth the rule-bending.
Theory number 2 is a little more solid, in that it doesn't require any one massive leap of logic like assuming time travel. Instead, it's a number of small leaps of logic that end up adding up. The Ascians were working on (and were close to accomplishing) several rejoinings at once. Alexandria's Calamity wasn't going to be Wind as one would assume after Light, but skip one ahead and straight to Lightning (or there's another Wind-flooded Shard out there somewhere, and the Ascians were working three Calamities in advance). Elemental Floods can be slow and steady like the Storm Surge rather than quick and immediate like the Flood of Light. People can just, like, figure out how to stop an Elemental Flood without Hydaelyn's intervention and every other Reflection before Alexandria just had a skill issue, I guess. None of these by themselves would be enough for me to discredit the theory, but there's so many little cracks in the theory that I end up not believing it either.
Ultimately, I think the truth is going to be some insane new third thing that none of us could possibly predict, due to factors that are currently completely beyond our understanding. Part of is that neither major theory works for me at the moment, but part of it is also meta reasons, chief of which is how Dawntrail winks and nudges at the audience, discrediting both the theories. It initially leads us to assume it's theory 2, but at some point you hear about the Storm Surge and literally get the option to have the WoL say "wow, this sure sounds like it was an Umbral Calamity", pushing the audience toward theory 1. Then it throws an absolute curveball that destroys theory 2 with the Millala's travelling to Alexandria after the 6th Umbral Calamity, and then it basically tells you "there's some weird stuff you don't get going on" by revealing Azem's symbol on the Key. The game just straight up walks you to the two reasonable conclusions and debunks them for you before giving you a clue you can't fully grasp the significance of yet. My guess is that whatever caused Alexandria to go through the stuff it did is the new arc "big bad", in the same way the Ascians and the Garleans were for the Hydaelyn/Zodiark saga. It's either a malevolent force of some kind - maybe a malicious other reflection, or some new secretive organization, some antagonist - or it's something that threatens the fabric of existence now that Hydaelyn and Zodiark are gone - maybe a natural collapse of the reflections now that the two big forces directly and indirectly responsible for their existence are no longer present. Dawntrail was meant to be the start of a new arc, and other than this mystery it's not left us a thread for the overarching story to pull on, so I suspect whatever the big arc for the next few expansions is is directly related to these weird reflection shenanigans and the origins of the Key.
Fantastic response, and excellent analysis all around. I don't have much to add (I'm on the "not so sure" side of the LL crew but even I acknowledge the 12th isn't a possibility I can rule out lol). But I will point out that the mechanic Zoraal Ja is doing when the Historia Crux appears is the platforms that transpose onto the central one. I need to run it again to see if there's any text beyond his like "My will resonates within reality!" but... to me this indicates that he is using the key (which drops from his body after he dissipates) to access either other shards or other timelines (or both) to attack the players.
I keep thinking back to Yoshida-san making that comment, "You guys really pay attention," (or whatever it was). I feel like they took that to heart this expansion, perhaps to the point where those who aren't willing to engage with the story on a deeper level think it's superficial and bad. I appreciate folks like yourself that want to dive into the meat of it! And while this expac wasn't without awkward moments, the core of it is pretty solid imo. Patches can't come soon enough...
Actually, I think theory 2 is the most likely. You think it's improbable that the Ascians would be working on several Rejoinings at once? I think that's the most likely thing they would be doing.
Consider: The Ascians are essentially immortal and are playing the long game. What they want are Rejoinings and they don't care how many mortals have to die to achieve it. They also can't actually see the future. So they plot and plan and take advantage of opportunities as they appear. They engineer as many Calamities as they can on the Shards. Most attempts fail, but they only need one to succeed. And then once they have a Calamity going on a Shard, they need to try to get the Source to suffer a similar Calamity. And sometimes, THAT fails.
But on a rare occasion (like every couple thousand years), they manage to get matching Calamities on Source and Reflection at the same time. And that's when a Rejoining happens.
And I'm sure the reverse may have also happened. They get the Source imbalanced first and then try to get a Reflection imbalanced in the same way. Which is why they were always trying to get everyone and their brother to summon Primals.
What makes the 2nd theory improbable to me is that there's no reason that I can fathom that the Ascians would fail to rejoin that Shard.
Additionally, that we were seeing zero signs of the Source being prepared for said rejoining.
Remember that you cannot *just* cause a flood of aspected aether to bring about a rejoining, you need to prepare that Source as the endpoint for where that aether is going. Otherwise you end up with another Void. This is why the Ascians would be summoning primals on the Source, draining it of aether and giving it a specific need to replace that aether.
And we've heard nothing about the aetherial balance of the Source being off, only that it was stagnating in ALL aether, because the First was going to be the next Rejoining, bringing in a surplus of Astral-aspected aether.
@@DrakeWurrum No reason? The Ascians are fallible. They can make mistakes. And they don't care about the lives lost in their attempts to Rejoin the worlds.
The simple reason is that the Ascians attempt a Rejoining and FAIL. They start a calamity on one world and then try and fail to start a corresponding calamity on the other.
On the Source, we only ever see the Ascians successes at Rejoinings, but how many times have they attempted Rejoinings and failed at it? We don't know. For all we know, Shadowbringers was just the latest in a long line of failed attempts at Rejoinings and the only difference from previous failures is that the Unsundered were killed off.
Yes this is exactly the type of well made, well investigated lore speculation video that I love. Inject straight into my veins.
Yoshi-P just revealed that Alexandria is from the 9th Shard per recent interview.
Incorrect. It is not in quotes, and it directly contradicts the established calamity of lightning being the 12th which yoshi P supposedly says is where Sphene is from. There was no second calamity of lightning. Additionally, an earlier interview has him responding to Alexandria being from the 12th. It's possible Living Memory is currently on the 9th, but until it's in the game, it's not canon.
@@LoreLinesXIV It was in the article in THEGamer published yesterday twice, once in quotes, once not. The second at the end referring to Sphene as being from the 9th reflection was not in quotes since the writer seems to be paraphrasing but there was a direct quote earlier, in the article's second paragraph.
"We felt that we needed to make it authentically and we needed to do a proper job, otherwise the thoughts of those people who live in the ninth reflection wouldn't be properly conveyed.”
Just because something was calamatous for the people of the 9th and they called it a Calamity, doesn't mean it was a Calamity on the source that marked a completed rejoining.
If there is another interview you say directly contradicts this one, please provide a citation. I would like to read it myself. I have looked extensively since reading your comment and cannot locate any article that says this.
Yeah, I saw that too. It's in the article twice, once in direct quotes.
@@elaine_of_shalott6587 Yeah, it's that specific interview.
@@pll3827 I figured, I just thought if I was going to insist on LoreLines providing information on the source of their statement about Yoshi-P saying the 12th in another interview I ought to make sure I included the sourcing on my point.
Slight correction:
Shadows of Mhach and Crystal Tower confirmed the void isnt exclusively 4.
I believe what Cob means is that the void quests retrace 4 beat by beat.
@@NeilaNuruodo If you're taking about 6.X, don't call them the void quests - those are a separate questline featuring Unukalhai & the ShB Role Quest NPCs.
I posit that its on the 9th (fite me) my theory argument is that its never stated the ascians had to do one element only once. Also the fact that living memory on elpis (unsundered world) would be wuite the stretch as im sure someone would notice a massive flux in aether and send someone from the convocation to check like emet selch who would no doubt see living memory for all the thinest of aether it possesses.
I do want to point out-- I don't think that the milalla having denser souls has *anything* to do with their intelligence. That feels like a really random thing to state considering there is absolutely no reason to believe it to be true. They were extremely intelligent by the standards of the Source as well. It almost borders on Ascian logic of "my soul is 'more complete' therefore I am superior" which the entire first arc goes out of its way to show is bs.
Thanks for posting this, was coming here to say the same thing. It's a weird conclusion to reach. I'm happy to accept that they probably have a larger pool of ather to draw from but that doesn't equal intelligence.
So we know for certain that a shard is flooded with an element that is the same as the corresponding calamity on the source that aborbs it?
What if its from a shard that was going to be absorbed in a future calamity? The 8th intending to be umbral, it is possible that Alexandria's shard was intended to be the second shard to fall to lightning? I mean Living Memory is still out there, the shard hasn't been absorbed yet outside of the bubble. I believe it was mentioned in game that Lindblum and other nations may have found a way to survive the storm surge as well and that Heritage Found was just soecifically how Alexandria survived it.
I'm so amazed that the devs put the historia crux in Zoraal ja's fight... its insane....
I knew they did SOMETHING cuz Dawntrail has ALOT of FF13 enemy types. Something is up for sure. As a 13 fan i'd be hyped if they add in more 13 stuff in some way... oh i hope a raid or trial against a time traveling Caius Ballad 😊
This channel is exactly what I’ve been looking for! Thank you for this content and cogent explanation!
Whould be kinda cool if electrope was somehow linked to original Byregot, maybe like a concept he made? I mean it has the affinity to lightning and how you can morph the material like wicked thunder does.
Not sure i how i feel about ascian influence in preservation or the electrope wars tho
Despite the understanding that Alexandria could be from any shard, particularly the 12th, I will be saying it is from the 9th until further notice. Because... c'mon, it's just too easy.
Yoshi-P just confirmed it.
My question is still Krile's aetheric density and what that implies for the Lifestream. Krile isn't one of the Lalafel that came over in the 5th calamity, she's a descendent, but her density is similar to that of the Source. But not of the modern source, which is 7 times rejoined, but of the 5th calamity source, which sould be slightly less dense. Wouldn't Yshtola see the difference in a 5 time rejoined soul vs a 7 time?
Moreover: are all Lalafel souls that enter the lifestream on whatever shard Alexandria is reincarnated at a 1:1 ratio maintaining density?
If so...what does that imply for the slew of Ancient souls that have now entered our lifestream from the release of Zodiark? Will they be reborn as full Ancients? Why or why not? the mechanics are confusing.
@theegocollective2695 cobheran: I LIKE this question! This is exactly where my mind is at! We know the lifestream is sundered, so how do different density souls interact there? Do Fragments of souls come together to make up the shortcoming of a thinner aetheric density? Or do the children of rejoined pull from the same density lifestream as their parents? And if so then how do the souls overcome the barriers between worlds? And what will become of the millions of unsundered souls we dumped in the lifestream on the source? I want a story where a child is born with an unsundered soul, and accidentally uses creation magic and burns all their aether up and dies. And we have to investigate why all these children are dying only to realize OH...this is our fault. So how do we fix this? It's dark and morbid but I like that kind of thing
I think electrope comes from the source and that it has been discovered and used before. you guys remember the crystal in the azime steppe? it looks awfully similar in color and marbleling (is that a word) but shaped and inscriped to serve its purpose aka the allagans used it for azys lla if i'm not mistaken. But didn't the questline also reveal that there are SEVERAL of those crystals in use?
To make it clear, you are proposing that
1. The Milala traveled through time to pre-rejoined 12th.
2. The Alexandria we see in Living Memory and Heritage Found was a section that escaped the rejoining. (I am not entirely clear if this is what you are saying)
While I was originally for “Alexandria comes from the 9th” I am leaning more towards point 1 now. It’s point 2 that I disagree with.
If they did travel through time, I believe it created an alternate timeline, much like what occurred with G’raha and the First. We know the 2 time travel possibilities are closed time loops or branching timelines, in this case I see it more likely where there is reality where all the 12th was Rejoined and a different reality where the Milala saved a portion of the world and that’s what we traveled too in Living Memory. We don’t know what exactly lies beyond Living Memory’s borders yet, there still could be a world, while very destroyed much like the Empty, it could still exist.
I’m led to this a bit because of Yoshi-P’s recent interview where he brought up the “doomed” timeline where the WoL is dead. To me that signals they are actively thinking about alt-timeline events as a way to explore the destroyed shard cultures and worlds.
Alternate timelines have been postulated since Heavensward and confirmed since Shadowbringers, so it's entirely possible that it is from an alternate timeline that diverged very early on. Even Elpis generated an alternate timeline, which became the prime timeline in which we experience the game (which yoshi p referred to as a close time loop, which, lol no. I'm glad he finally recanted that and admitted to the multiple timelines). If that's the case, though, it opens a very wide door that, in many ways, eliminates consequences. For example, th3 devs could pull the very much alive Emet Selch in the 8th umbral timeline and bring him back, diminishing his sacrifice and journey. Good time travel stories are hard to pull off. Multiple reality stories are harder. I'm not saying they won't go there, just that it makes me nervous.
@@LoreLinesXIVI think I trust them enough to not get incredibly stupid with bringing back characters like Emet or any of the Ancients. This possibility opens up a can of worms but I have enough faith they will not “undo” what had happened.
@@LoreLinesXIV elpis is not an alternate timeline... simply since every interaction with us was erased no one did know we was here. shadowbringer is the only time we had the timeline changed by an alternate futur.
and in heavenward we simply had ardbert send by the ascien from the first shard. but sincet he time in the primal and the first shard don't go at the same speed... that why minfillia did arrive century ago before we do arrive. it's explain when we meet the scion in the shard like some was there for a few years when it was only a couple of days for us.
and they can't go into graha timeline, it's explain in avenger endgame in a good way, if you go in the futur it's the futur of this timeline, for go to the other timeline, you need to move back in the past, stop what did change the timeline and then you can go into the futur of this alternate timeline. what will never happend thanks god it's a pain to explain.
and an important point, this timeline can't really come back anymore since the only tool for this was the crystal tower.... means this tool in stuck in our timeline. ascien never did develop any time travel capacity, because it will have destroy any need for what they try to do... it was simpler to simply go before hyadelin create the shard and stop her! problem solved!
people try to justify what have major hole into... it can't be the 12th shard, simply because at the end of the story we see that this shard still exist! with the sun rising... meaning the shard was never joined with the primal. and since the dome part is synchronize with the primal the time goes at the same time in both the primal and this shard. like with the first shard.
by creating a link, both are synchronize and the time will move now at the same speed. that why we can return to the first shard and people don't have gotten older and remember us.
i feel the whole lala of alola was extremely badly written and have left this with too many hole they haven't try to explain. and that why theory like time traveling and 12th shard emerge when it can't be this... because we already have rule concerning time in the game. and i don't see them coming and simply saying everything that did happend before dawntrail is not cannon and only what we have done in dawntrail is good. (that a blizzard move, not a SE move)
@@Beldhan "alternate" is a point of view. An "alternate timeline" is saying "Not my timeline". I'm sure from an objective point of view, Graha's bad future is no less or more a valid timeline than the one the main game takes place in, just as the timeline where the WoL never appeared in Elpis is just as valid. But the game and MSQ does not follow THOSE timelines.
@@LoreLinesXIV I appreciate your passion for lorecrafting but don't contradict the actual lore writers. Yoshida has never once gone back on the statement that the events of Endwalker operate in a closed time loop.
So let me see if I got this right after watching this.
The lalafell from aloalo on the source traveled to 12th shard to a time before it had been rejoined? Even though by the time they traveled it was already absorbed.
I guess time traveling in this game to a time before calamities struck is not a new concept but part of me is still confused as to how they managed to do that/why did the key answer their prayers in such a manner and why did the writers go in such direction of time traveling to a place/time before calamity has struck yet again. However, this time without causing a divergence in timeline as it has all seemingly transpired within the same timeline? Unlike the shadowbringers event which created a new timeline and maintained the old one.
Maybe the timetravel works a bit like steinsgate where an event has to be monumental enough to change worldlines otherwise the timeline tends to keep generally the same events save a few small details of insignificance. The crystal tower appearing on the first and the founding of the crystarium would be a fairly large event affecting many people compared to elpis especially with the memory alteration making it so only you and venat remember anything.
this is just speculation so take it as such, but Azem's powers seem to have a knack for bringing people to where they are needed. (I bring this up because the key shows Azem's symbol.) If the Milalla were simply trying to escape death by freezing, they likely had no destination in mind beyond "somewhere safe." Even more, they essentially prayed to this relic for salvation. So I could see it being that the key brought them to a place (and time, possibly, though I admit I'm on the "not convinced" side of the Lore Lines crew lol) they were needed, to Alexandria where their knowledge and rejoined soul-density helped them unlock the mystery of electrope.
@@NeilaNuruodo i also am a little on the "not convinced yet" side as well. like we've seen it done before and it is possible but i feel like if thats the case again it might over complicate things more (as much as they tend to already)
i think its fully possible this was a different reflection that also began leaning on thunder aspect because this is still on the same timeline
regardless of which side is right only time will tell and im interested to see the in-game explanation of it no matter what the case turns out to be!
@@NeilaNuruodo Azem power is a space power not time power. he call the other from far away. and we have no time travel between shard...
it seems a lot of people misunderstood the time dilatation situation between the shard and the primal world. they don't go at the same time speed. and it create this false impression of time travel. the only entity that can time travel (and it stuck in a paradox by the way) it's alexander... the whole crystal tower of graha is based on alexander power. before a shard and the primal world is connected they go at different speed.
an example for make it clear, let's say in the primal one day pass, in another shard 1 week pass in the same time. then after one years you have a time difference of 7 years and as the time ass this become more and more.... 2 years 14 and on and on and on...
now after 1 century the two are link and synchronize on one side 1 century did pass and on the other one 7 century. it don't means we did time travel into the futur, simply that them present are not the same as us.
@@Beldhan I assure you, Lore Lines understands the shard time differences :D to say the *only* entity that can time travel is Alexander seems disingenuous though. The only currently known one, maybe. But the Historia Crux manifested when Zoraal Ja used the key in the battle. I personally am not convinced of the 12th theory, but even I acknowledge that we can't really rule it out at this point. Furthermore, the differences in the passage of time between shards doesn't remain constant. Time was going much faster on the First when the Scions were called there, but it stabilized to near-equivalency with the Source once the WoL arrived. I agree that's likely due to the Crystal Tower - but the Tycoon isn't Alexander. It's a recreation of his power. And if the Ironworks folks could do it, so could others, yes? Anyway it's all good food for thought, I think!
So, I just want to throw this out there. We have six elements, but there are thirteen Shards of The Source. I was just in Heritage Found and I noticed the weather there was _Umbral_ Static. Lightning is normally an _Astrally_ aspected Element. So might we be dealing with _two_ Rejoinings for each element? An Umbral _and_ an Astral one? That would cover 12; and since the 13th was spoiled by the Ascians' incompetence, that would be enough. (That the 13th became the Void, an interrupted Rejoining, also raises the question of whether the Ascians should even be bothering to press on, because that Shard can no longer be rejoined.)
I like this a lot, and honestly wonder why they didn't take this route. But the 7th calamity was dark/astral so that's already thrown it off unfortunately. It's something I've chewed on a lot and it's hard to find a definitive explanation of their plan. Given that they started with the Void, learned a lot from that failure, and then swapped to elements--but then went to dark (7th, successful) and then light (8th, attempted, nearly failed via flood, and then thwarted ultimately by the WoL), I think they were going to switch to alternating light and dark until finished. That's just a guess, but as much as I prefer the "other shard" theory myself this is one thing that could point toward the theory this video posits. If not, it's hard to predict simply because there are not enough, after the 8th rejoining, to hit every element again, even *if* the void were one of them.
That said, it certainly doesn't rule it out either. I think the patches are going to be quite interesting. Possibilities are wide open, and hopefully we'll be diving into more details that will narrow it down!
I've actually wondered if the Ascians were planning to fix the 13th after getting the other 12 Rejoinings done first.
@@noppornwongrassamee8941 Put it on the back burner? That makes sense enough to me.
Yeah I just assumed that whatever shard Alexandria was from was just primed for a calamity. Much like the first it's ready to go whenever but they just need the source to be ready
I hope the story explains this. Because right now, a lot of things dont make sense. According to the people of Alexandria, it has only been 400 years since the war. And based on the fact that 30 years passed in Alexandria in about...we'll say a week at most on the Source, then the war was just a few months ago, Source time. But that makes no sense because the gate to the city of Gold has been there for centuries, and just 20 years ago it was opened, which should have meant over 10,000 years had passes on Alexandria in just 20 years on the Source (maybe closer to 20,000 years...depending on how many days we assumed passes between Zoraal Ja entering the City of Gold, and when the invasion started).
The math just isnt mathing.
Also, whats up with the Dawnkey having the mark of Azem!?!
This assumes the relative passage of time between Alexandria and the Source is constant. It's possible the attempt at fusion is what made so much time pass (30 years) in such a short amount on the Source. I agree there's a lot we don't know, but the story is plainly setting up for more. We've got post patches yet to get through, and there are plenty of hooks :D
The time between the dome appearing and 30 years passing is nearly instant. As soon as Vanguard was completed and a connection was made between Alexandria and the Source time equaled out. That same connection also allowed the Alexandrian military out to attack Tulliyolal, so 30 years passed in the span of that single cutscene. Once a bridge is established between two shards, time passes at the same rate. We see this on the First as well. Time for Alexandria is extremely compressed, so where the source has 12,000 years since the sundering, the 13th has 20,000 (started by Koji fox when talking about Unukalhai) and the 12 apparently had roughly 1,000 years.
I'm pretty sure it's explicitly stated in Shadowbringers the relative flow of time between shards is not constant. We even have an explicit example of this: Minfilia went to the First only a little while ago by our timeline (time per expansion is fuzzy, but it was only about 1.5 expansions ago by the time we're on the First) yet she arrived on the First hundreds of years ago by the time we're there, meaning time was massively sped up. Meanwhile, while we're on the First time on the Source passes roughly at the same rate as it does on the First, meaning the relative speeds have changed pretty drastically between the Heavensward patches and the start of Shadowbringers.
There's no reason why time on Alexandria can't also have been changing at different rates - it's possible it was slow relative to the Source for hundreds of years since the Storm Surge turning thousands of years on the Source into a couple hundred on Alexandria, and then massively sped up at some point before or during the creation of the Heritage Found dome (maybe due to the massive energy burst of the Rejoining-lite), passing 30 years in Alexandria in a matter of days on the Source.
The only thing we can really be sure of in terms of order of events is that relative to the Source the calamities happened in a specific order. Assuming the Shards aren't completely destroyed it's possible the inhabitants of their remains perceive different amounts of time to have passed - maybe the survivors of the 3rd Umbral Calamity perceive it to have been 10 years ago and the 4th perceive it as having been a million years ago, despite on the Source the 4th having happened after the 3rd.
@@LoreLinesXIV It was 10 thousand years for the 13th
@@fredy2041 That's only since the Flood of Darkness, not the Sundering.
The archeo alexandria area kinda...seeing those house like that made me tear up like seeing troia in the 13th.
I think it's pretty clear from everything the game has told us thus far that the Milala didn't time travel, they were shepherded by an Ascian to an unknown still living shard. Emet knew about Alexandria, and the city of gold, and explicitly told us that we should find it and deal with it. The Milala museum has a chamber of ancient masks where the weird cultist that led them guided them to the shard. Emet selch makes it clear when a shard is rejoined it is gone. In Eulmore we see that shards on the brink usually have one kinda normal place where folks wait out the rejoining.
The only way for any of this theory to be true is if we ignore previous characterization of a major npc, the established lore mechanics of the world, the moral importance of one of the most beloved expansions and the thematic weight of the zone we learn all of this from,. All that it gives us is a mechinism for time travel that the game's writers have already explicitly stated they want to avoid, and the potential for all the other rejoinings to be undone by having pockets of people left.
The only logical leap you need to make for this being an unrejoined shard ready for rejoining is that the ascians were working more than one calamity ahead, and that Emet knew what the Azem crystal was before he gave it to us. In exchange it offers us an explanation on the four remaining ascians, allows us to have stable shard travel, and gives us the explicit goal of going to the remaining shards and sorting out their balance now that there isn't an organization holding them on the edge of becoming the void.
I've always thought that it's pretty likely the Ascians (or at least the Unsundered Ascians) aren't working directly together anyway. It never feels like they get along too well, and we never meet more than 1 of them attempting a rejoining at a time. Lahabrea's plan in ARR is completely independent of Elidibus and only related to Emet-Selch insofar as it makes use of the Garlean Empire - it doesn't even seem like it demands Solus' approval. Emet-Selch getting up to his shenanigans in Shadowbringers is - as far as we know - completely divorced from other Ascian activity until he dies and Elidibus comes in to try to finish the job for him.
It's fully possible that each of the Unsundered Ascians is doing their own pet project, working on their own Shard to rejoin by themselves, and that what happened on Alexandria is a project that Elidibus (or whomever, it doesn't even have to be one of the Unsundered necessarily) left like 80% finished before we killed him on the First.
@@masterplusmargarita that's all well and good, but we know explicitly that Emet knows about Alexandria, and if one of the ascians figured out time travel, they would not have used it to move 500 people from the source to a shard and called it a day.
@bendonatier yeah wasn't the entire point of emet kidnapping graha to find out how to time travel and restore the 13th. If time travel was a readily available thing that'd open so many potholes
The Historia Crux and the Lightning element, really annoyed i didnt see the FF13 connection as Lightning is one my favourite characters LMFAO!!
Extremely great video
Maybe I'm crazy but where is the evidence of time travel with the Dawn Key? You say it with such confidence when I didn't see anywhere in game where it's made clear outside of speculation?
Based on observation, Azem’s magic doesn’t work through time, just space. So it is a theory for now that the relic can travel through time.
The presence of the historia crux while the key is actively being used at the top of Everkeep is the confirmation. Originally from FF13-2, The Historia Crux appears when an artifact is used to open a gate, which is what we saw during the fight with Zoraal Ja. What this tells me is that the key operates across time, linking the same place on different shards, but in different times. It's all but confirmed at this point by that fact alone. But in the game, we see the effect being the Milalla's traveling from the 5th umbral era to a point on the 12th during the 2nd Astral Era.
@@LoreLinesXIV We dont know if Alexandria comes from the 12th. This is pure speculation. There 13th shards, there is bound to be an element to be repeated.
@@LoreLinesXIV But the Moon is still there on Living Memory? There is weather, clouds, rain?
well the ice calamity was the 5th we know this 100%, the lightning one was the second second calamity so its logical to assume the the shard being flooded with lightning would be from the age of the second calamity which was was before the 5th so some time travel must of happened or Alexandria was already in its own bubble in the rift and they happened to stumble into it then opened path back to source but either way time travel just the second option has less jumping around
it's the 9th or one of the current still active shards 100%, it can't be 12th and it's ridiculus so many ppl wanna belive this
It makes perfect sense. You only want it to be the 9th because it’s FF9… which is a dumb reason…
@@koro_kokoro it doesn’t make any sense to be the 12th since to make it work you have to itroduce time travels that weren’t hinted anywhere in the story.
Also if you read my response i said the 9th or any of the still active reflections. I don’t care (but still when in 7.1 drops and we find out that echoes of vana diel will be set on yet another reflection pls come back and tell me it’s not the 11th :) )
@@TotoTheBest91 even without time, there is that shield that protected them
@@koro_kokoro that doesn't even matter, the calamity of lighthning came before the calamity of ice, and there's no time flow shenanigans that can chage that.
@@TotoTheBest91 you just want it to be 9th because of the ff9 theme… no nonsense you try to make up can change that
Can you link that video on why the skies for each shard are different? I can't seem to find a video with such a title.
We added it in the video description for you! Sorry it wasn’t already 😅
I'm not sure why you'd say that the First was 5 inspired, behind the Ronka Ruins reference
The First is heavily inspired by 3, specifically the alternate world threatened by a flood of Light that was saved by Warriors of Darkness
imho the time travle is one of the themes for this expnsion or better the ark started with this expension. in shadowbringers we see a cutscnee where g'raha told, think it was urianger, that the idea for traveling with the tower threw time was made after an adventure with "us" with something about time travle
I wonder if the Mikala kept their dense aether or if as the originals died out their aether was shared throughout the reflection.
I believe it's indicated that their souls remained denser. Which is why Preservation was so interested in baby Krile (very interesting that they already knew she had the echo; people don't usually awaken to it until later in life), and why her parents felt the need to hide her beyond their reach.
nice theory but it doesnt stand up because of shadowbringers.
all of the areas in a shard needs to be consumed by the specific element in order for it to be rejoined. First's rejoining was delayed because minfilia saved Norvandt by stopping the flood of light from consuming it whole, so the first wasnt able to rejoin.
if assuming Alexandria is from 12th, its similar how Alexandria formed barrier and was saved from lighting storms, but in this case the 12th was still rejoined. that's a huge plot hole.
plus there is no evidence anywhere in dawntrail that the key does time travel as well. there was no mention of everkeep/solution nine travelling to the future when they did interdimentional fusion. or the golden city gate as a portal to the past in 12th before its rejoining. both everkeep and golden city portals were told to be similar to void gates. we know void gates dont do time travel.
also, if it's really from 12th, where is the ascian who caused the rejoining? why would they still do the rejoining since they know zodiark is gone.
atleast the ascian in charge of 12th must have known about this key, and in turn Emet selch must have known about it. if the key does time travel, he would have just left it with lalas? and why was he surprised by time travel in shb then?
my theory is that its another shard which is yet to rejoin but the rejoining process was already started some time ago by ascians but it was halted by the shb/ew events. that shard may have been planned to be next in line to rejoin after the first. remember, time goes faster in alexandria, so their 100 years is just few days/weeks in source.
Also Emet selch told wol in shb that he looks forward to seeing him/her as his equal when all the rejoinings are done, so it means ascians were speeding up the rejoining process and expected full rejoining within wol's lifetime.
Even without the 13 reference, I still feel Occam's razor leans towards the 12th theory. The amount of assumptions one has to make for it to be Shard X is staggering: Shard X just so happens to be going through a Lightning calamity, that Ascians would bring another shards to the brink of collapse when the First was already on a knife's edge until recently, that a chuck of a shard can't survive a rejoining, that the Ascians were watching the shards soooo closely that they would notice a single tribe vanishing or appearing on a shard even though it took them a hundred years to notice an exact copy of the Crystal Tower appearing on a greatly reduced First, etc. We know the Dawn Key can access the Rift and we know that time travel is possible in the Rift. We even know it possible to visit a destroyed world via Elpis. It is such a small leap to say that both happened and Alexandria is the last of the 12th.
One thing I rarely see mentioned is the Dawn Key displays Azem's sigil. We know the Hourglass container was added by the Alexandrians, but the stone itself was a sacred artifact to the Lalafell and is of unknown origins. The presence of Azem's sigil must mean the stone is pre-sundering. My pet theory is that the stone contains one of Azem's spell just like the Zodiac Stones. I believe this spell is a sort of companion to one in Azem's Stone. A spell that sends one to allies (or adoptive Grandfathers ;) instead of summoning them. I think the Lalafell ending up in the past of the 12th is a complete accident caused by the massive amount of aether pouring into the Source through the Rift when they're prayers for salvation activated the spell. The combination of pre-sundering teleportation magic and the chaos of an ongoing Calamity ripped a hole in spacetime. The spell continued to function in the rift and guided them to a Alexandria where they could help develop Electrope.
I'd also like to point out that Lighting and Ice are opposite on the elemental wheel, holding North and South positions respectively. I'm not sure how this affects the Lalafell traveling from the Calamity of Ice to before the Calamity of Lightning but I thought I'd throw it out there.
I absolute agree with Occam's razor and that people are overcomplicating this. Additionally, it doesn't make sense from a business standpoint to limit established places we can go to by sacrificing an entire shard for a zone in an expansion, when you could have an entire expansion to explore said shard like Shadowbringers.
And don't worry! We are going to be talking ALLLL about they key very soon because there are huge plot threads tied to it going back to ARR, as well as a lot of unknowns! It's pretty exciting and terrifying! Looking forward to what the future holds!
@@LoreLinesXIV Going back to ARR!!! Can't wait!
I think it’s a pretty huge assumption to assume that part of a shard *can* survive a rejoining.
Additionally, the Lalafell who would become the milala traveled after the 5th calamity, but *before* the Alexandrian shard even began to be suffused with lightning.
For it to be the 12th, you’d need to assume: that gates to other shards can also travel though time, that the protections made by the people of a shard can resist the forces of a rejoining (without knowing that that’s something that they’d even need to defend against), and that the Ascians would never begin work on multiple shards at the same time. And that Preservation figured out how all that worked.
So far, gates to other worlds haven’t moved though time (no void gates do that, for example). Every time we time traveled, it was via examination of Alexander’s powers and deliberate action.
I would like to point out that this still doesn't explain where Living Memory is now, and why we require a gate akin to a voidgate to go there to begin with or why it seems like another world entirely. It either is another shard, which we would need an explanation as to why Living Memory ended there if they came from the 12th. I suppose it could be explained as the 12th fragment of living memory could simply end in another world, different from the source, but on the same dimension as the source. We do know that Alien Worlds exist.
Yes, the theory is sound. And you explain in a way where the vast ammounts of aether that are needed for time travel could have come from as well as why a spell that seems to be complicated could have ended in a tiny crystal.
I still support the theory of it being shard X. Is not so overcomplicated. Or rather, both theories are actually farfetched enough, so it's not like any theory is better rn. It would explain where living memory is, and would not add time-travel shenanigans to the already complicated explanation of the Milallas coming from the Source and existing in Alexandria.
@@lancevonalden5585 This is from datamining, but Living Memory is, in fact, another shard. It is listed among its own region and world categorization with its own unique code for teleportation cost calculations, similarly to Mare Lamentorum and Ultima Thule being the "Sea of Stars", Elpis being tied to "The World Unsundered" and Norvrandt being categorized under "The First", but it has a new code all its own.
I won't get involved in the rest of the discussion however, as I think it being the Twelfth would be a cheap copout and ruin the history and intrigue of the calamities in a way that would destroy all my interest that I've had in the narrative; which is already waning with the prospect of Wuk Lamat appearing more. Undoing more than the eighth calamity or having a way to return to rejoined shards would be such a narrative slap in the face that I'd genuinely be tempted to skip scenes from that point onward. Its the "no one important ever dies" issue but on an inter-dimensional level.
This theorie works on the speculation of it Alexandria is the shard that fall to the Calamity of lighting and nothing suggest such. Worse. The people of Alexandria survive that Storm Surge and putted a barrier to avoid the constant lighting storms. So the climax already happened but the Shard was not rejoined? Yeah, this doesnt make sence. Remember, again 400 years until Zoraal Ja arrived.
There's nothing to suggest that this was not a part of the 12th and a great deal of evidence to suggest it was. Remember, Preservation had been experimentating with dimensional fusion, and it's extremely likely that Alexandria was already gone by the time the rest of the shard had been rejoined. You are also missing the entire time travel component confirmed by the appearance of the Historia Crux, as the Milalla traveled to a period before the 12th had been rejoined by using the Dawn Key.
@@LoreLinesXIV There is also another problem to the theory. Living Memory. The moon is still there, if there was a rejoining, it wouldnt be there. We are steaching far to much the time dilatacion on this case. Think on this. Lalafells went into a shard way before its gone? On a shard where time moves faster than the source. The Storm Surge happens but Alexandria is not rejoined. Krile's parents, for this was 300 years aprox, but for the Source is 20. Then Zoraal ja Arrives, it doesnt add up much to the weight here. There is to many cons, to many unanswered questions.
@@LoreLinesXIV Literaly nothing suggest that the Milala time travelled, nothing. This is pure Speculation
@@LoreLinesXIV Agree with people up, 1)from what i remember 12 floor isn't under the dome, 2)in Shadowbringers we seen what happen when element take uphold - it's permanent radiance from the sky, and yet here's the normal cloud, normal moon. If Alexandria saved itself from rejoining then they should be either standing on something or more likely, float in interdimensional rift like Strayborough.
It's like people heard "Calamity" and instantly think it's should be 2nd umbral.
Like we don't have different events in game named the same names (like Ancients calling Final Days the Great Calamity if i remember right)
@@LoreLinesXIV Not to mention it would be such an flimsy move, while having whole story about 8th umbral calamity, reverse engineering of 2 epic entities like Omega and Alexander, and Crystal Exarch story...
...to just have dropped in our hand a mcguffin that already can do it and probably more.
It's not only copying, not only bad idea to again play with flow of time in this game, but also just feels like very much deus ex machina toy.
Im still confused with how living memory has clear blue skies, it must have been fusioned to another shard
it's a possibility, I think. if they're pulling from FF9 themes, Terra had some number of fusions with new worlds which didn't yet have life that went successfully before trying to fuse with a young one that had early life and having it fail catastrophically. They say they hadn't had a successful fusion before, but I assume "success" is defined in terms of life force to harvest, so if they did fuse to some other shard... I don't know. It definitely doesn't map 1:1 with FF9, so I'm not sure how much to take thematically. I just wonder what an "unsuccessful" fusion would look like.
I'm still on the theory that time while it can flow at different rates for different shards, flows in the same direction for all of them. If that's true, it eliminates the 12th as a possible target cause the lalafels arrived in Alexandria before a lightning disaster befell them. I suspect Alexandria, like the first, to be an aborted calamity
Theirs a moment, I can't recall exactly where whwre wuk lamat comments on how everyone here would be trying to claim it if it was on the source and sphene does her "ehhhh subject" change if i recall correctly so I believe it has to be made when worlds join in some fashion.
I do not think the assertion that the key is capable of time travel is well-supported at this stage. this is not to say that assertion MUST be false, or that the story CANNOT support such a thing (as i see other people saying). In fact, i would quite like to see where the story would go in such a case-- but the evidence isn't there at present. there is still room for it to be established in the future, but the way i see it, the story withheld just enough information to render it impossible to draw a definite conclusion for now.
Unless i have gravely misunderstood the logic presented in this video, the evidence being cited here seems to be the "fact" that the milalla have used the key to travel to the past-- an assertion which in turn relies on the assumption that they did in fact travel to the twelfth, which was never clearly established and unfortunately renders this argument somewhat circular. The possibility remains that another shard was in the process of being groomed for a rejoining via a calamity of lightning (a nigh certainty, given the number of shards), and that this rejoining was left incomplete by the deaths of the paragons, and therefore the shard was left in a permanent state of ascendant lightning without ever actually being rejoined.
That said, the repeated use of the word "calamity" to describe the culminating event of the storm surge seems significant to me. It is, at the very least, meant to call to mind the *idea* of an umbral calamity, for one reason or another. And the fact that Alexandria never learned of what happened to the world outside the barrier strikes me as a very conspicuous gap in information. So i would argue that there *is* some *narrative* and *thematic* evidence that the unlost world could be the twelfth. but whether such a thing is even *possible* remains pretty firmly unclear, in my mind.
Wait, besides Ronka, what other major FFV references are there in The First? Not saying there aren't, but did I miss anything major.
The Heroes Gauntlet features Necromancer Lenna and Berserker Bartz. Fort Gohn, the original home of the Night's Blessed is from FFV. The final boss of the Twinning is the Tycoon, named after the Kingdom of Tycoon in FFV.
@@LoreLinesXIV while I'm aware of those references, they don't really scream major. Not like all of the connecting FFIV references in Endwalker, or the major story beats from FFIX in Dawntrail. It's just 3 bosses and a location linked to Ronka. I'm not sure if we can pin an exact FF game that inspired The First, as there are various references in other locations. There are area references to 10 in Amh Araeng and Eden. Eden is the big 8 reference, and Vauthry and Eulmore are 7 references.
@@jaypro6269 The Warriors of Darkness and flood of Light plot points are both from FF3 too, plus the song Eternal Wind being used a lot and that is the overworld theme of FF3, I think The First is just a big amalgamation of multiple without any specific game tied to it.
I don't think the mallala were necessarily more intelligent to the inhabitants of the twelfth. As beings of the Source, we aren't necessarily more intelligent than the first's people. Were that the case, we probably wouldn't have been able to help them at all. I think it just so happened that the Mallala were experienced enough in their craft that they came to be known as Wise Sages, and that's all that was.
Isn't the First mostly FF1? It even has Mt. Gulug & FF1 Goblins in Kholusia. Many other FF1 references. But I agree with you, the Key for sure allows time travel. And for anyone who doubts it, it LITERALLY looks like an hourglass. That in itself says everything. People just hate the idea of time traveling so they don't wanna even imagine the possibility. lol
They don’t want it so they’re quick to dismiss even the thought of it.
To me it resembles a Grail
It looks nothing like an hour glass, it looks like a chalice. If it were an hour glass the bottom would mirror the top and be clear.
@@mickwayne3398 To make it an hour glass you'd need to chop off the base and add a second bowl to it. You'd think people had never seen a wine glass before.
Im gonna leave my 2 cents here since people seem to have missed a few key details. First the facts:
1. Milala are from the source, they fled the source during the FIFTH Umbral Calamity, which was an ICE aspected calamity.
2. Electrope is a RARE and SCARCE resource in whatever shard Alexandria comes from. Rare enough that a major war is started because of it. IF the shard Alexandria is from is Lightning aspected, how can electrope be rare?
3. A STORM SURGE is defined as A FLOOD of WATER due to, and during, a STORM.
4. The SIXTH Umbral Calamity causes a massive Flood in the source.
5. We know that the people of Alexandria, now Solution Nine, have effectively forgotten what exists outside the barrier since its creation.
6. in the lvl 100 Alexandria dungeon we clearly see WHAT threatens Alexandria and the rest of the shard by extension. It is not war. Alexandria survives their battle with whatever enemy we see them fighting, and survives the war. SAID WAR ENDS DUE TO A DISASTER CALLED A STORM SURGE. And what do we see happening to Alexandria as they preserve the queens memories in the last leg of the dungeon and are clearly fortifying Alexandrias defensive barrier?
A flood.
Alexandria is the last surviving remnant of the shard claimed by the 6th Umbral calamity due to an excess of WATER aka A FLOOD aka a STORM SURGE. Alexandria is the remains of the 10th shard now rejoined to the source, a part of which more than likely survived because of their efforst to fortify Alexandrias defensive barrier with Electrope technology. I am safe in making this assumption because while any of the shards denizens might not have forewarning or recognize a rejoining, THE MILALA WOULD. The Milala escaped the source because of the 5th Umbral Calamity and very clearly preserved much of their knoweledge of that time. Solution Nine is as advanced technologicaly as it is BECAUSE it has been going in synch with the Source since the war of the Magi.
No timetravel shenaningans needed whatsoever. EVERYTHING fits logicaly AND chronologicaly. Electrope in this context is a red herring to distract any loreseeker, myself included. I too was stuck on assuming a lightning aspected shard UNTIL the very moment I reach the last 3rd of the Alexandria dungeon and saw Alexandria effectively flooded and on its last leg DESPERATELY fortifying their barrier against what one can only assume is the Milala recognizing "a rejoining". Or to them, an Umbral Calamity. And WHY is this important? Because in the elemental "wheel" of all Final Fantasy, 14 included, LIGHTNING DESTROYS WATER. THIS is why Alexandria survives. The calamity they are facing is Water aspected and their barrier is massive sphere of LIGHTNING. Quite possibly the ONLY thing that could "in universe" block the power of a water aspected rejoining. I rest my case.
Yes but how does the last level survive without its barrier in what can only be the original location of the 10th I hear you asking? The rejoining happened in the aftermath of the War of the Magi. That was a "while" ago. Without a violent and destructive rejoining to contend with one can safely assume that a civilization of Solution Nines caliber would have little trouble erecting another barrier to keep everything in place, assuming one is needed in the first place and all remaining aether, air and everything else isnt kept in place by gravity. (Though my personal guess is that the developers forgot that detail and kinda just handwaived the problem away).
TL;DR: Alexandria is the last surviving remains of the 10th Shard. Why? See above.
As an additional bonus: Why does Emmet-Selch want us to look for the golden city? Because the WoL is now assuming the "Legacy he left us". We are now the sole protector of Etheirys. Emmet-Selch gave us veiled instructions in a language our "in lore accurate" WoL would understand, eventualy leading us smack dab in the middle of the Ascians latest fuckup and blunder: Here lies an Alexandrian AI with F*ING GOAL DRIFT leading to an all life consuming spiral of doom, please fix. Thanks Emmet! ...hang on, Emmet, whats waiting for us on the Treasure Isles in Othards norht? Hytholodeus stop laughing in the rafterst and drag Emmets ass back here! What mess is waiting for us on the Treasure Islands?!? HADEEEEES!!!
where is stated the milala's are from the source?
@@AyantanoAzem In either the Island Sanctuary questline or the Aloalo Island Criterion dungeon questline its stated that the people of the South Sea Isles disappeared during the 5th Umbral Calamity (dont remember which). Then in the Milala historical records in the Unlost World they describe how their Island and the waters surrounding it were forzen solid. During the MSQ it is then outright confirmed that the Milala are the descendants of the people from the South Sea Isles, thus Kriles ancestors are actualy originaly from the Source and not residents of the shard Alexandria comes from (which is the 10th as I try to prove in my post). There are multiple clues pointing to all of this before the MSQ just outright states this as fact. It should be pretty much impossible to miss unless you skip one of the cutscenes in the Asyle Volcane area and dont read any of the tablets (which are no longer there after you shut down the local memory reservoir).
Okay, I like your theory that the Storm Surge was a Calamity of water, but it has a problem: the Storm Surge is consistently described in the MSQ as a Calamity of LIGHTNING. The dome over Alexandria was made expressly to protect the kingdom from lightning storms. During the middle part of the Alexandria dungeon, the Kingdom is clearly getting blasted with lightning, not water, and Sphene's airship is disabled with lightning.
Of course, this does leave Alexandria being flooded unexplained. But it seems to be a result of the Alexandria's protective dome, not the Calamity.
@@noppornwongrassamee8941 "The painful memories of war I lay to rest" is the quote Sphene says at the start of part 2. Her airship isnt getting blasted by a storm. It is getting hammered by ELECTROPE WEAPONRY. This is why the other airship, still able to move leaves when Sphene tells them to. Its not protecting Sphenes airship from random lightning blasts where it would be logical to roll the dice to save their queen. Its protecting her airship from directed enemy fire. They leave because its not a matter of luck if her ship gets hit again, it WILL get hit for as long as it takes to break the shield.
ps. And like I said, a Storm Surge is specificaly "a Flood caused by a Storm".
This theory is thin, not quite I'll eat my hat, but I'd be very surprised if it is accurate. You say there is no reason to believe that Alexandria is from another active reflection, but Y'shtola, one of the Scion's two experts on cross-rift travel says it is. The Scions have been wrong before, but Occam's Razor still makes it more likely that the simplest answer is the most likely. It was an as yet unnamed reflection that was being prepped for a future calamity. Alexandria's situation seems much closer to the situation of Norvrandt at the beginning of Shadowbringers to me.
And no, the key does not look anything like an hour glass there is no bottom receptacle for that. It looks like a chalice.
We also mention our team itself is divided on the theory for which shard it is! This is merely one of the possibilities.
While Y'shtola is often the dev's mouthpiece, that isn't always the case. Y'shtola, as far as we know, also hasn't actually gone to Alexandria yet. She commented on the city of gold gate, and stated that it led to another reflection--but not which one.
As far as the key; the crystal in the middle is what is roughly hourglass-shaped. According to the in-game text, everything else (the chalice-looking container, the wires, the electrope) were most likely added by the Preservation's researchers while trying to figure out how to make it work again. The original device itself is the white crystal inside, which is reminiscent of a concept crystal or Ancient aetheryte.
-Arden (who also doesn't think Alexandria is the 12th. lol)
@@LoreLinesXIV I think this would have felt a lot better if it was presented as "the obvious explanation is that Y'shtola is right, but what if she's not, here's our crazy theory" but claiming time dialation is simpler than Y'shtola is right and everyone who doesn't agree is just blinded by their prejudice which people using the LoreLines login have been doing throughout the comments here is just infuriating. Nothing gets me angry faster than presenting speculation to the masses as definive lore. The Lorewatch podcast for WoW used to drive me up a wall doing it too. The crystal inside looks even less like an hour glass to me, it looks like a twist shape (the word I was looking for but was too tired to put my finger on last night is helix). I did show an image of the key to a bunch of non FF players asking them to describe the key using a real world object as a comparison. The answers I've gotten so far, a couple of people haven't responded yet, are candlestick, goth sippy cup, if an hourglass and a goblet had a baby, and "anything is a (adult toy) if you're brave enough. So I'll concede it is possible to see an hourglass there, but I think the people who do are at least as swayed by their theory that does involve time travel as I may be influenced by my inclination that they are overcomplicating things.
I'd really recommend editing it for tone and reposting.
ETA: hourglass, a torch and "a wizard tried to clean out his roomba and ended up with abstract art" are now added to the list.
I really like the idea that the Calamities happened in a different order on the Shards than they did for the Source. It makes the possibilities so complex that they could literally take us anywhere with the story and it would still make some degree of sense. It also leads into a wild theory that popped into my mind about Azem a while back: What if they aren't really from the Unsundered world? Azem seem to be leaving a trail for us to follow knowing when and where we will be before our Wol has any clue. My thought was the Azem we keep hearing about is really us, fully Rejoined and ended up in the distant past to set thing in motion for their younger self.
Just going to drop this here. I call this "endless circle theory" and it's also featured in the timeline video: ua-cam.com/video/9Z41oL5t6iw/v-deo.htmlsi=zNbeRxyIX2zUyZ21
My personal canon: the shard Alexandria came from still exists. It would have to, because Living Memory is there in the present. When a shard is rejoined, it ceases to exist. While there was some crazy lightning disaster in the shard of Alexandria, it was not enough to destroy or rejoin the shard. I would venture to say it is in a condition somewhat, but not entirely, similar to the first. Living Memory is like the Jetsons: it is simply above all the weather--or simply in an otherwise uninhabited region of the world unaffected by lightning. The sun rises at the end. If a world had been entirely consumed by lightning or otherwise destroyed or rejoined, there would be no sun--or at least no visible sun from anywhere on the shard. Your own explanations are extremely speculative, and have no explicit proof--just like mine. 😉
Thus, the shard of Alexandria is not one involved in any previous umbral calamity. My super-personal canon is that it is the Ninth Shard, because COME ON! 😂 I know the shards are not bound to be numbered based on the previous games. They were inspired by, but no other shard has taken so much over inspiration from another title (they even cited Lindblum's Festival of the Hunt for God's sake!). I would venture to say that that shared actually is Gaia, and we are looking at the future of the world of FFIX. Again, my own canon. If you call me wrong, that can only be your canon, because nothing I have said is disproven by anything in the game (as of 7.0).
hate to break it to ya but, the story told in 14 kinda torps this theory from the begining.
because 2 things:
first when the cataclysm that happened in thier shard is discussed, they never mention that lightning engulfed the world, they mention only "the continent", which indicates that there are multiple continents in that shard and they are VERY specific with that language
second, and this is the substantially more damaging one, Alexandria, within its own timespace, existed for 800 years AFTER the cataclysm, which would not be possible in an integration event.
the much more likely theory is that whichever shard alexandria came from had 1 of 2 things happen, either the ascians lost control of an experiment that was meant to cause an integration event in such a way that it did not successfully cause the requisit circumstances to complete, OR the people of the Continent alexandria was from independently got too high on thier own supply of lightning aspected aether and caused a localized cataclysm (similar to say the chernobyl event IRL)
all evidence within the actual story told in 14 indicates that wherever alexandria originated from, it was still there AFTER the cataclysm that was the catalyst for its development.
also the cutscene for Strayborough is explained in context as being seperated during experiments attempting to integrate, meaning it is in a pocket of dimensional space seprate from both the shard and the source, which would explain the cutscene. its like an asteroid floating in orbit.
Unrelated but I find funny the whole rejoining process was to revive Zodiark and make all the shards one again, yet with Metion around, what tf would Zodiark do? We know he has the power to reverse what Meteon has done but at the cost of so many lives. Point is, what would prebent Metion just do the same thing again? Zodiark wouldn't have enough lives/souls to operate so the whole concept of the rejoining is useless.
Zodiark in itself is useless.
Didn't the Milala come from a land of Eternal summer? Versus Alalo being a land of changing seasons?
There is no question that the Milalla came from Aloalo island. They are remembering it through legend, and while there was some slight seasonal variance, by comparison to where they went it sure would *seem* like eternal summer. Hyperbole, legend, and all that.
@@NeilaNuruodo Why is there no question? Especially when we are serving up time travel and dilation would it not be possible they arrived there after the calamity thus skipping the results on the first? I do not doubt the lalafel came from Aloalo; but the subsequent renaming and the fact the seasonal change was referenced in game as significant enough to force them to frequently relocate works against that logic.
it can't be the 12th for a simple reason, if the 12Th have already join the primal world, how can we have the last zone of the whole expansion. worse at the end we see that the world still exist. when the sun rise. leading to the idea that it's another shard...
another point about time traveler, outside alexander or the crystal tower in the first shard, no other entity or tool have the capacity to time travel (and the crystal tower was modify while using technology created based on alexander)
the whole time difference it's because all the shard don't move at the same speed, in fact most of the shard before be synchronize move faster than the primal one. means the milala didn't arrive in the past, they have arrive in the present but the time did flow faster, we did seen that before we enter dome more than 30 years did pass in the dome in the time of a few minutes for the primal world.
it's not time traveling it's time difference.
anyway the whole trouble with dawntrail lore, it's.... all the hole they have left open, either they plan later to let us explore more, or it was written without care. we have tons of stuff that feel strange or not explored enough in dawntrail. and alexandria is one of them.
we can try to find an explanation, but in the end it's not find the lore, it's try to justify the missing part of the lore. like when someone write a story full of hole and people try to find an explanation of what is missing...
i feel they have drop the ball hard with all the lore about this part of the game.... one krill story feel lackluster, this whole part will have been better if the main focus was krill and erenville, but in the end both story feel rushed and underwhelming. like most of the last area, we have no time to really understand what we do... and why we do it. i means they are entity that have turn themself in data... we know of another race that have done this in the past.... the omicron...why our character never did mention it! at no point the whole last part is complet, it's rushed, lackluster and filled with plothole over plothole.
like the ascien mask we see in the milala part and the fact that when the key is activate it's Azem symbol appearing on it. letting us think that maybe it's azem creation, but we have a trouble with this. the key will have no purpose before the shard was created... and outside a part of the council and hyadelin all ascien did become part of the shard.... but here we are asked to believe that Azem (our ascien past) have created with probably Hyadelin follower a key allowing the travel between shard...if that was the case the council will have used the technology for a long time.
i hope the futur patch will clarify a lot of this point... because right now the key is a macguffin and the whole krill/erenville story are underwhelming for say the less. plus alexandria whole story feel weird like the person behind it didn't know that had already the lightning shard that have join the primal world.
what is the music used?
Probably a new rejoining is happening and we have no idea what or who is causing it
😮
Whatever the answers are, I suspect we'll find them in Meracydia. Emet-Selch directed us to multiple places before his end that are now seemingly all connected.
He directed us under the waters of the Bounty, and we found a portal to the Void.
He directed us north of Othard, where we have yet to visit, and supposedly treasure lies.
He directed us to the golden city of the New World, and we found a portal to yet another reflection.
He directed us to "the forgotten people of the south sea isles" which we now know to be the Milala that evacuated to that same reflection.
He directed us to Meracydia, asking us if we knew about their "current affairs" at all.
He even directed us to investigate the true identities of the Twelve, which we've since done.
Although I also suspect we might find *another* portal to that reflection in the south sea isles...
It came from Final Fantasy IX.
Time mages confirmed, rabble rabble rabble. *is joking*
I'm getting mad copium thay Gaia learns to use her Ascian powers and is our key to knowledge of other shards. Lmao I just want her and Ryne back to the MSQ
I find this interesting, and I have some.. issues with it. I'm not sure who you are that does these but you should come by the balance lore discussion channel sometime because I'd like to chat about this.
ngl I don't think that's a great place to discuss lore. but if you're interested in joining our discord I'm sure I could rustle up a link for you!
@@NeilaNuruodo It's a very good place tod discuss lore, actually.
@@humgoesonforever I saw rather more bullying behavior, black-and-white thinking, and rude condescension than I believe belongs in a lore channel. I certainly wouldn't tolerate that kind of behavior and it disappoints me that the moderators there do. I've been in spaces where any sort of disagreement with group thinking was treated rudely or dismissed and I don't care to go back to that ; ; I don't doubt people know their stuff, don't get me wrong. It's only that the environment also matters.
@@NeilaNuruodo as someone who is a moderator of the balance I can definitely understand that there have been times that our moderation isn't perfect, and especially if your experiences came some time ago things are definitely different now than they used to be. we have put a lot of effort over the last year or so in making the balance a less toxic environment for everyone. things are never going to be perfect and we strive to do better every day. if you have had issues in the past, or if you do decide to try it again and see this kind of behavior please let the mod staff know and it will be dealt with. I know that I personally don't tolerate that kind of thing and the rest of the current moderation team feels likewise.
while it's entirely possible that the dome protected Alexandria from being rejoined, it does not explain time travel. Past that, the use of something that looks like a blue historia crux in Zoraal Ja's fight does not prove that time travel is part of how the key works. I do want to believe that it's the 12th, it'd be a fair bit unfortunate to get rid of one of the shards this way, and it is also worth considering that there is nothing outside the world of Living Memory except Living Memory. It is all well and truly gone. This suggests to me that Living Memory occupies the same place as a rejoined shard, because there is just emptiness all around it
I also feel that Alexandria is from the 12th, too. We know that time travel to previously rejoined reflections exists because G'raha was sent with the Crystal Tower to the First from a timeline where the First was rejoined with the Source. I believe that with the info from the Twinning, they reverse-engineered Alexander to achieve this based on the final boss, The Tycoon. (You can see this in its mechanics, design, and the displays on the walls of the arena.)
Also, I want to point out that when the key was near Azem's Crystal in the 3rd DT trial, it bore the mark of the Seat of Azem, which to me means it's a relic of Azem. A key that allowed the user to travel not only space across the rift but time as well. At least, that's my interpretation. I hope they delve deeper into this, and I want to thank you for this amazing video! ^^
I think Heritage Found comes from the 12th, but Living Memory is whats confusing me. And i don't do any of this time travel stuff because my brain hurts but im thinking they used a crap ton of energy to transport Heritage Found to another shard since it's a surviving piece from the 12th before the rejoining. Surely they had to be in existence for a long while before being transported to the Source. My theory now is PERHAPS they consumed the souls on that shard before Zoraal Ja found them and later came to the Source for his campaign. As for Living Memory, they definitely have to be on a different shard. The sky is there and the sun rises, so it isnt rejoined. Im thinking it either got transported there directly (like Heritage Found) or that they built it from scratch with their electrope material. Altho it wouldnt make sense for Heritage Found to be on a different shard (before coming to the Source) than Living Memory (unless a portal is open there too) because when they die in Heritage they go to Living Memory (as to why Wuk Lamat's 'mom' was there). PERHAPS Living Memory took over that shard and made it their home instead, rich with souls and aether until they started to be nearly deplete of aether to run everything. (Cant forget that Sphene will invade other worlds so that her memory collection and aether supply keeps running. And if i remember correctly she was about to suck up the remaining energy in Living Memory to transport the city to the Source)
Sure my theory has its flaws but thats all i know and what i believe until the next set of content to give us more lore.
It's a little bit weird. I have alwaya though Living Memory is in Alexandria's original place( pressumably the 12th) and it is entirely separated from EverKeep which it seems to be a interdimensional fusion between the source and a piece of Alexandria. I also think the lightning calamity engulfs all the sky from low to mid altitude while the very top is not affected. I say this because of how living memory functions and how in the Arcadion M4 you can see what it seems an holographic version of the top of solution 9 which does bot hsve thunderclouds as well
@@Yokai_Yuri I remember there being a huuuuuuuuuuge reactor with slow moving fan wings under Living Memory while the city was still golden, so it made me think the place was just seriously constructed on a massive level ontop of the planet. But it never crossed my mind that their city was built above the clouds. I'll have to check it out again and go there next time i log in, as well as the M4 hologram u mentioned^^
(As other comments have stated, since the 12th got rejoined the planet could still be there albeit starved of aether since its now in the Source. But do buildings and solid objects get rejoined as well? I have no idea. If living memory is in the 12th then its proof the city stayed orrrrrr maybe they transported the city back to the 12th after the rejoining. Idk, the lore in this game is intensely deep at times lmao)
I really hope there was some actual thought put into this by the writing team, and they didn't ass-pull it. Like how Tural mysteriously had not experienced the Final Days. Nobody even mentions it. Not a single utterance of, "Hey, remember when people LITERALLY STARTED TURNING INTO MONSTERS FOR NO REASON? THAT WAS WEIRD!"
It’s impossible that they came from a rejoined shard. Even with time travel and dilation btwn shards, it doesn’t work. Living Memory is on the other shard. When we shut it down, we are presented with a sunrise in a clear sky. No lightning storm, and clearly on a shard that still exists. So it can’t be time travelled before the rejoining of that shard cus it’s over aspect towards lightning is no longer present. And it can’t be an already rejoined shard in present day cus, you know, we’re there.
To be fairm LM, is way up on the sky, way pass the mandtle of lighting clouds and there is still raning. So that could be the reason. Yet it is right, there is normal weather, a sunrise, there is a moon. The shard was not rejoined.
I'm glad someone had a similar idea about it being the 12th. Granted my theory did involve time dilation kinda like how the whole us going to the first was was to prevent it's rejoining that happened in another timeline where Cid after we died and eorzea and garlemald were destroyed, awakened graha (though 100years too early) to prevent it from happening. But there were a few holes on my theory I didn't like, mainly the ascians and the fact that for us that timeline never happened cause we managed to prevent it vs in current time the twelfth had already been rejoined long ago so Eben if we did go back due to time dilation there was no saving it. I didn't think about the time machine in zoraal ja fight to glad the base of my theory is still popular but with different reasons and hopefully potentially different results in the future
The reason why i believe Alexandria is from the Source is because whem a reflection is overaspectsd towarss one element, jt begins to have an affect on the Source. Since we havent seen ANY kind of increase in Thunder activity on the Source, and the only time this happened was during the 2nd Umbral Calamity, its very possible that Alexandria is from the 12th.
I really like the teory that Alexandria is rejoined to the FFXI shard, it would be a good trigger for the raid series
I think they are just making stuff up at this point.
Where did Alexandria come from?
One Answer: Square Enix already working on FFIX remake so seeping spoilers and related themes into FFXIV
im still saying that alexandria is from the 12th, and that the dome and electrope protected them from the rejoining, the storm surge sounds an awful lot like the flood of light
I thought it was pretty clear in msq that it was the 12th they came from. Not sure why anyone would think otherwise.
My personal theory is that living memory is shielded floating along in the rift waiting to attach itself to any shard that opens entry.
There's a line of dialogue from G'raha which seems to suggest he, the interdimensional mage man, is not sure which shard it could be 'without asking an ascian'. If the answer was supposed to be obvious, it seems weird the writers would intentionally include a line from a knowledgable character meant to imply where its from is a mystery.
@@Janx14 While I do remember that specific dialogue, I think it would have been too forced for Graha to effectively go all in on naming the exact shard during that moment. Wouldn’t be very scholarly for him to assume. So while yes, it was left open to interpretation, I feel like it’s very much implied that it will more likely than not be the 12th. I could absolutely be wrong, but I consider it wierd and in poor form for them to start having elemental misdirections on what shard is what. For better or worse, we’re now getting knee deep in toward a criss crossing plot line of interdimensional, time traveling journeys with the WoL.
Then again, the way Hiroi wrote DT, wierd and poor form could be the new norm. But I digress!
@@h0lyhandgrenade there are 4 active shards with unknown elements some of them will most definitly have a double element that has already past like the 12th. this all could still be from the 9th shard i mean are we forgetting solution 9??? isn't that a hint on it's own already?
Because assuming it's the 12th assume you can only have one Lightning based Rejoining/Calamity EVER and that logic fails as soon as you realize that there's 13 Reflections to be rejoined and only 8 elements (well, 6 elements and 2 poles) to do it with.
Welp looks like I was wrong, Yoshi-P just casually dropped at an interview at Gamescom that Sphene and Alexandria was from the 9th. And did so like it was common knowledge. Ok.
Don't mind being wrong, Like I said in a previous post, I didn’t ‘assume’ anything. Just a take from an average person who likes the story. But hey, here we are watching this narrative spaghetti multiverse garbage begin to devolve into ****. Didn't realize I was going to end up playing along in an interdimensional time traveling adventure. I usually avoid those books and movies for a reason.
the only good part of DT's story