Addressing Alexandria's Reflection within Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail

[@Kefka_Reborn]

The crystal tower isn't the original time machine. It's Alexander. They used alexander and omega's parts in the ironworks augmented tower of the first. Omega's tech for interdimensional travel and Alexander's tech for time manipulation. Funny coincidence given we're talking about Alexandria, but I believe with their technology they could build something similar.

[@isturma]

Thank you! Came here to write this! As far as Elidibus sending you back to Elpis using the Tower, Tycoon was still in the basement. It was out of control during the Twinning, and I think we were sent in to "reset" the system, thus re-arming it for Elidibus.

[@TiggoFfm]

Considering there are people who theorised Alexandria was part of the (already rejoined) 12th shard I honestly wouldn't put it past Yoshi-P and the devs in general to already "leak" it being the 9th to prevent lore discussions from getting to heated/out of hand ( as a 3rd option to the dev lore part).

[@elaine_of_shalott6587]

Sadly, those people are still calling anyone who even considers that Yoshi-P might be correct stupid.

[@ventusvero4484]

My money was it was the 12th because that wouldnt make sense (timey whimy wise), which would be in keeping with much of DT story for me. Hehe. But makes sense, the 4, 9, 11, and 8th are all unknown and not rejoined, so the FF9 Reference Bat came from the 9th.

[@WarGiver]

I tried to propose it was the 9th on Reddit two weeks ago, and the amount of hate and insults I got there was enough for me to delete the thread, so I do entirely buy into that being the case. Things are already too heated.

[@taigenraine]

12 is rejoined, it doesn't exist. How can we go through a portal to a place that does not exist? It never could have been the 12th.

[@docdoom1987]

@@taigenraine Same way we went to Elpis, a place that doesn't exist. We used the Crystal Tower to travel through space and time, and they specifically mention the power of the key being similar in ability to the Crystal Tower. The games lore has already shown that we can visit places that no longer exist, but we can move along the timeline.

[@XieRH1988]

Narrative wise it doesn't matter which reflection it is, as long as it isn't one of the already rejoined ones. There's a bunch of surviving reflections so alexandria could be arbitrarily assigned to one of them since we don't have any pre established lore on them besides the numerical name

[@XieRH1988]

Alexandria being from the 12th would be like having the scene where G'raha and Y'shtola show up in 7.0, and Papalymo is inexplicably also with them. It just doesn't work because it involves something/someone that isn't around anymore. FFXIV goofed up with this once when they used the ascian Emmorololth in a scene that took place after she died.

[@elaine_of_shalott6587]

Yeah, the main reason this matters is a few content creators have popularized a wibbly wobbly, timey wimey theory involving time dialation somehow allowing the Milala to travel back to a reflection that had already been rejoined before they left and save a fragment of it. It doesn't really matter if it is the 4th, 8th, 9th or 11th. I imagine they just decided out of those four on the 9th because of all the FF9 references. Reason enough.

[@DarthSanguine]

@@XieRH1988 That scene came first. It was the Eureka writers that funked up.

[@ErinTheFennec]

While what Yoshi-P said is developer lore, I'm still more inclined to believe it over fan theories of it being the 12th as that option just doesn't really make sense, and given we already knew that the rejoining of The Thirteenth was going to be an astral aspected calamity (darkness) then it seemed far more likely that Alexandria came from another shard that just happened to also be undergoing the precursor to a calamity of lightning. If the MSQ says differently though, then I'm happy to accept that as the story itself is more important as a source

[@TheMexRAGE]

My theory is that the 9th reflection was left hanging before it's fall, because it was getting prepare for a calamity triggered by Shinryu that papalymo stalled and omega stopped on the end of heavenward, one of the elements Shinryu use is lightning, and probably elidibus was betting on Rhalgar faith would have shaped a primal mainly focused on lightning.

[@BalmungMP5]

This makes a lot of sense tbh.

[@Lyu-Phy]

200IQ Idea. Neat connecting the dots!

[@williek08472]

Oh my gods you're right, and it explains so much

[@the_dark_soul_of_man]

My problem with this is that from what I read in Encyclopedia Eorzea (page 23), the calamity of lightning already happened, that was the Second Umbral Era and the Ascians did not seem fond of repeating calamities. Still it's an interesting thought.

[@xuto2693]

​@@the_dark_soul_of_manThey'd have to. There aren't enough elements.

[@austinmartin612]

Time travel is actually all related to Alexander, the Tycoon in The Twinning is a garlond ironworks replication of the primal Alexander. Alexander foresaw this as well, since it could have just as easily removed itself from the timeline as if it had never existed... but it didnt, because it foresaw we would need the knowledge of time travel, which if we didn't have knowledge of Alexander would have been impossible. Also I feel like Sphene's regulator is Auracite imbued with her Aetherial Self, was doing the ivalice raids on an alt and when they were talking about how Auracite works it sounded very similar to the regulator technology.

[@josephgregorowicz5135]

I still need to understand how everyone in the comments can argue about Alexandria not being from the Twelth, then citing time travel blah blah blah, but then don't ever bring up the fact that "Alexandria" and "Alexander" are an awful lot alike. (Pretty sure the devs are going full tilt with this FF9 reference.)

[@luna_theraider]

@@josephgregorowicz5135I think the main reason isn’t the time travel itself. It was states in ShB that each shard travels thru time at different rates and rarely lines up with one another. Which is where people may have gotten confused. They may have thought it still existed in the flow of time at that period.

[@shadeblackwolf1508]

The twinning shows us how the CT on the first time travelled. It has a replica-Alexander at its core, effectively making Alexander the only timetravel entity

[@Alovon]

Like I said earlier, the Ascians clearly "Prime" Reflections as we saw with The First being "Primed" waiting for an opportunity for the Source to be ready for the Flooded Reflection to Rejoin. (See, Vauthry) The 9th/Unlost World clearly was primed for another Calamity of Lighting. As well, we've had a calamity of every associated element sans Light. (Darkness/Astral itself was a repeat after the failed attempt with the 13th. Bahamut's rejoining being an Astral Calamity, most likely reflected as Darkness on the 7th before it rejoined). So with the 8th Umbral Calamity attempt being Light with the First, the Ascians would've had plans set up for the next calamity after that to spin up (Much like how they had the First spun up on its way to a Rejoining very quickly relative to Source time after the 7th's Rejoining). Therefore, the 9th/Unlost World would've been the attempted 9th Umbral Calamity (and could very well become said Calamity in G'raha's original timeline, the next Calamity of Lighting probably occurring once the Everkeep's power ran out in the futile effort to sustain the Endless) As for why The Unlost world itself doesn't look like it's imminently about to flood anymore, well we do have the Barrier on the Source now, so the excess Lighting Ether on the 9th could've been jettisoned into the Source with Alexandria's Interdimensional fusion, therefore realigning the reflection itself's etherbalance.

[@woljay9362]

Wow! I got this same conclusion… either people are letting their head canons blind them or they’re not really listening while they play the MSQ and let “lore youtube videos” dictate what the devs intend(ed).

[@omnicbuddy4543]

RE: Why the Unlost World doesn't look all messy, I'm pretty sure they make a reference to Living Memory being above the clouds (which is why Solution 9 and that whole tower that's now on the Source was described as having a "top" we couldn't see). I think if we were to leap off those buildings and fall beneath the clouds below, we'd see how bad things truly are.

[@Ventus777777]

​@@woljay9362most people in this community let their head cannon blind them.

[@WarGiver]

I think the dimentional Fusion is something more interesting, We know that Lightning, Water, and Earth are Umbral leaning (Light) so what if the Fusion is of the 13th (Astral overrun), 4th/5th (Water/Earth), and 9th (Lightning), perhaps the remaining elements would let them fuse into another complete reflection that is a fusion of those charged reflections, a lesser source if you will.

[@johnlarken4744]

@@omnicbuddy4543 It's also possible that the habitable area within that shard is just larger then the city itself. The First had an entire continent that was somewhat habitable before we arrived.

[@baliskner]

We were told in the Eden raid that Lightning is a catalyst. so with the 8th calamity of light wiping out a lot of life (through the empire) and slowing down the aether flow in a way, a catalyst would just speed up the sources recovery and allow for another rejoining sooner. Should also balance out that light a bit with some Astral lightning. It just make sense to have lightning follow Light. Defib the aetherflows a bit. It also restarts that cycle of elements. im bad at explaining. xD

[@elaine_of_shalott6587]

IMO the reason is they thought it was so self evident that it was a currently existing reflection not one of the reflections that didn't exist anymore that it wasn't a spoiler to say it was the 9th. The 12th refelction theory was always far too complex to be likely to me.

[@alexe3176]

I had the impression at the end of the story once the barrier goes down you see the sun come out, implying the rest of the lightning scorched land still out there. The references to places far away in the Living Memory side quests prior implied to me that they're still out there. Also isn't only the area around Heritage Found part of the partial rejoining? That wouldn't be that much land area taken in perspective.

[@dustinhatfield8373]

I mean at calamity 8 all elements have had one now, it makes sense that a second shard would succumb to lightning and that's been my assumption this entire time. Alexandria was gonna be the next target and we still have Ascians out there anyways. Or perhaps it is the nature of shards to eventually doom itself with a naturally occuring calamity

[@subtlesong8936]

What gets me is that 14 has used two seperate literary time travel definitions: closed loop with Alexander, and timeline jumping with the crystal tower. With the existance of time dilation on the reflections and different methodologies of jumping between them, the spacetime continuum feels like such a mess. I don't know what could have caused these, but I'm just going to keep enjoying the story as it comes.

[@DarthSanguine]

The Crystal Tower's time travel is still a closed loop. Remember, us going back to before the Sundering, and telling Venat about the future is also a closed loop. But in order for that to be possible, we need the 8th Calamity to happen, so that the future Ironworks can make the Crystal Tower capable of time travel, and send it back to our era, where we can later use it to get to Elpis. If the 8th Calamity hadn't happened, we'd have no way of getting back to Elpis and telling Venat what we told her. This would result in a timeline where Hydaelyn didn't exist, and the Sundering never happened.

[@verdantmischief7092]

I never believed Alexandria was from a rejoined shard. I don't think the force field they used could possibly shield them from being joined to the source

[@godless1014]

I always assumed that Alexandria was quite literally carved out of the 12th (or whatever reflection it existed in) and so therefore it was never rejoined even though the original world from which it came could have been. The Alexandria we see on the source (or what's left of it) is a sort of desperate cast away on a life boat adrift between the reflections. Although not evidence, Alexandria being from the 12th makes for a much better story. If you assume it is from the 12th which was rejoined . . . well that is a pretty fucking awesome journey. Literally right before the bitter end and running out of time, they preserved the Queen's soul and then sent the kingdom adrift in time and space while the rest of their world fell apart and ceased to exist. God damn that is pretty cool. Playing through the Alexandria dungeon and hearing the desperation in their voices as everything falls apart is much more impactful and takes on a whole new meaning. Imagine the same thing happening on the 1st? With the last kingdoms of Norvrandt watching this wave coming to wipe them out and at the last moment . . . POOF! They make it out just in time and are now adrift in time and space while the rest of their world ceases to be. If, on the other hand, you believe it is from the 9th which has not been rejoined then . . . well . . . they just sort of said "hey, this world kinda sucks what with all of the lightning . . . and then just peaced out. They essentially got into a fight with their neighbor Lindblum and said "screw this." I'm out.

[@DarthSanguine]

The barrier didn't even exist at the time of the supposed "rejoining", so whether it could have or not is a moot point.

[@Aranexorsist]

@@godless1014 well the whole reason it can’t be the 12th is because Alexandria left, the way I think about it is to draw a parallel to norvrandt. The first didn’t get rejoined because the flood of light never completed. 1 holdout remained, much the same Alexandria remained, and living memory was in the 9th. Therefore it was never possible for it to be the 12th

[@godless1014]

​@Aranexorsist but had a small slice of Norvrandt been carved away and cast off into time and space ultimately fusing with the source, why would you assume that little slice would disappear once the world it came from was rejoined? I understand that you are making that assumption. I am asking WHY? And again, you say that living memory was from the 9th. I understand that you are assuming that. I am asking WHY? Why the 9th as opposed to literally ANY other reflection? As far as I can tell everyone is making this assumption based on what Yoshi P casually said offhand or the fact that FF9 is the ninth game in the series . . . Therefore the 9th reflection. Both of these are pretty flimsy for me.

[@X1OProductions]

We already have precedent for repeat elements/affinities, 13th reflection(failed calamity) and 7th reflection(7th calamity) were both darkness/astral.

[@doctorcis3510]

I still don't get how "all elements astral aligned" and "light"/ "all elements umbral aligned" and "dark" differ.

[@horizon7011]

@@doctorcis3510 Ah something something, light is stagnation/dampens the potency of the elements. Meanwhile darkness is hyperactivity/amplifies the potency of the elements. That's my understanding at least, thou the whole astral/umbral aligned (balanced aether?) calamities does throw a wrench into things.

[@SubduedRadical]

@@horizon7011 I think of it somewhat like light. White light is an equal balance of all colors. To the Human eye, what we perceive as white is equal amounts of both side of the center point of our vision, which is green. This is why you can see red, orange, yellow, and blue stars, but NEVER green stars. To the point in astronomy, a prank over the years is to put a green filter over a novice's eyepiece so they think they discovered the first green stars. What we see as white ARE the green stars. Being exactly in the center of our visual spectrum, they contain the same amount of light on either sides in perfect balance on their blackbody curve, thus appearing white. ...and if that's too technical, just think of the color rainbow, Roy G Biv (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet). Imagine you have 1 unit of Red and Violet, 2 units of Orange and Indigo, 3 units of Yellow and Blue, and 4 units of Green. It makes a bell curve centered in Green with an equal amount on either side. Alternatively, imagine you have equal 4 units of all 7 colors. That would, also, appear white as it is perfectly balanced. This is how I see Darkness and Light. Light is when you have an equal amount of all six elements aspected to Umbral, making "pure Umbral" or Light the same way the irl light example above would make "pure white", and if you have all six aspected to Astral, it would make "pure Astral" or Darkness. And the cutscene in Il Mehg where Urianger muses about the elemental wheel and Light and Darkness (as we know from RPGs/JRPGs/MMORPGs, whenever some character makes some important musing in a story, it's somewhere between 99% and 100% accurate), elements can be aspected to either Astral (change) or Umbral (stasis). Each of the six is NATURALLY aligned towards Umbral (Earth, Water, Ice) or Astral (Fire, Lightning, Wind), but they CAN take their other form, with Urianger's example being Astral Fire as flames while Umbral Fire would be hot ash. We could think of things like Umbral Earth being stone while Astral Earth could be earthquakes. Well, an interesting thing about Heritage Found. Ever look at the weather patterns? Ever notice one of them is "Umbral Static"? While it could just be a throwaway weather condition...it could also mean "the Reflection this dome came from was aspected to Umbral Lightning", now couldn't it? :)

[@acidtux]

​@@aSmolGoth I agree but that begs the following question: since the ascians' plan was to reunite all the reflections with the source they would have to do 14 calamities, but how do they pick the remaining elements to use after succeeding with one of each element? There are not enough reflections to do each element twice, and does that even matter, do elements have to be balanced for their whole plan to work? Maybe they didn't even know themselves. Or maybe I missed a major information somewhere

[@Winky813]

Ehhh, but like you said it was a failed rejoining leaving the 13th as the void. So they had no choice but to redo it with the same element on another reflection, not just repeating the element because they wanted to.

[@titaniumvulpes]

I actually looked up during the story which shard had rejoined during the Calamity of Lightning to be sure of which shard Alexandria _wasn't_ a part of. The Twelfth shard was successfully rejoined, there's nothing of it left, so it obviously couldn't be that one. Which means the second Calamity of Lightning had been prepped at some point. There are also some Ascians that are unaccounted for, notably Pashtarot and Halmarut. I've gone with the assumption one of them had been attempting to prime Alexandria's shard at some point but the rejoining failed much like the First's rejoining failed.

[@SAI-Max_D]

And let's not forget Emet-Selch's closing words at the climax of Endwalker: _Tell me, have you been to the ruins beneath the waters of the Bounty?_ _Or the treasure islands beyond the frozen waters of Blindfrost, in Othard's north?_ _The fabled golden cities of the New World?_ Now unless I'm hard blanking on us ever going to Blindfrost, it seems kinda suspicious that 2 of the 3 places Emet bade us seek out just so happened to contain a gateway to other reflections... Could there be other unfinished projects left for us to clean up?

[@Deode-d4h]

I think one of the reasons that it was leaked Alexandria may have been from the 9th is because the remaining denizens of Alexandria may not know they are the 9th Reflection, and there may be no one left alive in the 9th. All that remained was Living Memory until we shut it down.

[@TheMountainLynx]

iirc, it was The Tycoon, refurbished in the Crystal Tower's basement, that allowed the time travel. The Tower itself just provided the power. Or at least that was the read I got from the lore scraps lying around in The Twinning.

[@IslandFenix]

Pretty much. Cid and company essentially reversed engineered Alexander's time travel and Omega's rift travel, built The Tycoon to run the systems and used the Crystal Tower as a giant battery.

[@pll3827]

The Tycoon was supposed to have been destroyed during Shadowbringers post-MSQ - per the Twinning instance. Yet, the tower could still send people back in time during Endwalker.

[@IslandFenix]

@@pll3827 True, but in Endwalker that was Elidibus crafting the portal with the knowledge in the Crystal Tower's databanks and then burning what remained of his soul to provide the necessary power.

[@DarthSanguine]

@@IslandFenix Except we find out in the Pandaemonium questline that he did not, in fact, burn up his soul to do so.

[@IslandFenix]

@@DarthSanguine Nah, he did. Remember, just like Emet in MSQ the Elidibus we find in Elpis is pre-Sundering, so he now has to go through the centuries in his own timeline linearly to reach us in Shadowbringers. The one we encounter in the Aetherial Sea for the last wing of Pandemonium is a temporary construct Athena made by extracting his memories from the Lifestream.

[@Lyn685]

It is said that Preservation managed to extract Sphene's soul. This was long before her actual memories were extracted. Couldn't it be that her soul is still trapped or "preserved" somewhere, just like how Otis' soul was inside a robot? I find it hard to believe that they would just discard her soul like that, which is why the crown regulator gets me thinking.

[@MissKashira]

Especially when robo-Otis died and she said, "The older models weren't fitted with regulators." Why are the newer models fitted with regulators? Why does a bot need soul and memory management?

[@Dortz666]

During the Alexandria dungeon, there is static that cuts off what they managed to save, so to me, how Yoshi P talks about the writing leaving clues, there it would be her soul is preserved in the crown for sure.

[@KrisPage3]

Otis existed as a robot and is also an endless. So the origanal queen could be trapped in a robot version. Connect to the data centers of the endless. But the beast souls retained a bit of the origanal otherwise all the people using beast souls would transform the same. The crown I'm guessing is the failsafe. To control and preserve the dead queen. But if she wiped out all the memories. What memories of the soul will have remained.

[@Draylin41]

Thought it would have been cool for this to be a small section of the Twelfth Shard that had somehow splintered off from the rest before the rejoining. It could have been an indicator or how the Ascians didn't have the process down to a science yet and made a mistake that maybe not as devastating for their plans, harkens toward what happened with their first attempt on the 13th Shard. If this really is the 9th Shard though it could bring urgency to the story, because while this and the other 3 Reflections we haven't visited aren't rejoined they could all be in an apocalyptic state due to the Ascians preparations. Even with the leaders of the Ascians gone, a Calamity could happen just by how unstable the other shards are so it's pretty important that we find a way to travel there. While it would be interesting to have another Shadowbringers style expansion where we spend the whole time in just one Shard, it could be imperative that we not linger in one place too long so I'm hoping the next expansion has us visiting multiple Shards during the launch MSQ.

[@CrystalBearer20]

I never really thought Alexandria could be from the Twelfth because...well, it's there. It's not Rejoined. You mentioning the timeline of the Lalafell fleeing the Calamity of Ice just puts a nail in that coffin for me. The only way they could have escaped a Rejoining would have been Dimensional Fusion onto another Reflection, something they wouldn't have been able to do before the Lalafell arrived with the key.

[@MissKashira]

I suspected we weren't on the 12th when I learned the Milalla went there during the 5th Umbral Calamity. That meant they went there thousands of years after it was destroyed and lived there thousands of years before it had an issue. It would also mean Krile came from a shard that was destroyed 10k years ago 20 years ago. It hurt my head it was so confusing. But by the time I was standing on it, I was like, yeah, they just repeated elements...

[@airget]

It's the nature of how they play with time. Heck even in our "reality" The Source fell once and Gr'aha moved the fallen Source Crystal Tower to the First and then used his knowledge of the fallen "Source" reality to save The Source world. So it's not exactly out of the realm of reality where Alexandria could have been the 12th reality that made it's own pocket dimension and then went into the Source later on much like how Gr'aha transferred the Crystal Tower to the source. Heck even the SHB Crystal Tower Dungeon shows that in the future of the Source that fell they had managed to control the concept of the Primal Alexander which allowed them to move through time, which then of course would explain why people are also connecting Alexandria to that type of time manipulation because they share a similar namesake.

[@bendonatier]

For me the ultimate answer comes down to "What would make for a better story" and that's simple. Saying there are hold outs of rejoined reflections takes literally all the punch out of the concept of a rejoining. Emet likely knew of Alexandria, he's have to be an idiot not to. All he has to do is say "Hey we can sever everyone still alive on the first if we hold them up in eulmore, we can try to do things on the source in a way that's not destructive considering you've achieved world world peace except for the empire that I have total control over, let's try doing this with as little death as possible, see if it works". So making Alexandria the 12th makes our existing villains either dumb or evil for being unreasonable, rather than evil for being stubborn. worse yet, we know what a world ready for rejoining looks like, and it is "A single totalitarian ruler bides their time in a tower while the world waits to end. That's Alexandria, that's Eulmore. they are the same.

[@MissKashira]

The thing is, there is no reason to assume Sphene's soul is gone. We've already been shown the regulators have the ability to extract memories without someone having died. And while yeah, they could have taken the queen's soul and stuck it in a soul cell for someone rando to get a 1-up, given she was their beloved queen, I don't think they would have done that. So maybe her crown lit up in the same way the other regulators light up...as a repair function. After all, no other Endless wears a regulator. Why does the queen?

[@zaeriz3458]

Would love to see that breakdown of memory/spirit/physical aether. Aetherology and like what dynamis is/isn't and how the two forces interact is something I struggle wrapping my head around.

[@pll3827]

Sphene's regulator makes me think that surely they have backups of her - after going through all the trouble to bring her back.

[@jevawoah]

it’s funny, i immediately assumed for some reason it would be the 9th reflection. only once y’shtola said we didnt know what reflection it was did i realise that was even a question. then after watching a bunch of lore videos telling me i was being stupid, i realised it was indeed a bad assumption but i guess it was not lmao

[@ArcadeTheatre]

All I know is that 7.1 will give us some answers... and many more questions!

[@DarthSanguine]

3:32 Because he knew it couldn't've been. He knew the Twelfth had been rejoined, and therefore didn't exist any more. He is not an idiot - he is not going to insist that something that is completely impossible, and that the facts contradict, is true. He is not like a significant portion of this game's fanbase: too stubborn to admit they're wrong, unless it's spelled out to them in absolute terms. 4:15 No. You can, and you should, unless you can currently prove it to be false. Especially if it's coming from the game's producer and director. And in this case, we're talking about information that would've been decided very early on in development, so he should be privy to it. 13:26 *regulator, not resonator.

[@SniperKing-O]

Wuk Lamat puts Sphene's regulator on and becomes the Liquid Ocelot of FFXIV: Sphene Lamat.

[@nnovatakaren5515]

Please, no more wuk lamat 😢

[@johndipietro9301]

I think that you're mostly right, but I would like point to a small hole in the Occam's Razor around the crystal not being powerful enough - if indeed it was a tool crafted by Azem, it's not implausible that it WAS. Remember: the Crystal Tower was built by the Allagans in the 4th Astral Age. Certainly, they were a technological peak on the Source post-Sundering, but even they were still not at the point of the world-shattering magics of the Ancients. The closest they came to attaining that power was arguably in Eureka, which was the closest to Creation magic we've seen thus far, and even that managed to create a handful of other primal-like weapons at best. Thus, it's not impossible that they had to build big to make their technology work, whereas the crystal, if of Ancient origin, would be capable of something similar with a far smaller profile. That said, I DO think that the 9th makes the most sense for a different meta-reason: it slipped out because it's already on his mind from recent work. We know that writing for stories takes place several months in advance; it would make sense, then, that he's got some extra knowledge in his head, and that the team has been working on expanding the Unlost World in future quests. Thus, they've probably been discussing the reflection in conversations and it's a lot more salient. ETA: Also, thinking on it, Lightning as the first element to repeat does make a certain amount of sense anyways, as it IS the most active/astral element, and thus closest to Darkness.

[@etainapgwynnedd827]

Also, going from that, if the Calamity of Light (the 8th) had gone through, they would have needed something extra-astral to kick things going again on the source.

[@DarthSanguine]

*The Allagans lived in the 3rd Astral Era.

[@ValtielGamingZone]

You glossed over Alexander. As a primal it had the power to control time and the crystal tower wouldn’t have been able to do what it did without CID’s knowledge on the primal and attempting to recreate a Magitek version of it.

[@KirillBry]

The Endboss of The Twinning, a dungeon in the Crystal Tower of the First, was literally a recreation of Alexander. Attributing Time Travel to the Crystal Tower just feels incredibly wrong and misguided... In addition, They used the energy of the Crystal Tower to move the WHOLE CRYSTAL TOWER into a different shard, that is an enormous structure! Now what if we were to "only" move like a single Tribe of Lalafellin? the amount of energy required would be a lot lower, something that would likely be achievable through prayer alone. From what I've heard, Alexander even played a big part in FFIX since it's basically the centerpiece of ALEXANDria... I just want to see Alexander again...

[@GavinAstraWolf]

THIS, I WAS WONDERING THIS FOR A VERY LONG TIME. Cause at first it SEEMED like the 12th shard cause of all of the lightning storms but then how would Alexandira exist then? I know Yoshi P saying it in an interview isnt solid as you said but at least that makes sense. Plus like you said, I could see them doing that as an on the nose reference to FFIX. Either or I am REAL excited to see what the patch quests are going to be like cause there's still a lot about this that isn't answered.

[@warmachine5835]

I was alright with there being some time shinanigans going on because I could easily see "Stargate" logic applied; yes, typically transit between the shards would be temporally static, but like in Stargate where if your tunnel passes too close to a high energy event like a solar flare, the connection could be temporally distorted. There were 2 episodes of SG-1 dedicated to this, plus the movie Continuum. I could easily see this kind of thing explaining the Lalafel. They tried to transit mid calamity, creating the conditions for what would normally be a temporally stable point-to-point connection to be shifted, leading to them ending up on the 12th before it rejoined. No one would be any the wiser until the modern day and seeing all of the pieces combined with the knowledge we have about reflections and rejoinings and how they interact with calamities.

[@godless1014]

Why would you merely assume that Alexandria, which was literally carved away from its world and teleported/fused with the source (BEFORE a rejoining) would simply disappear (POOF! GONE!) and cease to exist if the shard from which it came was afterwards rejoined? Based on what? Why would you assume the world itself would literally disappear into thin air? While it is true that Norvrandt wasn't completely rejoined . . . it sure as hell came pretty damned close. And the part of Norvrandt that WAS destroyed didn't disappear. It was left a lifeless and barren husk. A dead world. And while it is true that the 13th seems to have at least partially disappeared or broken apart . . . we already know that what happened on the 13th was a very, very different thing from a usual rejoining. An colossal mistake. And if you assume that the shards are merely a corollary to their numbered counterparts in the Final Fantasy mainline franchise then . . . what's up with the incredibly strong connections between the 13th and FFIV? It's a fun idea to think that they would do that . . . but the connections between the 13th and FFIV completely ruin that as a possibility.

[@DarthSanguine]

@@godless1014 Urgh... I don't even know where to begin explaining everything wrong with what you just said. So I'm not even going to bother. Seriously dude, play the game again from start to finish, including all side content, and PAY ATTENTION THIS TIME! Jesus Christ...

[@WarGiver]

I never understood why people were claiming it was the 12th, it never made any sense. We knew Lalafell came from the source during the 5th calamity and the 12th's rejoining was the 2nd. We know based on what happened regarding the 8th calamity and how they planned to undo it that time may flow at different rates between reflections, at no point does it flow backwards. During the entire MSQ no indication was ever given regarding time travel. The Lalafell from the Source were the cause of the calamity of lightning on the (9th?) reflection because they originated electrope which was the root cause.

[@Deode-d4h]

I mean, there are two instances of effectively time travel to the past. Once was G'raha Tia and the Crystal Tower to the First from his timeline where the 8th Calamity occured already, but he goes back in time and to a different place altogether. The next is us the WoL going to Elpis, the very very distant past. That's why the theory Alexandria was flashforwarded from it's time before it was rejoined IF it was from the 12th Reflection exists considering it's the lightning calamity.

[@WarGiver]

@@Deode-d4h That is a nasty trap though, once time travel starts getting tossed around too much then the question of how hard is it really. Then the much more dangerous question, if it was so easy why didn't the Ascians use it. I could Rant about why time travel is unlikely from a difficulty angel. But Scribe covered that already. Instead I will say this: We are almost certain that the Ascians were involved with the Milala going to the 9th (The focus on the Four Masked Leaders of the Lala on the source kinda spelled that out.) AND given that the Milala were the apparent root cause (They originated Electrope, either invented it or the creation/refinement) of the Calamity on the 9th. It seems highly unlikely that the Ascians would take a risk involving something like a time travel paradox when, at the time of the second calamity, they have only one success and one catastrophic failure.

[@Deode-d4h]

@@WarGiver Which is why time travel was only used with the Crystal Tower involved, due to the use of a pseudo-Alexander recreation at its core used as the primary mechanism to send people back in time. As for why the Ascians never learned to just time travel, who knows. Maybe it was too much of a risk and they didn't want to ruin the timeline. Maybe its some taboo even they refuse to break. Maybe they did, but they would just create a splinter timeline where they saved the world but Meteoin ultimately destroys it all because they never learned why it all occurred. In the end, it's up to the writers to let us know these things.

[@WarGiver]

@@Deode-d4h I think its more taboo then anything, even the CT created both a paradox and a splintered timeline, one in each incident. So why take the chance. Again going from its another reflection to its time travel, that just seemed like too much of a stretch.

[@Deode-d4h]

@@WarGiver Time shenanigans was already involved. The dome flashforwarded those inside 30 years in the future somehow. It was already going to be complicated when that's the starting baseline.

[@markointhesky]

I used to think Alexandria was from the 12th as well and the land under Alexandria's barrier being the ONLY thing that survived the rejoining, but that was before I got to the Milala reveal in the story. Time FUCKERY definitely happens between the shards, but that's always been in the form of time dilation/compression, not outright time TRAVEL. Alexander is so far the only source of outright time travel in the setting, resulting in either stable time loops if used on its own (with alterations maybe being possible depending on how real that one mechanic in A12 is and whether or not he was just bullshitting the goblins based on his actions afterwards), or a branching timeline when used in conjunction with Omega's dimensional tech. We did NOT use the dimension hopping part of the crystal tower for the Elpis story, so that was a stable timeloop and always was. And Alexandria may sound similar, but Alexander himself is still in the timeloop of its own creation in the enigma codex on the source, so he's unavailable for this particular project. As someone else said, a shard that was setup for a lightning rejoining before all the unsundered died makes the most sense, since after the dark 7th calamity and the planned light of the 8th, they'd have to start repeating the elements sooner rather than later. Something to note is that the first ATTEMPTED rejoining with the 13th was dark/astral, and so was the 7th successful one, so the ascians aren't averse to trying an element more than once, though I suppose that does leave the wiggle room of them only doing it with an element successfully once, but they're dead so that doesn't really matter anymore.

[@godless1014]

If time flows differently on the reflections, (faster or slower) than events which occur on the source (such as a calamity) can occur before the events on the reflection which will inevitably cause them. Time dilation/compression NOT being the same as time travel is simply the splitting of semantic hairs. ANY time you introduce time travel into a story you necessarily allow for the possibility for ANYTHING to happen and be waved away as timey-whimey nonsense.

[@markointhesky]

@@godless1014 Hard disagree, there's clearly SOME correlation between the events on the source and the shards, or else a rejoining wouldn't need to have events on both shard and source to happen at the same time to work. Or perhaps even a necessary component of a rejoining is both the source and the relevant shard entering a state of equal time flow, like the Exarch said the First was entering with the source, right as the 8th umbral calamity was about to strike. Sadly that's just speculation though. But even if, say, the 1st is moving at .5x speed, the source is moving at 1x speed, and the 13th is moving at 2x speed, that just means they're moving forwards in time at different rates. None of them are moving BACKWARDS in time, which is what would need to happen for the Milala to go back however many units of true objective time from the 5th umbral calamity to reach the 12th shard from before the 2nd calamity. Thats simply not how the shards work. Also, literal word of god from Hydalen herself says that the shards share the fate of the source when discussing whether the people of the first could survive the final days, so I'd say its within reason that a large enough event on one side of the dimensional barrier could "bleed through" when it objectively happens, regardless of when it subjectively happened. I.E, a calamity in Objective Year 5002 would still effect a shard even if they were in Subjective year 5000, it wouldn't wait the additional two years.

[@SubduedRadical]

@@markointhesky as you say, dilation/compression, but not Time's Arrow pointing the opposite direction at any point. Event A still precedes B for all Reflections, just the time between them they measure differently (larger or smaller), but not the order. Gah, this reminds me of that one Sliders episode where time was backwards and they were like a record skipping and at the end of the episode, they broke time. (Saved the life of someone that was supposed to die, creating a paradox in that dimension...)

[@acgearsandarms1343]

Personal theory, Sphene’s crown, may function as a specialized regulator, complete with what are essentially administrative credentials. I don’t think it is the same as the regulators used by everyone else, but it might hold functions similar if not modified for her since she is both ruler and Endless. I honestly don’t think it has her memories since she purposely deleted the living Sphene’s memories, only partially restored a backup from her time as an Endless. However that also disappeared with the shutdown of the Meso Terminal. But what I think it does have is data. So whoever can claim it, could have unrestricted access to Alexandria’s systems. The ones Gulool Ja don’t have anyways.

[@nnovatakaren5515]

I don't like it at all. I would have prefered to dispense with the child king and all the political clusterfuck they seem unable to handle

[@dragonquest3827]

Yea its neat to think about. Like, maybe using this crown or regulator, packed with way more potential than we know, might somehow be a key to restoring the living memory as it was before shutdown. I doubt it would return the endless as they are now gone.....i mean, right? Where exactly did their souls return to?? Hmmmm....isnt living memory still a part of everkeep? But that part is also located on another reflection? Omg my brain. Its fun to think about though, that we could restore what was shutdown.

[@airget]

Maybe this is how they make "Kuja" since Gulool Jachild is most likely playing the role of Zidane and is potentially a clone of Zoraal. They may play with the idea that the crown will create an entity that can be both beloved and rule by an iron fist. So basically the best traits of Sphene and Zoraal to create a new King that can lead the people of Alexandria to a brighter future.

[@brendant.4493]

I would still watch that video lol. Thanks for your work, sir!

[@Dastreus]

It was pretty obvious that Alexandria came from the 9th reflection. The first was adjacent to final fantasy 1. Further there are 13 yards and the source. There has to be repeat elements in the rejoinings. After all, there have been two astral rejoining. The 13th and the 7th.

[@Guardian24829]

It's also entirely possible that the calamity on the 9th/Alexandria's Shard was not a "Calamity", just a non-ascian prompted natural disaster 'calamity'. If I recall correctly, assuming we saw the actual sky of Alexandria's shard during the end credits while in Living Memory....it's entirely possible that all the storms were over and done with, as there were clear skies. (on the other hand, that could've just been a simulated sky on the ceiling of Living Memory"

[@elaine_of_shalott6587]

Yes. Calamity is just a word, a synonym for disaster. Just because it has taken on a specialized meaning on the source, in the form of the numbered Umbral Calamities, doesn't mean it isn't still used in it's traditional form on one or more reflection. For an in game reference there is a body of water on the First called "The Source."

[@DeidaraKoroski]

ngl, i was confused why people were so determined for alexandria to be from the 12th. as of now we understand that shards have time dilation- time flows faster for them than for us. nothing else. the lalafels fled from the 5th calamity, of ice, which was After the 2nd calamity, lightning. im so glad you agree with that because i felt like i was missing something with the way people got confused when yoshi-p said 9th.

[@godless1014]

If time passes differently on each of the reflections relative to the source, than it is not impossible that events can occur on the source BEFORE they've happened on the reflection which will ultimately cause them to occur. Time is relative. It is also likely that among the reflections time will not always flow FASTER to one degree or another. Time may flow SLOWER in some cases. We simply don't know enough about the various reflections or the time travel mechanics relative to the FFXIV universe in order to make any reasonable assumptions.

[@hadares3699]

@@godless1014 Now I'm not going to say that your point is not possible, but all historical evidence has only shown time in reflections moving faster than time in the Source. The scions age years in the First while only weeks/months go by in the Source. The dome around Alexandria ages 30 years while at most minutes pass on the Source. For the Thirteenth, I'm not aware of any time related references, so no evidence one way or another. My point is, there's no concrete example of a reflection's time moving slower than the Source, but a handful of examples of the opposite. Let alone the fact that time would have had to move so much slower on the Twelfth, that thousands of years would pass on the Source before the rejoining event occurs on the twelfth. In my own interpretation, the crystal exarch's demonstration of rejoinings seems to imply that the calamities on a reflection and the source are simultaneous events. I.E. no matter what date the calamity occurs on the shard's/source's calendar, that point in time is simultaneous between the two. Logically this must follow or else you could get a contradiction like "the twelfth has rejoined, it no longer exists" > "but I can still go there, because the rejoining hasn't happened there yet". I believe we're meant to understand that once a shard is rejoined to the source, it no longer exists as a shard from any reference frame (unless you intentionally time travel with the crystal tower or another method)

[@SubduedRadical]

@@godless1014 time passes differently, but Time's Arrow still points in the same direction. Like imagine you could go into a semi-hybernation state where time passed for you at 1/10th the speed it does for us. Event A that happens in year 1 for us would happen in year 10 for you, and even B happening in year 3 for us would happen in year 30 for you, but we would both perceive A before B. You wouldn't see the 30 year event before the 10 year event. While I suppose it's possible one could be pointed backward somehow, that doesn't really work well considering it would mean that Reflection would have instantly gone backward from the post-Sundering time to the pre-Sundering time the second it was created. So overall, I don't think ones traveling BACK in time work.

[@shadeblackwolf1508]

I was pretty sure it couldn't be the 12th. The reason is this: Time while it may flow at different rates for different shards, that fluctuate through time, does only move in one direction. In Living Memory we learn that Lalas from source fled the 5th umbral calamity to become one of the peoples of Alexandria. Therefore, for Alexandria to be remnants of the 12th shard would imply the 5th umbral calamity happened before the 2nd umbral calamity, which is on its face absurd. Instead i believe it is a shard much like the first, that the ascians prepped for a calamity, but the calamity was aborted because the matching disaster on source did not come to be. And given the flow of time, i suspect it was either our battle at Castrum Meridium that was meant to be the matching calamity, or the disaster that was averted with the battle of Silvertear lake. This is what happened with the first. King Thordan and the knights were meant to cause a calamity of light. When that failed Elibibus used the warriors of darkness to call upon Hydaelin, and abort the calamity

[@Gloomdrake]

One of the weirder lines about time travel comes from the Endwalker Fisher Role Quest. After learning that you traveled back in time to help the client, his professor comments that the Studium also has the means to do that, but that it’s very hard to get clearance. I’m not sure if that makes sense, though

[@RockR277]

I need to rewatch these cutscenes. I don't remember that xD

[@deice3]

I always took that as you being that hidden means of time travel.

[@crowdemon_archives]

​@@deice3the WoL is in fact the hidden means lol Otherwise everyone would've pestered WoL to bring them along to Elpis or something 😂

[@RockR277]

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say every instance of Time Travel has involved Alexander? There's the Alexander storyline, and then there's the Tycoon based on Alexander in the crystal tower on the First. Maybe we'll find out something about there being a version of Alexander in Alexandria. Or maybe our little crystal will somehow find it's way into Goblin hands in the future, leading to the creation of _their_ Alexander. I don't have a surefire reason for why the crystal would be able to channel enough aether to travel through space _and_ time, but I'm assuming the Goblins and Alexander did it with crystals and/or prayer, and we know that the Milalans hoped and prayed for their escape. All that to say, I know nothing for sure, but I also don't think we can rule anything out for sure either.

[@SynodicScribe]

That's misleading. While things like Tycoon are very obviously based on Alexander, the primal itself is never directly the soul reason these things happened. Alexander isn't involved so much as he was the the inspiration.

[@RockR277]

@@SynodicScribe Well, I am essentially spitballing in the dark, but I still think it's possible that crystal ends up being what facilitates Alexander's ability to time travel in the future and that it could possibly have been scavenged by ironworks and end up in Tycoon. All I really mean to say is that it's not something to absolutely rule out. Alexander existing also means that not every instance of time travel involves the Crystal Tower.

[@RockR277]

Oh and to add on to all that, Elidibus sends us back in time, we have to assume without the use of Tycoon (considering it's very possibly been destroyed by then). While this does use the crystal tower and Elidibus' soul as a power source, it ultimately doesn't require crystal tower itself, assuming that Tycoon was a necessary tool for the CT to time travel, which I think we safely can. There's also the fact that past Elidibus was told where we would appear at the start of Pandaemonium, meaning they had future knowledge (that I think may have been confirmed to come from Azem?) This means that at least a select few ancients could manipulate time to some extent, possibly Azem. Our crystal bears Azem's symbol. I know we've talked about Azem having power over space, and space and time are often connected. Could possibly be a connection there. Edit: Idk why I'm questioning/justifying ancient time magic when Gaia exists.

[@crowdemon_archives]

​@@RockR277 last Azem is an oddball themself lol

[@basteala525]

I am all for a talk about the life and death and preservation and reincarnation of the soul and its lingering memories.

[@persofte]

if the ninth is the alexandria reflection it makes me wonder - is living memory just floating way up high in the sky in the ninth? and if so might there some way we can fly down to explore the rest of the shard? and on that point the barrier was supposedly made to keep the lightning energies out but looking at living memory post msq its got normal day and night, and normal weather, while heritage found is permenantly umbral static. could the calamity have been an intentional fabrication to isolate alexandria from the rest of the world? or maybe the calamity has simply passed on the ninth?

[@zeddoverkill]

I would definitely be interested in a discussion/disambiguation/explanation of the differences and relationships between physical, mental and soul/spiritual aethers.

[@mattp994]

Sphene's crown is the middle of Pashtarot's glyph upside down.

[@Switch-2501]

Yes, give me all of the reflections lore! More Sphene lore! This is amazing context, not only for FF14 but also DnDxFF14 home brew!

[@caijuu7775]

The, admittedly shaky, confirmation that Alexandria is from the Ninth isn't really THAT big a deal, imo? I'd still like it to be confirmed in-game, but I think anyone who still thought it might have been from the Twelfth after playing Dawntrail MSQ misunderstands the mechanics and relationships between the shards and time. Unless the key is ALSO a time travel device, and we have no reason to believe that it is, Alexandria cannot be from the Twelfth. The Storm Surge occurred after the Milalla of Aloalo traveled to the Unlost World during the 5th Umbral Calamity. The Twelfth was rejoined in the 2nd. The rate at which shards experience time relative to one another DOES vary, but the order of events remains the same regardless of perspective. Which means the Twelfth was long gone before the Storm Surge and Alexandria as we know it today ever occurred.

[@cottontailsify]

I dont understand why people are trying to come up with ways to fit the 12th shard into this. Like... the shard is rejoined. It's not there anymore. Occam's razor.

[@knightsolaire5351]

Rejoined… but there was a fragment of a shard floating out in space that wasn’t due to a failed rejoining of some sort. “Dimensional fusion” was obviously a ploy brought about by the ascians to try and get Alexandrians to finish the rejoining themselves.

[@ridewild1956]

my theory since the end of endwalker is that without hydaelyn and zodiark the reflections may start to converge into each other, creating a second source essentially and then the "reflection" and the source would begin to naturally recombine xenoblade 3 style

[@randomkoreanguy]

If Sphene's soul is preserved somewhere in the same way as Otis, then that would explain her return as well as why the program couldn't actually erase her. If her memories exist not only in the database but also imprinted into her soul, and her soul is tied to the system, then Wuk Lamat's attempt to bring her back merely awakened the latent memories resting inside the soul driving the entire system.

[@davidank07]

I feel like it would have been belligerent to make Alexandria come from anything other than the 9th reflection.

[@teyrns]

And so what should happen to FF13? Or is that now out of the question because of the one-time event? There's also what looks like Pulse in the background of Ultima Thule... I guess it doesn't matter that the reflections don't perfectly match the games that they're homages to, but having that be the case with the First and the Ninth and no others kinda sucks.

[@woljay9362]

@@teyrnsYikes someone seems intolerant lol

[@shiroihana4381]

@@teyrns the first was a homage to both ff1 and 3, the whole warriors of darkness thing was explicitly referencing 3, so it was still a way more "original" and/ or interesting way to do that thing... ...and let's not talk about the thirteenth being literally refurbished as "final fantasy iv at home"

[@RaccoonBrigade]

​@@teyrns FF13 isn't worth honoring

[@luminusprime]

Because it's FF9? But the Thirteenth is FF4...

[@kirin1195]

I was thinking that maybe the flow of aether in the reflections follows a similar principle to the Chinese Wuxing elements as a way to maintain balance. So when they want to cause a rejoining, it means cutting the flow off from the target to the reflection it feeds into. And the reflection that feeds into it also needs to be of the element your wanting. That or 9 was the one 12 flowed into. So if you want to aspect 12. You need to stop it feeding into another reflection so it stagnates as one element, while also charging the 9th that feeds into it. Meaning the excess thunder accumulation in the 9th happened as a result of it no longer having anywhere to vent after the 12th was rejoined.

[@BeauxPhades]

The way I interpreted it was FF9 references = 9th reflection. I don't think its that deep.

[@SynodicScribe]

Same. I'm here for it. lol

[@BeauxPhades]

​@@SynodicScribe of Echoes of Vana'diel ends up being the 11th shard instead of a different universe, that could just be the logic the last few shards follow

[@SynodicScribe]

@@BeauxPhades Seeing as the 11th Reflection is one of the remaining reflections it could work!

[@orly4672]

FFIV = 13th Reflection????

[@BeauxPhades]

@@orly4672 the ones going forward. Obviously the previously revealed ones don't follow this

[@tigaron02]

If it weren't for the 1st and the 13th being light and Dark we could argue that there was a chance the Ascians were doing Astral and Umbral rejoinings which would have allowed them to use 2 different reflections for Lighting based on being the 12th being Astral charged and the 9th being Umbral charged. Maybe that has some merit but I cannot say I would hang my hat on being definite about it.

[@kfavorite9447]

A video about the different parts of what makes a person a *person* in FFXIV (thought, soul, aether etc) in your video format would be a *GODSEND* so yes plz plz plz add it to the list? 🥲

[@venanreviews]

I kinda like these unscripted documentations of FFXIV lore. Sure it's not the normal but it gives us some food for thought until the next video. Maybe these could be a mini series? A scribe's scribblings? 👓👌

[@StarBlood27]

I believe if Alexandria is from a not joined shard and we go there, we will definitely deal with that named ascian from 1.0, as he built Alexander, the Time Machine primal that seems to have similar tech Alexandria has, making me believe he got it from that reflection

[@chrisanderson6353]

I would love to see a full length account of physical, spiritual and mental aether. Plus, would you be willing to share your sources of research. By watching your videos over the past year or two, I would love to learn all about the lore of all the reflections, and the ascians.

[@SynodicScribe]

Sources are in game dialogue, cutscenes, as well as citations from all three Encylopedia Eorzea books! I even make sure to pull data from their side stories within the FFXIV Lodestone.

[@AnnaBananya]

I'm really glad Yoshida made these comments because the arguments for it being the 12th are complete and utter lunacy.

[@HotaruGlaive]

But the arguments for it being the 9th go against the lore. Also, I think fans like you are truly lunatics. YoshiP also said that in 2 recent interviews that we don't know what really happens to a shard that is rejoined since it has never been explored. He also hinted at a "multiverse" and said that just because a shard is "rejoined" or has a cataclysm in one timeline doesn't mean it happens in others. So assuming it is 9th from our timeline may be wrong as well.

[@ExiaLupus]

@@HotaruGlaive How does it being the ninth go against the lore? Also I read Yoshi P's comments from that interview, and they support the established knowledge the rejoined shards are in fact rejoined to the source.

[@lavelmoore8871]

​@@HotaruGlaiveWhat in FFXIV stories implies that there is a multiverse.

[@bloodydarn]

@@lavelmoore8871 ShB Graha from another timeline, another universe, crossed into our universe and timeline. The Exarch comes from a universe where the First rejoined to the source via the flood of light calamity. If you didn't skip cutscenes and paid attention, the Exarch helps to prevent this calamity by stealing us away from the war against Garlemald during StB to have us save the First reflection in our universe

[@Brahmsonite]

There's also Omega and Greg. They've been dimension hopping throughout the franchise (in cannon) for ages.

[@xDarkLonerXx]

I've been of the mindset that the 9th's Calamity wasn't primed by the Ascians if only because we know that the Ninth had increasing duration of Thunderstorms over thousands of years in their reference for time dilation. And that the storm surge triggered after war had broken out and Windblums weapon detonated. Mayhaps ascians played a role in getting war to start, ie Electrop and its abundance. But I don't think it was primed if only because after the 13th, the Ascians became very mindful of when and how to tip a shard's aetheric balance to have it be absorbed by the source. The Storm Surge started ~400+ years before we even had contact with Alexandria, could've been more like the shards aether violently reacting to the detonation instead of Ascian intervention, but until we get to that point in the story we'll never truly know.

[@axethor]

Alexandria felt like another mistake to me. Passage of time in XIV is weird, but I could easily see they had it primed for a rejoining only for Emet and Elidibus to be defeated, leaving the other sundered Ascians to do as they please. Then whoever was in charge of the 9th just kinda left it there and the eventual War accidentally triggered the "Flood of Lightning." It's not a full rejoining level calamity so the shard still survives, but it still causes a lot of damage.

[@MissKashira]

30 years passed in a few days. If we killed the last Unsundered a month ago, centuries could have passed for the Alexandrians leaving no one to manage the situation.

[@xDarkLonerXx]

@@MissKashira The only thing barring centuries to have passed in Alexandria is that the Yok Huy were having dreams of Living Memory 1,000 years ago during their conquest of Tural, so by that reasoning the time dilation for the Ninth had to be much slower than the source. Living Memory was constructed after the barrier was put up. So the jump to the source is likely what caused their dilation to rapidly speed up until we blew a hole in Vanguard.

[@xDarkLonerXx]

@@axethor But the Yok Huy were having dreams of Living Memory during their attempted conquest of Tural 1,000 years ago on the source, which wouldn't be possible if you're saying they primed it in before Emet and Elidibus were defeated. The only reasonable thinking after learning about the Yok Huy's dreams of the golden city is to conclude that the Ninth 's time dilation was much slower than the sources of only ~400 years passed after the Storm Surge to them, when to us that would've been 1,000 years before Emet and Elidibus were defeated.

[@Tioko]

@@xDarkLonerXx Time dilation is not a constant, the speed is fluctuating. The Exarch explained as much when we arrived on the First, and said “We’ve reached a point of relative equilibrium now”. So time can go both faster and slower than on the Source.

[@Tarrot]

I wouldn't say time travel is intrinsically linked to the Crystal Tower. There are numerous instances of time travel without it. 1: Louisoux sending us 5 years into the future at the end of 1.0 2: Basically everything Alexander does, and I was always under the interpretation from The Twinning that the Crystal Tower could move across time and space specifically due to Alexander for time and Omega for space/alternate dimensions. Omega was also my reason only G'raha and the Crystal Tower do not follow the closed loop time-travel that just about every other instance of time travel uses. 3: Mikoto's Echo which effectively sends us forward in time to see events which will happen. I never thought the Milala moved to the 12th, but there wasn't anything about CT that made me think of it as the reason.

[@SubduedRadical]

Quick question/thoughts: 1) I thought it was Alexander that allowed time travel? While the Crystal Tower IS a massive battery and can do some time-space-dimension stuff, between the Twinning and that one Tales from the Shadows(or Dark?) short story on the website (the one about the alternate timeline Crystal Exarch came from and how Midgarsormyr in that timeline woke from his slumber impressed with what the people did and so decided to give them HIS protection) that it was established Garlond Ironworks records and research into Alexander were what allowed the actual time travel? 2) I agree with the general idea on the 9th. From the start I was talking on Reddit with people and they were insisting Alexandria was from the 2nd Calamity, but I pointed out that makes no sense if the Milalla were coming from during/just after the 5th. We haven't seen time travel work that way anywhere else in the game yet. 3) Though that said, I wouldn't use the Key's size as a thing here. As remember from The Tomb of Bill, in the supernatural world, size is a pretty irrelevant measure of strength. We have no idea HOW much power that thing has in it or can harness. For all we know, it could be that Azem stuck some dimension/time hopping super battery in the void somewhere and the Key merely taps into its power remotely. I'm...not suggesting that's what's going on here, but pointing out that we know next to nothing about the device, so we really DON'T know how it works or what it's capable of. 4) For a while, I thought there must need to be 14 total Calamities. 6 elements aspected to Astral individually, then all 6 aspected to astral together (Darkness), then all 6 aspected to umbral together (Light), then 6 aspected to umbral individually. Recall Urianger's musings - and in stories like this, musings almost always are somehow spot on 100% accurate (or close enough to not matter) about how all elements can be umbral or astral aspected? Like astral fire is...well, flame. But umbral aspected fire would be hot ashes. Granted, with one Source and 13 reflections, maybe they'd only been 13, and we have no idea how they settled on which to use in what Shards, or if they were only doing a few at a time or had all the plates spinning in various stages simultaneously (that we now need to go and fix, as per Emet's mandate to us). But in simple terms, a second Lightning aspected world doesn't seem far fetched. Maybe the 12th was astral lightning (storms) while the 9th is umbra lightning? Isn't one of the weather conditions in Heritage Found "Umbral Static"? Perhaps that means more than simply being a throwaway weather condition... I dunno. Just some thoughts.

[@omnicbuddy4543]

Maybe someone can help me out here, because I've been absolutely baffled this whole time as to why anyone would think it was the 12th. The 12th is gone, and we go to their home reflection. Living Memory, the Unlost World, IS the 9th. Did people miss that part? I even saw some people not realizing that rejoined Reflections are entirely absorbed. There's nothing left. I always figured it was one of the unjoined reflections we haven't heard about.

[@ExiaLupus]

The logic behind the theory amounts to "both have lightning, so they must be the same reflection!". I still don't understand the persistent attachment to the theory that many are demonstrating despite all the proof to the contrary. The hoops that they're jumping through to justify it are crazy.

[@thecrowonyourshoulder]

Oh yeah, I would love to see a video about Sphene's crown (Regulator). Also... is it possible to go into detail about Preservation? I feel they do play a big part in all of this, but they were not the main focus in the MSQ. I just wonder if they are still around, fled somewhere, or actually extinct.

[@Gluurak]

In MSQ was said her crown holds the memory and sould of sphene. And they showed the Crown in the After Credits. Soo it will have a role later on. Also Time Travel still is Alexander not Crystal tower they used Alexander and Omega to make the Dimension / Time Travel with the Crystal Tower in the first.

[@blakewashburn8463]

in the timeline where raha comes from the ironworks was rising in power its very likely it would of been the ones the asciand would plan after the rejoining of light

[@baltemys6097]

Plus +1 to Sphene's resonator video!!

[@TryckSpot]

Not that I disagree with any of this, I just find it strange you put such a large focus on the Crystal Tower within the context of Time Travel... and did not mention Alexander. The whole reason the Crystal Tower can Time Travel is BECAUSE of Alexander. That's what the Garland Ironworks based all their "Timey Wimey" engineering on. Alexander for Time Travel and Omega for Inter-dimension Rift jumping. Its pretty clear on that. Now, one of the still lingering mysteries of this, is that Alexander is still there - locked in time and space in the Hinterlands. Also, there's the Enigma Codex that Mide and her crew were tinkering with before Alexander 'dispersed' the crew. That thing is still a mystery, unless Im forgetting something that happened at the end of that series, but I couldn't help but relate the Codex's appearance to some type of Key, or at least reminiscent of Electrope. So, my suspicion is that time shenanigans are at play here, not to the extent that the Milala traveled back in time to the actual 12th before it rejoined perhaps, but in some lesser form perhaps. There's also the arena where we fight Zoraal Ja, in phase 2. I seem to remember his arena in phase 2 is design to be some nexus for time. If I find that research again i'll link it. However, just more fuel for the whole time-travel theories.

[@Zoeila]

It's not about time travel. It's about the massive energy reserves required for time travel

[@elaine_of_shalott6587]

Second thought, the biggest takeaway I had from this was that we were supposed to feel like the Endless might be alive in some sense. To me, they were far too staic, not really growing just existing at their current point for that to feel implied at all, the first contrast that comes to mind is the character of Merlin in the Safehold series by David Weber. An android containing the memories and personality of someone long dead, he develops his own identity, relationships and skills. To me the Endless just seemed like a very fancy video recording of the people who once were, controlled by AI to make them somewhat interractive. For that mater the memorial AIs in last season of Doctor Who's episode Boom ended up being more lifelike than the Endless to me. This makes for me the biggest flaw in Dawntrail's writing if it is really reflective of their intent. Far more of an issue than the fact that a large portion of the population can't stand a story where we are the mentor to a new female hero, rather than being the hero of the story ourselves.

[@normalmighty]

The endless are really interesting to me in terms of player receptions. There's a huge range of reactions from "these are real people we're killing here who are just alive as everyone else, why is everyone so casual about it??" on one end, and "these are literally just ai chatbots. Why is the game being so melodramatic??" on the other. And almost everyone feels like their interpretation is the obvious conclusion. I actually really like how they handled the endless, specifically because of the deeper discussions it's sparked about what is and is not "alive." Even if things can get a bit heated from so many people feeling like their interpretation is the obvious and most valid one.

[@elaine_of_shalott6587]

@@normalmighty Yeah, I admit I am squarely in the latter section, although I was entirely able to empathise with our comrades who were facing a very realistic ai chatbot taking the image of their loved one, just as they were trying to grieve. I can't imagine having been confronted with an equivalent that looked like my Mom in the weeks or months right after I lost her. But that's sympathy for Wuk Lamat, Krile and Erenville, not the Endless themselves. Sometimes I really wish I could get an idea of the media consumption habits that correspond to certain camps in the community. Like if you hate Dawntrail and Wuk Lamat, can you name at least 4 elements of Joseph Campbell's Hero's Jorney, yes or no? If you think FF14s story is too slow how many multi volume stories have you read and have you regularly watched TV series that are at least 30 years old, when a season was 20+ episodes.

[@normalmighty]

@@elaine_of_shalott6587 In terms of the "the story was too slow" crowd, I'm actually really listening to see how many of them also play WoW and how they feel about the new expansion story over there. The general early impressions I've been seeing from content creators is "huge step up for WoW, but it still felt like they went too fast and didn't give moments enough time to breathe. I'm wondering if we'll see a sort of mini counter-migration to WoW, if the players complaining about the XIV story being too slow are actually big fans of the much denser and faster unrolling of events over there. Part of me really hopes WoW nails this 3-expansion story they're going for, so we can end up with 2 good MMOs from a story perspective, one going for a more condensed vibe for the crowd who want that kind of thing, and one for players like me who likes to do every sidequest as I go and really immerse myself in each chapter of the story over a longer period of time.

[@elaine_of_shalott6587]

@@normalmighty Definitely, I'm waiting a couple weeks to jump into TWW but I do plan to check out the story over there this time. Having multiple good MMOs for different people's vibes is always a good thing. If nothing else it pushes the FF14 team to up their game. (Hey, Square Enix! You know how FF14 players are financially carrying your entire company? How about using some of that money on paying the VAs more so we can get all of the MSQ cutscenes voiced!)

[@Enclave.]

My money is on each element needs 2 calamities. One astral aspect and one umbral aspect. So yes, the 12th already rejoined but that's only one of the two lightning calamities needed. It's the only explanation I've been able to come up with. So for example. Say the 12th was Umbral Lightning, perhaps the 9th was Astral Lightning.

[@DJ_Bonebraker]

I have a sneaky suspicion that we're going to find out a lot of this in the post MSQ, especially since there is still some unfinished work with the void and to a lesser degree with the First. I also have a suspicion that Azem's key/real crystal will be, ahem, key to future patches & even expansions, since I think that the new story line is going to be about what is going on with the remaining unjoined reflections.

[@RrowdyBeast]

Isn't Alexandria's world the lightning reflection, the world Krile's parents came from the Ice reflection? First is Light, 13th is Void, feels like they might be simplifying the Sundering and Calamities as they focus on them imo

[@woljay9362]

Uuhhhh do AloAlo island. I think you’re simplifying your understanding for whatever reason. Krile’s parents didn’t come from another reflection their ancestors did (The first Milala aka Lalafells who travelled to the reflection Alexandria was on.) You have to remind yourself that every rejoining caused a element based calamity on the SOURCE WORLD…

[@dragonquest3827]

See, when a reflection is joined, due to the overwhelming element taking over that reflection and causing it to flood the entire thing, it returns to join with Source planet and carries a now overabundant amount of element back to the source, causing a calamity of that element on our source. Milalas on source, were dealing with the returning elemental calamity of ice element, then prayed to the crystal for salvation and were sent from the source to another reflection to escape the tragedy of a ice calamity. Sorry if my explaining is bad or has errors, i tried :)

[@Luferife]

Yes please do the video about life and death! And a question, I personally don't recall exactly how the regulators works. When they activate that power up or just turn back to life, the souls just return to the Aetherial Sea or they are spent forever?

[@CoBud91]

>walking around the new area Living Memory is in during the patch quest when suddenly Rage Awakened plays o_O

[@Redwolfxx]

Do you think the Cup and Crown in DT Physical representations of the Astromancy Suits as Relics?

[@Redwolfxx]

Possibly Dual Timeline? In 1 Timeline it wasn't the 12th the was Rejoined, but the 9th? or!!! What Happened in Future Timeline that in which WoL past away, that G'raha Hailed from, What happened in Tural there? There has to been timeline where because WoL didn't exist, the Rite of Succession happened the information on Gate Golden City might have been used, this 1 moment of Zarool Ja using the Cup happened in Both Timelines? Cross Roads of Time.

[@Redwolfxx]

Etro, Etro's Gate / Golden City gates designs are close, The Infinite Symbol. Goddess of Chaos, Fate, Balance of Worlds. Time Gates. Link to FF13 & FF15 Versus

[@Dor_Z]

I'm so early :d

[@陳威麟-q7o]

About sphene: as long her minion doesn't appear, we know the lore didn't reveal completely. (And we got Krele one after 7.05, knowing her secret.)

[@Angelo_Fragnarok]

There’s a key factor in your time premise that you missed: Alexander. Alexander is entirely based on time. Furthermore, the relic that summoned Alexander was a tiny crystal given to Mide by a lesser Ascian who was also responsible for ANOTHER relic in 1.0 which was supposed to unlock Seal Rock. This Ascian has not been seen since HW.

[@NeroLucifarious]

"A Lingering Will of Aether" Kingdom hearts crossover confirmed!

[@AxelFireDancer]

My theory regarding sphene’s resonant…Gaia exists…we don’t know her true name (both her reincarnated/former name before awakening as an ascian) nor where her shard was plucked from before being reformed after the calamity on the first…having her ability to manipulate time as well as her ascian powers…seems a likely plot thread they could use 🤔

[@SuperSnivMatt]

100% make a video on Sphene's regulator since I think regardless of it being touched upon here, and going to 100% be used in the future of MSQ, having a whole dedicated video will do wonders for people just catching up. Also, more content from you which is based as h*ck

[@Kururucat]

I think the lalafels could have traveled to Alexandria after the shard was rejoined and only Alexandria was left since we already have a few instances of this happening in the story: Krile's parents creating a portal from Alexandria to the source, and later on Zoraal Ja traveling the other way. During the ice calamity the lalafels could have done like the Zoraal Ja case. Maybe I'm missing something, but I think it could have been posible for Alexandria to be part of the shard lost during the second umbral calamity.

[@IceNInja42]

Problem isits stated that the Milala used their arcanism knowlegde with electrope to develop the tech into the powerhouse ut became. No milalas, no electrope develpoment, no "rejoining"

[@Kururucat]

@@IceNInja42 True, I had forgotten about that

[@anisoptera5832]

I may be remembering this wrong, but I but think what went wrong with the rejoining of the 13th was the absence of a corresponding calamity on the source. However, in successful rejoining didn’t the corresponding calamity have to be the opposite element to balance the forces out correctly? I thought that was why the flood of light was to be balanced by “black” rose (darkness) to complete the rejoining of the first with the source. In that instance what was a calamity of lightning on the Alexandrian world, would be balanced by ice on the first based on the arcane diagram.

[@Wanderingsage7]

The other timey wimey thing we know about, Alexander, is also massive, with TARDIS spatial capabilities to boot.

[@nexmeles8023]

Can we have a moment to talk about the seeming glimpse of South Gustaburg during Interphos fight? Thats been going all around my feeds and discords!

[@warmachine5835]

A class on the life stream and the process of soul creation and recycling would be welcome. As would anything we know about the "thermodynamic" properties of aether. Since one of my questions that gets thrown into stark relief by the situation in Alexandria is "what happens to aether when it is used?" Is there a concept of "conservation of aether" where it can only be transformed, not destroyed? If so, what other physical laws prevent the creation of a perfect closed system in which something like Living Memory can self-sustain forever on its own synthetic aether cycle?

[@KazumiKiguma]

I'm wondering if there's going to be some kind of connection with Alexander considering 9 was his debut title and he was a major part of it. The Enigma Codex also seems like it might be similar to Electrope iirc?

[@jondon4933]

Theory: Some Alexandrians involved in designing the fake Sphene were involved in archiving the real Sphene's soul in a way the President of the Arcadion stores souls. We'll discover and unintentionally release the soul, which we'll eventually learn is an Azem shard who used to moonlight as a traveling adventurer, specifically a White Mage, when she was alive. And we'll find this all out because she'll be telling us all kinds of stuff while following us around like Ardbert did.

[@izunia8436]

You're forgetting Alexandria was only partially rejoined the rest of the shard still exists separately that's what Living Memory is so it couldn't be a rejoined shard

[@iceman3317]

Need to remember...... Yoshi P has really began to focus on multiverse theory as well as going in the past and future.

[@thesaddestknees]

I honestly completely forgot that a resonator for sphene even existed. Been too sucked into the raids to remember key details.

[@DarthSanguine]

*regulator

[@Duskaria]

I've already commented this somewhere else, but Yoshi-P is a master in saying alot but not really saying anything. He'll say stuff like "oh a clue to what comes next is 'journey'" or "oh you talked to someone who may have said something that may be related to whats next" and its gets people speculating only for said patch to drop and not really being related to what Yoshida said unless you jump through ten hoops and squint your eyes.

[@Brahmsonite]

It's not that i thought it made a lot of sense to be the 12th. It's just that that's the one we knew was ruined by lightning. I figure it's possible that the properties of the Everkeep preserved it while everything else was rejoined. And as for the timing of the malala fleeing the 5th Calamity only to get taken out by the 2nd, well, time has been shown to flow randomly, er, convenien-, uh, *unpredictably* on the Shards. Lastly, the 13th is FF4 so it seems weird for the 9th to be FF9 and it could be that he meant "the FF9 reflection" and wasn't identifying the exact location. Just gonna have to wait and see.

[@Gefnir]

So what you’re saying is “Have you heard!? Princess Sphene is here?”

[@devinwebster8896]

My only issue with “Alexandria HAS to be from the 9th” is that, there’s a 75% chance it’s not (assuming the rest of the theory is correct). Additionally, the 1st pays as much homage to ff3 as it does ff1 and canonically the 13th pays homage to ff4 not ff13… so there’s no precedent in game for each reflection being an homage to each Final Fantasy game. As far as discrediting the 12th theory because “it’s impossible” for “a small handheld crystal” being able to time travel is silly. The “Key” is compared *in game* to the Crystal Tower… it’s VERY likely the “key” was made by the last Azem, in an age where people knew much much more about magic/aether then they do in the current age… remember; An even smaller crystal is inscribed with a spell, *based* on Azems favourite spell, crafted by a completely different person, to summon your allies across any distance to fight with you… and it only requires your fervent need/wish/desire to activate… The Crystal Tower is a battery, that was then *retrofitted* to make a device that could travel time and space, in a (relatively) short timeframe, by people who were effectively “inventing” a new kind of magic… so it’s not “lore breaking” if the “key” is a more advanced version of the same spell that Emet-Selch put in Azems crystal. As far as where the “power” came from? Tens of thousands of years of slowly storing it up? Or the spell is just much, much more efficient compared to what future G’Raha and the ironworks could make, which is why they needed the Crystal Tower. Honestly, at this point, I think both theories are just as likely. I prefer the 12th theory, only because I think it’s weird for Alexandria to be from the 9th… “because ff9”…

[@hakim6933]

Does, a rejoining actually fuse the reflection's landmass i.e. physical planet back into the source? or is it just the Aether that's refused? Depending on the answer, there could be lifeless dead planets out there or the source has been physically growing with every rejoining.

[@SynodicScribe]

The entire world is rejoined. Nothing remains.

[@MaydaTiger]

I dont see how the crystal Exarch would know if Alexandria is the 9ths, not only that he was not one of the scientists who figured all this out but he had no way of telling all they knew is which shard got absorbed when or so my understanding go

[@Seth6097]

Full-length video PLEASE