I’ve gotten this question a lot over the weekend and I couldn’t decide how I wanted to cover it so I just kinda sat in front of the mic and wanted to have an honest talk with all of you about it.
Suffice to say, I’m totally on board for believing that what we’re dealing with is the 9th Reflection, but I’m more interested to see it unfold within the MSQ later on than some off handed remarks in an interview.
Be sure to let me know your thoughts as well!
Follow me at: https://twitter.com/ScribeSynodic
Channel Art by Catti: https://ko-fi.com/catticatgame21234
Join the Channel’s Discord: https://discord.gg/YKBu4sQBEk
Support the Channel on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/synodicscribe?fan_landing=true
Disclaimer: The MMORPG known as FinalFantasy XIV Online as well as all its related publications and merchandise are owned by Square Enix. I have no claims to it.
Primary Sources:
Video Games-
FinalFantasy XIV Online
Publications-
Encyclopedia Eorzea Volume I
Encyclopedia Eorzea Volume II
Encyclopedia Eorzea Volume III
Alternative Sources:
FinalFantasyXIV, The Lodestone/Sidestory
FFXIV, Letter from the Producer
Published FFXIV Brand Art Books
#ffxiv #lore #dawntrail
source
When we used Azem's crystal in front of Sphene before we fight her I think we made her interdemensional fusion successful having our power override her attempt and caused the fusion of "Living Memory" with the "The First".
Theoretically I think this would give us a gate from the first to the source.
I feel like one the skies feel similar to me could just be me.
Also during the fight with her and she show's us other world's they looked similar to where we fought Leviathan and Titan in the Eden Raid series.
Obviously just a hunch but it feels very likely to me I would like to here anyone's thought's on this.
Thx 🙏.
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.
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
7:20 – 10:06 it has never been just the crystal tower for time travel. Time travel has always revolved around one thing: Alexander. The Alexander Raids had a time loop and an Alexander was in the Crystal tower. IF the white auracite in the artifact contains the ORIGINAL ancient concept for Alexander (since we know auracite can contain souls, memories, and even beings), there's no reason that the Milala couldn't have gone from the source to the 12th via time travel.
12:30 If Ascians had started a calamity of lightning on the 9th and Alexandria is from the ninth, then why is it not a void of lightning? We've seen that a run away calamity on a shard without causing a calamity on the source leads to the shard becoming a void unusable for rejoining. Especailly if time travel isn't involved and time was moving so much faster on the shard Alexandria is from that 30 years passed in moments for the people who were stuck in the crossfire when Everkeep appeared… Shouldn't it have become a void by then?
15:00 We are explicitly told that Sphene deleted all the memories of herself before she became a machine. There are no memories of the original Sphene left. This is something we are informed of specifically.
The shard being the 12th just makes too much damned sense. I'm not dismissing it yet. Part of me is thinking Yoshi P simply misspoke or a had a mistranslation. Perhaps he was thinking FF9 and instead said the 9th reflection. As far as the paradox problems with the calamity of lightning happening BEFORE the lallafell's travelled through the gate . . .
Well. Time travel makes pretty much ANYTHING possible. That's why writers put time travel into scripts. Any number of timey-whimey bullshit scenarios can be posed and then we'll figure out a reason later . . . or not . . . because it's time travel bullshit and that's precisely what inevitably happens whenever you introduce time travel. My own theory is that in each one of the reflections time might flow VERY differently from that of the source and therefore events which have yet to occur (but inevitably WILL happen) on one reflection may already be feeling its effects on the source (even though it hasn't happened yet) or the other way around. It is a bit sloppy I will admit . . . but that's what happens with time travel nonsense.
As far as the tower itself specifically being a time travel vehicle . . . no. I never really got that impression. I always assumed it was a vehicle which we would use to navigate SPACE but not necessarily TIME. A teleportation device. It seems rather obvious to me that the next overall FFXIV arc after the Hydealan/zodiark saga is going to involve the scions hopping around from reflection to reflection and undoing the work of the Ascians (perhaps even reversing a rejoining). My own theory is that in each one of the reflections is ALSO a shard of Zodiark trapped in a moon (seemingly confirmed in Endwalker on the 13th) and that we will undo a rejoining and bring back a dead world, but by doing so we will also unavoidably be making Zodiark stronger (just like when Ardbert rejoined with the Warrior of Light). A Catch-22. Zodiark gets stronger . . . but so do we. I still think that Zodiark will ultimately be the overall big big bad of the entire series. And how exactly are we going to be hopping around from world to world? Well, that also seems pretty obvious to me. The Crystal Tower. I speculate that the device which Sphene gave us will act as a sort of key or tuning dial which will allow the tower to effectively hone in on each of the frequencies of the reflections and then . . . poof! New adventure awaits! All the while the crystal tower is the focal point (just as it was for Graha in Shadowbringers). Everything revolves around the Crystal Tower.
As far as the 9th ALSO suffering from a calamity of lightning . . . Well, yes, it does seem rather obvious to me that at some point the Ascians would run out of options and sort of reuse a certain element to bring about a calamity but . . .
AND THIS IS A PRETTY GODDAMNED BIG "BUT"
. . . IF the 9th (assuming it is Sphene's world) has already suffered from a world-shattering lightning-aspected calamity alongside the 12th . . . then 1) why wasn't the 9th rejoined alongside the 12th and 2) where was the 2nd lightning-aspected calamity on the source? Although I can think of some possibilities to explain this, they are all pretty goddamned sloppy.
So no. A much simpler answer is the world that died to lighting (Sphene's world) is also . . . the world that died to lightning lol. In other words. It's obviously the 12th.
BUT . . . assuming that I am wrong and that the 9th reflection IS Sphene's world exactly like Yoshi P stated. Is it merely a coincidence that the reflection most closely resembling the 9th game in the Final Fantasy series is ALSO the 9th reflection in FFXIV?
And that got me thinking . . . what if every Final Fantasy 1-13 game will eventually show up in some form in each of the reflections in FFXIV? Take the first for example. One. Final Fantasy one, which involved the original warrior of light.
And who was the original warrior of light?
BOOM! Elidibus. Who showed up on the first. It's fun to think about each one of the mainline games in the Final Fantasy series being represented in one form or another as their equal numbered reflection in FFXIV . . . but there is one rather HUGE problem with this explanation: Final Fantasy IV. The world most closely related to FFIV is obviously . . . the 13th lol. So yeah. Probably not what is going on. But then that just means that Sphene's world being the 9th and ALSO being most closely associated with FFIX is merely a coincidence. Meh. Maybe. But once again that seems rather sloppy.
Reflections, reshmlections… as long as this whole thing leads to Alexander making an appearance in the MSQ, I'll be over the moon.
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
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.
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.
I think the most egregious example of 'developer lore' to date is the reason for the Unsundered being Unsundered. It's never touched on in game, and the devs gave something along the lines of 'Hydaelyn didn't Sunder them because she knew she couldn't' or something like that, which is super unsatisfying to me
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.
If you assume that Alexandria is from the 9th and NOT the 12th then . . . we've got a pretty big fucking problem on our hands. A problem that is roughly the size and shape of an impending calamity which is happening RIGHT NOW. Which would mean . . . Ascians win! The delicate balance tips and GAME OVER. The great rejoining. Do not pass go. Do not collect $100. Which would mean we had best fucking hurry to save the 9th Shadowbringers-style. And this is a conclusion that the Scions themselves would no doubt come to eventually.
But . . . this doesn't really feel right does it? Back-to-back expansions dealing with the 9th? Nah. Not buying it. It seems rather obvious that our next destination would be to save the 13th (which has already been set up). Why else bring in Zero? Golbez? Why have the bonus quest in Shadowbringers once you complete all of the job quests which TOTALLY foreshadows exactly this? That's likely our next destination, the 13th . . . not the 9th (or the 12th).
Sphene's description of her world sure as goddamned sounded like it was on the verge of a world ending calamity. A rejoining. The desperation in their voices during the Alexandria dungeon is EXACTLY the type of desperation I would imagine the people having as a their world LITERALLY fell apart and was destroyed. Hurry! SAVE THE QUEEN! Time is running out! Let's get the fuck outta here!
If you assume, however, that the rather obvious and simple answer is the right one and that Alexandria is from the 12th . . . well, that makes for a pretty goddamned awesome story with no impending 8th calamity (because the calamity already happened). Two nations at war. One nation mischievously develops a world-shattering weapon (Ascian meddling obviously). When used, the weapon tips the elemental scales which leads to a calamity of lightning. The world slowly starts to fall apart and die. A scared people watch in horror as their world starts to be destroyed like the equivalent of the wave in the 1st. In sheer desperation the Alexandrians struggle against time to preserve the soul and memory of their beloved queen before all is lost. They use their technology to literally carve out their kingdom from their destroyed world and set it adrift in time and space betwixt the reflections. A desperate cast away. Their home world completely obliterated and rejoined. The last vestiges of a once proud and boisterous world. They find themselves travelling from reflection to reflection, consuming the souls and memories of the dead in a desperate but futile attempt to preserve their way of life. Pure tragedy.
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? 👓👌
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.
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.
I would definitely be interested in a discussion/disambiguation/explanation of the differences and relationships between physical, mental and soul/spiritual aethers.
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.
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.
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”…
As for the key not being able to achieve the prodigees of Syrcus, I'll be devil's attorney. With only our ether AND azem's crystal we summon at ease warriors from accross the dimensions. More over, the key show to be able to fuse worlds on an massive scale that humble Syrcus warp, and generate by that a pocket dimension WITHIN the source.
Though the amont of aether required should be massive for milala to time travel indeed, my theory is that the key contain a spell more efficient. Golbez fused the aether of a shard of Zodiark AND a first brood wyrm to try and crack the bound between realities, when sorcerers of the first made void portals accross 2 dimensions, and millala's a portal accross two if not 5 dimensions
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.
It seems rather obvious to me that these are the same questions that the scions themselves will be pondering in the not-too-distant future. And it would seem rather strange to me if their conclusion was that Alexandria came from the 9th for . . . Ummm . . . Reasons and . . . Stuff.
Much more likely they would connect Alexandria – a kingdom from a world destroyed by lightning – with . . . A world destroyed by lightning lol. Duh. Obvious.
And if the scions concluded for whatever flimsy reasons that Alexandria came from a reflection that was not rejoined . . . Well, then they have a pretty goddamned big problem on their hands. The way the Alexandrians fled their world in desperation and terror means we have another Shadowbringers on our hands and another impending doom and calamity mere moments away!
Or . . . You know . . . Obvious thing is obvious. It's the 12th. Nothing to worry about. What's done is done.
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.
So what you’re saying is “Have you heard!? Princess Sphene is here?”
I honestly completely forgot that a resonator for sphene even existed. Been too sucked into the raids to remember key details.
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.
They copied the world of ff9 almost perfectly, to be honest, if i see anywhere between 7.1 to 7.5 anyone with a rat face i will be willing to accept this is the same world. Only thing missing, any other lets say "races" in ff9 were already on the verge of extinction by the time of the game (black mage and homonculus can't reproduce, last 2 summoner in love with someone who can't reproduce, only a few of the Quinn were left, Quina is even completely optional to get)
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?
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.
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 🤔
FF9 – 9th Reflection.. seems to line up
All I know is that 7.1 will give us some answers… and many more questions!
Yes, give me all of the reflections lore! More Sphene lore! This is amazing context, not only for FF14 but also DnDxFF14 home brew!
It might be a stupid question but the Watcher is still around and there is one on each moon, shouldn't he know something? He might be connected with the others and could give some answers.
Wait wait wait. Let me understanding this. So when the world was going to ****, the Lala ran and left everyone to thier own devices?
Bro those bastards have been slimy since the beginning
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
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
This expansion really was botched to hell. Alexandria could've been resolved in the next expansion. We could have just been given a vacation like they marketed this expansion to be. Instead we can a god awful annoying Wuk Lamat and a world threat in the last five minutes. What the hell were they thinking.