Dawntrail brought with it a couple of answers and a LOT of new mysteries and possibilities for Final Fantasy XIV. one of those mysteries is where the nation of Alexandria originated. in this video, we will be exploring the history and evidence based on what we have been shown in the game thus far.
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Dawntrail lore, let's fucking go!
Maybe I'm crazy but where is the evidence of time travel with the Dawn Key? You say it with such confidence when I didn't see anywhere in game where it's made clear outside of speculation?
This theorie works on the speculation of it Alexandria is the shard that fall to the Calamity of lighting and nothing suggest such. Worse. The people of Alexandria survive that Storm Surge and putted a barrier to avoid the constant lighting storms. So the climax already happened but the Shard was not rejoined? Yeah, this doesnt make sence. Remember, again 400 years until Zoraal Ja arrived.
Even without the 13 reference, I still feel Occam's razor leans towards the 12th theory. The amount of assumptions one has to make for it to be Shard X is staggering: Shard X just so happens to be going through a Lightning calamity, that Ascians would bring another shards to the brink of collapse when the First was already on a knife's edge until recently, that a chuck of a shard can't survive a rejoining, that the Ascians were watching the shards soooo closely that they would notice a single tribe vanishing or appearing on a shard even though it took them a hundred years to notice an exact copy of the Crystal Tower appearing on a greatly reduced First, etc. We know the Dawn Key can access the Rift and we know that time travel is possible in the Rift. We even know it possible to visit a destroyed world via Elpis. It is such a small leap to say that both happened and Alexandria is the last of the 12th.
One thing I rarely see mentioned is the Dawn Key displays Azem's sigil. We know the Hourglass container was added by the Alexandrians, but the stone itself was a sacred artifact to the Lalafell and is of unknown origins. The presence of Azem's sigil must mean the stone is pre-sundering. My pet theory is that the stone contains one of Azem's spell just like the Zodiac Stones. I believe this spell is a sort of companion to one in Azem's Stone. A spell that sends one to allies (or adoptive Grandfathers 😉 instead of summoning them. I think the Lalafell ending up in the past of the 12th is a complete accident caused by the massive amount of aether pouring into the Source through the Rift when they're prayers for salvation activated the spell. The combination of pre-sundering teleportation magic and the chaos of an ongoing Calamity ripped a hole in spacetime. The spell continued to function in the rift and guided them to a Alexandria where they could help develop Electrope.
I'd also like to point out that Lighting and Ice are opposite on the elemental wheel, holding North and South positions respectively. I'm not sure how this affects the Lalafell traveling from the Calamity of Ice to before the Calamity of Lightning but I thought I'd throw it out there.
Probably a new rejoining is happening and we have no idea what or who is causing it
😮
I'm just excited for when someone in game finally puts together that corrupt aether crystals could be used to run electrope on any aether source.
I personally have a suspicion onto the source of electrope's origins. I think that it is not a natural occurring mineral at all, but specific forms of rock and stone that have been aetherically tilted so far into levin (lightning) that the rock and ores metamorphize into something new, electrope. The lightning imbalance of Alexandria's aether, be it the 12th or one of the 4 intact shards besides the 1st and 13th, would have given rise to this metamorphic ore. With the planar overlay that Alexandria has done, fusing it to the Source, it brought what remained of the electrope to the Source, but also put an area of space that is very imbalanced towards lightning there. It then gave that space 30 years to cook in the couple of hours from the view outside. We see an electrope mine fully functioning, and even NPCs mentioning that there might be a surplus due to most of it being earmarked for the military. I suspect that the area below Heritage Found is now rich with new electrope, the ores that could metamorphize having done so. This may not mean electrope can just be everywhere and every city becomes S9 however, as the entire shard was lightning imbalanced to create that world war, so we might only see enough to see some new technological marvels from magitek engineers working with the engineers of S9, but unless the material can be synthesized artificially, it may remain a somewhat limited resource where recycling could become a real need.
I really like the teory that alexendria is rejoined to the FFXI shard, i would be a good trigger for the raid series
I feel that it is just easier to say that The Unlost World/Neo-Alexandria comes from a reflection that was "Primed" for the next Calamity of Lighting.
Remember, the Ascians after their failure with the 13th realized they needed to have both a reflection on the edge of collapse/flooding of a element, and the Source itself tipped towards instability in a certain elemental direction in order to successfully intake the excess Ether from the reflection that would be rejoined.
The state of Neo-Alexandria in the barrier perfectly fits this as it's analogous to the state The First was in (mind you the state the first was in was sort of a happy accident due to Ardbert accidentally making Mitron into Eden, but Minfilia's intervention did seemingly, intentionally or not, align the state of the First closer to the state the Ascians wanted.)
Heck, the Preservation Organization that created The Endless in the first place could've been led by an Ascian at the start, set up as the equivalent mediating force on the reflection in its "Primed" state like how Vauthry was set up to keep the Flood of Light at bay until the Ascians needed the First to flood.
We threw a monkey-wrench in that though, so the Reflection Neo-Alexandria was on was left to its own devices and with the presence of the Malala on it with The Key, it allowed them to figure out how to perform Interdimensional Fusion (heck, maybe the concept of it was a idea started by the Ascian who created Preservation as a way to brute force rejoinings more easily, but was dropped due to the difficulty in performing it with the Key being hard to work with as noted by Krile's parents)
I also believe it's the 12th because at a point in the MSQ, they talk about the Everkeep levels, and how we fight Zoraal Ja on the 11th, with the 12th level being unknown, which we find out is the portal to the other reflection. I expected them to namedrop it right there and then but guess not.
I thought it was pretty clear in msq that it was the 12th they came from. Not sure why anyone would think otherwise.
My personal theory is that living memory is shielded floating along in the rift waiting to attach itself to any shard that opens entry.
I think it isn't a rejoined shard but one Emet or the others were prepping for a rejoining. Due to the time not matching up this would have been the 9th or even tenth they tried. But with them in a mess after well the last two expanisions no one was there to cull it and prep the source for a second lightning. I say this because 13 rejoinings means some elements would need be repeating.
I think it's pretty clear from everything the game has told us thus far that the Milala didn't time travel, they were shepherded by an Ascian to an unknown still living shard. Emet knew about Alexandria, and the city of gold, and explicitly told us that we should find it and deal with it. The Milala museum has a chamber of ancient masks where the weird cultist that led them guided them to the shard. Emet selch makes it clear when a shard is rejoined it is gone. In Eulmore we see that shards on the brink usually have one kinda normal place where folks wait out the rejoining.
The only way for any of this theory to be true is if we ignore previous characterization of a major npc, the established lore mechanics of the world, the moral importance of one of the most beloved expansions and the thematic weight of the zone we learn all of this from,. All that it gives us is a mechinism for time travel that the game's writers have already explicitly stated they want to avoid, and the potential for all the other rejoinings to be undone by having pockets of people left.
The only logical leap you need to make for this being an unrejoined shard ready for rejoining is that the ascians were working more than one calamity ahead, and that Emet knew what the Azem crystal was before he gave it to us. In exchange it offers us an explanation on the four remaining ascians, allows us to have stable shard travel, and gives us the explicit goal of going to the remaining shards and sorting out their balance now that there isn't an organization holding them on the edge of becoming the void.
I hope the story explains this. Because right now, a lot of things dont make sense. According to the people of Alexandria, it has only been 400 years since the war. And based on the fact that 30 years passed in Alexandria in about…we'll say a week at most on the Source, then the war was just a few months ago, Source time. But that makes no sense because the gate to the city of Gold has been there for centuries, and just 20 years ago it was opened, which should have meant over 10,000 years had passes on Alexandria in just 20 years on the Source (maybe closer to 20,000 years…depending on how many days we assumed passes between Zoraal Ja entering the City of Gold, and when the invasion started).
The math just isnt mathing.
Also, whats up with the Dawnkey having the mark of Azem!?!
Theirs a moment, I can't recall exactly where whwre wuk lamat comments on how everyone here would be trying to claim it if it was on the source and sphene does her "ehhhh subject" change if i recall correctly so I believe it has to be made when worlds join in some fashion.
I am of the opinion that Alexandria is not from the 12th. Time travel in FF gets muddy real fast. I believe the lala's ended up on another shard that was also lightning aspected. My reasoning is this, there are currently only 8 elements, and Etherys was split into 14 shards with, with one shard being the source. It stands to reason then, that some shards would share an elemental aspect with another shard. Hence why the Ascians were able to rejoin a shard of darkness, to bring about the 7th umbral calamity, and the 1st was to be the 8th. If we look back on the rejoinings:
1st Calamity – Wind
2nd Calamity – Lightning
3rd Calamity – Fire
4th Calamity – Earth
5th Calamity – Ice
6th Calamity – Water
7th Calamity – Dark or in Eorzean terms: Umbral
The 1st was supposed to be a Calamity of Light or Astral. So stands to reason another shard that was not rejoined, but had a wave regardless, is lightning and we know the Ascians been trying to create elemental waves on all the shards. And our understanding of the rejoinings, is that they can only happen, when the entire shard gets consumed by the chosen element. Hence why our intervention in the 1st ruined everything for Emet-Selch. If not for G'raha's time travel to prevent the 8th calamity, then Norvrandt would of been consumed by light as planned and the rejoining would of commenced. The key point that changed the timeline, was Emet-Selch's death. That is what ultimately changed the history on the 1st.
Anyways back on point, I believe that in order for a shard to be rejoined, they have to be completely consumed by their element. Hence why Emet created Vaultry, he knew leaving even 1 part of a shard unconsumed, would mean it could not be rejoined. So this theory that Alexandria is a shard that was already rejoined, is I believe, false, as the shard would be unable to be rejoined if it wasn't 100% consumed by it's chosen element. Like the 1st being saved first by Minfilia halting the wall of light, then us killing light wardens and Emet-Selch, prevented the 1st from being consumed fully by light and gave Ryne and crew a chance to restore the empty, to undo the damaged caused by the Ascians. Alexandria set up their own little barrier that ultimately prevented their own shard from being rejoined. But it still, much like the 1st, experienced its own wave, that got halted by the barrier they created. And we know that time on the shards flows far differently than they do on the source. We know from the time Minfilia went to the 1st, before we ourselves got summoned by G'raha, over a hundred years had passed on the 1st.
And we know the lala's went to this shard Alexandria existed in, during the 5th umbral calamity. More than likely the shard they ended up on, was, much like the second shard that rejoined, was lightning aspected. Most likely it was set up to be the 9th umbral calamity. If anything, the 8th calamity going off, would of had the other calamities popping off much more rapidly than before, given the state we saw the source in from the glimpses into G'raha's past. But I agree, that the shard numbers do not match up with the game numbers. So it could be any one of the shards that were not rejoined yet.
I love the lore in this expansion and all the questions we can nibble on. Thank you for doing your videos. They are very much appreciated among the 100 "Why Wuk Lamat ruined Final Fantasy" videos that you find on FFXIV Youtube.
Lorewise I still struggle with the gate to the golden city. Did that gate preexist Preservation's effort to displace shards? If so is there a gate like that to every shard hidden deep in some crevices of the source, possibly built by Azem? If not, then the gate must be the first successful attempt at shard displacement by Preservation; they must have placed it there?
Whould be kinda cool if electrope was somehow linked to original Byregot, maybe like a concept he made? I mean it has the affinity to lightning and how you can morph the material like wicked thunder does.
Not sure i how i feel about ascian influence in preservation or the electrope wars tho
So let me see if I got this right after watching this.
The lalafell from aloalo on the source traveled to 12th shard to a time before it had been rejoined? Even though by the time they traveled it was already absorbed.
I guess time traveling in this game to a time before calamities struck is not a new concept but part of me is still confused as to how they managed to do that/why did the key answer their prayers in such a manner and why did the writers go in such direction of time traveling to a place/time before calamity has struck yet again. However, this time without causing a divergence in timeline as it has all seemingly transpired within the same timeline? Unlike the shadowbringers event which created a new timeline and maintained the old one.
There seems to be two major theories for Alexandria's origin.
1. The one proposed in this video, where Alexandria is a surviving part of the Twelfth, to which the Millala travelled using some sort of time travel.
2. Alexandria not being the Twelfth, but being some other shard which went through most of a Rejoining process but never actually got Rejoined through an Umbral Calamity
I'm not convinced of either of them, because they both require some leaps of logic I'm not comfortable making. Theory one has the obvious leap of logic requiring time travel to be possible outside of Crystal Tower shenanigans, which the video squares away through the presence of the Historia Crux in Everkeep. This is better than I usual see, which just takes time travel for granted, but I'm admittedly still unconvinced, through a combination of in-universe and meta reasons. In universe, I'm simply not convinced that's the Historia Crux. It looks significantly different: the rings aren't jagged, the patterns are different, the color palette is different – the only 100% similarity is it's a tunnel of glowing, rotating rings, which is sort of a pretty standard sci-fi image. None of Zoraal Ja's attacks involve anything time-travel related that would require the Historia Crux to show up, either – he's more about reconstructing reality around him.
The meta reasons I don't believe that whatever that thing is is significant is simply that it's not highlighted in any way. It just shows up in the background during the fight – the trust NPCs don't mention it, there's no line from one of the Scions along the lines of "What was that mysterious machine Zoraal Ja summoned? It seemed to contain great power…". If we're doing something as important as introducing a time travel machine that our plotline going forward is going to need to make sense, the writers sure as heck aren't letting it be in the background of a trial where players are more likely to be staring at the ground for indicators than paying attention to the Skybox, not without any line to make damn sure the audience knows there was something weird going on there beyond the usual flashy animations. Not pointing it out explicitly would be downright horrible writing.
Without this, I just can't throw my weight behind theory 1. Until there's a reason for us to believe the Millala had a means of time travel, it seems like nothing more than speculation – speculation that I readily admit could easily be made more convincing and proven right, but speculation I'm not convinced by just yet.
There's also the smaller leap of logic that a chunk of the Twelfth could exist after it's been rejoined. This isn't as big of a deal breaker for me, but I do think it'd make for unsatisfying storytelling after Shadowbringers being the story it was, and it would involve retconning the fairly explicit infodup about how rejoining works. It's the sort of bending of the rules I could see happening in order to tell a new story they want to tell – one I'd initially be unhappy about until the new story proved good enough to be worth the rule-bending.
Theory number 2 is a little more solid, in that it doesn't require any one massive leap of logic like assuming time travel. Instead, it's a number of small leaps of logic that end up adding up. The Ascians were working on (and were close to accomplishing) several rejoinings at once. Alexandria's Calamity wasn't going to be Wind as one would assume after Light, but skip one ahead and straight to Lightning (or there's another Wind-flooded Shard out there somewhere, and the Ascians were working three Calamities in advance). Elemental Floods can be slow and steady like the Storm Surge rather than quick and immediate like the Flood of Light. People can just, like, figure out how to stop an Elemental Flood without Hydaelyn's intervention and every other Reflection before Alexandria just had a skill issue, I guess. None of these by themselves would be enough for me to discredit the theory, but there's so many little cracks in the theory that I end up not believing it either.
Ultimately, I think the truth is going to be some insane new third thing that none of us could possibly predict, due to factors that are currently completely beyond our understanding. Part of is that neither major theory works for me at the moment, but part of it is also meta reasons, chief of which is how Dawntrail winks and nudges at the audience, discrediting both the theories. It initially leads us to assume it's theory 2, but at some point you hear about the Storm Surge and literally get the option to have the WoL say "wow, this sure sounds like it was an Umbral Calamity", pushing the audience toward theory 1. Then it throws an absolute curveball that destroys theory 2 with the Millala's travelling to Alexandria after the 6th Umbral Calamity, and then it basically tells you "there's some weird stuff you don't get going on" by revealing Azem's symbol on the Key. The game just straight up walks you to the two reasonable conclusions and debunks them for you before giving you a clue you can't fully grasp the significance of yet. My guess is that whatever caused Alexandria to go through the stuff it did is the new arc "big bad", in the same way the Ascians and the Garleans were for the Hydaelyn/Zodiark saga. It's either a malevolent force of some kind – maybe a malicious other reflection, or some new secretive organization, some antagonist – or it's something that threatens the fabric of existence now that Hydaelyn and Zodiark are gone – maybe a natural collapse of the reflections now that the two big forces directly and indirectly responsible for their existence are no longer present. Dawntrail was meant to be the start of a new arc, and other than this mystery it's not left us a thread for the overarching story to pull on, so I suspect whatever the big arc for the next few expansions is is directly related to these weird reflection shenanigans and the origins of the Key.
I think electrope comes from the source and that it has been discovered and used before. you guys remember the crystal in the azime steppe? it looks awfully similar in color and marbleling (is that a word) but shaped and inscriped to serve its purpose aka the allagans used it for azys lla if i'm not mistaken. But didn't the questline also reveal that there are SEVERAL of those crystals in use?
I lean on it being another shard because there are not enough elements for all shards to be rejoined, but elemental alignment matters.
Remember that the 2nd calamity was so devastating people only survived by hiding in caves. This leads me to believe it was Astral Lightning. Astral aspected Lightning would be much more destructive than Umbral aspected lightning.
And the most common weather in Heritage Found is …Umbral Static!
That's my theory anyway, this also does not need time travel for the Milala, and explains why we can visit that reflection.
The portal to Living Memory at the top of Everkeep, where all the memory data is taken, is an ACTIVE portal to another shard up until Sphene closes it. Y'shtola states as much. Living Memory and the Everkeep, and by association Alexandria, are from an un-rejoined shard we can presently visit. Moreover, when the dome appears in Heritage Found, it is a dimensional fusion between their shard and the source at that point in time, and until the dome is pierced by Zoraal Ja, the parts of the source within the dome operate on that shard's timeframe. This could not occur if that shard was already rejoined, because that shard's timeframe would be our timeframe.
The only active shards remaining that could be The Unlost World are the 4th, 8th, 9th, and 11th. Alexandria belongs to one of them. That's why it's named The Unlost World to begin with – we know it's another active shard, we just don't know which and Y'shtola says only an Ascian would know for sure.
As for why Y'shtola does not recognize Krile as having a less dense soul, it's because Krile is likely only 1/14th less dense than Source denizens. The Milala left after the Fifth Umbral Calamity, which would leave them 6/14ths vs. the Source's 8/14ths. However, we know from Ardbert's interactions with us that fragments of souls are attracted to one another and have the ability to merge, and it is entirely possible that in the thousands of years the Milala existed on The Unlost World, some of their 6/14ths rejoined souls merged with some of the 1/14th shards. If that happened, then that would put Krile at 7/14ths vs. everyone else's 8/14ths (and our 9/14ths). But Y'shtola's aether sight is also imprecise – she did not recognize our soul as having been repaired by merging with Ardbert, she only saw the corruption removed while Ryne saw deeper. It's likely that Y'shtola is unable to detect the minute difference in soul density a single rejoining creates.
Extremely great video
Slight correction:
Shadows of Mhach and Crystal Tower confirmed the void isnt exclusively 4.
I would like it to be another different Shard thought. Yes, there is the possibility that the Milalla not only shard-jumped but also timeskipped to the past when they used "The Key" to go to salvation. But that would require them to have gone extremely to the past of the 12th, as we know that not only Milalla's culture was very ancient and some of the better details had been lost but also how the Milallas were partly responsible for the the Electrope being used as miracle material. I believe that as with the First avoiding the rejoining by saving a small fraction of the world, the world of Alexandria also avoided the rejoining by saving a small fraction of it. It would also not be such a nuisance as we know for a fact that time traveling shenanigans in FF are not easy to be done, and the only ones able to properly do it, in the lore, were Alexander (a primal) and G'raha with the help of other-future-timeline scientists that studied Alexander and Omega.
Some people theorize that the "Key" was simply one of Hyadelyn's crystals given to the Milalla, awakening their Echo and their secondary abilities that came with it, thus granting them shard-jumping. This took them to another X shard. Not the 12th as it had been already consumed. They support this with the fact that we required a gate akin to a Voidgate to travel to Living Memory, so they had to be in another shard to begin with.
I believe though that time traveling being so hard to do, requiring either an epic primal like Alexander or the processing and aetheric power of the Crystal tower, would be really farfetched with just a simple item that we know the Milallas got but not why or how. It would still require vast ammounts of aether and great power.
Both theories, and tbh any theory, would be farfetched until we are given more to it. I am just posing what I believe the most, but I would not say that Alexandria being the 12th is wrong, since it is possible, we have seen it possible. Just that in my scope, the idea of it being another shard that was about to die to Lightning, is the best of the two. Hopefully it is like you say and the devs will give us more details in the patches to come.
Thanks for the Video. It did bring some light to stuff I had forgotten.
what is the music used?
Electrope could be an ore that was made with dynamis. There seem to be strong connection in game about memory powers being related to dynamis such as logos actions from Eureka content or lost actions from Bozja and zadnor content. The power up using beast souls resemble arimata used by the auspices of the far east which was driven by emotion and in case of suzaku, her memory of love for tenzen triggering her power.
I have 2 big problems with this theory.
A – there's literally NO indication that the key also allows you to travel through time, and is just a "hey this fits my theory so I'm gonna use it."
B – I refuse to believe there's ANYTHING that could allow a shard to escape a rejoining, unless the dome had already removed itself from the 12th before the rejoining. And I don't mean the dome was erected, thus cutting off its connection to the outside world. I mean physically already removed from existence on the 12th.
We don't have enough information until the devs give us an indication that either, if not preferably both, of these are possible.
Remember, there's more shards than there are elements. Having multiple calamities of the same element is entirely possible. In fact, we have the 13th, consumed by dark, and another shard that WAS successfully rejoined in a calamity of dark.
it's the 9th or one of the current still active shards 100%, it can't be 12th and it's ridiculus so many ppl wanna belive this
I'm not sure why you'd say that the First was 5 inspired, behind the Ronka Ruins reference
The First is heavily inspired by 3, specifically the alternate world threatened by a flood of Light that was saved by Warriors of Darkness
Can you link that video on why the skies for each shard are different? I can't seem to find a video with such a title.
Quick tidbit to think about rq, you state that Sphene lied about not agreeing with Zoraal Ja's attack, but that might not be a lie. It's pretty much known that there are two sides to Sphene, her memory, and her directive as queen. The memory of Sphene is what we interact with majority of the time, and it's entirely possible that she truly does not wish for any more war or loss of life, and just wants her people to be preserved, but the queen's directive knows this is folly and would require the sacrifice of others to do.