This was been a topic many people asked for and I was more than happy to do my best in researching it. Honestly I wasn’t expecting to be pulled across so many expansion while attempting to explain this, but I’m glad that I was able to put this together all the same! Be sure to let me know your own thoughts in the comment section, because we certainly will learn more about this item at a later date!
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Hmm, at ShB Emet talks about cave painting of Hydaelyn and Zodiark. People at beginning had more knowledge of what happened at sundering. That includes shard soul of Azem who could have enough knowledge and skill to make the key.
Interestingly Lala's in AloAlo have used the key before escaping during ice cataclysm. Dwarfs at 1st use same greeting and are also technically advanced. They make tanks with energy cannon. Also there is fairy in island.
Instead of just being a creation of Azem, it could be a auracite crystal modified by Azem, similar to how Athena worked on the Heart of Sabik.
Ultima, the High Seraph was a extradimensional being that appears on Etheirys before the Sundering, and the auracite she created would react to the emotions/feelings of those wielding said auracite.
As something related to an extradimensional being, auracite might be a great foundation to build upon for spells going across space and other realities.
I think there's a reason why they linked the lore of Pandemonium and Heart of Sabik with Ultima, the High Seraph, and I'm sure this relic may be another link as well.
I just thought if something. FeoUl is also orange. That’s all
The key is actually an nft.
This video made me realize something that I'm slapping my forehead for not realizing for over a decade:
Teleport, Return, and the ease of our use of the Aethernet systems are so easy for us because the magics involved would be something that Azem the Traveler would have as native abilities. It's not that we have boundless aether to Teleport so easily, it's that the magics involved are as effortless to us as breathing. The costs are negligible because they're practically instinctual for us.
This relic is surely belongs to Azem, since the mark in activation are not naturally formed, but crafted like our crystal. And as such size in hand of asian, you can hardly blame our origin to drop it… Guess we should thank for Emet again for the adjusting of size after all.
Is it weird that I just refer to it as "Crack rock of destiny"?
The key that unlocks the gateway that joins both our worlds is to be a unifier, a bridge who'd connect those rejecting what needs to be done.
What if Azem invented Return and Teleport? As in, the two very first spells you learn?
I wonder if the relic is what Azem was working on before the Sundering, when they walked away from both groups to find a third way. Like, they might have known what Venat's 'plan' was and started working on it. Because, intended use or not, it can stitch together reflections with out a calamity.
As for why the Lala's had it, Azem did like island wine so…
"Does it mean I got 13 more worlds to travel and explore? NICE!"
Azem when they hear Venat is about to sunder the world into 14 pieces.
Personaly i think the crystal is a Auracite(jp description call it blue crystal even if it's almost white in the game), but i can see Azem being the one that had the crystal, just like Atena had the Heart of Sabik and we don't know how she got it, so many possibilities, i'm hyped!
we also have a possible shard exploration on the next patch with the FFXI Raids =D
I personally believe the Key was made by Emet Selch himself after he had already made the Azem Crystal and gained an understanding of the spell and was in fact part of one of his original plans to rejoin the worlds, given that Interdimensional Fusion is in essence a forced rejoining of Alexandria's Shard and Xak Tural but he gave up on it seeing the method as flawed.
I’ve been thinking this Crystal could have been a creation of Azem to aid in their travels and I completely forgot about the short story. Hell I don’t even remember if I read this one…
I’m convinced. If this isn’t the crystal from the story it’s something like that. A tool used by Azem to aid in their travels around the star
Spoiler below
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I'm convinced Venat and Ancient Azem worked together to create a solution to reuniting the shards after the Endsinger's fall, and that's what the key is.
I'm more curious what this thing can do. When it was super charged it was able to merge some of a reflection to the source which makes me wonder what kind of other things it can do or what this means for the future of FFXIV's story.
My personal headcannon is that the crystal was handed to the milala by ascians to send to to the reflection of alexandria, seeing as how imperative they were in advancing that world's technology, spurring it towards lightning more and more, making it a vessel ready for rejoining
My interpretation, after some thought, is that we’re dealing with two different spells with similar means of activation; that being fervent prayers. The crystal of Azem’s spell pulls what you desire to you. The key’s spell meanwhile brings you to what you desire.
B is actually for Brilliant
The real question is if Azem lost the crystal, or "lost" the crystal, as Azem, with a suspicious amount of future knowledge, might well have decided to ensure that the convocation could not redact the crystal, and made sure it would not be found… until after the sundering. And Azem did save an island from a volcano because they enjoyed the grapes there. What if that island that Azem saved is what would become Aloalo after the sundering?
Also, if you do have some education in physics, you know that the warping of space and the warping of time are essentially the same thing. Which really brings into question what power those sorts of spells could have in the hands of a creative user.
I was really tired of people jumping to conclusion regarding the key, but your video is a real breath of fresh air.
You really took the time to explain all we knew about Azem's magic and I find your theory really elegant. No big brain plan, just characters being true to themselves and the consequences of that.
(And great job bringing out the side story, I was so focused on the convocation lore when it got released I totally forgot about the crystal)
Scribe has a beard :0 I never noticed that before.
It's possible to be a relic of Azem, but it's also possible to be something similar, but not coming from him. It's very in the air right now, everything is possible, even that the symbol of Azem doesn't refer to the Azem we are, but another one that had the seat of Azem, because let's forget the Ancient that we were wasn't the only Azem to ever exist.
I think it's definitely a crystal forged by Azem– AND, I think, it may have been created in the final hours of the ancients.
It's said, from what I recall, that Azem fled both the convocation and venat, to try and seek an alternative path
i think the key, as we call it, is part of this path
Perhaps, a way for wayward travellers, cast wingless, adrift, to find their way home again?
With the information that we have so far, that it's an old artifact of Azem's themselves, makes the most sense. We are on the source after all, which is the original world right? We still havn't found any traces of Amurat, but it 'SHOULD' be possible to find.
I like this theory, especially with how it ties into the Tales of the Dawn story. As an additional line of thought though, I don't think I have seen anyone speculate about the Crystal having a strong resemblance to White Auracite. This is purely speculative, but an alternative theory I want to propose: The crystal, likely made by Azem, contains one of the shards of Azem's soul (and likely memories) from another reflection (or the OG Azem themselves?), hence the teleportation magic power and its reaction to our summoning spell.
i happen to main a lalafell pld so at the end of dawntrail when the wol has it all i was thinking was "ah back in the hands of a lala where it belongs"
Its worth noting that when the Milala prayed to the relic, it transported them from a realm aspected to ice to a realm aspected to levin (although not as greatly at the time). Aetherically speaking, it sent them to a realm that was as far from their struggle as possible. Perhaps thats why that shard in particular was the destination the crystal chose.
I sure do love mcguffins.
Noice!
So awesome though. Allot to unpack here.
I only just realised that the Azem Crystal summoning looks like a Sun. It also looks very much like the Milala sun mural, however theirs has 8 circles surrounding the centre. Ours has 7.
I love how Reddit and the Synodic Scribe have all come together to decide that today is the day to theorycraft about the key.
I like to think that Azem left the key behind deliberately.
There's no reason to think it isn't the one Hythlodeus found in his office.
I personally believed that the crystal was made by azem, POSSIBLY as their solution to the sundering. They didn’t join either side, possibly because they wanted to find their own answer- hence the crystal
The world will be sundered, yes but one day someone will have the wish to unite these worlds together and with this crystal, they could “rejoin” their world.
remember as krilles parents said that key is not good or evil it is a tool
Very likely, whatever the device is, it will most likely be the means by which we can travel to other Shards. Without the Ascians to bring about any more rejoinings, perhaps future expansions will involve us traveling to shards and possibly finding a way to restore the ones that have been overrun with aether like the Thirteenth
I think this is my favorite theory of what the key is. I'd much rather it be a creation of Azem than a random piece of auracite like the Heart of Sabik or something. Sounds a lot more interesting, and I hope this is where they take it. I would like more Azem lore.
Do you think that maybe the volcano Azem infamously dove into for a fun haha food joke or whatever it as might have some connection to the island the Milala were originally on?
The one thing I notice looking at the images and screenshots of the crystal: It looks an awful lot like the sort of aetheryte style that we saw when we visited The World Unsundered. And considering this was likely the catalyst that was trying to be used to teleport all of Alexandria into the Source, well…
It seems that a lot of Ancient Azem's magicks and concepts centered around spatial manipulation, specifically point to point teleportation to either move themselves and any personnel/materiel needed to a particular destination or to call other people to their side. It's like they were essentially running a civilian rapid response brigade, especially given what we learned at the end of Myths of the Realm.
This does beg the question though: what was the fate of our/Azem's shard in Alexandria's reflection? At best, only the souls within Alexandria were cut off from the Aetherial Sea since the soul energy was recycled/expended to fuel the regulators, so the rest of the shard may be intact albeit corrupted into essentially a lightning version of The First/Thirteenth. (Also sidebar: Is my math off or should Krile still technically be short a shard in her soul? Her ancestors were essentially 6/14 rejoined, and while she was present for the 7th Umbral Calamity, she nor her ancestors were present on the Source for the 6th. So she should be a 7/14, while most people on the Source are 8/14 and the WoL and G'raha are 9/14 with the WoL fusing with Ardbert and G'raha fusing with Crystal Exarch that survived the 8th Umbral Calamity from the other timeline.)
What does seem clear is that this Key is just a bigger part of understanding the prototype gate that Preservation created. If we can figure out how THAT works, we can make stable connections to the other reflections which might keep them from collapsing into the source per if Y'sthola's theory from the end of Endwalker holds.
I'm excited to see how this plays out since it's partly going along my headcanon of what would happen in the next 10-year arc.
I think at some point in the future we are going to fight original Azem that went forward in time and try to rejoin all shards without calamities by using some ultimate spacial magik. But that would bring instant dead to those lives on the remaining shards then we overcome him. Decide then to use the artifact to slowly merge all shards into Source. Azem return in his time to set history to its course such us pandemonium raid event.
After watching this as well as a video that hypothesizes the key is Auracite, I'm thinking: What if it's both?
The High Seraph Ultima created this twisted white Auracite (Who's STILL alive and kicking, we only killed a Primal in her image!), and Azem found it, and enchanted it with his magicks to turn it into a mass-teleportation device.
The crystal in the relic looks more like auracite to me, which would be something associated with Ultima/the Heart of Sabik rather than Azem. Combined with the devs saying they intentionally wanted to leave Azem a blank slate for people to fill in the details based on their own WoL, I strongly suspect trying to connect the relic to Azem is barking up the wrong tree.
I do think that the electrope enhancements made by Preservation might have some connection though, and the symbol of Azem appearing on the relic might connect us back to the conversation we had in Shadowbringers with Urianger about how symbols and names relating to Azem appear all over the world as a sign of travel and protection.
The crystal inside is absolutely white auracite.