Hey wouldn’t it be cool if the Warrior of Light collected all the shards of their soul and went back in time at the end of FFXIV and became Azem?
—people whose primary interaction with fiction is theorycrafting whether Goku could beat up Superman
Okay, that’s not entirely fair; this could be done interestingly, maybe. But I still don’t like the idea.
Because it’s not enough that their Warrior of Light is a super strong slayer of primals and Ascians and the literal embodiment of despair. It’s not enough that they’re descended from one of the fourteen most important people in Amaurot, and the one specifically who set themself apart by defecting. It’s not enough that they basically inherited the seat of Azem when Hythlodaeus gave them the soul crystal. No, their WoL has to be even more special by somehow going back in time and literally becoming the same Azem they reincarnated from, somehow.
Maybe that’s ungenerous? I don’t know. I only ever see it out of people who unironically enjoy powerscaling.
But I don’t think it’s going to happen or even that it can happen!
There have been seven Calamities, thus seven rejoinings, leaving the Warrior of Light at 8/14 of Azem’s soul — the one bit from the Source and seven from the seven rejoined reflections. Then at the end of Shadowbringers, Ardbert sacrifices himself to rejoin with us so we can overcome the light poisoning, leaving us at 9/14.
But one thing that has never changed is how tall people of the Source are. Even at 9/14 of a soul, the Warrior of Light and G’raha are the same height as all of their friends — not to mention, they’re the same height as people of the First, Ninth, and Thirteenth. This despite the fact that the unsundered Ancients were much taller.
I know the Doylist explanation for this is that the sundering and rejoinings hadn’t been conceptualized when the game was early in development, so they didn’t think to have people suddenly banging their heads on their doorframes after Bahamut wrecked things. But the IRL reasoning doesn’t much matter; the fact remains that in-universe, Ryne is the same height as Alisaie and Blue Alisaie. So why should we expect that a fully-rejoined WoL would be the same height as an Ancient?
Well, not a Hyur, exactly, but more or less. Sure, when you go back to Elpis there are remarks about how you resemble Azem physically as well as in your soul color, but for most WoLs there’s still the little problem of them having weird ears or horns or tails or fur covering their entire body. Or the fact that they only come up to knee-height even after Emet-Selch bolsters their aether.
If the WoL was destined to go back in time and become Azem, surely Hythlodaeus would have said something like “Wow, you even have their adorable feline ears!” or something.
Let’s pretend, for the sake of argument, that this whole premise is actually possible: The Warrior of Light could go back in time and become Azem, if only their soul became fully rejoined.
Okay. So how does their soul get rejoined? To reiterate, we have 9/14 of Azem’s soul. How are we going to get the other five bits? Do we…
This seems… unlikely.
You know what, actually, I could actually go for an evil shard of ours doing this to four of our other shards and then coming after us. Then we have no choice but to kill them, and when that happens they rejoin with us. Maybe that wouldn’t be awful. A villain like that could be good commentary on the kind of player who thinks this would be a good idea.
Why would the Warrior of Light want to do this? Why would they say yes?
I really hope not. It’s possible within the lore of the game, I guess, but I’d rather not see that.
Though that gives me an idea: The Warrior of Light is dead in the Eighth Umbral Calamity’s timeline, but there’s no reason their soul couldn’t still reincarnate. The rest of the Calamities and rejoinings could happen in that timeline. It wouldn’t be “the Warrior of Light” but rather their future successor. Not sure how they would get back to ancient times without the Crystal Tower… but then, I’m also not sure how the WoL is supposed to go back to before the time period they already visited to begin with in this becoming-Azem concept.
Ugh, please, no. Not only would this be lazy writing, it would retroactively cheapen Ardbert’s sacrifice.
Maybe.
There’s a pretty neat fic series I’m following called The Young Azem Mysteries that’s about, well, Azem when they were younger. They, Hades, and Hythlodaeus engage in shenanigans and it’s all-around a fun time. Ithas — the titular “young Azem”, since they haven’t yet actually ascended to the seat of Azem — has a mysterious backstory that involves falling through time in some weird direction (there’s a lot of spacetime shenanigans in this series that I really love), and has no memory of anything before they were found by Venat as a young child. There’s also something really weird about their soul when Hades and Hythlodaeus look at it with their soul-sight.
The author hasn’t explicitly said that Ithas is a rejoined WoL; I don’t know if that’s the intention or if it’s something else entirely. If it is the intention, I don’t know if it will ever be confirmed. But that’s one way the concept could be done that I don’t totally hate. Ithas is just trying to live their life without drama, not trying to change the past or fulfill some grand destiny.
Also, Ithas is a precious child who must be protected at all costs. That is all.
Other than that, the whole rejoined-with-an-evil-shard-who-forcibly-murdered-the-other-four-remaining-shards idea and the future-reincarnation-from-the-bad-timeline idea are just things I came up with off the top of my head, but I guess they’re not horrible either? I sort of talked myself into not hating them while I was writing this.
I still don’t really like the idea of the WoL literally being Azem, though. Having the same soul doesn’t mean you’re the same person! We’ve seen this over and over — Emet-Selch wanted the WoL to be Azem, but the whole point is that they’re not! So if this did happen, I’d want it to happen to a future reincarnation of the WoL… but that flies in the face of the powerscaling weirdos who just want their WoL to be the Ultra Super Mega Special Best At Everything In The Universe, and they’re mostly the ones who want this concept to happen in the first place.