I've seen a lot of speculation regarding "the Withering" that Halmarut and Calyx talk about, and I think there's already many leads that have been laid out towards it though Post-EW and DT. The big one comes from the Endwalker Studium quests, where the WoL fixes and ancient translation device which reads out this passage from an old book about the Lifestream:
"The serpent that sleeps in the deep slowly sheds its skin of old. Eventually, the serpent devours its own tail, and renders new flesh using its own. The pain felt will cause the earth to quake, the mountains to crumble, and the rivers to run dry. Thus, seven wedges must be driven into its back..."
This feels way to specific to not mean anything, and it also sounds an awful lot like the great withering mentioned in 7.4. I also put my game into japanese to check that this wasn't just the translation team having fun, but according to Google Translate the japanese version is pretty much the same, also specifying the seven wedges. Interestingly, there's seven shards left if we include the Source, and we know that the aetherial sea got sundered, so presumably whatever this serpent is (whether is lives in the Lifestream or is the embodiment of the Lifestream itself) it got sundered as well. Perhaps the Winterers are trying to drive these "seven wedges into its back", or maybe that is something that we as the Keeper of the Key will have to do in the coming expansions?
This would also explain the "keening from the earth" which occured during the Final Days. I've seen some people think that this was a dropped plot point or a red herring, and that it was actually supposed to be the Endsong, but Ahewann mentions the same keening being heard from the earth during the second Final Days in Endwalker, so I highly doubt that. It also explains the odd scene with Elidibus at the end of Pandaemonium, where he's returning to the aetherial sea and says something like "should this star continue upon its course...". If the serpent is in (or "is") the aetherial sea, it stands to reason that Elidibus would see this truth just before dying. Elidibus' constellation is also Ophiuchus, the Serpent-Bearer, which would make sense given that he's the heart of Zodiark and Zodiark protects this serpent and the star itself by forestalling the Final Days.
There's also even more serpent imagery regarding the plot of inter-shard travel. The Yok Huy mention in the Tender Valley quests that they "revere sepents as divine creatures who govern the boundary between worlds", and that "when the great serpent doth awaken, its coil shall envelop the world", not to mention the fact that the great serpent of Ronka/Tural somehow exists on many reflections, and that the First has similar mythology. In P12S, which takes place in the aetherial sea (and calls back Ultima, the High Seraph who also might have some role in this), the background is a serpent coiling around without a visible head or tail. There's probably even more serpent symbolism too that I've missed, but either way everything seems to add up.
I believe that the true goal of the Winterers is related to this serpent, given the prominent role of themes of death and transcending it in Dawntrail. Maybe they want to destroy it so that there is no more life and death, but some new kind of existance? Or maybe they want to keep it alive no matter the cost? Either way, I believe that voice of the serpent is "nature's proclamation" which "echoes in the silence left by the will of the star" given that if the serpent is the source of the keening from the earth, it predates both Zodiark and Hydealyn, and is maybe a kind of "true" will of the star.
Also Zenos comes back in 8.0, you heard it here first folks
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"The serpent that sleeps in the deep slowly sheds its skin of old. Eventually, the serpent devours its own tail, and renders new flesh using its own. The pain felt will cause the earth to quake, the mountains to crumble, and the rivers to run dry. Thus, seven wedges must be driven into its back..."
This feels way to specific to not mean anything, and it also sounds an awful lot like the great withering mentioned in 7.4. I also put my game into japanese to check that this wasn't just the translation team having fun, but according to Google Translate the japanese version is pretty much the same, also specifying the seven wedges. Interestingly, there's seven shards left if we include the Source, and we know that the aetherial sea got sundered, so presumably whatever this serpent is (whether is lives in the Lifestream or is the embodiment of the Lifestream itself) it got sundered as well. Perhaps the Winterers are trying to drive these "seven wedges into its back", or maybe that is something that we as the Keeper of the Key will have to do in the coming expansions?
This would also explain the "keening from the earth" which occured during the Final Days. I've seen some people think that this was a dropped plot point or a red herring, and that it was actually supposed to be the Endsong, but Ahewann mentions the same keening being heard from the earth during the second Final Days in Endwalker, so I highly doubt that. It also explains the odd scene with Elidibus at the end of Pandaemonium, where he's returning to the aetherial sea and says something like "should this star continue upon its course...". If the serpent is in (or "is") the aetherial sea, it stands to reason that Elidibus would see this truth just before dying. Elidibus' constellation is also Ophiuchus, the Serpent-Bearer, which would make sense given that he's the heart of Zodiark and Zodiark protects this serpent and the star itself by forestalling the Final Days.
There's also even more serpent imagery regarding the plot of inter-shard travel. The Yok Huy mention in the Tender Valley quests that they "revere sepents as divine creatures who govern the boundary between worlds", and that "when the great serpent doth awaken, its coil shall envelop the world", not to mention the fact that the great serpent of Ronka/Tural somehow exists on many reflections, and that the First has similar mythology. In P12S, which takes place in the aetherial sea (and calls back Ultima, the High Seraph who also might have some role in this), the background is a serpent coiling around without a visible head or tail. There's probably even more serpent symbolism too that I've missed, but either way everything seems to add up.
I believe that the true goal of the Winterers is related to this serpent, given the prominent role of themes of death and transcending it in Dawntrail. Maybe they want to destroy it so that there is no more life and death, but some new kind of existance? Or maybe they want to keep it alive no matter the cost? Either way, I believe that voice of the serpent is "nature's proclamation" which "echoes in the silence left by the will of the star" given that if the serpent is the source of the keening from the earth, it predates both Zodiark and Hydealyn, and is maybe a kind of "true" will of the star.
Also Zenos comes back in 8.0, you heard it here first folks
submitted by /u/ungerkst_ullsvin
[link] [comments]
Continue reading...