The 143 Ascian Problem
Based on the information presented in these quests, reflections of sundered Ascians can have their memories restored through the crystals.
They are Shadowbringers and Endwalkers quests, quoted below for easier referencing:
That introduces the first problem: with fourteen seats in the convocation, one being of Azem, and three being of unsundered Ascians, the ten remaining sundered have... one hundred and fourty reflections across the shards.
Up to that point in the story, those reflections don't mean anything really.
Even considering the rejoinings, and the thin possibility that the Ascians were successful in recruiting all of the reflections of the unsundered and keeping them unaffected by their respective calamity, by the time the Warrior of Light gets the crystals of the convocation in hand the only impact those reflections can implicate is a potential reenacting of their actions when going rogue, however they would be far less knowledgeable and powerful.. Unless they had an alternate method for memory backup.
They Had An Alternate Method for Memory Backup
Dawntrail introduces Preservation. Even though Calyx was vehemently opposed to copying memories ((Lv. 100) A Terminal Invitation, (Lv.100) In Fate's Footsteps), Preservation did fully develop the methods for memory duplication.
That happened before Krile was handed to Galuf, which happened before the Seventh Umbral Calamity. Which, in that case, would be safe to assume that the Ascians supervising the Ninth would have knowledge of Preservation's method (if not involved in it to some degree).
It is safe to assume that by that point the Ascians had, in their hands, an alternate method for the memory backup, no longer relying solely on the crystals of the convocation.
This is not conjecture. They were supervising the shard, they had people working with the Key, and those people also worked on memory duplication.
The question here is: is this fact going to cause story implications?
Addressing the Problem
I do think it's a problem. A very damning storytelling problem.
Defeating the same enemies ten times over is not something I believe most are signing up for, in terms of story development.
Here are a few reasonable possibilities I can think of:
1 - The Ascians were not able to locate all of the reflections in time. They tried, but meddling directly with a shard of the Source too much could bring forth strong instabilities like the Flood of Darkness, and Elidibus' role in policing Ascian activities to not reach that outcome again would make the location of reflections a deliberately complicated process. In this scenario, the story elegantly isolates those factors with an existing reasoning.
2 - The Ascians were able to locate the reflections of the unsundered, successfully recruited them, and they had their memories backed up. The only way out of an outcome where the Warrior of Light has to fight dozens of Fandaniels, Nabriales, Mitrons, Igeyorhms and others is to find the memory backups and destroy them. Or send somebody to do the job, which could be a reasonable mission for Oblivion.
Ultimately, no matter how much I think about it, it boils down to: 'a mission to destroy the memory backups' or 'we fight several unsundereds a few times over again'.
Unless, for some reason, the Ascians did not create a backup plan in case they lost the crystals of the Convocation. However I must say that it would be an entirely different conversation, and would potentially raise many more other questions.
submitted by /u/Krainz
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