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Shadowbringers, Endwalker, and the Branching Timeline Model

Or, how the Warrior of Light might have saved the Ancients from the Final Days (but will never know)

I made a short post awhile back posing a philosophical interpretation of Endwalker's time travel plot, on which @starcunning replied with an interesting question:

How do we square this with the Eighth Umbral Calamity timeline where WOL dies before ever going to Elpis? The loop is never closed in that future, but the worldstate is still sundered.

And as this ties into something I've thought about a lot, I started to write a response but realized it should probably be its own post, so here we are!

Let's talk about the branching timeline model and what it means for Shadowbringers and Endwalker.

On my first playthrough of Endwalker, it did kind of immediately bug me that the time travel mechanic appeared (at least at first glance) to work differently than what we saw in Shadowbringers. I've thought about it a lot since then, and in particular Elidibus's words to the WoL before he sends them back, and I think that it's not necessarily inconsistent after all. Is what I'm about to lay out the intended reading? I have no idea. Like the previous post, it's just a reading that I think is both viable and interesting to play with.

So first of all, that the time traveling Crystal Tower scheme in Shadowbringers worked at all seems to pretty definitively indicate that temporal paradoxes do not occur in this universe; instead, what we seem to have is a branching timeline. At the point when G'raha Tia is sent back in time across the rift, the timeline diverges. The branch we travel is the one where G'raha is successful, and the Eighth Umbral Calamity never occurs. But since the Eighth Umbral Calamity never occurs in this branch, G'raha is never sent back in time--in fact, he can't be, because we wake up the young G'raha sleeping in the Crystal Tower generations before he would be sent back. In our timeline this loop is already not closed, and never can be.

Urianger even seems concerned about this in his conversation with the Exarch in the Echo flashback, saying, "Yet howsoever history be rewritten, thy present self was shaped by events which followed the Calamity. Should said catastrophe be averted, the very skein of thine existence will unravel. Surely thou hast foreseen this..." And G'raha assures him he's aware of the consequences... but still seems to believe the plan will work, so it's hard to say exactly what he means here, as nothing he says about "an offering and not an edict" or the Warrior of Light as their "unbroken thread" actually explains why the plan would still work even without closing the loop.

But in any case, that doesn't actually happen! The Exarch continues to exist after the First is saved and the Calamity averted--and he seems just as surprised at this as anyone else.

Y'shtola: And with that triumph, the future from which you came will no longer come to pass... Yet, here you still stand. Crystal Exarch: ...So I do. I wonder if that other age continues onward somehow, cut adrift from time's flow? Or have I simply etched myself a place upon this new block of history? Crystal Exarch: Either way, this is an unexpected development.

So, it's evident here that a contradictory past and future are able to coexist in this universe. How, we don't know for sure. G'raha himself is the first to propose something like a branching timeline model and I think that's the simplest way to conceptualize it so I'm going to go with that. Based on that model, we assume that the timeline in which the Eighth Umbral Calamity occurs persists, though we do not experience that branch.

In Endwalker, Elidibus sends the Warrior of Light back in time to Elpis to discover the truth of the Final Days. Before they depart, he gives them this warning:

Yet even should you manage to interact with others, you will be unable to effect meaningful change. For the reality you wish to save─the reality to which you must return─exists as a result of the Final Days. You cannot reshape the past to undo the tragedies of the present. Cannot unmake the sorrow and suffering fated to come.

I've spent a long time thinking about the meaning of Elidibus's words here--in particular "You cannot reshape the past to undo the tragedies of the present." Does he mean "You cannot" as in "it is impossible; you will be unable to even if you try"? Because based on what happened in Shadowbringers, that seems to be false. Or does he mean "You must not, because if you alter the past, your own present will not come to pass"?

I was initially leaning toward the latter, and so I was shocked when the Warrior of Light made the choice to tell Venat and the others the whole story. It certainly seemed like it flew in the face of Elidibus's warning--though that is, let's be real, very Azem of us.

It is useful here, I think, to compare the Warrior of Light's journey through time to G'raha Tia's. G'raha traveled back in time with full intent to change the future by changing the past; he wanted to undo the future from which he had come. He also never intended to return, and so if we apply the branching timeline model, G'raha remained in the new branch he created.

The Warrior of Light, on the other hand, does not intend to change the past, at least not at first. They are simply seeking knowledge with which they can return to their time and stop the Final Days from destroying their world.

Why, then, does the WoL decide to tell all to the Ancients? I think that depends on your WoL, and it also depends on how they interpret Elidibus's words--whether as a caution, or a mere statement of fact.

I think one possible interpretation--and it's the one I think I prefer for my character, but certainly not the only one--is that the WoL tells their story with full knowledge that this may change the past such that their future, their timeline, their world never comes to be, because given even the chance to save the countless lives lost in the Final Days of the ancients, they cannot in good conscious refuse to at least try--Elidibus's warning be damned.

But of course, it doesn't work, right? Among the Ancients, only Venat retains her memories of what happened with Meteion, and the Warrior of Light returns to their future, and the Final Days of Amaurot occur, and Venat either cannot or does not prevent it with the knowledge she has.

And yet, if we apply the branching timeline model... this is the only thing that could have happened, from the Warrior of Light's point of view. As Elidibus says, "For the reality you wish to save─the reality to which you must return─exists as a result of the Final Days." Where G'raha Tia remained in the new branch he created and was thus able to see the changes he had wrought, the Warrior of Light returns to their own time, and thus their own branch. Thus, if we interpret Elidibus's words in light of Shadowbringers, what he means is that you cannot change the past in the timeline to which you must return.

The possibility remains, however, that the Warrior of Light's actions caused a new fork in the timeline. It is possible that Venat did act with the knowledge she possessed, and was able to effect some change. Perhaps she was able to stop the Final Days before Zodiark was summoned. It is very possible that the Warrior of Light created a new timeline where the world was never sundered.

Because they return to their own branch of the future, however, they could never know that, and thus we can never know that.

So now, I return to starcunning's question. If we apply the branching timeline model, then the idea I proposed in my previous post can still be true--but only in one branch. By traveling to Elpis, meeting Venat, and leaving her with foreknowledge of the future, the WoL's actions create (at least) two possible Venats: one who changes that future, and one who does not (whether through inaction or trying and failing).

The branch where the Sundering occurs will later split into two more branches: one where the WoL dies before traveling back to Elpis, and one where they live to do so. Since both of those branches exist simultaneously, at least one WoL will always travel back to Elpis, where there is only one timeline because it hasn't yet forked. So Elpis will always receive a visit from the WoL who lived, even though there is also a branch where the WoL died.

I will also say, however, that my previous post was more of a philosophical musing on the game's themes around primals and gods than a hard interpretation I am arguing for over all possible others. I myself don't necessarily think that Venat wouldn't have created Hydaelyn without a visit from the WoL. I don't think it's possible for us to know that for sure, because we don't see a world in which that didn't occur and we also spend limited time with Venat, leaving much of her character open to interpretation and speculation. It is possible to imagine a third branch of the Elpis timeline in which the WoL never visited. Perhaps the Final Days play out the same way they do in canon, or perhaps something else happens entirely. If you really want to go there, perhaps if the WoL doesn't visit, they never catch Meteion, and she never delivers her message to Hermes at all, and perhaps that alters the timeline in some other way we haven't even imagined. Who knows! Sounds like a fun thing to write a fic about.

As for the branching timeline model, there's a lot to explore about time travel in this universe, and various ways to interpret what we see, and I haven't even brought up Alexander! I think the branching model works best for reconciling the various examples of time travel we see in the game, and I think that model opens up a lot of interesting possibilities to explore. This is just one of them!

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C'oretta's constant companion is Violet, her "piggy" that she rescued from a smuggling operation while on a job with the Stone Torches soon after joining the Adventurer's Guild. The others were shocked that the (outside Coliseum regulation oops) animal fighting ring had this particular creature among their cages. C'oretta just thought she was adorable.

Violet is very intelligent, and very protective of her catgirl. It's not unusual for people who upset or anger the miqo'te to find themselves suddenly beaned by warm pebbles dropped out of nowhere. She also seems to have not grown up very much in the last few years, remaining in a compact "piggy" form. How much of that is her own magic or how long it takes her kind to grow to adulthood is unknown.

No one's quite sure if C'oretta actually knows that Violet's a behemoth or not. She never seems to see the magic her "pet" does.

Violet has a few stories of her own, and of course features in many of C'oretta's. She even has a tag on this blog.

(And yeah, as people reached Elpis, I had quite a few pings telling me I needed to do a certain PunchyCat relevant sidequest there!)

8/29/25

does your wol(oc) have a signature companion/minion? What is their story?

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Dark Autumn won the Aiming hairpiece on her last trip to San d'Oria.

ynow what we need

roegadyn appreciation hours

show them off!

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If Squenix won't let me see my fave elezen in the wild anymore I'll take that old man out hunting myself! 🦄❤️

My graphics ain't the best but enjoy my attempt at bringing Edmont out into the wilds... The monster hunter wilds.. 😎

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Lolorito

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bring back hard mode (HM) dungeons

hot take?? but hard mode dungeons are amazing and I hate that they stopped making them because they

allow the devs to get more use out of old game assets

allow for fun new views of familiar environments (nighttime vs daytime, lush & pristine vs immense disrepair, normal fucked up vs supremely fucked up, and so on)

provide opportunity for microcosmic/hyperlocal non-MSQ storytelling (that people will still actually be motivated to do because of the dungeon requirement!)

provide opportunity for PROGRESSION of perhaps "forgotten" story beats

offer more options for gear progression and glamour

free us from the 50/50 chance expert roulette hellscape

help endgame not feel so completely stuck in the current zone or lore environment (feeling that right now in 7.3 especially)

I could go on and on here.... and it's not like I love every single HM (there are several I can't stand, actually) but I am so glad they exist, and I think they should revisit the concept. thanks for coming to my mog talk.

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venat’s weirdness in that murdering one guy would have been the same as murdering Everyone On Earth to her. the polar nemesis to the omelas child society she will just hit the sunder button rather than have a single person or group be deemed expendable. the only one other than hermes to be concerned with the cosmos/the world outside the egg. arguably her desperation to have the wol be born and live is her most selfish act. hope incarnate. crazy ass character of forever

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Would it make sense to carry multiple bows for different purposes?

While I’d love to wander round like some kind of archery Witcher, if I was adventuring, I’d probably stick with the one. But that doesn’t mean I can’t have different ways of shooting!

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The next expansion can't come soon enough I'm genuinely so so sick of every new piece of gear added to the game being modern casualwear or cyberpunk techwear

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Most happenings in our lives have no bearing on the fate of the world. More often than not, they go unobserved and unremarked. But you, my friend, gather up such forgotten tales and see them delivered. In so doing you bring joy… …Your tales, in particular, may be more varied than those of others. There may be times when you face great hardships, and the weight is more than you can bear. In such a time, I bid you remember this: no matter how great your burdens, the tales that you have gathered shall ever be your strength─a beacon to light your way in the darkness.

-Wandering Minstrel, "A Light That Ever Burns", The Rising 2025, Final Fantasy XIV.

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The Rising 2025

Greetings, Warrior of Light. This is a world that exists outside your reality. Could it be a dream? A flight of fancy conjured by your weary mind? Perhaps…or perhaps not. 'Tis a pleasure to meet you again. As I have in the past, I have beckoned you here that I might express my gratitude. For long years, we have walked together with you on this grand adventure. It is a never-ending journey, one that shall continue tomorrow as surely as it does today. The most natural of things. Along the way, I have endeavored to keep my gaze firmly fixed upon the future. Of late, however, I have been keenly reminded that we must occasionally look back upon the path we walked, that we might remember the lessons learned. In the course of our adventures, it seems that I too have grown. To learn from successes and failures both, and forge ahead with humility and sincerity… This is what I had resolved to do at journey's beginning, and I resolve to do so anew. Nothing would please us more than to continue having you at our side on the road ahead. And I pray that, upon this journey of life that we have the honor to share, the light of the Crystal shall ever shine! …Now, the time has come for this vision to end; time for your eyes to open from this waking dream. This world shall yet endure. And as we continue to make our way, I pray that we shall have occasion to meet again. Till that day, I wish you the happiest of journeys. Fare you well.

-Naoki Yoshida, "A Light That Ever Burns", Final Fantasy XIV.

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been seeing a lot of gulool ja ja posting recently and haven't seen anyone with the same take i had (which makes me think i'm probably way too out in left field lmao) so i figured i'd share it just for the sake of discussion!

it's been pointed out a lot that gulool ja ja was kind of like the turali version of our wol, and combining that with the fact that we had just wrapped up the first major story arc and are heading into a new chapter with this expac, it caused me to view him not so much as a character, but as a lens with which to reflect on wol's journey and legacy so far.

after all, both gulool ja ja successfully united their respective continents, got everyone to put aside their differences and work together in common cause, and brokered an unprecedented peace between disparate peoples who had been in conflict for generations, ushering in a new era of peace and cooperation. and now, our respective journeys at an end, wol is moving on to a new adventure while gulool ja ja plans to entrust his legacy to a new generation.

and to me the overwhelming feelings i had were... what will wol's legacy be like when we're not around anymore? will the peace we helped to build in eorzea endure when we've passed on and entrusted our legacy to others? what will it imply about wol's chances if gulool ja ja fails and his kingdom plummets into war and discord?

i didn't come up with any solid conclusions to any of this, and obviously based on the nature of the game we probably will never find this out unless we wind up doing a storyline where we time travel to the future or something similar. but i couldn't help but mull it over throughout the entirety of the first half of the expac--and at certain points in the second half as well. to me he's the personification of the themes of legacy and remembrance, so it kind of feels like missing the point to me when people say he's not flawed enough or that his reign isn't believable. the point isn't really that he's a benevolent king who rules No Problems Kingdom (which we know doesn't Really have no problems). the point is that that's oomf. he's us looking back at ourselves and asking us to think about what we've accomplished for eorzea, and how much of it will outlast our lifetime

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hmm i guess.. the way eutrope states her motivation, its always about her friends. yaana is the one who keeps insinuating that its all about her boyfriend. even to retsarras face. dude i think yaana hates his ass so bad lmao why is she like "everything is your fault btw"

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final fantasy fourteen dawntrail post in the wake of patch seven point three

dawntrail through gulool ja ja presents a fantasy of "a perfect ruler that can unite the many peoples on the continent through the power of open and equal dialogue" as something that could possibly exist, and buying into this fantasy to at least some degree is basically the price of entry for getting to enjoy the journey of wuk lamat trying to follow his example. if you can't suspend your disbelief enough to accept the premise that such a ruler Can exist, then everything presented as consequence of his achievements and anything wuk lamat does to repeat his success will feel equally bogus.

I think it speaks of (base) dawntrail's vision that this ideal philosopher-warrior king is still going to die eventually, and his kingdom will fall apart if he doesn't prepare for a future beyond the reach of his own glory. after wuk lamat wins the rite of succession it's revealed gulool ja ja was literally half dead already - even if you believe the perfect ruler is something that can exist, it is is not something that can be sustained indefinitely, and less-than-perfect individuals will have to continue the work. we're then introduced to alexandria and sphene as a further extreme of this: even if you could make the perfect ruler last indefinitely, that still isn't sustainable!

while gulool ja ja is wildly successful and widely beloved, it's not like there are no dissidents whatsoever in tural. there's the faction of yok huy that never recognised his authority and saw the succession as their chance to reclaim independence, and the faction of mamool ja that feel like he sold them out to #woke. these two issues are ultimately diffused with a wuk lamat friendship speech, probably far too easily for some people's tastes, but i think they're reasonable enough plot beats for a story that, particularly in its first half, really hammers on the importance of open and equal communication as the foundation of a peaceful future of cohabitation. wuk lamat's show of goodwill resolves these conflicts because dawntrail offers this fantasy that any conflict can be talked out with the right mindset as extension of this fantasy of the ideal ruler that can talk anything out.

i can understand people who simply cannot suspend their disbelief for this fantasy of a peacefully unified uncolonised fantasy continental america when any meaningful knowledge of its real world counterparts will tell you it's not that simple, and when earlier expansions did not shy away from depicting national and international strife. but to me it does not feel like dawntrail (at least not base dawntrail) is unaware that what it is presenting is an unrealistic and unsustainable fantasy, because sphene's intrusion in the second half challenges the premises of the fantasy in multiple ways. it's possible that you could encounter the kindest gentlest most amicable person ever and you still cannot talk things out with her no matter what. how does your fantasy of peaceful cooperation hold up to that? for that matter, how does the reputation of the ideal philosopher-warrior king who could talk out any conflict hold up to the reality that his son went insane and tried to hyper genocide his own people in his attempt to break away from the expectation that he also become a perfect philosopher-warrior king, and the king both didn't notice this was brewing and couldn't stop it once the situation exploded? what about sareel ja cooking up whatever it is he's doing in the alliance raids out of his own ideas of what being the perfect ruler entails? this fantasy is unsustainable, the very concept of an ideal ruler can and will drive people to ruin.

that said, it does get excruciatingly awkward to have to read through shit like the yok huy COLONIALISM = BAD murals. dawntrail is trying to strike a balance between the abstracted human condition stuff that shb-ew dealt with while also taking a careful step back into the political stances with real world analogues the game had previously sworn off in stb postgame, and it is playing it safe on this front to the point of occasional absurdity. this too can make it harder for people to buy into the fantasy enough to get to enjoy the story for what it is.

dawntrail repeatedly hammers on how it is memory of the past that shapes the way people live in the present, for better or worse. koana initially wants to replace all turali traditions with sharlayan technology because he believes the old traditions abandoned him first. bakool ja ja makes a complete ass of himself because he was born in the sunk cost factory. wuk lamat and the other succession candidates have to learn about the how and why of every local culture to pass each part of the test, because they need to understand where these people are coming from before they have any right as a leader to decide where they should be going. ffxiv, as a whole, cares a lot about showing you the history that lead up to where we are now, else it would not spend as much time on the ancients as it does. the past guides the future, remembering the past is necessary to meaningfully shape the future, be it to respect or break free from the hopes of the past. wuk lamat makes sure to get to know the people in living memory before shutting the place down because she has no right to decide alexandria's future without knowing its history first.

notably alexandria is a complete monoculture even after many former turali moved in, because they quite literally have no cultural memory. they do not remember the dead, their history lies abandoned outside the walls, their culture consists of neon malls and billboard ads and a theme park where the present never ends (very striking to me when everkeep is supposed to be this last bastion of safety in a world torn apart by war and climate crisis). it is a lifestyle of convenience: it is more convenient to forget the dead than to have to mourn them, it is more convenient to assimilate and conform than to actually overcome one's differences, it is more convenient to paste over all the electrope with a hologram than to actually build something real.

it is, also, a parody of the fantasy of joyous coexistence presented in the first half of dawntrail. the people are united under their benevolent ruler not because they have reached an agreement despite their differences, but because their differences have been erased for the sake of the convenience of the dominant culture. the people of yyasulani were formally given the choice of whether to move into everkeep and wear regulators or not, but the alternative for those who would have otherwise preferred to stick with their old traditions was dying in the thunderstorms alexandria brought to the region. once the regulators are on and the past is forgotten, there's no need to engage with anything but the superficial present in front of you. the only method sphene can think of to avoid going to war with wuk lamat is offering them the same assimilation into alexandria, because alexandria's present culture cannot actually abide or overcome differences.

again, to me, it did not feel like base dawntrail was unaware that gulool ja ja and the consequences of his presence are a fantasy. the comforting convenience of that fantasy is directly challenged by the existence of alexandria and its rulers, it is more subtly challenged through the various assertions that even if such a miracle ruler existed, it will take the joint efforts of many more less miraculous people to maintain the results of that miracle. wuk lamat is not actually able to save sphene with the power of friendship, she is only able to insist that it is worth the effort to try all the same, because even if the fantasy of being able to talk anything out is not realistic it's still worth striving for.

however, as the repeat specification of base dawntrail might have clued you in, it feels to me like dawntrail patchquests are conceding to this emotional convenience. koana's distrust towards the nomadic traditions of the hhetsarro after he was abandoned as a child turns out to have been unfounded, it was actually because of the Problems Dinosaur all along, neatly sidestepping any potential interpersonal or ideological conflict. human sphene's misgivings about waking up to a completely unrecognisable alexandria and being mistaken for the version of her that actually made it this way are resolved with an easy "oh we knew you're not her, we just like you anyway :)" before any real tension around this can arise with anyone who still holds an image of the digital sphene. the distance between sphene and wuk lamat in 7.2 is completely forgotten, sphene is suddenly all clingy about wuk lamat despite barely even having talked with her on screen (because we're just forgetting that there's a difference between sphenes I guess?), and wuk lamat's blatant remaining attachment to the digital sphene has no impact on her relationship with the living one whatsoever. alexandria's cultural memory hole was actually reversible all along, sparing them the effort of rebuilding their understanding of the past from scratch, and living memory's metallic gray remains get plastered over with its pleasing holograms again.

in a way it feels like dawntrail, after carefully dipping its toes into some material politics again, is now recoiling and going back to talking exclusively about an abstracted human condition, very clumsily so at that, and completely abandoning its initial premise and emotional impact in the process. the (alexandrian) fear of death has been spotlighted to an extent where the state of alexandria's relationship to its people let alone the people of tural has become an afterthought. human sphene, so far, functionally exists only to give alexandria its miracle ruler back, without any examination of the pressure of this expectation that drove her digital counterpart to lobotomise herself. gulool ja lives in the shadow of two generations of once in a lifetime rulers and yet nobody questions that this little ipad baby should become king of alexandria one day just because his dad married into the position before. after many tacit acknowledgments that the fantasy is impossible to sustain but is worthwhile to strive for all the same, the fantasy is now not only achievable, it is the status quo that must be returned to as fast and unquestioned as possible. shit dude, we're status quoing so hard here that even the fucking ascians are back somehow.

personally i still think "human" sphene should have been the personal memories that were suppressed to create the image of the perfect ruler, leaving "the real sphene" as a fundamentally unknowable entity that can only be extrapolated from the various biased records of her. but if we must insist on exposing the real person then the least she could do is refuse the expectation that she return to her role as beloved princess.

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I do not think Ilberd would be happy with the outcome of stormblood. Sure ala mhigo is no longer under garlean occupation, but also all the people who had given up on freeing on it (i.e. most of the people who actually used to live there) are allowed to reap the rewards. And the Eorzean Alliance is still standing instead of being decimated by shinryu. That’s only one goal out of several accomplished, and by the time he actually decided to go out by murder-suicide-summoning, it was the one that was, deep down, the least important.

Now, I think he would have been genuinely pleased, if a little annoyed still, if one were to somehow bring back a version of him from before Lolorito let him take the whole fall for the crystal braves betrayal to see the current state of ala mhigo. But the Ilberd who actually existed at the time of his death would be pissed that shinryu was stopped before it wiped the alliance and every garlean off the face of Hydaelyn

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Red Mage and Gunbreaker Battle Duo

Random set shots I just liked while messing with angles, filters, lighting.