More Insane and Inane Theorizing

Alright. So this one’s a stretch and I know it. I mean, it came to me at approximately 2:30 in the morning after I was hopped up on thinking about Falcom deep-lore. But I think it’s a fun thought, so that’s precisely why I’m willing to share it even knowing there’s a 95% it’s wrong. And what might it be? A theory connecting Ys and the Trails series.

So. The first point to address is that Zemuria is obviously not… uh… whatever the setting of Ys should be called. For the sake of this argument, we’ll call it Elde-Terra since it’s effectively our Earth with the major point of divergence being the existence of the Eldeen civilization. Mostly [Footnote 1]. There are two obvious pieces of evidence proving this. The first, and simpler, is the moons. Elde-Terra very notably has two moons; notable because they’ve never been explained or mentioned, they’re just there. Zemuria, to the best of my memory, only has one moon. So there’s that. And the second piece of evidence is that Elde-Terra is effectively Earth and Zemuria is too different. So different that tectonic shift can’t really explain it. Zemuria as a continent is the apparent extent of the world’s area, is — if I recall correctly — significantly smaller than the entire are of Earth — and by extension Elde-Terra — and outright doesn’t match any real world geography. Naturally, because it isn’t supposed to. And with that in mind, let’s move on to the meat of the theorizing.

So then if the worlds are obviously two different planets, if nothing else, why does this matter? To that question I ask another: why does the Salt Pale exist? As stated by the Gralsritter, Artifacts are ‘gifts of Aidios given too early’. In other words, they seem to have a purpose simply beyond the understanding of modern science. When considering other Artifacts that have shown up (at least through Sky), Mayor Dalmore’s wand is incredibly useful — if considering a sample intended use case, it would be a very handy capture device for a security force, no? — and the Recluse Cube’s usage was provided through the plot. But with the Salt Pale, there isn’t any discernable purpose in or out of universe. Since it turns everything it touches to salt and that’s it, the Septian Church hasn’t found a use for it except as a weapon. The fact of the matter is, it’s hard to think of a good use for the mass proliferation of any individual material, much less salt [Footnote 2]. But there is an obvious use for wide-scale ecological manipulation: terraforming. And this is where things get spicy.

So Elde-Terra has two moons. I’ve wondered if there’s a lore reason for it that we simply haven’t seen or if it’s just a cool design choice [Footnote 3], but in my search I found some people bandying about the theory that it’s a megastructure build by spacefaring Eldeen. Which… Doesn’t seem necessarily impossible, but does have some issues [Footnote 4]. But if we consider the possibility of spacefaring Eldeen — which, again, does not seem impossible — it’s entirely reasonable to believe they might’ve thought of terraforming other planets to suit their needs, even just as a potential experiment since I still have no idea why they made the Black Pearl from a civics standpoint. And terraforming should be within their means. The Ark of Napishtim alone seems like it would be capable of manipulating a planet’s atmosphere to the point of establishing a livable environment, to say nothing of the likes of the Mask of the Sun and the Akashic Records. Even returning to the example of the Salt Pale, the means through which the Black Pearl created Cleria by inroducing into the soil to be mined up has a certain degree of similarity, if much more controlled. And furthermore, there’s the ultimate fate of the Eldeen. It’s noted that most of them ‘ascended to heaven’, which is obviously a reference to Eldeen Spooky Voice Heaven, but it doesn’t preclude the possibility of at least a faction of them giving up on Elde-Terra and trying to start over somewhere else.

So then what does this timeline look like? Aidios as Eldeen travels across the sea of stars and discovers Zemuria as a viable candidate for terraforming. But, remembering how things fell apart last time with the Darklings, she decides to be a little more careful this time. Rather than letting Emelas become a wedge between Humanity and the Eldeen (or just her, I guess), she decides to ‘dilute’ it in a sense. And also makes sure that the Emelas tools she uses to terraform her new home are better governed. So she creates the Sept-terrions from Emelas to alter the fabric of Zemuria and make it more appropriate as a home. The Divine Beasts were fabricated from a process similar to that by which the likes of Galbalan were made — but more stable — to act as guards over the Emelas tools. With their wardens safely in place, she gave the Sept-terrions to Humanity so they could use them to… I don’t know. Why did Aidios give the Sept-terrions to Humanity in the first place? And finally, to prevent widespread jealousy among Humanity about the inequality of power present, she manipulated the introduction of Emel into the environment in a lesser form that eventually became Septium — effectively Ash Emelas specialized through Eldeen processing to retain elemental affinities. With her work done and a new home made, Aidios settles down to do whatever the heck the Eldeen did in their free time. Sit around and play the harmonica in a temple, I guess.

But, that doesn’t really answer the why, does it? Just the how. Because that then raises the critical question: if Aidios was one of the Eldeen, then where is she now? And that leads us to Ouroboros. While I still think there’s a degree of oddity to the thought that the Grandmaster as Aidios since she’s making an awful lot of trouble trying to claim things she should by rights have control over, that could in turn lead us to the interesting twist that ties it all together. At some point between Aidios’ gifting of the Sept-terrions to Humanity and the present — maybe the cause of the Great Collapse, just to work everything in — there was some kind of upheaval in heaven. Perhaps the Napisthim incident repeated itself and a group of Humans tried to overtake control of one of the Sept-terrions leading to it going berserk. Perhaps they tried making their own in a similar way to the creation of the dragon-soldiers like Galbalan. Perhaps since Aidios wasn’t around when Ys Origin happened, she never found out why the Black Pearl is a problem. I kinda like that last one, since it could lead into an explanation for the creation of Gehenna through the overuse of Black Emelas much like yada yada play Ys I and II. Either way, Aidios was dethroned from her seat as administrator and replaced by some kind of Galbalan-Darm stand in false Sept-terrion. Thus leading to her forming Ouroboros — the serpent eating its own tail. Because that’s what she’s become; a goddess who needs to steal back her divine power to overthrow her own creation that grew beyond its bounds. Items made through Divergent Laws are just items made using Emelas which surpass the laws Septium abides by — and would be able to damage the Divine Beasts where other weapons could not, just like how the dragon-soldiers / Galbalan can only be killed permanently through Emel weapons — and magic which goes beyond the scope of Orbal Arts is just magic made possible through the manipulation of Black Emelas.

Or something. Like I said, this is all a very crazy, very tenuous thought. I don’t think it’s true. If I did, I wouldn’t be writing about it [Footnote 5]. But it’s fun to share dumb little things like this, eh? I feel like I had more to add to this that would help tie things together, but whatever. This is enough goofing off for one article.

Footnote 1: There are some things brought up by Lacrimosa of Dana that exceed these boundaries, but this isn’t the place for me to explain my feelings on that. Put simply for this discussion, if the plot can say ‘it was all a dream’, then so can I.
Footnote 1A: There is also the likes of Rul-Ende and the Nors gods, but I can kind of justify them as relating to the Eldeen in a roundabout way and they aren’t important to this conversation.
Footnote 2: See -> Ice IX.
Footnote 3: My current operating theory which doesn’t actually mesh with this topic is that the second moon was formed in a similar way to our own Luna; the impact between Earth and a smaller planet(oid). But in Elde-Terra’s case, this second impact was with a planet(oid) rich in Emel, so the kind of ‘divergence point’ between our history and Ys’ is this impact which introduced an acranoreactive material into Earth’s environment resulting in shifts in fundamental forces allowing the likes of magic and irregular evolution to produce things like monsters. So the second moon of Elde-Terra, according to this theory, is basically just another moon like Luna, but with a ton of Emel in it.
Footnote 4: Most notably, the fall of the Atlas continent shouldn’t have so catastrophically disrupted their civilization if they were advanced enough to construct artificial moons. One could get around this by arguing it was no greater in population than the ISS or that this just proves how thoroughly massive the Darklings’ rebellion was, but then there’s the counterpoint that the Ark of Napishtim’s rampage… I’m digressing way too much.
Footnote 5: While I’ll probably get into this more later, I don’t much like theorizing and trying to predict the future of stories. In one regard, it can make things hard for the original creator since it can make things hazy as to whether or not something predicted was their original intent all along or if they took the idea from the prediction. In another, there isn’t really much point to it for the audience member; the creator isn’t going to say ‘You know what? You’re right! That’s exactly what’ll happen! Congratulations!’. The best case scenario for an audience member is to hear ‘maybe, just wait and see’. All told, it ends up more as a means through which the audience member is saying ‘Look how clever I am, I already figured out what you’re going to do’ and I say this as someone who has inspected his own past actions and realized the inherent impropriety and futility in them.