Garland's plan for Terra [Spoilers]

[Flavvy]

Up for a bit of overthinking?

So, I'm trying to understand Garland's plan and one thing in particular has me confused. From the Wikia[finalfantasy.wikia.com], I gather that:

To control the cycle of souls in Gaia, Garland used the Iifa Tree to prevent the Gaian souls from returning to the planet, trapping them within Iifa's roots. Later, Garland constructed the Soul Divider at the Iifa Tree's base that allowed the souls of Terra to flow into Gaia instead.

Around 3,000 years ago Garland used the Iifa Tree to block Gaian souls from returning to their crystal in the planet's core, halting the planet's soul cycle. Garland's plan was to only allow Terra's souls to cycle. Around 1,800 years ago Garland built the Soul Divider at the tree's base to replace the rejected Gaian souls with Terran ones so the Terran civilization might one day be revived. The Mist that covers the Mist Continent is a by-product of the filtering process, and is expelled from the tree to the Mist Continent through the tree roots.

Based on this, it's my understanding that the idea isn't to revive Terra anymore (or to fuse the two), but to transfer all Terrans to Gaia to replace the Gaians on their own planet.

As far as I understand, souls are the 'energy' that the crystal needs to regenerate via the soul cycle—otherwise it would deteriorate like Terra's crystal did when its in inhabitants started to strive for immortality and therefore their souls stopped returning to their planet's crystal.

• How is stopping Gaian souls from returning to their planet's crystal in any way beneficial for Terra (or Terrans for that matter)?
  
  
• By stopping Gaian souls from returning to Gaia's crystal, isn't Garland just weakening the crystal of the planet to which he wants to transfer the Terrans' souls through the Genomes?
  
  
• Garland creates Kuja to accelerate the death toll on Gaia and therefore the rate of the soul cycle... but is also using the Iifa Tree to stop the soul cycle on Gaia, as the rejected souls of Gaians turn to Mist. Wait... what?
  
  
• When someone dies, their soul return to the crystal: if the idea is to stop Gaian souls from returning to Gaia's crystal in order to "only allow Terra's souls to cycle" through Gaia's crystal thanks to the Soul Divider, isn't that technically letting Terrans die when they wanted the exact opposite (i.e. to be immortal)?
  

[FafnirChaos]

Thanks for spoiling the game for me, garland, terra. what is this final fantasy 1 and 6..

on a serious note.. his plan was to assimilate Gaia in order for the citizens of terra to live, His whole plan was to change Gaia into terra, terra was dying and needed a host in order to live.

I looked at the Lifa tree and soul cycle as a constent flow like the life stream from FFVII,which means that the people of gaia's souls would never be reborn, and only terras citizens would be able to be reborn(if you believe in reincarnation) and the crystal was a universal aspect, I must have missed something, maybe it was memoria that did it.

The mist could be the same idea as FFX in which the dead hate the living for living and want their company. Preventing souls from returning to the earth, and having them stagnate would seem like a great way to go about doing it. having Gaian's kill other Gaians and when there's little left, bring in your planets souls to finish them off. Why else would there be machines in order to destory mist as fuel? and black mages. The mist really all makes sense in disc 4 when the entire planet is covered when all the souls of the people of terra parished.

[Flavvy]

Originally posted by FafnirChaos:

The mist really all makes sense in disc 4 when the entire planet is covered when all the souls of the people of terra parished.

Wait, the Mist is the souls of dead Terrans?

[Tirlititi]

Up for it :D

It is never explicitly stated whether Mist is made of terran or gaian souls, but it should logically be the latter.

Here is how I see it:

1) When Terra attempted to assimilate Gaia, it failed because it was weakened (ie. its soul flow was light) while Gaia was young and strong. Thus Terra is the one which was partly assimilated in the process. It somehow didn't disappear but ended up inside Gaia, conserving its own Crystal and soul cycle.

2) The Iifa Tree's first purpose is to weaken Gaia's soul cycle. It doesn't removes all the souls from the cycle but rather acts as a filter, slowly removing soul 'energy'.
On a side note, I think this filter is placed at the stage "Soul in Crystal -> Soul returning to the surface" and not when the souls are returning to the Crystal. The roots are said to expell Mist but never to gather souls, so I don't think that's their purpose. There's this picture also, which can be interpreted as "The Iifa Tree deals with souls passing through its trunk".
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/98687557/Resources/Gaia-terra-assimilation.png
We see in the Soulcage's screen that the movements inside the trunk are ascending ones, so it's more likely that the souls are returning to the surface at this point.

3) With the Soul Divider, the plan is to assimilate Gaia by assimilating its Crystal directly. Terran souls (not necessarily the souls of people, but maybe the souls of the fauna and the flora rather) are placed in Gaia's soul cycle, thus slowly making the planet a more fitting place for terran people. The souls of terran people are known to be kept for the genomes. Maybe once the process is over, they'd have either give up their immortality, either start again to assimilate planets to keep their soul cycle strong.

So the answers to your questions would be that

• It weakens Gaia thus making it more easy to assimilate (the ratio gaian/terran souls should get in favour of Terra in this plan).
  
• Yes, but when Terra's strength is added, the planet will be strong enough to live for a long time again.
  
• Accelerating the flow speed allows for the Iifa Tree's filter to be more efficient. It's a natural law in fluid mechanics.
  
• Maybe, maybe not ^^

[Flavvy]

Tirlititi, that's brilliant! Thanks so much for taking the time to write this :)

Originally posted by Tirlititi:

There's this picture also, which can be interpreted as "The Iifa Tree deals with souls passing through its trunk".

Wow, I guess I'm not the only one who had questions: there's actually illustrations for this! lol / I think you're right though, it does seem to indicate the Tree affects souls going out of Gaia's crystal, not returning.

Originally posted by Tirlititi:

Terran souls (not necessarily the souls of people, but maybe the souls of the fauna and the flora rather) are placed in Gaia's soul cycle, thus slowly making the planet a more fitting place for terran people.

I'd never considered this--it does make more sense if it's flora and fauna, as you say, since people's souls would manifest in Genomes.

Originally posted by Tirlititi:

Accelerating the flow speed allows for the Iifa Tree's filter to be more efficient. It's a natural law in fluid mechanics.

As in, Kuja is tasked with killing people on Gaia so that more souls will need to be "sent up" by its crystal, further reducing its energy?

I get that the crystal can't send souls out anymore--well, it can, they're just caught by the Tree's roots and turned to Mist. But what happens to the souls of the people Kuja is tasked to kill? Do they just naturally wander back to the crystal and then, when they're cycled again, are then turned to Mist?

Thanks again, this is great!

[Tirlititi]

They are cycled again and filtered, I guess. Part of it becomes Mist but there's also a part of it that continues to be in the cyle.

[Flavvy]

Makes sense, thanks again!