More Reasons to Drop Those Eyes
Krile: Even should you succeed in excising the eyes from the dragoon's mail, we have no way of knowing if your friend's soul would survive so violent a separation. And that is to say nothing of the possibility that his would-be savior might become Nidhogg's next host.
I've ranted before about the fandom's negative perception of Aymeric's command to throw Nidhogg's Eyes off the bridge into the roiling maelstrom of ice and wind below the Steps of Faith. I've noted before there's a difference in the knowledge characters have in universe as vehicles of the story (not a roleplay thing, that's up to the player, or not) versus us, the players, comfortably watching said story play out and recognizing tropes while also having meta knowledge the characters do not.
To see some changes in the story in context thanks to duty support updates in 6.3, I replayed through the Dragonsong War patches of Heavensward, 3.1 through 3.3. At the very start of 3.3, Revenge of the Horde, Y'shtola, Krile, Alphinaud, and the WoL have a conversation in the Forgotten Knight about the mages' findings and concerns when it comes to possibly saving Estinien--or not--based on what they saw when Nidhogg attacked Vidofnir.
And here in this short paragraph we see some of those main concerns brought up: Can the Eyes be removed from Estinien? What danger does it pose to the next person who grabs the Eyes?
Questions no one in the story knows the answer to as they share and discuss and worry, finally leading to "Throw them into the abyss!" due to that.
Again, these were definitely things the writers considered when making the characters react with their knowledge and perspectives and personalities within the story. We as players are along for the ride, and even our WoLs have their specific roles to play as characters in the specific plotlines, as an MMO, by default, is on rails more than other game genres.
Anyway, I got to this scene again and was all "oh yeah" regarding the earlier posts. There's reasons to go back, either in replay with an alt or using New Game+, to see the story play out again. There's a LOT to remember, and it all builds on itself, key scenes in one patch affecting others down the road.
