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Parhelion said:

Its entirely possible that there's only a reflection of the Flame on Sag because when someone burrowed from vortex to astral, their travelling pushed a bit of the nexus into wherever it connected, like when you screw a screw into a board and splinters of wood crack outwards ever so slightly.

It's a simplistic view but viable.

Mlaan said:

Query: Why does Celest (New and Old) have such a strong fascination with seafaring?
Context: Merians can breathe underwater, rendering boats useless except as little more than cargo transport, and traditionally they have not much cared to make considerations for non-merians. There is no tract of water connecting the (then) Crystal Sea with the Inner Sea, and the only settlements accessible via the Crystal Sea to our knowledge were Magnagora and the Balach Swamp. Why did an Empire of aquatic, water-breathing people with no seafaring opponents and only one significant trading partner develop such a strong culture surrounding shipbuilding and seafaring?  

Jolanthe said:

I think it's fair to say there is a lot of lost knowledge out there - we like to think of civilization as only ever advancing (even in the real world), but whenever powerful libraries and cities are burnt down and history is rewritten to look at them unfavourably, knowledge of some variety is always lost. It's very possible some things were relearned over and over, and each time, it was thought to be discovered for the "first time".

But I think it's also prudent to consider that different times and different eras called for different measures. In the wake of the Vernal Wars, mortals could just focus on surviving against the environment and lack of resources, rather than constant worry of being consumed. Mortal populations arguably moved around a lot less after the Vernal Wars - there was more time to contemplate exploration. We don't know the full differences between edifices of power and nexuses, but it seems safe to say that edifices of power were built primarily to be fonts of power first and foremost, while this wasn't quite the same pressing issue for new cities that didn't need to combat the soulless by raising vernal gods. I would imagine the modern nexii are far, far less efficient at maintaining and refining power than the old edifices, but that doesn't mean they are strictly inferior in every way.

I'd also like to point out that the Transcendent Ice Needle of Climanti still does exist in some capacity - and while there is no visible way to connects to any planes, it actually does possess the unusual ability to transport you to a past era prior to Climanti's ruin. This is something significant that no nexus can do, and is a rather significant component of the Icewynd quest chains.

I will also point out that the Great Trees of the Communes only intersect on Ethereal. They don't intersect on all planes. They have no reflections on astral at all, despite there being astralspheres that can align with the communes for the purpose of wild nodes. For a city nexus to be able to bypass intersections on adjacent planes and go directly to different layers is a very special property - one that might arguably have ripple effects. I doubt any of the nexus reflections on astral were actually built there - they seem to be more literal reflections that manifested on their own as the other lower planes were linked to the nexus and tuned to them, bent in a way that is not in the natural order. How or why? Well, that'd be more a matter that is anyone's guess.

Mlaan said:

Myth: According to the Ecclesiarchical canon, the interplanar connections between Prime=Water and Water=Cosmic had to be intentionally aligned through great understanding and magic, indicating that the Pool of Stars could only connect to other planes due to the genius intellect of Tresalyne and the merians of the Celestine Church and College of Aquamancy. 

However: In the account of Ladantine's journey through the Astral Plane, the only reason the party was able to escape the plane at all was that a manifestation of the Eternal Flame was found and recognized on the Astrophere of Sagittarius. As the discovery of the Astral Plane was literally occurring at that moment, it is impossible that this pathway was laboriously researched, constructed, and implemented into the nexus ahead of time, indicating that the Eternal Flame penetrated the planes all the way to Astral as an inherent characteristic of its construction. This suggests that though these Celestian institutions did learn how to use these connections, they existed before the merians discovered how to use them. 

It might be asserted that the cosmic plane of Celestia was not connected via the Pool of Stars until the Celestines performed this alignment, but to refute that, we can refer to the Archmage Marinus Shervalian (who I will quote for later query), who claims that the Nyalia research facility discovered the other three significant cosmic planes. Even if we accept that these planes were first sensed and identified by the Nyalians on Prime, who did not have a nexus of power, it remains impossible to reach a cosmic plane from the Prime. 

If we assume that they merely sensed each plane and merely informed the nexus-operators, the inability of each Imperial nexus to access the corresponding planes of other nexii demonstrates that the connection is made via the nexus itself and is not derived merely from knowing the way; knowing how to reach Continuum does not mean you can reach it through the Eternal Flame for example. This is further emphasized by Ladantine's escape from Astral; at no point is this genius-level intellect able to transverse from Astral to Celestia, a place with which he is intimately familiar.  

Myth: According to Archmage Marinus Shervalian, Old Celestian Aquamancers (via Tresalyne) found the first pathway between an Elemental Plane and a Cosmic Creche, and discovered the Cosmic Planes of Shallamar, Continuum, and the Vortex. 

Archmage Marinus Shervalian says, "Anyway, our job here, in what was the jewel of the Empire's research facilities, was to probe the aether, to attempt to find new planes and sources of power. In fact, it was we who discovered the Cosmic Planes of Shallamar, Continuum, the Vortex, and the Cosmic plane itself."

However: As before, many ancient cities had advanced enough planar sciences and powerful enough extraplanar magics to create Edifices of Power capable of raising Vernal Gods. These constructs were conduits of extraplanar power, so we can infer with relative safety that they were able to penetrate at least one plane beyond the Prime. Examples of these are the Ice Needle of Climanti, the Sacred Pyramid of Alin'Dor, the Crystal Spire of Lancenti, and the Black Coral of Glomborolum, all of which resemble modern Edifices closely enough that they are recognizable as potent and proven methods of the collection, refinement, and storage of incredible amounts of enough power to elevate a mortal into Divinity. It seems inconceivable that only after the entirety of the Elder Wars and Vernal wars, not a single one of these multiplanar constructs was able to be aligned to a cosmic creche. I am not so certain of my grasp of ancient Gaudiguch/Alin'dor lore that I can refute it completely, but I am confident that the Illuminati are represented as coming from Alin'dor.   

• Weird thing, "Vernal Wars" says Dio knew about Celestia and Angels while "Aftermath" says the early Aquamancers discovered Celestia ("wrapped around the plane of water") and then gave it it's name (given they lived on the island of Celest which is kinda... appropriately hubristic). With "cosmic creches", Ecclesiarchical canon feels more... logical?
  It'd be an interesting topic to explore IC, one idea that already comes up is that maybe mortals in the basin didn't necessarily know the specific plane Dionamus worked with? Potentially none who'd even seen him made it to the basin, so all they had was stories passed along, then when Celestia was discovered by the early Celestians they combined the two together (mental image of Dio's angels being more like... the alien/horrific wings and eyes everywhere sort and coming from maybe a dead plane)
  
  
• Afaik, the Edifices and Nexii are specifically distinct things? Edifices were like a massive battery that you drained to make a vernal god and that was kinda it. Nexii are for power storage and plane connections (city nexii particularly for this), but even with the wars and the like none of the cities actually raised a god from their nexus until Marylinth which was also the only time it's happened as Ascendants are different.
  
  
• I'd say that the Eternal Flame being present on Astral doesn't necessarily mean too much regarding cosmic? Having a nexus specifically designed to pierce planes reaching all the way up to Astral makes me wonder if it's in someways similar to Ethereal and, while distant, somehow abstractly reflective of stuff on prime. Where like... unless they were destroyed it seems like there'd be maybe hundreds of cosmic creches out there somewhere?
  
  
• "Aftermath" also indicates that gate-less/nexus-less planar travel is actually plausible. But it seems to be a lost technique/magic/etc, likely cause gates and nexii make planar travel way simpler so mortals haven't needed it since figuring this out.
  
  
• My understanding is that yeah... the reality of the planescape was only actually learned about after mortals started coming back to the basin. Kiakoda, Mornhai stuff, and Ellindel all kinda point towards this.
  
  
• I wouldn't be necessarily surprised if some pre-aftermath civilisations did discover some stuff, but it seems like the move to the basin and "Aftermath" is kinda starting over and fresh in a new world. So, there's also the possibility that this knowledge just never made it to the basin around "aftermath" times, maybe some civilisation of pyromancers was completely wiped out, planar travellers hit issues, etc.
  
  
• I also wouldn't be that surprised if they didn't? There's a necessity aspect, vernal wars era mortals needed a way to fight the soulless eventually leading to D'Varsha creating the first edifice. From then on it seems like they were raising as many as they possibly could as fast as they possibly could? I imagine resources, research, everything would be focused on "how can we raise even more weapons and survive against the next soulless attack?". For something like, figuring out how to cleanse the seas, if it's a big enough problem it seems like it'd be easier to just ask a Vernal god to take care of it, or send another one who could? And a vernal might be able to just... yank the corruption out of the sea so no need to involve the water plane. 
  
  Which is why it kinda makes sense to me that it changes in aftermath. There's no more vernal gods to do stuff, for whatever reason there's also no more edifices, so mortals need to start figuring out stuff for themselves again, necessity leads to discoveries which we see in the guardian/wiccan/melder classes because we needed a solution to an issue and then we extrapolated on that.