When are we supposed to stop fighting?

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Originally Posted by Theodric

Given that Venat is indirectly responsible for the Final Days occurring (given that she had foreknowledge of their existence due to the lack of a memory wipe) and then is ultimately responsible for the genocide of her own species? Nah, I don't think she was in much of a position to 'plead' with the very same people she actively sought to screw over first by withholding key information and then murdering down to the very last man, woman and child.

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I dont see how this makes any sense. She doesnt want to sunder the world, she makes it VERY clear that she wishes she could do something else, hence the pleading prior to performing the action.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

Zodiark was also a necessity by virtue of being the very force that served to prevent Etheirys from being destroyed. If not for Zodiark, there would be no Etheirys given that both the first and second set of sacrifices served to prevent the planet from decaying and dying altogether. That is, of course, in addition to Zodiark serving as a ward against the return of the Final Days in both the Unsundered and Sundered world.

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What Venat is pleading for is that people should not return to the society that caused the Calamity in the first place, not that they shouldnt have summoned Zodiark at all, as far as I can tell.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

Of course, had Venat spoken up about the Final Days before they happened then Zodiark would not have been needed but blaming the Ancients for mitigating a disaster that was sprung upon them without forewarning would strike me as utterly bizarre.

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We have virtually no idea what happened between Elpis and the Final Days other than that Venat gathered support to oppose the Final Days and potentially have to summon Hydaelyn, which sounds like the opposite of not trying to stop the final days. I don't really get what you mean by "blaming the Ancients".

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Originally Posted by tokinokanatae

How does that solve the Meteion issue if she doesn't tell anyone that Meteion exists?

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I guess her not explicitly saying "There is a depressed harpy collective sending negative vibes at Etheirys causing the calamity, please learn to deal with strife in a healthy manner so that we can counter those vibes and face the horde at the end of reality together with the power of hope" in the cutscene depicting metaphors of her journey to the future the WoL is in means she never told anyone or intended to tell anyone about Meteion.

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Originally Posted by AlysanneVrannai

We are shown her pleading with people to learn to cope instead of bypassing suffering altogether in the post-Elpis cutscene, and they blatantly refused her and went for the Zodiark route instead.

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She “plead” with people after the final days already struck. She had the knowledge BEFORE the final days even hit. Emet KNEW he was mind wiped. We KNOW no matter how crazy the claim, his duty for the safety of the star comes first so he investigates whatever crazy claim there is, we see this when we bring up our claim to him. All she had to do was tell him. Hell, she has the echo, use that. They couldn’t combat Meteion because they didn’t know what was behind the final days. Venat had that information and kept it solely a secret. As for the whole “we don’t know what happened between blah and blah.” Again, i bring up the anamnesis cutscene. It seems to be one of the last times she spoke with her followers, and from what we see, they don’t even know of her sundering plan, that they would die etc etc.

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Originally Posted by AlysanneVrannai

I guess her not explicitly saying "There is a depressed harpy collective sending negative vibes at Etheirys causing the calamity, please learn to deal with strife in a healthy manner so that we can counter those vibes and face the horde at the end of reality together with the power of hope" in the cutscene depicting metaphors of her journey to the future the WoL is in means she never told anyone or intended to tell anyone about Meteion.

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Yes, you're right. Being vague about the very real threat that's still facing them is a lot better. Wouldn't want to make Venat sound silly or anything.

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Originally Posted by tokinokanatae

Like, it really doesn't make any sense to say she offered an alternative when Zodiark was already there. Let's imagine that the people listened to her, said she was right, that they needed to move forward from this. Then what? How does that solve Meteion? How does that solve the Zodiark that now exists and the souls removed from the cycle of life giving him power? If they gave her the answer she wanted, are they suddenly worthy of being told the truth?

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This is an interesting thought. I mean, what would she have done in that case? If we believe that the density of the sundered's souls is important to defeating Meteion, would she have tried to convince everyone that they had to surrender themselves to having their souls torn apart anyway...?

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Originally Posted by Veloran

This is an interesting thought. I mean, what would she have done in that case? If we believe that the density of the sundered's souls is important to defeating Meteion, would she have tried to convince everyone that they had to surrender themselves to having their souls torn apart anyway...?

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The worst part is it only takes a selection of them to accomplish it. The Scions plus whoever joins your party (and of course Emet and Hyth.) So in the hypothetical scenario where they were not sundered, assuming all other methods to allow them to manipulate dynamis would not bear fruit, at most you could say it could be accomplished by agreeing to the sundering of a fraction of their populace (not to the tune of 14x over) and preparing them for this task - again, assuming all other alternatives were exhausted and would not work.

I used to think that a possible reason for her faction's plan to be so unappealing to the remainder of her people was because it may have entailed sundering them to eradicate a symptom mistaken for the cause of the crisis, i.e. creation magicks, but in reality they're not even given that much of a rationale.

Gods I hate that cutscene so much. It's from Venat's POV so it's biased and it's clearly not a faithful retelling of events. I mean, if we're not allowed to bring up anything from ShB or Amaurot as fact because it's only "one side of the story" or "Emet's interpretation" then this should be no different. As with most things, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. There's nothing other than that cutscene with the Zodiark Cultist Strawmen group to indicate the Ancients as a whole were like that, on the contrary, we know for a fact they weren't because Venat had a following of "no small number". The question I'd like answered is what was her threshold to not sunder the world?

The Ancients were so divided over the fate of the star that Elidibus exited Zodiark to mediate. I doubt any further sacrifices were going to be made without him in the pilot's seat, which would imply Venat sundered the world in the middle of negotiations. It comes across as not everyone complied quickly enough so, F it, sundered!

I suspect her logic was failing to convince them, in all honesty, as between the time Elidibus emerged and the Anamnesis scene, the number of her following is implied to have withered down to just a few. Add into that Elidibus potentially communicating the grief of the souls inside Zodiark at not being able to return to the star (ergo, trapped in a limbo of a kind) and proving that this manoeuvre was possible, it may have further eroded away any opposition to the plan against arguments which were at best philosophical in nature since she had committed to not revealing the true underlying reasoning behind them, and merely had exhortations against forsaking suffering. As an aside, even the Scions are perplexed by this when they see the Plenty in the Dead Ends and how that world's pursuit of perfection ended - whatever one thinks of it. This argument was going to be a hard sell without facts to back it, so platitudes would not cut it.

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Originally Posted by Lauront

I suspect her logic was failing to convince them, in all honesty, as between the time Elidibus emerged and the Anamnesis scene, the number of her following is implied to have withered down to just a few. Add into that Elidibus potentially communicating the grief of the souls inside Zodiark at not being able to return to the star and proving that this manoeuvre was possible, it may have further eroded away any opposition to the plan against arguments which were at best philosophical in nature since she had committed to not revealing the true underlying reasoning behind them, and merely had exhortations against forsaking suffering. As an aside, even the Scions are perplexed by this when they see the Plenty in the Dead Ends and how that world's pursuit of perfection ended - whatever one thinks of it. This argument was going to be a hard sell without facts to back it, so platitudes would not cut it.

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Given how Venat is depicted, as a former Convocation member and trusted advisor hence the white robes, I'm also left to believe that the issue was the message and not the messenger. It's interesting they decided to go with the Ancient souls being trapped within Zodiark because, IMO, that made the third sacrifice significantly more justifiable. We're told returning to the star is a fundamental part of their belief system and they're being deprived of that.

Definitely, I think that may have added to the emotional gravity of it all. Had they been given an adequate explanation? They may have focused on the more immediate goal of wiping out Meteion and left the restoration of those souls for when Zodiark had fulfilled his purpose. We can but speculate.