Did the Ancient Amaurotians... (minor spoilers)

TBH We can only speculate because story so vague...

However I believe good Ascian guys who created Hydaelyn (probably crystal covering the planet) used their own souls to power it...
However creators of Zodiark tried different approach attempt to use lesser races and their own half population to weave stars laws. We know it is failed.

I think we are shattered souls belonged to other lesser races (minus WOL maybe) after supernova Hydaelyn revived lesser races and formed new planets. This is why Ascian considers us unreal / mockery / made up.
I think what Ascians trying to do undo supernova event with joining. In previous trials they demonstrated they have power over time itself. But how much power they need to undo all events?

Ascian near god beings but not gods. They have limits like creators of Omega and their enemy Midgardsormr.
Midgardsormr only one who managed travel between stars while creators of Omega failed or refused to travel.

What made me believe supernova event dungeon called "Amaurot" at some point of dungeon it will take you a shattered piece of planet slowly consumed by star. However I am not sure about if English translation correct.
Another thing a dying star does not emits light.. surrounding planets always at night phase. Dungeon have same theme.

Both Zodiark and Hydaelyn also Omega seems mere tools created for preset purposes.. Calling them god seems weird to me. Perhaps its just translation.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by TinkerTech

I read the debacle as "We created Zodiark to revive our home and stave off disaster, but it cost us over half our population. We want them back." And somehow, by un-sundering the shards, they will achieve his. By default, once a life is gone, it's gone. So either the lost Aumorites are in some limbo they can be retrieved from, or Emet-Sech and Co. are in a state of extreme denial. (Which, considering everything they did led to their world being shattered and their loved ones lost, can you blame them?)

---

I'm inclined to believe it is the latter. It's been pretty much confirmed by the SHB story that souls are basically recycled (yet can still, under certain circumstances, carry over recognizable attributes of their previous incarnations). I think that one of the big "revelations" and 'stick it to yah' moments against the Ascians is going to wind up being that the whole time they were tormenting the shards, they were really just killing off the same ancients again and again.

I believe Zodiark probably could pull off reviving the lost ones. We have seen someone pull off revival, temporarily and on a small scale, with ten years as a gap. But that’s an ordinary alchemist. Not the most ancient of Primals. I’m not inclined to say it absolutely could be done, but it at least seems plausible to buy he could pull it off.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MirronTulaxia

My point with Anamnesis Anyder is not that it was biased, but that it was ten seconds. It's an absurdly short window of time into a, presumably, complex matter. I'm not taking that as the entirety of what happened, especially when Y'shtola is working to find more information.

And the Ascians personal view of things doesn't really matter. No one views themselves as a monster. They have all manner of justifications for their actions, some of them possibly even to varying degrees accurate. Kuja viewed himself as the center of IX's universe and decided it was fitting to erase all of existence because he wouldn't be around. Are we to therefore conclude his actions were morally just? I, at least, find that to be a pretty weak form of moral reasoning. The Ascians, likewise, are no better than Kuja, if not even worse because at least Kuja had a moment of redemption that I sincerely doubt will exist for the Ascians, regardless of how they view things.

---

>_> You were the one who mentioned Emet's bias in relation to that clip, I was just pointing out that he had nothing to do with it...

This whole last paragraph implies that there's a universal set of morals that can be used to determine who is right and wrong and that really isn't how morals work, especially not across two entirely different races separated by literally thousands of years. You can only conclude something is morally wrong or morally just from your own worldview, which is what leads to such horrific conflict between groups whose morals do not align. The game hits on this message multiple times, not just in the Ascian plotline. The entire primal summoning plot hinges on the question of justification in a situation where both parties have their own reasons... Of course Kuja was wrong from the perspective of his potential victims. Of course the Ascians are wrong from the perspective of those they intend to obliterate. But nevertheless, to themselves, this game's villains are often the "heroes of another story" and you, the player, are asked to empathize with their perspectives on multiple occasions; even Estinien laments for Nidhogg, the dragon that had his family massacred, because he got the opportunity to literally see the world through Nidhogg's eyes. Rather than the simple black and white of good versus evil, this game repeatedly asks its players to judge the relative merits of both sides in a conflict and to recognize that the decisions we, the Warriors of Light/Darkness, make throughout the plot are still one-sided decisions made in service to those we personally care about--often without regard for those on the other side of the conflict at all. That the Ascians see themselves as justified does matter, because the game is literally trying to tell you again and again that the only way to really end conflict isn't judgment, it's understanding.

Oh, I finally get what you’re talking about. You misunderstood the point, had to go find the post.

1. What I’m saying with regards to Emet’s bias and the Hydaelyn Convocation is that if that ten second clip represented all that the group stood for, why wouldn’t Emet say that instead? Saying they stood for life as we know it is the more positive interpretation, so if Emet, being biased, wouldn’t make up a new reason. Not sure if I’m articulating this point well, it’s hard to type it all out on my phone. Basically the point is about Emet’s account, to me, being more positive (presumably the opposite of his bias) than the ten second clip alone represents alone. Because of that I’m figuring there is more to the story than just that.

2. I think that saying all moral stances are equally correct, so killing everyone because you’ll die someday is as morally correct as sacrificing your life to save an entire planet... if that’s your stance there isn’t going to be any agreement. Moral relativism has some merit. Taken to that absurd of an extreme isn’t something that I’ll ever agree with, it’s wrong, plain and simple.


3. You must be playing different games, because at no point does IX or XIV present the villains you’re talking about in a justified light. Sympathetic? Sure. Justified? No. It certainly says “killing everyone for the way they were born is wrong”. If anything the flaw of Nidhogg and the Ascians both is they go against the central theme of the game, about passing on legacies and moving towards the future, not being trapped in the past.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MirronTulaxia

Oh, I finally get what you’re talking about. You misunderstood the point, had to go find the post.

1. What I’m saying with regards to Emet’s bias and the Hydaelyn Convocation is that if that ten second clip represented all that the group stood for, why wouldn’t Emet say that instead? Saying they stood for life as we know it is the more positive interpretation, so if Emet, being biased, wouldn’t make up a new reason. Not sure if I’m articulating this point well, it’s hard to type it all out on my phone. Basically the point is about Emet’s account, to me, being more positive (presumably the opposite of his bias) than the ten second clip alone represents alone. Because of that I’m figuring there is more to the story than just that.

2. I think that saying all moral stances are equally correct, so killing everyone because you’ll die someday is as morally correct as sacrificing your life to save an entire planet... if that’s your stance there isn’t going to be any agreement. Moral relativism has some merit. Taken to that absurd of an extreme isn’t something that I’ll ever agree with, it’s wrong, plain and simple.


3. You must be playing different games, because at no point does IX or XIV present the villains you’re talking about in a justified light. Sympathetic? Sure. Justified? No. It certainly says “killing everyone for the way they were born is wrong”. If anything the flaw of Nidhogg and the Ascians both is they go against the central theme of the game, about passing on legacies and moving towards the future, not being trapped in the past.

---

I don't understand what you're saying with Emet's bias in your first point. It's possible that he simply didn't know the Hydaelyn crew's full reasoning? By the point they were willing to summon their own god, I'm sure communication was not exactly clear between the two groups anymore.

It's not a question of whether all moral stances are equally correct--what I'm saying is that thinking of morals in terms of "correct" and "incorrect" is a significant oversimplification of how morals work in the first place, but I'll leave it there because this isn't the Hall of Rhetoric lol

At this point I am very convinced indeed that we are playing different games.

1. One would think he would have some idea of something for why they would summon. It doesn't seem like he would just make up something, and if he was then, as I said, presumably he would make up a negative reason, not a positive reason. From this again it seems reasonable to conclude that what Emet shared is something he heard, which means unless the Hydaelyn group was lying to him or his source for information (which seems absurd again) then it was a motivation. Again, I'm not saying the ten second clip is false (that would be even more absurd), but to assume that the guy who hates Hydaelyn and everything she stands for would ascribe a benign motive to her summoners that didn't exist is pretty ridiculous, so clearly there is more to it than just that tiny bit we saw.

2. It... really isn't. Not in this instance, again. We could have a nuanced debate on a subject like "is it right to risk your life to save someone else" because there are two pretty good sides there. Side A: "Saving someone is generally a net gain, so it's good even with the risk" versus Side B: "If you die then you can't do more good, and then two people are lost instead of just the one". That's a nuanced debate. The Ascian debate goes like this. Side A: "Let's kill everyone on the planet, man, women, and child, in order to maybe bring back some people who have been dead for thousands of years. People who died to save others, and willingly offered their lives." versus Side B: "Let's... not do that." There isn't a debate to be had there. Every question of morality is not shades of gray. There isn't any justification for what the Ascians propose, and saying "but they're really sad" doesn't make it any better.

Am I being mildly hyperbolic? Sure. But it really isn't far off from the truth.

3. I mean, if you want I can go and cite particular moments. The Crystal Exarch has a very strong point near the tail end of Shadowbringers main story that sums up what XIV pushes for pretty well. Directed at, surprising no one, the main bad guy. It makes it pretty clear what the angle of the story is here. The moments you already cited were not really accurate.

To me, Hydaelyn and the sundering are an evil necessity. By splitting everyone's soul (yes, I don't think the sundering was an accident) you ensure no one has the power to resummon Zodriak without having to kill them all. Sure, it cost everyone creation magic, but hey, the population was increased x12! I'm also pretty sure once all Ascians are finally defeated and the risk of Zodriak coming back is gone, Hydaelyn will go dormant and the blessing of light will go puff, nerfing our character for future plots to come.

All controversy from Hydaelyn side will be that we are compelled to be her peons in the fight against Zodriak, and perhaps, a "dark explanation" about how she remains active, a primal need to consume aether in order to keep their physical form after all.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MirronTulaxia

2. It... really isn't. Not in this instance, again. We could have a nuanced debate on a subject like "is it right to risk your life to save someone else" because there are two pretty good sides there. Side A: "Saving someone is generally a net gain, so it's good even with the risk" versus Side B: "If you die then you can't do more good, and then two people are lost instead of just the one". That's a nuanced debate. The Ascian debate goes like this. Side A: "Let's kill everyone on the planet, man, women, and child, in order to maybe bring back some people who have been dead for thousands of years. People who died to save others, and willingly offered their lives." versus Side B: "Let's... not do that." There isn't a debate to be had there. Every question of morality is not shades of gray. There isn't any justification for what the Ascians propose, and saying "but they're really sad" doesn't make it any better.

Am I being mildly hyperbolic? Sure. But it really isn't far off from the truth.

3. I mean, if you want I can go and cite particular moments. The Crystal Exarch has a very strong point near the tail end of Shadowbringers main story that sums up what XIV pushes for pretty well. Directed at, surprising no one, the main bad guy. It makes it pretty clear what the angle of the story is here. The moments you already cited were not really accurate.

---

Except it's not "let's kill every man, woman, and child on this planet" from the Ascians' perspective, it's "let's repair what was horrifically broken and save our world." They're not justified to us, the players, but they are certainly justified to themselves, and that you seem so fixated on the tiny details of Hydaelyn's motivation but entirely failed to notice the story going out of it's way to paint Emet-Selch as a direct foil to the WoL and a character whose motivations we are supposed to understand even while we recognize them to be abhorrent from our PC's perspective, that boggles the mind indeed.

Ah yes. Excellent logic. "The examples you gave are not accurate but my example is, promise." I'd bother to go pull actual quest text of I thought it would have any chance of affecting your opinion, but I can tell it won't so I'll just end with: I really wouldn't use anything the Crystal Exarch says as your "moral of the story, " given that, by traveling to the First/past and creating a paradox, he essentially wiped out an entire timeline and obliterated the lives of many people who would have been born in that timeline, rewriting history for what he deemed the greater good--the exact same thing the Ascians want to do.

1. That it's not that from their perspective is, ultimately, meaningless. Their perspective is wrong. All those sentient beings are perfectly capable of living, dreaming, loving, laughing, and in general being every bit as good a person as anyone else.

2. Who said that I can't understand his reasoning? You can understand why someone does something, that doesn't make it justified.

3. Given your examples of villains being morally equivalent so far does not track and that a lack of understanding is the root of conflict relative to "don't cling to the past, live and pass on for the future, yada yada" I'm pretty comfortable with my stance. Feel free to pull quest text.

4. There is a huge, huge difference between the Crystal Exarch and the Ascians. That you think they're equivalent is... really on par with the rest of things, but still mind boggling.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MirronTulaxia

1. Their perspective is wrong. All those sentient beings are perfectly capable... and in general being every bit as good a person as anyone else.

2. Who said that I can't understand his reasoning? You can understand why someone does something, that doesn't make it justified.

3. Given your examples of villains being morally equivalent so far does not track and that a lack of understanding is the root of conflict relative to "don't cling to the past, live and pass on for the future, yada yada" I'm pretty comfortable with my stance. Feel free to pull quest text.

4. There is a huge, huge difference between the Crystal Exarch and the Ascians.

---

This conversation is going nowhere so I'm gonna call it quits after this but:

1. That's your opinion, your definition of wrong, and your definition of personhood. The Ascians clearly have different definitions of those things and if you don't personally want to acknowledge that the story gave them a differing perspective that's cool, but the rest of us who do recognize that the story asks us to at least look at things from that perspective will be over here enjoying the other half of the story.

2. Absolutely never said that the Ascians are justified from our perspective as players. Literally not once.

3. Did you miss the beast tribes who summon their gods out of fear that their territory will be stolen and their people massacred, a fear which is driven to ever more extreme heights by the WoL swooping in and murdering their gods in front of them? Did you miss the scene where Estinien realizes he and Nidhogg were parallels of each other, each driven to endless war by an unquenchable thirst for vengeance? Did you miss Lyse's decision to invite the Ananta to her peace talks even knowing the threat they posed because the only way to build a brighter future is through reaching understanding? Did you miss our efforts to actually parley with Emperor Varis--a talk which fell apart entirely because he refused to see any side but his own? Letting go of the past is a fine message, but complex stories can easily have more than one theme, and I really think you're missing a major point about building bridges with those of different perspectives in this game.

4. The Crystal Exarch is "different" because his actions were for us. If he were on the other side, there'd be no question of his actions being wrong. Imagine if he was an Ascian and used the tower to rewrite history to prevent Amaurot's fall instead of the Source's, erasing all the mortal lives of the shards. Would that be okay? Of course not, so why is it okay to do it to the people from the Source's bad future? Is he allowed to get away with erasing lives for the "greater good" because you happen to agree with his definition of good?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by sarehptar

Except it's not "let's kill every man, woman, and child on this planet" from the Ascians' perspective, it's "let's repair what was horrifically broken and save our world." They're not justified to us, the players, but they are certainly justified to themselves, and that you seem so fixated on the tiny details of Hydaelyn's motivation but entirely failed to notice the story going out of it's way to paint Emet-Selch as a direct foil to the WoL and a character whose motivations we are supposed to understand even while we recognize them to be abhorrent from our PC's perspective, that boggles the mind indeed.

Ah yes. Excellent logic. "The examples you gave are not accurate but my example is, promise." I'd bother to go pull actual quest text of I thought it would have any chance of affecting your opinion, but I can tell it won't so I'll just end with: I really wouldn't use anything the Crystal Exarch says as your "moral of the story, " given that, by traveling to the First/past and creating a paradox, he essentially wiped out an entire timeline and obliterated the lives of many people who would have been born in that timeline, rewriting history for what he deemed the greater good--the exact same thing the Ascians want to do.

---

My only comment on the end part there is I don't think it's actually confirmed what happened to the timeline the exarch left behind, and it actually seemed like it was implied in the short story that everyone there would be left to "live on in a doomed world" or something along those lines. Only way it makes sense without being a total paradox as well imo.

Not debating that it was every bit as morally gray as what the Ascians are doing, but the exarch also had the added benefit of it turning out that no, it's likely no one would have been born after a time in that world, because it was doomed to be the timeline where the Ascians win and eradicate everything to restore their civilization (likely hand picked to be those who supported their actions in the first place, or they'd likely end up where they started anyway imo). Perhaps not something he knew going in, but hey. Lucky him. Things were worse for his side in that world than he knew :P

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by sarehptar

Snip.

---

1. It's a reasonable stance on all accounts. The Ascians having a different stance does not, somehow, make it justified.

2. Then your argument is completely missing mine.

3. Nope, didn't miss any of those. None of those are "and it's okay to kill everyone" which is the point you're missing. You can understand other sides. That doesn't mean that the actions the other side takes are justified, right, or in general correct.

4. No, the Crystal Exarch is different because his actions were for everyone. It wasn't just for the WoL. It was to create a future where many more people would be alive. Not to recreate the past like the Ascians. The world was doomed. They tried every other possible answer they could think of, and then tried to do that. And it was a cause supported by people in said doomed timeline to begin with. Ultimately, it saved more lives than it lost, especially when you factor in the First not being destroyed and all the other shards. The Ascians goal does not.