Did Zodiark ever do anything wrong?

To answer the question of the title, ultimately -- yes.

Zodiark was functionally a tool, and like most tools, it is not inherently good or evil; but ultimately wound up being used for evil purposes, despite being created to do something that initially had good intentions. I think Hades makes it pretty clear at the end of Endwalker by saying their methods wouldn't have ultimately worked; so despite being created to stop an apocalypse which was Objectively Good, once you get further into the subsequent sacrifices where it goes from being willing Ancients offering themselves to forcing your ritual sacrifices onto life you deem "unworthy" or "less than", esp. post sundering, it's pretty clearly Not Good and Very Evil. While the Capital "E" Entity of Zodiark may not have possessed the will for most of it's creation to order people to do explicitly evil things (especially post-Elidibus removing himself), I think it's pretty obvious both explicitly and on the margins that its influence was directly responsible for a lot of Bad Things.

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Originally Posted by Eisi

Well Zodiark was the evil one. So it doesn't really matter if he did anything wrong does it? He was the evil one, Hydaelyn was the good one.
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True! She told everyone what was going on with Meteion and Dynamis and the truth of the final days. She wanted the ancients to succeed. Still people decided not to listen because they were incapable because of how inferior they were to us... she had to judge them by erasing their bodies and identities and instead replacing them with better stock. Sometimes that's the only way to save the world, no matter how tragic.

On the other hand wait wasn't Venat an ancient as well? So she must have already been kinda sundered I guess for her to be able to understand that something other than Zodiark could be done? For her to actually care I mean. I don't really know tho.

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Originally Posted by Eisi

I know, I know. Venat just did her thing and she was pretty much just 100% wrong let's face it. She's a cutie though. The convocation also was pretty incompetent, including Emet who didn't even care about the memory erasure incident. And nobody ever found out that it had to do anything with Dynamis, including Fandaniel who knew that it was a thing. The storyline is just really well written.

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You. I like you.

The storyline really only works when you assume every Ancient to be a massive idiot and Venat to be at best hugely incompetent or at worst actively sabotaging her people for the benefit of a "better" future humanity she saw exactly one (1) specimen of. One of the most important people on the planet (and his Kind Of A Big Deal friend) got his mind and memory tempered with? By a machine that instantly made him go "is this even legal??"? Why, of course this situation was never investigated! I guess it is a testament to how badly the Ancients deserved to die: they are such a bunch of idiots, it is a wonder their society managed to survive for millennia. I'm sure these immortal people, who each had massive magical powers capable of potentially ending the universe with a creation gone wrong yet still managed to function, and whose apparently global culture revolved around debate, the confrontation of different points of view and research, were just completely unable to handle themselves.

Genius Godakawa! Absolutely flawless.

And man, lol. Fandaniel's knowledge of Dynamis sure was a boon to the Convocation! He never even found out the Final Days were Dynamis. Wow. But I guess this is the same dude who asked for a random familiar's help to get himself down a tree while being a master of wind magicks and avian creations. If anything, this is a consistent character trait, which is more than I can say about the rest of Hermes's purported tenure of the Seat of Fandaniel – not that Hermes being a part of the Ancient Convocation of Fourteen or of the reincarnated Ascian paragons ever interested Ishikawa in the first place, it looks like.



But to answer the thread question: no. Or rather, not as Zodiark himself, but as Elidibus the Ascian after the Sundering, yes, though moreso as a well-intentioned (for his people) extremist type of antagonist. And IMO you cannot dissociate what Elidibus decided to do from what caused him to act this way, namely the Sundering breaking down reality and deleting his civilisation, and the remnants of his people being indefinitely trapped in the purgatory of Zodiark to serve as aether battery for what he views as the broken pieces of people he used to know and love. That sucks. And this isn't even touching upon the fact that Venat, as Hydaelyn, was by then fully onboard the time loop train, so whatever opposition she gave the Unsundered was pretty much lip service. Can't diverge from that timeline of 8 genocides too much! So yes, the post-Sundering, disembodied Heart of Zodiark acted the villain, exactly as according to her plans.

His actions as Zodiark however were as follows: stopping the Final Days, massively seeding the planet with life so it doesn't remain a barren rock floating in space, and coming out of the giant soul mecha cockpit to mediate matters when conflict erupted over what to do next with regards to the sacrificed people whose memories, awareness and souls in fact remained within Zodiark.

Tipping the aether balance of the twelve unsundered members of the Convocation who performed Zodiark's summoning over to Darkness is a thing that happened. Other than Altima's crystal's testimony of it, we have zero details on what this actually entails, other than Emet preferring the shade.

I think you're supposed to feel bad for Zodiark in his pathetic state. Hard-working primal maintains the balance for millennia, then loses parts of his body, and then who happens to show up but Hydaelyn's champion who promptly beats him to a pulp. Repeatedly.

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Originally Posted by Avenger

I think you're supposed to feel bad for Zodiark in his pathetic state. Hard-working primal maintains the balance for millennia, then loses parts of his body, and then who happens to show up but Hydaelyn's champion who promptly beats him to a pulp. Repeatedly.

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Hey, be fair. We didn't do it repeatedly, we only did it once, Extremes are non-canon! Also, Fancy Dan shoulders some of the blame, surely.

But yeah, to a degree I do feel sorry for it; not like I'd feel sorry for a person (since Zodiark has no will), but more like how I'd feel sorry for a long-standing piece of public infrastructure that gets taken for granted, like a train line or a river or something. 'You give us so much and people treat you like crap'. It's especially true when you consider the fact that Zodiark was never intended to do anything but put up the barrier, so all this stuff happened to it because of something it was never supposed to do in the first place.

EDIT: Also, minor clarification, we don't know how long Zodiark was doing its thing before the Sundering when it 'lost parts of its body', but it probably wasn't long as far as the Ancients' time scale. I very much doubt it was up for even a century before the Sundering; if I were to enforce human timescales onto the Ancients, I'd be surprised if the time between the first summoning and the Sundering was more than a year.

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Originally Posted by Avenger

I think you're supposed to feel bad for Zodiark in his pathetic state. Hard-working primal maintains the balance for millennia, then loses parts of his body, and then who happens to show up but Hydaelyn's champion who promptly beats him to a pulp. Repeatedly.

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Not only that but he was protecting the world for 12k years and literally is never thanked for it and it’s hardly even mentioned. Not even in his own codex entry.

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Originally Posted by KizuyaKatogami

Not only that but he was protecting the world for 12k years and literally is never thanked for it and it’s hardly even mentioned. Not even in his own codex entry.

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I mean, he should have been painted blue for us to like him. Purple is a evil color, I mean, Lahabrea Had a purple aura and he was evil, therefor Zodiark is evil.

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Originally Posted by Magikazam

I mean, he should have been painted blue for us to like him. Purple is a evil color, I mean, Lahabrea Had a purple aura and he was evil, therefor Zodiark is evil.

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You might be onto something. Purple is my favorite color…

I think it bears mention that despite Zodiark essentially being a glorified mecha that requires a heart/pilot to act, the souls that went into him were still conscious as we see them directly cry out to us and beg us to save him/them from Fandaniel (and the destruction he sought) and we even see them walk around on the moons surface.

Now their presence might be due to the towers binding him being shattered but we do speak with Hythlodaeus.

There is a implication that they were stuck immobile and aware for 12 000 years and could do nothing but cast their gaze at the ruined shard that once was their home.
Their hope of salvation edging a little bit closer each time a rejoining was performed only to be betrayed by a member of the convocation for the second time (counting Venat)

A terrible end for a tragic figure.

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Originally Posted by Adils

I think it bears mention that despite Zodiark essentially being a glorified mecha that requires a heart/pilot to act, the souls that went into him were still conscious as we see them directly cry out to us and beg us to save him/them from Fandaniel (and the destruction he sought) and we even see them walk around on the moons surface.

Now their presence might be due to the towers binding him being shattered but we do speak with Hythlodaeus.

There is a implication that they were stuck immobile and aware for 12 000 years and could do nothing but cast their gaze at the ruined shard that once was their home.
Their hope of salvation edging a little bit closer each time a rejoining was performed only to be betrayed by a member of the convocation for the second time (counting Venat)

A terrible end for a tragic figure.

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Something interesting about this is that I actually never got the idea that the souls within Zodiark regretted their decision, or even seemed to expect or want to be freed from it. There's one guy genuinely freaking out, but everyone is lamenting... well, not that they're in there, but that they're in there and it's not working. It's one thing to sacrifice yourself for the greater good, it's another thing to do that and then wake up learning that the greater good's not even winning.

It's also unclear how much of what had transpired or was going on that they even knew; they seemed to understand their literal at-the-moment reality of Zenos and Fandaniel ruining everything, and by Hyth's report they know the events up to their imprisonment and the sundering, but beyond that it's not clear--and even given that, they don't really express any opinions about the post-summoning, pre-Fandaniel-wakeup period, they're mostly just dwelling on that initial summoning's emotions. So it's hard to tell how tragic their in-the-end emotionality was, if they knew or lamented anything specific beyond 'we sacrificed ourselves for nothing'.

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Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

Zodiark seems to often be framed negatively by the game's writers, despite — if I understand the lore correctly — never having done anything negative.

The Convocation made Zodiark to save the planet from The Final Days, and while this did not tackle the root of the problem, he did succeed in protecting the planet. It took a sacrifice of Ancient lives to create him, but they did so willingly....

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Quote truncated for character limit

This outlines a fundamental parable throughout FFXIV's story: There's no absolute good or bad, light or dark, joy or sorrow. You have to accept both as a balance.

Ulimately, while Zodiark didn't do anything he wasn't asked to do, the issue was that his existence, in its whole being, posed a threat to the state the world had become due to Hydaelyn's actions. Were Zodiark to rejoin, so too would Etherys, and so too would Etherys' people. Hydaelyn split them so that they would have the means to combat against dynamis. Allowing them to rejoin takes that ability away from them again, leaving them totally vulnerable. We also don't kill Zodiark because he's a threat, but instead because Amon uses him to be an imminent threat. Were he to never have been used by Amon, we would have likely let him be.

I think my issue is that the game goes out of its way to paint Zodiark as the evil that must be destroyed and hydealyn as the savior when it arguable is both and neither at the same time. For all inrense purpose Elidibus is zodiark but he states a few times that he is only interested in keeping things in balance. He states early on that he is only opposed to WOL because the pendulem between light and dark is swinging too much towards light. What the truth of the matter is, debatable.

But one curious thing i did note was that the souls within Zodiark cry out against Amon when he wants to reacte the calamity using Zodiark.

I also noted during the trial that Themis originally had both light an dark abilities which made me wonder if Zodiark originally did prior to Hydealyn, in the art work he is shown as having two halos originally and then one after. It could just be a thing they changed / abandoned as they went on.

Ultimately though, Elidibus was about reconcilation and so Zodiark being a tool to save them was similiar in this regard, i think this is why Elidobus extracted himself originally, in order to find a solution to the dispiute but Hydealyn sundered during this phase resulting in the situation as it was.

I will say though that hydealyns back up plan was pure madness. Shove a bunch of frightened people onto a ship where the slightest extreme emotion would result in them transforming into beasts... what would be more stressfull or emotional that fleeing the planet? IMO the moment that shop left Zodiarks influence they all would have turned.

I do hope at some point they revisit the Zodiark stuff but thats unlikely to happen unless they decide they need to undo enwalker for an expansion idea. Or they give Summoners the ability to summon Zodiark (please do this would be cool)

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Originally Posted by Anvaire

For all inrense purpose Elidibus is zodiark but he states a few times that he is only interested in keeping things in balance. He states early on that he is only opposed to WOL because the pendulem between light and dark is swinging too much towards light.

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He was lying. (Or more correctly they just hadn't figured out the truth yet.) As Themis he was 'the Emissary', supposedly an adjudicating role, but he absolutely wasn't doing that after he became Zodiark; at that point he's incapable of being neutral, and by all appearances doesn't actually try to be. In the present day he cares about balance in two very select ways that absolutely aren't the way he presented:

1. Controlled opposition; he was manipulating us and later Ardbert's crew so that the Ascians could control both sides of the conflict rather than just the bad guys. Granted, with us he didn't do that fantastically well.
2. Making sure the world didn't spin completely off its axis while they were off smacking it with apocalypses; he's just consciously aware that they don't want another Thirteenth situation.

In fact, going by later information (I believe in one of the short stories) he was actually specifically wrong about this one; a concern raised about the Ultima Weapon was that another attempted dark-aspected calamity so soon after the last one might just prolong the effects of that one rather than actually cause a new one.

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Originally Posted by Anvaire

I will say though that hydealyns back up plan was pure madness. Shove a bunch of frightened people onto a ship where the slightest extreme emotion would result in them transforming into beasts... what would be more stressfull or emotional that fleeing the planet? IMO the moment that shop left Zodiarks influence they all would have turned.

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If the backup plan was perfect, it wouldn't be the backup plan. Given the Loporrits never seemed at risk of turning there's probably some sort of in-built defense there (they had twelve thousand years to plan for this, after all), but really, the main thing to me is 'yeah obviously that plan's not great; if it was, we'd be doing it'.

Also, Venat's knowledge of what exactly was happening was very limited; she had evidence that other habitable planets exist, she didn't know that they were getting hit by the same thing, so in that context it's totally reasonable to go to one of them in response. In fact, we didn't know planets outside of the Source were getting hit until Godbrand Manderville told us.

What if Azem indirectly caused the 1st Calamity

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

In fact, we didn't know planets outside of the Source were getting hit until Godbrand Manderville told us.

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I believe we actually knew since Ultima Thule. When we spoke to the ea about the Final Days they said the same calamity had hit them. Alphinaud even pointed out to Meteion that the Meteia inadvertently drove worlds to their doom. So we knew from very early on that the main plan was the only chance, the backup was doomed to failure before it was even conceived given that the ea's planet, Deneb III, was only the third star visited by the Meteia and even then they were already spreading their despair.

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Originally Posted by Anvaire

I think my issue is that the game goes out of its way to paint Zodiark as the evil that must be destroyed and hydealyn as the savior when it arguable is both and neither at the same time. For all inrense purpose Elidibus is zodiark but he states a few times that he is only interested in keeping things in balance. He states early on that he is only opposed to WOL because the pendulem between light and dark is swinging too much towards light. What the truth of the matter is, debatable.

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Except it doesn't... Yes, up until Shadowbringers, we're made to believe that Zodiark is evil, but it's in shadowbringers that we are shown the truth. He's not evil, and neither are the ancients. Yes, their goals don't align with our own, but that doesn't make them evil. As I mentioned, the problem with Zodiark isn't that he's evil, it's that he presents the real threat of rejoining, which has two serious consequences: 1: The lives of those currently on Etherys (across the source and all reflections) would cease to exist. Yes, they would in essence become their whole selves, but we don't know that rejoining is "better". 2: The whole beings are incapable of defending themselves against dynamis. Nuff said....

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I will say though that hydealyns back up plan was pure madness. Shove a bunch of frightened people onto a ship where the slightest extreme emotion would result in them transforming into beasts... what would be more stressfull or emotional that fleeing the planet? IMO the moment that shop left Zodiarks influence they all would have turned.
)

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We have no reason to believe that Meteion can detect Aetheric beings in any capacity. In fact, we are lead to believe that the opposite is true and she struggles with detecting aether altogether. The song of oblivion isn't a directed attack at the people of Etherys. It's a directed attack at Etherys altogether. She knows WHERE Etherys is, but she likely has no idea what's happening there. If the people of Etherys were to leave it, Meteion likely wouldn't know. Now that's not to say she wouldn't seek the people out, but we don't have any concrete information anyway on the matter.

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Originally Posted by Ascended_Demon

I believe we actually knew since Ultima Thule. When we spoke to the ea about the Final Days they said the same calamity had hit them. Alphinaud even pointed out to Meteion that the Meteia inadvertently drove worlds to their doom. So we knew from very early on that the main plan was the only chance, the backup was doomed to failure before it was even conceived given that the ea's planet, Deneb III, was only the third star visited by the Meteia and even then they were already spreading their despair.

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Deneb III isn't suggested to be the Ea's home planet, nor was it clear if it got hit by the same thing exactly or just a similar phenomena; the Ea only bring it up as 'hey something similar happened over here'. The Ea only being the third planet Meteion visited even suggests it might be an unrelated phenomena if you assume that the Ea haven't really updated their knowledge of the universe, since it would've happened beforehand, but I don't think that's true; the Omicron definitely seem capable of seeing outside Ultima Thule and updating their knowledge.

Hell, my assumption now is actually that Deneb III was a Mandervillian planet. While we know that not every star a Meteion visited reached the same fate as ours, the Mandervillians absolutely got hit by the same despair-pocalypse as we did.

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Originally Posted by Anvaire

I will say though that hydealyns back up plan was pure madness. Shove a bunch of frightened people onto a ship where the slightest extreme emotion would result in them transforming into beasts... what would be more stressfull or emotional that fleeing the planet? IMO the moment that shop left Zodiarks influence they all would have turned.

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Everyone already "left Zodiark's influence" the moment we killed him on the moon. That's what allowed the Final Days to start up again.

Anyway, I'm not certain whether Hydaelyn's stated evacuation plan actually was the plan, or just what she told the Sharlayans to get them to start building a spacecraft that was actually capable of travelling much further than the moon, without actually mentioning anything about Meteion.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

Deneb III isn't suggested to be the Ea's home planet

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The Ea mention two planets, both of which sound like they could be their home, but it seems strange one way or another.

This quest mentions a different planet called Sadr IV in a way that indicates this is a planet whose orbits they use to measure time by, which could be an astronomical observation of a distant planet or it could just be an overly technical way of saying "a year", i.e. the time it takes for their home planet to complete an orbit.

Meanwhile Deneb III is mentioned here as a place that the Ea observed to be affected by the Final Days, likely from start to end. So is it their own planet, or is it one they observed from afar before Meteion destroyed them as well, but these recreations are unaware of that later history? Perhaps it was the very first, making it an isolated incident to the Ea's awareness, with their own doom not far behind.

The lorebook doesn't mention their home star either way.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

The Ea mention two planets, both of which sound like they could be their home, but it seems strange one way or another.

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I don't think the Ea experienced the Final Days. The Ea's home is designated as Ostrakon Tria in Meteion's report, and this is what she had to say about them:

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Originally Posted by Meteion's Report

Tria: Evidence of large population centers akin to cities recovered. No extant life-forms found — only their lingering essence.

One race had concluded that finite time was the root of all woes. Aspiring to shatter its shackles, they went in search of infinity. They discovered nothing is infinite, and that neither time or death can be cheated. Disillusioned, they gave up on the future — and themselves.

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The Ea had already discovered the inevitable heat death of the universe and had exterminated themselves via exsanguination of their aether before Meteion got there. She presumably got information on them via an Echo-adjacent power and her own abiltiy to tap into the emotions of others.

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Originally Posted by Dikatis

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Tria: Evidence of large population centers akin to cities recovered. No extant life-forms found — only their lingering essence.

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The Ea had already discovered the inevitable heat death of the universe and had exterminated themselves via exsanguination of their aether before Meteion got there. She presumably got information on them via an Echo-adjacent power and her own abiltiy to tap into the emotions of others.

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It's also possible that what Meteion classifies as a "lingering essence" of long-dead inhabitants is literally what the Ea are in the form we encounter them. They shed their living forms long ago so Meteion does not detect them as such, but she still might have directly interacted with their incorporeal selves.

Well at first SE fundation was most likely "the darkness are evil cuz it's dark and Zordiark their mighty god wants to do meany things. Hydealin is light so she's good, Asciens will be the Zordiaks minions and do bad things like killing people and bringing on chaos".
That was most likely the scenario when they were remaking ARR.

Going from ARR to HW, now that the game was saved, they needed to flesh them out a little more and came up with the WoD and the first. Basically setting the whole 13 shards and that light or darkness are not good / evil just.
The goal of the asciens was fleshed out, to merge the world. Was the whole "ancient" thing figured out yet and "what" caused the world to shatter? Maybe, maybe not.
However going from SB to ShB, that's most likely when all pieces regarding what zordiark and hydealin are was decided. This also coincide with the rework of "light/darkness" and "Astral/Umbral" which is a major retcon but was absolutely necessary. Now we know why zordiark is darkness, and why hydealin is light. Zordiark is darkness because it's the Astral aspect and they needed to move aether around to prevent "something (dynamis)" from affecting their world. hydealin is light because after the fracture the best thing is to just "freeze" everything in place.
The only remaining thing left to figure out was "what caused "the sound", what destroyed the ancien world.". Maybe it was already decided during SB, but it doesn't matter. At this point the story is globaly finallzed and even understand it's not just "good vs bad" or "light vs darkness"

There's no evil or good, just two different PoV in this case.

Zordiark represents the ancient world. A world that didn't want to die and was ready to sacrifice all the future lives to resurect. They all sacrificed themselves willingly to save their world, and that is very true. Altough they had a different relationship with death due to their excessively slow aging. Hydealin wasn't against Zordiark and how to save the world, she, and her followers, were against the idea of sacrificing the future to remake the past. This is basically her stand, "our time is over, let's leave the world to our childrens".
Zordiark followers however wanted to sacrifice their children to bring back the good 'ol day.

Who's right? Who's wrong? Depends on where you stand on the matter.
Hydealin caused immense suffering. Her splitting the world in order to beat zordiark and stop the "future sacrifice of the children" resulted in us becoming weaker, frail and dying excessively shortly. To the point even Emet struggled to see us as "alive".
How rough, probably even for her, to see people go from being all mighty living thousands of years to "barely able to move around, incapable of magic to just die after a few dozen of years of misery..."

Hydealin definitely brought immense suffering to the world.
But her stand was that the future should be able to live on its own term, basically "hear, feel, think" and not just become cattle to the aether slaughterhouse.

Basically, in her view if we decide to unify all the shards and become whole against, fine, as long as it is "our choice". her only motto was to not interfer. Hence why she'd only become active when asciens were doing stuff.
I do not believe the character itself wouldn't care nor be hurt to see civilization fighting, wars and tragedy. But so long as "it is our choice", she's fine with that.

In a sens, Hydealin altough she's light aspected represent chaos and freedom of will. Zordiark represent order, going back to how thing was, stagnation basically. Kind of funny when you think that they incarcnate the opposite aspect of what they represent.

In ultimately after our journey at the end of the universe, we kind of learned that something which killed many civilization was perfection. At the end of the last dongeon of EW, the world we see is the logical continuation of the asciens. So perhaps, maybe she kind of saw it coming (or not?), but her fracturing the shards and making us struggle is what saved humankind. Because had the ancient continued on their route we can bet they'd have done the same as the last civilization, unable to see beauty in nature, and just leaving the world with death as everything was pointless.

I do believe we paint her a bit too cleanly, because indeed, she did bring immense pain in the world but.. I guess it was well worth it?

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Originally Posted by Dikatis

I don't think the Ea experienced the Final Days. The Ea's home is designated as Ostrakon Tria in Meteion's report, and this is what she had to say about them:



The Ea had already discovered the inevitable heat death of the universe and had exterminated themselves via exsanguination of their aether before Meteion got there. She presumably got information on them via an Echo-adjacent power and her own abiltiy to tap into the emotions of others.

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Of course they experienced the Final Days. How else did she destroy their souls and collect them for us to experience them at the end of the game?

Zodiark did nothing wrong, because Zodiark did not have a will of His own. He was a turbo-charged superfamiliar empowered through a TON of Ancient sacrifice to rewrite the rules of the star and agitate places of stagnant aether, since those were the places where blasphemies kept showing up.

The Ancient Convocation deciding to continue making additional sacrifices was arguably "doing good in an evil way" because the objective was to save their world, but it meant sacrificing all the new life that had sprouted up, and Venat effectively argued that what the Ancients needed to do was move forward instead of backward.

Meanwhile, consider Venat. When we get to Endwalker, the key thing we learn is that Venat did this STRICTLY because of the bootstrap paradox of the WoL going back to Elpis and telling her what happened, and she concluded that only by allowing the Ancients to be decimated by the Final Days (AND allowing the new life to flourish AND ultimately sundering the star entirely so that the new life was more capable of manipulating dynamis in order to combat Meteion) was she going to prevent Meteion from winning. She allowed all of the death and suffering that occurred as a result of that decision (on the Source through the calamities, on the shards because of the Rejoinings, throughout all time) because she knew that was the only future where Meteion could be defeated, and if she deviated from the bootstrap paradox, she MIGHT save one world, but she'd doom the original world and every possible timeway that would spiral off of it if she did so.

So Venat, too, could be argued to have been doing evil in a good way, since it would ULTIMATELY, HOPEFULLY, lead to a resolution that rejected Meteion's nihilism, but it required a ton of bloodshed in order to work. Which is a big reason why Hydaelyn uses the last of Her conscious strength to get in a final bout with the WoL; She knows that She needs to pay some kind of penance for what She's done, and getting killed by Her own champion is the best way to do it.

But at the end of the day, Zodiark didn't do anything wrong; the Ascians did a LOT of evil in the name of reactivating Zodiark, and Zodiark WOULD have been used to commit huge evils if the Ascians had succeeded, but ZODIARK wasn't the source of that evil.

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Originally Posted by JepMZ

Of course they experienced the Final Days. How else did she destroy their souls and collect them for us to experience them at the end of the game?

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I honestly don't think the description of Tria actually strays from what we found, they technically are just 'lingering essences', so they would've been there--and reasonably, they would've eventually seen the Final Days whether they wanted to or not. In fact, the only society in Ultima Thule that we can't be confident Meteion found before turning were the Grebuloffs; every other civilization is either within the number range of the report section we heard, have an accurate description of them after the report's recited, or in the case of the Nibirun and Karellians directly mention her in dungeon notes (the Karellians might also be in the report), but the Grebuloffs have none of these.

Not that any of that matters, because they're all artificial dynamis constructs and she had twelve thousand years to make them; that's a lot of room to get clever or go back to earlier findings.

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Originally Posted by unlimitedBLACK

Meanwhile, consider Venat. When we get to Endwalker, the key thing we learn is that Venat did this STRICTLY because of the bootstrap paradox of the WoL going back to Elpis and telling her what happened, and she concluded that only by allowing the Ancients to be decimated by the Final Days (AND allowing the new life to flourish AND ultimately sundering the star entirely so that the new life was more capable of manipulating dynamis in order to combat Meteion) was she going to prevent Meteion from winning. She allowed all of the death and suffering that occurred as a result of that decision (on the Source through the calamities, on the shards because of the Rejoinings, throughout all time) because she knew that was the only future where Meteion could be defeated, and if she deviated from the bootstrap paradox, she MIGHT save one world, but she'd doom the original world and every possible timeway that would spiral off of it if she did so.

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I've always felt like it was a weak point in her reasoning.

"I know if I follow this road, I'll destroy the entirety of my civilization, introduce war, illness, death and suffering in everybodies life, that 7 entire worlds will be wiped.

If I do that, there'll be some other form of humanity that hasn't fixed the problem and face imminent extinction. It won't be for thousands of years, while Meteion wipes the universe clean of all life and gets stronger in her corner of the universe.

I really hope I'll have a solution by then..."

And then, her solution is "I know your form of life can simply be erased from existence by Meteion through Dynamis, but please go there and find a way".

As if 12000 years of Ancients studying how to fix the issue and preventing Etheirys from being ruined in the first place wouldn't have granted some results.

It would have been better for the story if we were the only ones remembering what happened, really.

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Originally Posted by Alenore

I've always felt like it was a weak point in her reasoning.

"I know if I follow this road, I'll destroy the entirety of my civilization, introduce war, illness, death and suffering in everybodies life, that 7 entire worlds will be wiped.

If I do that, there'll be some other form of humanity that hasn't fixed the problem and face imminent extinction. It won't be for thousands of years, while Meteion wipes the universe clean of all life and gets stronger in her corner of the universe.

I really hope I'll have a solution by then..."

And then, her solution is "I know your form of life can simply be erased from existence by Meteion through Dynamis, but please go there and find a way".

As if 12000 years of Ancients studying how to fix the issue and preventing Etheirys from being ruined in the first place wouldn't have granted some results.

It would have been better for the story if we were the only ones remembering what happened, really.

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We, the player, don't exist without the Sundering. From a gameplay standpoint, it doesn't make sense to have a plot point for Venat to solve the problem without a Sundering. Doing so would wipe us out, along with everything we've done in the game.

Regardless of the paradox, if she finds a way to stop Meteion and avoid the Sundering, then she also unmakes the future worlds that she already knows will exist, and that we come from. It's easy to say, "that's how it should be", but would we be ok with allowing a Rejoining, regardless of the lives that now live in order to set things right? I don't even know if there IS a "good" decision in this situation. I just took it as Venat accepting that what happened has already happened, even though she is in an earlier point of the timeline, and she works to ensure that *we* continue living in the world as is it is now.

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Originally Posted by Darkstride

We, the player, don't exist without the Sundering. From a gameplay standpoint, it doesn't make sense to have a plot point for Venat to solve the problem without a Sundering. Doing so would wipe us out, along with everything we've done in the game.

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Yes, that's why the story should never had given so many options to Venat to try solving the issue in a different way.

Her choice is fine if she doesn't have foreknowledge of what it entails, because she's doing the best she can and decides to side with life in the long run. It strengthens her stance on being against the sacrifices and wanting to give all life a right to self determination.

It's also acceptable if she knows the future and that it'll lead to Meteion's downfall and saving Etheirys. Even knowing what it would cost, she might think a "safe" solution is bettert han an unknown.

So we're left with her actually fulfilling all the horrible conditions to a timeloop and taking a huge gamble knowing it's currently looking, at best, very bleak.

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Originally Posted by Darkstride

Regardless of the paradox, if she finds a way to stop Meteion and avoid the Sundering, then she also unmakes the future worlds that she already knows will exist, and that we come from. It's easy to say, "that's how it should be", but would we be ok with allowing a Rejoining, regardless of the lives that now live in order to set things right? I don't even know if there IS a "good" decision in this situation. I just took it as Venat accepting that what happened has already happened, even though she is in an earlier point of the timeline, and she works to ensure that *we* continue living in the world as is it is now.

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I'd hear this argument if Endwalker didn't follow an expansion where G'raha seemed fine with apparently dooming his timeline to save us because "that's how it should be". And nobody really raising a single concern about it.

On the contrary, the fact G'raha didn't disappear is actually a hint that timelines are not erased, which is confirmed out of universe by the corresponding Tale. I'd expect the scholar figure that Venat is to notice that.

Which means that if Venat actually decided to act on the informations we gave her, the WoL would be in the very same position with an Hydaelyn in our world to potentially grant us the location and the aether to end Meteion, but with a chance to save her civilization.

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Originally Posted by Alenore

Yes, that's why the story should never had given so many options to Venat to try solving the issue in a different way.

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What options?

Pre-Sundering, Venat is greatly hindered by the fact that's she's one woman, without much in the way of actionable intel herself in a society that circumstances mean she cannot be open about the problem. Telling the Convocation (at least, before it becomes a public and present problem, at which point they don't listen to reason) will lead to them unseating the one guy that can do anything at all to stem the tide when it hits; telling the masses leads them into a panic spiral when faced with a problem that we know absolutely capitalizes on a panic spiral... and also leads to the Convocation finding out and causing the first problem anyway. Venat mentions just before Elpis wraps that she does intend to look into other possibilities, but this never comes up in other places; presumably, they're all dead ends, and are never elaborated on because they don't matter to the actual story. Instead, she recruits a trusted handful of people, and credit due to those people, it's a good lineup: they include the head of Akadaemia, multiple capable warriors, a prodigy, multiple experts in their field, and several respected public figures. They don't seem to have a dynamis expert (although Mr. Akadaemia probably has some level of knowledge), but other than that I can't really think of better options. We know that from the 5.2 Anamnesis meeting, the Sundering plan is the only thing on the table at that point, but that nobody's comfortable with it; fair enough, that is an ugly trigger to pull. But this was not a decision made of blind ignorance; this was a decision made by intelligent, qualified people who could see that there was no other option.

After the Sundering, Venat's restrictions as Hydaelyn are if anything worse. She has gotten the ball rolling on the plan that we'll end up using, mostly by putting the Loporrits onto it (and remember it's not actually the plan we told her she'd use, she's not hopelessly shackled to The Time Loop), and the Twelve are doing a good job keeping the planet stable, but other than that she's off in the aetherial sea, running on a battery of aether she will never recharge for moral reasons, doing whatever the 'will of the star' actually means, and facing down thirteen justifiably mad ghost wizards. She's heavily restricted both by circumstances and morals, but she still does do what she can--and what she can is hand out the Blessing of Light, and work with an Oracle when circumstances allow, which might've only happened once. Something about these circumstances, though, are that they mean we actually don't know how many times she tried and failed to do something; the Blessing of Light is exactly something that would get lost to history if it were on the losing side... so who's to say that Hydaelyn didn't make a whole bunch of losing gambles, that nobody wrote down?


Venat was in a real bad place all the way through her story, but that doesn't mean she was narrowly focused on one goal. It did mean that the entire way through, only one plan remained standing, and it was not a pretty one. Given all of that, my question remains: what were her other options? You act like she had a wealth of them within the text itself that would've worked so well, but what were they? Or did you just imagine them?

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

doing whatever the 'will of the star' actually means

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I assume this is stuff like sealing Ultima, the High Seraph originally before Ajora released her, since that's attributed to Hydaelyn herself. Truly, if we're making stuff up that isn't in the text at all, Hydaelyn has been staving off interdimensional incursions from other beings like the High Seraph all this time.

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Originally Posted by Zero-ELEC

I assume this is stuff like sealing Ultima, the High Seraph originally before Ajora released her, since that's attributed to Hydaelyn herself. Truly, if we're making stuff up that isn't in the text at all, Hydaelyn has been staving off interdimensional incursions from other beings like the High Seraph all this time.

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This gets to something that's largely a different thread discussion, but I think what it comes down to is that Venat's ONLY option was "preserve the world until This Particular WoL shows up and has a meaningful chance of succeeding against Meteion." Which meant that EVERYTHING throughout the history of Hydaelyn that threatened the stability of the star was up to Venat to manage.

Remember that part in the Praetorium where Hydaelyn soaks two casts of Ultima to keep WoL from dying and says she can't soak a third? Now imagine how much power she had to dump into subduing the High Seraph and then sealing her away. It's a ton of things JUST LIKE THAT, that the WoL couldn't have possibly told her about because the WoL's knowledge of the star's history is going to be incomplete, and Venat had to be ready for ALL OF IT.

Venat's only option was "SURVIVE."

And overall, that's because the game couldn't paradox itself out of existence. The game HAD to do the time loop and force Venat into that situation because the implications of them just being able FIX ALL TIME would deflate the stakes completely.

The simplest way I think of this is that Zodiark is a primal. Using tempering primals enforce their will on the summoners. So by his nature as a primal no, Zodiark didn't do anything wrong other than what is his nature. What Zodiark does that is morally questionable is how he encourages the Ardor when we've seen that the demands of a primal never end for sacrifices, there's also no guarantee he can bring the Ancients back as they were. I find Hydaelyn to be morally grey as well but this is partially because the devs do not explain wtf is going on w the time travel.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

What options?

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The final cutscene in Elpis where we part, she pretty much has decided the course of actions, fully expect the Final Days to come, and that humanity would need a way to resolve the problem by bringing the fight to Meteion ("much less take the battle to Meteion at her nest")
She even says so herself : "Bewildered and divided, we would perisg like the peoples of those celestial ruins". She then proceeds to form a faction of a few people knowing the actual truth (or do they?), working against the collective will of their people, thus dividing them.


She refuses, here and there, to call upon the Fourteen based on flawed arguments.

• "Hermes might become a foe if he knew" => Then don't tell him. He's not Fandaniel yet, his name was just suggested and Emet is talking with him right now. Interrupt them, show Emet what actually transpired using the Echo, and I'm pretty sure that proposition will be rescinded.
• "We might alienate Fandaniel from helping in the tragedy to come" => Good, the point is to try to prevent the tragedy.
• As far as we're told, Hermes-as-Fandaniel contribution to the problem was identifying that it happened where the celestial currents were weak. Something she now knows.
• She differenciate telling the Convocation and telling the masses, showing that she thinks they could hold the information hidden. So this is not an issue of "if I tell them, Hermes will 100% know".

Even then, Hermes as our resident expert in Dynamis matters might prove very useful on fixing the issue if he even knew it was Dynamis in the first place, even if he had no idea it was Meteion.
As you said yourself, she managed to convince a lot of important people to act. Perhaps those people would have been better used actually working on trying to solve the initial problem, instead of doing damage control.

Like, what would have gone worse if she actually told everybody? People panicking into sacrificing themselves to save their lives, and their civilization being virtually gone? That's what happened anyway.



If you really can't see the options she might have had...

Right after Elpis :

• Tell the Convocation instead of playing 14d chess, and reach a consensus on what they should do. If they can't, apply plan B ;
• Actually "fortify their defenses", something she said they had to do but visibly never acted on since the Final days hit hard ;
• Assemble a team of experts on Dynamis around Etheirys to work on actual countermeasures to strong Dynamis waves, study its potential effect. Hermes is hardly the only one aware of dynamis ;
• Start studying entelechies, starting with the Elpis flowers, and continuing with checking how Meteion was created, if need be using the Echo ;
• Have Ancients start to research interstellar travel, super dense aether storage, to reach the Nest ;
• Since she knows time travel is possible, go back in time and prevent Meteion's creation in the first place ;
• Find ways to summon an entity like Zodiark without the requirement of sacrificing so many people ;

During the Final Days, to mitigate the issue :

• Tell them from the very beginning it seems to come from where the Celestial currents are the weakest instead of letting them find out for themselves after X days / week / months / years of damage has been done ;
• Implement solutionsto counteract the despair: showing hope in the form of Elpis flower apparently worked to convince Meteion, explain to them why it happens, so they can try to not lose control ;
• She knows of Meteion's location. Instead of a bubble bigger than the actual orbit of the Moon, perhaps a localized shield between Meteion and the Star would suffice ;
• Don't waste time trying to bring Azem or the Convocation into the fold since you know it won't happen ;
• Push for the creation of Zodiark and go through the sacrifice of 50% of the population before the world is broken to the point they need to sacrifice 25% more (if less wasn't enough to create a localized shield) ;

If everythings fails and she has to go through the Sundering :

• Create artifacts, magicks, or tools to protect somebody from dynamis waves, so they aren't unmade as soon as they reach UT and have to rely on a Deus Ex Machina to survive. Like a personal version of what Zodiark does ;
• Instead of creating Loporrits for the sole purpose of evacuating Etheirys, also tell them to create a ship to reach Meteion and study Dynamis? That was the initial long term plan, and something had to be put together at the eleventh hour to even get there ;
• Have loporrits help her gather aether for her plan, like for instance, capitalizing on the free floating aether Zodiark released when he disappeared. Might have been useful ;
• Create a simulacrum like the Watcher or the Twelve that can actually help with the problem instead of being asked stuff outside his purview and with fragmented memories ;
• Compile this story and informations somewhere, so that people don't have to guess everything and find out every details, especially if the timeline might have changed and key elements to fulfill the loop lost : Akasa might have never been studied, the Elpis flower might have disappeared, perhaps Elidibus would have been definitively killed, the Ragnarok never built, etc ;
• Actually study how it would be for the people in the Moon in outer space. It's not like Meteion is not broadcasting despair everywhere, albeit in lower concentration than she does toward Etheirys, and it might very well trigger despair related effects, especially after the entirety of the population just lost relatives, their homes, their whole planet and are facing the unknown ;
• Imagine an escape plan which doesn't leave the majority of the population, the Reflections, to an unknown fate, probably annihilation.

Tthe game explained she couldn't do that because reasons. But again, that's my point. Writing it like that just forced Venat into picking this option out of potentially many, giving bad reasons why, when it brought absolutely nothing to the story, except confusion.

If Venat had forgotten, she would have gone with the initial plan, we would meet her in Elpis, we'd go to the Aetherial Sea, she'd sacrifice herself and be free of her long duty, we'd go to Ultima Thule and end Meteion.
If you want to have her know what happened in Elpis, make it that she finally remembers what happened because she has an Echo vision of us in Elpis, and voilà, we're at the exact same point in the story.

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Originally Posted by Alenore

Right after Elpis :

• Tell the Convocation instead of playing 14d chess, and reach a consensus on what they should do. If they can't, apply plan B ;

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I don't need to read any more of this. You have already shown your hand: you are ignoring what the game says, to claim that the game is wrong about what it says.

This exact point, your absolute Plan A, is something that that game explicitly says is a bad idea. Not only does Venat say that she can't tell the Convocation, we know that's right, because we've already seen it: Emet-Selch is a by-the-books square doing exactly what the Convocation is supposed to do, and he made the problem so much worse that Kairos is the only reason they managed to still have a Zodiark afterwards. If your first point is so easily debunked that the game itself did it, you don't have any other points.

Everything else you said is exactly what I thought: your own imagined scenarios based off of no evidence, because your very first point was to reject the evidence we actually had.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

snippity

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You're just not even trying to understand, I think.

I'm not ignoring what the game says. I'm pointing that what the game says is a poor justification based on a bad reasoning, and that their argument don't hold water.

Show me when we're told that Venat is right and that telling the Convocation would have been a bad idea, outside of Venat saying so. I'll wait.

You're saying Emet-Selch is supposed to act "by the book" when we're repeatedly told he twists the rules to help Azem, he somehow ignores the major issue of Kairos being forbidden, he's shown acting out of anger, and then trying to do the right thing ? The same Emet-Selch that will, after the Sundering, be implementing a grand scheme to rejoin everything, constantly hiding things, manipulating people?
Do you actually truly believe that if Emet was shown that his memory was wiped by Hermes, and that there's a planetary wide threat he would actually just go see the guy responsible and tell him everything? If yes, then you're simply acting in bad faith.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

Everything else you said is exactly what I thought

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? Of course these are imagined scenarios. These options have obviously never been explored. They are all "what if", things she could have done.

Anyway, I'm done.

It's been literal years and y'all still yapping about this.

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Originally Posted by thegreatonemal

It's been literal years and y'all still yapping about this.

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Dude, I don't know what you're expecting to contribute by saying this. You could just not respond if you don't think the conversation is worth having.

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Originally Posted by Alenore

Show me when we're told that Venat is right and that telling the Convocation would have been a bad idea, outside of Venat saying so.

...

Of course these are imagined scenarios. These options have obviously never been explored. They are all "what if", things she could have done.

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The whole point is that Venat did what she did knowing she would be vilified by her people and that the action was immoral because she believed it was the best path forward (as opposed to the stagnation or regression Zodiark represents). Trying to say that she was wrong or throwing out hypothetical alternatives ignores the fact her choice to sunder Etheirys was entirely based on her philosophical ideals and convictions, not a moral code.

Hydaelyn (Venat) doesn't say what she did was right; she argues it was a grim necessity to create the best future. Whether you agree or not is immaterial because there's no universe we can observe where she made a different choice. It's just the way things have - or had, I suppose - to happen. Can't turn out any other way. Did you not believe Elidibus when he told us our actions on Elpis wouldn't effect meaningful change?

(I don't need more timey-wimey nonsense. I'm miffed enough about the VII Remake project indulging way too heavily in that for my taste.)

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Originally Posted by Alenore

Do you actually truly believe that if Emet was shown that his memory was wiped by Hermes, and that there's a planetary wide threat he would actually just go see the guy responsible and tell him everything

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Yes. Because had exactly that information in Elpis before Kairos, and he does pursue the guy responsible and do things he shouldn't do. Yes, Emet bends the rules for Azem, but that's because Azem's his friend: Hermes isn't, and Venat isn't. (In fact I kinda feel like he doesn't like either of them even before the big turn.)

Emet in Elpis acts as, in part, a display of exactly what the existing systems and heirarchies of Amaurot would do in this scenario... and what those systems and heirarchies would do is make the problem worse. Of course they would: the entire situation was a reaction to their status quo in the first place, and Amaurot by nature is not self-aware enough to solve itself.

In fact, straying from that point (which I will happily do, thegreatonemal is right that this is a worthless, stale argument), I would actually say that Emet-Selch never stopped being that stuck-up stickler for the rules beyond what was helpful or healthy. After all, what do we see in Shadowbringers but a man who's stubbornly sticking to plans, definitions and outlooks that are abjectly horrifying and bad for everyone but he and his own, that he himself apparently struggles with while never actually questioning? He swapped out codified laws of an existing society with self-made plans and declarations, but he was still the exact same bitter, joyless enforcer, who'll only bend for a scant few exceptions.

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Originally Posted by unlimitedBLACK

Dude, I don't know what you're expecting to contribute by saying this. You could just not respond if you don't think the conversation is worth having.

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There was a conversation worth having here?