Who knew the 6.15 Omega Quests… (Spoilers)

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

I brought up the scene in Thavnair because I believe it's directly intended as a compare and contrast. Thavnair faced the literal exact same disaster as Amaurot, but Thavnair were the ones that were able to work through it by themselves, while Amaurot fell into hysteria and desperation.

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"By themselves"

As the WoL, the Scions, and Vrtra shepherd them to safety.

Then Sharlayan promises them salvation, only for that to fall through, yet again to the Scions and the WoL and Zenos...

The teachings scene would be a great compare and contrast, save for that pesky follow up where the reciting of the teachings fail Matsya. It was only when a savior stepped in that he did not succumb.

In the end, it was no different. Unintentional or not, by the actions of the game, the lesson out of both Final Days was that saviors are necessary, that the common man is nothing without them. As Alisaie puts it at some point, "Doomed to die in cold obscurity."

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

"By themselves"

As the WoL, the Scions, and Vrtra shepherd them to safety.

Then Sharlayan promises them salvation, only for that to fall through, yet again to the Scions and the WoL and Zenos...

The teachings scene would be a great compare and contrast, save for that pesky follow up where the reciting of the teachings fail Matsya. It was only when a savior stepped in that he did not succumb.

In the end, it was no different. Unintentional or not, by the actions of the game, the lesson out of both Final Days was that saviors are necessary, that the common man is nothing without them. As Alisaie puts it at some point, "Doomed to die in cold obscurity."

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I actually think it's rather exceptional how a good half of the zones in Endwalker actually don't have the Scions or the WoL doing all that much, and the Thavnair revisit is a perfect example. The most we do is just... perform some cleanup in Vanaspati--and sure, that probably helped, but it's hard to say what that actually did. After that, a lot of what we do is just help people on more individual levels while being there to see Thavnairian locals do the meaningful stuff--Ahewann, Vrtra (who I do count as a Thavnairian local, he's as much a part of the nation as anyone else, and he doesn't really use his dragon-ness to decide anything), and Matsya most of all. The most active Scion in all of that is Estinien, and even he's only really moral support for Vrtra. While we provide some muscle, Thavnair very much pull themselves out of the worst of it. Sharlayan provides an escape route afterwards, but that's after they've made it through the worst of it--and as we learn from the very sidequest that this thread is allegedly about, a huge chunk of Thavnair didn't take that route.

I'd also say the same is largely true of Elpis--I genuinely don't believe that there's a single event in Elpis that doesn't play out basically the same if we aren't there. And Garlemald might be the most painful of them, I feel like until we hit the Tower of Babil the WoL had done more harm than good. You can even spread it to a couple of the role quests; with the exception of Gridania's the stories are mostly about the city-states coming to terms with their own problems, and our influence is slim to none beyond 'being the one to beat up the Blasphemy'. And I think that's all very much intended, I think a huge core element of Endwalker is seeing how people handle the worst days of their lives, without necessarily having or needing a player-insert superhero to help.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

About 10000 years ago, Igeyorhm tried to brute force a rejoining on the Thirteenth by attacking and killing its heroes. Not only did she successfully eradicate life on the Thirteenth, she also rendered it uninhabitable, turned its denizens into Voidsent, and made a rejoining impossible. The Ascians learnt from that mistake, but each subsequent rejoining involves the destruction of all life on the reflection in question and a massive catastrophe on the Source. By the time our journey started, they had killed off eight worlds including the Void, and rendered one mostly uninhabitable, with the intention of using chemical warfare on the Source to expedite the associated rejoining.

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Guess the Shards should have been more, ah, resilient.

They are pretty resilient. That's why we're still around. Can't say the same for the Ascians, although perhaps Gaius was a bit overzealous in that regard. It would have been nice to meet the rest of them before they were written out of the story offscreen.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

They are pretty resilient. That's why we're still around. Can't say the same for the Ascians, although perhaps Gaius was a bit overzealous in that regard. It would have been nice to meet the rest of them before they were written out of the story offscreen.

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You can't point to the non world ending Calamities and hold them as proof of the innately superior coping methods of the Sundered, but then say it's not the fault of the Sundered on the Shards for succumbing to their own End of Days. Which is it? If your world is destroyed, are you weak and pathetic and deserve whatever happens to you, or is it an unambiguously a tragedy that can't be shouldered by the people that fail to save their planet from outside forces trying to destroy it?

So, when I said that the Sundered were more capable of moving on, I mentioned two things. Yes, it was a confirmed history, and sure if you want to say that's instead because The Ascians Wanted It you can say that and take that away from them.

But the other part is the mental fortitude to move on. The ability to not give up when an earthquake eats everything you know, or a flood washes away every civilization on the continent. The Sundered people knew that death happens, that suffering is inevitable, so they were able to lean on those coping mechanisms; they already came to terms with all of it. That's what we saw in Thavnair, whereas in the post-Elpis scene we saw Amaurot fail to grasp exactly that.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

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I think you're reading too much into the word happy there, it was just a phrase indicating they're willing to move on of their own accord. they aren't dying in some horrific manner or being twisted into monsters or weapons of war, they just stop living. It's not a great solution, but compared to any of the other ends we see, it's by far the best, though the Ea who choose to die are similar.

As to moving on and successive civilisations rising where others fell, I do agree that is something the sundered do well, but it's also a very short term view of things. In the lifespan of a near immortal being, the entirety of the sundered planets history is really nothing. Like again to compare to the Ea, they're terrified of the literal heat death of the universe, something so far away it's impossible to actually imagine, with no way to change that fate. For things like the calamities and the final days, moving on and finding a way to live with that trauma is clearly something the sundered manage alright with (though how that compares to the ancients I have no real idea, they didn't get the opportunity to do so). But I don't think those are at all comparable to some of the more serious problems we see others brought down by.

There isn't really any way to just get back up after being conquered by the omicron, or having your entire planet destroyed by plague. Same deal with being exterminated by an angry god, or whatever wiped out the other planets meteion just found corpses or ruins on.

As for the final days, the strength of the average persons character doesn't really have much to do with that being resolved. They had significantly more information, sharlayan had some warning, and it still would have killed every living thing if it wasn't for the WoL and scions killing meteion.
The ancients did fine with what information they had, zodiark was incredibly successful. Some panicked, but plenty of sundered panicked and turned.

I wonder how people in our world would react to the idea of some nutter deliberately holding back information about an impending disaster only to then kill off the survivors for not 'moving on'. There's a pretty big difference between a civilisation ending due to a natural disaster and a civilisation being wiped out intentionally. Both are unfortunate but one is much more sinister than the other.

Nobody is obligated to just 'move on' after their loved ones are killed to satisfy the deranged whims of a pretty self proclaimed 'supreme deity'. Just as nobody is obligated to just bend over and allow themselves to die for the sake of the Unsundered. I'm not sure why it's being presented as any different, really.

The reason they’re being treated differently is some of the people arguing define the morality of a situation by what is being done and some of the people arguing define it by who is doing it.

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Originally Posted by Jemachu

Except Emet-Selch made it clear that the people of the source "stood only to gain" from the rejoinings, that we would become the equals of the unsundered.

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...Emet-Selch is racist. He thinks people 'stood only to gain' from the Rejoining because he literally thinks that the Sundered people are lesser beings. He doesn't care about the people of the Source as they are, it's not a kindness. And the Rejoinings literally involve mass murder anyway; statistically speaking there's no chance in hell that you'll benefit from them.

Also, isn't part of the Ascian plan to sacrifice the people of the Source to Zodiark anyway? Even in the statistically impossible chance you as a native of the Source survive to that point, you still die because the Ascians don't actually value you more than they value their people.