Something about the new Ascian lore

we are already outside Hydaelyn's control, we are not fighting for her anymore, we are fighting for our right to exist, we've acknowledged the conviction of the ascians and their motives even though we cannot agree on their path, but we already choose to remember their existance, that's a step towards defiance

It seems to me that the hypocrisy goes even further. Emet-Selch is clearly delusional. He says that these wars and major disagreements didn't exist even though we know they did. Who do you think summoned Hydaelyn? Basically, he's just looking at the past through rose colored glasses.

They didn't exist before the calamity, the conflict between Hydaelyn and Zodiark was the very first conflict in their history and it is said by one of the shades.

However you could say that he's an hipocrit because he prefers to mingle with mortals than with his peers and his actions shows him taking a more active role in our society even to the point of siring children.
For someone that loathes us that much his actions are odd

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Originally Posted by Remedi

They didn't exist before the calamity, the conflict between Hydaelyn and Zodiark was the very first conflict in their history and it is said by one of the shades.

However you could say that he's an hipocrit because he prefers to mingle with mortals than with his peers and his actions shows him taking a more active role in our society even to the point of siring children.
For someone that loathes us that much his actions are odd

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Conflict did exist because one member already left the council in disagreement. This might not be a violent conflict, but its still one. And they do have the same emotions we have so its really hard to take that no other conflict ever came up, maybe not in their city but that was not the only place in the world.

And the conflict between the two crystals was between two sides of the same race. That alone at least shows that they are quite similiar to us.

That's nitpicking and they literally say to you that the first time the population stood divided was about zodiark and hydaelyn I don't know what tale you are spinning

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Originally Posted by Alleo

The Ascians and Emet in turn have done more bad than good to us and seemingly even went against the wishes of some of their own race. I feel bad for him but he was wrong and like the OP stated, alot of the conflict only was started thanks to them and seemingly their race was not even that great either since Zodiark only was summoned when their city was under attack..they seemingly still just discussed helping the rest of the cities when those were also under attack..so Alphinaud is quite right, there is not much difference between us ... You completely ignore all the good she had done and accuse her of being evil just because she once told us a different version of the story..while completely ignoring that we also only saw the view of the Ascians who claim to be tempered to Zodiark..and ignoring that we already have people from their race who were against them too..heck it was their own race that summoned Hydealyn.

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I'm not sure they could be argued to have gone against the wishes of their own people. To be fair, it seems that their chosen course of action was largely agreed upon and supported by a majority of their population (even more when counting later willing sacrifices). Some disagreed, hence Hydaelyn, but it would be almost impossible to have every single person agree on a solution to every single problem. Also, judging from what little we've been told, the numbers in disagreement seemed to grow after the later sacrifices post-summoning rather than it being considered a bad idea outright.
Whether they were entirely honest with everyone on the potential limitations of such a method before they resorted to using it is another matter. Though perhaps they didn't realise themselves until it was too late? After seeing so many of their own people willingly sacrifice themselves to summon Zodiark in the hope of saving their family/friends from the looming calamity, it' s no surprise the lengths to which Emet and the others were willing to go to keep their 'saviour' and their promise of protection against a future disaster.
It's also somewhat understandable why they may have hesitated to help other nearby communities under threat. Whilst I can't remember the exact dialogue for that quest, the argument for helping seemed to include the possibility of designing new creations to assist. As noted before, the creations were often risky with the potential of becoming exceedingly dangerous as a result of the smallest mistake or oversight. What if something was to go wrong? Despite their good intentions, they would have been blamed and held responsible. Might they have feared that their input could've risked making an already dire situation worse?

I think his arguments were relatively compelling for a villain. In a lot of ways, the old world was better off. They had their first calamity and they had a plan to fix it and bring everyone back by the end. Their first major division in society ended up changing the world fundamentally.

Everything that follows that can be looked as simply fractured remains of the true world. I don’t believe this but I can see why an Ascian would. Of course he openly admits to being tempered so the argument only has to be strong enough to justify what he already wanted to do. I think it works both ways, it would make more sense to give this new life a chance but that’s also cause we play a part in it.

I don’t think he’s being hypocritical about all the conflict born from differences, because I believe that will happen without Ascian interference. When he asked if we could imagine the current world giving up half of themselves to save the other half, I thought it was a good point because I frankly couldn’t. He’s spent a long time with humanity, more than all the scions’ lives put together. So I’m sure he has some insight into how people are beyond the calamities he’s caused.

But the elephant in the room is that with all their power, they were a danger to themselves. We know they caused their own calamity even if we don’t know how it happened. They make it clear it’s from their own nightmares and creation magic run rampant. Their only way of survival was to sacrifice half to stop it, and half again to fix the aftermath. Their first disagreement broke the world.

My point with all that is they’re existence actually seems more fragile than ours because they move in measures of existential magnitudes. They may be nigh immortal, but if they can so easily destroy themselves then it only takes one mistake.

Our fractured existence is less stagnant and constantly makes mistakes and grows from it. I think this would have been a good argument to put to Emet.

I’m also sure we’ll get more context on why the ancients felt Hydaelyn was necessary and why the world needed to be fractured. I don’t innately trust Hydaelyn because she’s not particularly forthcoming about her past, but it will probably be an understandable reason why she’s necessary. She also has a good way of running things, as she only supports us without taking.

I think Emet only told us half the truth. I guess the end of the world was actually orchestrated by the members of the Convocation. They were grandmasters of creation magic after all and it wouldn't be impossible for them to cause a calamity of such magnitude. After they duped a huge portion of population into sacrificing themselves to summon Zodiark, they finally obtained the ultimate power (and also weakened the potential opposition). I don't think the opposition would summon Hydaelyn without a good reason. So the remaining ascians summoned Hydaelyn and made the 14th member of the Convocation her champion (or avatar) in order to restore balance.

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Originally Posted by Remedi

That's nitpicking and they literally say to you that the first time the population stood divided was about zodiark and hydaelyn I don't know what tale you are spinning

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So one of the highest member in the city being against the summoning is nitpicking? That is conflict even if its not violent.

Heck when I ran around yesterday I found two NPCs and one said (in a speech bubble) that they are now citizens of the city and then "I hope we dont regret that". They have the same emotions as us, I doubt that they never had conflict either. We only know the view of Emet and some of the shades of these ancient ones and we dont even know if the others truly knew how many sacrifices Zodiark needed and if they had agreed to that. At least when they saw that it was not ending and should kill the new generation they created Hydaelyn. That there was nothing of disagreement before that is hard to believe.

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Originally Posted by Scintilla

I'm not sure they could be argued to have gone against the wishes of their own people. To be fair, it seems that their chosen course of action was largely agreed upon and supported by a majority of their population (even more when counting later willing sacrifices). Some disagreed, hence Hydaelyn, but it would be almost impossible to have every single person agree on a solution to every single problem. Also, judging from what little we've been told, the numbers in disagreement seemed to grow after the later sacrifices post-summoning rather than it being considered a bad idea outright.

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Well lets not forget that this was only one city we saw. There is a side quest where two NPCs discuss the catastrophe and its about helping the other cities/rest of the world. One was against it simply because these others should help themselves and the other wanted to help them but only because the other cities had no right to have a solution of their own and everyone should be allowed to have a solution to this...so one was against helping others of their race if they are not living in their city..and the other only wanted to help because he/she thought that everyone else not living in the cities should have the rights to go against the problems. x) None of them had the lifes of these people in mind..and the story really hints that Zodiark was only summoned because the disaster was on the door of their city..so they might never know if truly the majority of the people of their race would have agreed to that and since they kinda waited for it until it was right at their doorsteps another solution was probably not doable.

Basically, I don't buy it. The one and only conflict ever resulted in the entire world being split into alternate realities? Get real. No, they clearly had conflict just as bad, and seemingly much worse, than the people on the splintered worlds. You don't just skip to world-splitting disasters. This is something that develops over time. This is why I say that Emet-Selch is merely looking back through rose colored glasses. They had conflict, but he doesn't realize it now. Heck, even if it had been just the one conflict, then it is several magnitudes higher than any conflict on all the splintered worlds combined. This would be skipping friendly rivalry, and going straight to nuclear bombs. It's simply not possible. Either Emet-Selch lied, or he's simply delusional. Honestly, after millennia, I'd bet on a mix of both. He may have actually convinced himself that there was no conflict in their world even though the evidence strongly suggests otherwise. I think he honestly believes the delusions, and that is why he is so determined to merge the worlds. Furthermore, accepting that this conflict exists would be contrary to his belief that the Ascians were a pure and benevolent people. Accepting any part of that would shatter his belief about reality. So, he rejects it entirely.