The Ascian Question: Have the Ascians ever lied?

They didn't say 'powerful people don't lie', they're saying that they're so powerful that they simply don't have to. If I was in the business of chaos, I'd understand that a damning truth would be far more impactful than prancing around spreading little porky pies. You also have to account for the fact that both Elidibus AND Solus (despite not being an emissary) have discussed the 'balance' and maintaining it, though it's easy to assume that despite knowledge of the balance, both Solus and Elidibus would have different methods/ideal's on the subject and that Solus is clearly the more likely to favour full-on Zodi over the way things are now.

Even then, he has no reason to lie about the topic. Doing so would just lead us to some digging before coming to the conclusion that it's a farce, unless they write it in a way where it IS a lie and that said lie causes a rift with the Scions/WoL/Hyde, but it's very hard to see that happening when we've essentially been following that road since ARR.

I just hope the emphasis on WoL's headaches isn't going to become some sort of "Oh, I actually am tempered. Whelp, resisting it hurts my grey matter". Also not likely.

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Originally Posted by RopeDrink

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The thing is, the Ascians are not so powerful that they don't have to lie. Their goals as presented to us so far involve bringing about calamities on the Source to summon Zodiark back, and they can't simply will those things to happen, otherwise they would have already. As such, they manipulate the various peoples of Hydaelyn to cause these events to happen, and manipulation generally requires some form of lying. What I'm saying (and what others have also said) is that lies of omission - sharing the truth, but only part of the truth or without appropriate context - are very much in the Ascian's toolbox, and that still counts as a form of lie. We've seen this in how they impart information on how to summon primals to others, like with Tiamat and Bahamut - they tell them how to 'summon back a loved one' or something similar, but neglect to mention that they're actually summoning a primal made in their image and not the aforementioned loved one.

Solus may be 'telling us the truth,' but it's reasonable to assume that it's being offered without crucial context or nuance to communicate the full truth behind Zodiark and Hydaelyn being primals. And of course, just because someone hasn't directly lied before doesn't mean they aren't ever going to do so, even if it is reasonable to assume they'll be truthful.

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Originally Posted by Cilia

What exactly has Hydaelyn lied about? To my knowledge she hasn't lied about anything or told a half-truth; like the Ascians, she simply hasn't explained damn near anything. We've got all these cryptic hints from them both, but we don't really have a clear, in-depth picture of the greater conflict we were dragged into.

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It's a kind of glaring omission that she's a primal....Especially since we were basically told to go around and get rid of them since they cause harm to the environment.

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Originally Posted by QT_Melon

It's a kind of glaring omission that she's a primal....Especially since we were basically told to go around and get rid of them since they cause harm to the environment.

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To my recollection, Hydaelin has not even once asked us to go kill Primals. Stop the Ascians, yes, but I don't believe she's ever directly asked us to kill Primals. It's the Scions that tell us to do that, because they know the affects Primals have on the land. The fact that you never talk to Hydaelin about Primals kinda rules that out as a lie, even as a lie of omission, because it's a subject that just doesn't come up in general with her.

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Originally Posted by QT_Melon

It's a kind of glaring omission that she's a primal....Especially since we were basically told to go around and get rid of them since they cause harm to the environment.

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Originally Posted by Hezzlocks

To my recollection, Hydaelin has not even once asked us to go kill Primals. Stop the Ascians, yes, but I don't believe she's ever directly asked us to kill Primals. It's the Scions that tell us to do that, because they know the affects Primals have on the land. The fact that you never talk to Hydaelin about Primals kinda rules that out as a lie, even as a lie of omission, because it's a subject that just doesn't come up in general with her.

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To build on what Hezzlocks said (which is spot on - she's never directed us after primals, as that's something we've been lead to do by the Scions), we've had remarkably few conversations with Hydaelyn directly; we had a handful of short conversations during 2.0, and then we didn't directly hear from her until the 3.X patches. The longest conversation I believe we've had with her was during 3.3, via Word!Minfilia, and that conversation barely gave her enough time to inform us of the presence of the Shards and their general origin - namely, the conflict with Zodiark. Even with Minfilia acting as her voice, she's barely strong enough to tell us about that conflict and ask us to stop the Ascians. She could be hiding something from us, but it's more likely that she hasn't been strong enough to have that necessary conversation about what exactly she is.

And, of course, always take anything Ascians say with a grain of salt; what Solus means when he calls Zodiark and Hydaelyn 'primals' remains to be seen.

It's also possible that if Hydaelyn is a primal, being located within the aetherial sea doesn't have the same negative effects as one summoned into the physical world.

In any case, you can't say that Hydaelyn has lied but the Ascians haven't. We know the Ascians have "selectively told the truth" to some people to further their goals. We don't yet know the true situation for Hydaelyn, but nothing She has said is provably untrue at this point.

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Originally Posted by QT_Melon

It's a kind of glaring omission that she's a primal...

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Primals don't know they're primals; they believe they are what their summoners expected them to be.

Ifrit believes he's the one true god.
Garuda believes she's the one true god.
Bahamut believes he's Bahamut.

Even the vague essence of Shiva that Ysayle allowed into her soul gave her a sense that she was truly a vessel for the soul of Saint Shiva.

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

Primals don't know they're primals; they believe they are what their summoners expected them to be.

Ifrit believes he's the one true god.
Garuda believes she's the one true god.
Bahamut believes he's Bahamut.

Even the vague essence of Shiva that Ysayle allowed into her soul gave her a sense that she was truly a vessel for the soul of Saint Shiva.

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Does this apply to Alexander? I can imagine that at the moment Alexander was summoned, he may have believed whatever he was summoned to be (home of Goblinkind?), but then had enough Future Knowledge to figure out that he was a Primal, with all that implied.

(I'm not even going to go into Phoenix.)

Alexander is a bizarre case. Quickthinx used primal summoning as a shortcut to getting a machine that shouldn't work to work. Once Alexander came into being, as far as we can tell, its ability to see the world from a four-dimensional perspective (all time happening at once, one monolithic block capable of being edited like a painting) overwhelmed the biases that would have been imparted by its summoners. Therefore it did recognize its own nature and conclude that it should not exist. Because any action it could take would leave the world worse for it, it did the least amount of damage it could by "editing the block" and containing its own existence within a stable time loop.

Phoenix wasn't really a "true" primal. It's ... [deep sigh] It's a thing.

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

Primals don't know they're primals; they believe they are what their summoners expected them to be.

Ifrit believes he's the one true god.
Garuda believes she's the one true god.
Bahamut believes he's Bahamut.

Even the vague essence of Shiva that Ysayle allowed into her soul gave her a sense that she was truly a vessel for the soul of Saint Shiva.

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That is true for most Primals, but not all Primals. Like I said earlier she is the thoughtform of what people believe a "good god" should be. As far as her consuming Aether it's been noted that she is.

The cave painting is the singular original being, then the split as people had their concepts of "good and bad" (like Ramuh said) the the other painting is Hydaelyn shattering (look at the feet) there isn't a (which way is this to be read) if you look carefully. It's showing her doing the Sundering or Split. This knowledge of it (the cave painting of history)of course was lost due the various calamities.

Also not so fast on her never telling us to kill primals. She gave us the vision to get the crystals, those crystals were housed in Primals as well. The vision she gave us was the darkness that the Ascians were causing. The Ascians were summoning Primals. She has been actively telling us to banish the darkness. Not capture it, banish.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wk8xv5wWtjE

(interesting to see other shards of ourselves [as in WoLs not *ourselves*] go forth and do the same but anyways).

I think you're also hitting the root problem with Hydaelyn though not sure if you are aware of it. Her being a Primal she is "our creation" - man made so therefore she will have the faults because she contains what is mankind's concept of good. Since these traits are what are seen as good, it's likely we will excuse the faults in those paths (when explaining Hydaeyln is different and not really meant to "harm" us).

As far as not specifically telling us to kill Primals, okay why are we subscribing to Ascian double talk on her behalf? She literally congratulates us on several occasions for overcoming various trials, including re establishing our connection to her and says we still aren't done and still need to spray our Darkness-b-gone.