When are we supposed to stop fighting?

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Originally Posted by KizuyaKatogami

People keep repeating that line, but we need to actually use context for it. Compared to the mass suffering and horrible circumstances they were facing, their world before it occurred truly was a perfect paradise compared to what they had experienced. It’s subjective as to how each player will take it but that’s how i’ve taken it since i first read it. It goes along with the whole, you never really cherish something until it’s gone, kind of along the lines of that. It’s a comparison.I really don’t think you can jump to a conclusion that the suffering was minor. Especially given the side quests. We also don’t even know about the other societies so to say that and jump to that conclusion is a bit much.

Something to note about the elpis flowers btw, is that they cant easily be affected by aetheric density from what we're told. Its not really to do with them not having a range of emotions.

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I think that’s the question at play though. If it truly was a paradise, even comparatively, then we must also recognize that their suffering was lessened as well, no?

Suffering is entirely relative though. A person who has never experienced pain (small children) will react loudly and dramatically when first feeling it. An adult exposed to that same pain will wince and move on.

I guess the question is, how much suffering is the right amount per Venat's grand plan? Seems like she overshot just a bit with the sundering. Maybe 14 way split was too much. 7 might have been better. Of course she may have only spit it 14 ways because we went back in time and told her she split it 14 ways because we went back in time and told her she split it 14 ways because we went back in time and told-AD INFINUM BAD TIME TRAVEL WRITING.

ANYWHO. Venat was still an Ancient. They could have policed her much earlier on. A red flag was when she left the convocation but did not return to the star as tradition held. Not gonna bash someone for not buying into the suicide cult mentality, but it definitely shows a certain level of arrogance. Is there any point at all in the story where Venat/Hydaelyn recognizes she is wrong about anything?

I am realizing it is unfair to view Venat as an outsider to the Ancients that brought about their doom. She was one of them. They brought about their own end because they feared one of their own creation so much. Poetic.

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Originally Posted by Necrotica

Is there any point at all in the story where Venat/Hydaelyn recognizes she is wrong about anything?

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In fairness to Venat, she did proclaim that there was no kindness or justice in the tragedy that she wrought. The Sundered stand to benefit indirectly from Venat's actions but their reaction felt rather muted given that their existence came as a result of the genocide of the Ancients as a whole.

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Originally Posted by Necrotica

ANYWHO. Venat was still an Ancient. They could have policed her much earlier on. A red flag was when she left the convocation but did not return to the star as tradition held. Not gonna bash someone for not buying into the suicide cult mentality, but it definitely shows a certain level of arrogance. Is there any point at all in the story where Venat/Hydaelyn recognizes she is wrong about anything?

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The Ancients approached death like a more dramatic version of retirement; when you're finished with your work, you die.

What Venat did wasn't wrong or arrogant, she just didn't feel like her work was done just because she found her role as Azem was done. It's similar to a leader of a country going on to helm a not-for-profit or something rather than just retiring (which I mention off-hand because one of Australia's Prime Ministers did that); it's atypical, but it's not wrong, not everyone feels that their work is done because they reached the top.

We don't really know what led Venat to making that decision, just that she found a rather different destiny. Knowing what we do about Venat, though, it's unlikely her decision was made out of arrogance or selfishness.

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Originally Posted by Necrotica

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Pain and suffering are simply a part of life. The society in which the Amaurotians lived in were not free of them either. Hermes was the most obvious example, but we also witnessed Eric express his sorrow over the loss of his mother and anger towards his father's conduct. We also know that the Final Days is reliant on the ambient emotion to work. If the Ancients were truly a society free from such things, the original initiating outbreak event never would have occurred in the first place.

We know precious little of what Amaurotian society was actually like outside of how they wanted to portray themselves. Every powerful nation invariably thinks that it's the greatest civilization that ever was, so we're not exactly treading new ground here. A third party perspective would be very helpful with this, especially from the nations on other continents. I'll have a good laugh if they pull out the classic Esthar city move, with futuristic cities equipped with dynamis-powered cloaking technology over in the New World. 'Oh, that lot? They're just a bunch of primiti- eh?' 'Oh, don't mind us, we're just the caretakers of the galaxy.'

But even in the absence of that perspective, the more that we get to know the Amaurotians, the more that they seem to simply be just another group of people who just happened to have a lot of magical power. Without that silver spoon and the comforts that came with it, there was no place to hide away their undesirable and unwanted feelings. And that's not a bad thing. Being able to address your feelings around setbacks and work through them is just a part of growing up.

'...But do not avert your eyes. See your life for what it is.'

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Originally Posted by KizuyaKatogami

Not sure what your point is here at all lol. In the end it was Venat that brought them to extinction. Not necessarily Meteion.

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The main theme of the story is that the Ancients were willing to completely ignore the problem instead of solving the root cause, leaving it to fester. Venat made an omelette out of cracked eggs, the other option was to continually commit mass sacrifices to feed a god that can delay the inevitable death of their world. Nothing hints that the ancient society would ever face the Endsinger/Meteion and come out on top eventually. Of course, a counter-argument is that nothing says they would not eventually face Meteion; This argument however falls a bit flat to me since it completely ignores the context and theme of the story, where the story very heavily condemns the Amaurotine way of thinking as decadent, haughty and naive. They would leave the universe to its eventual death just to buy whoever knows how many more thousands of years of their society instead of taking direct action to address the very attitude that lead them to where they are (which Venat did).

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Originally Posted by AlysanneVrannai

They would leave the universe to its eventual death just to buy whoever knows how many more thousands of years of their society instead of taking direct action to address the very attitude that lead them to where they are (which Venat did).

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Venat relied on the Zodiark plan for 12,000 years without ever even having told anybody about the threat or so much as implied that the universe might be in danger.

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Originally Posted by AlysanneVrannai

The main theme of the story is that the Ancients were willing to completely ignore the problem instead of solving the root cause, leaving it to fester. Venat made an omelette out of cracked eggs, the other option was to continually commit mass sacrifices to feed a god that can delay the inevitable death of their world. Nothing hints that the ancient society would ever face the Endsinger/Meteion and come out on top eventually. Of course, a counter-argument is that nothing says they would not eventually face Meteion; This argument however falls a bit flat to me since it completely ignores the context and theme of the story, where the story very heavily condemns the Amaurotine way of thinking as decadent, haughty and naive. They would leave the universe to its eventual death just to buy whoever knows how many more thousands of years of their society instead of taking direct action to address the very attitude that lead them to where they are (which Venat did).

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Except they didn’t ignore the root cause, they just didn’t know what it was. Venat had the knowledge of it, she could have told them.Had she told them perhaps they could be able to face against Meteion and come out on top, Venat never gave them the chance so we may never know. Venat ran away from telling them the truth and lost hope in her people, the very thing she says not to do she did.

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Originally Posted by Jandor

You seem to want to pat them on the back for going thousands of years without a major disaster (that we know of,) but given the ridiculous scale of the disaster they did cause, I'm not sure they deserve it.

And yes, Venat did wipe the Ancients out, as a result of Hermes trying to wipe the Ancients out, so I'm not sure how you've arrived at the conclusion that they'd be fine. First disaster in thousands of years by your estimation, and they totally blew it.

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This is the thing though, the sundered are just as capable of creating horrific events. Look at Sildih. Look at mhach. If we want to talk about deserving then in that case no one does. In their defense, they made it through the disaster. Don’t see how that’s totally blowing it. The sundered couldn’t even handle the 8Uc either, so that point doesn’t mesh well at all. By this logic everyone sucks, no one would’ve survived anything so they deserve to be condemned.

One of the assertions I find the most interesting about the ultimate fate of the Ancients is the idea of the game trying to show us that they were spoiled.

I remember when Shadowbringers first came out and all we had was Amaurot as a depiction of their lives, people wanted to say that they brought their deaths upon themselves because their "creation magic was obviously a drain on the planet", even though the game specifically goes out of its way to point out that all creation done by them is through internal reserves of aether.

When we got the side stories that gave us even more glimpses into the internal workings of their society, suddenly everything shifted. Now, rather than being an unnatural drain on the planet, the line against them was that they were too obsessed with upholding the natural order, which is, of course, why they deserved to be wiped out.

Finally, with Elpis showing us the widest picture yet, we're back to yet another reason why they deserved to die: they're spoiled (even though they talk amongst themselves when they're facing emotional problems?), decadent (????) and weak (all four of the Unsundered we know spent 12000 years in the single-minded pursuit of what they thought would save their world).

I'll be blunt. There is no reason the Ancients deserved to die. The fact that they did is a tragedy and not one they brought on by doing any one thing. It's a lying comfort to pretend tragedy only visits those people and societies that deserve it.

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Originally Posted by KizuyaKatogami

Except they didn’t ignore the root cause, they just didn’t know what it was. Venat had the knowledge of it, she could have told them.Had she told them perhaps they could be able to face against Meteion and come out on top, Venat never gave them the chance so we may never know. Venat ran away from telling them the truth and lost hope in her people, the very thing she says not to do she did.

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We are shown her pleading with people to learn to cope instead of bypassing suffering altogether in the post-Elpis cutscene, and they blatantly refused her and went for the Zodiark route instead.

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Originally Posted by Veloran

Venat relied on the Zodiark plan for 12,000 years without ever even having told anybody about the threat or so much as implied that the universe might be in danger.

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Relying on the Zodiark plan to actually prepare a counterattack vs relying on Zodiark creating the "perfect" safe haven and just ignoring the calamity are two very different things. She also absolutely talked about an alternative in the post-Elpis cutscene. Its not like she went straight for sundering without trying to steer people to what she thought a better course.

Has anyone claimed that the ancients "deserved" to die? What happened to them was a horrible, unfortunate tragedy. Thier culture having trouble dealing with accepting loss and moving on from the past has nothing to do with what they "deserve".

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Originally Posted by AlysanneVrannai

Relying on the Zodiark plan to actually prepare a counterattack vs relying on Zodiark creating the "perfect" safe haven and just ignoring the calamity are two very different things. She also absolutely talked about an alternative in the post-Elpis cutscene. Its not like she went straight for sundering without trying to steer people to what she thought a better course.

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There is something rather ghoulish in coming to a group of people who have lost loved ones and telling them they need to move on for their own good, when you were in the position to stop the deaths in the first place. But I guess if you needed those people to die as a shield for your plan, it's okay.

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Originally Posted by tokinokanatae

There is something rather ghoulish in coming to a group of people who have lost loved ones and telling them they need to move on for their own good, when you were in the position to stop the deaths in the first place. But I guess if you needed those people to die as a shield for your plan, it's okay.

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How in the world was Venat in a position to prevent the first calamity? Are you talking about us failing to stop Meteion in Elpis?

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Originally Posted by AlysanneVrannai

How in the world was Venat in a position to prevent the first calamity? Are you talking about us failing to stop Meteion in Elpis?

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By telling people in power about Meteion and what happened in Elpis.

Like, it really doesn't make any sense to say she offered an alternative when Zodiark was already there. Let's imagine that the people listened to her, said she was right, that they needed to move forward from this. Then what? How does that solve Meteion? How does that solve the Zodiark that now exists and the souls removed from the cycle of life giving him power? If they gave her the answer she wanted, are they suddenly worthy of being told the truth?

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Originally Posted by AlysanneVrannai

We are shown her pleading with people to learn to cope instead of bypassing suffering altogether in the post-Elpis cutscene, and they blatantly refused her and went for the Zodiark route instead.

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Given that Venat is indirectly responsible for the Final Days occurring (given that she had foreknowledge of their existence due to the lack of a memory wipe) and then is ultimately responsible for the genocide of her own species? Nah, I don't think she was in much of a position to 'plead' with the very same people she actively sought to screw over first by withholding key information and then murdering down to the very last man, woman and child.

Zodiark was also a necessity by virtue of being the very force that served to prevent Etheirys from being destroyed. If not for Zodiark, there would be no Etheirys given that both the first and second set of sacrifices served to prevent the planet from decaying and dying altogether. That is, of course, in addition to Zodiark serving as a ward against the return of the Final Days in both the Unsundered and Sundered world.

Of course, had Venat spoken up about the Final Days before they happened then Zodiark would not have been needed but blaming the Ancients for mitigating a disaster that was sprung upon them without forewarning would strike me as utterly bizarre.

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Originally Posted by tokinokanatae

One of the assertions I find the most interesting about the ultimate fate of the Ancients is the idea of the game trying to show us that they were spoiled.

I remember when Shadowbringers first came out and all we had was Amaurot as a depiction of their lives, people wanted to say that they brought their deaths upon themselves because their "creation magic was obviously a drain on the planet", even though the game specifically goes out of its way to point out that all creation done by them is through internal reserves of aether.

When we got the side stories that gave us even more glimpses into the internal workings of their society, suddenly everything shifted. Now, rather than being an unnatural drain on the planet, the line against them was that they were too obsessed with upholding the natural order, which is, of course, why they deserved to be wiped out.

Finally, with Elpis showing us the widest picture yet, we're back to yet another reason why they deserved to die: they're spoiled (even though they talk amongst themselves when they're facing emotional problems?), decadent (????) and weak (all four of the Unsundered we know spent 12000 years in the single-minded pursuit of what they thought would save their world).

I'll be blunt. There is no reason the Ancients deserved to die. The fact that they did is a tragedy and not one they brought on by doing any one thing. It's a lying comfort to pretend tragedy only visits those people and societies that deserve it.

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Agreed, it's just been a series of reasons as to why they supposedly "deserved" their downfall - and on a similar basis you could say the sundered have long had one coming themselves. It's little but fishing for reasons to excuse the sundering in the end and you are right, they did not deserve it (much as the dragons did not deserve what befell them), and the cited reasons you mention are all fatuous in their own right. The "spoiled" thing just so happens to be the most tenuous lines of reasoning in this case. Maybe the sundered should surrender their ability to use aether, and the Garleans specifically should abandon their tech, and they should all revert to living in caves after an enforced lobotomy of some kind. Wouldn't want to be "spoiled". Fandaniel has the right idea in that lone soldier scenario.

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Originally Posted by tokinokanatae

By telling people in power about Meteion and what happened in Elpis.

Like, it really doesn't make any sense to say she offered an alternative when Zodiark was already there. Let's imagine that the people listened to her, said she was right, that they needed to move forward from this. Then what? How does that solve Meteion? How does that solve the Zodiark that now exists and the souls removed from the cycle of life giving him power? If they gave her the answer she wanted, are they suddenly worthy of being told the truth?

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They can move forward and face the crisis instead of fleeing from it, just like the story theme paralells in using the Moon as an Ark vs chasing after Meteion.

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Originally Posted by AlysanneVrannai

They can move forward and face the crisis instead of fleeing from it, just like the story theme paralells in using the Moon as an Ark vs chasing after Meteion.

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How does that solve the Meteion issue if she doesn't tell anyone that Meteion exists?

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Originally Posted by Theodric

Given that Venat is indirectly responsible for the Final Days occurring (given that she had foreknowledge of their existence due to the lack of a memory wipe) and then is ultimately responsible for the genocide of her own species? Nah, I don't think she was in much of a position to 'plead' with the very same people she actively sought to screw over first by withholding key information and then murdering down to the very last man, woman and child.

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I dont see how this makes any sense. She doesnt want to sunder the world, she makes it VERY clear that she wishes she could do something else, hence the pleading prior to performing the action.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

Zodiark was also a necessity by virtue of being the very force that served to prevent Etheirys from being destroyed. If not for Zodiark, there would be no Etheirys given that both the first and second set of sacrifices served to prevent the planet from decaying and dying altogether. That is, of course, in addition to Zodiark serving as a ward against the return of the Final Days in both the Unsundered and Sundered world.

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What Venat is pleading for is that people should not return to the society that caused the Calamity in the first place, not that they shouldnt have summoned Zodiark at all, as far as I can tell.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

Of course, had Venat spoken up about the Final Days before they happened then Zodiark would not have been needed but blaming the Ancients for mitigating a disaster that was sprung upon them without forewarning would strike me as utterly bizarre.

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We have virtually no idea what happened between Elpis and the Final Days other than that Venat gathered support to oppose the Final Days and potentially have to summon Hydaelyn, which sounds like the opposite of not trying to stop the final days. I don't really get what you mean by "blaming the Ancients".

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Originally Posted by tokinokanatae

How does that solve the Meteion issue if she doesn't tell anyone that Meteion exists?

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I guess her not explicitly saying "There is a depressed harpy collective sending negative vibes at Etheirys causing the calamity, please learn to deal with strife in a healthy manner so that we can counter those vibes and face the horde at the end of reality together with the power of hope" in the cutscene depicting metaphors of her journey to the future the WoL is in means she never told anyone or intended to tell anyone about Meteion.

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Originally Posted by AlysanneVrannai

We are shown her pleading with people to learn to cope instead of bypassing suffering altogether in the post-Elpis cutscene, and they blatantly refused her and went for the Zodiark route instead.

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She “plead” with people after the final days already struck. She had the knowledge BEFORE the final days even hit. Emet KNEW he was mind wiped. We KNOW no matter how crazy the claim, his duty for the safety of the star comes first so he investigates whatever crazy claim there is, we see this when we bring up our claim to him. All she had to do was tell him. Hell, she has the echo, use that. They couldn’t combat Meteion because they didn’t know what was behind the final days. Venat had that information and kept it solely a secret. As for the whole “we don’t know what happened between blah and blah.” Again, i bring up the anamnesis cutscene. It seems to be one of the last times she spoke with her followers, and from what we see, they don’t even know of her sundering plan, that they would die etc etc.

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Originally Posted by AlysanneVrannai

I guess her not explicitly saying "There is a depressed harpy collective sending negative vibes at Etheirys causing the calamity, please learn to deal with strife in a healthy manner so that we can counter those vibes and face the horde at the end of reality together with the power of hope" in the cutscene depicting metaphors of her journey to the future the WoL is in means she never told anyone or intended to tell anyone about Meteion.

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Yes, you're right. Being vague about the very real threat that's still facing them is a lot better. Wouldn't want to make Venat sound silly or anything.

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Originally Posted by tokinokanatae

Like, it really doesn't make any sense to say she offered an alternative when Zodiark was already there. Let's imagine that the people listened to her, said she was right, that they needed to move forward from this. Then what? How does that solve Meteion? How does that solve the Zodiark that now exists and the souls removed from the cycle of life giving him power? If they gave her the answer she wanted, are they suddenly worthy of being told the truth?

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This is an interesting thought. I mean, what would she have done in that case? If we believe that the density of the sundered's souls is important to defeating Meteion, would she have tried to convince everyone that they had to surrender themselves to having their souls torn apart anyway...?

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Originally Posted by Veloran

This is an interesting thought. I mean, what would she have done in that case? If we believe that the density of the sundered's souls is important to defeating Meteion, would she have tried to convince everyone that they had to surrender themselves to having their souls torn apart anyway...?

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The worst part is it only takes a selection of them to accomplish it. The Scions plus whoever joins your party (and of course Emet and Hyth.) So in the hypothetical scenario where they were not sundered, assuming all other methods to allow them to manipulate dynamis would not bear fruit, at most you could say it could be accomplished by agreeing to the sundering of a fraction of their populace (not to the tune of 14x over) and preparing them for this task - again, assuming all other alternatives were exhausted and would not work.

I used to think that a possible reason for her faction's plan to be so unappealing to the remainder of her people was because it may have entailed sundering them to eradicate a symptom mistaken for the cause of the crisis, i.e. creation magicks, but in reality they're not even given that much of a rationale.

Gods I hate that cutscene so much. It's from Venat's POV so it's biased and it's clearly not a faithful retelling of events. I mean, if we're not allowed to bring up anything from ShB or Amaurot as fact because it's only "one side of the story" or "Emet's interpretation" then this should be no different. As with most things, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. There's nothing other than that cutscene with the Zodiark Cultist Strawmen group to indicate the Ancients as a whole were like that, on the contrary, we know for a fact they weren't because Venat had a following of "no small number". The question I'd like answered is what was her threshold to not sunder the world?

The Ancients were so divided over the fate of the star that Elidibus exited Zodiark to mediate. I doubt any further sacrifices were going to be made without him in the pilot's seat, which would imply Venat sundered the world in the middle of negotiations. It comes across as not everyone complied quickly enough so, F it, sundered!

I suspect her logic was failing to convince them, in all honesty, as between the time Elidibus emerged and the Anamnesis scene, the number of her following is implied to have withered down to just a few. Add into that Elidibus potentially communicating the grief of the souls inside Zodiark at not being able to return to the star (ergo, trapped in a limbo of a kind) and proving that this manoeuvre was possible, it may have further eroded away any opposition to the plan against arguments which were at best philosophical in nature since she had committed to not revealing the true underlying reasoning behind them, and merely had exhortations against forsaking suffering. As an aside, even the Scions are perplexed by this when they see the Plenty in the Dead Ends and how that world's pursuit of perfection ended - whatever one thinks of it. This argument was going to be a hard sell without facts to back it, so platitudes would not cut it.

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Originally Posted by Lauront

I suspect her logic was failing to convince them, in all honesty, as between the time Elidibus emerged and the Anamnesis scene, the number of her following is implied to have withered down to just a few. Add into that Elidibus potentially communicating the grief of the souls inside Zodiark at not being able to return to the star and proving that this manoeuvre was possible, it may have further eroded away any opposition to the plan against arguments which were at best philosophical in nature since she had committed to not revealing the true underlying reasoning behind them, and merely had exhortations against forsaking suffering. As an aside, even the Scions are perplexed by this when they see the Plenty in the Dead Ends and how that world's pursuit of perfection ended - whatever one thinks of it. This argument was going to be a hard sell without facts to back it, so platitudes would not cut it.

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Given how Venat is depicted, as a former Convocation member and trusted advisor hence the white robes, I'm also left to believe that the issue was the message and not the messenger. It's interesting they decided to go with the Ancient souls being trapped within Zodiark because, IMO, that made the third sacrifice significantly more justifiable. We're told returning to the star is a fundamental part of their belief system and they're being deprived of that.

Definitely, I think that may have added to the emotional gravity of it all. Had they been given an adequate explanation? They may have focused on the more immediate goal of wiping out Meteion and left the restoration of those souls for when Zodiark had fulfilled his purpose. We can but speculate.

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Originally Posted by Rulakir

Gods I hate that cutscene so much. It's from Venat's POV so it's biased and it's clearly not a faithful retelling of events. I mean, if we're not allowed to bring up anything from ShB or Amaurot as fact because it's only "one side of the story" or "Emet's interpretation" then this should be no different. As with most things, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. There's nothing other than that cutscene with the Zodiark Cultist Strawmen group to indicate the Ancients as a whole were like that, on the contrary, we know for a fact they weren't because Venat had a following of "no small number". The question I'd like answered is what was her threshold to not sunder the world?

The Ancients were so divided over the fate of the star that Elidibus exited Zodiark to mediate. I doubt any further sacrifices were going to be made without him in the pilot's seat, which would imply Venat sundered the world in the middle of negotiations. It comes across as not everyone complied quickly enough so, F it, sundered!

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Kinda sad her own POV paints her in such an unflattering light.

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Originally Posted by Rulakir

Gods I hate that cutscene so much. It's from Venat's POV so it's biased and it's clearly not a faithful retelling of events. I mean, if we're not allowed to bring up anything from ShB or Amaurot as fact because it's only "one side of the story" or "Emet's interpretation" then this should be no different. As with most things, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. There's nothing other than that cutscene with the Zodiark Cultist Strawmen group to indicate the Ancients as a whole were like that, on the contrary, we know for a fact they weren't because Venat had a following of "no small number". The question I'd like answered is what was her threshold to not sunder the world?

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Theres no difference in the vision and how the populace is described in regards to Zodiark. "No small number" does not indicate many.

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Originally Posted by Rulakir

The Ancients were so divided over the fate of the star that Elidibus exited Zodiark to mediate. I doubt any further sacrifices were going to be made without him in the pilot's seat, which would imply Venat sundered the world in the middle of negotiations. It comes across as not everyone complied quickly enough so, F it, sundered!

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Elidibus' return was not due to their being a large divide, but that there was a divide at all, one that worried the Convocation. We know by the time Venats group finalize their decision to summon Hydaelyn that the Convocation was not listening to them. Clearly time passed.

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Originally Posted by tokinokanatae

There is no reason the Ancients deserved to die. The fact that they did is a tragedy and not one they brought on by doing any one thing.

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That is a red herring. The historically instructive question to ask is 'What were the factors that lead to Amaurot's decline and fall?'

It's not at all surprising that people are seeing hubris and decadence here, and they're a recurring theme in the fall of many great human civilizations. But you did touch on a good point. One of the biggest factors that lead to Amaurot's demise was its reliance on Creation magic. The Final Days didn't affect the Amaurotians directly. It specifically affected their Creation magic, in particular when it was used in specific areas where the celestial currents were at their weakest. This was all known at the time. They could just as easily have chosen live out their days without the convenience of Creation magic, like mere mortals do. But that would have meant sacrificing their self-perception as 'caretakers of the planet'.

There are other cracks that have shown as well. Amaurot's governance was built around an unquestioning faith in the 14 supremely powerful individuals that make up the Convocation. Obvious problems with nepotism aside, it was interesting to see how much they struggled with the concept of political dissent. It's not really surprising that a society in which conformity and obedience are demanded would struggle with emotional expression and adapting to new circumstances.

It's important to juxtapose the Ancients experiences' with Thavnair's Final Days. Here you have a society of mortals, without the grandiose power or highfalutin wisdom that Amaurot had. Unlike Amaurot, this is not simply an issue of not using a certain spell type. The Final Days corrupts not their magic, but their very flesh and souls. And yet, in the midst of all this devastation, these seemingly powerless survivors found a way to band together and overcame their feelings of despair to resist the transformation. Courage is not the absence of fear. They proved Hermes wrong in their resilience.

'Darkness abideth within every living being, and can never be cast out.
Neither reason nor faith can challenge this immutable truth.
To live is to suffer. And in suffering, find strength and purpose. And hope.'

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They could just as easily have chosen live out their days without the convenience of Creation magic, like mere mortals do. But that would have meant sacrificing their self-perception as 'caretakers of the planet'.

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Their creation magic was innate to them and the issue wasn't active use, but passive. Their fears came to life before their very eyes. It's like saying that the Final Days that attacked Thavnair could have been averted if people would have just "stopped getting scared", which I think all of us would agree if ridiculous.

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Amaurot's governance was built around an unquestioning faith in the 14 supremely powerful individuals that make up the Convocation. Obvious problems with nepotism aside, it was interesting to see how much they struggled with the concept of political dissent.

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While not the Convocation, we can see that there is debate about government in the Halls of Rhetoric: "No no no, my position has nothing to do with the intrinsic value of unique identity and whether or not it is retained! Rather, I posit that the reproductions of a given concept are inherently imperfect, and thus they are themselves unique, albeit in minor but significant degrees, and─most importantly─this variance is not to be condemned, but celebrated! Better that than to strive in vain for an impossible standard that, even if met, would leave us lesser for lack of diversity!" RE: the Bureau of the Architect's standards for creation approval.

I wouldn't characterize that as struggling with political dissent.

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The Final Days corrupts not their magic, but their very flesh and souls. And yet, in the midst of all this devastation, these seemingly powerless survivors found a way to band together and overcame their feelings of despair to resist the transformation.

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This doesn't sound unlike what the Ancients did to me. They came together and found a solution to their problem, which they then enacted.

What a lot of people seem to forget is that even since the days of Amaurot, the Ancients have not been presented as some sort of blob or an object lesson in what not to do; they have been presented as human beings. Human beings from a society with highs and lows, but people that still laugh, love, and come together in times of crisis. They didn't do anything wrong. They handled the Finals Days as well as any society could be expected to handle the Final Days.

The answer was already given in Shadowbringers: it doesn't matter if the Shards ARE "objectively inferior" in most ways to the Ancients--this is not a moral judgment, mind you, but a hypothesis--they still have the right to live and oppose the Ascians. You don't need to then look for reasons why "the Sundered people are ACTUALLY superior" because they survived. It doesn't matter. It's not about superior/inferior to begin with, and trying to frame it in those terms is to borrow Emet-Selch's flawed reasoning that he used to justify taking actions he hated against a people he hated even more.

It was never a competition to begin with. Amaurot is long gone. Humanity is in the present. The main reason why it's instructive to discuss Amaurot here at all is to learn from their mistakes.

Creation magic is not something that you use passively. Remember that this is the true form of summoning magic. It takes a lot of active concentration to use, because you need to hold the form of your creation steady in your mind's eye.

'By your bemused expression, I gather you find it odd that your elders can fail in so simple an application of creation magicks? It is more common than you realize, little one. In this instance, a gaggle of children was passing by as I held the image of the robes in my mind's eye. Simply by becoming aware of their presence was the form influenced and the final product changed. All things considered, it could have been worse. Just the other day, I was attempting to conceive a white haired lion, when all of a sudden this exquisite eagle alighted on the nearby railing, giving me quite the shock - and dramatically altering my initial concept!'

Amaurot is most definitely a society built around conformity. One of the very first things that you learn is that your individualistic way of dressing is a sign of depravity in their eyes. 'To delight in disparity is the mark of the morally deficient.' 'The eyes of the collective are ever watching and weighing your worth.'

The common person never speaks out against the Convocation while you're in Amaurot, given that they are held as 'the wisest and most puissiant' out of all of them. And it's worth remembering that, despite being part of its supreme leadership, Azem was unpersoned simply for refusing to tow the party line.

It's also worth noting that the way that the survivors of Thavnair warded off their Final Days was exactly as you described. They mastered their fears through their spirituality, by reciting the teachings of their old gods. They found strength and comfort in each other. And I think that's more the central theme of the story, than it is about ruminating about the 'what ifs' of a long dead civilization.

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings;
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

It was never a competition to begin with. Amaurot is long gone. Humanity is in the present. The main reason why it's instructive to discuss Amaurot here at all is to learn from their mistakes.

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Even taking the rest of your post aside, I think this is a nice summation on the core of our disagreement. I think Amaurot and the Ancients worth discussing and and of itself, because I think exploring other cultures (even if they're fictional) to be interesting. Distilling it down to "their greatest value is in their use" is a rather amusingly Ancient sentiment we see expressed by more than one person in Elpis, though!

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Originally Posted by Lyth

It was never a competition to begin with. Amaurot is long gone. Humanity is in the present.

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Kind of a relative concept given our very flagrant use of time travel. "The past" "the present", and "the future" are not so distinct.

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Creation magic is not something that you use passively. Remember that this is the true form of summoning magic. It takes a lot of active concentration to use, because you need to hold the form of your creation steady in your mind's eye.

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Except that isn't what was happening. Their creation magic was actively "wrested from their control" and dread forcibly "siphoned from their minds". It isn't the case that they were just engaging in it's use in an afflicted area and out popped a monster, something was using their own magics against them against their will.

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The common person never speaks out against the Convocation while you're in Amaurot,

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We clearly do see "the common person" arguing about the bureaucracy's policies and the ideals of conformity though, as tokino quoted previously.

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And it's worth remembering that, despite being part of its supreme leadership, Azem was unpersoned simply for refusing to tow the party line.

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It's my understanding that Azem chose to leave the Convocation. Hence being a defector rather than an outcast. Afterwards they simply didn't refill the seat.

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It's also worth noting that the way that the survivors of Thavnair warded off their Final Days was exactly as you described. They mastered their fears through their spirituality, by reciting the teachings of their old gods.

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The Ancients had no gods in which to place their faith. And I very much think you would argue that when they created one to put their faith in, that was them choosing to turn away from their despair rather than confront it.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

That is a red herring. The historically instructive question to ask is 'What were the factors that lead to Amaurot's decline and fall?'

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They were attacked and sabotaged, is a good place to start, I think. Nitpicking the victims' "cracks" to search for a source of their fall within them, when they were attacked, seems a bit grotesque to me. Especially if you're trying to contrast that to "us" in the present day, who survived... largely because we had an untold amount of knowledge and resources the initial victims lacked, that we only had access to because we weren't the first targets - because we had a reference point to another group taking the hit first.

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It's important to juxtapose the Ancients experiences' with Thavnair's Final Days. Here you have a society of mortals, without the grandiose power or highfalutin wisdom that Amaurot had. Unlike Amaurot, this is not simply an issue of not using a certain spell type. The Final Days corrupts not their magic, but their very flesh and souls. And yet, in the midst of all this devastation, these seemingly powerless survivors found a way to band together and overcame their feelings of despair to resist the transformation. Courage is not the absence of fear. They proved Hermes wrong in their resilience.

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This is a funny comparison to me, considering how many Thavnairians we see succumb to despair and become Blasphemies - including the one who rallied the survivors, Matsya, who would have turned just like the rest if not for a last-second rescue by an outside party. Are we then to examine the deep flaws of the culture of Thavnair to understand why that mother and her children in Vanaspati all turned? Did Vrtra screw up by giving his people too stable, too good a life, instead of conditioning them better to accept suffering? What "flaws" are we to understand we must learn from when examining a baby despairing and beginning to turn, if not for a one-in-a-billion shot of a nice dragon being there at the right place at the exact right time? Do you see how strange and absurd trying to pin down a vulnerability of despair to concrete factors, to "flaws" to tsk-tsk at, begins to become?

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Originally Posted by Brinne

This is a funny comparison to me, considering how many Thavnairians we see succumb to despair and become Blasphemies - including the one who rallied the survivors, Matsya, who would have turned just like the rest if not for a last-second rescue by an outside party. Are we then to examine the deep flaws of the culture of Thavnair to understand why that mother and her children in Vanaspati all turned? Did Vrtra screw up by giving his people too stable, too good a life, instead of conditioning them better to accept suffering? What "flaws" are we to understand we must learn from when examining a baby despairing and beginning to turn, if not for a one-in-a-billion shot of a nice dragon being there at the right place at the exact right time? Do you see how strange and absurd trying to pin down a vulnerability of despair to concrete factors, to "flaws" to tsk-tsk at, begins to become?

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People on the Source are far more susceptible to dynamis than the Ancients ever were, this is why they so easily succumb to it. Even then, Matsya managed to stave it off with mantras and seeing hope completely saved him.

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Originally Posted by AlysanneVrannai

People on the Source are far more susceptible to dynamis than the Ancients ever were, this is why they so easily succumb to it. Even then, Matsya managed to stave it off with mantras and seeing hope completely saved him.

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"Seeing hope" is a poetic way to say "saved by a third party out of the blue." It is a pity that--judging by her own recollection--Venat didn't see fit to extend that sort of "hope" to her people as she strolled past them being attacked, if that is what it takes to make sure people don't succumb to despair.