Did Zodiark ever do anything wrong?

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?