Tales from the Dawn #3: "A Question of Life" (Hermes)

I see someone was having fun with the tags. Let's not do that.

Also, cripes, love to see another thread devolve into the same argument, again.

At this point I've just accepted it. They're going to keep turning the threads into this regardless of whether anyone else wishes it.

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Originally Posted by Absimiliard

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A billion is usually slightly less than 'countless millions', assuming than you can count to more than 1000. The distinction between the Ascians and the post-Azem Convocation is mostly arbitrary, especially because their core leadership were unsundered. It doesn't really sound like Amaurot engaged with the other nations of the Ancient world as equals. They just hosted academic debates on how best to play god while observing the suffering of others from on high. Their entire philosophy and world view was warped from the outset. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Academic debate was like 90% of the policy making process for the Ancients. Allowing those from outside the ruling body to have any kind of input is a stark contrast to ... well, literally any modern government, both real or in the game. Regardless, the ruling parties rarely ever actually enforced anything unless it was absolutely necessary. It wasn't their way.

There is no evidence of unfairness anywhere in the game with regards to Amaurotine interactions with Ancients from other corners of the world. What we do know is those "other nations" would willingly defer to Amaurot in matters necessitating interaction but were otherwise left to handle their own affairs, even during the Final Days.

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Originally Posted by Zero-ELEC

Also, cripes, love to see another thread devolve into the same argument, again.

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Seemed like an inevitability given the relative lack of new information coupled with Hermes' morality being centered on the value of different lives.

I only really find myself wondering how how he would've reacted if he had learned the truth about the Meteia after he had resigned himself to conformity.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

Seemed like an inevitability given the relative lack of new information coupled with Hermes' morality being centered on the value of different lives.

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Yeah, this one I almost give a pass because the story is actually outright about the Ancients and the End of Days. I still don't want to deal with this argument ever again and desperately wish the writers would stop going back to the well, but it's rather different from derailing a conversation about, say, the voidsent into 'but do we really, truly know Venat wasn't an inherently malicious murderer?'

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Originally Posted by Zero-ELEC

I see someone was having fun with the tags. Let's not do that.

Also, cripes, love to see another thread devolve into the same argument, again.

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Also, VERY thankful someone could actually fix that, thankyou. That was a REALLY rancid show of exactly where people were with the masks off and no accountability on who was saying what.

(I was the one that added just 'tags were a bad feature'.)

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Originally Posted by Absimiliard

You are grossly underestimating the ease with which food can be acquired. Not every lifeform in FFXIV is fantastically dangerous. In fact, the vast majority of them are perfectly harmless and often quite defenseless. The plethora of life we routinely fight in-game is only a portion of what's actually there.

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In this scenario, these sundered humans - wretches incapable of communication of any kind, would be the perfectly harmless and quite defenseless lifeform to a lot of the dangerous wildlife out there.

Really, "incapable of communication" seems very to hard to believe, since even animals can communicate with other other. Incapable of spoken language? Sure. But some forms of community and even culture might be possible without language as we understand it.

I actually agree that Emet-Selch largely doesn't believe what he says about the sundered being lesser life forms, and that most of his ideas are a form of rationalization to help justify the atrocities he feels he has to commit. I just think that process of rationalization started early on, when he felt incapable of communicating with what were mostly likely proto hunter-gatherer societies.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

Yeah, this one I almost give a pass because the story is actually outright about the Ancients and the End of Days. I still don't want to deal with this argument ever again and desperately wish the writers would stop going back to the well, but it's rather different from derailing a conversation about, say, the voidsent into 'but do we really, truly know Venat wasn't an inherently malicious murderer?'



Also, VERY thankful someone could actually fix that, thankyou. That was a REALLY rancid show of exactly where people were with the masks off and no accountability on who was saying what.

(I was the one that added just 'tags were a bad feature'.)

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If you’re gonna accuse us of escaping accountability, than I proudly confess that “mankind’s first edgelord” and “tears for the hedgehogs” were my tags. And what masks going off are we talking about? That we admit to finding Hermes an unsympathetic arrogant school-shooter like edgelord? Again, nobody’s concealing that.

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Originally Posted by Absimiliard

Virtually every shred of information we have regarding Ancient civilization seems to strongly indicate their methods and moral statutes differed greatly from what we saw from the Ascians. It seems fairly evident their own people would consider what they're doing to bring them back abhorrent if somehow made aware of it. Indeed, Emet-Selch's past self was absolutely revulsed by what he learned of his future. There is no indication anywhere in or out of game in any official materials the Ancients were anything more than our interactions with them (Note: them being the Ancients, not the later Ascians) made them out to be. They were just... people. Some good, some bad, but on the whole they definitely come off as upstanding.

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There is no doubt that Emet felt repulsed by what was to come, but in the discussion of how ascians treat beings they deem lower to themselves, Emet doesn't really at any point clearly state how badly he feels about what he will do, does or did to the sundered. Not even in his death does he seem apologetic. He talks about his burden, but beyond that, I do not believe personally that the pipeline from ancients (especially the Convocation) to ascian would be as drastic as you make it seem.

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Originally Posted by Thenightvortex

If you’re gonna accuse us of escaping accountability, than I proudly confess that “mankind’s first edgelord” and “tears for the hedgehogs” were my tags. And what masks going off are we talking about? That we admit to finding Hermes an unsympathetic arrogant school-shooter like edgelord? Again, nobody’s concealing that.

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Nice. I, for one, just rewrote my earlier posts into tags, because the comparison to the Joker will never not be on point. Hermes, just as much of a first step for mankind as The Joker is the first step for Gotham City, god bless.

The comparison actually does fail at one point, though: at least Alan Moore had the decency to end The Killing Joke on "it isn't society, it's just you, Joker".

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Originally Posted by Lurina

Lyth, this is a bonkers thing to say, and you know it. This is not a diagetic conversation. People unsure if the sacrifices were sapient or not aren't unsure because they're indulging in in-universe moral relativity about issue in line with the Ascians, they're unsure because Natsuko Ishikawa, the real-world human being, literally hasn't written it down.

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I admire your patience. I truly do.

For the sake of my own sanity I simply cannot bring myself to play the Bad Faith Bingo with the Ancients Bad crowd that haunts what has become of the Lore forum. Arguments are repeatedly made and ignored. What little canon we have to go on is continuously twisted into this weird echo chamber of headcanons that seemingly operate on a single basis: Villains BadTm and can never be relatable, right or have a point, or simply be just human beings... because that would be actually interesting.

(inb4 someone accuses me of being an alt because I never posted before Endwalker but talk about the Lore forum)

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Originally Posted by Teraq

For the sake of my own sanity I simply cannot bring myself to play the Bad Faith Bingo with the Ancients Bad crowd that haunts what has become of the Lore forum. Arguments are repeatedly made and ignored. What little canon we have to go on is continuously twisted into this weird echo chamber of headcanons that seemingly operate on a single basis: Villains BadTm and can never be relatable, right or have a point, or simply be just human beings... because that would be actually interesting.

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Can we please stop drawing battle lines? It's both extremes of the argument that make the Lore forum miserable, not just one side while the other is completely reasonable.

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Originally Posted by EaraGrace

I've seen many quote Alphinauds line, but what of the rest of it? Its clear that the Scions are concluding that the humans on the Source will be sacrificed, based solely on what fake Hyth told us. Concluding that this is an incorrect reading of that conversation, that they were intending to sacrifice anything but human beings, is to say the Scions are also wrong, which is nonsensical writing. So we are left with two choices. Either the writers were telling us the initial sacrifice were intended to be humans, or the writers of ShB and EW lost the plot several years ago.

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Sorry, I know I was a bit slow in my reply. It turns out my brain was only capable of producing a series of whistles and clicks until I fell asleep for approximately fifteen hours. It has been known to happen.

The Scions are qualifying clearly in that conversation that they're working on assumptions and speculations, because they're operating primarily from context of the Ascians' current behavior, which obviously has no problem doing harm to other human beings in the name of their mission. They don't know for certain what Hythlo's words mean in the present - the Scions are also clearly speaking purely in context of the Ascians in the present ("their plan doesn't stop with just the Rejoinings...") until Emet-Selch confirms his intentions directly later on in Amaurot. And even then, their initial speculation involves the additional assumption that the Ascians would be able to make distinctions, logistically and specifically, of who and what would be sacrificed and what wouldn't.

I know you have asked in the past: "so, were the Ascians then planning on sacrificing the sapient beings of the Source out of spite?" And I actually have little problem saying that yes, probably, in largely part. Emet-Selch is lashing out and saying and doing a lot of things out of raw spite and resentment in that sequence already, and using the Scions' speculation that you've quoted, already put forth that people who would continue to doggedly oppose them and refuse to cooperate with them were on the chopping block in the post-Innocence cutscene.

Overall, this is what I would say/speculate/interpret: I think the most likely situation for the Ancients is, again, the contents of the third sacrifice is forever unknowable because the plan didn't proceed far enough for them to even come into existence. The Ancients were not able to "nurture the planet until it was bursting with vitality" to be able to evaluate what that vitality looked like and refine their plans from there.

Things are different for the Ascians. Enough time has passed that the "bursting with vitality" stage has been reached, for better or worse. And the Ascians have reached a point psychologically where, yeah, they don't care anymore, anything that doesn't suit them or they suspect would continue to oppose them is getting fed to Zodiark because screw you. I would interpret, actually, the distinction being made that the Ascians can be selective about who and what gets sacrificed - to the extent of judging a potential sacrifice based on "do you hate Zodiark and the Ascians y/n" - makes it harder to believe the initial plan, free of twelve thousand years of malice, would have revolved around unilaterally throwing waves of babies into the grinding machine.

I always took it that the pro-Zodiark crowd was about to perform the sacrifice which is what ended up spurring Hydaelyn's summoning in the first place... or at least the post-Elpis cutscene seemed to be suggesting that.

The notion of him getting pre-empted before they even tried to make him do anything would just sour my opinion of the latter crowd further.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

Also, VERY thankful someone could actually fix that, thankyou. That was a REALLY rancid show of exactly where people were with the masks off and no accountability on who was saying what.

(I was the one that added just 'tags were a bad feature'.)

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Yeah its nice that at least some of those tags are gone. Also if you hover with your mouse over the tag you can see who wrote it. Tells you a lot about some people.

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Originally Posted by Tehmon

There is no doubt that Emet felt repulsed by what was to come, but in the discussion of how ascians treat beings they deem lower to themselves, Emet doesn't really at any point clearly state how badly he feels about what he will do, does or did to the sundered. Not even in his death does he seem apologetic. He talks about his burden, but beyond that, I do not believe personally that the pipeline from ancients (especially the Convocation) to ascian would be as drastic as you make it seem.

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Emet is also one of those that left poor Mitron behind to suffer for a huge amount of time. And that was a fellow ascian...of course since they are sundered too it seems that they are also quite bellow them.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

I always took it that the pro-Zodiark crowd was about to perform the sacrifice which is what ended up spurring Hydaelyn's summoning in the first place... or at least the post-Elpis cutscene seemed to be suggesting that.

The notion of him getting pre-empted before they even tried to make him do anything would just sour my opinion of the latter crowd further.

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Well, we already knew that the timeline and depiction of events as portrayed in that cutscene is extremely weird and heavily abstracted to more reflect on Venat's perception of things. Portraying the arguments for the third sacrifice as happening while the Final Days were still going on, for instance, lol.

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Originally Posted by Brinne

Overall, this is what I would say/speculate/interpret: I think the most likely situation for the Ancients is, again, the contents of the third sacrifice is forever unknowable because the plan didn't proceed far enough for them to even come into existence. The Ancients were not able to "nurture the planet until it was bursting with vitality" to be able to evaluate what that vitality looked like and refine their plans from there.

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But we are not historians, trying to piece together the truth of what really happened based on the evidence in front of us. If we were, this level of skepticism would be justified. We are analyzing a piece of literature, and when presented with a factual ambiguity like that, it's important to look at the story from a thematic and metaphorical level too.

Two of the big themes of FFXIV has always been, one, that it is understandable, but wrong to value your own kind over others, and two, it is important to place faith and hope in the future, and not cling to the ways of the past.

The choice between the third sacrifice and the sundering represents the ultimate expression of that conflict, with Venat being the ultimate expression of the "light" aspect. 'I value people outside my own ingroup that will sacrifice my own people for thier sake, I trust and value the future so much that I am willing to erase the past for the sake of the future.'

Many of the characters involved talk about the targets of the third sacrifice being capable of inheriting the will of the star, becoming stewards like the ancients were, or just being allowed to decide thier own future. Rhetoric that resonates if they are indeed people, will the potential to have a future. Which is why on a thematic level, it makes the most sense for them to be some form of people.

If the targets of the third sacrifice were instead trees and livestock, what would that mean on a thematic level? Suddenly one of the central conflicts is stripped of any weight, and Venat looks like a rabid enviromentalist - which would be fine, if the theme of nature versus technology has ever been a central plank of the conflict between Zodiark and Hydaelyn, but that really is not the case.

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Originally Posted by KariTheFox

If the targets of the third sacrifice were instead trees and livestock, what would that mean on a thematic level? Suddenly one of the central conflicts is stripped of any weight, and Venat looks like a rabid enviromentalist - which would be fine, if the theme of nature versus technology has ever been a central plank of the conflict between Zodiark and Hydaelyn, but that really is not the case.

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Just a quick reply, because Dipping Energy Levels again: this is speaking back to the old misperception that Venat was acting "on behalf" of the sacrifices, in order to protect them in some way, when she never was. This is not actually a matter of "my kind versus another's kind" to her. That never comes up in her motivations after she is introduced properly as a character, is never named as a motivation versus other things, is undermined by the fact that everything was destroyed in the Sundering, and her speech just before the Sundering makes clear that from her perspective, she was cutting down her people for the sake of her people, according to her values. She is keeping them from walking down the wrong path, pre-emptively, in her eyes. She is a person who is taking the step of putting down a beloved family member (in tears) because she is convinced they will go on to lead a destructive lifestyle where they can't be happy.

Venat is not a crazy environmentalist acting on behalf of trees and livestock. To Venat, it is simply irrelevant whether or not the sacrifices were people, or trees or livestock, because her primary concern is her people becoming "stagnant" and "not growing" through any possible means of "clinging to the past." Because what she is afraid of is the future of the Plenty.

Going back to the logistical side of things - and ideas that are more actively speculative on my part - Hythlodaeus's speech suggests to me that the initial life that reappeared after the second sacrifice was, on some level, kind of primordial. "Tiny lives sprouting." Ancients generally have no control over souls and what becomes recognized as authentic life, but the Ancients do have the capacity to shape and guide life force into vehicles that may be more likely to gain those things, based on patterns and research - do you use your creation magicks to form an elemental sprite, or a goobbue, or something like Meteion?

In that sense, even without there being already-existing people, the debate over "do we use the new life to restore our brethren, or to pave the path to a future potentially without us" still makes sense. The second sacrifice provided the star back with the spark and energy for life, and now the Ancients are in the position of deciding how they will raise that life - on a path to evolve to basically livestock, or a path to become sapient beings. Because once again, Venat is a character whose motivations are rooted in ideology, not materialism. She would be arguing for a future where saving their people trapped in Zodiark is sub-optimal versus preparing and nurturing the form of a future generation that could inherit the star from them altogether, because she values the process of "passing on one's legacy to the future" as a self-justifying and morally correct principle.

That ended up less truncated than I intended. Oops.

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Originally Posted by KariTheFox

But we are not historians, trying to piece together the truth of what really happened based on the evidence in front of us. If we were, this level of skepticism would be justified. We are analyzing a piece of literature, and when presented with a factual ambiguity like that, it's important to look at the story from a thematic and metaphorical level too.

Two of the big themes of FFXIV has always been, one, that it is understandable, but wrong to value your own kind over others, and two, it is important to place faith and hope in the future, and not cling to the ways of the past.

The choice between the third sacrifice and the sundering represents the ultimate expression of that conflict, with Venat being the ultimate expression of the "light" aspect. 'I value people outside my own ingroup that will sacrifice my own people for thier sake, I trust and value the future so much that I am willing to erase the past for the sake of the future.'

Many of the characters involved talk about the targets of the third sacrifice being capable of inheriting the will of the star, becoming stewards like the ancients were, or just being allowed to decide thier own future. Rhetoric that resonates if they are indeed people, will the potential to have a future. Which is why on a thematic level, it makes the most sense for them to be some form of people.

If the targets of the third sacrifice were instead trees and livestock, what would that mean on a thematic level? Suddenly one of the central conflicts is stripped of any weight, and Venat looks like a rabid enviromentalist - which would be fine, if the theme of nature versus technology has ever been a central plank of the conflict between Zodiark and Hydaelyn, but that really is not the case.

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The issue is that the way the themes have been applied to the Sundering narrative since it was introduced in 5.0 hasn't really been consistent, though.

Like, I would have agreed with you back in the days of Shadowbringers, when the emphasis of the conflict was heavily on how the Ancients 'ought' to have stepped aside and let the new life thrive. (Though I can only recall one actual instance of the third sacrifice being framed as the successors to the Ancients as stewards, which is during the conversation with Hythlo in Amaurot - what else were you thinking of?) Back then, everyone kind of took it as a given that the third sacrifice was the player races. That made the story line up very nicely. The Amaurotines wanted to wipe 'us' out 12,000 years ago to bring their people back, but Hydaelyn stood in opposition to them, which led to us inheriting the world. However, Emet and the Ascians still want the same thing in the present: To kill us and save their own people and bring back their civilization as it was. Nice and clean, right?

...but in Endwalker, the framing shifted towards the player races being descendants of the Sundered Ancients instead, which was ultimately confirmed explicitly in an interview. So now everything is muddled. There's no obvious conclusion to draw about what the third sacrifice was, and despite what Hydaelyn's efforts, whatever they were didn't end up inheriting the star after all - we did. Or rather the Ancients kept it, just Sundered.

This makes the message very muddled. My guess is that the original intent in Shadowbringers was that the player races were the new life, but they decided to change that in Endwalker to fit with the narrative about the Sundering's purpose being to force humanity to understand grief and loss. It's no longer a tale of people resisting passing the torch, but a tale of people refusing to accept loss and change and having it forced upon them, then collectively overcoming far in the future. In Shadowbringers Hydaelyn fights Zodiark to save the new life from her people, while in Endwalker Hydaelyn fights Zodiark to 'save her people from themselves'.

But this change left the identity of the third sacrifice blank - a hole in the story. Which the developers decided to address by, well, just not talking about them.

It's hard to really make a good-faith judgement about writer intent when it feels overwhelming like the writer intent isn't even completely consistent behind the scenes.

Which does tie back to Hermes and what he was grappling with: did the Ancients have the right to dictate life into forms that their society approved of, and how did this presumption tie into what was expected of themselves?

There is an almost stubborn refusal to acknowledge what her motives, as now clearly articulated in the short story (and the Q&A), actually are.

Personally, I can't see how people can place any reliance on what the Ascians planned to do with the final stage of the Rejoining as an indication of what was involved way back then. The Sundering is a massive shift in circumstances, and we know they intend to wipe the slate clean to restore their people, with the specifics of how it'd play out, vague. The only constant is that there will be a sacrifice of life to that end. Nowhere is it implied that it necessarily must be actually sapient life and, more specifically, ancient life.

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Originally Posted by Brinne

Going back to the logistical side of things - and ideas that are more actively speculative on my part - Hythlodaeus's speech suggests to me that the initial life that reappeared after the second sacrifice was, on some level, kind of primordial. "Tiny lives sprouting." Ancients generally have no control over souls and what becomes recognized as authentic life, but the Ancients do have the capacity to shape and guide life force into vehicles that may be more likely to gain those things, based on patterns and research - do you use your creation magicks to form an elemental sprite, or a goobbue, or something like Meteion?

In that sense, even without there being already-existing people, the debate over "do we use the new life to restore our brethren, or to pave the path to a future potentially without us" still makes sense. The second sacrifice provided the star back with the spark and energy for life, and now the Ancients are in the position of deciding how they will raise that life - on a path to evolve to basically livestock, or a path to become sapient beings. Because once again, Venat is a character whose motivations are rooted in ideology, not materialism. She would be arguing for a future where saving their people trapped in Zodiark is sub-optimal versus preparing and nurturing the form of a future generation that could inherit the star from them altogether, because she values the process of "passing on one's legacy to the future" as a self-justifying and morally correct principle.

That ended up less truncated than I intended. Oops.

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As per this translation previously posted by Lurina, given that it is Zodiark seeding the star with life (which we know from Elpis would involve the propagation of creations suited to receiving a soul), it would not surprise me in the least if the primal is what was spawning templated creations (namely, animal and plant life, and similar) using stored up concepts, which would then reproduce in the usual way. I agree with your take on how this may have played out, i.e. her faction presenting these entities as being potentially apt to develop sapience if guided through the right evolutionary course, maybe drawing on her encounter with the WoL to add further contours to this narrative. Alternatively, a narrative of make do with those survivors and let the wilderness be populated by the new life as it reclaims it. Her faction's main goal is to get her people to stop the third sacrifice out of the fear that restoration of their civilisation would result in their stagnation, or worse (and of course, her own direct fear is the Plenty and Meteion.) Using such a narrative to stall and buy time until she was ready to summon Hydaelyn is the most logical way of parsing the event to me. My take on it is her answer is to preserve the timeline as is required and provide her followers an adequately persuasive narrative to stall towards that end.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

Can we please stop drawing battle lines? It's both extremes of the argument that make the Lore forum miserable, not just one side while the other is completely reasonable.

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Exactly. As it often just needs a vague hint at the sundering or a thinly veild mentioning of how one feels about the otherside and how they view the sundering to cause such derailments. It doesn't matter which side does it as both do it. Of course it doesn't help that this story was about a person who starts us down the path to it. Hopefully the last one for now won't be from an Ancient's perspective. The crazy thing they could do us give us something from where we left Eric, Elidibus and Lahabrea at the end of the current Pandeamonium segment. As I'm sure all three would have somewhat interesting inner thoughts about what happened.

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Originally Posted by Lurina

This makes the message very muddled. My guess is that the original intent in Shadowbringers was that the player races were the new life, but they decided to change that in Endwalker to fit with the narrative about the Sundering's purpose being to force humanity to understand grief and loss. It's no longer a tale of people resisting passing the torch, but a tale of people refusing to accept loss and change and having it forced upon them, then collectively overcoming far in the future. In Shadowbringers Hydaelyn fights Zodiark to save the new life from her people, while in Endwalker Hydaelyn fights Zodiark to 'save her people from themselves'.

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I don't think it's that muddled, every interaction we have with the ancients as far back as Shadowbringers has them treating us as thier children, even literally in Emet-Selch's recreation, or as a familiar as a proxy-child in Elpis (I'll put Pandemonium to the side now since I view it as post-EW materiel that represents us growing and starting to interact with our ancestors as adults.)

So if we know as far back as Shadowbringers that the ancients are our ancestors, and we all thought back then they planned to sacrifice us for the sake of bringing themselves back , I don't see how that fact being explicitly confirmed changes anything.

Nor do I see Venat's motivations as contradictory, she wants her people to grow beyond thier pain and loss by entrusting the world to future generations, because she believes in mankind's potential and all that.

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Originally Posted by Denishia

Which does tie back to Hermes and what he was grappling with: did the Ancients have the right to dictate life into forms that their society approved of, and how did this presumption tie into what was expected of themselves?

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Given that Venat had explicit future knowledget, allowing the ancients to cultivate livestock for the third sacrifice, if that is indeed what is going on, also means explicitly cutting off the future civilizations of the sundered world from ever existing if she doesn't have history play out in a way that can lead to thier coming into being. They're longer a hypothetical future possibility, but a confirmed fact that she feels compelled to protect.

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Originally Posted by Absimiliard

A couple thoughts. Firstly, if we choose to disregard other in-game conversations and take this one purely at face value, nothing in there indicates the sacrifices to be limited to sapient life. He appears to be speaking of all life, and any kind of assumption otherwise would indeed be mistaken on part of the Scions. However, this is decidedly not what the original Ancients had planned. Conflating the two is disingenuous.

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What in game conversations am I disregarding? Fake Hyths statements, the Scions views, Emets speech, the supplemental materials, all fit within an understanding of the Ancients using sapient sacrifices. It's the assertion that they aren't using them that doesn't make sense, and requires ignoring multiple statements by several involved parties and the assumption that these selfsame characters are either incredibly stupid or acting in bad faith.

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Originally Posted by Absimiliard

We are informed rather clearly their original plan was to cultivate life in the world, then sacrifice that life to bring back those sacrificed to Zodiark. The Ancients, and by extension Zodiark, were at no point shown capable of willfully creating sapient life -- or granting a new organism a soul, for that matter.

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The clearest way to disprove this is to point to Meteion, who by any definition of sentience meets the threshold. And on the matter of souls, the Lykaons are plainly stated to possess souls. The Ancients may not be able to create souls, but they can create beings the star would give a soul.

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Originally Posted by Absimiliard

Both of these things were dictated not by them but by the planet itself. Even the Meteia were produced only after an absurd amount of experimentation, with all involved acknowledging the one Meteion's full sapience as a fluke. If the Ancients were not able to create sapient life or grant souls, then that does rather limit their choices when it comes to intended sacrificial lambs.

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It wasn't a fluke it was the whole point. Hermes at multiple points highlights that the goal was to create an entelechy with free will.

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Originally Posted by Absimiliard

Now on to the second point: It isn't merely that they couldn't form words. They were quite literally incapable of any form of communication, even that facilitated by the Echo (or whatever you want to call the remaining power the unsundered had).

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Source for this? I believe the Nier event simply stated they couldn't form words, and Emet once again stresses the Sundering doesn't ones body.

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Originally Posted by Absimiliard

I felt compelled to revisit this briefly. Curious that Emet-Selch's words should be taken at face value at certain times yet handily dismissed at others even when context should indicate he's being truthful at a given time. We're to immediately accept everything he says about the Ascians' grand plan and him willingly going along with it as fact, yet his descriptions of the state the sundered are in directly after the act are inherently suspect.

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And I am compelled to point out that either reading of Emets reliability works in my arguments favor. Either he is not reliable, in which case we can't trust him at all and thus we can dismiss the Nier event and his assertions about the nature of the Sundered, or we do believe him and he disproves the theory that the Sundering physically changed the Sundered to such an extent as to make them mindless husks.

My opinion? He can be trusted to tell us what he intended to do and facts about what occurred, but he can't be trusted to make value judgements given his clear bias against the Sundered. In other words, I think he's reliable in descriptive statements, but not prescriptive ones.

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Originally Posted by Brinne

The Scions are qualifying clearly in that conversation that they're working on assumptions and speculations, because they're operating primarily from context of the Ascians' current behavior, which obviously has no problem doing harm to other human beings in the name of their mission. They don't know for certain what Hythlo's words mean in the present - the Scions are also clearly speaking purely in context of the Ascians in the present ("their plan doesn't stop with just the Rejoinings...") until Emet-Selch confirms his intentions directly later on in Amaurot. And even then, their initial speculation involves the additional assumption that the Ascians would be able to make distinctions, logistically and specifically, of who and what would be sacrificed and what wouldn't.

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So once again this would mean the writers wrote the protagonists to be incorrect, and then from incorrect premises stumble on the right conclusion about Emet and the Ascians plan. If you want to hold that ShB's climax is founded on this idea then sure, but I don't think this is logical to presume. If however that's ok with others then I think thats a perfectly consistent position to take and have nothing to say but "agree to disagree" for now. But again I hope its understandable why I'm more skeptical of this position.

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Originally Posted by Brinne

I know you have asked in the past: "so, were the Ascians then planning on sacrificing the sapient beings of the Source out of spite?" And I actually have little problem saying that yes, probably, in largely part. Emet-Selch is lashing out and saying and doing a lot of things out of raw spite and resentment in that sequence already, and using the Scions' speculation that you've quoted, already put forth that people who would continue to doggedly oppose them and refuse to cooperate with them were on the chopping block in the post-Innocence cutscene.

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But those wouldn't be the ones Emets sacrificing. The calamities and the natural lifespan of the Sundered would ensure that, a fact he was aware of and used as an argument to convince us to join him. He'd be being spiteful against random people. I have a sour opinion of the Ascians for sure, but this defies even the logic that I as a foremost member of the anti-Ascian squad (I couldn't resist I'm so sorry) disagree with.

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Originally Posted by Brinne

Overall, this is what I would say/speculate/interpret: I think the most likely situation for the Ancients is, again, the contents of the third sacrifice is forever unknowable because the plan didn't proceed far enough for them to even come into existence. The Ancients were not able to "nurture the planet until it was bursting with vitality" to be able to evaluate what that vitality looked like and refine their plans from there.

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I refuse to believe the Ancients were willing to shove random souls into their ultimate creation. We know those souls would have some sway over the heart, per Elidibus, and I don't believe they would play fast and loose with their savior.

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Originally Posted by EaraGrace

So once again this would mean the writers wrote the protagonists to be incorrect, and then from incorrect premises stumble on the right conclusion about Emet and the Ascians plan. If you want to hold that ShB's climax is founded on this idea then sure, but I don't think this is logical to presume. If however that's ok with others then I think thats a perfectly consistent position to take and have nothing to say but "agree to disagree" for now. But again I hope its understandable why I'm more skeptical of this position.

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No, because the protagonists never make any comment or speculation upon the original, non-Ascian plan to begin with. They only speculate on the implications this has to the current, Ascian plan, as that's the only one that has any relevance to them. They say absolutely nothing about "oh, the Ascians/Ancients were Like This, even before the Final Days and Zodiark!" All they say is, "this probably implies the Ascians won't stop even after the Rejoinings."

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But those wouldn't be the ones Emets sacrificing. The calamities and the natural lifespan of the Sundered would ensure that, a fact he was aware of and used as an argument to convince us to join him. He'd be being spiteful against random people. I have a sour opinion of the Ascians for sure, but this defies even the logic that I as a "hater" disagree with.

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See, and I'm an Ascian lover, and I have no problem believing this given the psychological and emotional state the Ascians are in in the present day. All of Sundered life, to the Ascian perspective--Emet-Selch's perspective that he's fervently trying to persuade himself of--are "perverted distortions" of the authentic life unjustly stolen, who have lived on the erased corpses, sacrifices, and history of what he himself refers to as "the first people," and ones furthermore embraced by Hydaelyn as "her children." I, as someone who is sometimes capable of a fair amount of Spite myself (shocking, I know!) don't find it a large leap at all to see someone in Emet's position going "Hydaelyn's children? Hahaha, more like Zodiark's dinner, losers!"

Obviously, this is not morally right or fair by any stretch of the imagination. But in terms of raw human emotion? Yeah, I don't have difficulty "getting it," so to speak.

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I refuse to believe the Ancients were willing to shove random souls into their ultimate creation. We know those souls would have some sway over the heart, per Elidibus, and I don't believe they would play fast and loose with their savior.

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They wouldn't be "shoving random souls" in. Under this idea, they'd evaluate more closely once those souls had properly developed over a period of generations, being nurtured by the survivors, when the planet was bursting with vitality. They're not arbitrarily throwing darts at a board or anything. It's just that, now that we have more understanding of the workings and limitations of the Ancients' magic, they probably literally had no way of knowing exactly how those sprouts of life would develop until they were done developing. I would presume that there would be less trouble "controlling" the souls within Zodiark as the heart were they less intelligent and sapient.

Just gonna make a quick note here, since it's fairly evident some of the posters have not actually played NieR Re[in]carnation:

While the story there is about Emet-Selch, he is not the narrator and it is not colored by his own views. The story gives a neutral account of his perceptions and a handful of the events he experienced/witnessed before, during, and after the fall while also noting how he feels about these things. A clear distinction is made between narrator and Emet-Selch's own views. It should be kept in mind that NieR Re[in]carnation does not utilize the unreliable narrator in its stories, and anything presented there as a result of the crossover with Final Fantasy XIV is considered canon.

Included with the above is artwork, some of which depicts the differing states of the sundered along their path to getting it together. Those developers do not tend to choose their art accidentally, and they're not overfond of employing vague symbolism for instances such as the one spoken of here. It's generally a safe bet to take what the game hands you at face value. Between the artwork and narration it's very easy to see the sundered were in much worse shape right after the act than they would be later on.

The English version of the game does in fact only say they were incapable of forming words, but it also provides the example of "unnngh... aaah.." with regards to what came out of them. Other localizations make it more apparent they simply couldn't communicate at all. Should we disregard these and only look at the English, we can still piece this together based on the fact the Unsundered are inherently able to communicate with basically anything capable of it via the Echo. What else are we to think when a group of people capable of universal communication is unable to discern or convey anything?

The EN version may be worded a bit poorly, I'm not sure, but it is clear both from the FR version and from the answer Yoshi gives at the Q&A regarding how the sundered came to be, that their bodies were affected, if not in appearance as such, at the aetheric level. It is also implicit in other plot points, like the fact that the sundered are tiny compared to the ancients.

https://i.imgur.com/aW4r4OG.png

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Q: If you look at the Source and it’s reflection today, they are inhabited by various races such as Miqo’te, Au Ra, Lalafell and so on. However, all the Ancients seem to be human-like races so is there a lore regarding how mankind came to have such a varied amount of races?
A: When the world was Sundered all living beings became incomplete. But that said incompleteness allowed them to develop strengths and weaknesses and that overtime compounded into racial traits. That sort of thing like strengths and weaknesses over time, with elements of little bit more or little bit less increases or be stronger in certain tribes and in turn developed into distinctive features. I don’t know about the official lore for this but people are asking things like “Ok why are Miqo’te’s ears are so big?” and I was like “I don’t know maybe they couldn’t hear that well and tried super hard to hear and maybe that…was what led them to develop those big ears. So why are the Lalafell so tiny…like I don’t know, maybe they are under a lot of pressure, or maybe they were really…intense?

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Originally Posted by EaraGrace

But those wouldn't be the ones Emets sacrificing. The calamities and the natural lifespan of the Sundered would ensure that, a fact he was aware of and used as an argument to convince us to join him. He'd be being spiteful against random people. I have a sour opinion of the Ascians for sure, but this defies even the logic that I as a foremost member of the anti-Ascian squad (I couldn't resist I'm so sorry) disagree with.

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This actually brings up an interesting point that we see through both Emet-Selch and Hermes--how connected do they consider these people's incarnations to be? While Emet-Selch doesn't come out and call us "Azem" or the name of whoever we were as an Ancient, there are times when we're alone that he absolutely treats us as though we're the literal same as the person he knew, to the point of acting personally put out at our "amnesia", as he sees it.

Same with Hermes. When he speaks to the lykaons, there's this unspoken assumption that they will remember what was done to them and can hold grudges even through the cycle. Most people in Elpis treat reincarnation as a rejuvenation of sorts, like a particularly refreshing dip in the Aetherial Sea. And, in the process, it means that they might never see one another again, but the overall idea isn't that someone will become someone else through choosing to go back to the Star.

While I see this as a fascinating quality of the Ancient perspective, it's also not hard to see how that could be twisted by the Ascians to a horrifying end. Emet-Selch really didn't like Alphinaud's speech to him? Well, he has both the longevity and ability to see that specific soul throughout any incarnation and (mentally) mark it accordingly. To an Ascian, these grudges they might have would not seem arbitrary, because that soul would still be "Alphinaud" to them, regardless of what that weird little Sundered is calling themselves now.

Mitron actually clarifies this point during the Eden storyline. When Ardbert killed Mitron and Loghrif in their Ascian Prime form, he transformed into Eden, the first sin eater. He was also trapped in his altered form for the next one hundred years, only capable of feeble whispering, and unable to move.

'Emet-Selch - couldn't he have saved you?'

'Perhaps he could have, if such had been his wish. Far easier, however, to simply find another piece of my fractured soul to replace me. From his perspective, there was no need to intervene and potentially disturb with the balance of aether. And so here I remained.'

In short, the Unsundered Ascians didn't really care about individual soul fragments, and considered them to be expendable. If they wanted a new Mitron or a new Azem, all they would need to do is find one of many fragments on the shards and override their current memories with the corresponding memory crystal. That's also why Emet's more than happy to turn the Warrior of Light into a sin eater to destroy the First.

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Originally Posted by Absimiliard

I felt compelled to revisit this briefly. Curious that Emet-Selch's words should be taken at face value at certain times yet handily dismissed at others even when context should indicate he's being truthful at a given time. We're to immediately accept everything he says about the Ascians' grand plan and him willingly going along with it as fact, yet his descriptions of the state the sundered are in directly after the act are inherently suspect.

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I am suspect about the description given in NieR, not because Emet is inherently untrustworthy in describing past events but because it contradicts things he says in the game.

When he describes and demonstrates the idea of sundering to us, it's simply splitting a being into identical copies with weakened attributes. If sundering truly reduced its victims to primitive incoherence, why not say so there? Why not drive home the full horror of what he witnessed his people reduced to?

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Originally Posted by Iscah

I am suspect about the description given in NieR, not because Emet is inherently untrustworthy in describing past events but because it contradicts things he says in the game.

When he describes and demonstrates the idea of sundering to us, it's simply splitting a being into identical copies with weakened attributes. If sundering truly reduced its victims to primitive incoherence, why not say so there? Why not drive home the full horror of what he witnessed his people reduced to?

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Well, we know they couldn't actually have been simply made into identical copies, because it's since been confirmed - not just in NieR - that the Sundered races are the reincarnated copies of the Ancients, but aren't identical to them and had to evolve into their current forms. And from the beginning, all Sundered are tiny, size-wise, compared to the Ancients, to reflect their 'reduced' state. You can chalk it up to a partial retcon or Emet-Selch simplifying the explanation for whatever reason - for expedience or to make sure we understood the basic concept, or both - speculate however you want - but even given what we knew back in Shadowbringers, if he was actually showing the true effects of the Sundering, the Ryne copies he made as an example should have been half the height of the original Ryne, at the very least.

It's also entirely consistent with descriptions we have of the earlier eras, e.g.:

https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/First_Umbral_Era
https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/First_Astral_Era

It does seem like he's abstracting the explanation a bit to focus on its aetheric effect.

I can speculate as to reasons why this was not just shown in game and instead was shoved into a crossover...

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Originally Posted by Brinne

if he was actually showing the true effects of the Sundering, the Ryne copies he made as an example should have been half the height of the original Ryne, at the very least.

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Scientific detour – if we're actually physically taking all the atoms in a person and arranging it into two "scale models" of the person (half the volume), they're going to be more around 80% of the height of the original. (Edit to be clear: 80% as opposed to 50% height suggested by Brinne, which would be an eighth of the volume.)

(Or perhaps the same size but extremely un-dense, and then they evolve and collapse down over a few generations or something.)

Incidentally, a 14x increase in volume would make someone about 2.5 times the height.

On the other hand, people of the Source aren't any bigger than those from the shards, just more dense.

This is a bit of a nomenclature issue, but the numbered calamity always precedes the associated era. As an example, the Seventh Umbral Calamity precedes the Seventh Umbral Era, which is then followed by the Seventh Astral Era (patch 2.1 onwards).

The First Umbral Calamity (of Wind) was linked to the rejoining of the Fifth Shard. But that wasn't the first world that the Ascians destroyed, because Igeyorhm's destruction of the Thirteenth served as the inspiration for this.

So the period of time that Emet recalls post-Sundering isn't the First Umbral Era, as Emet and his minions had already murdered two worlds filled with people by then. Every time the Ascians cause a calamity it brings about widespread destruction to the Source, which more often than not results in a complete 'reset' to civilization's progress and a subsequent 'umbral' period in which society recovers.

And the people on the Shards- Cylva, Zero, Unukalhai from the 13th and the huge cast from the First - none are written with a large gap in intelligence or cultural advancement, nor a huge gap in power discounting the density required to contain the Light Wardens -which was also reliant on the Traveller's Blessing from Hydaelyn or else any of the Scions or G'raha himself coming from the Source would have been enough. The difficulty of opening Voidgates that the Black Mage equivalents on the First had were because of the distance between the First and Thirteenth Shard and the aetheric alignments at odds. And Allag itself as the hyper-advanced magical and technical civilization was peopled by those with less than half Rejoinings that the current day Source people have.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

Scientific detour – if we're actually physically taking all the atoms in a person and arranging it into two "scale models" of the person (half the volume), they're going to be more around 80% of the height of the original.

(Or perhaps the same size but extremely un-dense, and then they evolve and collapse down over a few generations or something.)

Incidentally, a 14x increase in volume would make someone about 2.5 times the height.

On the other hand, people of the Source aren't any bigger than those from the shards, just more dense.

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That's even assuming that aether-based physics maps onto our atomic understanding of physics.

Density might work in weird ways because of aether (or rather, it just works the way that characters describe it working, because that is what is necessary for the story.)

In other words, Emet-Selch accurately depcited Ryne beong sundered because there is no reason in the plot for him to be inaccurate.

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Originally Posted by KariTheFox

I don't think it's that muddled, every interaction we have with the ancients as far back as Shadowbringers has them treating us as thier children, even literally in Emet-Selch's recreation, or as a familiar as a proxy-child in Elpis (I'll put Pandemonium to the side now since I view it as post-EW materiel that represents us growing and starting to interact with our ancestors as adults.)

So if we know as far back as Shadowbringers that the ancients are our ancestors, and we all thought back then they planned to sacrifice us for the sake of bringing themselves back , I don't see how that fact being explicitly confirmed changes anything.

Nor do I see Venat's motivations as contradictory, she wants her people to grow beyond thier pain and loss by entrusting the world to future generations, because she believes in mankind's potential and all that.

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Feel like you're not really acknowledging the contradiction here. Like, you've made two assertions in your last couple of posts:

1) We can assume the third sacrifice was sapient beings even if it's not explicitly stated because the story has a broader theme of letting go of the past to secure the future, and it's stated that Hydaelyn's faction wanted the new life to inherit the star in line with the idea of 'let those who walk before lead those who walk after' and of how one mustn't prioritize ones in-group at the expense of others, so it would feel out of place if they weren't sapient.

2) The player races, collectively 'mankind', have always been meant to be Sundered Ancients.

These are mutually incompatible ideas. If 2 has been true from the start, 1 cannot be a consistent application of the theme because, again, the 'new life' didn't inherit the star. We did. And whatever the third sacrifice was has disappeared from the story (or more accurately, been written out).

If the theme is not being applied consistently, it cannot be used as a basis to make an inference of writer intent. We cannot use the thematic resonance of the new life succeeding the Ancients as stewards of the star to presume their sapience when they didn't.

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Originally Posted by Lurina

1) We can assume the third sacrifice was sapient beings even if it's not explicitly stated because the story has a broader theme of letting go of the past to secure the future, and it's stated that Hydaelyn's faction wanted the new life to inherit the star in line with the idea of 'let those who walk before lead those who walk after', so it would feel out of place if they weren't sapient.

2) The player races, collectively 'mankind', have always been meant to be Sundered Ancients.

These are mutually incompatible ideas. If 2 has been true from the start, 1 cannot be a consistent application of the theme because, again, the 'new life' didn't inherit the star. We did. And whatever the third sacrifice was has disappeared from the story.

If the theme is not being applied consistently, it cannot be used as a basis to make an inference of writer intent. We cannot use the thematic resonance of the new life succeeding the Ancients as stewards of the star to presume their sapience when they didn't.

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Children, or rather future generations can be understood as "new life" in the world.

They are also our descendants, and we are the ancestors of future generations.

Future generations are new life, they descendants of those who came before. I don't see the contradiction.

The potential third sacrifice didn't vanish from the story, we grew up.

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Originally Posted by KariTheFox

Children, or rather future generations can be understood as "new life" in the world.

They are also our descendants, and we are the ancestors of future generations.

Future generations are new life, they descendants of those who came before. I don't see the contradiction.

The potential third sacrifice didn't vanish from the story, we grew up.

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To reiterate, at the time of the third sacrifice, Sundered humans - the player races - did not exist because the Sundering had not yet happened, and so couldn't be sacrificed. The only form they existed in was as Unsundered Ancients.

Are you saying the Ancients were planning on sacrificing their own kids? That's completely unsubstantiated by the text. A distinction is repeatedly drawn between the 'new life' and the Ancients as beings.

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Originally Posted by Lurina

2) The player races, collectively 'mankind', have always been meant to be Sundered Ancients.

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Where does this come from? At the point of Shadowbringers, that question was one of the big confusing ones that wouldn't get addressed at Q&A events – whether we were descendants or creations of the ancients, or even simply co-inhabitants of the planet alongside the Amaurotine race.

I don't recall having gotten a definite statement on it before Endwalker, so unless I've missed something, how can we be certain it was their intent all the way from Shadowbringers?

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Originally Posted by Iscah

Where does this come from? At the point of Shadowbringers, that question was one of the big confusing ones that wouldn't get addressed at Q&A events – whether we were descendants or creations of the ancients, or even simply co-inhabitants of the planet alongside the Amaurotine race.

I don't recall having gotten a definite statement on it before Endwalker, so unless I've missed something, how can we be certain it was their intent all the way from Shadowbringers?

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You've misunderstood me. I'm saying that KariTheFox seemed to be making that assertion, which I was saying was mutually exclusive with their other assertion.

Like I blabbered on about a couple pages ago, I personally believe that the third sacrifices were originally meant to be the player races, conjured into existence for the first time by Zodiark, but then they soft-retconned it to make way for their new storyline without really thinking through the repercussions it would have on the story.