Who knew the 6.15 Omega Quests… (Spoilers)

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Originally Posted by thegreatonemal

Wow, you zoomed and enhanced and still got it wrong. Do you need glasses?

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You're ignoring the fact that you misspelt Gridania, but you wanna tell us about reading? Btw, is this you in the pic below?

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016...isable=upscale

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Originally Posted by AwesomeJr44

You're ignoring the fact that you misspelt Gridania, but you wanna tell us about reading? Btw, is this you in the pic below?

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016...isable=upscale

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Wait that's user entered? Don't even remember. Still doesn't change the fact that you can't read very well. Deflect less, its okay to have flaws.

I'm dizzy from the spin that the Ancients had other options besides sacrificing themselves and that even the stated "purgatory" coming from apparently the gold standard of those sacrificed meant that existence within Zodiark wasn't that bad. I can't say I'm surprised that the supposedly "empathetic" ones are actually just full of false virtue.

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Originally Posted by thegreatonemal

Deflect less, its okay to have flaws.

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You know what. You're right. I've been so rude to you. I'm sorry. I've been so busy calling you a container of oatmeal, that I forgot an important lesson. I should have let you come out as a container of oatmeal on your own terms. My apologies.

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Originally Posted by AwesomeJr44

You know what. You're right. I've been so rude to you. I'm sorry. I've been so busy calling you a container of oatmeal, that I forgot an important lesson. I should have let you come out as a container of oatmeal on your own terms. My apologies.

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lol. It's really hard for you. Couldn't be me but you go off. Bless your heart sweet one. Go pick up some oatmeal for breakfast tomorrow, sounds like you got a major craving. :)

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Originally Posted by thegreatonemal

Go pick up some oatmeal for breakfast tomorrow, sounds like you got a major craving.

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Are you endorsing that I eat your own kind? That sounds a bit like cannibalism. Why would you want me to eat your own brethren? And yes, I actually do now have a craving for some fine oats. Can I borrow some of yours? Your profile name implies you have quite a few, so hopefully you'll be willing to spare some, seeing as you already endorse my consumption of them.

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Originally Posted by thegreatonemal

lol. It's really hard for you. Couldn't be me but you go off. Bless your heart sweet one. Go pick up some oatmeal for breakfast tomorrow, sounds like you got a major craving. :)

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You're the only oatmeal i crave <3

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Originally Posted by KizuyaKatogami

You're the only oatmeal i crave <3

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While I'm flattered I believe your affections are misplaced. Mr, oatmeal is down the road. Weird mix up. Let me mark it in bold on your map so you don't get lost. :) Safe travels friend!

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Originally Posted by thegreatonemal

Yeaaa, none of which you just described is what happened in the story. The actual game we played put it as such. Venat, with limited options has to make a cruel decision in order to give life a chance to save itself because the majority of her fellows are set upon a plan that will ensure that everyone dies.

At least from what I've seen people say she could have done they all fall apart. We even have a scene where she goes through some of her options with an explanation of why they might go wrong. It's the making stuff up and coming up with half thought out ideas that causing a bunch of us to tilt our heads.

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Nothing was "ensured" and even the writers have stated it was simply her belief they were headed towards destruction.

When you are faced with an impending apocalypse, choosing to withhold that information on the basis that you might cause a panic comes across as a particularly weak line of reasoning when the first thing the Scions do after getting back from the moon is alert the leaders of city states so they could discreetly inform the populace about the second Final Days and take preparatory measures.

The Convocation already had experience with handling natural disasters and organizing evacuation efforts so at minimum they ought to have known. As far as the whole Hermes side of the argument goes, he hardly struck me as an essential aspect to stopping the Final Days because Venat already knew what was causing the problem and how it could be stopped, and it's repeatedly shown throughout the Ancient-related side content that all they need to make rapid advances in a field is for someone to kindle an interest in it.

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Originally Posted by thegreatonemal

Mr, oatmeal is down the road. Weird mix up.

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So uh, I checked with the guy down the road. That's apparently Mr Toast. He said that you were indeed Mr. The Great Oatmeal. So I must ask again, do you have any oats to spare for me? :)

Which was then confirmed by Metion later about her actual plans and given Venat, at the very least knows whats going on in the present believing that doing nothing would lead to death is pretty reasonable conclusion to come to. Besides we don't have a time table from when Metion fled to when she started singing. If I had to guess a few days, maybe a week at most. What we do know is that the Convocation were debating and working on their solution as other parts of the world burned What could have been done on such short notice?


Hermes is the world expert on the subject. He knows the subject better I'm not sure how Venat saying to the 14 that dyanmis is the cause is going to help with anything. I doubt they even know it exists either, Emet didn't. Tipping Hermes off to the truth might cause him to lie or sabotage the creating of Zodiark.

@Awesome No no, I even marked it on your map...how even? You went the wrong way. Oatmeal lives passed Miss Omelet. You really can't miss it he has a sign out and everything. I'll give him a call and he'll be on the pouch and he'll wave at you.

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Originally Posted by Brinne

If you're waiting on a "definitive statement" on what it's like from an individual human perspective in response to an environmental condition, then, conveniently, you'll be waiting forever and can draw upon the "who can saaaaay" angle for eternity. Drawing on some personal experience so I can speak more confidently on it, if you'll forgive me - without a constant supply of insulin, I would die a painful death. But one of the first things you learn in managing this condition is that there is no definitive or universal experience you can absolutely cite or draw upon. It is different for every single person who has it. In other words, you all now get to enjoy type one diabetes and have to manage the constant fatigue and giving yourself multiple daily injections or die, along with the associated financial burden, but don't worry, you should all be totally okay with it, because some people manage fine!

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With sources please explain what the conditions in Zodiark are to justify human sacrifice. I see a collection of despondent souls desperately repeating their devotion to the god they became. And if that experience is so horrible then maybe they should sealed Zodiark away and put the souls into a state of sleep and not, yknow, use them as their own personal god? Maybe not subject new souls that to “torture?” I think we can find a middle ground between “fate worse than death” and “not great.”

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Originally Posted by Brinne

"Some people manage fine" and there not being a "statement of definitive experience" does not mean that does not mean we cannot confidently say that, as a whole, it is a shit condition to live with, that we should not expect people to have to live with it if there's any alternative, and if there some kind of cure ever exists in the future, it is absolutely positively the moral choice to apply it to those who need it.

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If that cure required grinding living breathing human beings into paste I’d say that’s not ok.

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Originally Posted by Brinne

Also, we're talking about different things in your second statement. "Death" to the Ancients is "returning to the Star and entering the cycle of reincarnation." I never suggested being trapped in Zodiark is worse than what happened to the Hydaelyn followers. Both of those outcomes, from an Ancient perspective, construes a fate worse than death. Would you like me to agree that the fate of what happened to the souls fueling Hydaelyn was worse than Zodiark? I can certainly agree to that! It's quite messed up, and I feel extremely bad for the ones sacrificed to Hydaelyn!

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Great! Wonder why they felt they needed to do that then!

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Originally Posted by Brinne

Uh, yes. It's canon that you can use other sources.

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Cool we’ve established they could break down other sources.

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Originally Posted by Brinne

That's the entire basis of the Ancients' plan to get their loved ones back. That is not the same as saying that at the time Zodiark needed to be summoned the alternative resources were available in the quality or quantities needed - once again, it is stated those resources needed to be "nurtured" until the planet was "bursting with vitality." Zodiark is a Primal of darkness, of moving, active dynamic energy - so, likely, yes, dark-aspected aether - living energies - as Hythlodaeus's shade put forth.

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Ok so now we’re establishing that any living energy is an acceptable alternative. In which case, why did the Ascians work towards sacrificing the denizens of the Source, given the wealth of living beings that aren’t sentient?

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Originally Posted by Brinne

It's also impressed upon us the massive amounts of aether contained within an Ancient's body and soul. Hydaelyn powered herself on the souls of very few individuals to Sunder the entire world, stay operable for the next twelve thousand years, and continue to empower Warriors of Light and intervene on their behalves to make sure things were proceeding smoothly. It's a bit hard to take the suggestion of "why didn't they just use some ruined buildings instead lol" in good faith, I'm sorry.

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Oh so now we’re saying that Ancient souls are special. So you agree that Ancient souls are special, and thus are a better option than other living alternatives. In which case we suddenly have another reason to believe the Ancients were not sacrificing chickens right?

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Originally Posted by Brinne

My response was not "maybe he did." My response was "we do not know," or to put it another way, "you can't reasonably cite something as evidence for your argument that has never been concretely established in any way, shape, or form." We have no context as to the debates that took place among the Ancients, only that they happened. Perhaps some people felt that the urgency of getting their loved ones out meant taking the fastest route possible, versus a slower, more humane approach; perhaps people were still so stressed out and traumatized not all options that seemed "obvious" were apparent to them. We have no idea. I'd love to have a better understanding of it, don't get me wrong!

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You’re justifying human sacrifice by saying they were stressed out.

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Originally Posted by Brinne

Hydaelyn was explicitly relying on Zodiark to protect the planet to make her plan work, and the Watcher clarified that "opposing Zodiark" never meant wanting him gone.

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This is the exact quote in English.

https://i.imgur.com/uxT2Emq.jpg

Notice this is a bit more nuanced that your quote. They opposed his creation, yet never wished to unmake him. If what you say is true then this would be a lie. The alternative is this isn’t a lie, and Hydaelyns group rightfully recognized that once Zodiark was summoned no alternative form of protection was feasible and thus did not wish to unmake him. By itself, one could I think handwave this away as another gap purposefully left in his memory. That is if we didn’t have another who disagreed with Zodiarks summoning. A noted defector specifically.

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Originally Posted by Rulakir

I'm dizzy from the spin that the Ancients had other options besides sacrificing themselves and that even the stated "purgatory" coming from apparently the gold standard of those sacrificed meant that existence within Zodiark wasn't that bad. I can't say I'm surprised that the supposedly "empathetic" ones are actually just full of false virtue.

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The term has been co-opted, but I believe this is what they call “virtue signaling.”

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Originally Posted by KizuyaKatogami

You realize that after the sundering the sundered are now susceptible to becoming like both the first and second areas of the dead ends right? Those two would’ve been an impossibility for the ancients but they are now a major possibility for the sundered. 2 is worse than 1.

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Agreed, I think EW is fairly clear on communicating that there is just an inevitable end to any given civilisation. Like even if you successfully dodge all of the problems we see mentioned in the report or dead ends, you're still susceptible to stuff we see in UT. The dragons didn't actually do anything to bring about their fate, and the Ea both solved all of their material concerns and clearly had a strong drive towards understanding and learning as much as they could, but reality is just a hard barrier sometimes.

I don't think the expac was intending to say that the sundered are somehow immune to bad endings, ignoring some of the weird takes the scions give while turning into the floor (Yshtola was particularly weird). Venats motivation seems to just be entirely focused on the sadness bird blues, not on ensuring society will continue on forever. If she was focused on the latter I think you're 100% correct that the ancients would last much longer, just because they're so much harder to kill. the only real external threat to them would be the omicron.

Also ngl, I think the plenty are by far the best fate we're shown, like they all seem perfectly happy to just stop existing. As far as apocalypses go I'd pick that over basically anything else.

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Originally Posted by EaraGrace

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You know, at this point, rather than going line by line, I think it's probably going to be more productive to suggest taking a step back so as to cool our jets enough to not strip all context out of the ongoing conversation so we can keep yelling "human sacrifice!" "justifying human sacrifice!" and "grinding humans into paste!" whenever possible when nobody ever said that, ever, including, you know, the game itself.

The original point of this conversation was indicating it is completely understandable - and to me, yes, moral - to see it as an imperative to save the souls trapped within Zodiark instead of just abandoning them to their fates, and if the third sacrifices (that we don't know any of the specifics of) aren't okay, then rather than killing everyone who still wanted to save their loved ones, the reasonable thing to do is to lend your talents and intelligence to finding a better alternative. Maybe it would be hard, but to quote a certain character, surely, "nothing is impossible." It is flat out not reasonable to me to say that it's okay to expect people to just leave their loved ones in there.

If the response is to: aggressively shoot down the idea that any possible alternatives could have possibly existed beyond demanding "just give up on your loved ones and let them be trapped in purgatory forever", put forth something like "lol why didn't they just make Zodiark out of destroyed buildings," argue "they probably didn't have it so bad in purgatory they were fine, ignore the ones explicitly tagged as being in anguish and lashing out blindly in grief and torment," and to attempt to cynically tie the suggestion that "no, abandoning the people in there is not an okay thing to do or ask others to accept" with "JUSTIFYING HUMAN SACRIFICE! HUMAN PASTE!" then there's not much point in me continuing to attempt to engage, sorry. The immediate response to floating "maybe they could have compromised and found perhaps a slower or less efficient, but more humane way to help those people?" being as such tells me that the point of contention here is not exploring empathy for those suffering, nor a good faith desire to understand the situation, actions and feelings of those involved, or the desire for thinking of a way less people would have had to suffer, but rather - a fundamental aim to justify certain characters' ultimate choices to force people to do nothing, to flat out just not help them, and then violently punish those who refused to go along with it.

And that is not a conversation I have the time or energy to have or pretend is worth having.

As I've mentioned, "but there was definitely no other way" is the supreme cliche of cliches amongst apologism techniques for committing atrocities.

Zodiark's initial summoning: Human Sacrifice.
Second Sacrifice: Human Sacrifice.
Third Sacrifice: "oh it could be anything. It could just be a big pile of chickens or something. There's no way of knowing."
Emet-Selch's intended plan for the inhabitants of the source after reversing the sundering: Human Sacrifice.

I don't think it's ambigious at all. I think the writers want us to engage the parts of our brains that do pattern recognition.

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Originally Posted by LordGiggles

Also ngl, I think the plenty are by far the best fate we're shown, like they all seem perfectly happy to just stop existing. As far as apocalypses go I'd pick that over basically anything else.

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I mostly agree with you, but I'm not sure I'd call the Plenty 'happy'. They seemed to be freaking out... pretty bad, actually. And it's a weird subjective, almost philosophical call on if the Plenty were 'happy' before Meteion turned up; they were fulfilled in the sense that they didn't have to struggle with things like hunger or disease, but they didn't really have anything to live for, which is kinda what brought the breakdown. If you look below the actual play space (but only during the dungeon, not after it, which I hate) you can see that they've essentially left their planet a lifeless mass of rocks, which kinda speaks to it; they can live forever, but there's nothing left to spend that life enjoying. And after they're gone, nothing left to build from.

Endwalker (and a lot of FFXIV in general) generally has an outlook of 'everything ends, eventually'. It's just the nature of things, tragic as it is, what's important is how you respond to that. And I would say that the Sundered aren't painted as better because they won't end--rather the contrary, by my count the amount of dead civilizations we've found is nearly equal to the amount of living ones we've met--but rather because when sundered societies fall, others can be build. Not only is this true in a literal sense--Mhach and Amdapor gave way to Belah'diah and Gelmorra gave way to Ul'dah and Gridania--but also because the sundered, as people who have lived through and seen the inevitabilities of death and suffering, have the emotional resilience to keep going. One of Endwalker's most important scenes, I think, is Matsya reciting Thavnairian teachings to give those around him the strength to move on; they lean on cultural teachings of how to deal with loss that Amaurot just didn't have, and through that manage to keep standing when Amaurot faltered.

Yeah, the sundered could fall victim to the same crises as anything else. In fact, they have--they've been whacked with seven different Calamities, not to mention all the other disasters. But every single time, they could get back up.

The Calamities were engineered with the idea of rebuilding being possible. The Ascians do not induce them and then grind the survivors to paste, because they want the world to recover (so that another Rejoining can occur).

We have no idea if the Unsundered could have recovered, because they weren’t given that option. It’s well and good to speak of resilience, but no one was trying to wipe the Sundered out completely either.

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Originally Posted by tokinokanatae

The Calamities were engineered with the idea of rebuilding being possible. The Ascians do not induce them and then grind the survivors to paste, because they want the world to recover (so that another Rejoining can occur).

We have no idea if the Unsundered could have recovered, because they weren’t given that option. It’s well and good to speak of resilience, but no one was trying to wipe the Sundered out completely either.

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I brought up the scene in Thavnair because I believe it's directly intended as a compare and contrast. Thavnair faced the literal exact same disaster as Amaurot, but Thavnair were the ones that were able to work through it by themselves, while Amaurot fell into hysteria and desperation.

I wouldn't use the term 'engineered', given the trial and error involved. About 10000 years ago, Igeyorhm tried to brute force a rejoining on the Thirteenth by attacking and killing its heroes. Not only did she successfully eradicate life on the Thirteenth, she also rendered it uninhabitable, turned its denizens into Voidsent, and made a rejoining impossible. The Ascians learnt from that mistake, but each subsequent rejoining involves the destruction of all life on the reflection in question and a massive catastrophe on the Source. By the time our journey started, they had killed off eight worlds including the Void, and rendered one mostly uninhabitable, with the intention of using chemical warfare on the Source to expedite the associated rejoining. Their ultimate goal was to kill off all sundered life across the fourteen worlds so that they could perform more soul microtransactions with Lord Zodiark to rebuild Amaurot again.

It was a pretty bad plan from the outset.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

I brought up the scene in Thavnair because I believe it's directly intended as a compare and contrast. Thavnair faced the literal exact same disaster as Amaurot, but Thavnair were the ones that were able to work through it by themselves, while Amaurot fell into hysteria and desperation.

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No, it wasn't intended as 'contrast' on the basis of social darwinism. You're overlooking the simple fact that the Ancients were dealing with a saboteur within their midst in the form of Venat who went on to engage in the genocide of her people but before that point, deliberately held back knowledge of what, exactly, would help mitigate the Final Days.

Much of Endwalker was spent developing methods to mitigate the disaster due to the protagonists speaking directly with leader figures and regular people alike as well as researching ways to prevent Tempering. Even then, many people throughout Thavnair succumbed to despair - but as the Omega side quests revealed, it was never about a 'pattern' or some people being weaker than others. It was entirely circumstantial.

Had Venat actually bothered to try and empower her own people with special perks, brought them back from the dead when they fell in battle and actively had her 'champion' negotiate with leader figures then I daresay things would have played out much differently.

The only difference between the Sundered and Unsundered on that front is that the former were actively aided by Venat whilst the latter were actively sabotaged.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

I brought up the scene in Thavnair because I believe it's directly intended as a compare and contrast. Thavnair faced the literal exact same disaster as Amaurot, but Thavnair were the ones that were able to work through it by themselves, while Amaurot fell into hysteria and desperation.

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"By themselves"

As the WoL, the Scions, and Vrtra shepherd them to safety.

Then Sharlayan promises them salvation, only for that to fall through, yet again to the Scions and the WoL and Zenos...

The teachings scene would be a great compare and contrast, save for that pesky follow up where the reciting of the teachings fail Matsya. It was only when a savior stepped in that he did not succumb.

In the end, it was no different. Unintentional or not, by the actions of the game, the lesson out of both Final Days was that saviors are necessary, that the common man is nothing without them. As Alisaie puts it at some point, "Doomed to die in cold obscurity."

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

"By themselves"

As the WoL, the Scions, and Vrtra shepherd them to safety.

Then Sharlayan promises them salvation, only for that to fall through, yet again to the Scions and the WoL and Zenos...

The teachings scene would be a great compare and contrast, save for that pesky follow up where the reciting of the teachings fail Matsya. It was only when a savior stepped in that he did not succumb.

In the end, it was no different. Unintentional or not, by the actions of the game, the lesson out of both Final Days was that saviors are necessary, that the common man is nothing without them. As Alisaie puts it at some point, "Doomed to die in cold obscurity."

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I actually think it's rather exceptional how a good half of the zones in Endwalker actually don't have the Scions or the WoL doing all that much, and the Thavnair revisit is a perfect example. The most we do is just... perform some cleanup in Vanaspati--and sure, that probably helped, but it's hard to say what that actually did. After that, a lot of what we do is just help people on more individual levels while being there to see Thavnairian locals do the meaningful stuff--Ahewann, Vrtra (who I do count as a Thavnairian local, he's as much a part of the nation as anyone else, and he doesn't really use his dragon-ness to decide anything), and Matsya most of all. The most active Scion in all of that is Estinien, and even he's only really moral support for Vrtra. While we provide some muscle, Thavnair very much pull themselves out of the worst of it. Sharlayan provides an escape route afterwards, but that's after they've made it through the worst of it--and as we learn from the very sidequest that this thread is allegedly about, a huge chunk of Thavnair didn't take that route.

I'd also say the same is largely true of Elpis--I genuinely don't believe that there's a single event in Elpis that doesn't play out basically the same if we aren't there. And Garlemald might be the most painful of them, I feel like until we hit the Tower of Babil the WoL had done more harm than good. You can even spread it to a couple of the role quests; with the exception of Gridania's the stories are mostly about the city-states coming to terms with their own problems, and our influence is slim to none beyond 'being the one to beat up the Blasphemy'. And I think that's all very much intended, I think a huge core element of Endwalker is seeing how people handle the worst days of their lives, without necessarily having or needing a player-insert superhero to help.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

About 10000 years ago, Igeyorhm tried to brute force a rejoining on the Thirteenth by attacking and killing its heroes. Not only did she successfully eradicate life on the Thirteenth, she also rendered it uninhabitable, turned its denizens into Voidsent, and made a rejoining impossible. The Ascians learnt from that mistake, but each subsequent rejoining involves the destruction of all life on the reflection in question and a massive catastrophe on the Source. By the time our journey started, they had killed off eight worlds including the Void, and rendered one mostly uninhabitable, with the intention of using chemical warfare on the Source to expedite the associated rejoining.

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Guess the Shards should have been more, ah, resilient.

They are pretty resilient. That's why we're still around. Can't say the same for the Ascians, although perhaps Gaius was a bit overzealous in that regard. It would have been nice to meet the rest of them before they were written out of the story offscreen.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

They are pretty resilient. That's why we're still around. Can't say the same for the Ascians, although perhaps Gaius was a bit overzealous in that regard. It would have been nice to meet the rest of them before they were written out of the story offscreen.

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You can't point to the non world ending Calamities and hold them as proof of the innately superior coping methods of the Sundered, but then say it's not the fault of the Sundered on the Shards for succumbing to their own End of Days. Which is it? If your world is destroyed, are you weak and pathetic and deserve whatever happens to you, or is it an unambiguously a tragedy that can't be shouldered by the people that fail to save their planet from outside forces trying to destroy it?

So, when I said that the Sundered were more capable of moving on, I mentioned two things. Yes, it was a confirmed history, and sure if you want to say that's instead because The Ascians Wanted It you can say that and take that away from them.

But the other part is the mental fortitude to move on. The ability to not give up when an earthquake eats everything you know, or a flood washes away every civilization on the continent. The Sundered people knew that death happens, that suffering is inevitable, so they were able to lean on those coping mechanisms; they already came to terms with all of it. That's what we saw in Thavnair, whereas in the post-Elpis scene we saw Amaurot fail to grasp exactly that.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

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I think you're reading too much into the word happy there, it was just a phrase indicating they're willing to move on of their own accord. they aren't dying in some horrific manner or being twisted into monsters or weapons of war, they just stop living. It's not a great solution, but compared to any of the other ends we see, it's by far the best, though the Ea who choose to die are similar.

As to moving on and successive civilisations rising where others fell, I do agree that is something the sundered do well, but it's also a very short term view of things. In the lifespan of a near immortal being, the entirety of the sundered planets history is really nothing. Like again to compare to the Ea, they're terrified of the literal heat death of the universe, something so far away it's impossible to actually imagine, with no way to change that fate. For things like the calamities and the final days, moving on and finding a way to live with that trauma is clearly something the sundered manage alright with (though how that compares to the ancients I have no real idea, they didn't get the opportunity to do so). But I don't think those are at all comparable to some of the more serious problems we see others brought down by.

There isn't really any way to just get back up after being conquered by the omicron, or having your entire planet destroyed by plague. Same deal with being exterminated by an angry god, or whatever wiped out the other planets meteion just found corpses or ruins on.

As for the final days, the strength of the average persons character doesn't really have much to do with that being resolved. They had significantly more information, sharlayan had some warning, and it still would have killed every living thing if it wasn't for the WoL and scions killing meteion.
The ancients did fine with what information they had, zodiark was incredibly successful. Some panicked, but plenty of sundered panicked and turned.

I wonder how people in our world would react to the idea of some nutter deliberately holding back information about an impending disaster only to then kill off the survivors for not 'moving on'. There's a pretty big difference between a civilisation ending due to a natural disaster and a civilisation being wiped out intentionally. Both are unfortunate but one is much more sinister than the other.

Nobody is obligated to just 'move on' after their loved ones are killed to satisfy the deranged whims of a pretty self proclaimed 'supreme deity'. Just as nobody is obligated to just bend over and allow themselves to die for the sake of the Unsundered. I'm not sure why it's being presented as any different, really.

The reason they’re being treated differently is some of the people arguing define the morality of a situation by what is being done and some of the people arguing define it by who is doing it.

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Originally Posted by Jemachu

Except Emet-Selch made it clear that the people of the source "stood only to gain" from the rejoinings, that we would become the equals of the unsundered.

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...Emet-Selch is racist. He thinks people 'stood only to gain' from the Rejoining because he literally thinks that the Sundered people are lesser beings. He doesn't care about the people of the Source as they are, it's not a kindness. And the Rejoinings literally involve mass murder anyway; statistically speaking there's no chance in hell that you'll benefit from them.

Also, isn't part of the Ascian plan to sacrifice the people of the Source to Zodiark anyway? Even in the statistically impossible chance you as a native of the Source survive to that point, you still die because the Ascians don't actually value you more than they value their people.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

...Emet-Selch is racist. He thinks people 'stood only to gain' from the Rejoining because he literally thinks that the Sundered people are lesser beings. He doesn't care about the people of the Source as they are, it's not a kindness.

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I'd say it's a bit more complicated than him being a 'racist'. He is shown to be very conflicted by what he had been forced to do in order to bear the burden of trying to prevent the complete and utter extinction of his race and the eradication of all knowledge of his civilisation, loved ones and their many accomplishments.

Assuming you have any, I imagine you'd be at least a little torn up if you woke up one day and the equivalent of Venat had decided to forcibly devolve not only your loved ones but everybody you knew, stripping them of all memory and seeking to eradicate all knowledge of their existence.

Which again, circles back to how messed up the entire situation is - and how Emet's actions are simply a consequence of the horrific corner that he was pushed into.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

I'd say it's a bit more complicated than him being a 'racist'. He is shown to be very conflicted by what he had been forced to do in order to bear the burden of trying to prevent the complete and utter extinction of his race and the eradication of all knowledge of his civilisation, loved ones and their many accomplishments.

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See, the thing is that person wasn't saying 'Emet-Selch was right to stand by Plan Zodiark and his people' like you are. That's something that you could argue with decent moral grounding, and even though I disagree it's not one with less moral grounding than my own stance.

That person was saying that the sundered people of the Source should be grateful for a plan that will always end in the Ascians killing them, because the people who would go on to live afterwards would be superior.

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Originally Posted by Jemachu

He deemed us unworthy and lesser beings because we failed his test at the end of Shadowbringers—a test that prior to the sundering he vehemently disagreed with, unlike Hermes and Venat—the dialogue I referenced took place before this, when he still had hope that we could meet his expectations for mankind and find another way as allies without bloodshed.

The fact you ignored the rest of my post speaking about the third set of sacrifices, the same ones that everybody who defends Venat's genocide harps on about baselessly as 'confirmed totally being human sacrifices', and instead simply honed in on your classic tedious comeback that "Emet is a racist tho!!!11!!" says it all.

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His test was unreasonable, and about seven apocalypses late for my liking. I never got the feeling that test was genuine; rather, he was setting outrageous conditions of success so he could claim himself right when we fell short of them. If he actually wanted to stop the Calamity he had plenty of chances to.

And you've completely failed to understand that the third sacrifice, for the story to make any sense at all, has to be substantial to a level of moral ambiguity; it has to be something that would be objectionable. If the third sacrifice isn't a huge and dubious alternative of some kind, then the Convocation look stupid for not doing it earlier, and Venat's crew look stupid for objecting to the ethical alternative. Since I assume you don't think the Convocation are stupid, then the third sacrifice must be something substantial.

My view on that is 'if that requires sentient beings to be the ones being sacrificed, then that's what it is for you to consider the problem'. We don't know the contents, but we do know the stakes and responses; substitute whatever works for you in that context as the contents.

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Originally Posted by Jemachu

He deemed us unworthy and lesser beings because we failed his test at the end of Shadowbringers—a test that prior to the sundering he vehemently disagreed with, unlike Hermes and Venat—the dialogue I referenced took place before this, when he still had hope that we could meet his expectations for mankind and find another way as allies without bloodshed.

The fact you ignored the rest of my post speaking about the third set of sacrifices, the same ones that everybody who defends Venat's genocide harps on about baselessly as 'confirmed totally being human sacrifices', and instead simply honed in on your classic tedious comeback that "Emet is a racist tho!!!11!!" says it all.

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When exactly did Emet-Selch propose we work together to restore his people without bloodshed? I'm pretty sure what he said was something along the lines of "Hey, WoL, it would be super neat if you succumbed to Sin-Eater corruption, lost your sense of self and identity, and went on a killing spree in order to prepare this world for a rejoining."

Emet-Selch didn't want allies to avoid bloodshed, he wanted to explain his point of view to us, and for us to accept it and allow him to continue his plan of rejoining the shards - no matter how many people died in the process.

My current running theory is if the "new life" was ensouled, as is implied in the short story, and the Amaurotines knew souls would be trapped within Zodiark that could've been the cause of the conflict of the 3rd sacrifice. Even if they weren't humanoid souls, they might've objected to souls in general being used. Like Brinne was saying, they probably could've worked out a solution with a slower transfer. Sacrifice a portion of non-souled life and release a few Amaurotines at a time. Maybe another part of the conflict was that some people were in a rush to retrieve those who'd sacrificed themselves to the extent that they were considering sacrificing souled entities in the first place.

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Originally Posted by KariTheFox

Zodiark's initial summoning: Human Sacrifice.
Second Sacrifice: Human Sacrifice.
Third Sacrifice: "oh it could be anything. It could just be a big pile of chickens or something. There's no way of knowing."
Emet-Selch's intended plan for the inhabitants of the source after reversing the sundering: Human Sacrifice.

I don't think it's ambigious at all. I think the writers want us to engage the parts of our brains that do pattern recognition.

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Unfortunately for you, the sources do introduce ambiguity, because the third stage has materially different conditions to stages 1 and 2, as well as the world post-Sundering. Emet-Selch's intended plan is for the fragmented remnants of those very ancients who Venat sundered to supposedly "avoid temptation", i.e. the ones which were contemplating this stage of sacrifice. I realise for your own attempts to try demonise the ancients, you very much want it to be ancient babies or some such nonsense, but the sources leave it much less clear than that. So you can continue pointing at it, stamping your feet, insisting it meant human sacrifice, and we'll continue saying "sorry, no cigar". It's just a song and dance at this point.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

His test was unreasonable, and about seven apocalypses late for my liking. I never got the feeling that test was genuine; rather, he was setting outrageous conditions of success so he could claim himself right when we fell short of them. If he actually wanted to stop the Calamity he had plenty of chances to.

And you've completely failed to understand that the third sacrifice, for the story to make any sense at all, has to be substantial to a level of moral ambiguity; it has to be something that would be objectionable. If the third sacrifice isn't a huge and dubious alternative of some kind, then the Convocation look stupid for not doing it earlier, and Venat's crew look stupid for objecting to the ethical alternative. Since I assume you don't think the Convocation are stupid, then the third sacrifice must be something substantial.

My view on that is 'if that requires sentient beings to be the ones being sacrificed, then that's what it is for you to consider the problem'. We don't know the contents, but we do know the stakes and responses; substitute whatever works for you in that context as the contents.

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Problem is, it wouldn't have mattered if the sacrifices were grass and trees. Venat just wanted to have a moral leg to stand on for the Sundering.

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Originally Posted by Brinne

You know, at this point, rather than going line by line, I think it's probably going to be more productive to suggest taking a step back so as to cool our jets enough to not strip all context out of the ongoing conversation so we can keep yelling "human sacrifice!" "justifying human sacrifice!" and "grinding humans into paste!" whenever possible when nobody ever said that, ever, including, you know, the game itself.

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Why was Emet screaming about doing just that then?

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Originally Posted by Brinne

The original point of this conversation was indicating it is completely understandable - and to me, yes, moral - to see it as an imperative to save the souls trapped within Zodiark instead of just abandoning them to their fates, and if the third sacrifices (that we don't know any of the specifics of) aren't okay, then rather than killing everyone who still wanted to save their loved ones, the reasonable thing to do is to lend your talents and intelligence to finding a better alternative. Maybe it would be hard, but to quote a certain character, surely, "nothing is impossible." It is flat out not reasonable to me to say that it's okay to expect people to just leave their loved ones in there.

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And if the only solution was to either leave them in there or replace them with other sentient souls? What is moral then? Because the game never even entertained an alternative option and I see no reason to believe there was any.

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Originally Posted by Brinne

If the response is to: aggressively shoot down the idea that any possible alternatives

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Where did she shoot down possible alternatives. Where. Not where did she shoot down the third sacrifice, where did she shoot down alternatives. The Convocation decided to sacrifice lives to get them back, not her.

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Originally Posted by Brinne

could have possibly existed beyond demanding "just give up on your loved ones and let them be trapped in purgatory forever", put forth something like "lol why didn't they just make Zodiark out of destroyed buildings," argue "they probably didn't have it so bad in purgatory they were fine, ignore the ones explicitly tagged as being in anguish and lashing out blindly in grief and torment," and to attempt to cynically tie the suggestion that "no, abandoning the people in there is not an okay thing to do or ask others to accept" with "JUSTIFYING HUMAN SACRIFICE! HUMAN PASTE!" then there's not much point in me continuing to attempt to engage, sorry. The immediate response to floating "maybe they could have compromised and found perhaps a slower or less efficient, but more humane way to help those people?"

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I am literally arguing they should have done that if that were an option. You are saying they couldn’t for the First sacrifice, chose not to for the Third, and are actively deciding out of spite not to try for the Ardor.

Also my comparison is suddenly unacceptable when you’re talking about how I’m basically saying diabetics should just get over it? Really? You really think that slight doesn’t bother me too? You asked me to forgive your comparison, I don’t. I have health conditions that require medications I’ll be on for the rest of my life. Yet once again it’s ok for you to say that and not me pointing out the untold slaughter the Ascians were aiming to enact isn’t acceptable.

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Originally Posted by Brinne

being as such tells me that the point of contention here is not exploring empathy for those suffering, nor a good faith desire to understand the situation, actions and feelings of those involved, or the desire for thinking of a way less people would have had to suffer, but rather - a fundamental aim to justify certain characters' ultimate choices to force people to do nothing, to flat out just not help them, and then violently punish those who refused to go along with it.

And that is not a conversation I have the time or energy to have or pretend is worth having.

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I think asserting that the first hot conflict in Ancient history was over chickens is an even greater indicator this convo is not worth having.

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Originally Posted by redheadturk

Problem is, it wouldn't have mattered if the sacrifices were grass and trees. Venat just wanted to have a moral leg to stand on for the Sundering.

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Yes people usually have reasons for doing things. Moral one’s even.

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Originally Posted by redheadturk

Problem is, it wouldn't have mattered if the sacrifices were grass and trees. Venat just wanted to have a moral leg to stand on for the Sundering.

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Your straw-Venat seems very impressive, but unfortunately the real Venat is a few feet to your left. Surrounded by just short of a dozen academics who had genuine reason to agree with her without the 'oh she's just surrendering all agency to time travel' excuse you're using to demean her agency, and who believed entirely in the cause.

So, let's perhaps revise the argument's direction for you: the third sacrifice isn't 'substantial enough for Venat to object to'. It's 'substantial enough for at least eleven environmentally-conscious academics to object to'. Essentially; what level of sacrifice do you think would have been enough to set off a room full of people like the Watcher?

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Originally Posted by Brinne

And that is not a conversation I have the time or energy to have or pretend is worth having.

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This is something everyone here had to learn the hard way, unfortunately. I enjoyed your posts though and hope it hasn't deterred you from engaging further.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

Your straw-Venat seems very impressive, but unfortunately the real Venat is a few feet to your left. Surrounded by just short of a dozen academics who had genuine reason to agree with her without the 'oh she's just surrendering all agency to time travel' excuse you're using to demean her agency, and who believed entirely in the cause.

So, let's perhaps revise the argument's direction for you: the third sacrifice isn't 'substantial enough for Venat to object to'. It's 'substantial enough for at least eleven environmentally-conscious academics to object to'. Essentially; what level of sacrifice do you think would have been enough to set off a room full of people like the Watcher?

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Presenting more headcanon as fact, I see.