*Spoilers* Anyone feel joining Emet would have been better

"What is a genocide when all you erase is memories and not the soul themselves, who just reincarnate later?"

Genocide, because if I am understanding correctly, not all the sentient races of the Shards are fragments of the Ancients? Just considered "lesser" because they aren't Ancients. That sure is a, ah. Bold narrative on the writers' part.

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Originally Posted by Eylirria

edit: On "genocide". The sundering killed far more people over the ~12000 years, through what became the new "cycle of life", diseases, wars and what have you, then the calamities ever could.

And it's not even close. Given a long enough timeline, the rejoinings are a moral imperative.

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Considering the Ascians are directly responsible for many if not most of the wars that took place during that time, this rings real hollow.

You can't have the Ascians actively setting up wars, summons, or being willing to use things like Black Rose and then just say its the sundereds fault.

They literally were the direct builders of the two biggest and most war thirsty empires the Sundered world has ever seen. Using strife they directly helped cause as an example of why rejoinings are good is a wildly flawed argument.

The thing is, uniting the Shards should have always been impossible from the moment the Thirteenth reflection fell to Void. There is no rejoining it to the source. The fragment of souls there will never return to the aetherial sea, nothing new will be born there, etc...

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Originally Posted by KizuyaKatogami

You know this all rings incredibly hollow when Ironworks was willing to sacrifice an entire timeline to bring back the WoL. They were aware them messing with time could potentially erase all of them and yet they went through with it anyways. But it’s fine if they do it right? Since they’re the protagonists? But the antagonists should just sit down and not even try right?

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Allowing a timeline to continue is sacrificing it? And yes, a willing sacrifice in hopes of creating a world not choking to death on Black Rose is a good thing, unlike killing innocents to resurrect your dead friends. I never had issue with Zodiarks summoning, only the events after.

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Originally Posted by KizuyaKatogami

You know this all rings incredibly hollow when Ironworks was willing to sacrifice an entire timeline to bring back the WoL. They were aware them messing with time could potentially erase all of them and yet they went through with it anyways. But it’s fine if they do it right? Since they’re the protagonists? But the antagonists should just sit down and not even try right?

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Oh i had not thought of that, it is pretty much the same situation as the Ascians, but because it is done by the good guys it is portrayed as a good and noble act by the story.
A very common hypocrisy found in big stories where the good guy must always win just because they are the good guy because the story cannot acknowledge' the villain's actions as equal and fully be reduced to a battle of wills, oh no, heroes gotta keep the high moral ground...



Oh, if only we joined Emet, you could imagine bringing back everyone and going back to Elpis drinking tea and chatting with Hythlodeus, Venat and Emet together again, that would have been a beautiful end I would have liked to see.

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Originally Posted by EaraGrace

Allowing a timeline to continue is sacrificing it? And yes, a willing sacrifice in hopes of creating a world not choking to death on Black Rose is a good thing, unlike killing innocents to resurrect your dead friends. I never had issue with Zodiarks summoning, only the events after.

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Considering that timeline's main hope was the overpowered crystal tower combined with ironworks, removing that from the equation means the chances of the timeline going well are close to 0.

Remember, 7 calamities happened, the world wasnt doomed after any of them so you cant pretend "oh its the 8th now and black rose is everywhere so kinda ok sacrificing it"

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Originally Posted by Lium

One question I do have about all this is, what were the Ascians' plans going forward had they succeeded in Rejoining all the shards? Because that still wouldn't have prevented the Final Days from eventually happening again. Was it just to have Zodiark be around forever, keeping all the celestial currents or whatever in balance? If that's the case, wouldn't Zodiark continuously require sacrifices to remain powerful enough to hold the world together?

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Well Zodiarc was there as a tool to keep the celestial currents functioning, considering he didnt require any sacrifices and worked just as well for 12000 years while sundered, I would say it is unlikely that he would need more sacrifices anytime soon, especially considering the story clearly focuses on the ancients choosing sacrifice, not Zodiarc, Zodiarc is a tool.

You do make an important point though, rejoining would be achieved and everything would go back to normal ancient times, the real question is whenever or not the threat of Meiteion would be revealed, the most likely answer is that Hydaelyn in her last moments after her defeat would reveal the truth since its not like she wants the star to be destroyed. Though time travel complicates things because if time travel happened anyway then we as WoL also know the truth and could have informed Emet.

Since as you know, Meiteion has existed for thousands of years and has failed to destroy eithyris, in the case where nobody is aware of her, the question is up to whichever Ancient might decide to research the final days for academic purposes which at least seems to be a common thing in their society, to research and understand and fix problems, that person might figure it out in a timeline where nobody knows about Meiteion.
And considering the ancient society is about continuous improvement is more than likely that people would slowly learn more details about dynamis as a subject and some would choose to research it only to find there's a literal wave of dynamis slamming itself against the planet's celestial currents which will lead to further questions and research which would reveal the threat of meiteion in time.
After all, when more discoveries happen, the amount of subjects to research decrease(unless it opens other trees of research early on but stops near the end) so it stands to reason dynamis would get its time in the light.


Though there is a certain plot hole here, why did Meiteion sit at ultima thule for 12000 years doing nothing but singing the song of oblivion, like, you ve been trying this thing for 12000 years, are you really gonna do nothing to quicken that process?
Barrier at 100%, 12000 years, Meiteion is not doing even 0.1% of barrier damage in a year, there has to be ways to try to interfere, though you could argue she doesnt care cuz "le end is inevitable" but that only gives more time for the ancients to figure it out and beat her.

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Originally Posted by Alenore

Nobody is saying "Ancients with no knowledge of Meteion would have beaten her". No, they would just have hid behind Zodiark and kept going with their life while the rest of the universe suffered, unbeknownst to them.

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I just said this, it is highly likely the ancients would have figured it out due to one simple fact, immortality kinda gives you nigh infinite time, and it is also more than likely that there would be at least a few scholars research the final days just like we research historical events, hell it is a certainty because anyone intelligent would want to learn what can cause extinction level events.

And also "kept going with their life while the rest of the universe suffered"?

You mean the universe full of dead civilizations? Are you so desperate to villainise the Ancients that you blame them for focusing internally?

Because in my eyes the Ancients have been the good guys all along.

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Originally Posted by Vexander

The thing is, uniting the Shards should have always been impossible from the moment the Thirteenth reflection fell to Void. There is no rejoining it to the source. The fragment of souls there will never return to the aetherial sea, nothing new will be born there, etc...

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That is actually an interesting hypothesis, could you elaborate?

From memory in order to achieve a rejoining a certain energy needs to be so out of balance it consumes the entire shard, so I would assume since the void took over the thirteenth the rejoining of the thirteenth to the source would have been complete including souls and all.

But I do remember Emet saying they screwed up the thirteenth by rushing, though we werent given full details as to what that meant, do we know more about it?

I feel that would be a giant plot hole is true because it would make no sense for the Ascians to keep trying to rejoin all the shards if the final goal wouldnt be possible due to the mess that was the thirteenth, were they thinking of uniting all the shards and then somehow fixing the issue with the thirteenth and then rejoining it with the source?

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Originally Posted by Zoliru

Considering that timeline's main hope was the overpowered crystal tower combined with ironworks, removing that from the equation means the chances of the timeline going well are close to 0.

Remember, 7 calamities happened, the world wasnt doomed after any of them so you cant pretend "oh its the 8th now and black rose is everywhere so kinda ok sacrificing it"

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It wasn’t sacrificed though. There’s an entire short story on the official site going into what happened after. The 8th astral era.

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Originally Posted by Zoliru

I feel that would be a giant plot hole is true because it would make no sense for the Ascians to keep trying to rejoin all the shards if the final goal wouldnt be possible due to the mess that was the thirteenth, were they thinking of uniting all the shards and then somehow fixing the issue with the thirteenth and then rejoining it with the source?

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Yes, this was generally expected to be the plan. Remember that at the time of the Sundering the Convocation (and Amaurot as a whole) was already well and truly going down the road of 'solve every problem by sacrificing lives to our dark god', so they were expecting to do that once Zodiark was whole enough to do something, as the Ascians, after ten thousand years, had learned nothing.

I don't remember if it was ever directly stated they wanted to do that with the Thirteenth, or just a fair assumption. The list of things they definitely have/would ask Zodiark for are full of such huge tasks that, frankly, re-balancing a shard's aether is probably among the more restrained ones.

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Originally Posted by Zoliru

We learn that summoning being at the level of Zodiarc does not mean tempering similar to eorzean primals, that was simply an addition to the summoning spell, for beings such as zordiarc you still feel a "tug" which can be described as a form of tempering but nothing like what we expect from the average tempered individual, Emet Selch himself was evidence of that after all since shb.

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This was true of a sundered Zodiarc (i.e., a fourteenth of his power). We have no idea what a united one would do. Given the will under which he was eventually to be summoned, once the sacrifices had already been made but the intent of his creation skewed with the losses therein and since, it's plenty likely we'd see worldwide tempering locking us in a blinded belief that the world is perfect and all ('again') as it should be.

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Originally Posted by Zoliru

I feel that would be a giant plot hole is true because it would make no sense for the Ascians to keep trying to rejoin all the shards if the final goal wouldnt be possible due to the mess that was the thirteenth, were they thinking of uniting all the shards and then somehow fixing the issue with the thirteenth and then rejoining it with the source?

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I think most of us having been working under the assumption that the Ascian plan basically amounted to 'rejoin the other 12 shards, worry about the 13th later.'
It's possible that given the circumstances they'd have just had to go with it and hope that 93% restored is enough for Zodiark to be able to figure out and "fix" the rest.

Plus, y'know, they're tempered. They're not going to give up even if it won't work, they'll keep trying to restore him till he's either restored or destroyed, and if they'd still been around when he was destroyed you can pretty much guarantee they'd have immediately set about trying to re-summon him.

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Originally Posted by EaraGrace

It wasn’t sacrificed though. There’s an entire short story on the official site going into what happened after. The 8th astral era.

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To be fair, the Ironworks and G'raha didn't know it would survive when they put their plan in to action, indeed they considered its destruction a reasonably likely outcome.

It all worked out in the end, but it was definitely more than a bit questionable in the moment.