Confusion (of the highest order) about Venat and Sundering

Copypaste from Wiki:

Venat, who knew the true cause of the Final Days, opposed the Convocation and led a faction that sacrificed themselves so she can become the primal Hydaelyn. She used her ability of sundering beings to weaken Zodiark enough to imprison him within moon, simultaneously splitting Etheirys and most of its inhabitants into the Source and its thirteen reflections.

So, uhh, she wanted to stop sacrificing people by... sacrificing people?.. That's some twisted logic right here lol. I mean, yeah, proportionally speaking sacrificing a faction is nothing compared to sacrificing another half of the population but do we really want to start putting lives of the people on the weight? Why it was worth it? Were there no other way around?

Another confusion is, how come sacrificing HALF of the population is only enough to summon Zodiark and halt the spread of Oblivion Song but sacrificing of a faction is enough to literally give Venat godly, maker-like powers and abilities to impison Zodiark and manipulating of UNIVERSE and planets itself, sundering the world into 13 shards. How did she become so powerful?! Was that faction consisted of, like, super powerful ancients and such? That sacrificing mere dozens? of lives was enough to overpower combined effort of HALF the population?

So weird.

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Originally Posted by Antoine_Lenheim

Copypaste from Wiki:

Venat, who knew the true cause of the Final Days, opposed the Convocation and led a faction that sacrificed themselves so she can become the primal Hydaelyn. She used her ability of sundering beings to weaken Zodiark enough to imprison him within moon, simultaneously splitting Etheirys and most of its inhabitants into the Source and its thirteen reflections.

So, uhh, she wanted to stop sacrificing people by... sacrificing people?.. That's some twisted logic right here lol. I mean, yeah, proportionally speaking sacrificing a faction is nothing compared to sacrificing another half of the population but do we really want to start putting lives of the people on the weight? Why it was worth it? Were there no other way around?

Another confusion is, how come sacrificing HALF of the population is only enough to summon Zodiark and halt the spread of Oblivion Song but sacrificing of a faction is enough to literally give Venat godly, maker-like powers and abilities to impison Zodiark and manipulating of UNIVERSE and planets itself, sundering the world into 13 shards. How did she become so powerful?! Was that faction consisted if super powerful ancients and such? That sacrificing mere dozens? of lives was enough to overpower combined effort of HALF the population?

So weird.

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sundering doesn't kill and since hydaelyns purpose was highly specific it didnt take as much energy to work. as for it being worth it, imo yeah considering it lead to us defeating the metea.

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Originally Posted by sidurgu-12

sundering doesn't kill and since hydaelyns purpose was highly specific it didnt take as much energy to work. as for it being worth it, imo yeah considering it lead to us defeating the metea.

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Yeah, even though it requires sacrifice, it doesn't kill, on the contrary, it creates new life on those reflected shards. But since when manipulating planets and creating life on them became a trivial thing that does not need that much energy to work?

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Originally Posted by Antoine_Lenheim

Yeah, even though it requires sacrifice, it doesn't kill, on the contrary, it creates new life on those reflected shards. But since when manipulating planets and creating life on them became a trivial thing that does not need that much energy to work?

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life wasnt being created with the sundering, it only sprang up after zodiarks second sacrifice. plus it seems like venats group was quite big.

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Originally Posted by Antoine_Lenheim

Yeah, even though it requires sacrifice, it doesn't kill, on the contrary, it creates new life on those reflected shards. But since when manipulating planets and creating life on them became a trivial thing that does not need that much energy to work?

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This is just a theory I have, nothing concrete, but Hydaelyn wouldn't technically need a tremendous amount of energy to make 13 new worlds. As far as I am aware Zodiark was summoned as the "god" of the laws of reality, therefore I would argue that by splitting the "god" of reality into 14 parts then that too would split reality into 14 parts.

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Originally Posted by Kordarion

This is just a theory I have, nothing concrete, but Hydaelyn wouldn't technically need a tremendous amount of energy to make 13 new worlds. As far as I am aware Zodiark was summoned as the "god" of the laws of reality, therefore I would argue that by splitting the "god" of reality into 14 parts then that too would split reality into 14 parts.

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so basically a cosmic voodoo doll.

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Originally Posted by sidurgu-12

sundering doesn't kill and since hydaelyns purpose was highly specific it didnt take as much energy to work. as for it being worth it, imo yeah considering it lead to us defeating the metea.

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While it's debatable if the Sundering killed the Sundered (I would argue it did, at least to the same degree as the Rejoining, since in both cases no "soul essence" is destroyed, just divided or re-assimilated at the expense of the original identity) I think they're talking about the sacrifices. People were still sacrificed to summon Hydaelyn.

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Originally Posted by sidurgu-12

so basically a cosmic voodoo doll.

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I guess, I haven't really though it through much more than what I stated but your analogy does make sense.

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Originally Posted by Lurina

While it's debatable if the Sundering killed the Sundered (I would argue it did, at least to the same degree as the Rejoining, since in both cases no "soul essence" is destroyed, just divided or re-assimilated at the expense of the original identity) I think they're talking about the sacrifices. People were still sacrificed to summon Hydaelyn. In that sense, it did explicitly kill.

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Except we don't actually know if it destroyed the original identities of the unsundered, it very well could have mind you, but I don't think it did because if everyone died and was reborn without their old memories then how would they still have memories of the unsundered world like the makers of the Qitana Ravel cave paintings and the sun deities Azeyma and Azim having celestial, the sun, and naming similarities to the seat of Azem. Sure you could write it off as just being the echo but that just doesn't seem to be a satisfying conclusion.

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Originally Posted by Kordarion

Except we don't actually know if it destroyed the original identities of the unsundered, it very well could have mind you, but I don't think it did because if everyone died and was reborn how would they still have memories of the unsundered world like the makers of the Qitana Ravel cave paintings and the sun deities Azeyma and Azim having celestial, the sun, and naming similarities to the seat of Azem. Sure you could write it off as just being the echo but that just doesn't seem to be a satisfying conclusion.

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Emet explicitly says, "No one could remember it (the original Ethirys). Just fleeting recollections of an all-too-familiar world."

"Fleeting" means "momentary" or "almost nonexistent". As in, the memories of their previous lives were almost completely gone.

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Originally Posted by Lurina

While it's debatable if the Sundering killed the Sundered (I would argue it did, at least to the same degree as the Rejoining, since in both cases no "soul essence" is destroyed, just divided or re-assimilated at the expense of the original identity) I think they're talking about the sacrifices. People were still sacrificed to summon Hydaelyn.

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I think the difference is that Hydaelyn's summoners were voluntarily giving up their own lives to achieve what they thought was important, whereas the people planning to sacrifice "some portion of life on the planet" may have been trying to sacrifice sentient life without their agreement.

We still don't have enough answers about what really happened then. Just one unsatisfactorily allegorical scene that doesn't line up with Emet's account in Shadowbringers, and arguably paints Venat in a worse light than he did.