Other dangers in the Ancient's time

Considering how dense the aether of Ancients are, and how powerful they were, I am actually curious as to what Venat would face often enough that could corrupt her aether that made her invent the Blessing of Light aka Travelers' Ward.

Also would that ward have been enough to prevent the tempering done by Zodiark?

We know that Ancients have been killed and/or severely injured in Elpis and during the events near the Final Days at Akadaemia Anyder. But as for anything on the actual ground, your guess would be as good as mine. Monsters are routinely made to populate the world as part of the "ecosystem" so there could be some nasty things down there, but I'm not sure any would be as powerful or corrupting as one of Lahabrea's primals. There was a remark from Pre-Sundering Lahabrea about powerful spontaneous creations being made of the fears of the Ancients, and that seemed (to me) to be where the original idea of the origin of the Final Days was going but we ended up getting what we got in Endwalker.

The "Travelers' Ward" could very well be just another thing that they gave an awkward explanation for when trying to fit older story into newer story since the Blessing of Light was written a decade earlier and they had to somehow shove an explanation in and probably didn't put further thought into it.

Not sure if it would protect against Zodiark since His fully realized form would be exceptionally powerful, being made up of the culled aether of a large chunk of the Ancient population that survived the Final Days. Emet-Selch made it sound like tempering was inevitable.

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Originally Posted by Necrotica

Considering how dense the aether of Ancients are, and how powerful they were, I am actually curious as to what Venat would face often enough that could corrupt her aether that made her invent the Blessing of Light aka Travelers' Ward.

Also would that ward have been enough to prevent the tempering done by Zodiark?

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Atop that, one might also wonder why she was so skilled at combat. She was quite a challenge when we fought her.

Can only really assume that the reasoning behind both her creating of the Blessing of Light and the fact that she was so skilled at combat was due to something that happened whilst she was Azem.

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Originally Posted by Necrotica

Considering how dense the aether of Ancients are, and how powerful they were, I am actually curious as to what Venat would face often enough that could corrupt her aether that made her invent the Blessing of Light aka Travelers' Ward.

Also would that ward have been enough to prevent the tempering done by Zodiark?

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Considering the Ancients were comfy in their "perfect" city (Amaurot was a single city) and places, they were probably kept out of danger quite a bit outside of Elpis. The rest of the world likely was just like how the world is now, with a lot of dangers to deal with and creatures to defeat. Since the Seat of Azem travels quite a lot, it would only make sense they would encounter dangers most Ancients from Amaurot wouldn't even dream of ever encountering.

If they allow for things like Behemoths to get the ok to be released into the general wilds then I'm sure there's other creations that are out there that's just as dangerous. Just because most Ancients didn't need to know how to fight doesn't mean there aren't any who would. After all Pandeamonium's whole deal is the containment and study of the most unruly of creations. Emet Selch seemed to hint at that even someone who holds the seat of Altima who is the advocate of the arts should be able to handle any problems.

Even Hythlodaeus who has a cushy desk job knows how to fight. He I want to say is the one that tells us they only have their hoods up when they're somewhere they know they won't need to rely much on their peripheral vision. The seat of Azem is practically filled by someone who is capable of running around as an unsundered WoL. I.E someone who is there to help the little guy with whatever problems they might have. That being a volcano about to erupt, punching something in the face that's been terrorizing the town, or finding some little girl's totally not creepy assed dolls.

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Originally Posted by SannaR

If they allow for things like Behemoths to get the ok to be released into the general wilds then I'm sure there's other creations that are out there that's just as dangerous. Just because most Ancients didn't need to know how to fight doesn't mean there aren't any who would. After all Pandeamonium's whole deal is the containment and study of the most unruly of creations. Emet Selch seemed to hint at that even someone who holds the seat of Altima who is the advocate of the arts should be able to handle any problems.

Even Hythlodaeus who has a cushy desk job knows how to fight. He I want to say is the one that tells us they only have their hoods up when they're somewhere they know they won't need to rely much on their peripheral vision. The seat of Azem is practically filled by someone who is capable of running around as an unsundered WoL. I.E someone who is there to help the little guy with whatever problems they might have. That being a volcano about to erupt, punching something in the face that's been terrorizing the town, or finding some little girl's totally not creepy assed dolls.

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But Behemoths don't temper people. Most dangerous things we face don't temper. And talking to them they did not seem to understand what a primal was.

So what was the traveller's ward warding against?

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Originally Posted by Necrotica

But Behemoths don't temper people. Most dangerous things we face don't temper. And talking to them they did not seem to understand what a primal was.

So what was the traveller's ward warding against?

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Charm, confusion, poison...you know, the usual status effects. That's partially a joke, and partially serious. We've seen normal monsters that can easily cause status ailments magically, like the last boss of Sirensong Sea who can force people to march towards/away. I would suspect a properly powered Traveler's Ward would be perfect to prevent that sort of thing from happening, and something a seasoned fighter/adventurer like the Seat of Azem would easily come up with.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

Charm, confusion, poison...you know, the usual status effects. That's partially a joke, and partially serious. We've seen normal monsters that can easily cause status ailments magically, like the last boss of Sirensong Sea who can force people to march towards/away. I would suspect a properly powered Traveler's Ward would be perfect to prevent that sort of thing from happening, and something a seasoned fighter/adventurer like the Seat of Azem would easily come up with.

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The Blessing doesn't shield from those though. We get hit with them all the time. Sleep spell got us in the Ifrit mess.

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Originally Posted by Necrotica

The Blessing doesn't shield from those though. We get hit with them all the time. Sleep spell got us in the Ifrit mess.

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I said properly powered for a reason. The Traveler's Blessing given to us isn't a fully powered one, as Hydaelyn, like the rest of Etheirys, was only at 8/14 power. That's enough to prevent tempering from elder primals. Imagine if we were given it by an Unsundered Venat, we'd likely not deal with status effects ever again.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

I said properly powered for a reason. The Traveler's Blessing given to us isn't a fully powered one, as Hydaelyn, like the rest of Etheirys, was only at 8/14 power. That's enough to prevent tempering from elder primals. Imagine if we were given it by an Unsundered Venat, we'd likely not deal with status effects ever again.

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Don't believe Hydaelyn sundered herself. Otherwise the heroes of the First would not have needed to come to the Source to talk with her. Her blessing should be at 'prevent aetherial corruption' power.

Probably less for a one time big bad, and more for the hundreds of enemies that inflict some sort of aetherial damage sort of thing.

Honestly, it's literally just a poorly thought out scriptwriter's tool that doesn't even explain well what it's supposed too.

I'm more thinking it's for encountering creatures similar to the Fae on The First. You know, creatures that can just up and turn you into a plant or some shit. For NPCs, that kind of thing is permanent. For the WoL, it only lasts a few in game minutes (seconds for us).

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Originally Posted by Necrotica

Don't believe Hydaelyn sundered herself. Otherwise the heroes of the First would not have needed to come to the Source to talk with her. Her blessing should be at 'prevent aetherial corruption' power.

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Then she had even less power. If she was using multiple multiple souls to keep herself going, and she did not intervene after reviving us during the Lahabrea solo fight (see 2.0 story changes), then doesn't that mean she was running pretty low on energy when she gave us the Traveler's Ward to begin with?

It's a simple traveler's ward.
It's purpose was probably something fairly mundane, like serving as a mild monster repellent.
But when everything but the ward got scaled down to sundered size, it ended up having the effect of warding off strong aetherial influence.

I think a useful factor to recall is that tempering is functionally very similar to void corruption. There were probably various forms of aetheric corruption floating around, they just probably didn't do as much as the cases we're more familiar with; much like how Zodiark tempered the Ascians but not to a degree we saw from Ifrit and Lakshmi, it was probably just causing issues like heatstroke and hypothermia rather than total transformations. Still not great, still something you'd want to protect against, but not as bad as 'turn into a brainwashed sea monster'.

As for what threats are out there... well, yeah; these were a people that looked at a behemoth and went 'yes, this is something that would benefit the world by putting it out into nature'; OBVIOUSLY there's nasty stuff out there. We also have a small sample size of dangers Azem dealt with in the Lodestone short stories; the famous volcano of course, but in the Watcher's story he mentions rampaging animals, a dangerous monster made by a child, and poisonous plants, as well as a less 'living' threat of perilous mountain peaks. That's a decent sample size to show that when it comes to the world outside the cities, things aren't too different from what we'd recognize, the only difference is... well, that Ancients specifically looked at half those things and agreed the world was better with them.

We also know of at least six different styles of combat the Ancients partook in thanks to Ktisis Hyperborea (Venat's DNC, WHM and PLD equivalents, Emet's BLM and DRK parallels, Hyth's psuedo-BRD). That's a wide enough swathe to reason that either people were diverse enough to use different organized combat styles, or that threats were diverse enough to warrant diversifying responses to them.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

We also know of at least six different styles of combat the Ancients partook in thanks to Ktisis Hyperborea (Venat's DNC, WHM and PLD equivalents, Emet's BLM and DRK parallels, Hyth's psuedo-BRD).

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Also transformation magicks if those count as a separate style. Those are probably also a good candidate for something "unnatural" that could cause aetherial damage.

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Originally Posted by Necrotica

Don't believe Hydaelyn sundered herself. Otherwise the heroes of the First would not have needed to come to the Source to talk with her. Her blessing should be at 'prevent aetherial corruption' power.

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I'd say at full power the traveler's ward would protect from the ailments Ryu listed before, perhaps even ensure one need not change their dress to remain comfortable in cold or hot climates. Keep in mind that by the time our WoL was born six calamities have already occurred and if the blessing only comes once one has awakened to Hydaelyn's voice, it could either be after the seventh calamity or shortly before it she granted us the blessing so her power has weakened considerably, thus we definitely don't have the full strength of this ward as she conceived it.

I'm actually thinking, loosely related to the topic, but given how much Hydaelyn's power had weakened by our time it probably wouldn't be unreasonable to assume had another calamity happened it would have killed her, which is probably exactly what happened in the doomed future the Exarch came from and it was that which made it so bad, not our WoL's death. Because with her death no one else would ever receive the blessing or awaken to the echo again unless the Ascians so desired, essentially creating nothing more than black masked Ascians but not as obvious.

There was also a very interesting point Erichthonios made in the cutscene after you defeat him in Pandaemonium, in that he firstly mentions how Themis and the WoL "do not look like mercenaries", and then adds "you do not look like prize fighters either" (paraphrased) - both career paths you would not think a supposedly 'perfect' society that Ancient Etheirys would have.

So, the question has to be asked, why would the Ancients have need of soldiers-for-hire, and for that matter, why would a society that prized cerebal pursuits like philosophical debate and rhetoric over fiticuffs, have fighting contests? Does that mean that they still had wars and had actual soldiers doing the fighting, as opposed to say, specialized aetheric constructs (as in, familiars?).

If that is true, and this does tarnish the image of the Ancient world as 'perfect' a lot, then the idea of Venat's "traveller's ward" spell starts to make better sense (and once again makes Emet look like a liar, or at the very least wanting to sweep the more nasty aspects of his supposed "perfect society" under the rug simply to take the moral high ground). And thus things like war, battle and combat would also go hand in glove with that.

Why did the Calamities hurt Hydaelyn though? She seems to be feeding on aether in the aetherial sea so a bunch of death and new souls getting flooded down there should empower her more.

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

There was also a very interesting point Erichthonios made in the cutscene after you defeat him in Pandaemonium, in that he firstly mentions how Themis and the WoL "do not look like mercenaries", and then adds "you do not look like prize fighters either" (paraphrased) - both career paths you would not think a supposedly 'perfect' society that Ancient Etheirys would have.

So, the question has to be asked, why would the Ancients have need of soldiers-for-hire, and for that matter, why would a society that prized cerebal pursuits like philosophical debate and rhetoric over fiticuffs, have fighting contests? Does that mean that they still had wars and had actual soldiers doing the fighting, as opposed to say, specialized aetheric constructs (as in, familiars?).

If that is true, and this does tarnish the image of the Ancient world as 'perfect' a lot, then the idea of Venat's "traveller's ward" spell starts to make better sense (and once again makes Emet look like a liar, or at the very least wanting to sweep the more nasty aspects of his supposed "perfect society" under the rug simply to take the moral high ground). And thus things like war, battle and combat would also go hand in glove with that.

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Frankly I've always thought Amaurot was never actually a perfect society, both because I highly suspected Emet was hiding a whole bunch of questionable stuff, and because it's named Amaurot. I think a lot of people who saw that name and learned that it was from the book 'Utopia', and then kinda called their research there, without getting far enough to see that Utopia was most likely a satire or critique. Granted a lot of social context of stuff like this gets lost over time, but the point of Utopia is essentially laying out all the ways this supposed 'perfect society' works in a way that suggest it's actually got some pretty terrible elements (slavery, for one), and is only 'perfect' to the person that's isolated from those elements.


That said, a tiny bit of devil's advocate: it's entirely possible that the Ancient world had war, but doesn't anymore for whatever reason; that'd explain why they'd have a word for something like 'mercenary' even if they don't really exist anymore. And as for 'prize fighter'... well, that doesn't necessarily imply a culture of war and violence, that just means some people fight for prizes. All that requires is competitiveness and combat techniques, and we know they've got both. Surely they've got some kind of combat sport going, it's just probably not very close to the two extremely ivory-tower corners of the Ancient world we've been. After all, if your only windows into America were Congress and Harvard, you probably wouldn't find direct evidence of MMA, but that doesn't mean MMA doesn't exist.

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Originally Posted by Necrotica

Why did the Calamities hurt Hydaelyn though? She seems to be feeding on aether in the aetherial sea so a bunch of death and new souls getting flooded down there should empower her more.

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I don't recall any suggestion that she was feeding on aether in the sea. On the contrary, she was becoming increasingly weakened because she was unwilling to do so, instead burning through the original aether from her creators (along with the boost from the Crystals of Light in 3.4, which was apparently her aether to begin with) until only Venat's soul was left as the final piece to be spent.

I'll have to rewatch some cutscenes, but I do remember that her crystal battery was slowly being built up over time. I thought that was the whole reason she was by the aetherial sea. If not to tap into a source of aether why bother being down there?

To get back to threats in Ancient times it would be cool to find out there were other 'pantheons' there. The Ancients we met were all about creating life. But maybe there were other groups all about creating weather patterns, shaping the landscape, etc.

Not impossible to think these groups would fight occasionally. And then the Traveler's ward makes more sense since other Ancients could totally mess with your aether so having protections against that would be necessary.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

That said, a tiny bit of devil's advocate: it's entirely possible that the Ancient world had war, but doesn't anymore for whatever reason; that'd explain why they'd have a word for something like 'mercenary' even if they don't really exist anymore.

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Yeah I feel like they did have war at one point because it's insinuated that all of the world is under unified rule in Amaurot, and that one Ancient we can talk to in ShB treats Amaurot as the highest place of society in the world. While war could be LOOOOOONG ago in their history, I don't think the Amaurotines debated the other cities into submission.

The Ancients weren't morally superior to the sundered. We meet haughty ancients, altruistic ancients, dutiful ancients, and psychotic ancients. They're just as human as we are for better or worse, but granted insane amounts of power that is constrained by their societal norms. Unless they popped up on Etheirys with the fully formed society they had at the Final Days, they had to evolve from somewhere.

Two major causes of strife are limited resources and differences in thought and appearance. The culture we found had by this time remedied both and covered individuality in a literal cloak of sameness. At least to me, it would imply this was not always the case and they have either since overcome trials that caused them to take these measures, or they have foreseen the consequences of not adopting such measures which would mean they're not as perfect as they think they are.

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

If that is true, and this does tarnish the image of the Ancient world as 'perfect' a lot, then the idea of Venat's "traveller's ward" spell starts to make better sense (and once again makes Emet look like a liar, or at the very least wanting to sweep the more nasty aspects of his supposed "perfect society" under the rug simply to take the moral high ground). And thus things like war, battle and combat would also go hand in glove with that.

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I think Emet just simply saw the past through very rose colored glasses. He did say that his world would have no need for heroes yet he himself only got the job as Emet-Selch because he had helped so many people around the world that they spoke up for him. Sounds like a hero to me. I think that perfect world was probably mostly contained to Amaurot.

About the topic: I have no idea what could have existed out there to need such a spell but as other said, if Behemoth is fine to release than who knows whats out there...heck even just one evil ancient could be a huge problem.

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Originally Posted by Necrotica

Why did the Calamities hurt Hydaelyn though? She seems to be feeding on aether in the aetherial sea so a bunch of death and new souls getting flooded down there should empower her more.

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With each rejoining Zodiark got one part of himself back. I would take a guess and say that if she needed to sunder him to be able to defeat him than a Zodiark that gets more rejoined would surely make it harder to hold him in his prison. Also I could imagine that each calamity took a huge hit on the source world.

I would be curious though were you saw that she fed on aether? She told us that aether was drawn towards her and thus over time the mother crystal was created. But that was not energy she ate. I also doubt that she would be willing to just snack on some souls. If she did after all she would not have grown weaker.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

Two major causes of strife are limited resources and differences in thought and appearance. The culture we found had by this time remedied both and covered individuality in a literal cloak of sameness. At least to me, it would imply this was not always the case and they have either since overcome trials that caused them to take these measures, or they have foreseen the consequences of not adopting such measures which would mean they're not as perfect as they think they are.

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Now that I think about it, one of the NPCs in Amaurot is admonishing us for not wearing a robe. Going as far as stating that even children should wear them. Seemingly they are afraid of individuality and all the bad emotions that come with that. (Envy and such things) That sounds like they know that this could happen.

My assumption that she fed on aether was based on how few people were used in her summoning and how long she has been around, awake, speaking to and empowering heroes, etc.

I did not thing she was straight eating souls but it is the aetherial sea, not the sea of souls. Sometime aether is just aether. Leftovers from above that cling to souls on the way down but are not the actual souls.

I am probably mixing up some FF7 stuff in all this.

I am really curious about what the would outside Elpis and Amaurot are like during that time. We know so little about what exists outside their walls and viewpoint. It would not surprise me if outside the Ancients comfort zones there are much bigger and exotic threats, and that the seat of Azem would be the one most skilled in preparing defences given their purpose. The Blessing of Light may protect us from Primal influence now, but its original origin could have been a more general ward that had other protective uses. If indeed we get a weaker form, then it makes one wonder just what threats she had to protect against that may have been worse then Aether corruption.

It brings to mind one of my favorite quotes from Star Trek, "it's easy to be a saint in paradise". What about the sentiant life outside the Ancient controle? What do they have to face and fear (Outside of volcanos...) everyday? I know people would like to move on from the Ancients/Hydalyn, but there is still so much we do not know about the Ancients/Final Days/that era I hope we do get to continue exploring it in some shape or form, be it even short stories or perhaps a novel?

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Originally Posted by Necrotica

Considering how dense the aether of Ancients are, and how powerful they were, I am actually curious as to what Venat would face often enough that could corrupt her aether that made her invent the Blessing of Light aka Travelers' Ward.

Also would that ward have been enough to prevent the tempering done by Zodiark?

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but the density of aether in the ancient world is not exclusive to the ancients. Other lifeforms and wildlife were also dense in their aether, and only the creations of the ancients were not.
Based on this, it stands to reason that some wildlife and even other intelligent lifeforms could pose a direct or indirect threat to the innocents, and some could be challenging to face. Besides, let's not forget about other dimensions and worlds that exist in the universe that could spit out some threats, just like how Ultima is.
You also need to keep in mind that not all ancients behaved in the same manner as we have seen in the Pandaemonium raid series, and I won't be surprised if there are a good number of rogue, greedy, or plainly villainous ancients somewhere around whether as a researchers, commonfolk, or even in high positions.

I mean even Pandaemonium really does showcase to us that the ancients are very much capable of instability but they will take measures that appear to be very extreme to "correct" these instabilities (almost immediate execution, literally tearing off a piece of oneself and locking it away). It would not be unreasonable to assume that many of the ancients outside of the governing body of Amaurot would be unwilling to go to such measures. I know we got the half population sacrifices but I wouldn't put too much stock in that entirely because those were desperate times and people can do things they would never even dream of doing in a mostly sound state of mind when they are pushed to the extreme.

And let's not forget the whole volcano situation actually. Think about how the convocation was content to allow an island be destroyed because it was the natural order of things. The people living there might become bitter that those who are supposed to protect them were willing to let their home burn, even if in the end the island was saved. How commonplace might this have been? It couldn't have been an isolated incident, and so people who might have been in similar situations might be less inclined to be civil. But after the passing of millennia these threats were ultimately forgotten. You have to remember, Venat was old. She's probably been around far longer than most people who had held seats on the Convocation by the time of the Final Days and even after giving up the seat of Azem she chose to remain outside the Aetherial Sea. She would be intimately familiar with all manner of threats on the star and thus she developed a magick that was suited for her line of work and also passed it on to those who might benefit from it.

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Originally Posted by Alleo

With each rejoining Zodiark got one part of himself back. I would take a guess and say that if she needed to sunder him to be able to defeat him than a Zodiark that gets more rejoined would surely make it harder to hold him in his prison. Also I could imagine that each calamity took a huge hit on the source world.

I would be curious though were you saw that she fed on aether? She told us that aether was drawn towards her and thus over time the mother crystal was created. But that was not energy she ate. I also doubt that she would be willing to just snack on some souls. If she did after all she would not have grown weaker.

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Necrotica's just doing their usual thing where they ignore the actual focus of the thread (that they made, yes) to make constantly shifting, flimsy and easily countered arguments; yes, it is directly stated that Hydaelyn didn't consume any aether after her summoning, which is why she was weak, Necrotica probably didn't just magically not read that part, they're just pretending they didn't to try to get people to argue with them for missing it. They can be safely ignored.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

Necrotica's just doing their usual thing where they ignore the actual focus of the thread (that they made, yes) to make constantly shifting, flimsy and easily countered arguments; yes, it is directly stated that Hydaelyn didn't consume any aether after her summoning, which is why she was weak, Necrotica probably didn't just magically not read that part, they're just pretending they didn't to try to get people to argue with them for missing it. They can be safely ignored.

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Doing okay there Cleretic? How is ignoring all my threads going for you?

I can't help but wonder how much "natural" life that was not created by the Ancients existed...assuming there was any at all.

Given how absurdly powerful the Ancients themselves ended up being, you'd think maybe there were other lifeforms of similar nature present.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

I don't recall any suggestion that she was feeding on aether in the sea. On the contrary, she was becoming increasingly weakened because she was unwilling to do so, instead burning through the original aether from her creators (along with the boost from the Crystals of Light in 3.4, which was apparently her aether to begin with) until only Venat's soul was left as the final piece to be spent.

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Unless I'm misremembering something, I thought she also mentions in Labyrinthos that the light she harvested in the process of saving the First from the flood was why she was suddenly strong enough to commune with us directly again.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

I can't help but wonder how much "natural" life that was not created by the Ancients existed...assuming there was any at all.

Given how absurdly powerful the Ancients themselves ended up being, you'd think maybe there were other lifeforms of similar nature present.



Unless I'm misremembering something, I thought she also mentions in Labyrinthos that the light she harvested in the process of saving the First from the flood was why she was suddenly strong enough to commune with us directly again.

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We don't even have confirmation the Ancients were the only sentient species on the planet with souls. Could have been entire other races doing their own thing. Reminded of Justice League unlimited with the bug people living below the New Gods.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

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Unless I'm misremembering something, I thought she also mentions in Labyrinthos that the light she harvested in the process of saving the First from the flood was why she was suddenly strong enough to commune with us directly again.

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The only time she mentions the first in labrynthos is when she is possessing krile but didn't say she used the light from the flood to save the first. She mentioned that she was unable to save the first and was too weak. And that she was only able to bring minfillia and emets souls to the source

I just thought of a few other things that could have needed a traveler's ward if things back then were capable of it. Even though it was a curse made by a voidsent people were turned into the Tonberries. Then there's the pixies being able to turn people into leafmem. Though the elementals were first made to serve as messengers we do know that in our time they have striken people with aether altering magics.

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Originally Posted by Alleo

I think Emet just simply saw the past through very rose colored glasses. He did say that his world would have no need for heroes yet he himself only got the job as Emet-Selch because he had helped so many people around the world that they spoke up for him. Sounds like a hero to me. I think that perfect world was probably mostly contained to Amaurot.

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While it's all too common for people to remember the good and forget the bad, if Emet-Selch truly is tempered, that may be one of the subtle manipulations of Zodiark, to instill a compulsion to restore the unsundered world. As if having rose-colored glasses forced upon him...