NPCs in Living Memory

I must have missed it but was there an explanation of how any NPCs still exist in Living Memory after the MSQ is still complete. I remember them stating during MSQ that there hasn't been any living people in Living Memory for a very long time.
It was also stated that NPCs associated with servers we shutdown would be lost.

So, I am at a loss as to understand how any NCPs which are not the automatons exist in that zone. Yet, the aether current NPCs were not automatons and I did those quests after the MSQ.

Cahciua specifically says that those quest NPCs in Living Memory remaining Endless whose corporeal aether hasn't vanished yet. Normally due to some remaining desire or purpose. Once you complete their quests they disappear.

As Zero-ELEC said, they give an explanation, but it's very hand-wavy and doesn't make sense. In short, those quest-givers are indeed computer simulations, just like everyone else in Living Memory. I assume they just struggled to find a way to have quest-givers that existed both before and after the MSQ completed, and so they settled on something flimsy that they felt was passable enough. Not the worst plot hole in Living Memory at least.

Someone can clarify, but the impression I got was that they're a weak form of the ghost mobs that we dispatch all the time. Memory impressions fueled by a bit of aether.

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Originally Posted by Denishia

Someone can clarify, but the impression I got was that they're a weak form of the ghost mobs that we dispatch all the time. Memory impressions fueled by a bit of aether.

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They look like they actually are digital by how a few of them disappear after quests. Which doesn't really change the general angle of things, it just means we're going technobabble rather than mystic nonsense.

My general vibe is that we turned off the machine in full, but there's still a few subroutines that didn't get, ignored, or superceded the shutdown command. A couple of them actually do seem like they might've been on a higher priority, which would make some amount of sense; the greeter was still around, and the two quests in Asyle Volcane are both from important people to Living Memory specifically. And the rest just elevated themselves through pure will, I guess.

Since the NPCs who stuck around to give quests did so from sheer force of will, it was probably dynamis.

"Probably dynamis" should be my new answer for hand-wavy XIV writing, and also serves to make fun of Endwalker. It's the equivalent of "a wizard did it", or "it's magic, I don't have to explain it".

Those with unfinished business are able to maintain their form until that business has been completed. Whatever you do, do not consider what their ability to do that says about the personhood of the Endless. We've been assured they aren't people, so just hold onto that assurance as tight as you can and forge ahead.

The endless are essentially tech ghosts. And like traditional ghosts a big enough anchor like regret can keep them around in defiance of the natural order for a time.

Living Memory NPCs are the result of Electrope capacitors that haven't yet discharged. Completing their quest completes the circuit to ground and lets the charge dissipate

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Originally Posted by Layte_Aeon

The endless are essentially tech ghosts. And like traditional ghosts a big enough anchor like regret can keep them around in defiance of the natural order for a time.

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This.

Like, it's not some deep or complicated thing. Everyone in Living Memory is a digital ghost. Most fade away when we turn off the terminals but some remain behind since they have "unfinished business".