Revelations from SHADOWBRINGERS

[MrThinker]

/snip
It's unforgivable either way (which is why I also question the WoLs choice to change events in ShB to avoid an unfavourable future) but motive can matter. /snip

Forgive me if I am misinterpreting you here, but it's not like the WoL is actively advocating genocide to restore their friends. For them, that 8th Calamity was/is a future that hasn't happened yet, and is thus something they would (rightly, I believe) want to avoid. Your statement would work better if it was directed to G'raha and the future Ironworks, who were the actual ones who made the choice to change events.

[Scintilla]

Forgive me if I am misinterpreting you here, but it's not like the WoL is actively advocating genocide to restore their friends. For them, that 8th Calamity was/is a future that hasn't happened yet, and is thus something they would (rightly, I believe) want to avoid. Your statement would work better if it was directed to G'raha and the future Ironworks, who were the actual ones who made the choice to change events.

I'm not quite sure how best to phrase my grievance so forgive me if I don't quite get my point across:

Emet-Selch sought to restore past lives at the cost of present ones. This is acknowledged to be wrong.
The WoL (and the Scions, G'raha, and the Ironworks) sought to protect present lives at the cost of future ones. This appears to be considered of little/no concern.

Whilst true, those lives didn't exist in the present, the Scions (and G'raha Tia, especially) were still aware of their future existence. They knew that the calamity had caused widespread death, but they also knew that there were survivors, albeit living through difficult times. They were in full knowledge that changing events would likely lead to these lives never being brought about. G'raha himself even describes it as a sacrifice made.
The recent short stories added to this (though, I admit, the WoL and Scions wouldn't have known about it); G'raha described it as a willing sacrifice made by the survivors of the calamity. In contrast, the short story describing the post-calamity events stated that the vast majority opposed the plan, with many refusing to help or choosing to leave the Ironworks altogether.

The only point that makes me feel slightly better about it is the number of lives saved against those lost. Whilst we don't know exactly how many lives the Ascians would have sought to restore, the cost would have been monumental. In the case of the Scions, the number of lives saved would likely have exceeded those lost.

Unfortunately, it always comes to mind when I take part in discussions here. I would feel I was being insincere if I was to completely overlook this whilst condemning others for actions which bear some similarities, even if there are a few key differences.

[MrThinker]

I understand where you are coming from, but again I believe that grievance would be the most appropriately directed at solely G'raha and the future Ironworks (and maybe Urianger since he was brought into the plan), since they were aware that those lives in the future had already existed. Not so for our character and the other Scions, who only thought of it as a prophecy of what may be, rather than cold hard fact until they reached a point of no return.

At the same time, the short story only deals with the time period following the calamity during which Cid was still alive. At that point, it would have been reasonable to believe that even with the state of the world as it was, it would have been possible to recover, which in turn was why Cid and Nero left the theory as a 'gift' rather than an edict for the Ironworks, but the situation (dead land, poisonous crops, total state of anarchy) does not seem to have improved even after 2 centuries have passed, and seemed extremely unlikely to improve.

If there was no way to reverse the effects of Black Rose on the environment, then I believe the Ironworks had reasonable grounds to think "welp, we are doomed and there's nothing we can do to stop that, but perhaps we can make a miracle to prevent this from ever happening". At the same time we have no idea how long Umbral Eras usually last, because we dont really have a complete timeline. We only know that the 7th Umbral Era was 5 years, and that the 8th was still ongoing more than 2 centuries afterwards, so we can't really give a reasonable assumption on whether or not the Ironworks were premature on their plan and should have waited longer to see if the world recovered.

The difference with Emet and the ascians situation, is that life was still thriving after the sundering. Yes, in altered form they were not familiar with, but thriving nonetheless. This does not seem to be the case with the 8th Umbral Calamity.

[Edax]

I'm not quite sure how best to phrase my grievance so forgive me if I don't quite get my point across:

Emet-Selch sought to restore past lives at the cost of present ones. This is acknowledged to be wrong.
The WoL (and the Scions, G'raha, and the Ironworks) sought to protect present lives at the cost of future ones. This appears to be considered of little/no concern.

Whilst true, those lives didn't exist in the present, the Scions (and G'raha Tia, especially) were still aware of their future existence. They knew that the calamity had caused widespread death, but they also knew that there were survivors, albeit living through difficult times. They were in full knowledge that changing events would likely lead to these lives never being brought about. G'raha himself even describes it as a sacrifice made.
The recent short stories added to this (though, I admit, the WoL and Scions wouldn't have known about it); G'raha described it as a willing sacrifice made by the survivors of the calamity. In contrast, the short story describing the post-calamity events stated that the vast majority opposed the plan, with many refusing to help or choosing to leave the Ironworks altogether.

The only point that makes me feel slightly better about it is the number of lives saved against those lost. Whilst we don't know exactly how many lives the Ascians would have sought to restore, the cost would have been monumental. In the case of the Scions, the number of lives saved would likely have exceeded those lost.

Unfortunately, it always comes to mind when I take part in discussions here. I would feel I was being insincere if I was to completely overlook this whilst condemning others for actions which bear some similarities, even if there are a few key differences.

The problem here is that the Warrior of Light can’t even make the decision to accept fate. By being pulled into The First, the first crack in a pattern of cracks to the timeline was made. Add to that, the WoL doesn’t even have enough knowledge of the original future to even try and restore the original timeline as close as possible. Trying to let fate take it’s course is not a viable choice for the WoL. It was however in Emet’s grasp to go back in time and prevent the sundering if he were not so already blinded by his intent on committing genocide in the present timeline.

[Elladie]

It's been three months since I finished ShB, and there is still one thing no one has been able to explain satisfactorily during all these back-and-forth discussions.

Why is it okay for Hydaelyn to have ended the existence of everything on the Source by splitting it into fourteen bits but not okay for Emet Selch to end the existence of all those bits by bringing them back (rejoining) them into their original form? I am struggling to see how these two acts differ.

If separating them isn't killing them, how is rejoining them killing them, to put in another way?

[Alleo]

The Ascian's appear to have little to no respect for the sundered beings. But are they looking to cause rejoinings for no other reason than to kill all sundered beings (Genocide)? Or is their motivation the restoration of lives ended by Hydaelyn during the Sundering, with the loss of sundered life being a consequence of that?

The problem is that their plan is the same as it was at their time. And before Hydealyn came up and split the souls everyone had a complete soul. So all his talk about us being not alive is bad anyway because they were ready to kill living beings with complete souls too.

In the end no matter what they decided to sacrifice, a bigger part of their surviving people were against it. You see it in the cave image and Hythlo also said it divided their race for the first time. Would that really count if it was only a handful ancients against it and the majority for it? And on top of that the Ascians were tempered to Zodiark.

About the extinction of the race part: Was this ever stated ingame that their race would cease to exist? Because as far as I can remember they just talked about leaving the planet in the hands of the new life. Of course this could hint that their race was at end but for me it may have simply been the argument that the death should stay death and that the new souls born after the calamity will decide on the fate of the planet now. I mean before the calamity the ancients were the only race living there and now after the calamity they for the first time might have had to live next to other races. Thus they might not believe to have the right to "rule" over them. I mean there was enough ancient ones left to divide the race and for one part to summon Hydealyn. Unlike the spoken races now they also got very old. I dont see a reason on why they would not be able to reproduce again and over time get the numbers up again.

Forgive me if I am misinterpreting you here, but it's not like the WoL is actively advocating genocide to restore their friends. For them, that 8th Calamity was/is a future that hasn't happened yet, and is thus something they would (rightly, I believe) want to avoid. Your statement would work better if it was directed to G'raha and the future Ironworks, who were the actual ones who made the choice to change events.

Yes it was not the WoLs decision it was the one from the future. And as we know their world seems to be beyond saving and it was not even the future Ironworks that did this. It was a lot of people still living there who had big respect for the WoL and decided that our life was worth theirs. In a way you could say that their sacrifice was similiar to the ones the ancient did. The ancients sacrificed themselves to give some of their people a chance at a future and the people 200 years in the future sacrificed theirs to give us and in turn many more people a future. (Its made quite clear that the black rose was too destructive to the world and even killed the soil) And we only knew about this bad future when we were already on the first thus change already started.

[Rannie]

It's been three months since I finished ShB, and there is still one thing no one has been able to explain satisfactorily during all these back-and-forth discussions.

Why is it okay for Hydaelyn to have ended the existence of everything on the Source by splitting it into fourteen bits but not okay for Emet Selch to end the existence of all those bits by bringing them back (rejoining) them into their original form? I am struggling to see how these two acts differ.

If separating them isn't killing them, how is rejoining them killing them, to put in another way?

The big difference is one didnt consist of killing millions of those people in the process of splitting while Emet is bring about mass genocide to bring the souls back together. One hand yeah a soul got split but the bodies where still alive. On the other hand death destruction and chaos to merge back what handful had lived and the others may get merged back in the lifestream but they are dead and have to wait for rebirth.

If you don't think there was any mass genocide just look at everything destroyed by Emet's lackey damn near screwing up with the flood of light. It wiped out 90% of the world plus there is also the 13th as well as the history of calamities. They brought about in the previous umbral eras.

Also for added emphasis the souls then after all are rejoined would then be killed off again to bring back those that willingly gave their lives to stop a world from being completely destroyed as well as gave them life.

[Crushnight]

It's been three months since I finished ShB, and there is still one thing no one has been able to explain satisfactorily during all these back-and-forth discussions.

Why is it okay for Hydaelyn to have ended the existence of everything on the Source by splitting it into fourteen bits but not okay for Emet Selch to end the existence of all those bits by bringing them back (rejoining) them into their original form? I am struggling to see how these two acts differ.

If separating them isn't killing them, how is rejoining them killing them, to put in another way?

I would say the biggest difference between the two is intent, Emet-Selch had every intention to kill every living being on every shard then sacrifice who knows how much life from the source to bring back the ones who sacrificed themselves to save the World, Hydaleyn intentions right now are not as well known she definitely wanted to keep Zodiark in check and she decided she needed to fight and split his power up but did she do it knowing what would happen? or was this all an unforeseen consequence? The former would put her as bad as Emet-Selch with mass murder, while the latter would paint Hydaleyn at worst as gross manslaughter.

Until we hear more from Hydaleyn herself as well as her creation/battle with Zodiark we cannot know what her intent was unlike Emet-Selch who was clear with his intentions, this leaves it up to the individual player to guess what Hydaleyn wanted and whether her actions were fully intentional or a consequence unforeseen.

[Scintilla]

snip

You’re probably right and more of the responsibility does lie with G’raha and, to some extent Urianger. At least, more so than with the WoL and other Scions. In the case of the Ironworks, whilst the knowledge was built upon their research, it wasn’t them that put it into action; they had left their knowledge to the future generations incase they chose to use it.

snip

I’d agree that, in the beginning, the WoL had pretty much no choice and G’raha’s secrecy meant that they were missing vital information until it was too late. However, they accepted enough of Urianger’s “vision” to act upon it, despite that “vision” showing there to have been survivors. Though, as MrThinker said, this may have been because the events depicted were taken as a possibility, not a certainty, hence some features such as survivor numbers may not have been taken to be completely correct.

snip

There’s still much we don’t know:
We know that they had planned to sacrifice ‘life’ to Zodiark to resurrect the sacrificed Ancients, but we don’t know exactly what that life consisted of; Did they intend to sacrifice people? Had they intended to sacrifice animals? Or plant life? Or both?
We also don’t know the exact numbers of support for the two conflicting sides. How accurate is a cave painting? Is its purpose simply to depict the sequence of major events? Can it be taken as 100% accurate, right down to tiny details such as number of people painted (particularly when any differences are very small)?
What we do know: Prior to Hydaelyn’s summoning a large proportion of Ancients willingly sacrificed themselves for Zodiark. After the second round of sacrifices and the plans for a third, a number of Ancients began to dissent. Despite this, the number of sacrifices made to summon Hydaelyn was lesser to those made to Zodiark, hence the need for Hydaelyn’s ability to split the opponent – as a balance. The disagreement having been described as ‘dividing society’ suggests that the number of Hydaelyn’s supporters was not small, but neither does it suggest that they were a majority.
Considering that Emet, Lahabrea and Elidibus were the only unsundered Ancients remaining (that we know of), I would say that this is unlikely? Despite having an Ancient Great/Grandfather, Varis and Zenos couldn’t be described as ‘Ancients’. Outwardly, it appears that the only characteristic that they may have obtained from Emet’s true self is an increased height.

The big difference is one didnt consist of killing millions of those people in the process of splitting while Emet is bring about mass genocide to bring the souls back together. One hand yeah a soul got split but the bodies where still alive. On the other hand death destruction and chaos to merge back what handful had lived and the others may get merged back in the lifestream but they are dead and have to wait for rebirth.

Do we know that splitting didn’t kill anyone? I don’t remember reading it anywhere, though perhaps it’s something I missed. Could you point me to where I could find that the person (not just the body) continued to live?

[Rannie]

Emet Selch himself showed exactly what Hydaelyn did when he was explaining it in SHB when he created that clone of Ryne. That didnt involve killing her.

He says, "if she were to strike you," while looking at Ryne and then snaps his fingers. A second Ryne materializes right next to her. "Two individuals, identical in appearance, yet reduced in all respects. Strength , intelligence, the soul itself- all is halved."

Which by the way before that he states plainly that she was summoned to enervate him.

Enervate: cause (someone) to feel drained of energy or vitality; weaken.

Return to Eulmore in the journal

Edit: On the terms of possible, for lack of a better term, collateral damage and death due to Hydaelyn and Zodiark fighting itself, you can not hold something like that against either of them as sometimes it does happen. The purposely killing people though was not something that Hydaelyn was summoned forth to do as that has been shown multiple times with her trying to stop the rejoining which cause mass genocide. The act of splitting did not kill.