Seeds of 7.0 and on?

[Alleo]

No. You've amended it to "Nearly half" in the last post by you so now yes, but "Nearly half" dose not equal "half" you posted in the 1st.

And in the next sentence Hythlo states "that another half sacrificed themselves" sounding to me that it was quite near half the people. Even in your pie chart its quite near the half. So I am not really sure why we are talking about semnatics here? Hythlo himself probably has not counted the amount of people either.

My whole point was that Hydealyn always had way less amount of aether to be reproduced which is why she needed to split him (and no that makes him not death). We only know that one member (which is probably the old us) went away. There is a high chance that the very same person did a part in summoning Hydealyn (and its the theory I follow) but for all we know they could have been against that too. There is also no ingame text saying that she needed more fuel afterwards and Elidibus mentions summoners as in more than one.

My whole answer to you was just because you said that the first sacrifice was only there to fuel him and the rest was for his actions. With Hythlo in your screenshots says that it has not happened. He already stopped the calamity with the first round of sacrifice.

Also it may be true that they are not there or it could simply be that Zodiark somehow sent them in the rift to save them when he noticed that he was losing. There are many possiblities here.

About the OP: The cloud in the sky could simply be the door where the meteorits came from. We know from the dungeon that the Ancient ones created their own nightmares and we see them spawn in just like Ascians spawn into the room. We also know that the sound came from the earth itself, it did not start from the sky. So this violett cloud could simply be created by the fears of a bunch of ancient ones that even the sky would turn against them.

[Erendis]

There was also talk of time before the Calamity where 'Gods walked Eorzea' but they fled before the First Umbral Era abandoning mortals to the Calamities. To a Sundered, Amaurotines would certainly look like gods in a fractured memory.

A while ago someone here mentioned that unsundered Ascians spent some time with sundered people before resorting to calamities (I might have missed that part in msq since I do not recall it) so it would fit that lore part.

[MrThinker]

A while ago someone here mentioned that unsundered Ascians spent some time with sundered people before resorting to calamities (I might have missed that part in msq since I do not recall it) so it would fit that lore part.

That is currently a theory to explain the gap between the Sundering and the 1st Calamity (which are NOT the same thing).
The timeline is:
Age of Ancients
Sundering
Age of Gods
1st Calamity
Age of Man

The theory is that during the Age of gods Lahabrea, Emet and Elidibus may have spent time trying to adjust to the sundered world, and their actions coupled with the half remembered times of the ancients may have given rise to the tales of the 'gods' in different civilizations.

[ObsidianFire]

The Unsundered Ascians would have to spend time with Sundered People... to instigate the 1st Umbral Calamity. The Calamities are never random and are always a result of the Ascians manipulating events to cause a Calamity. Emet-Selch even admits to it.

It should be noted that Sundering and killing aren't the same thing. So when Hydaelyn Sundered Zoidark, she didn't kill him. And probably didn't kill the Ancients already living in the world. So I can easily see it being the case that Ancients were Sundered and got all their memories of who they were and what their own history was all messed with and some of them on the 1st Shard recorded what they remembered of their own history. Like... if you remember people creating things, but you can't do that anymore, what would you call that memory?

[QT_Melon]

There was already a multi page debate about the Sundering/Murdering difference and unfortunately, because of people's mindsets there's no definite conclusion that what happened wasn't as bad even if technically not the same thing.

So the problem arises when you argue from the standpoint as not being the "same thing" it's usually to say "Sundering is a much worse crime than being dead" and that's where that viewpoint makes things murky like "Rape is less bad than murder"

And while I'm hand wringing to make that analogy because "Well it's just a video game" this is where I think culturally how it comes across to people it's problematic in story telling and debates to say "sundering is less bad mmkay"?

Especially if there's no solid conclusion every life in existence was okay with sundering over the attempt of being sacrificed without their consent.

The only bonus for Sundering at this point is the opportunity to become "non sundered" the other one is if Sundering was a consequential option.

Keep in mind I get what the story is trying to "do" in the sense of setting up the good/bad, but I think has a hit or miss because of what I see in debates due to an international audience and generation/cultural aspects in morality.

Anyways, in terms of finalizing the Ascian/Hydaelyn/Zodiark story arc, I'd agree with previous posts it would make a great circular arc if there was a larger danger that ends up with the Ascians sacrificing one last time because all in all it was them trying to save their star in the first place. So bigger picture scenario (other arguments aside).

[Alleo]

Well since people are still there which means that they must have survived the sundering (cant create babies without parents) then its not murder. If losing your memories or power (since we dont even know if people lost their memories or if they simply split and each part still got them) is as bad as killing something and eating their souls (thus they cant even be reborn again) then you can see it as that, but people not agreeing to it dont have the false mindset.

Heck at that time it were ancient ones that decided to summon Hydaelyn and they thought that this was the better alternative between being probably someday tempered by Zodiark and having the new life being mass sacrificed which might have one day even turned on them if it was not enough. So whole mass death including getting your soul eaten vs being split thus losing your power and maybe memories.

So yes imo sundering is less bad. Because with that option you are able to have a life and can make new memories (if they are even lost) with the downside of having no god like power anymore (which might have been a good side effect to stop another calamity from happening again) while also having free will. The other option was either death which includes your soul or maybe even tempering if you are an Ancient.

About cultural aspect in morality: Our own view of morality will fall into this and we will see certain things different because of that but the game itself also has its own morality, which we can see through reactions, actions and rules.

[Mornyr]

My whole answer to you was just because you said that the first sacrifice was only there to fuel him and the rest was for his actions. With Hythlo in your screenshots says that it has not happened. He already stopped the calamity with the first round of sacrifice.

Also it may be true that they are not there or it could simply be that Zodiark somehow sent them in the rift to save them when he noticed that he was losing. There are many possibilities here.

Hmm, you might be missing something about the whole fuel/create comment. As far as I know, somewhere earlier in the thread made an awkward post or was trying to say that the initial amount of people who were sacrificed had somehow or potentially influenced Zodiark's creation, either with grudges or different views of his Concept. Or something to that effect.

I think Fay was trying to say that the Ancients that were sacrificed were A) willing, so grudges shouldn't have been an issue anyway and B) that they only gave up their life energies and weren't actually involved in his creation. So basically "The group offered up their own pure life energies to act as fuel for the Convocation (minus what was presumably our original soul) to create Zodiark".

But that's just my interpretation, honestly the whole back-and-forths feel convoluted as hell.

Hmm, and i'd have to go back through a fair few cutscenes, but I feel like it was definitely stated somewhere that the person who left the Convocation was the person who started the Hydaelyn movement afterwards, or at least very heavily implied. But i'd need to check, unless someone else remembers better than me.

My whole point was that Hydealyn always had way less amount of aether to be reproduced which is why she needed to split him (and no that makes him not death).

Rather than saying she needed to split him, it sounds more to me like that's all she could actually do, regardless of whether she wanted to do more and kill him or not. Assuming that was even a possibility. I still like the thought that they might have been 'two sides of the same coin' so to speak, which would make killing the other one somewhat dicey.

Someone mentioned before about the Lore team confirming Zodiark being stronger and even without that I think we can all agree on that point. How much stronger is a different question, but I feel the gap can't have been too large, otherwise they wouldn't have had to fight so long/much and Zodiark would've just stomped Hydaelyn into the ground straight away
.
If the gap in power wasn't too large, putting Hydaelyn at only somewhat of a disadvantage, I could definitely see it as eventually being something like a final gambit/betting-everything-on-a-final-blow type of situation for Hydaelyn, maybe realizing she would eventually lose, where Zodiark hesitated to commit that much and came out on the losing end. Maybe it was a difference in what they were made to protect or their goals, for example Zodiark being made to safeguard the entire planet and realizing what a full-scale confrontation would create, with Hydaelyn being made to safeguard the new life and risking or knowing the potential outcome if she won.

That's just more speculation though, but I thought it was an interesting line of thought at any rate. And it does seem rather logical to me with what we know, but that could easily be turned on its head with future revelations.

Also, while I remember. In terms of the sequence of events/paintings, Emet-Selch says here:

Now if Zodiark somehow managed to prevent just these 3 from being Sundered at the end (which I find unlikely, but that's just my personal opinion and not a fact) then this can already be considered essentially 1st hand information, he experienced their fights and even if he didn't personally witness the conclusion, it wouldn't be that hard to figure out, especially considering all the memory fragments.

Which also ties in with my ideas about if they were off planet at the time (the more likely option in my mind). If they did go gallivanting off planet for any reason, either a threat or something else, we don't know when they left.
Presumably it was before the creation of Hydaelyn, maybe when her group was getting all up in arms about Zodiark, but it should have been before the fights started anyway. Otherwise there would need to be a serious problem for the Ascians to go off and do something else during that time. Which does bring into question how much they might truly know about events while they were gone, however.

The Ascians have their own version of the Echo. Plenty of people have already mentioned that memory fragments were around and you would guess somewhat common not long after it happened. It's also been mentioned that the Ascians spent time amongst the Sundered at first.

All of those together make it seem to me that it would actually be pretty simple for them to piece together a timeline of events during the time they were away. Not to mention the shards of Zodiark himself which i'm sure they could glean some information from. I imagine it would be tedious and there could still be gaps in their knowledge, but learning what actually happened to the best of their ability would probably be the first thing on their minds when they got back.

For example Zoidarks rewrite of reality may have been to make the Lifestream and used creation/life energy didn't return to planet prior to the rewrite it just returned to the user or just became a blob or some such. So its possible Zoidark maintained the creation/life energy as a hole offered up in creation.

I actually think this is a really interesting idea. After all, we have these:

and also this:

Now, none of the NPCs seem at all worried about these bunch of Cubus just aimlessly wandering around. One of them even sends us on a quest to go catch one, so we can use it's energy to make a real cloak and stop dressing like rebel punks.
I could definitely see the second portion of Zodiark sacrifices being used to 'quicken' the lifestream, so to speak.

If that is the case, I have to wonder how that would have affected the Ascians creation magic. It's something of a vague idea of mine and i'm not too sure where i'm going with it, but I can't actually recall us seeing a current Ascian doing any Creation-like magic? In front of us that is. Though do correct me if i'm wrong, there's plenty of stuff in this game i either missed or don't remember haha.

Emet saving Y'shtola seems like a special case in my opinion, for starters, he doesn't have to worry about a physical body for her, since all the Scions on the First are just solid souls. So I imagine that would reduce the amount of effort required quite a bit. Another thing is that he's not creating something new/from scratch, he's basically just...'reconstituting' her soul out of the Lifestream, I suppose.

As for his version of Amaurot, it's already made by the time we get there, so we don't know how he did it, but considering that the First is basically 9/10 pure Light I feel like that should give him enough power. Even more so if he could somehow use the broken fragments as some kind of foundation/resonance.

As a side note, going back to the cave paintings for a minute...although when I thought of this i'd forgotten about the half-remembered references so it's much more of a stretch now, based on something Elidibus says:

I'd be super curious to know if there was actually more behind the paintings and any other possible intact clues left behind on other Shards than they're letting on. Sure, it's probably the simplest explanation, a bunch of people half-remembering the events and worshiping them as their creator gods. But I think it would be cool if there was something more to it.

Like, just going off Elidibus' words, I feel like it probably shouldn't be one of Hydaelyn's creators that made the paintings. Even if they didn't remember the part where they don't want anyone else to know, they should have Tempered or partly Tempered by the creation of Hydaelyn, who also apparently doesn't want anyone to remember. Though I guess they would've just made her like that.

So the directive should have been something pretty deeply ingrained in them, or Hydaelyn should have been able to stop them or fully wipe the memories they want people to forget. This is, presumable, before Midgard came along and made a pact to seal her powers, even if she was weakened by her fight with Zodiark she should still have more power than she does at the present point of the game.

In that case, maybe it was a Zodiark supporter, or maybe a Neutral faction, or maybe someone else managed to escape being Sundered and is hiding out somewhere, like a bubble dimension outside the star.

Though more likely it's just them wanting people to forget they used to 'all-powerful' and reducing the amount of people that might try and help the Ascians willingly bring Zodiark back. Not that they really have trouble finding helpers anyway...
But also my main guess is them wanting to give the 'new life' a fresh start, so to speak. Like, 'the old era has ended, let the new generation carry on and the old fade into obscurity' type of thing. Food for thought though. It's entirely possible there's a whole other reason Hydaelyn's creators wanted to wipe the memories of that time away.

Almost a 10k word post, my god. It kinda got away from me so i'm sure I forgot some things I wanted to talk about, but oh well, it's already plenty long...if not too long haha. I feel like I should add a "You are about to watch many cutscenes" warning to the start...
Edit: Hmm, pictures don't seem to be showing...I'll try and work on that. Fixed, and tried to speace out my blocks of text more >_>

[QT_Melon]

Yeah I figure the circular retort was gonna come back, and completely miss the point - so not worth the time debating since it wold make my point moot (feed into redundancy) about that whole issue.

What I would like to know though is more about the other cave paintings.

One of them looks pretty obvious showing the WoL fighting off the Darkness, another looks almost like some kind of explanation of what's happening with the souls, and lifesteam/sundering? Still trying to figure out the third painting with the Red Drawings, though it looks like something was slain and is lying at the center person's feet (can't tell if that's supposed to be a giant seashell or something else lol).

[MrThinker]

Yeah I figure the circular retort was gonna come back, and completely miss the point - so not worth the time debating since it wold make my point moot (feed into redundancy) about that whole issue.

What I would like to know though is more about the other cave paintings.

One of them looks pretty obvious showing the WoL fighting off the Darkness, another looks almost like some kind of explanation of what's happening with the souls, and lifesteam/sundering? Still trying to figure out the third painting with the Red Drawings, though it looks like something was slain and is lying at the center person's feet (can't tell if that's supposed to be a giant seashell or something else lol).

Are you talking about the cave paintings we briefly gloss over with Y'shtola in the hideout of the Children of the Everlasting Dark? or the paintings in the Qitana ravel before the 2nd boss? (unless those dont exist and Im just conflating the caves with bardaam's mettle.)

[Alleo]

Hmm, you might be missing something about the whole fuel/create comment. As far as I know, somewhere earlier in the thread made an awkward post or was trying to say that the initial amount of people who were sacrificed had somehow or potentially influenced Zodiark's creation, either with grudges or different views of his Concept. Or something to that effect.

My first post in this thread was about the post that said that the first sacrifice only fuled Zodiark and it was the second that made it possible for him to act. Thus why in their view Hydealyn also must have needed more fuel. I pointed out (and it was in the screenshots) that Zodiark already acted with the first sacrifice by stopping the calamity. So Hydealyn herself has probably only needed the one sacrifice (which we dont know the amount of people, but its 100% less than Zodiark).

The other point you brought up is more in the case of that their feelings can change their creations. We have quests that show that just one slip in concentration can create something quite different and that their fears created all those horrible monsters that in turn killed them, which fueled the fears of the survivors. Since Zodiark was created while the calamity was going on in their city it might be possible that those who sacrificed themselves felt conflicting amount of emotions and might have changed the concept. Maybe it was never planned for him to temper people but the fear of losing control gave him the power to control. (As an example) It might not be the case but imo its quite telling that primaes that are taught by the ascians will always temper while those with the echo (or in Zenos words, those with a more powerful mind) wont be tempered. So it could be that it was never meant to be that way.

Oh I agree that the 14th was probably involved in creating her, especially since we are now one of her champions. It could be that the WoLs are those that once summoned her but showing how WoLs can go against her own wishes this for me means that we are not tempered and if that is the case then tempering was something which was included in Zodiark on purpose or by accident.

Yeah I figure the circular retort was gonna come back, and completely miss the point - so not worth the time debating since it wold make my point moot (feed into redundancy) about that whole issue.

Instead of trying to attack the poster as missing the point, try to focus on the argument and take them down. Or what did you want to get with posting something like that in a thread that kinda had nothing to do with it? People will have different views on it and I am of the opinion that losing your power or memories by being split is in no way near murder. And I am quite sure that there a lot of people out there that also see murder as much worse than rape. Others might disagree.