Did the Ancient Amaurotians... (minor spoilers)

[Iscah]

I always thought it was weird that so many people insist the Convocation's plan was to commit genocide against a hoard of mortal men created by Zodiark when the story doesn't specify what the "new life" is anywhere that I can remember. But maybe I just like the Amaurotines too much to believe they'd do that lol

From replaying Shadowbringers recently, my understanding is that the Ancients' original plan involved sacrificing an unspecified portion of life to Zodiark, but at this point Emet is intending to sacrifice all the inferior humans. I'd have to find quotes again though.

[MrThinker]

From replaying Shadowbringers recently, my understanding is that the Ancients' original plan involved sacrificing an unspecified portion of life to Zodiark, but at this point Emet is intending to sacrifice all the inferior humans. I'd have to find quotes again though.

Check the scripts for 'A Greater Purpose' and 'Shadowbringers' if you can.

[Theodric]

I'm increasingly convinced that Hydaelyn is a net negative force.

Mm. It's interesting that the more we learn of Hydaelyn the less her words and actions line up with what has been revealed elsewhere. I'm quite eager to see how 5.3 plays out in that regard.

[MirronTulaxia]

Honestly if anything I'm more convinced she is a net gain. The Ascians end game being "sacrifice everyone else for the sake of some dead people" is not exactly a justified action. As the entity primarily opposing them Hydaelyn seems infinitely more justified in comparison.

[sarehptar]

While we can debate to what extent the Hydaelyn convocation had in mind for summoning her (I don't really agree that just because a brief ten second clip fails to mention it that it wasn't a reason, especially as with Emet's bias it would make more sense to not attribute a more benign reason to Hydaelyn's summoning)... It's sad what happened to the Ancients, but given it's entirely possible it was caused by their overuse of Creation Magic (ancient civilization uses magic for too much and causes problems is pretty common after all)...

Combining two replies because I'm on mobile but I don't think the sacrifice was beastmen--I'm not convinced all life on the planet had to be present before the Sundering. Aren't the Ixal implied to be descendants of Allagan bioengineering? Our current beast tribes probably could have evolved or/been created over the thousands of years since Amaurot, just like the spoken races have probably diversified over those years. Personally if I was going to peg something as "new life"... Animals exist. XD At the very least we know that Amaurotines viewed themselves as stewards of their planet, including research specifically into plants and animals, so they could have been planning to cultivate a ton of living but non-sentient beings for a sacrifice?

Now actually replying to you Mirron--the "ten second clip" we see comes from Anamnesis Anyder, which is not part of Emet's false Amaurot but instead the ruins of the real Amaurot, so Emet's bias wouldn't have affected it.

And the idea that the Ancients' "overuse" of Creation Magic brought on their downfall is, as far as I can tell, purely fan-made/fan speculation that never particularly made sense (at least not to me, maybe I missed something...)--the Amaurotines' Creation Magic comes from their own nigh bottomless personal pool of aether; they're not drawing on the planet's energy to create these things? And they're not messing with the Lifestream either since the none of the things they create have souls... What impact could this have had on the planet? I think people want to blame the Amaurotines because that feels poetic--the plotline of "pride goeth before a fall" is older than dirt. I'm not saying it might not ultimately be true, but I think a lot of people are jumping on that possibility without much proof from the actual text of the story.

As for whether the Ascians now are monsters... Of course we see them that way when we're one of the ants they intend to squish. But from their perspective... It's probably akin to the question "If an art studio catches fire, do you save the artist or the art?" If you save the creator, you can get new and better creations. If you save the art, you lose the future. The Ascians view mortal beings as flawed, twisted creations--it literally makes no sense for them to value us over their race of creators.

[MirronTulaxia]

While we can definitely rule out the Ixal we can presumably say that the Spoken races and the Beastmen on Nordhvant as well as the Source were probably present to some extent, given that there isn't any logical reason for there to be that much overlap.

My point with Anamnesis Anyder is not that it was biased, but that it was ten seconds. It's an absurdly short window of time into a, presumably, complex matter. I'm not taking that as the entirety of what happened, especially when Y'shtola is working to find more information.

As far as how the Ancients could impact things it could simply be about disturbing the natural balance and rhythm of the planet with their creations. It doesn't have to be draining the planet to impact it after all.

And the Ascians personal view of things doesn't really matter. No one views themselves as a monster. They have all manner of justifications for their actions, some of them possibly even to varying degrees accurate. Kuja viewed himself as the center of IX's universe and decided it was fitting to erase all of existence because he wouldn't be around. Are we to therefore conclude his actions were morally just? I, at least, find that to be a pretty weak form of moral reasoning. The Ascians, likewise, are no better than Kuja, if not even worse because at least Kuja had a moment of redemption that I sincerely doubt will exist for the Ascians, regardless of how they view things.

[Insertusernamehere]

About question: I believe SHB main story taken / inspired from "Utopia: Amaurot (Thomas More/1516)"
From wiki (Utopia): "all people wear the same types of simple clothes and there are no dressmakers making fine apparel"
Rich / poor, ignorant / educated etc.. no longer subject to direct judgement if they have same appearance. For this reason they wear same clothes and live as equal.

I think story very simple:

"The Voice of Emet-Selch: The fabric of our star began to fray..."
"The Voice of Emet-Selch: The star was fading. We saw we had to weave its laws anew..."

I think he is referring a star dying. It run out of fuel.. and they have to alter laws of their star (apparently failed).
I believe they experienced a stars collapse prior to supernova. Possibility supernova caused creation of Hydaelyn (our planet infused by crystal maybe good Ascian guys doing? not sure...) and other altered versions of Hydaelyn (multiple similar planets) also caused destruction of Zodiark (their planet(s)).

Story also throws some details here and there but most of them makes no sense to me. I believe those details not meant to be explained, place holder for possible further story line.

[TeraRamis]

About question: I believe SHB main story taken / inspired from "Utopia: Amaurot (Thomas More/1516)"
From wiki (Utopia): "all people wear the same types of simple clothes and there are no dressmakers making fine apparel"
Rich / poor, ignorant / educated etc.. no longer subject to direct judgement if they have same appearance. For this reason they wear same clothes and live as equal.

I think story very simple:

"The Voice of Emet-Selch: The fabric of our star began to fray..."
"The Voice of Emet-Selch: The star was fading. We saw we had to weave its laws anew..."

I think he is referring a star dying. It run out of fuel.. and they have to alter laws of their star (apparently failed).
I believe they experienced a stars collapse prior to supernova. Possibility supernova caused creation of Hydaelyn (our planet infused by crystal maybe good Ascian guys doing? not sure...) and other altered versions of Hydaelyn (multiple similar planets) also caused destruction of Zodiark (their planet(s)).

Story also throws some details here and there but most of them makes no sense to me. I believe those details not meant to be explained, place holder for possible further story line.

They seem to convolute and confuse the word 'star' and 'planet.' Most of the text leads me to believe that they were living on the 'star,' which is - in fact - a planet.

I've seen no evidence from the dialogue that this was a solar-borne disaster. Emet Selch describes noises coming from the ground beneath their feet as the first warning signs of doom.

It is very curious that more emphasis hasn't been put on discovering the nature of the original calamity, and why the ancients concluded that the only means to prevent it was to summon - or, really, create - a dark-oriented self-aware God-being to stave off disaster. Why wouldn't you just sacrifice the lives and heal the planet directly? Or, even more to the point: why not just pack up and leave, using your magic to create an ideal new world elsewhere?

I appreciate that "the story is the story," but when the route character trod from point A to point B is inexplicably confused, it leads me to want questions answered.

I have a feeling that we are going to eventually learn that a disaster did not presage the creation of Zodiark, but that Zodiark was created (accidentally or otherwise) and then disaster occurred, requiring sacrifice to stave it off. This would help explain our character's (our soul's) departure from the Council of 14 as some form of protest against a reckless course of action, and would also go a long way to answering why the Amaurotians would develop such a stupid solution (we've got to sacrifice half our populace twice) to 'save' the world - they had no other choice (and would also explain why the opposition elected to create Hydaelan as an imperfect foil).

My narrative Spidey Sense is telling me that this is some kind of analogous tale to the fall of Zeal in Chrono Trigger.

[TinkerTech]

They seem to convolute and confuse the word 'star' and 'planet.' Most of the text leads me to believe that they were living on the 'star,' which is - in fact - a planet.

I've seen no evidence from the dialogue that this was a solar-borne disaster. Emet Selch describes noises coming from the ground beneath their feet as the first warning signs of doom.

I'm not an expert in Japanese language by any means, but I've read elsewhere that this draws from the Japanese language using the same word for 'planet' and 'star'. (You see this more egregiously in FFXV) It's merely a translation hiccup. Not really anything to read too much into.... Unless that's what they WANT us to think. /s

I read the debacle as "We created Zodiark to revive our home and stave off disaster, but it cost us over half our population. We want them back." And somehow, by un-sundering the shards, they will achieve his. By default, once a life is gone, it's gone. So either the lost Aumorites are in some limbo they can be retrieved from, or Emet-Sech and Co. are in a state of extreme denial. (Which, considering everything they did led to their world being shattered and their loved ones lost, can you blame them?)

As for "Why didn't they look more into what was causing it?" Personally, I think it stems from a lack of adversity. There was no war in their world, no struggle for survival until the Sound happened. They were caught completely off-guard and weren't used to thinking under pressure. They just wanted it to STOP. Really, the Ascians should be using the world and its people as it currently is to help them solve this problem; they're used to situations like that and working to find the root cause, not just reacting to the symptoms. (and, being in a sundered state, may be immune to the mind-rending effects of the Sound.)

[Morningstar1337]

I'm not an expert in Japanese language by any means, but I've read elsewhere that this draws from the Japanese language using the same word for 'planet' and 'star'. (You see this more egregiously in FFXV) It's merely a translation hiccup. Not really anything to read too much into.... Unless that's what they WANT us to think. /s

I don't find it a hiccup. It was going on too long for these instances to be isolated incidents. And it seems to be just poetic enough to fit into English as a synonym.

Plus AFAIK, several planets were confused as starts before their discovery, Venus, Jupiter, etc.