Quote Originally Posted by Morningstar1337 View Post
I still of the opinion that the creation magic was the line that was crossed here. That somehow the planet was enraged by the existence of godlike entities (or more accurately the hubris that caused) and decided to hijack, regardless of the source of the aether used for it.
That makes absolutely no sense though.

For one thing, creation magic was natural to the Ancients. We're told even newvorn babes could do it and it came as naturally to them as breathing. Some people had greater or lesser capacity, but every single one of them was born to it. Why would the planet destroy them for something they were naturally gifted with?

Secondly, the statement that the Final Days stripped them of their creation magic is wrong. In fact it made their magic run wild to the point they were creating things uncontrollably. However this was also only a symptom of the Final Days, because what was truly killing the planet is something that's described like life becoming anathema to itself. Every living thing started twisting and dying, and the Lifestream effectively started strangling itself and was on the edge of dying altogether. So why would the planet's solution to supposedly being overtaxed be to completely kill itself and turn the whole world into a barren rock? Even when a similar scenario happened in FFVII the planet's response was to try and destroy humanity, not itself.

Lastly, the Sound that started the apocalypse first appeared in another society on another continent to Amaurot, and systematically continued appearing everywhere outward from that until almost nothing was left. It doesn't make sense for it to be Amaurot's fault when it originated with another civilization entirely.

I'm not saying that it couldn't have been caused by creation magic in SOME way, but this framework of "the Amaurotine abused their power and the world killed them for it" really does not stand up to scrutiny.