Nature of the Sound

[Vyrerus]

So, I'll embrace the Chrono Trigger references in this regard, because I've been doing a Let's Play of it recently, and as such, have been ruminating both its translation/localization and JP scripts.

In Chrono Trigger in the infamous kingdom of Zeal(Jiru) there is a town of dreamers, Enhasa. In that place, the citizens of Zeal embrace an almost constant state of sleep in order to have dreams. Here you meet a creature named Doreen, who is strikingly the same as two creatures you met much earlier, Masa(Gran) and Mune(Leon). In English you go on to find out that these creatures are related, siblings even, but only two of them are part of a certain sword.

Well, if you dig into the differences between the English and JP script, you will find a line that was omitted/altered that fills in a huge gap that I wasn't even aware of until I read the original line. In JP, one of the dreamers of Enhasa states something along the lines of, "The creatures of our dreams sometimes materialize." It's phrased a bit more vague than that, but the implication is that the dream trio were brought into existence via the Enlightened Ones' dreams. This same NPC says that the power of Lavos-sama is what makes it possible.

Now, obviously we can't really draw 100% line for line, blow for blow comparison here, but Shadowbringers directly references Shakespeare's, "The Tempest." and also the movie, Forbidden Planet(which is also heavily inspired by The Tempest). In Forbidden Planet, the Krell destroy their own civilization by inadvertently making the monsters from their dreams a reality.

Were there to be a Lavos-like entity, whether they want to call it that or refer to it as the FF7 alien-parasite, or something else entirely, it would fit right in with this setting given this context. Also, given the OP is referencing the Ronkan murals, do note that the first monster you fight in the Qitana Ravel is a, "Ronkan Dreamer."

Really gets the imagination flowing, huh?

[Veloran]

Really gets the imagination flowing, huh?

Excellent catches. Something to add, in Chrono Trigger the kingdom of Zeal was destroyed by Lavos 12,000 years ago. Just so happens to be the exact time period we're given from the Final Days and Amaurot's destruction to the present day in XIV. It's a bit of a particularly specific coincidence.

[Kesey]

Now, obviously we can't really draw 100% line for line, blow for blow comparison here, but Shadowbringers directly references Shakespeare's, "The Tempest." and also the movie, Forbidden Planet(which is also heavily inspired by The Tempest). In Forbidden Planet, the Krell destroy their own civilization by inadvertently making the monsters from their dreams a reality.

But "The Tempest" monsters aren't represented by character's direct fears, they actually represented the natives of the new land (referring to the American colonies) and yes there is fear there, but its of the audience's making over the existence of peoples they already felt were sub-human. Furthermore, because the image of Amaurot that the WOL and the Scions see is creation of Emet's memory, using the area to heavily reference "The Tempest" directly calls back to a critical character in the play, Prospero, who is a mage who uses magic to manipulate the characters to do as he wants--just like Emet was doing. The fact that the racist under tone of Prospero and other European characters of the play tend to use racial identity to look down others then echoes how the Ascians have come to view the people of the source and the shards as lesser beings. This is literally thing about Shadowbringers that made me say that was "kind of genius" instead of the general "oh it references Shakespeare" of the story telling.

But the Shakespeare references don't end there. The main theme is called "Tomorrow and Tomorrow" which is titled as such to recall the famous "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" speech made by Macbeth, from the play Macbeth. What's key here is that Emet, much like Macbeth, believes they are invincible, destiny has chosen them rule and win, and can't conceive how they will fall. Macbeth's speech is the moment that he realizes that following the evil path of murder has lead him to a meaningless life, so does Emet realized in his final moments where he begs us to remember we once lived. Not to mention the concurring themes of good trimuphing over evil.

Now as much as I would love for all of this to be a reference to Chrono Trigger and some how Lavos = The sound, the real monsters are the Ascians, the actual people doing evil and manipulating humankind from the shadows. Furthermore, I'm having a really hard time tracking the support this thread and others give to those Ascians who have absent mindedly neglected to tell us what actually caused the sound, because those guys are liars. They don't want us to know because they caused it. They weren't the benevolent civilization that they have projected to us, because it they were so great how did they make the leap from superior enlightenment to we're gonna cannibalize 13 worlds and the source to bring it all back? A superior benevolent society knows their time is up and doesn't claw it back from the brink of nothingness.

[Veloran]

Furthermore, I'm having a really hard time tracking the support this thread and others give to those Ascians who have absent mindedly neglected to tell us what actually caused the sound, because those guys are liars. They don't want us to know because they caused it.

They haven't told us for one of two reasons. First, because it's not time for us to know yet narratively. Or two, because they themselves don't really know, which is why they had to will a god into existence to brute-force an end to the problem.

They weren't the benevolent civilization that they have projected to us, because it they were so great how did they make the leap from superior enlightenment to we're gonna cannibalize 13 worlds and the source to bring it all back? A superior benevolent society knows their time is up and doesn't claw it back from the brink of nothingness.

I don't really see how benevolence and submission to fate are traits that are supposed to go hand-in-hand. To your earlier point the Ascians view sharded life as lesser beings because they quite literally are lesser broken forms of their prior existence, and that through the rejoining they're in fact saving everyone and returning them to what they once were.

The Eden story even highlighted this: Emet-Selch (or Elidibus, were he so inclined) could have stopped the Flood of Light, if he had saved Mitron early on by de-Edenifying him. Instead, the Ascians just shrugged and went "meh, we can raise another shard of Mitron, forget about that one".

Emet seemed to believe that Mitron and Loghrif were dead. Even if they were aware that Mitron had in fact become Eden, it's debatable as to whether it would have either been possible, or desirable in terms of their plans, to try restoring him.

He was a primal and everything we know of primals shows they are of one mind and one drive.

This is probably not accurate? Elidibus' drive seems to be a trait of his character far moreso than his mantling of the WoL primal. It's not like Ysayle was driven by Shiva's will.

[YianKutku]

I don't really see how benevolence and submission to fate are traits that are supposed to go hand-in-hand. To your earlier point the Ascians view sharded life as lesser beings because they quite literally are lesser broken forms of their prior existence, and that through the rejoining they're in fact saving everyone and returning them to what they once were.

Again, the point of the Rejoining is not to get everyone presently on the shards to become Unsundered again.

The point of the Rejoining is to get the worlds to be Unsundered, so they can sacrifice it again to bring back the people they already lost by being sacrificed to Zodiark. The only people they want to "save" are those who are already gone via Zodiark; everyone else, including the souls currently alive, are merely fodder to bring them back.

This was the entire impetus for the summoning of Hydaelyn, because the dissenters went "no, this is not acceptable, we cannot cling onto our civilization at the cost of everything else".

Emet seemed to believe that Mitron and Loghrif were dead. Even if they were aware that Mitron had in fact become Eden, it's debatable as to whether it would have either been possible, or desirable in terms of their plans, to try restoring him.

Loghrif was dead, but according to Mitron (and corroborated by every interaction with the Ascians in FFXIV prior), this is a minor setback, since the particular Convocation soul will eventually be reincarnated.

But Emet-Selch (named specifically by Mitron, but again I suspect Elidibus would also be eligible) didn't even bother, because doing so would mess with the one-track plan he had for Rejoining the First through Light.

Ryne: Emet-Selch -- couldn't he have saved you?

Mitron: Perhaps he could have, if such had been his wish. Far easier, however, to simply find another piece of my fractured soul to replace me. From his perspective, there was no need to intervene and potentially disturb with the balance of aether. And so here I remained.

Gaia: So after you failed, he left you here to rot. Some friend he turned out to be.

Mitron: Thus abandoned, I called out for what seemed like an eternity to the only soul who could save me: you, Gaia.

[Vyrerus]

This was the entire impetus for the summoning of Hydaelyn, because the dissenters went "no, this is not acceptable, we cannot cling onto our civilization at the cost of everything else".

No, the impetus for Hydaelyn's creation was specifically their fear of Zodiark's power going unchecked. It's pretty clear that fear was the motivator, because summoning a god that would need to be maintained in much the same way as the one it holds in check is clearly not a real solution, but it was the one they could think to muster that would work, at the time.

[Kesey]

No, the impetus for Hydaelyn's creation was specifically their fear of Zodiark's power going unchecked. It's pretty clear that fear was the motivator, because summoning a god that would need to be maintained in much the same way as the one it holds in check is clearly not a real solution, but it was the one they could think to muster that would work, at the time.

No, the impetus for Hydaelyn's creation was that summoning Zodiark doesn't actually stop the Final Days, it just delays it. So they need to summon Hydaelyn to create a permanent solution. You hear this from the recording of the Ancients that summon Hydaelyn at the end of Anamnesis Anyder.

What's not directly clear here is what is Zodiark doing that just causes The Sound and the Final Days to come back around after an extended period of time.

[Vyrerus]

No, the impetus for Hydaelyn's creation was that summoning Zodiark doesn't actually stop the Final Days, it just delays it. So they need to summon Hydaelyn to create a permanent solution. You hear this from the recording of the Ancients that summon Hydaelyn at the end of Anamnesis Anyder.

What's not directly clear here is what is Zodiark doing that just causes The Sound and the Final Days to come back around after an extended period of time.

The thing is, even though that's what they say in the recording, it's not a fact. It's just what they believe. They were afraid that Zodiark wasn't a permanent solution, because they were either aware that the cause of the Final Days hadn't actually been rooted out, i.e. Zodiark is symptomatic treatment, or that Zodiark's miracles would just lead back to retriggering the Final Days again... somehow.

Really, that recording just proves the Hydaelyn dissenters to be vainglorious rebels, with an idea that was ultimately no better than what the Convocation had in mind, except on the matter of protecting the new life. Which we aren't given much detail about. It'd be one thing to protect the new life if it were freshly sprouted sentient life, life aware of itself. It'd be another if they were asking every other Amaurotine in existence to trade the possibility of getting their loved ones back for what amounts to cattle(at the time).

There's still many factors we don't know, too. Like if the Sundering was intentional or not. I assume that it wasn't, but if it was the only way for Hydaelyn to protect the new life, then that means that the Dissenters essentially risked the existence of everyone and everything. I think it wasn't intentional, but that proves that the dissenters really didn't know what they were doing, since their checks and balances for Zodiark wound up completely altering and then having dominion over the star(and all its pieces). Not too mention, it was an inherently violent course of action.

Hydaelyn has some 'splainin to do!

[Veloran]

The only people they want to "save" are those who are already gone via Zodiark; everyone else, including the souls currently alive, are merely fodder to bring them back.

1/4th of the Amaurotines were never sacrificed to Zodiark to begin with, and like most of the Convocation members must exist as sundered beings in the current sharded world. We can say then that the Ascians are invested in rejoining everything's souls at least for this 1/4th of their people as well as to return the sacrificed.

This was the entire impetus for the summoning of Hydaelyn, because the dissenters went "no, this is not acceptable, we cannot cling onto our civilization at the cost of everything else".

The Anyder actually say nothing about any of this when discussing their motivations for summoning Hydaelyn amongst themselves. They say they intend to summon Hydaelyn because the summoning of Zodiark didn't bring a permanent solution to ending the threat of the Sound. We don't know what that entails, why they believed this or what if anything they even knew of the Sound, but they don't really say anything about the Convocation's intent to sacrifice proliferated life being relevant to their plans.

But Emet-Selch (named specifically by Mitron, but again I suspect Elidibus would also be eligible) didn't even bother, because doing so would mess with the one-track plan he had for Rejoining the First through Light.

This is what he says, we have no reason to believe he's correct. It's true that the Unsundered considered the sundered Ascians as being expendable, because from their perspective they can simply be reraised once again at a later date, but as to his belief that Emet knew his situation, Emet himself says that he believes both of them were slain and that he is the only Ascian on the First.

[YianKutku]

1/4th of the Amaurotines were never sacrificed to Zodiark to begin with, and like most of the Convocation members must exist as sundered beings in the current sharded world. We can say then that the Ascians are invested in rejoining everything's souls at least for this 1/4th of their people as well as to return the sacrificed.

In other words, they see the "life" that is not the 1/4 of their people to be lesser beings. Which tracks with what Emet-Selch keeps ranting about, and which the short stories have illustrated that Azem deeply disagrees with.

The Anyder actually say nothing about any of this when discussing their motivations for summoning Hydaelyn amongst themselves. They say they intend to summon Hydaelyn because the summoning of Zodiark didn't bring a permanent solution to ending the threat of the Sound. We don't know what that entails, why they believed this or what if anything they even knew of the Sound, but they don't really say anything about the Convocation's intent to sacrifice proliferated life being relevant to their plans.

The motivation of the "dissenters" who summoned Hydaelyn was also mentioned by Hythlodaeus in 5.0. In Anyder in 5.2, we are given another motivation, that Zodiark cannot "forestall the doom" of the Ancients. I strongly believe these motivations are entirely compatible; specifically, I read the recordings in Anyder as the dissenters being aware that if the rest of the Amaurotines continued to pay Zodiark's price for every single miracle, it would lead to the end of the Ancients just as much as the End of Days threatened to.

As far as I know, Hythlodaeus's commentary on Hydaelyn's summoners has not been explicitly contradicted.

This is what he says, we have no reason to believe he's correct. It's true that the Unsundered considered the sundered Ascians as being expendable, because from their perspective they can simply be reraised once again at a later date, but as to his belief that Emet knew his situation, Emet himself says that he believes both of them were slain and that he is the only Ascian on the First.

Which assumes that Emet-Selch is astonishingly oblivious and uncaring about where Mitron and Loghrif had gone, if he didn't check out the Flood of Light in the first place to find Eden, and, considering his much-vaunted soul-sight, recognized Mitron's soul in there.