6.0 Story Speculations

[Kesey]

This was now, that was then. Again sacrificing all the rejuvenated life in the Ancient world after first sacrificing to restore it would be meaningless, we're specifically told only a portion would be sacrificed. Also unless we assume that the souls of the original sacrifices escaped the Sundering - Which is an unlikely prospect - We would then be led to believe that they exist now as sundered life.


Sure. But it just happens that the only one who doesn't vouch for Venat's motivations is Venat. When we see the Hydaelyn faction talking about their motivations, the premise is their fear that Zodiark doesn't represent a permanent end to the threat of the Final Days. They say nothing about protecting the rejuvenated life. And frankly, if they had intended Hydaelyn to do what she did and sunder the world, it follows that their priority was the stability of the star itself and not life in particular.

There was two intended sacrifices for Zodiark. The first was the portion of Amaurotians to summon Zodiark and fix The Sound and Final Days problem. Then they were going to let new life flourish and then sacrifice that life to again power Zodiark to bring back all the dead Amaurotians from the previous sacrifice. To the Ancients is wasn't just an issue of stopping the end of the world but also perpetuating themselves over others.

But you are correct about Venat and company's motivation. It is not to directly attack Zodiark, as that isn't mentioned. Hydaelyn is summoned to stop the final days from happening. Furthermore, I'm not sure the rejuvenated life had a chance to sprout as I'm assuming Hydaelyn was summoned not long after Zodiark. But the key question is really what is Zodiark doing that will still cause the final days to come to pass that Hydaelyn was necessary?

[Kesey]

Perhaps i didnt explain myself properly my bad:

Its kinda implied that most sentient races like the playable ones and certain races like the Amaljaa existed before the sundering since the same race exist in different shards. Considering that after Zodiark restored the star itself, the life was almost completely extinguished and the ascians were forced again to sacrifice themselves to restore the star's life, it was then when new races came to be, and those are the very races that an ascian faction wanted to use them as fodder for Zodiak to bring back all the previously sacrificed ascians while other though that they deserve a chance to live and got worried how the star became too dependant on Zodiark and summoned Hydaelyn to keep Zodiark in check.

Doesnt mean they were going to exterminate the life of the star, just the new non ascian sapient life, but the moderate ascian faction considered this was a sacrifice too great just for their lost kin to come back plus that they didnt think that Zodiark existence was the solution to everything

This speaks to problem of what Ancients look like behind the masks. Because we either have two levels of races or three. When we view it as two we have humaniods and beastmen. But as three, the Ancients are another race that isn't humaniods. Now we've only seen them portrayed as wearing robes and masks as I'm sure its a reveal they've been saving for 6.0. But is there playable races under those masks and robes or a whole new race?

[Kesey]

Either way, Venat herself does not speak ill of them and says they only do as they believe is best for the star. And I think that's the crux of the disagreement - the two groups had conflicting visions on how to best steward the star. Checking Zodiark's might and ceding the future to the 'newer souls' was their view on how to do that. Again the way they don't malign the Convocation suggests to me they're also viewing their proposed actions in the framework of sacrifice for the greater good of the star - they just disagreed that further sacrifices would achieve that. Their concerns therefore also appear to be pragmatic in nature. There may be more to the whole thing but based on what we currently know, that's how I read it.

This comes down to how you want to interpret Venat. Because it can be seen as you explain above, or Venat and company can be seen to have had their hand forced into this situation of summoning Hydaelyn. If the convocation is tempered as Emet claims, then the value of debate and discussion is essentially out the window when in comes to a topic like Zodiark will kill us all eventually. The lack of ill will from Venat can be seen as pity not respect or pragmatics, because you'd feel bad for a person if they were tempered can could never have their mind changed.

[Kesey]

Given Elidibus himself was confused on what the Convocation actually wanted, and he obviously did not receive any influence from Venat's group, I think this is more a case of everyone disagreeing with each other, and they happened to coalesce into two vague groups that continued to squabble among themselves. Maybe they started as being all polite and Amaurotine about it at first, but seeing how the Ascians we see in the present day apparently loathe each other, obviously it didn't last.

One of the major issues is that Emet-Selch is the only source of information on what the people of the Ancient world actually wanted, and we know how biased he is, as well as prone to leaving out rather important bits of information to serve his own purposes. Lahabrea had gone crazy (with considering Zodiark as the One True God), and Elidibus was senile. The other Ascians had been subordinate to the Unsundered (primarily the aforementioned Crazy Lahabrea), and once all the Unsundered were dead, the one example we see of Fandaniel decided to Kill Everything, ignoring the whole Rejoining business. At this point, it does seem like literally only Emet-Selch was on-board with the original plan of "Rejoin then sacrifice".

Elidibus couldn't have received influence from Venat's group as he was sacrificed to summon Zodiark before Venat's group formed. Venat's group comes together after the summoning of Zodiark because they know Zodiark didn't fix the end of days problem, he only somehow delayed it.

But the "Rejoin and sacrifice" plan still might be the play Fandaniel has on the table. I think he's more of the approach of kill everyone and do all the rejoinings at once and then we'll all be reborn in Zodiark's new world.

[Rannie]

There was two intended sacrifices for Zodiark. The first was the portion of Amaurotians to summon Zodiark and fix The Sound and Final Days problem. Then they were going to let new life flourish and then sacrifice that life to again power Zodiark to bring back all the dead Amaurotians from the previous sacrifice. To the Ancients is wasn't just an issue of stopping the end of the world but also perpetuating themselves over others.

But you are correct about Venat and company's motivation. It is not to directly attack Zodiark, as that isn't mentioned. Hydaelyn is summoned to stop the final days from happening. Furthermore, I'm not sure the rejuvenated life had a chance to sprout as I'm assuming Hydaelyn was summoned not long after Zodiark. But the key question is really what is Zodiark doing that will still cause the final days to come to pass that Hydaelyn was necessary?

Kesey it would have been a total of 3 seperate sacrifices if not more... the first time half of the remaining Amaurotines offered themselves up to create Zodiark and stop the Final Days, another half of who was left of the Amaurotines offered themselves to bring life back to the planet. Then they were going to take the new life after cultivating them and use that new life to bring back those who sacrificed themselves the first two times.

The first two sacrifices ended up being 75% of the total population after the final days started

This was all told to us by Hytholodaeus before we went to fight Emet Selch under da sea

[Bhearil]

Why would Zodiark create new races when rejuvenating life? Rather than this convolution of Zodiark creating new sapients for the Hydaelyn faction to object to their sacrifice, doesn't it just make more sense that when the world was sundered and Hydaelyn had to rebuild, she created the new forms of life across the shards all at once? She does claim to be humanity's (et al) creator and mother, after all.

Not to mention, Hydaelyn's entire thing is division. Doesn't it follow that in the same way she divided the souls of the Ancients across the reflections, she divided the Ancients as a people into various separate races? A Tower of Babel situation, if you will.

Sundered ascians were probably reincarnated when sundered but considering that if recover enough power they can body hop this wasnt an issue. Hades true form is not in any way humanoid looking. Elidibus doesnt count because he was emulating the WoL ideal form so he must be humanoid looking for that. We dont have canon confirmation but seems Ascians aka Ancients were a totally different race

Considering there was a world ending apocalypse on which many Ascian died despite their godlike powers before they arrived to the conclusion that there was no choice but to summon Zodiark using half of their remaining population as fuel to save the star, means that if the "lesser" races existed already they were completely wiped out and only ascians remained to use as energy source. In any case either Zodiark gave birth to all the "lesser" races or he resurrected them all with new souls. Either way Zodiark could be considered the "Father" of most of the races by all effects.

Hydaelyn could be considered the "Mother" because splitting all creation effectively "created" several lesser versions of the entire star so its not wrong for her to consider all her children when she made them the way they are now (aka sundered)

[KageTokage]

I'm really hoping that Sharlayan's inclination towards non-interference largely mirroring the behavior of Amaurot (With the Archons basically filling the same role Azem did for them) is not a happy coincidence and that one of their higher-ups somehow has direct ties to the Ancients.

I feel like there's simply too much we don't know about the state of the pre-sundering world for it to all be delivered to us by the known remaining individuals who'd have knowledge of the subject (Which is basically just Fandaniel, Hydaelyn, and Zodiark).

[KizuyaKatogami]

(I'm going to do my best to set aside any assumptions I might make about these claims based on your Ancient cosplay glamour, lol.)

Emet-Selch said his plan was to rejoin all sundered life into the Source and sacrifice it all.

Hythlodaeus even vouched for Venat's motivation.

We were talking about during the ancient times...not now. Also not sure what my glam has to do with anything? Dont really care what kind of "assumptions you have to make". Could say the same to you.

[Theodric]

One could argue that Elidibus was deliberately written in such a manner so that any additional lore bombs could be dropped not during Shadowbringers itself but in Endwalker. Furthermore, didn't Yoshi-P imply that there were two different endings proposed for 5.3 in a fairly recent interview? I swear, I read something along those lines...if that is indeed the case, then it's likely that something very different was planned for the other potential ending.

I'm also disinclined to consider Lahabrea to be 'crazy' so much as world weary in a similar manner to Emet-Selch. He just wanted to get the job done and Yoshi-P even compared himself to Lahabrea in an interview, stating that he was a hard worker. We need to remember, by the time we see the Ascians in the present day they had already long since tried to work with and alongside the Sundered and found them to be wanting. Only Emet-Selch and to an extent, Elidibus, appeared willing to try and reach some sort of tentative understanding whereas Lahabrea simply pushed ahead with his goal at the forefront. His main quirk appears to have been to change hosts too often, which backfired on him...but also proved effective given what we saw happen when he took over Thancred. Incidentally, out of the three Unsundered he was the biggest threat to the Warrior of Light and his allies. Then again, ARR and early HW were written much differently to what came after them.

I don't have links to either interview, sadly - though given how many around these parts are enthusiastic about archiving snippets of lore, maybe someone else can post them!

[WhiteArchmage]

I'm really hoping that Sharlayan's inclination towards non-interference largely mirroring the behavior of Amaurot (With the Archons basically filling the same role Azem did for them) is not a happy coincidence and that one of their higher-ups somehow has direct ties to the Ancients.

I feel like there's simply too much we don't know about the state of the pre-sundering world for it to all be delivered to us by the known remaining individuals who'd have knowledge of the subject (Which is basically just Fandaniel, Hydaelyn, and Zodiark).

I wouldn't be surprised if there was some Ascian Interference in Sharlayan... because it's Always Ascians(tm)