6.0 Story Speculations

[Anonymoose]

We were talking about during the ancient times...not now.

My question here is what does "ancient times" have anything to do with sundered at all? This part of the debate seems moot if nobody was sundered yet. The Convocation was just pushing "sacrifice people to Zodiark" as the fix for every problem and ignoring the people who questioned it, leading Venat's faction to believe that what was supposed to be a temporary measure was now as sure to doom them as the Final Days, assuming they had even found a permanent way to stop it in the first place.

At that point we're splitting hairs. If the solution is always "sacrifice people to Zodiark" - does it matter if they intend for it to be everyone or just end up there incidentally?

...Yet oh how the star had suffered. So many species lost. The land was blighted, the waters poisoned, and even the wind had ceased to blow. Once more did our people give of themselves to Zodiark. Another half of our race sacrificed to cleanse the world; to ensure that trees and grasses and myriad tiny lives would sprout and grow and flourish.

The cycle of life had begun anew, and we reconsidered the means by which we might protect it.

The Convocation decided thus: we would nurture our world until it was bursting with vitality. Then, when the time was right, we would offer some portion of its living energy to Zodiark... In return, He would restore to us those brethren whose souls had fed His strength, and together we would resume our role as stewards.

There were, however, those who disagreed with this plan. They argued that enough had been sacrificed to Zodiark─that this new world should belong to the lives newly born.

The question for them was, even if the Convocation eventually said, "OK, enough sacrificing our own to Zodiark, do they really get to unilaterally decide "Well, we'll just sacrifice others!"? Who has the right to make that call for whom? And to refuse to debate the wisdom of sacrificing the very life their comrades sacrificed themselves to beget is tantamount to turning on the foundations of their culture. They were the leaders of their culture, a culture that saw themselves as the stewards of the world, and then turned on all of it for Zodiark alone.

One question that remains open for me is, did those who sacrificed themselves to Zodiark ever expect to be restored in the first place? Did they truly sacrifice themselves to see the world reborn only for that new birth to be slaughtered on the altar of their own resurrection? And what of the new life's lack of consent in this plan?

If that was the case, I personally think they were unworthy to ever claim the mantle of the world's stewards in the first place.