Zodiark: Good or evil? thoughts

[Laerune]

He is neither good nor evil, it only wants wat their summoner wanted, salvation.

Good for those that want to go back to the good old days, bad for those that were born after the final days.

[Anvaire]

Except for Elidibus, the rest of the ascians have so far been shown as no more than mustache-twirling villains.

I’m not sure how Lahabrea could be considered “morally grey”. The man was a sociopath and said it was all for him and had to be corrected by Elidibus that it was for Zodiark. The rest of the ascians even called him an idiot.

Not everything Emet-Selch does is directly “for the cause” either. Like possessing a random innocent on the First and mutating their body until it looks like a form he’s comfortable with. Then there’s the Garlean Civil War, which he instigated on purpose to cause bloodshed and chaos despite it not being essential to his plans since the gas weapon was already tested and done.

And then there’s their whole MO: spread the seeds of conflict all across the world over and over, and then reap their harvest later when it suits them. They taught the elezen about the power of dragon eyes and started the Dragonsong War. That had no benefit to them for 1000 years until they decided they could use Thordan to go on crusade as a primal with the power of the Warring Triad.

Even with their goals in mind, they still seem intent on terrorizing the realm constantly and I’m not sure what part of that is “not being a villain”. Elidibus is their baby sitter and without him, everything would have gone to hell in a hand basket. They don’t even start listening to him until after Nabriales went rogue and got himself killed because he saw an opportunity.

I think whether the ascians are seen as evil comes down to perspective. Yes they are comitting genocide on a regular basis. But you have to consider, they have seen a "perfect" version of the world.The sundering is an unatural occurance and has splintered something that should be whole into multiple parts. It is an anomaly. To use a real life example, if a bout of radiation or an illness fundementally ultered the biology - those who had known what they should have been would look to heal or repair. But those who were born altered and did not know would see themselves as how they should be even though thier chang was due to x reason.

This is the very argument that the MSQ is making. To the ascians the sundered lifeforms are broken and incomplete, something that naturally should never have been. But to those sundered they are "natural" because they have not seen what was before. Worse still is that the ascians can see the hue of a soul and so know exactly who the sundered soul once was, to them they are seeing a friend or loved one who has been altered and broken.

i think Emet's story in shadowbringers was his inner conflict between seeing the sundered life as 'alive' and whole or broken. He was desperate to guage them worthy because then the burden he had carried was lost. To a being that lives forever and has multiple conscious lifetimes, knows that souls are reincarnated again after death, the premature end of their "current" life would not matter overly much. Obviously it is horrendous to those who are sundered and to us who can relate to them due to the natutre of our own existence. Essentially while we can imagne whats its like to be an immortal god like being, we cant really relate, but we can to the ordinary person.

Ultimately when it comes to the ascians they are villains because their method and resolve is horrendous. Their intentions though, I can't actually find something bad in the motivation behind them. They just want to restore the world to how it should have been. Effectively they just want to heal their people and although it is wrong, it is also understandable from their perspective.

[YianKutku]

Except again, it’s perspective. I wouldn’t see them as evil so much as trying to restore their world and loved ones back to how they were. Again, if we want to get technical, the rejoinings would save more lives than just keeping the world sundered. I’m so shocked honestly that people still continue to call them villains or zodiark is evil or they’re evil when the devs themselves said there is no good or there is no evil. Yoshi P specifically wanted this to be a story that isn’t black and white.

Again, the Ascians are cruel to each other. Fandaniel quite obviously doesn't want to save the world: he wants to destroy it. (At least so he says, and the only way he can be redeemed is by the story going "actually he's lying because Reasons".) Emet-Selch wants to rejoin the worlds to restore the lost Amaurotines via further sacrifice, and in doing so he doesn't even bother to check up on what happened to Mitron. Elidibus doesn't even remember why he's doing what he does, and he's the nicest Ascian we've met apart from Gaia. Lahabrea keeps ranting about the One True God, so he's clearly out of it, to the point where when his True Death is confirmed, Emet-Selch went "lol he was dumb". I don't even know what Nabriales was trying to do other than gloat at us for whatever reason.

And Mitron attempts to forcibly keep Loghrif by his side, despite her express denial as Gaia, so he's definitely evil, in the "sexual harassment lawsuit" kind of way.

None of this is necessary to cause the rejoinings. The Ascians we've met (again, other than Gaia/Loghrif) were cruel for the sake of being petty jerks.

So yes, I believe the Ascians are evil, because they don't even treat each other as equals and respected colleagues.

[Slatersev]

Bit late, but I don't think characters like Tiamat or Middy are so powerful because there Unsundered, I think it's just because there Dragons and Dragons are naturally freakishly powerful.

Were giving no indication that Mortal's from the Shards are inherently weaker then Mortals from the Source. And we have been given no indication that "Immortal boundless wells of Aether" is the natural state of all Sapients from other worlds.

In fact, even if you decide to ignore all the Crossover events, Omega still disproves the latter, because he is explicitly pulling from other FF games where we know the natural state of what would be the Unsundered equivalents of those places is not "Magic Demigods"

[Anvaire]

Bit late, but I don't think characters like Tiamat or Middy are so powerful because there Unsundered, I think it's just because there Dragons and Dragons are naturally freakishly powerful.

Were giving no indication that Mortal's from the Shards are inherently weaker then Mortals from the Source. And we have been given no indication that "Immortal boundless wells of Aether" is the natural state of all Sapients from other worlds.

In fact, even if you decide to ignore all the Crossover events, Omega still disproves the latter, because he is explicitly pulling from other FF games where we know the natural state of what would be the Unsundered equivalents of those places is not "Magic Demigods"

This is actually a really good point i hadn'd consistered and i think its natural that there is disparity between unsundered races. I would wager that either the Amauroteans are but one race of exceptionally gifted magic users, on the original world, or that they never met beings from other stars so their perpective is limited by what they think is "natural and perfect"

[MikkoAkure]

Ultimately when it comes to the ascians they are villains because their method and resolve is horrendous. Their intentions though, I can't actually find something bad in the motivation behind them. They just want to restore the world to how it should have been. Effectively they just want to heal their people and although it is wrong, it is also understandable from their perspective.

Haven't you heard of the phrase "the road to hell is paved with good intentions"? I think that's quite apt for the ascians here. While their goals at one time may have been noble, at least to them, they have long since lost their way and now stand atop super-weapons while cackling.

At least to me, everything I learned about Amaurot in Shadowbringers told me that they were a society eventually headed to collapse, regardless of the Final Days. They were extremely arrogant and wielded the powers of creation as if they were gods. Of course they wouldn't view any new life as being worthy to exist. But what gives them the right to make that decision? Their society collapsed due to what seemed like to be its own making and Venat's rebellion even said that Zodiark was a temporary measure and the Final Days would happen again if they stayed the course.

We also don't know what it was like outside of Amaurot at the time. We do know that there were farm villagers though. Were they also perfect beings capable of creation magic and gifted with long lives? We also know there was death, Emet-Selch's Tales from the Shadows describes the Underworld and that all souls come back to it. I'm not sure that the old days were as "perfect" as the Amaurotians think it was. Azem certainly didn't think so if they refused the Convocation's help repeatedly and spent all of their time outside the city.

[Theodric]

I don't think the Ascians have ever been presented as 'moustache twirling villains'. They've always been pushed as antagonists with a clear goal, even back in the days of ARR. We learned more about them over time, of course, though so too did we take that approach when it came to the Dravanians.

Personally I chose to take the same viewpoint as Yoshi-P:

Joel Couture, Siliconera: What inspired the storyline of Shadowbringers? What interested you in exploring how fine the line can be between good and evil?

Naoki Yoshida: Even in modern-day life, people already hold different views on where to draw the line between good and evil. The same can be said when you look back on history, in which the claims of those who emerged victorious were deemed to be right, whereas those who lost were wrong. However, with developments in culture and education, everyone knows that the world doesn’t work in a simple “good is right and evil is wrong” sort of way—I believe the world of Shadowbringers is a representation of that very idea.

Source: https://www.siliconera.com/final-fan...gh-emet-selch/

[EaraGrace]

You say this and quite often people draw a line that Hydealyn = Good and Zodiark = evil. For me i think its neither and that the story will be nuanced and complicated. I do think though, there has been a lot of time spent narratively speaking to paint Zodiark as an evil entity that must be stopped, or an entity that is bad if he wakes up. It will be interesting to see things from his perspective which is what i hope we see eventually.

There are certainly things about Hydealyn that i find are a bit sketchy and grey and the most prominent is where she aetherically ate minfilia because she was too weak, yet was sat in the middle of the aetherial sea. So for me either our understanding of how aether works is wrong, or there is something missing there. Of course it could be that she refused to absorb the aether for reasons, but if that is the case she chose to sacrifice minfilia instead, which opens up an even bigger can of worms to consider.

Given the fact that the aetherial sea is made up of, at least in part, the aether that constitutes souls, perhaps her hesitance is rooted in the fear that absorbing said ether is akin to destroying souls? Hydaelyn was capable of pulling specific souls out of the sea, so of all beings she should know what she was centered in.

Then there’s also the unknown of if a being disrupts or changes the flow in the sea, what would happen to the aetherial balance elsewhere.

Perhaps, in comparison to these other options, having a willing voice was a way to avoid doing that. It’s important to consider that whatever the impact, Hydaelyn refused to do so for some time, as her weakness was a long running trend that reached its peak in Heavensward (and maybe still continues)


Nothing solid, just theories.

[KizuyaKatogami]

Again, the Ascians are cruel to each other. Fandaniel quite obviously doesn't want to save the world: he wants to destroy it. (At least so he says, and the only way he can be redeemed is by the story going "actually he's lying because Reasons".) Emet-Selch wants to rejoin the worlds to restore the lost Amaurotines via further sacrifice, and in doing so he doesn't even bother to check up on what happened to Mitron. Elidibus doesn't even remember why he's doing what he does, and he's the nicest Ascian we've met apart from Gaia. Lahabrea keeps ranting about the One True God, so he's clearly out of it, to the point where when his True Death is confirmed, Emet-Selch went "lol he was dumb". I don't even know what Nabriales was trying to do other than gloat at us for whatever reason.

And Mitron attempts to forcibly keep Loghrif by his side, despite her express denial as Gaia, so he's definitely evil, in the "sexual harassment lawsuit" kind of way.

None of this is necessary to cause the rejoinings. The Ascians we've met (again, other than Gaia/Loghrif) were cruel for the sake of being petty jerks.

So yes, I believe the Ascians are evil, because they don't even treat each other as equals and respected colleagues.

Did you really just compare Mitron and Loghrif’s situation as the “sexual harassment lawsuit” kind of way?Seriously?

[_Koneko_]

sounds to me you need to read up on the story hades straight up admitting all the sundering did was split a person into 14 parts ... where hades him self has caused the death of billions of this split up people