Zodiark: Good or evil? thoughts

[HiraishinNoJutsu]

Yeah we don't really know the logistics of how Zodiark can bring back the dead but that one story about phoenix's creation and a soul wandering into the creation intact has me thinking of two possiblities

Souls cannot be created not even by the Amaurotines but they can be perceived by people with excellent eyes like Hythlodaeus or guided around by someone like Emet-Selch so either

A. Zodiark is like a blender and when the sacrificed person is put into him its ground up turned into energy for him to use this means that the soul and all is gone and He can't bring back the people who gave up their lives or they will be lifeless like what Lakshimi did

or B. Zodiark like Phoenix just holds the souls and aether inside of him like cores and when it's time to replace his energy source with the new lives he would pop his old cores out like batteries and the ancients have their people again.

Like Anonymoose pointed out in his Mogtalk with Sly we also gotta find out why Venat thinks Zodiark is but a "temporary fix" before we can fully assemble this puzzle

[Theodric]

The narrative is framed in such a way that there is no 'good' or 'evil' but rather two sides of a conflict in fierce opposition to each other due to the stakes at hand. The proposal that Emet-Selch did not make a fair effort to understand the Sundered lifeforms is false, as per these words from Yoshi-P:

What thoughts went into creating Emet-Selch’s backstory and character? What feelings did you want the player to go through as they journeyed with and ultimately fought against him?

Yoshida: One big goal we had in this story was to have players understand the Ascians. In order to do so, Emet-Selch needed to be not just an enemy, but a character that tries to understand the protagonist, the Scions, and the masses.

During development, we never really anticipate or try to predict what kind of emotions players would feel towards certain characters or the story. We feel it is more important for us to think about what kind of ideas and principles to depict rather than what kind of emotions we would like to evoke through exploring said ideas.

Shadowbringers may leave players feeling emotionally conflicted at its end. What interested you about making players feel a bit unsure about whether they’re doing the right thing?

Yoshida: I touched on this in a previous answer as well, but I would be delighted if Final Fantasy XIV served as a catalyst for people to ponder about themselves, their surroundings, parents, siblings, friends, and society, instead of holding onto the idea that good is rewarded and evil is punished. That said, we are entertainers, not philosophers—our greatest joy would be for players to enjoy the game, one way or another.

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

[Slatersev]

I think anyone who actually believes there gonna go, everything would have been fine if Venat let the Convocation do there thing is way off.

Or that if they completed the Rejoining's they would get there world back.

Because I also highly doubt Zodiark was a permanent solution to the Sound, Azem not signing off speaks to it, though they certainly had more then one reason for going AWOL.

Frankly, it seem likely to me the Sundering was done because Venat and co thought/figured out the Sound would come back, and splitting the world weakened it. She called it a temporary fix, and YoshiP straight up said we need to here her side of the story.

And the Ascians rejoining the world 7 times played into its hands by giving it enough to power/wake it again. A delicious bit of irony would be the Unsundered, so set on there path and determined to rebuild there home, so convinced of there superiority, being the unwitting pawns of something above even there god and only helping it grow stronger when there atrocities were meant to bring about salvation.

[Theodric]

Insofar as the proposed inability for Zodiark to bring back the Ancients is concerned...

Although it’s not 100% clear how these things work as yet, we have some lore indicating that the plan isn’t an impossibility:

Toward the end of Shadowbringers, players defeat Hades without imprisoning him in the White Auracite. But Lahabrea was defeated in a similar way, and eventually returned. Is Hades is done for good?

NI: With Lahabrea, he wasn’t literally put into the White Auracite. But he was absorbed into the dragon’s eye, and Estinien pierced it. Although he wasn’t imprisoned in the White Auracite, you can technically say he’s in the same situation.

When Hades revealed his true form, and his soul was there, we didn’t capture it in the White Auracite. He was held down and pierced with a stake, basically. He was captured and not able to move at that point, and then the Warrior of Light struck him with the blow, so it is believed that Hades has been completely destroyed.

Source: https://www.pcgamesn.com/final-fanta...ringers-ending

We see from here that Lahabrea’s soul survived, even being trapped in Nidhogg’s Eyes as they were being used to fuel Thordan. Although it is implied Estinien piercing them put him in a similar situation to the usual Ascian killing method, something to understand is this from the French version of the game:

[20:48] Urianger : Une fois privée de son corps, une âme ascienne pourrait être enfermée dans une prison d'éther... Une lame éthérée serait alors en mesure de la briser, et l'Ascien retournerait ainsi vers la mer des étoiles.
= “Once deprived of their body, an ascian soul could be locked in an aether prison... An ethereal blade would then be able to break it, and the Ascian would thus return to the sea of stars.”

Souls basically seem to have a core component, that is the soul itself, and then the soul aether comprising it. It is that soul aether which appears to have gone into fuelling the aether required for Zodiark to be summoned and repair the planet. Their plan was to be enacted once he had nurtured the life of the world and restored its vitality, as per this:



We also know from lines during the fight that Hades – with his unique power over the Underworld – saw himself as integral to their plan. Probably because that power would let him identify and pull out the souls in question.

So, the plan seems to me to be to revitalise the star, until its bursting with aether, and then recombine those souls with this aether. The exact mechanics of it are not known but it’s possible that the specific type of incorporeal aether they required was attaching to the freshly minted souls and so they would need to sacrifice those to realise the plan. None of it really seems impossible and Lakshmi is a far weaker, less sophisticated primal – there was also no individual with Hades’s specific powers in that case either, who would have sufficient understanding of how to pluck the souls out of the Primal. So let’s not assume too much off of one example, eh?

[DPZ2]

Funny how the Ancients of Amaurot were debating the same sort of non-action before the Final Days that the Sharlayans have accepted as orthodoxy (to our knowledge).

The parallels are disturbing.

As for "Zodiark = good, Hydaelyn = evil" ... The problem is that there is a dichotomy where none really exists. The two are fixed points, but the "heart" that was to control one of them abandoned those responsibilities to once again become Elidibus.

Zodiark has no heart, nothing to guide them but --- what, exactly, was Zodiark's purpose again? To supress? To conquer? We know it wasn't to return the souls used in its creation. Such a cheap means of payment would be no sacrifice.

[KizuyaKatogami]

Funny how the Ancients of Amaurot were debating the same sort of non-action before the Final Days that the Sharlayans have accepted as orthodoxy (to our knowledge).

The parallels are disturbing.

As for "Zodiark = good, Hydaelyn = evil" ... The problem is that there is a dichotomy where none really exists. The two are fixed points, but the "heart" that was to control one of them abandoned those responsibilities to once again become Elidibus.

Zodiark has no heart, nothing to guide them but --- what, exactly, was Zodiark's purpose again? To supress? To conquer? We know it wasn't to return the souls used in its creation. Such a cheap means of payment would be no sacrifice.

It was Salvation. We’re told this numerous times.

[DPZ2]

So, Salvation. By that you mean "preservation or deliverance from harm, ruin, or loss", correct? By doing, exactly, what?

And when it was all over, after the Great Sacrifice, the remainder of the people were just ... going to ask, politely, for their money back?

Pffffft.

[HiraishinNoJutsu]

So, Salvation. By that you mean "preservation or deliverance from harm, ruin, or loss", correct? By doing, exactly, what?

And when it was all over, after the Great Sacrifice, the remainder of the people were just ... going to ask, politely, for their money back?

Pffffft.

The Final days caused the entire world to go out of wack so by rewriting the laws of the star Zodiark successfully stopped the Final days.

And after the great sacrifice they weren't asking for their money back per say the were essentially swapping currency. A refund of those they lost and in return Zodiark gets these new lives in exchange. It's one of the reasons Venat and her group go against the convocation. They don't believe these newly minted lives deserve to be sacrificed and that the future of the star belongs to them.

[KizuyaKatogami]

So, Salvation. By that you mean "preservation or deliverance from harm, ruin, or loss", correct? By doing, exactly, what?

And when it was all over, after the Great Sacrifice, the remainder of the people were just ... going to ask, politely, for their money back?

Pffffft.

Did you play ShB? I don’t mean this in a mean way i just don’t want to spoil things for you. But they explain the very things you’re talking about in the base expansion and in the post patches as well as the short stories.

[DPZ2]

Did you play ShB? I don’t mean this in a mean way i just don’t want to spoil things for you. But they explain the very things you’re talking about in the base expansion and in the post patches as well as the short stories.

I've finished the storyline through the current patch, yes. I also realize that the viewpoints of both Elidibus and Emet Selk are not particularly reliable, especially in light of the fact that Zodiark has been without a heart, and it unclear whether Elidibus left before or after the Sundering.

To HiraishinNoJutsu's point: Sacrificing "newly minted lives" after the Final Days are over is an extremely dubious thing to do for beings who are as Moral and Righteous and Upstanding as the Ancients appear to think themselves. Then again, Star Trek has come across plenty of gods and godlings with the same deficient moral compass, so why not?

"We didn't know what the outcome would be, but when it was finished we had no use for the lives created by Zodiark in the process of our Salvation, so we were going to try turning them in for the deposit." is a pathetic, but typical, excuse for godlings.