Why did the Ascians never try to do these?

[Veloran]

To be fair, his diplomatic approach was not in good faith. It was another calculated scheme. He bought himself time to course-correct and learned more about what was going on with his enemies (as the Exarch had just done something impossible).

His diplomacy was rooted in pragmatism. There was a small chance the Warrior of Light might accept Emet's perspective that they "only stand to gain" from the Rejoinining, and then, if not, there was still a larger chance that the Warrior of Light could be used to control the Light until they eventually transformed into the very monster that would usher in the Calamity course-correction. And if neither of those happened, he could always just kill them. It was win/win/win. Until it wasn't.

This is probably not the case.
First, due to the nature of the rift, Emet-Selch effectively had all the time in the world to "course-correct". To wit, the first time chronologically we see Emet-Selch is actually in WoL's Echo vision of Vauthry, where he approaches Vauthry's father. This was some time after G'raha arrived on the First with the Crystal Tower, but decades before he would attempt his first summoning and end up with Thancred. Assuming any linearity to time, the first time we see Emet on the Source he's already been to the First, saw how the forces of the Crystarium and Eulmore were trying to combat the Sin Eater threat, and had taken action to counteract them by disrupting their alliance. Considering this, he had decades of time on the First to deal with the issue of the Crystal Tower and how it had clearly traveled through time and the rift, but he chose not to do so.

As he says, Emet-Selch could have simply sided with Vauthry outright and killed everyone. But as we see in his short story, he has a tendency for "hope against hope". Rather than being aghast that "Azem" either was WoL at all or that they wouldn't join him, I would say his reaction to seeing Azem in WoL and saying "No, it can't be.", is pure disbelief that his vague hopes for some kind of alternative solution might possibly bear fruit. We know Ardbert is directly paralleled with Emet in how he had lost hope over the course of 100 years, and that it was unimaginably worse for Emet over the last 12,000 years, so in the same way Ardbert had to be pushed to find new hope in WoL, Emet can't even believe his eyes when seeing it for himself, despite wishing it to be so.

And we can certainly say he did want it to be so, considering he prepared all of Amaurot and the plan with the Azem stone and seemingly preformed some kind of Ancient funerary rite in revealing his true name before the final battle.

Basically he got the win he'd always wanted but didn't think was actually possible, until it was.

[Anonymoose]

The difficulty I have with this is the fact that Courgevais, an ascian, provided the horn which would power Alexander's core.

As a Lominsan I am honor-bound to point out that this was Travanchet.

It means at least one ascian had to have been aware that a time-travelling-city primal was on the board.

I hate to lean on this argument because it's used against me every time I whine about Shadowbringers time travel throwing all the rules established by Alexander time travel out the window, but The Wings of Time and The Rift are very different methods with potentially-similar-looking results. They're different beasts when it comes to how time is traveled and the effect it has on the world(s) when it is done, so even if they knew about Alexander (whose own conclusion about itself was that it's difficult to use towards any specific goal where by the benefits outweigh the drawbacks), The Tycoon is still big news.

<snip>

To be honest I'm not sure where we disagree. Emet-Selch admitted these things. That his cooperation was whimsical. That he was trying to "understand what drives the hero of the Source. To determine if our goals are truly incompatible," because just trying to get rid of them wasn't working for anyone and he can just keep scheming if he wants. That he was still scheming "every hour of every day." And, when we show up, that his scheme he decided on isn't quite going to plan exactly because his invitation was only for "abomination, ripe with the power to bring about the world's annihilation."

Imho, offering cooperation with the stance of "I'll be spending the entire time I'm with you gathering intel and laying groundwork ensuring I can steamroll you if I want, you'd be wise to do the same, but hey, I hope we can be friends" is not exactly good faith (This is actually debatable! Some would say Emet-Selch was operating under limited sincerity of intention by admitting his bad faith, so it's kind of good faith up until he shot G'raha.) I agree with the stuff you said, too, though, so I don't it's at odds.

Arguably, Emet-Selch wrote a fan-fic and gave it a chance to play out but the Warrior of Light didn't validate his headcanon, lol.

[Catapult]

As a Lominsan I am honor-bound to point out that this was Travanchet.

As a Gridanian... yeah fair call mind derp.

I hate to lean on this argument because it's used against me every time I whine about Shadowbringers time travel throwing all the rules established by Alexander time travel out the window, but The Wings of Time and The Rift are very different methods with potentially-similar-looking results. They're different beasts when it comes to how time is traveled and the effect it has on the world(s) when it is done, so even if they knew about Alexander (whose own conclusion about itself was that it's difficult to use towards any specific goal where by the benefits outweigh the drawbacks), The Tycoon is still big news.

I stand by my opinion that the ascians, with their immortal perception of time, struggle to organize themselves on anything finer than a century-to-century schedule.

[Veloran]

To be honest I'm not sure where we disagree.

Arguably, Emet-Selch wrote a fan-fic and gave it a chance to play out but the Warrior of Light didn't validate his headcanon, lol.

We don't agree because I'm suggesting that Emet-Selch actually got his most preferred outcome and the one he put the most work into making possible.

After WoL defeats Innocence, Emet has effectively already completely won. He didn't need to do a single thing except wait, and WoL would turn into a Sin Eater and shift the aether of the First back into a state of rejoining. From the perspective you're saying he had, the game was up right then. Instead, he tells everyone where he could be found, thus allowing the Scions to track him down.

I'll stress again, he had absolutely no reason to do this. His "invitation for an abomination" simply makes no sense. Indeed his entire creation of the phantom Amaurot makes no sense from the standpoint you say he was acting from, because it served no purpose towards his plans for the rejoining. Rather, he created the city, the elaborate scenario of the Final Days, and the Azem stone all for the purpose of informing WoL and pushing them to see if they could overcome and be true to the person Azem was. Even Hythlodaeus' creation, which he suggests was just an accident, was clearly calculated to give more information about the sundering to WoL and reveal their connection to Ardbert, something which Emet had likely already seen in advance. And we can take this to be the case because the reveal of the stone shows that Hythlodaeus was something Emet orchestrated rather than an offminded mistake. WoL passing the test and not being broken by everything, therefore allowing Emet to finally give up his burdens and entrust the future to someone he could recognize as his old friend, was the ending he most wanted but the one he believed in the least.

If the plan for the rejoinings was Emet's 12,000 year-old painstakingly scripted dramatic play, what he ultimately ended up seeing acted out on the stage was in fact his impossible guilty-pleasure fanfic where everything miraculously came together at the 11th hour.

[Anonymoose]

We don't agree because I'm suggesting that Emet-Selch actually got his most preferred outcome

For whatever it's worth, apparently Yoshida commented on this in Famitsu this week and (while he maintains everyone is entitled to their own interpretation), Emet-Selch's true feelings were a desire to be proven wrong - to see that the Warrior of Light would overcome the "abomination" plan and prove they really can make the impossible possible, really can bring anyone together. Emet-Selch wanted to believe he really was Azem, or at least Azem-like, and would give him reason to re-evaluate the sundered. Instead, Emet-Selch saw that the Warrior of Light was nothing but another sundered being - unable to contain the aether of the Lightwardens, which any Ancient would have been able to do with ease, and he was "disappointed from the very bottom of his heart".

Again, I think we're not saying much, if anything, mutually-exclusive here (or at least I'm still not really getting it). We're shining a spotlight on different things to explain different things; I see that. I touched only on the vague "he wanted Azem to return to the fold" / "he wanted to see if goals were truly incompatible" / "he was back-up scheming" while exploring the logic of the schemes within schemes, and you had something much more focused on and specific about the former and what that means to you, but both jibe with what Yoshida's saying here, no? Emet-Selch, despite the schemes within schemes to advance the calamity all other things being equal, was disappointed that the Warrior of Light didn't validate his Azem headcanon, and moreover seemed to take on the most Azem-like silhouette at the same moment he stood resolved to kill him.

[CaesarCV]

The ever-eloquent Anonymoose has done a pretty excellent job detailing everything, but I'll still give my own interpretation on events if only to sate my ego.

Emet-Selch is a man driven far more by his emotionality than efficiency in scheming. He's very good at that too, but part of the whole bait and switch of the character is that he initially appears like some megalomaniacal madman but turns out to be a bitter, extremely depressed survivor filled with loneliness and guilt. He, far moreso than even other unsundered we've seen, truly cannot escape the past and obsessively dreams back towards it. He can't let go of the glory of Amaurot to the point where he creates a massive replica of it, even admitting it's far more than would be necessary for his goals. For him, everything goes back to the final days and the convocation's reaction to them. He sees even his grand nation-building projects as little more than playing around with toys since it's utterly impossible for any of them to match to Amaurot.

He's also kind of a racist, believing the unsundered to be little more than crude monkeys incapable of real emotion, civilization, or accomplishment. This relates back to the fascist themes of the overall game, especially denoted since the civilization he's most linked with, Garlemald, has clear and evident fascist themes to it. The unsundered are toys, even if he's tried to relate to them he ultimately failed. (As a slight digression I interpret that failure as more of his guilt and obsession with the Unsundered at play rather than any truth. The game makes it abundantly clear that sundered mortal life possesses inherent value and the capacity for greatness.) But at the same time, he cares about one sundered mortal...namely, the Warrior of Light.

Why?

Because the Warrior of Light presents a chance to rewrite history. Azem was pretty explicitly Emet-Selch's best friend, and the one the ascian most respected. But despite that, when Emet-Selch and the others settled on the Zodiark plan, Azem disagreed. And for a man as obsessed with the past like Emet-Selch, that fact tore him up inside for millennia. But here's a chance, maybe a small chance, and he tries not to hold too much hope on it, but maybe this time he can get Azem to agree? If he gets the Scions on his side they can figure out a way to handle the rejoining without killing the WoL or them turning into a Sin-Eater. He'll have time and some of the best-equipped mortals to help him too, which is nice, if not totally necessary. But more than that he can finally prove that he was right all of those thousands of years ago. He can make Azem see things his way, and if it doesn't work...well, he'll just kill them and move back on with the plan. However, just as he hoped that the Warrior of Light might truly be Azem...they prove to be just another disappointing mortal. But he held onto some hope, maybe if he reminds them just right he can see them as a real human again...and if not he'll just kill them. No big deal.

Unfortunately for Emet-Selch, he can only overcome his faults in his last moments. Only then does he actually trust the mortals to inherit the legacy of Amaurot. Only then does he finally see the WoL as truly similar to Azem. Only then, does he find peace.

[Anonymoose]

I'll still give my own interpretation on events if only to sate my ego. <snip> But despite that, when Emet-Selch and the others settled on the Zodiark plan, Azem disagreed. And for a man as obsessed with the past like Emet-Selch, that fact tore him up inside for millennia.

This is why "the more interpretations/perspectives the better". In my head, somewhere in my vague peripheral vision, "Azem disagreed and left" was always unfortunate but understandable; Azem usually did his own thing, anyway. But yeah, when you put it like that and I look directly into it, I bet watching his best friend walk away from a plan he believed in really sucked. Imagine how that must have festered after he was tempered and couldn't fathom that Zodiark was anything but the only acceptable path, crushing himself under his own expectations to save everyone for 12,000 years, knowing Azem chose not to share the burden, and not only still wanting him back, but deluding himself into thinking the Azem he wanted was somewhere in the Warrior of Light... Kinda puts his reaction to seeing the silhouette in a new context for me. "Gods, no wonder he was so pissed..."

[Veloran]

For whatever it's worth, apparently Yoshida commented on this in Famitsu this week and (while he maintains everyone is entitled to their own interpretation), Emet-Selch's true feelings were a desire to be proven wrong - to see that the Warrior of Light would overcome the "abomination" plan and prove they really can make the impossible possible, really can bring anyone together. Emet-Selch wanted to believe he really was Azem, or at least Azem-like, and would give him reason to re-evaluate the sundered. Instead, Emet-Selch saw that the Warrior of Light was nothing but another sundered being - unable to contain the aether of the Lightwardens, which any Ancient would have been able to do with ease, and he was "disappointed from the very bottom of his heart".

Again, I think we're not saying much, if anything, mutually-exclusive here (or at least I'm still not really getting it). We're shining a spotlight on different things to explain different things; I see that. I touched only on the vague "he wanted Azem to return to the fold" / "he wanted to see if goals were truly incompatible" / "he was back-up scheming" while exploring the logic of the schemes within schemes, and you had something much more focused on and specific about the former and what that means to you, but both jibe with what Yoshida's saying here, no? Emet-Selch, despite the schemes within schemes to advance the calamity all other things being equal, was disappointed that the Warrior of Light didn't validate his Azem headcanon, and moreover seemed to take on the most Azem-like silhouette at the same moment he stood resolved to kill him.

It seems to me that interview is quite supportive of the point I was making. Emet wanted to see Azem in WoL, even while believing that to be impossible. What ultimately happened is exactly the ending he desired. Why I say we don't agree on this point is that you seem to characterize this as a failing of his schemes and of WoL "invalidating his headcanon of Azem". But considering what Yoshida says there, if Emet was disappointed by WoL's failure to contain the light, it follows that what he truly wanted was for what happened, to happen. Yoshi isn't saying he was disappointed afterwards, after all.

Because the Warrior of Light presents a chance to rewrite history. Azem was pretty explicitly Emet-Selch's best friend, and the one the ascian most respected. But despite that, when Emet-Selch and the others settled on the Zodiark plan, Azem disagreed. And for a man as obsessed with the past like Emet-Selch, that fact tore him up inside for millennia. But here's a chance, maybe a small chance, and he tries not to hold too much hope on it, but maybe this time he can get Azem to agree? If he gets the Scions on his side they can figure out a way to handle the rejoining without killing the WoL or them turning into a Sin-Eater. He'll have time and some of the best-equipped mortals to help him too, which is nice, if not totally necessary. But more than that he can finally prove that he was right all of those thousands of years ago. He can make Azem see things his way, and if it doesn't work...well, he'll just kill them and move back on with the plan. However, just as he hoped that the Warrior of Light might truly be Azem...they prove to be just another disappointing mortal. But he held onto some hope, maybe if he reminds them just right he can see them as a real human again...and if not he'll just kill them. No big deal.

Killing WoL or even WoL joining him is probably not what he wanted, I think. Throughout the story he pushes WoL's buttons as hard as he can (ex at the ladder, after Innocence, before the Dying Gasp) to see if he can get WoL to give in, but in fact we know that he didn't want WoL to surrender. WoL agreeing to join Emet would be inconsistent with how Azem was in life, so that happening would just be another disappointment. He didn't want validation, he wanted to be proven wrong.

[KizuyaKatogami]

And I wouldn't discount the probability that Emet-Selch's approach was influenced by the Warrior of Light being a shard of Azem. Emet-Selch secretly crafted the Azem stone despite his tempering; he must not have believed that it was necessarily at odds with Zodiark or the salvation of the world as he understood it needing saving. He perhaps held some self-delusion that Azem, given enough time and opportunity, would willingly return to the fold. When what had to be done was done, Emet-Slech wanted Azem there. I think that's perhaps why he was so angry to see that, even after spending time with him, the Warrior of Light not only continued to defy him, but in the final moments of their conflict stood with the silhouette of Azem themselves.

In a recent interview we are told a primal can control how much and what kind of tempering they do. It’s highly likely Zodiark’s tempering is very minuscule in that regards.

[Anonymoose]

In a recent interview we are told a primal can control how much and what kind of tempering they do. It’s highly likely Zodiark’s tempering is very minuscule in that regards.

Emet-Selch's explanation seems to be that Zodiark didn't deliberately temper them after-the-fact at all. It was being brought into symbiosis with his energy during the summoning that bound them to his will and made him their one true god, due to the creation of a connection between themselves and the unprecedented psychic weight of the thing they were summoning. "It was unavoidable."

Using the French phrasing here just because it's so explicit.

Tu n'aurais tout de même pas également oublié que lorsque les hommes-bêtes invoquent leurs Primordiaux des temps modernes, ils entrent en symbiose avec leur énergie et deviennent des “subjugués”, hein? Rassure-moi, tu commences à me faire peur! Eh bien, figure-toi que le processus est exactement le même pour nous. Pour faire simple, celui qui croit pouvoir résister à l'influence psychique d'un être aussi démesurément puissant ne peut qu'être lourdement déçu. C'est ainsi que les Asciens sont devenus les courroies de transmission de l'énergie de Zordiarche, mon jeune ami! Notre existence n'a qu'un seul but: amplifier et étendre la part de Ténèbres dans l'univers tout entier.

Surely you would not have forgotten that when the beastmen summon their primals in the modern day, they enter into a symbiosis with their energy and become "subjugated" (tempered)... Right? Reassure me, here, you're starting to scare me! Well, the process was exactly the same for us. To put it simply, anyone who believes they can resist the psychic influence of such a disproportionately powerful being will be sorely disappointed! This is how the Ascians became the conveyor belts of Zordiarch's energy, my little friend. Our existence has but one purpose: to amplify and expand His Darkness through the entire universe.