Sharlayan origins and the Endwalker Trailer

[GoldStarz]

It's not a team effort when someone never even shows up for the huddle. The only credit I can give Hydaelyn was shielding WoL against Ultima at the end of 2.0 and then blasting Lahabrea, and ultimately his design was to weaken Hydaelyn rather than cause a Calamity so by expending all that power she arguably did what he wanted anyway. Aside from that her best showing was sending Minfilia to the First, and it's debatable how much of that was by her own power. Every other instance of WoL saving the world was down to WoL themselves, and as people are so fond of pointing out in relation to the tempering argument WoL would always be doing that with or without Hydaelyn's blessing. And as an aside most of what you reference on this front weren't shaped up to be Calamities.

Except she very clearly is trying to contribute. Do you think it was solely Minfilia's idea to leave Ardbert behind rather than use his energy to stay the flood? Minfilia is a very smart and capable person, but I doubt she has the ability to recognize that someone's soul is the same as another's or the ability to pre-plan to such an extent that she can make a split second choice that affects 100 years down the line. I'm positive that either before or after she was sent on her way, Hydaelyn sent her a memo not to use Ardbert's soul.

There's only so much you can do when you quite literally have no way to speak to people, let alone actively influence events.

[Cilia]

I don't like playing Quote Chop Suey, so...

Simply put I disagree with the Convocation's intent to "return to the way things were" due to Heraclitus' philosophical doctrine of panta rhei, or "everything flows." Nobody steps through the same river twice; or more contextually you can't go back to the way things were, because not only has the world changed since [X time ago] you have changed as well. To believe you can return to the previous status quo, much less enshrine it in eternity, is absolute folly. Months, years, decades... centuries... millennia... change is inevitable.

"Venat & co. shouldn't have summoned Hydaelyn because the Convocation said they were going with the Amaurot Restoration Plan, and enjoyed popular support."
This is fallacious reasoning; specifically an appeal to authority and popularity. Just because the Convocation decided on that course of action, and just because it was popularly supported, doesn't mean it was right. If you disagree with that course of action and your conviction is true, and authority refuses to listen to your concerns, rebellion is not just right, it is necessary to have your voice heard. This will likely end up hurting people, but that is the price that must be paid, and to do nothing is a betrayal of one's conscience - to lack a moral center and conviction to go with it.

The whole scheme is ultimately an attempt to escape the consequences of the Final Days of yore - trying to both have one's cake and eat one's cake. It's entirely understandable why they'd want to try, and with Zodiark offering the temptation also understandable they'd give in, but that's just a weakness of heart. Trying to reclaim what wast lost, regardless of the cost, instead of standing the pain and moving forward... it's maladaptive, living in the past like that. Born of the innocence that came with living in a "perfect" world, but all the same...

Those who live in the past risk losing sight of the future.

Never you mind the fact it might not be possible for Zodiark to resurrect people body and soul; and even if he is, whether or not those people would be understanding and accepting of the price that was paid to bring them back.

Anyway... the pro-Zodiark / anti-Hydaelyn camp has all but said verbatim it's arguing in bad faith (as was postulated from the first), and like I said I don't enjoy Quote Chop Suey, so I'll take my leave at this juncture. Suffice to say that of two bad options I see Hydaelyn as the better of the two (not a good one, just the lesser of two evils) for philosophical reasons, and the Ancients / Ascians throwing a private pity party over their losses doesn't change my opinion on the subject. Some differences can't be reconciled.

[Theodric]

Anyway... the pro-Zodiark / anti-Hydaelyn camp has all but said verbatim it's arguing in bad faith (as was postulated from the first), and like I said I don't enjoy Quote Chop Suey, so I'll take my leave at this juncture.

I don't think that's the case at all. For starters, there's many people who aren't interested in taking a side so much as arguing from the perspective of the characters and factions being discussed.

Furthermore, I think it's pretty disingenuous to paint people who favour Zodiark as somehow being part of one big hive mind and as arguing in bad faith when there's a trend towards some of the people in favour of Hydaelyn outright ignoring developer comments that outline that, ultimately, it is a matter of perspective. I don't think I've ever seen people in favour of Zodiark resort to death threats or extremely nasty defamatory comments about the character of any individual who happens to favour the antagonists in a fictional fantasy game. (Though I don't doubt that an example of someone getting snappy in a post or two after months of being harassed will be used as if it's somehow comparative to creepy stalking and death threats!)

Unfortunately I cannot say the same of some of Hydaelyn's more zealous defenders, but even so I'm certainly not going to tarnish every poster who likes Hydaelyn with the same brush. Perhaps the same generosity could be extended in turn?

[Gothicshark]

...what if this was a subtle hint of something? Of Sharlayan also having Ascian hands in their origins, perhaps...? It wouldn't be too far-off, seeing them as secret-keepers like they are. What do you guys think?

Yoshi-P is very open that he loves Mystery Novels, and the FFXIV was designed based on his love of a good Mystery Novel, so is it a hint of something, Yes. Very Much so, in fact once you finish Endwalker, and what ever the big Reveal is, it's been indicated that the Clues go back to ARR, and you should replay the MSQ and talk to everyone, because the clues to what ever the great mystery is have already been given.

Is there a Sharlayan connection to the Ancients? Yes, it's been not too subtly suggested in game a few times, and even the lore of Sharlayan has some inconsistencies that suggest there is a lot more to their society than has been revealed openly, things we will probably uncover either in the MSQ or by chatting to NPCs and doing side quests. The fact that 6th Calamity was the flood and two out of the three civilizations caused it, and the Survivors are suppose to be everyone in between, and the third society of scholars was destroyed by a curse prior to the War of Magi, doesn't mean there weren't survivors of Nym that might have been the ancestors of Sharlayan.

---

Personal Theory:

there are more ancients other than the Ascians alive and immortal, but they have been working tirelessly to save people from the Ascians. Hydaelyn being the most obvious as she has a humanoid avatar. These good aligned Ancients founded Nym as a Counter to Mhachi and Amdapor which were created by the Ascians to help bring another Calamity. But Mhach cursed Nym with the Tonberry Curse, and supposedly none were spared... or maybe not, just maybe a few of their number avoided their fate, held a collection of Knowledge, and made it on the Ark and were saved from the Flood. Just maybe those survivors moved to Islands far from everyone and founded Sharlayan, and they had the backing of a good aligned ancient such as Hydaelyn. My evidence is the stylistic look and feel of Sharlayan is closer to Nym than Mhachi or Amdapor, plus the common class from Sharlayan is Scholar, but not Fairy Scholars, but the more modern Carbuncle. The other class from Sharlayan is Astrologian which could be described as an advancement from Scholar. In fact Sharlayan seems to have a lot of casters, but no White or Black Mages. They seem to always go the arcanist route using knowledge and arcane to do magic and avoiding white and black magic. Which is why went Alisaie went Red it was such a big deal.

[Rulakir]

It's the hypocrisy that bothers me. Humans value human life above all other creatures, they're also responsible for the deaths of tens of billions of sentient life every year for far less. It's never stated what "new life" would be sacrificed to Zodiark and, yes, if our civilization were in similar circumstances the populace would overwhelmingly vote in favor of sacrificing billions of non-human lives (though you might get some backlash if it included dogs).

It's also never stated that the third sacrifice wouldn't be the last. The Ancients had stopped the Final Days and restored the world, the only thing left to do was bring back their loved ones.

As for Venat, she may have been an extremist acting on behalf of a fringe group. I find it questionable that her 'solution' was to sacrifice to and summon a second elder primal when their society hadn't resolved the issues with the first one. Even though "no small number" of Ancients disagreed with the third sacrifice, I sincerely doubt if given an informed choice they would have chosen sundering as the alternative. Not only due to self preservation, which they had already given 75% of themselves for, but acknowledgement that doing so would cause exponentially more loss of life. The question is whether or not she knew imbuing Hydaelyn with the ability to enervate her foes would effect everything and not just Zodiark. It's surprising to me how much leeway she gets for making a non-consensual decision on behalf of all Ancients, the majority of whom did not agree with her, that destroyed their civilization after they'd given so much to save the world.

[MikkoAkure]

The issue is we have no evidence for previous Warriors of Light ever stopping any Calamities. Historically they're known to appear on the eve of an Umbral Era, which implicitly suggests that they have a very low success rate. Even the instances where we know they've done heroic things, such as with Tenzen or Ramza, we neither know if those situations would have developed into Calamities (as Ascian involvement looks to have been zero), nor to what degree Hydaelyn was even involved.

A lot of the problem with making conjectures regarding the past events is that all of this is being told in the medium of a video game and not a chronicle of events of another world with no "plot". If past WoL were very successful at stopping calamities, then there wouldn't be much at stake would there? As much as I like the game and its lore, I don't think that it's meant to be thought about this much. Besides, the writers can always say that the successful attempts at stopping calamities were so successful that we didn't hear about them. Hydaelyn herself is so secret that the general populace of the world doesn't know of her existence, let alone mystical magical warriors who fight against the powers of Darkness.

The Ascians are always doing things in the background too, they don't make just 1 plan and throw all their eggs in the basket. Look at the whole plot of Heavensward. That was kicked off because 1000 years ago an Ascian told king Thordan I that you can get power by eating dragon eyes, and then he left and the whole region fell into chaos. I don't feel like that was done specifically to cause a calamity, but they're certainly trying to make a mess of things and reap their harvest down the line depending on what has grown from the seeds they've sown. The thing with the Ascians' goals to cause a calamity is that they only have to win once.

It's the hypocrisy that bothers me.

Well I guess we'll all find out in a few days what happened since we don't have the complete story yet and we're jumping at conclusions right now without all of the facts. My current stance is that when a primal tells its indoctrinated and tempered followers that it will totally return all of the souls of the summoned in exchange for more aether, I'm disinclined to believe it, as I'm sure Venat was as well. Some of the Ascians definitely seemed to have been drinking the kool-aid more than others since Lahabrea outright referred to Zodiark as a god despite the fact he more than anyone else should know better while Emet-Selch treated his tempering casually as a matter of fact.


On topic, I wouldn't be surprised if the Ascians had something to do with Sharlayan, for the same reason I mentioned above for the Ascians starting the Dragonsong War. Their reasoning with Sharlayan will probably be a lot more subtle than that but we'll know this weekend.

[Rulakir]

My current stance is that when a primal tells its indoctrinated and tempered followers that it will totally return all of the souls of the summoned in exchange for more aether, I'm disinclined to believe it, as I'm sure Venat was as well. Some of the Ascians definitely seemed to have been drinking the kool-aid more than others since Lahabrea outright referred to Zodiark as a god despite the fact he more than anyone else should know better while Emet-Selch treated his tempering casually as a matter of fact.

Primals are the will of their creators made manifest. There was no reason not to believe Zodiark could return the sacrificed Ancients when he'd succeeded in carrying out the Convocation's previous requests to cease the Final Days and restore life to the world. It's also been presented that primal tempering is essentially involuntary. It's for this reason I believe Hydaelyn tempers and will be rather irked if she's somehow the sole exception to a rule of basic survival instinct for every other known primal.

My opinion is everyone should be a lot more concerned that we've been carrying out a primal's will not only without question but with devotion when we don't know what Hydaelyn's will is. I've theorized that her primary objective is to stop Zodiark no matter the cost as opposed to protecting life as I'd argue the sundering was a violent act against nature, but it did serve to suspend Zodiark.

[GoldStarz]

It's the hypocrisy that bothers me. Humans value human life above all other creatures, they're also responsible for the deaths of tens of billions of sentient life every year for far less. It's never stated what "new life" would be sacrificed to Zodiark and, yes, if our civilization were in similar circumstances the populace would overwhelmingly vote in favor of sacrificing billions of non-human lives (though you might get some backlash if it included dogs).

It's also never stated that the third sacrifice wouldn't be the last. The Ancients had stopped the Final Days and restored the world, the only thing left to do was bring back their loved ones.

We can pretty easily intuit that the new life that was created throughout the star was sentient. The Echo is awakened from those who have the soul of an Amaurotine and have witnessed a star shower. There have been a number of star showers throughout the game, and while the Echo isn't the rarest thing in the world, it's still uncommon. From there, we can presume that this means the majority of souls of the Source are in fact created from that new life.

As for the third sacrifice being the last. No one ever said the first one wouldn't be the last. Or the second. By the time the third sacrifice is being planned, people are of course getting suspicious. As they should have been, the Convocation was, Emet-Selch's own admission, tempered; they were never going to stop unless someone stopped them. Whether Venat's way of choosing to deal with the situation was idea or not is something up for debate, but the fact is that the Convocation (and I specifically say the Convocation here because we've yet to actually here from Zodiark himself on the matter) were becoming a proven danger to both themselves and the star.


It also feels worth noting that based on how Emet-Selch describes the sundering, it's entirely possible that no life was destroyed in the Sundering and that the changes between the worlds is largely due to a widening gap from how souls were reborn through reincarnation rather than them immediately becoming new people.

Primals are the will of their creators made manifest. There was no reason not to believe Zodiark could return the sacrificed Ancients when he'd succeeded in carrying out the Convocation's previous requests to cease the Final Days and restore life to the world.

Go ask Shanti and her daughter how that worked out for them. There's an ocean's depth of difference between restoring life and restoring a life, let alone hundreds of them.

[MikkoAkure]

Primals are the will of their creators made manifest. There was no reason not to believe Zodiark could return the sacrificed Ancients when he'd succeeded in carrying out the Convocation's previous requests to cease the Final Days and restore life to the world. It's also been presented that primal tempering is essentially involuntary. It's for this reason I believe Hydaelyn tempers and will be rather irked if she's somehow the sole exception to a rule of basic survival instinct for every other known primal.

My opinion is everyone should be a lot more concerned that we've been carrying out a primal's will not only without question but with devotion when we don't know what Hydaelyn's will is. I've theorized that her primary objective is to stop Zodiark no matter the cost as opposed to protecting life as I'd argue the sundering was a violent act against nature, but it did serve to suspend Zodiark.

If that were completely the case and Warriors of Light are Hydaelyn sleeper agents, then it wouldn't account for Ajora summoning Ultima, Cylva basically causing everything bad that happened on the First, or the Warriors of Darkness joining Team Rocket to kick puppies and shoot children with poison arrows on the Source. Also Hydaelyn willingly giving up most of her energy basically every meaningful encounter we have with her, to the point where even Midgardsormr is kinda like "I don't know about this". She's definitely a complex program, but there must be something about her that values free will to a fault. It's even in her song.

This post my age like a banana in a few days but I'd like to think the writers are better than 10 years of story ending with "you've been pranked!" and it turns out that we were tempered all along. I'm sure Zodiark might get some level of redemption, but I'm not banking on a complete flip either.

[Theodric]

I think it's pretty subjective as to whether a story involving Hydaelyn being deceptive would be good or not. Some people will be indifferent to such a revelation, others will find it agreeable and then there's people who will dislike it.

Which can be attributed to pretty much every aspect of the game's story, ultimately.

I enjoyed much of what Shadowbringers brought to the table. I'm hoping that I'll be similarly impressed with Endwalker. With any luck, we'll see similar nuance at play to what we've seen established thus far.