Sharlayan origins and the Endwalker Trailer

[Vyrerus]

I mean you do realize

You clearly haven't engaged with the thought experiment that is the in world ethics of what's actually happened due to the Sundering.

In this setting the statements:

"Ardbert is dead." and "Ardbert still lives." are both true.

Every person who has died in a Rejoining is dead, but they live on literally by becoming a part of the Source's Lifestream. They either go on living by becoming part of a living person, or they join with the rest of whatever soul they are part and parcel to, in the aetherial realm.

In this setting, physical death is not the end, basically. To stop a Rejoining is to say that a temporary life is more important than the infinite soul that propels it, that imbues in it the qualities of life we hold most dear.

Ergo, the only way to actually commit genocide is to destroy souls completely (or destroy everything they could inhabit).

That doesn't mean it's painless. That doesn't mean that it's right. But as it stands it is better to take the actions necessary to heal those still living souls which have been damaged for 12,000 years. To right the great wrong done against them.

And the proof is there. We could not hope to succeed against Emet-selch even with 8/14 soul shards. We needed another shard of our soul to stand up to contest him. To save what was left of a single shard, we required intervention from the future and the equivalent of technically two further Rejoinings. We had to be 9/14 and rely on the Calling of the Exarch, and then had to contest him with the Auracite, all of the Scions with us, and the Lightwarden's aether.

We literally have to accept the fact that we needed the Ascians to succeed, restore our souls, in order to give weight to our will.

All I saw in the story was the Scions bitterly accept this truth, but being forced to ignore it for their own sake. What came after were pleas of emotion.

It is a bitter battle which becomes a weight that the victor may never unencumber themselves from. Such is what it means to wage war against your own kind.

[filkry]

Every person who has died in a Rejoining is dead, but they live on literally by becoming a part of the Source's Lifestream. They either go on living by becoming part of a living person, or they join with the rest of whatever soul they are part and parcel to, in the aetherial realm.

In this setting, physical death is not the end, basically. To stop a Rejoining is to say that a temporary life is more important than the infinite soul that propels it, that imbues in it the qualities of life we hold most dear.

I think the link you're drawing between the metaphysics and ethics isn't necessarily there.

In the real world, we have plenty of groups with beliefs that include some kind of immortal soul, whether via reincarnation or moving onward to another existence after death. Yet, usually these same groups do not use this metaphysical belief to argue that a single, transient instantiation of that life is of lesser value.

In the world of FFXIV, it's true that a rejoining would not permanently destroy the essence of a person. But it's not just their soul that matters - their memories and minds are important as well. I think the Ascians know and believe this more than anyone, as they seek not only to preserve the souls of the Convocation (and eventually the rest of Ancient society), but their minds and memories as well. They don't seek to bring back the reincarnations of those people, but those people in their wholeness.

In that light, if it's the mind and memories that matter as much or more than a wholeness of soul, a sundered life is not worthless or subservient to that theoretical whole being.

[Rulakir]

In this setting, physical death is not the end, basically. To stop a Rejoining is to say that a temporary life is more important than the infinite soul that propels it, that imbues in it the qualities of life we hold most dear.

Ergo, the only way to actually commit genocide is to destroy souls completely (or destroy everything they could inhabit).

This is my thought process as well. I thought the Scions' last pleas to Emet were weak because their only argument was essentially that an ~80 year life span is as or more important than an immortal soul. Meanwhile, the Scions actually are engaging in 'permanently' (as far as we know) killing the immortal souls of the Ascians, which seems especially egregious knowing that they could be reincarnated into someone like Gaia.

It's surprising to me that more people aren't bothered at the notion of having a sundered soul. It's not quite the same, but I imagine it'd be like if I told someone they have a long lost twin. The amount of people who wouldn't care about that would be extremely small, most would immediately wish to seek them out. Every non-Ascian in FFXIV's universe is just like, "This is fine."

[Vyrerus]

the link

You're applying real world belief to the situation, not looking at it from within. The line has to be drawn, because it's a theoretical that cannot be confirmed. There is no belief in the real world that posits that we have multiple, simultaneous iterations of the same soul that would be together if not for a goddess. We have no beliefs that know for certain that souls are real and tangible, whereas in the setting we're talking about they can be looked at with naked eyes of some special people, and with aether goggles by others. Also almost all real world reincarnation beliefs posit that we can transmigrate into animals and insects, usually as a punishment for bad acts in life. That hasn't been shown in XIV, and it automatically places living a life other than a human as a lesser life. But we know some animals are very smart, human-like even, particularly apes.

Do you see a chimapanzee as an existence equivalent to your own? It has a mind and feelings. Is its mind, is its wholeness, better than yours? Worth as much as yours?


I clearly said that the Sundered lives are real. They add memories to the soul, but the whole soul cannot experience them due to Hydaelyn's dimensional barrier. What you've just implied, unwittingly, is that the Sundering was a good thing because it caused there to be "more" minds.

But think about it, if those minds and their capacity for memory are reduced to 1/14th of the original experience that life had on the planet, then why are we holding that up as a standard that should be protected? Keep in mind that it's every soul that was sundered, including those in the Lifestream that had yet to experience life. No one in the Sundered worlds experiences the wholeness of mind or life that the Ancients did.

It doesn't mean it's worthless, but we have no way to actually portray someone living a more full life than what we know ourselves. We default to the assertion that the Sundered lives are precious, because they seem just as real as we ourselves. It's just we can't really conceive for ourselves a life beyond what we know. We could posit many ideas about it, but all would fail to showcase just what made Ancient life so special in XIV's world.

The Sundered live in a cycle of life that imitates what came before at a lesser intensity with more and more frequent death. Hydaelyn hurt the minds and wholeness of every original soul and life by literally dividing them. They had greater minds and the capacity for more memories before then. They are now consigned to a fragmented existence wherein the fragments of their souls can be raised in bodies to believe things antithetical to that of their other selves, and they can even do battle with and kill one another.

You're essentially asserting that the Sundering should have happened. If the weight of minds of the Sundered is worth more than the whole of the original soul, then there are an endless amount of minds to be had. I would ask why you devalue the original mind and soul so thoroughly. Why was it OK for their minds and memories to be destroyed? Why must they be subservient to lesser portions of themselves?

[Veloran]

It's not as though the Sundered lives are worthless. But it is true that they experience a degree of suffering that, frankly, they did not deserve to be put through without their consent, as mandated by Venat. If every person could have known the fullness of what they would experience dying countless times and what they had lost, I'm not sure how many people would have chosen to even live like that.

[sidurgu-12]

welp, this thread got weird.
that aside i do think some ancient culture has influenced them in some way based on the council scene in the trailer. but how much i have no idea.