On Venat's Role in the Story

[Lauront]

Is that the edition of the Encyclopedia Eorzea which was sent up to the Loporrits from Sharlayan? The one that claims that Warriors can perform the intellectual gymnastics needed to crystallize Aether into a mountain with Land Waker? Because until recently, Sharlayan scholars believed that all natural phenomena were the byproduct of Aether. You'd have to check in with the Hannish scholars if you wanted to see an alternative theoretical framework that allows for analysis of these outlier cases, although it hasn't quite entered mainstream conciousness yet. Aether theory has its uses and its limitations, much like Newtonian physics does in our own world. One cannot be too dogmatic in one's thinking.

Yeah, that edition was probably in need of an update. It does, however, contain an excellent treatise on carrots.

The big problem you have with that kind of position is that aether is readily observable through certain measurement instruments and special abilities. So if they want to come back and say the Sharlayans never bothered to study what was happening with all that aether at that point in time, that aether can solely be manipulated through intellectual means, or that the Sharlayans would not be able to account for something surplus or hidden (in this case, dynamis), fine, but as it stands aether factors into how these abilities are explained.

I agree that one can't be too "dogmatic", especially in the face of retcons or, more charitably put, "revisions" - whichever the case may be.

[Zoliru]

Also just something important I remembered, but I assume you all know in real life we have created tools to observe things we are not able to observe with our eyes or ears?

Well the Ancients can do the same, the elpis flower already exists so we even have an item already sensitive and able to read dynamis, it is just about research from there, and Ancients if anything were very into research and understanding so even without Hermes some would eventually go there.

[Lyth]

...

I cannot tell what has been tested and what hasn't. Perhaps someone out there has hooked some poor Warrior up to a clever testing apparatus, subjected them to life and death battle conditions to push them to the brink, and witnessed them weave tangible, measurable aether out of seven other people into a physical mountain. Or, alternatively, when offered up tales of such brave heroics and surpassing mortal limits, the only language we had available at the time was 'Aether'. About four years ago, the only measure that we had of martialist's energy was this arbitrary measure called 'tactical points'. Nowadays we know that many of these disciplines each have their own terminology to describe the expenditure of energy, that may or may not necessarily be based in aether. I suspect that the more that we journey and learn about the world, the more acutely aware we will become of our own ignorance. It's easy to dismiss these growing pains with a wave of the hand and a muttering of 'retcons', even when the knowledge gained doesn't tie into the narrative continuity itself. Travel is fatal to prejudice, after all, and Azem is first and foremost a wanderer.

[Lauront]

Florid, feel-good polemics regarding "prejudice" aside, that barely even seems to have any relevance at all given how Sharlayan scholars operate, yes, the lore writers can in the end make up whatever they want, whenever they want, for whatever reason they like (and irrespective of whether one thinks it's good or not); I do not dispute that and they certainly left themselves a lot of wiggle room for it.

If you want to dismiss the EE, feel free to do so. I don't particularly care one way or another, as ultimately however they explain it, as Veloran pointed out, the ancients do nonetheless exhibit an ability to wield this power. I was linking the source because a lot of people are unaware that the EE had in fact covered the topic.

[KageTokage]

I do kind of expect dynamis is going to get more focus going into the future; especially now that the blasphemies have caused it to manifest in a very tangible and dangerous manner.

Whenever a deeper understanding of the workings of the world is gained, it's a given some will try to abuse it for ill ends.

Urianger and Thancred even bring up the subject if you go talk to them in Labyrinthos, saying they intend to keep an eye on the Sharlayan side of things make sure nobody tries to abuse the newfound knowledge of the moon and interstellar travel somehow...and considering the plot of the Sage quests, the concern isn't unwarranted.

[QT_Melon]

I honestly forgot the whole bit about Azem not wanting to support the summoning of either of the primals, which seems like a rather significant bit of missing context; even moreso with the new knowledge that Venat was their mentor.

As much as I'd like to know about things like that, I'm not seeing many places they could logically squeeze it into aside from Pandemonium.

Well

Azem defected the convocation.
Anamnesis Anyder - Azem did not respond to another Ancient who reached out to him, Venat was noticeably silent on that front. So I'm honestly not going to be surprised if more hand waving will be done such as Venat maybe keeping Azem out of harm's way WITHOUT saying anything to our past self.

I will say on a side note, anyone notice Elidibus (hairstyle) post credits was like... a little brother version of Venat?

[BetaKeja]

Maybe having a few dialog options where I could've at least said "I don't agree with what you've done, but you've given me no choice other than to follow through" would have helped, instead it was quite the opposite.

Definitely. I feel that the story wouldn't have soured so much if there was something like that when you meet her in the aetherial sea. Maybe she'd admit that hiding things was mistake, she was left with no other options; or maybe it'd be some garbage justification; or just dodging the question. Whatever the response at least that anger could be vented instead of being left unsaid and ignored by everyone.

I’m just tired because the same people who were saying that “Venat/Hydaelyn is a big meanie and the Ascians were right” before are still saying it now and Endwalker made everyone on both sides double-down on their opinion. No amount of “debate” is going to convince anyone here to change their mind so it just comes off as a rant post. Endwalker showing Venat’s side of things as promised by the writers couldn’t do that so I don’t think mutual randos on their internet can.

There's at least three sides to every argument. I think both Venat and the Ascians were wrong. And the story just brushes that off, Hydaelyn was right to do as she did, there are no lines of dissent, no dialogue choice to call out her mistakes.

... I wonder if that's evidence that Hydaelyn does temper/influence people?

[Cleretic]

Also just something important I remembered, but I assume you all know in real life we have created tools to observe things we are not able to observe with our eyes or ears?

Well the Ancients can do the same, the elpis flower already exists so we even have an item already sensitive and able to read dynamis, it is just about research from there, and Ancients if anything were very into research and understanding so even without Hermes some would eventually go there.

You remember that the Elpis flower didn't actually do much of anything for the Ancients, right? Those flowers were mostly by mistake, and of little more than a curiosity since to most of the Ancients, they don't really do much of anything. Hermes is the one guy that was actually fully aware of their properties.

Hermes was the only guy paying attention to and with a strong working knowledge of that field. That was absolutely vital to have on hand for the Final Days, not just because he could quickly apply the concept, but because he was one of the very few people with enough knowledge of dynamis to actually recognize a crisis-level reaction of it. Any theoretical greater research project on it after the Final Days would require him at the helm.

...but any project like that also has to grapple with the fact that the entire civilization has swerved into 'going to great, even hypocritical lengths to pretend that didn't happen'. Frankly, I don't think that Amaurot would've had the political will to actually focus on something like that, now that they had the Zodiark safety blanket protecting them indefinitely and the outlook of 'if there was a problem, Zodiark will solve it'.

Considering how many questions have been left unanswered….yes absolutely. Unless they just don’t want to acknowledge them at all in which case stunning writing lmao.

I've got bad new for you: I play a Duskwight. And pretty much every regular poster into the lore subforum pre-Endwalker had a theory that somehow, Silvertear Lake would be important again.

I fully believe that the writers of this game would abandon and never acknowledge unanswered questions. It's not like they haven't done it before, including about subjects that people really like talking about. Hell, all the Endwalker role quests were devoted to picking up unresolved plot threads from multiple expansions past, and they didn't exactly lick the plate clean on all those regions.

[QT_Melon]

We still don't know if Silvertear is entirely dropped for sure? Dangling...yes - but dropped? I dunno. We still have unanswered questions about one Ascian, and one member of Midgardsomar's Brood.

Is it the end of Hydaelyn and Zodiark? Well yeah we don't need them anymore to be the systems that keep the star going now...

[Cleretic]

We still don't know if Silvertear is entirely dropped for sure? Dangling...yes - but dropped? I dunno. We still have unanswered questions about one Ascian, and one member of Midgardsomar's Brood.

Is it the end of Hydaelyn and Zodiark? Well yeah we don't need them anymore to be the systems that keep the star going now...

I think we can be pretty sure Silvertear is dropped, because the only evidence for the 'something in/under Silvertear Lake' mystery was in 1.0. There was no mention of the mystery at all from ARR onward. Given that making that mystery at all satisfying would require the element to be... you know, mentioned in a space that the vast majority of players would be able to pick up on and follow the clues, and hopefully a few other times to build it up, I think we can safely assume that whatever storyline was planned under the previous director has been dropped, and Silvertear is just a regular lake.

Similar to the Duskwight and Gelmorra, as much as I wish it wasn't (again, Duskwight player). All the neat little worldbuilding and buildup about Gelmorra, again, was invented for 1.0 (evidence suggests the 1.0 director might've been intending them for a similar role to what the Allagan Empire got in the live game), although in this case some of it survived into 2.0, mostly as dungeons, while the Silvertear mystery got dropped entirely because it was only text.

When you write as many cool background details as FFXIV's team do, it's just not gonna be possible to cover them all; some might have been for ideas that just didn't happen, some have less potential than they first seemed for where the story went, and some were just never supposed to be all that important. You can't just assume that, because you personally think something is cool and interesting, that the writers think it's worth the same page count that you do.