*Spoilers* Anyone feel joining Emet would have been better

[Rulakir]

Which goes back to what Urianger says himself, NONE of the places she found were doing well, her arrival had negative effects and helped push them over, but the ones that hadn't already wiped themselves out were for one reason or another already on the edge.

Well, then Etheirys is still doomed and all Venat did was delay the inevitable. It also means all the shards are doomed, possibly sooner rather than later since time flows differently on them. What then? Do they rejoin or just die off in their separate reality? What happens next time there isn't someone to make the executive decision that civilization no longer has a future and needs to be 'reset' for life to continue?

This is one of the problems I have with EW's messaging. They on one hand treat everything as inevitable, but on the other hand imply there's some choice in the matter (unless it's the Ancients). The sundering isn't going to prevent Etheirys from suffering the fates of the other stars even if it's not through "perfection". Even the Ra-la state in their notes that they were once "lesser" and "sought purpose", so similar to the sundered.

[EaraGrace]

Well, then Etheirys is still doomed and all Venat did was delay the inevitable. It also means all the shards are doomed, possibly sooner rather than later since time flows differently on them. What then? Do they rejoin or just die off in their separate reality? What happens next time there isn't someone to make the executive decision that civilization no longer has a future and needs to be 'reset' for life to continue?

This is one of the problems I have with EW's messaging. They on one hand treat everything as inevitable, but on the other hand imply there's some choice in the matter (unless it's the Ancients). The sundering isn't going to prevent Etheirys from suffering the fates of the other stars even if it's not through "perfection". Even the Ra-la state in their notes that they were once "lesser" and "sought purpose", so similar to the sundered.

But I’d argue that messaging is exactly the point. While I recognize my interpretation may differ as this is subjective, one of the core questions Endwalker asks, in my reading of it, is how we grapple with the inevitable. How we come to the terms with the finite nature of existence and our own place in it. Or in other words, it asks:

Venat: Why, given life, are they meant to suffer. To die…

Which Venat answers

Venat: As fragmented, imperfect beings, yours is a never-ending quest. A quest to find your purpose, knowing your end is assured. To find the strength to continue, when all strength has left you. To find joy, even as darkness descends…

… And amidst deepest despair, light everlasting.

And in that is the key to overcoming the song of oblivion. Not in finding solutions to all of life’s ills, but to know that our end is assured and yet still wanting to see tomorrow, of fighting against the inevitable for that one extra day. The Dragons scoff at the answer, the Ea mock it, and the Omicrons don’t understand it. And in the end they were swallowed by despair.

[MikkoAkure]

Frankly, even if we assume that a descent into self-destruction was inevitable, I'm not so sure that denying them that choice in the future by destroying them in the present is all that reasonable.

The Amaurotines technically already self-destructed. Just not in the exact same way as others we’ve seen through Meteion did.

One of their number gets upset with his society, plays with forces he barely understands and are outside his control, goes mad at the revelation they brought him, and decides to test all of humanity with an apocalypse before wiping his own memory and that of one of the leaders of the account.

Then the leaders of the society when faced with the threat delete chunks of their remaining population to stop it through summoning a god, and when they decide to sacrifice the life they created to get their society back, a splinter group of their society breaks reality, effectively bringing the remaining population of their race to 4, 2 of whom are technically gods or partial gods now.

As I’ve said before, the future that would face the Ancient civilization if they came back would no longer be the same as it would be before, and would probably more closely resemble Meteion’s projection of Ra La. They all come back to life and now have a living god. Do you think their zealotry or their god will just go away? It would change the civilization completely.

[Slatersev]

The Amaurotines technically already self-destructed. Just not in the exact same way as others we’ve seen through Meteion did.

One of their number gets upset with his society, plays with forces he barely understands and are outside his control, goes mad at the revelation they brought him, and decides to test all of humanity with an apocalypse before wiping his own memory and that of one of the leaders of the account.

Then the leaders of the society when faced with the threat delete chunks of their remaining population to stop it through summoning a god, and when they decide to sacrifice the life they created to get their society back, a splinter group of their society breaks reality, effectively bringing the remaining population of their race to 4, 2 of whom are technically gods or partial gods now.

As I’ve said before, the future that would face the Ancient civilization if they came back would no longer be the same as it would be before, and would probably more closely resemble Meteion’s projection of Ra La. They all come back to life and now have a living god. Do you think their zealotry or their god will just go away? It would change the civilization completely.

Also when Xande came back to life threw cloning it came with him concluding life didn't matter because everything ends and that leads to his Covenant with the Cloud of Darkness.

Who's to say some of the Ancients who made the sacrifice if they were brought back wouldn't reach the same conclusion?

That's not even getting into the idea that we don't know how the Anicents would have reacted to the idea that new life was sacrificed without there consent to bring them back. Like I have said this before but does Hythlodaeus seem like the type who would be pleased or ambivalent to find out his best friend committed mass sacrifice on innocent people without a say to bring him back?

New and likely permeant fissures in there society was guaranteed even under the best case scenario because it involves a permeant new god that Tempered there leaders and a bunch of revived dead people who would have very varying reactions to being brought back to life and what it took to make that happen.

[Veloran]

Which Venat answers

Poorly, in my opinion. That speech of hers you quoted is very poetic, and also completely meaningless in the context of the circumstances at hand and what she is doing. Just from the outset, nobody is perfect, none of the races we encounter including the Ancients, they're all on that "never-ending quest", and yet the Ancients are supposed by Venat to be a hopeless dead-end that must be replaced by the Sundered. The Dragons are also nigh-immortal and incredibly powerful. But Midgardsormr wasn't "swallowed by despair". He wanted to live, and he wanted his children to live, and the race as a whole clearly want to live. With that in mind, one really needs to question whether Venat's answer - More specifically her actions - Were at all justifiable or even reasonable.

The Amaurotines technically already self-destructed.

Rather, they were destroyed. Specifically by Venat. If Hermes was the madman who created the test, Venat was the madwoman who simply went along with it and judged them failures to be extinguished.

Then the leaders of the society when faced with the threat delete chunks of their remaining population to stop it through summoning a god, and when they decide to sacrifice the life they created to get their society back,

Let's say this is something of an erroneous characterization of events.

As I’ve said before, the future that would face the Ancient civilization if they came back would no longer be the same as it would be before, and would probably more closely resemble Meteion’s projection of Ra La. They all come back to life and now have a living god. Do you think their zealotry or their god will just go away? It would change the civilization completely.

The Ancient's right to self-determination supersedes Venat's opinion on their worthiness to live.

Who's to say some of the Ancients who made the sacrifice if they were brought back wouldn't reach the same conclusion?

we don't know how the Anicents would have reacted to the idea that new life was sacrificed without there consent to bring them back

They do and we do, respectively.

[MikkoAkure]

Rather, they were destroyed. Specifically by Venat. If Hermes was the madman who created the test, Venat was the madwoman who simply went along with it and judged them failures to be extinguished.

I don't think that's supposed to be the idea the writers were trying to get across. Because of the limitations of the medium, unless they decided to make a whole essay on Amaurotine culture and the histories surrounding the events, we have to take it at faith that the characters present in the situation are taking actions that make sense to them in context. The rest is on you, the reader/viewer/player to accept it. Part of analyzing the actions of fictional characters is realizing that they're meant to be more than what are presented and the form is limited in how much the writer can get across. Venat doesn't seem to be meant to be portrayed as a "madwoman" as you describe. The writers' efforts won't convince everyone, which is where we get debates like this. It would be one thing if this were an actual written history of events, and even then people debate on the actions of people in history, but this is a fictional story where the writers were trying to deliver a specific story.

Let's say this is something of an erroneous characterization of events.

That's what happened though. I don't know how you can spin that otherwise. Half of their surviving population and then half again were used as fuel for a god of their making. They were willing sacrifices, but they were still used and spent in order to stop the catastrophe that one of their own caused.

The Ancient's right to self-determination supersedes Venat's opinion on their worthiness to live.

It would be something different entirely if it was just Venat, but it wasn't just her though. We may never know how many supporters she had, but she still had supporters whom she told the full story to and they agreed with her. Between the many unknown deaths caused by the Final Days themselves and the vast swathes of population sacrificed to Zodiark, there probably weren't too many left compared to the pre-apocalypse number. Yet there were still enough present who supported and were sacrificed for Hydaelyn's own summoning that Hydaelyn had the power to fight back against another god who had over half the surviving population sacrificed to it and win.

The whole point of a lot of the exposition on the Final Days is that not all of their society agreed on Zodiark's "3rd event" and enough of their number to make an impact said "no" and without that, Hydaelyn wouldn't exist. Just like you can't paint the lore forum users with the same brush, you can't paint the Ancients either.

[Veloran]

I don't think that's supposed to be the idea the writers were trying to get across.

What a writer intends and what they communicate is often not the same thing.

That's what happened though. I don't know how you can spin that otherwise. Half of their surviving population and then half again were used as fuel for a god of their making. They were willing sacrifices, but they were still used and spent in order to stop the catastrophe that one of their own caused.

The Scions were "used and spent" as well, and we call them heroes. I fail to see why we should take the Ancient's plans as being self-destructive, when for all intents and purposes we do the same.

It would be something different entirely if it was just Venat, but it wasn't just her though.

We see just twelve other people in on her plan - To the degree she even let them in on it, anyway. But these people are effectively all dropped from the plot at the end of Elpis.

whom she told the full story

Really? Because from what the records in the Akademia suggest, they didn't know the full story. And maybe if Venat had enlightened everyone else with the full story, things would never have degraded into the Final Days to begin with.

that Hydaelyn had the power to fight back against another god who had over half the surviving population sacrificed to it and win.

Hydaelyn's sundering power effectively hard-countered Zodiark. Besides, are you forgetting that Elidibus ejected himself from Zodiark's heart to try and make peace with Venat? And that without someone controlling him Zodiark is nothing but a willess, immobile husk? Trying to rationalize Hydaelyn's power, and the number of supporters Venat had from that is fruitless.

Just like you can't paint the lore forum users with the same brush, you can't paint the Ancients either.

A bit ironic, considering that's exactly what Venat did.

[Kozh]

Just my two cents, it's not like I don't find the 3rd sacrifice to be a bad thing. Because sacrificing new generation just to bring back the past does sound like an evil path (though funny enough, for all we know maybe the new generation doesn't mind about that lol). But my problem is the double standard.

Hydaelyn, despite of her own word that what she does isn't unforgiven, is portrayed as the "tragic hero" that's actually right, and we don't get a choice to disagree with her (no, the boat scene isn't disagreeing with her). Remember when people get mad because our WoL agrees to emet last request in ShB? Yet now they belittle anyone else who dare critize hydaelyn. Why? Because her choice benefits the sundered being.

Yes her choice manage to bring mankind this far, but it's a choice made by herself alone after meeting a messianic figure from the future for two days, top. Does she even told her followers what really happened back in elpis? She certainly doesn't tell the convocation considering our emet doesn't know shit about dynamis being the cause of final days. What happen with "you don't get to dictate the fate of the star!" narrative the game has been opposing till now (especially in ShB).

It's ironic too that from the unsundered perspective, venat is the ascian equivalent to them. Someone who deemed the their race to be faulty and thus not deserved to be saved. Better leave the fighting to superior being who can control dynamis, amirite.

Also, maybe this is just me, but I feel the Ascian being that devoted to Great Rejoining is partly because of the sundering itself? Like, they were suddenly sundered without reason (form their pov), how do you think they would feel? Personally, if it happened to me I would be furious and seek rejoining to spite whoever does the sundering. But this is just my musing and irrelevant to my previous point.

[Rulakir]

It would be something different entirely if it was just Venat, but it wasn't just her though. We may never know how many supporters she had, but she still had supporters whom she told the full story to and they agreed with her.

This is debatable now. The cutscene in ShB with Venat in Anyder implies that she didn't confide in those closest to her about the sundering or, if she did, neglected to inform them it would include all of Etheirys. The last one to speak asks why she must be the heart because they'll miss her and need her as their leader, which makes no sense given that 1) she wasn't going anywhere and 2) none of them would remember. I had long suspected that the people who supported Venat did not know about the sundering because the odds of anyone being okay with that were virtually nil. However, given that it's stated Hydaelyn was imbued with that power it was always intended by Venat.

[Kozh]

The people of the New World and Meracydia may not have been effected, but they're also not very high-density populated areas.

So just because they're not high-density populated area they don't deserve to exist? Idc whether it's a possibility or not, the thing is, they themselves expect to be erased by the end of it. They have 300 years and no one ask "uh, should we use this to rebuild society instead of going back (and potentially erase us)?". Really? Hell, even with omega and Alexander tech, they could built a better bunker than labyrinthos.

You're answering my assumption with another assumption. I'm not sure why you would be against the idea of the Ironworks doing something to fix the past if they lived in a world where the Calamity was still happening and continuing to happen and Black Rose will never fade so I don't know how that helps your argument.

You're right, it's actually against my argument. Because to think that the Ironworks decided to go back to the past despite the calamity already passed, is way more laughable than if black rose still exist. Hey, I tried to be kind to them, shouldn't be a problem to you, no?

It's still a part of the canon of the story and most importantly, the beginning where everyone is introduced to these characters. It's one thing for the story to evolve and to add nuance, but it's another to introduce inconsistencies and altogether pretend that the whole beginning of the story never happened.

Except that nabriales are dead in arr, and will never received the "nuances". Lahabrea fortunately get that though. They explained his evil mustache twirling way was due to him losing sanity because he body hopped too much.