Our Azem - A secret plan? (Slight EW Spoilers)

[Rannie]

It’s genocide because they’re all dead? Everything. We’re not the same person as our Azem. That person is dead because Cenat ended their life. She killed them. She also killed all the animals, plants, critters, and whatever else got split apart. Venat killed them all.

All the new life are new people/plants/animals imbued with life from the shards of the people she killed. Their lives are all over. We’re the new life.

That’s why Venat states what she did was terrible. She killed everyone to try and save the future. Heavy stuff.

However they are not dead as death is

:*a permanent*cessation*of all vital (see*VITAL*sense 2a) functions*:*the end of life

Vital in the sense of 2a

:*needed by your body in order to keep living

So I ask you to put yourself in the situation of being sundered where you have some if not all your memories your body is intact your power is yes diminished, and you life is granted finite, but you are breathing, eating, speaking, loving, hating. Do you see yourself as dead?

[Iscah]

thats not how sundering works. emet selch himself explained that hydaelyns sundering split your being but thats it and since she sundered the planet every single shard was the same. minus aether density.

This is my understanding of it. Everything split apart into copies and apparently there may have been some degree of memory loss over what happened (or perhaps people just had no comprehension of the split in the first place to "remember" it).

The fact that the ancients are clearly physically a different race does confuse things though, and I think the game messed up by only giving us such a brief and non-literal account of what actually happened at the time of the Sundering. The big questions raised in Shadowbringers have not been answered well here.

[Rannie]

This is my understanding of it. Everything split apart into copies and apparently there may have been some degree of memory loss over what happened (or perhaps people just had no comprehension of the split in the first place to "remember" it).

The fact that the ancients are clearly physically a different race does confuse things though, and I think the game messed up by only giving us such a brief and non-literal account of what actually happened at the time of the Sundering. The big questions raised in Shadowbringers have not been answered well here.

It's why I'm wondering how sundering is Genocide

[Rosenstrauch]

If I were to fire a ray gun that gave everyone on Earth stage 3 cancer, resulting in most of the population dying from inoperable tumors, I would still be responsible for the genocide of humanity even if I technically didn't kill anyone myself.

Likewise, if I were to fire a ray gun that made everything manmade that operates on electricity cease to function, resulting in the total collapse of civilization since the majority of our industry depends on electronics to function, I would still be responsible for the genocide of humanity even if, technically speaking, it's all the other humans who are killing each other over rapidly dwindling necessities like food and water.

Venat's sundering is the same. Yes, technically speaking, she didn't strangle anyone to death or anything like that. But she did take an entire planet's population, which had been adapted to thrive for nigh on millennia, and rendered them incapable of sustaining their own lives for more than a few decades at best, while also depriving them of the aether required to create or use the tools that were the backbone of their civilization.

It's genocide with more steps, but still genocide. The idea that all the survivors of the Sundering just shrugged their shoulders and went on being the best people they could possibly be, when mere moments prior they were so desperate to fix their world that they turned to Zodiark is... well, ludicrous.

[Cilia]

It's why I'm wondering how sundering is Genocide

Sundering includes such important things as intelligence - which is to say, things you know and remember - as well. Personality is shaped to a degree by memory and the experiences that gave rise to those memories, so bereft of ~93% of your memories you'd no longer be the same person - killing you in a metaphysical sense, not literally. Apply this across a whole planet, and you get genocide after a fashion.

... though it's important to remember that Hydaelyn / Venat herself says it was abominable, though eminently necessary to actually stop Meteion's song of oblivion.

[Shookbeast]

I’m not sold on this theory of the sundering not being death. If that was the case, wouldn’t Emet have been able to run around and talk to all his friends? Wouldn’t all the sundered Ascians remember what happened?

We don’t have Azem’s memories. Emet had to imbue sundered souls with memories to restore them as Ascians.

I think the moral complexity of what Venat did is what possibly lead our Azem to not being on board with her actions. If we could, I’d like to swing the discussion back to speculation on what Azem might be up to (:

[redheadturk]

What Venat did is technically genocide, as the people the ancients sundered once were are gone

[Rannie]

I’m not sold on this theory of the sundering not being death. If that was the case, wouldn’t Emet have been able to run around and talk to all his friends? Wouldn’t all the sundered Ascians remember what happened?

We don’t have Azem’s memories. Emet had to imbue sundered souls with memories to restore them as Ascians.

I think the moral complexity of what Venat did is what possibly lead our Azem to not being on board with her actions. If we could, I’d like to swing the discussion back to speculation on what Azem might be up to (:

I mean they probably could have and did remember some of what happened after the sundering but with the constant death and rebirth, they no longer remember, plus for the source we don't know what they had left over from the Unsundered world especially in eorzea since they had multiple calamities that were earth destroying. Point in fact in the Qitana Ravel the pictures showing the final days are there on the first and the only calamity they had was the flood of Light. There were also the buildings of amaurot as well in the tempest.

Also those restored sundered Ascians weren't really restored to their former memories, it I think would be more like a person who has amnesia watching a recording of themselves and not remember that they did it.

[KageTokage]

The rank and file Ascians still strike me as a weird and ill-explained case.

Did the unsundered have a "generic" memory crystal they used on basically anyone who seemed likely to be willing to aid them in their schemes?

[Cilia]

The thing about the sundered Ascians is they aren't infused with the memories of their unsundered selves, they're infused with the personality and memories of their unsundered selves as remembered by the unsundered Ascians, which means they can be a close approximation but not quite the same thing. The unsundered Ascians didn't know everything about their colleagues, as Fandaniel showed very well.