*Spoilers* Anyone feel joining Emet would have been better

[EaraGrace]

What experiences? Roughly every 100 years max every individual's memories and experiences are completely reset upon death, at which point they reincarnate into a new, innocent being. And culturally there isn't any "experience" either - As was the sweeping point at the end of 5.0, everything fades with time. Everything that has happened now will be lost to history, forgotten as the mountains tumble to dust and the edifices of this age wear to nothing. Not to mention, how many people fell to despair in moments in Endwalker? Transformed into monstrosities almost instantly by hopelessness? Did they not learn the right lessons?

The experiences that are passed on the same way all human knowledge is? And once again, I’m not arguing everything is solved for all time. Just that humanity is now on a path they wouldn’t be if reliant on Zodiark.

I should think they would take significant comfort in the fact that the Final Days was merely the result of a rogue creation utilizing a powerful energy source rather than being a completely unknowable apocalypse event springing forth from nowhere and nothing. The latter of these circumstances is clearly more difficult to process than the former.

And that comfort will quickly be replaced with horror as they realize they are surrounded by a graveyard of civilizations who, despite doing what they thought was best, fell to ruin and despair. And that even if they do survive, ultimately Etheirys and everything on it will still be destined to die.

They had thousands of years, given the planet was being protected. And if Venat and her allies were working on it themselves it should have gone quite quickly. As to the second point, ask Venat given she chose to go with that plan even with that question in place.

Thousands of years maybe. And like I said, they had no interest in remembering the Final Days in any form, but you believe they’d be willing to suffer to achieve that goal?

That is that, yes. That being bad writing. Hell, it's so vague and contradictory you can hardly even claim that to be the case.

Why? It makes sense. Tempering being the natural consequence of creating an incredibly powerful primal doesn’t contradict anything.

Then don't tell everyone? Or hell, do so. It wasn't a panic that caused the Final Days, it was overwhelming space magic plowing through holes in the atmosphere.

Let’s lay this out. You can’t tell everyone, as they’ll panic. You can’t tell the Convocation, as they don’t keep secrets and Hermes reaction may doom the world. So who do you tell? Those you trust and can keep the secret.

[Cleretic]

Another poster brought up an excellent point. Veloran, I believe. About how Venat could have opted to create a spaceship and flee with those who agreed with her. Much in the same way as how Midgardsormr chose to leave his Star behind. Such a choice would have allowed Venat to enact her own resistance and the Convocation to enact theirs.

And as I mentioned when that was brought up before, that runs into a problem that you're assuming that all they need to do is recreate the conditions that ended up working. Which sounds great at first, but runs into two problems.

A: They don't have a way to know that this specifically could have worked. They know that Meteion is in space, yes, but they don't really know anything else about what's needed; for all they know they'll need an army unlike anything that her crew could possibly manage.

B: It also presumes that they would have been able to do what was required, which seems unlikely. What we see is needed ends up being a handful of dynamis-capable people who can speak from the heart and connect with the souls of those Meteion is imprisoning in their own despair. I have serious doubt that the Ancients actually would have been capable of this, because their personalities and histories that they can speak from (basically, intellectual empathy) is entirely separate from the ability to interact with dynamis that their creations have (basically, magical empathy). You need both present at once, and quite simply, the Ancients just don't. In fact, their creations end up immediately succumbing to dynamis and becoming Terminus beasts, which suggests that some level of soul or willfulness is required, and that can't just be snapped into existence.

[Veloran]

The experiences that are passed on the same way all human knowledge is?

Human knowledge is extremely transitive. Again ShB spelled this out, and the entire game has done nothing to dissuade the notion of people's reliance on gods and messianic figures.

And that comfort will quickly be replaced with horror as they realize they are surrounded by a graveyard of civilizations who, despite doing what they thought was best, fell to ruin and despair. And that even if they do survive, ultimately Etheirys and everything on it will still be destined to die.

The dread of an axe murderer in your kitchen supersedes the dread of existentialism. The Ancients clearly wanted to live.

And like I said, they had no interest in remembering the Final Days in any form, but you believe they’d be willing to suffer to achieve that goal?

These are the people Venat trusted and expected to make the ultimate sacrifice, so yes I would expect them to do so. Midgardsormr did.

It makes sense. Tempering being the natural consequence of creating an incredibly powerful primal doesn’t contradict anything.

It doesn't make sense because Hydaelyn is an incredibly powerful primal and supposedly she did nothing because that was simply not the nature of Ancient primals.

You can’t tell everyone, as they’ll panic.

Who cares if they panic. The Final Days isn't predicated upon their panic.

You can’t tell the Convocation, as they don’t keep secrets and Hermes reaction may doom the world.

There are countless solutions on this front. The first and most obvious - Hermes isn't even necessary because all the information that he brought to the table was already revealed to Venat in Elpis. Another, trick him to get his cooperation. Another, tell the Convocation before Hermes even joined. Way more besides.

A side note, since the Ancients are living lie detectors now, is it any wonder why the Convocation rejected Venat's objections? She was lying to them.

[QT_Melon]

Also I am not so sure about her "killing" by sundering. Every being was sundered...if sundering kills then nothing would be left alive thus no new life could have been reborn. Emet talks about sundering by just making a copy of Ryne. Bascially how I see it: The Ancient person was bascially split into 14 people. Each one of them less powerful than before but still with their memories intact. After all we see on the First that people had knowledge of the Final days and the sundering (cave painting). Or am I missing some ingame information where we got told that sundering kills?

A little food for thought. By the act of sundering which is now a purposeful act. You remember that each reflection/shard had different aethereal balances. So we also talked about how geographically things probably had their own evolution, ie land masses mountains and so forth. Now let's think of sundering. So now a place gets a new reflection right?

Do all the people sundered land safely?

Do people walk around with no memory with a big "what happened" only to fall into a chasm. Or what if your reflection is now a volcano where a home once was?

I mean I guess it's nice enough to overlook that detail and just assume, but here we were arguing about the logistics of various land masses that fell to calamities that likely caused deaths.

Personally I have a hard time feeling that sundering is just some "pain free" everyone landed safely when places aspected towards other elements could cause some other potential problems with geography.

Even then. Let's also think about what's going on with the Ancients. Let's say some of them while dealing with the Final Days may have created a flying creature that took their concentration to have them fly around to avoid a terminus beast.

Allasudden poof! Sundered, bye bye ability of creation magic and person just gets dropped in the ocean and slams into and dies or into a mountain. Who knows. Their agency was pretty much taken at that moment.


....To Be Continued *cue Roundabout ----->

[QT_Melon]

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I mean maybe we could argue that somehow her one summon and sunder, did all these wonderful calculations that somehow made everyone safe during the sundering event (since we really didn't see it anyways) but honestly that would make her way OP and that people would have even wondered why she just didn't sac herself instead before Zodiark's creation or something like that in fact, it just makes some of this more ominous that now she had the forethought - instead of just a contest of wills of well intended beings that didn't know WHAT could have happened.

I mean she basically needed Zodiark to be created since the argument is she shouldn't be changing the future. Basically waited for some people to sac pull to become Zodiark, and took over as the will of the planet. I mean she didn't really kill anyone but they did have to suffer and doing so deaths were caused and it's not like we know for sure by happenstance caused more death, but suffering/death/loss is OKAY on her watch.

With people arguing that the Ancients would have never learned so it was okay for Venat to do the things she did, reminds me of how our history books were about taming savage Native Americans to be less of heathens so Americans can justify taking over the land as new life. Now that so many years have passed there is no way in hell current dwellers of former native soil are gonna let go of that land now. Its helpful we forgot about it too just like how history rewrote what happened to the natives.

NOW though - don't get me wrong since it bears repeating I like the story, but I just have qualms with the portrayal. I would have loved to have seen the new life. I would have loved to have been the fly on the wall for those meetings by the convocation. Like I know we can't see Azem during those meetings but would have been interesting to SEE the emotional state of those members instead of random Ancients in a monologue to Answers. I also feel that the struggle and calamities needed to happen because I still feel a combination of the right balance of Aether embodiment WITH the ability to use Dynamis won the day. So I kinda stand in the middle that neither were really right in what they did but it took both of those views to make right and save our star.

[Alleo]

If the ancient had indeed survived, then they should be around somewhere. We know from Elpis that some of the things they created survived until the modern day. There is the option that they were wiped out on the source and the first, but if that was so you would expect that there would be mythos and legends about them.

The Ancients got sundered thus I guess after they first died of old age after that they just got reborn into smaller bodies because they now could use less aether. So the Hyurs themselves could be the smaller bodies of Ancients while the rest of the races probably were creations of them that later got reborn souls of them too. After all we know that ancient souls too gets reincarnated all the time, we ourself are proof of that.

We do not know how the situation was after Zodiark, after the fight between him and Hydaelyn. Maybe he did indeed only recreate nature and Amaurot was still in ruins after he saved the planet. Or it was rebuilt but because the future generations were much smaller they had no use for it or it got destroyed by the countless of calamites. After all Amaurot was the only city still "standing" after the Final Days. Everything else was already destroyed by it. And since only a small part of the Ancients even survived I doubt that they had rebuilt much outside of their city when the sundering came. The calamites did the rest. This can be seen on the First which had none such things because the Amaurot ruins do still exist under the sea and we even have the cave painting about the Final Days and everything after that. (Which gives a hint that people must have remembered otherwise they could not have painted that)

There are also mysteries because we still dont know much about the 12. Which will be explained in the next raid to us.

@QT_Melon:
Well we only have one source about sundering and that is Emet showing it to us by making a copy of Ryne. If that what happens then for me at least it would be the easiest solution that they bascially made a copy of everything. The whole planet was copied 14 times and because each needed aether it took that from the the original. For me it just means that bascially in a moment of time suddenly there were 14 copies of the planet and all its living beings without the others knowing that they are a copy. I doubt that through sundering the land suddenly changed. That would be something that happened over the centuries.

Of course until we get any confirmation any of our points are pure speculation. But this is also why I dont like saying that it was mass genocide. We simply dont know. Unlike of course rejoining where we know that the shard was bascially destroyed and the people killed. We have a example with the First and thus we can say that rejoinings are planetwide mass genoicde. Because rejoining only happen when the shard gets destroyed.

[QT_Melon]

Of course until we get any confirmation any of our points are pure speculation. But this is also why I dont like saying that it was mass genocide. We simply dont know. Unlike of course rejoining where we know that the shard was bascially destroyed and the people killed. We have a example with the First and thus we can say that rejoinings are planetwide mass genoicde. Because rejoining only happen when the shard gets destroyed.

I get it, because we don't see it. I just find it hard to imagine that someone didn't die as a result.

The other thing I think about that does upset me is that answer we got about why Hydaelyn (now passed off as) embellished the Heavensward story of her and Zodiark. Okay it was to help rile us up. Keep in mind however, how she told the story. She basically asked Minfillia to become her spokesperson. I don't even like Minfillia, but that's messed up.

So basically you asked someone to DIE and become your mouthpiece so you can lie to our WoL....WAT?!?!

[sidurgu-12]

So basically you asked someone to DIE and become your mouthpiece so you can lie to our WoL....WAT?!?!

minfillia was gonna die due to flow and being lost for too long but fusing with hydaelyn let her live while letting hydaelyn continue for a bit longer.

[Rosenstrauch]

minfillia was gonna die due to flow and being lost for too long but fusing with hydaelyn let her live while letting hydaelyn continue for a bit longer.

Correction: Minfilia was going to escape alive alongside the WoL and Alphinaud, but Hydaelyn requested she return to where Y'shtola had cast Flow for the purpose of empowering her to act as the Word of the Mother/Oracle of Light.

It was kind of a dick move, honestly. Especially since it was revealed that Hydaelyn was sitting on not one, but two stashes of unused power—the Mothercrystal and the power she'd set aside to test us in the event that we wished to challenge Meteion. And while it was certainly taxing for her to appear on the surface world (either as herself or through Krile), her situation wasn't so dire that she needed Minfilia to sacrifice her life to act as her mouthpiece. Really, the whole "Word of the Mother" thing is a little screwed up, in hindsight.

[Lihtleita]

even if we had done exactly what emet wanted and everything went right, the rejoining wouldn't be perfect. the void is still useless.