[Spoilers] Venat's motive

[Veloran]

"Without knowledge of the future she has no reason to hide the truth from anyone else in Elpis." She gives exactly the reason she has to keep things secret, and it's because the truth is so crushingly depressing that she has to make sure she only tells people who can take it (and we see soon after, the general Ancient population can't take it). She also has to make sure Hermes remains oblivious, which means being selective about who might tell him.

Neither of these things are necessary. Of the group that originally learn the truth 75% of them can take it, and in fact Emet and Hythlodaeus are two people that Venat chooses not to tell despite them proving that they would deal with it. The general Ancient population? They can panic or not panic as much as they damn well please, because in the final version of events 99.999% of them end up dying anyway. And Hermes? He is not needed. Venat already knew what to do to safeguard the planet, they could have chucked Hermes to the bottom of Pandemonium for all that he brought to the table.

"Assuming WoL never shows up and Venat never even gets involved, then Hermes should have just heard Meteion's report and turned traitor the whole way." Actually, Venat probably sticks around Hythlodaeus and Emet-Selch, who she crosses paths with as part of their official duties; she's nosy, and doesn't seem to have anything better to do. It's also actually neither Venat nor our fault that things go so sour about Meteion's report; it's Emet-Selch's, and so that won't actually change.

Do I really even need to begin to tell you all the ways in which this idea is flawed? Countless events on Elpis, from big to very very small only transpire because WoL is there. WoL holds Emet and Hythlodaeus up at multiple points, leading to them crossing paths with Venat, and WoL's presence is the reason Venat takes an interest in the party and joins them because a rogue time traveler is kind of a big deal. They only investigate Meteion in the first place because of WoL and are only there as Meteion is delivering her report because they've gone to track down Hermes for that purpose. They then only find Meteion after she disappears because of WoL, as none of the others can detect her. From there WoL battles into Ktisis with the others, and aids in the ruse that even allows Venat to escape. And Emet-Selch made things go sour? In what regard?

"If Venat knows nothing she has no reason to even design a concept capable of sundering souls to begin with[...]" Venat's actions in Ktisis are not influenced by us, she's off tagging Meteion while we're down with Emet and Hythlodaeus. Her nosiness was always going to put her there.

As I just said, the notion that she's just so nosy that somehow everything would occur exactly as it did with WoL there is an absurdism. For goodness sakes' Dynamis only even comes up because WoL is there asking about it.

Really, Emet is the active ingredient here; without him being around she wouldn't have had reason to follow (indeed, we wouldn't be following either), and Hermes wouldn't have been set so far off that he went to Ktisis.

What reason does Venat even have to follow Emet? And in what way did he "set off" Hermes? All he said to Hermes was to take Meteion with them back to Amaurot so they could recall her sisters - A scene that only even happens because of WoL - And which is hardly something intrinsically antagonistic.