*Spoilers* Anyone feel joining Emet would have been better

[Lauront]

Midy also has first hand knowledge that being "Unsundered" doesn't really matter much in terms of ability to survive as a society long term. Or ability to be decent. After all, the Omnicrons were a "full race" all those dead stars he passed on the way to Etheriys were from "full" peoples and look what it got them.

Midy has more reason then anyone to not really buy what the Ascians were selling. He has no reason to believe even if they got what they wanted they wouldn't end up the exact same way as any other dead star. If anything he would probably find them extremely arrogant and naïve to the wider universe.

I'm failing to see the logic here. Against the omicrons, being sundered would indeed pose a problem, especially if they could fell even unsundered stars, albeit at a great cost in the case of the Dragonstar. The only reason sundered Etheirys might be spared from them is it would not even be regarded as worth the effort. The Omicrons were a full race, but they were also one that had digitised their entire existences (hence, I consider automatic inferences in the case of Omega, a construct's of theirs, to be referencing dynamis, to be purely speculative in nature) and had lost a great deal in the process. How might a 1/14th Source fare against a full blown invasion of their kind? 2/14ths? Etc. Most likely a non-issue with them because they gave up to apathy, but let's say another star did. Having a few heroes shielded by boatloads of plot devices and plot armour does not mean the rest of the aetherically divided Source would be able to handle an invasion from a hostile star at full strength. Were it not for that, the Endsinger would've devoured the souls on the star whole through the Final Days' repeat, so it's not like the sundered (albeit 7 times rejoined) Source itself is insulated from future risk, even if she is now gone.

And frankly, who cares whether he "buys" it or not? It is their people and star which were aetherically divided 14 times over. Not his. All he knows is that his people suffered an unfortunate fate before another star. He knows nothing of the future of the Source, of whether it too might succumb one day to a similar dead end to all those other stars. In the end, the only reason Hades and the other ancients were blind to the fate of the other stars is because this knowledge was withheld from them, thanks to Hermes as well as Venat and the time travel contrivances. Midgardsormr is none the wiser to it. Bit bizarre to hold it against them if the knowledge was never shared with them. Meanwhile, while some of his children got along with man, we know man's greed led to another getting locked in a brutal conflict with them, so it wasn't inevitable that this star's fate could've ended much the same as those others which turned hostile to the dragons, particularly if Nidhogg gained the upper hand. Again, you can thank the protagonists and all their plot armour for it not going that way.

While I agree with you on some aspects I don't think saying that Emet is wrong requires saying that the sundering is justified. From the perspective of the sundered like the WoL, who had no choice in the matter, then he's wrong. He wants to destroy their world regardless of whether he has a good reason for it. And from the perspective of the sundered as we see with Ardbert and the WoL, separate pieces of the same soul behave as different people. So, those people are perfectly justified in saying to the Ascians, "even though the event that created us maybe shouldn't have happened, you don't have the right to tell us that we're mistakes and should die for the sake of your people". Even if we take the view that the sundering shouldn't have happened, 12000 years later, the already existing sundered have a right to defend themselves.

Regarding the sundering and its necessity, I've pretty much maintained a neutral stance on this because I feel like there's several questions that need to be answered before I can make a judgment on Venat's actions. Like, how long from the 2nd sacrifice was it until the sundering? What was Azem doing? What was the life that was to be sacrificed to bring back the ancients? Was it just plants and animals or was it creatures much like modern people? Either way I don't think it was morally correct to do so which even Venat admits herself, but the answers to some of the questions would clear things up for me in determining whether it was truly a necessity or not.

I'll grant that the "wrong" in this case depends on whose perspective we're viewing this from. I take it you mean the third round of sacrifices. As for the ancients who had the Sundering sprung on them with precious little understanding of what was truly going on behind the scenes...? From their view, it is sufficient that they are reversing a great injustice inflicted upon them. Even if Venat had some kind of moral qualms with the third round of sacrifice (and if it was just creations like those coming out of Elpis I can't say I'd share them), they still might not consider that good enough reason to sunder the star. In the end the entire plot is now mired in a bog of extreme vagueness so unfortunately we're just filling in holes through speculation, which they might address later on - or they might not. Hades tired, set a test for the sundered whereby he'd pass the baton, and honoured his word.

[KariTheFox]

Doesn’t change my point though. Poachers have 0 respect for wildlife. They don’t hold any ceremonies. I mean even non-poachers, the sundered we see slaughtering animals left and right seem to do so with no remorse where even the Ancients did. So i don’t see how they’re arrogant. It’s like with some people takes the ancients are damned if they do damned if they don’t. People keep trying to find ways that the ancients aren’t superior to the sundered when for all intents and purposes based on what we’re shown they kinda are lol. Like i brought up before, we literally summon our own creations who are actually more advanced than 90% of the ancient ones we see in Elpis, as the ones we summoned could speak, and then we slaughtered them There's the familiars we see led by Matoya where theyre effectively slaves to do her bidding, or the smn egi's etc. There’s a pretty stark contrast there.I think in the end people realize they’re living in a very flawed society and so the thought of even a fictional society being better than theirs rubs them the wrong way, so then they try and tear said society down brick by brick looking for the smallest of flaws(when half of them don’t even make sense)

A poacher is someone who hunts rare animals illegally for money. In the world of the ancients, everyone has godlike powers, and wants for nothing. There would never be a poacher because nobody needs any money - because anyone, even children, could make pretty much anything they wanted with their godlike powers. Before the final days, no ancient ever struggled to make rent payments, or found themselves wondering how they would feed their children, or had an illness they couldn't afford to treat. All their basic needs were accounted for, at all times. Without a struggle for survival, without a world that has poverty or war, of course they were able to focus on bettering themselves and the star. This doesn't make them "superior" to the sundered people. It means they are starting with a distinct advantage that no sundered person would ever get. (or to steal a quote from another science fiction franchise "It's easy to be a saint in paradise." )

And even so - their society had flaws. Evidenced by the fact that people like Hermes felt the need to suffer alone, despite misgivings he had about the way things worked.

[Veloran]

Spare me the condescension. My point is that using those three as a baseline is ridiculous, given they were clearly exceptional individuals. Using their reaction doesn’t tell us anything.

I'm just saying, those are not the same situations. And if we can't take their reactions into account, then frankly we have no baseline for what people in general would think. I also don't think their reactions would matter to begin with.

Venats plan A was the defeat of Meteion, based on my read. The Mothercrystal, as well as the reserve of strength she kept for our trial make that clear. And why couldn’t she just leave? To where? To a plant unprotected by Zodiark where Meteion would find a weakened, separated group of Ancients and immediately kill them? It seems obvious why that wasn’t in the cards.

Based on my read that was her final backup plan on the offchance somebody wanted to try and challenge her. And again - It was in Venat's cards, she was literally planning to do it and had been in communication with the Loporrits and Sharlayans about doing it.

That’s your subjective take.

I've seen other writers describe more sound narrative decisions in their own works as being worthy of derision for less.

What a dim view of people.

It's the correct view, one we see reflected in the game, life, and as I said by WoL themselves.

The Convocation, a group of smart people brought together as experts in their field, do not need another “smart guy” and he certainly wouldn’t be “invaluable in the crises to come.” Come on.

That's precisely my point. As it is, we have absolutely zero evidence that Hermes had any information of worth to add beyond what Venat already knew.

You’re letting your distaste for a certain character cloud the reality of what happened.

That's exactly what happened though. She didn't want to reveal the truth to him on the offchance that he could be made useful. She has a history of doing this now.

Assumptions.

When I presented the idea, that indeed was all it was. Not up to me if you don't find it of interest.

This does not sound like animals being sacrificed to me.

Exactly who is being disingenuous here? You know full well the situation at the time of the third sacrifice and the situation now, 12,000 years later, are nothing alike.

[Garnetiferous]

I'll grant that the "wrong" in this case depends on whose perspective we're viewing this from. I take it you mean the third round of sacrifices. As for the ancients who had the Sundering sprung on them with precious little understanding of what was truly going on behind the scenes...? From their view, it is sufficient that they are reversing a great injustice inflicted upon them. Even if Venat had some kind of moral qualms with the third round of sacrifice (and if it was just creations like those coming out of Elpis I can't say I'd share them), they still might not consider that good enough reason to sunder the star. In the end the entire plot is now mired in a bog of extreme vagueness so unfortunately we're just filling in holes through speculation. Hades tired, set a test for the sundered whereby he'd pass the baton, and honoured his word.

I meant the 2nd sacrifice. From what I understand of the timeline it goes Final Days > 1st sacrifice to summon Zodiark and put up his aether shield to stop Meteion's attack > 2nd sacrifice to restore the planet's capacity to sustain life > *indeterminate amount of time debating on what to do* > Convocation decided to nurture the planet and sacrifice a portion of its life to bring back those sacrificed > *more time here* > Summoning of Hydaelyn >*more time here*> Sundering

And yeah, I agree, from the Ascians point of view, they're trying to save their people and we're the ones standing in their way. So it makes complete sense why they're doing what they're doing.

[Lauront]

Okay thanks for clarifying that. Yes, it's all very ambiguous in terms of the passage of time.

[KizuyaKatogami]

A poacher is someone who hunts rare animals illegally for money. In the world of the ancients, everyone has godlike powers, and wants for nothing. There would never be a poacher because nobody needs any money - because anyone, even children, could make pretty much anything they wanted with their godlike powers. Before the final days, no ancient ever struggled to make rent payments, or found themselves wondering how they would feed their children, or had an illness they couldn't afford to treat. All their basic needs were accounted for, at all times. Without a struggle for survival, without a world that has poverty or war, of course they were able to focus on bettering themselves and the star. This doesn't make them "superior" to the sundered people. It means they are starting with a distinct advantage that no sundered person would ever get. (or to steal a quote from another science fiction franchise "It's easy to be a saint in paradise." )

And even so - their society had flaws. Evidenced by the fact that people like Hermes felt the need to suffer alone, despite misgivings he had about the way things worked.

I’m not saying they’re flawless, but people are bashing them for things the sundered do far worse in is my point. People claim that both the sundered and the unsundered are the same when they aren’t. There’s no such thing as a perfect society in anything, but i think it’s fairly obvious the ancient world was pretty up there compared to the sundered world. Hermes felt the need to suffer alone but that’s his own fault, as we meet other npc’s who share the same misgivings as him, it seems that he himself didn’t go out and look and interact with said people. Also thank you for pointing out, you’re entirely correct. The ancients didn’t have to worry about illness or age, both things that venat herself created when she sundered the world and everyone on it. She made beings susceptible to those things so all those deaths can be pinned on her. Also i’d say a being is pretty superior if it’s essentially immortal and immune to illness than one that can die from the flu. My poacher comment seems to have gone over your head as it wasn’t even a poacher specific thing but an example, of the sundered committing worse things or doing the same things as the ancient world but people bash the ancient world for doing so and turn a blind eye to the sundered when they do it. Please look at the examples i have with eden primals,egi’s,poroggo familiars, because it seems like those points are being purposely avoided as they refute many of the opposition people have with the ancients.

[Lauront]

Venat does not say that they would specifically need Hermes "expertise" for anything. She says "well he's smart, and maybe his intelligence will be useful?" If you actually pay attention to her dialog in this scene, she suggests to WoL that the world may be completely different when you return to your own time, meaning that she is actually intending to do things differently. And yet she also says that the others being mind-wiped may have set the stage for a conjunction leading to the timeline remaining the same, meaning she knows that not telling the others increases the chances that everything goes unchanged and the Ancient's world is destroyed.

Not only is the entire thing a godawful contrivance with little logic behind it, what Venat is talking about with Hermes there is her MO to a T - Withhold knowledge from someone and try to manipulate them into aiding your cause, even when revealing the truth of the situation to them might make them your enemy. To be clear, this is a mistake, and leads to the deaths of billions as the Ancient's world is razed while everyone is scrambling around to figure out the cause of the situation. Keep in mind that she also says that she needs to "prepare their defenses", and yet absolutely nothing comes of this.

She also mentions "securing our escape". This makes it harder to believe that her moon escape plan was not conceived with the genuine intention to pursue it had she felt the need to do so, in spite of some people writing this off as obviously never going to happen - there are so many uncertainties in the 12k years that followed that I consider any genuine ability to foresee every eventuality over that time span, including the development of the means to undertake time travel, to be rather fanciful at best, or at least prone to any number of possible setbacks arising, and it's all obscured through the shroud of the time travel itself sparing the need for any proper explanations. So it is not inconceivable she genuinely did intend to launch into space. We can but speculate on it until the developers choose to answer that question, which is why I don't really intend to discuss the plot much until we get some interviews, short stories etc., to see if they will address the gaps I see. With that said, I agree entirely with your characterisation of it.

I didn't get the chance to respond to this earlier, but I do think that is a very interesting point that you bring up. Venat and Emet-selch are both two sides of the same coin in terms of their ideals. Emet concluded only Unsundered life could lead to a full existence, while Venat believed that sundering it was the only way. Both go on to force their own righteousness on the entire world. Why then is Venat, the initial aggressor, considered a hero by the game's narrative, where Emet-selch is the villain to be slain? Why, when Emet-selch, at the very least, made the attempt to truly understand how the Sundered existed, and lived among them for lifetimes upon lifetimes? Conversely, Venat cast judgment on the entirety of her people and their lives, as they experienced the very first major Calamity their society has ever seen, and on a scale that dwarfs the umbral calamities of the shards. The end of the world as they know it, and she expects them to make a judgement call based on information only she is privy to. I understand there is context for her decision beyond this, but it still comes across as quite the double standard. Were we playing this game from the perspective of an Ancient, and Venat was spouting things about needing to 'divide the world and suffer, so that you can weather the coming storm,' we would absolutely see her as an antagonist to be in conflict with. She, like Emet, sees it as for their own good, but is that really her decision to make? As with Emet, I would say no, and I think the narrative would have benefitted greatly if it saw things in similar terms.

Very well articulated.

[SpectrePhantasia]

There's something to note here that I think hasn't been recognized very much - Emet-Selch's motives and ideals and Venat's motives and ideals appear to be exactly the same, simply flipped around. Emet believed that the Sundered were morally and physically deficient, selfish, indolent, given to the temptations of power, and both magically and ethically incapable of true fulfillment, and so they must be rejoined. Whereas Venat believed that the Ancients were morally and physically deficient, selfish, indolent, given to the temptations of power, and both magically and ethically incapable of true fulfillment, and so they must be sundered. Many of the arguments that were once applied to the Sundered, that they were inferior beings prone to self-destruction, are now being turned around and used with the Ancients to justify their destruction without a hint of irony.

It's stuff like this that makes me question whether the story was actually some kind of grand 5D meta commentary on the nature of narrative presentation and audience reception, or if everything was just a complete accident and they just unintentionally doubled back on a bunch of ideas they were trying to dispute.

I didn't get the chance to respond to this earlier, but I do think that is a very interesting point that you bring up. Venat and Emet-selch are both two sides of the same coin in terms of their ideals. Emet concluded only Unsundered life could lead to a full existence, while Venat believed that sundering it was the only way. Both go on to force their own righteousness on the entire world. Why then is Venat, the initial aggressor, considered a hero by the game's narrative, where Emet-selch is the villain to be slain? Why, when Emet-selch, at the very least, made the attempt to truly understand how the Sundered existed, and lived among them for lifetimes upon lifetimes? Conversely, Venat cast judgment on the entirety of her people and their lives, as they experienced the very first major Calamity their society has ever seen, and on a scale that dwarfs the umbral calamities of the shards. The end of the world as they know it, and she expects them to make a judgement call based on information only she is privy to. I understand there is context for her decision beyond this, but it still comes across as quite the double standard. Were we playing this game from the perspective of an Ancient, and Venat was spouting things about needing to 'divide the world and suffer, so that you can weather the coming storm,' we would absolutely see her as an antagonist to be in conflict with. She, like Emet, sees it as for their own good, but is that really her decision to make? As with Emet, I would say no, and I think the narrative would have benefitted greatly if it saw things in similar terms.

[KizuyaKatogami]

I didn't get the chance to respond to this earlier, but I do think that is a very interesting point that you bring up. Venat and Emet-selch are both two sides of the same coin in terms of their ideals. Emet concluded only Unsundered life could lead to a full existence, while Venat believed that sundering it was the only way. Both go on to force their own righteousness on the entire world. Why then is Venat, the initial aggressor, considered a hero by the game's narrative, where Emet-selch is the villain to be slain? Why, when Emet-selch, at the very least, made the attempt to truly understand how the Sundered existed, and lived among them for lifetimes upon lifetimes? Conversely, Venat cast judgment on the entirety of her people and their lives, as they experienced the very first major Calamity their society has ever seen, and on a scale that dwarfs the umbral calamities of the shards. The end of the world as they know it, and she expects them to make a judgement call based on information only she is privy to. I understand there is context for her decision beyond this, but it still comes across as quite the double standard. Were we playing this game from the perspective of an Ancient, and Venat was spouting things about needing to 'divide the world and suffer, so that you can weather the coming storm,' we would absolutely see her as an antagonist to be in conflict with. She, like Emet, sees it as for their own good, but is that really her decision to make? As with Emet, I would say no, and I think the narrative would have benefitted greatly if it saw things in similar terms.

[Rulakir]

Why then is Venat, the initial aggressor, considered a hero by the game's narrative, where Emet-selch is the villain to be slain?

Venat also shares a striking amount of similarities to Hermes. One's a villain and one's a hero, it's part of why I felt like the narrative was gaslighting me.