[ENDWALKER MSQ SPOILERS] Timeline weirdness

[Kordarion]

In every country on Earth, it's pretty normal to cull predators or invasive species when they start causing problems to the wider biosphere. The US alone culls tens of thousands of wolves a year. Even greater numbers of predatory fish and merely disruptive herbivores, like deer, are killed for no purpose other than management of the environment and maintaining a sustainable population of all species.

It's not that the Ancients doing it is morally uncomplicated, just that it's weird to act like it makes them alien or evil - I assume you don't think of the RSPB workers who do this stuff as 'monsters'. If I might be a little presumptuous, I doubt this is something you think about much in your day-to-day life at all. They probably don't either.

The moral difference, in my opinion at least, is that for the most part the predatory animals we cull in our world came into existence separate from our actions. In Elpis they make these creatures, playing god in every aspect of their lives, not to mention that in real life we cull a species and not render it extinct like in Elpis. However I do agree that the people who cull those populations in our world aren't monsters, that comment was more directed at use of:

People who adopt bunnies for Easter, black cats for Halloween, or puppies for Christmas, only to be surrendered to shelters after they've worn out their cuteness.

as an example of why modern humanity can't make comments on the morality of designing species at a whim and when it doesn't work out erasing their mistakes while ignoring the fact they are living beings and then starting the process over until you, the ancients, get what you want.

[Lurina]

In Elpis they make these creatures, playing god in every aspect of their lives, not to mention that in real life we cull a species and not render it extinct like in Elpis.

We create new breeds of dogs, cats, and livestock and then render them extinct because they didn't 'come out right' all the time. Recently we've even started to do it with genetic engineering. On that note, entire new races of mice and other lab animals are regularly created exclusively for the purpose of researching experimental treatments for diseases and then are summarily disposed of.

I think that the Ancients were a little dubious in their treatment of other life, but only in the way that baseline humanity is dubious. The distinction you're drawing where we hold back in playing with their lives to suit our purposes doesn't meaningfully exist beyond the fact that their methods are magical and fantastic while ours are scientific and aesthetically banal.

[Rulakir]

Lurina's beating me to the punch. I listed examples based on what the person I responded to said. I mean, if we really want to go down the rabbit hole of the atrocities humans commit against non-human creatures on a daily basis, actions that unless you're a hardcore vegan I guarantee you financially support, we can do that. However, my point was those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

[Kordarion]

We do play god too much in our own world don't we, I guess I went and got a bit too emotional in the way I was responding to what was being said and didn't quite articulate myself properly. I see a difference in creating a new breed of a species and developing a whole new species entirely, maybe I shouldn't, and I do see your point about making and then getting rid of need breeds of animals, it is wrong. I guess part of my problem is the sort of technological difference we see between our societies and the ancients. Obviously they used magic and we don't but they come across as a sort of future society that is supposed to be beyond that sort of stuff while we are still in a period of working out our relationship to the world around us in a healthy way whilst retaining our advancements. It just feels that from what we know they should be beyond that and aren't, I prefer my futuristic advanced societies to be better, not simply appearing better but just being the same.

I guess I don't like the "those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones" idea because it limits you to only calling out your own society and not calling out both societies for doing the wrong thing.

[Iscah]

Not really, maybe I've explained poorly.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, maybe the rubbish I can draw in paint is worth a hundred.

It's a pretty terrible picture, but I hope it serves to get across the general idea. The slice is for visual effect, not because I think the tip of the tower was actually physically used like a knife on a birthday cake.

It's one unit, one "timeline" if you like, just split various different ways at various points.

It's not about having space as in an actual physical space for it to go, I mean space in the sense that Etheirys is an aether rich place but the worlds contained within only require 1/14th of the total resources, and there are currently far fewer than 14 worlds.

G'raha's "original world" starts as the Source, and I personally think it probably has to be the Source, I doubt the Shards are meaty enough to survive being sliced any thinner, but his adventure doesn't require that said world ends as the Source. All that is required for his trip to work is that his original world and the events that led to his departure are preserved.

There are some big things I disagree with on this theory.

Firstly, the maths isn't right. Rejoining a shard doesn't remove its aether from the world, it just redistributes it. The sundered world started as (14 x 1/14) but after seven rejoinings it is currently (1 x 8/14) + (6 x 1/14).

Splitting the Source and the First into two copies each so you can then rejoin those copies either calls for pulling another 9/14th of aether out of nowhere, or effectively performing a second mini-Sundering by accident without any of the disruptive effects like worldwide memory loss.

And it does require splitting both the Source and the First, or there's nothing to get rejoined to the other Source in the other timeline in the first place.

This idea of more selective splitting of two specific shards without touching the others also just sounds like something less likely to happen spontaneously.


Also, I don't believe the mere action of moving the Crystal Tower to the First was what caused the split in the timelines, especially given (or at least assuming) the natural tendency towards time loops over splitting timelines.

Simply travelling to the past is not enough to disrupt the timeline, or time loops could never form.

At the point where G'raha travels to the First, as far as we know, he has no idea what was there before he arrives. There is no proof of there ever being a separate timeline where the tower didn't appear in Lakeland shortly after the Flood.

As I understand it, the appearance of the tower in Lakeland and the hundred years (in First time) that followed are still part of the pre-split timeline.

The exact point where it does split is a debate in itself, and generally I'm just inclined to put a big question mark over the section of the timeline starting with the first call from the Exarch and ending with our defeat of Hades and say "it splits somewhere in here". That's all that matters for the sake of understanding the larger timeline.

But regardless of exactly when it happened, I think it is much simpler to think of it as a "higher level" split and not something happening among the shards.

We already seen their responses. "Our" Emet, Hythlodaeus, Venat and Hermes have already acted out their role in this timeline, and their actions will continue to be reflected in our history. Going back to change 'that' history wouldn't change anything that happened in our timeline, but raise the curtain for a new play and create options for the future.

We'll be able to see how they react to new information, get more details on the story of the original Azem, and other issues related to the Ancients. But I guess it's up to SE.

I think you're misinterpreting that quote.

The Emet speaking that line is in our timeline. Even if we went back and changed the past to create a second branch, it would have no effect on him personally.

If the "new tale" will still involve him, it will be something moving forward from his position here as he speaks those words - though in any case I am inclined to take it as simply referring to the characters of the modern day. He himself seems fairly definite about bowing out.

To turn to his own words elsewhere:

And thus the aether beckons me
To depths of black eternity,
To dream of things long lost and gone,
And futures which might yet be won─
Though not by me, lest you mistake,
For others wait, the stage to take,

To be fair, this may be coming from the point of his appearance at the Seat of Sacrifice rather than later, but it's an echo of the same metaphor and in both cases, he seems to be accepting that his tale is at an end and it is time for others to take the stage in his place.

It's also possible that these are just stable loops in many branching timelines.
As long as the changes aren't big enough to cause significant changes, you end up with a new timeline branch where the time travelers existed in the past, but is otherwise mostly the same.

- Timeline 1A
The original timeline.
Mide is not the founder of the Hotgo tribe, and the initial Alexander time travel happens.
WoL does not travel to Elpis, and the 8UC happens.
G'raha likely cannot be sent back in time because the Ironworks do not have knowledge of Alexander.
This timeline is not necessarily doomed since Fandaniel wouldn't be able to kill Zodiark.

[etc.]

I dislike this concept of approach to time travel in general, though I had to put some thought into exactly why - and I think the simple answer is that it makes no sense to me that you can have "two pasts" leading to the exact same outcome.

As I see it, at any point in time, a single event can have two possible outcomes and so it is conceivably possible to picture the timeline splitting in two directions where a different outcome happens in each one.

But to have a past where everything turns out perfectly the same except for one event which we somehow displace with a different event but don't disrupt anything else? That doesn't work for me. I don't consider it to be an option in this story.

To be clear though, I see that as a different path to replacing an unknown past event with an event that requires time travel to play out.

For a simpler example back in Alexander: we previously didn't know how Alexander manifested three years ago, though Mide incorrectly assumed she had summoned it herself. But once we get teleported there ourselves, we replace our incorrect assumption with the truth. That's a very different thing to actively overwriting an earlier version of events.

And as an example of an event where there can't have been an earlier version, we have the "save yourself" moment in Alexander where we travel back mid-A12 for the sole purpose of releasing the forcefield. If there was an earlier version where someone else did it, then there would be no reason for Alexander to overwrite the original version of events to achieve the same result.

[Lurina]

We do play god too much in our own world don't we, I guess I went and got a bit too emotional in the way I was responding to what was being said and didn't quite articulate myself properly. I see a difference in creating a new breed of a species and developing a whole new species entirely, maybe I shouldn't, and I do see your point about making and then getting rid of need breeds of animals, it is wrong. I guess part of my problem is the sort of technological difference we see between our societies and the ancients. Obviously they used magic and we don't but they come across as a sort of future society that is supposed to be beyond that sort of stuff while we are still in a period of working out our relationship to the world around us in a healthy way whilst retaining our advancements. It just feels that from what we know they should be beyond that and aren't, I prefer my futuristic advanced societies to be better, not simply appearing better but just being the same.

I guess I don't like the "those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones" idea because it limits you to only calling out your own society and not calling out both societies for doing the wrong thing.

I don't think there's anything wrong for judging the Ancients for their treatment of other living beings, so long as you're also willing to extend those arguments to contemporary humanity. For me, what puts me off in these conversations is the dissonant hypocrisy of hearing people talk about how the Ancients were perverse and deserved to die for that stuff, while drawing a line between themselves as us. To bring it around to the sacrifices, we slaughter an unthinkable amount of relatively intelligent beings just to keep the wheels of our civilization turning. We're crushing entire biospheres for our convenience. The Anthropocene has driven more species into extinction than any other event in 60 million years.

If they deserved to get sundered, we deserve to get sundered.

[Kordarion]

I don't think there's anything wrong for judging the Ancients for their treatment of other living beings, so long as you're also willing to extend those arguments to contemporary humanity. For me, what puts me off in these conversations is the dissonant hypocrisy of hearing people talk about how the Ancients were perverse and deserved to die for that stuff, while drawing a line between themselves as us.

If they deserved to get sundered, we deserve to get sundered.

I think my original point in this conversation in this thread was that I would simply rather spend my time in the "present" rather than the ancient world if given a choice. And then that lead to me commenting on how I don't like either what the ancients did in Elpis or the concept of "those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones". I don't think they should have been sundered for what they were doing in Elpis either, although it does play into why I don't think they would have been able to permanently defeat Meteion but that is another can of worms I'd rather not open right now.

[Lurina]

I think my original point in this conversation in this thread was that I would simply rather spend my time in the "present" rather than the ancient world if given a choice. And then that lead to me commenting on how I don't like either what the ancients did in Elpis or the concept of "those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones". I don't think they should have been sundered for what they were doing in Elpis either, although it does play into why I don't think they would have been able to permanently defeat Meteion but that is another can of worms I'd rather not open right now.

That's fair. This part of the conversation started because of Yuella asserting that the Ancient's deserved to be sundered for their "lifestyle", though, and drawing an explicit distinction between us and them by saying:

I don't know why people are so enamored by the ancient lifestyle anyway. It's not a good lifestyle. They wantonly create living beings and then kill them off cold-heartedly if they're "not suitable" even though these creatures feel pain.

I think Rulakir was pointing out their hypocrisy - since this statement could just as easily describe modern human culture - rather than saying that it was wrong to criticize the Ancients at all, which is the way you seemed to interpret it in your reply.

As modern humans, we are all complicit in extra-species violence and manipulation on a scale so spectacular that it boggles the mind. In the time it took me to type this message, we have cold-bloodedly slaughtered roughly 400,000 chickens, creatures proven to experience complex emotional states and capable of solving simple math problems (as well as being, by the way, a subspecies of our own creation), despite the fact that we've advanced to the point we don't even need meat to survive. And that's just chickens. To condemn a fictional culture as deserving of death on that basis is goofy, unless you'd also extend that judgement to yourself.

[Jandor]

There are some big things I disagree with on this theory.

Firstly, the maths isn't right. Rejoining a shard doesn't remove its aether from the world, it just redistributes it. The sundered world started as (14 x 1/14) but after seven rejoinings it is currently (1 x 8/14) + (6 x 1/14).

Splitting the Source and the First into two copies each so you can then rejoin those copies either calls for pulling another 9/14th of aether out of nowhere, or effectively performing a second mini-Sundering by accident without any of the disruptive effects like worldwide memory loss.

And it does require splitting both the Source and the First, or there's nothing to get rejoined to the other Source in the other timeline in the first place.

This idea of more selective splitting of two specific shards without touching the others also just sounds like something less likely to happen spontaneously.

In the first picture you've got the Source, which is exactly 7x wider than the First. When they rejoin the Source line gets one shard wider to represent that.

In the last picture, you've got the Source, which is exactly 6x wider than First, and below it you've got the 8UC world and the First, both only one shard thick.

There is no extra aether, it's the same quantity just shifted around.

On the accident or happening spontaneously point, I don't really understand why that would make any difference? It's not like your version of the timeline split is any less accidental or spontaneous.

-----

People still remembered what happened after the big main Sundering, at least to enough of an extent that they could paint it on the walls of caves. There's no reason to believe a second mini-Sundering would be any more deleterious than the first, and every reason to believe that whatever side-effects occurred would be lesser.

Going from being a 14/14 Ancient to a 1/14 mortal would likely be a far more jarring experience than going from being a 8/14 mortal to a 6/14 or 1/14 mortal. In the latter you're essentially going from being yourself to ... being yourself still, albeit with a thinner soul, which following our experiences on the First seems to generally not be all that big of a deal. (Apart from if you need to absorb the aether of a half a dozen Lightwardens, but lets be fair, that hardly ever comes up.)

-----

Part of my reasoning is from Alexander. His story was a closed loop one, but IIRC it didn't have to be. He could have split the world/timeline but chose not to as too many splits could cause reality to crumble. It's also stated that excessive messing with time would use a tremendous amount of aether.

A way to cause a split, that uses a tremendous amount of aether, and if done too much could result in things being spread too thin to remain functional.
The end result of an Alexander induced split sounds a lot like a Sundering to me, and Alexander is the basis of the Crystal Tower time machine tech, so it stands to reason a split induced by the tower would function similarly.

[Iscah]

On the accident or happening spontaneously point, I don't really understand why that would make any difference? It's not like your version of the timeline split is any less accidental or spontaneous.

The difference is that if it's a mini-sundering of the shards then it seems a lot harder to accidentally only slice apart the correct bits of shards to isolate the right timeline. It seems like something that would need more deliberate intent than just everything equally duplicating at once.

It's also placing the cause of a split at a different level of reality – your version being on the same level as the Sundering and mine being something that happens on a higher level of reality, not involving shards or quantities of aether at all. They're very different mechanism concepts.

I agree with the assumption that whatever mechanism is at work in the Alexander storyline is still at work in Shadowbringers, and that's why I'm happy to argue that there's no inconsistency with it producing stable loops in one case and a split in another, but I disagree that the mechanism must be sundering.

It's also worth noting that Alexander itself is not, at least in its capacity as a time-travelling robot, the thing that creates the split in the timelines. It is simply the vehicle used to transport people through time, at which point those people's actions may or may not trigger a split.

Of course, one of those "people" is Alexander the thinking entity with deep knowledge of time and a cat sidekick, but still that doesn't mean Alexander has the direct power to split timelines. It has to deliberately get involved and manipulate events to ensure time stays on track, which means that stopping a split is not as simple as not using its powers to cause one.