Quote Originally Posted by OhNooo View Post
I can definitely see the parallels between Thordan and Hydaelyn. Thordan was truly convinced he was righteous and that he would bring peace to his people. Literally right after he transformed and started his monologue about his plans, I already knew we'd end up fighting him. It didn't matter that he had good intentions, our character gave that determined look we get when we're about to throw down lol. The fact that he was using power from a millennium of prayers gained by manipulation of the people who were ignorant to what truly happened in the past was pretty messed up. I guess his reasoning was it was better to have them believe in something than to learn the truth and lose faith, which he ended up using as a power source.

And in the same way it's interesting how all of the WOLs and others who Hydaelyn has "called" to serve her are also ignorant of the truth about what happened in the past and are operating on very limited and skewed information. All of mankind, including us, seem to have been manipulated by a person or group in order to fulfil their own agendas whether they have good intentions or not. Although Hydaelyn saw herself as helping to free mankind in the long run, it came at the cost of betraying her own people and basically "making" a whole new type of human who would be more susceptible to things like manipulation.

The sad part about all of this for me, is the fact that all the sundered had no choice in anything - they are literally the products of this horrible betrayal and are mostly ignorant of the true history of the world they live in. The "chosen" ones among them end up caught in this war between two sides that they never asked to be in. It's actually really messed up.
One of my pet peeves with the whole thing is how she refers to herself as a supreme deity, and then Y'shtola throws this out: The implications of temporal magicks are not entirely understood, and so we cannot assume that our Hydaelyn and the Venat you met in Elpis are one and the same. Nevertheless, due to Her intrinsic qualities as an all-powerful being, I'd wager that Hydaelyn possesses the knowledge we seek.

Both Emet-Selch and the moon janny make it clear that neither considered them to be gods in an absolute sense. How can she possibly be taken as an "all-powerful being"? They're both very powerful primals (Zodiark all the more so), but a supreme deity and all-powerful being she is not. And this is from characters who ought to know better and yet no one calls them out on it.