*Spoilers* Anyone feel joining Emet would have been better

[Rulakir]

She is as grey as the Ascians.

I disagree solely due to how the game treats her. There is never a single scene with an Ascian in which my character doesn't have an angry expression often combined with the 'come at me' stance. (I'm not counting post-defeat pity.) This is in stark contrast to everything Venat/Hydaelyn, which is only ever smiles, affirmative dialog options, etc. It doesn't matter if we can argue their actions were grey when the game itself treats the two as black & white.

[MikkoAkure]

I disagree solely due to how the game treats her. There is never a single scene with an Ascian in which my character doesn't have an angry expression often combined with the 'come at me' stance. (I'm not counting post-defeat pity.) This is in stark contrast to everything Venat/Hydaelyn, which is only ever smiles, affirmative dialog options, etc. It doesn't matter if we can argue their actions were grey when the game itself treats the two as black & white.

To be fair, the first 5 seconds of the game is you in front of an Ascian wanting to fight you and then they spend the whole original game and the first 2 expansions trying to kill you, everyone you know, and the world as you know it before they make any actual attempt at making us understand their motives beyond "Hydaelyn is bad, mmmk". The first couple of quests in the game include a black-masked Ascian trying to kill you for no other reason besides "they like to do that to adventurers".

Venat may be a lot of things, but unlike most of the Ascians, our WoL's first meeting with her doesn't include a monologue followed by her trying to kill us. I'd be on my guard too after the first couple of weirdos in masks who teleport in from the shadows appeared and tried to kill me. Without any context, I wouldn't need a "Goddess of Light" to tell me that's bad news whenever one appears before me.

We finally learn in ShB that there's more nuance to it, just as we learn in EW that Hydaelyn isn't pure and gave the whole world the school of hard knocks, but at least she never tried to directly kill us the entire game and only ever acts benevolent towards us. If the Ascians didn't immediately treat us with hostility and said "hey, this low level adventurer is uncommonly strong, maybe we should tell them our story and bring them on our side", things might have been different but that's not how it went down.

[Lium]

To be fair, the first 5 seconds of the game is you in front of an Ascian wanting to fight you and then they spend the whole original game and the first 2 expansions trying to kill you, everyone you know, and the world as you know it before they make any actual attempt at making us understand their motives beyond "Hydaelyn is bad, mmmk". The first couple of quests in the game include a black-masked Ascian trying to kill you for no other reason besides "they like to do that to adventurers".

Venat may be a lot of things, but unlike most of the Ascians, our WoL's first meeting with her doesn't include a monologue followed by her trying to kill us. I'd be on my guard too after the first couple of weirdos in masks who teleport in from the shadows appeared and tried to kill me. Without any context, I wouldn't need a "Goddess of Light" to tell me that's bad news whenever one appears before me.

We finally learn in ShB that there's more nuance to it, just as we learn in EW that Hydaelyn isn't pure and gave the whole world the school of hard knocks, but at least she never tried to directly kill us the entire game and only ever acts benevolent towards us. If the Ascians didn't immediately treat us with hostility and said "hey, this low level adventurer is uncommonly strong, maybe we should tell them our story and bring them on our side", things might have been different but that's not how it went down.

Great post. And I would add this is why I'm still not high on Emet-Selch like everyone else is because the guy has killed tens of billions of people - seven worlds worth - through Rejoinings and wholesale genocides on the Source (not even counting the Primals which existed to cause chaos amongst the beast tribes) just to bring his world back at the expense of our own. And the kicker is because he didn't see us as truly living beings. I mean, I get it. He's a well written character. But that does not excuse the fact that he's right beneath Meteion in wiping out life on a very large scale.

Devil's Advocate for one moment, though. The devs back in ARR really had no idea where the overall story was going. So, back then I think the Ascians were more or less just your standard generic evil video game villains. It wasn't until around 3.x that the current story started taking shape. I think that's what Yoshi P had said. If they had the whole story from the get-go, then I think there would have been much more nuance to the Ascians.

Edit: Actually eight worlds worth. I forgot about the Thirteenth. It was just never Rejoined because it was turned into an actual void.

[KizuyaKatogami]

Great post. And I would add this is why I'm still not high on Emet-Selch like everyone else is because the guy has killed tens of billions of people - seven worlds worth - through Rejoinings and wholesale genocides on the Source (not even counting the Primals which existed to cause chaos amongst the beast tribes) just to bring his world back at the expense of our own. And the kicker is because he didn't see us as truly living beings. I mean, I get it. He's a well written character. But that does not excuse the fact that he's right beneath Meteion in wiping out life on a very large scale.

But tbf, our character should be smart enough to know who put them in that predicament. It was Venat. She's the one who caused all of the suffering and millions upon millions of death, yet we still treat her as good.

[Lium]

But tbf, our character should be smart enough to know who put them in that predicament. It was Venat. She's the one who caused all of the suffering and millions upon millions of death, yet we still treat her as good.

To counter the idiotic plan to sacrifice half their population to bring forth a god, then sacrifice more to bring them back, and then do yet another sacrifice to...restore the world? A world that was still hurtling headfirst into the Final Days. Remember the last species in the Dead Ends? That was where the Ancients were headed.

Venat's plan was far from perfect but it was absolutely the lesser of two evils.

[Rulakir]

To counter the idiotic plan to sacrifice half their population to bring forth a god, then sacrifice more to bring them back, and then do yet another sacrifice to...restore the world? A world that was still hurtling headfirst into the Final Days.

Venat needed Zodiark, she had no plan to stop the Final Days without his aetheric barrier. She also needed him to restore the world. There's a reason she doesn't become anti-sacrifice until conveniently the third one.

[Jandor]

Except that isn't how Rejoinings work at all.

Yeah it is. The shard is destroyed, and the ultimate goal after all the shards are destroyed is to sacrifice everyone left.

Venat needed Zodiark, she had no plan to stop the Final Days without his aetheric barrier. She also needed him to restore the world. There's a reason she doesn't become anti-sacrifice until conveniently the third one.

The one where they're planning to sacrifice others instead of themselves? Yeah, that is a bit of a turning point.

[KizuyaKatogami]

To counter the idiotic plan to sacrifice half their population to bring forth a god, then sacrifice more to bring them back, and then do yet another sacrifice to...restore the world? A world that was still hurtling headfirst into the Final Days. Remember the last species in the Dead Ends? That was where the Ancients were headed.

Venat's plan was far from perfect but it was absolutely the lesser of two evils.

Don’t see how it was the lesser of two evils when it equated to mass murder if you count the age span difference and new vulnerability to illnesses. We don’t know if the ancients were heading for, that’s your headcanon. Don’t see how saving the world is an idiotic plan. You realize Venat’s plan required sacrifice as well, and Ironworks was willing to mass murder an entire timeline to bring us back. Still shocked people are calling the ancients plan idiotic, thought we grew out of that. What were their other options exactly? Or will you acknowledge that Venat could’ve gave them what she knew and they could’ve formulated a plan together to prevent the final days altogether?

[Lauront]

To counter the idiotic plan to sacrifice half their population to bring forth a god, then sacrifice more to bring them back, and then do yet another sacrifice to...restore the world? A world that was still hurtling headfirst into the Final Days. Remember the last species in the Dead Ends? That was where the Ancients were headed.

Venat's plan was far from perfect but it was absolutely the lesser of two evils.

If the plan seems idiotic, it's because you've completely misunderstood it - here are the relevant sources on it. They had no option but to resort to sacrifices of their own because of what the Final Days did to the planet. It's never stated to be their preferred option. They then had to resort to more to revive the planet. And it is only with the final, more contentious stage that they'd sacrifice some of the new lives to restore those inside Zodiark. The scenario shown within the Dead Ends final area, facile caricature as it is, was not an inevitability if she but shared that knowledge of the fate of that star (derived from a few lines of Meteion's report) and her deeper concerns... of course the story introduced various contrivances to stop that. Her entire plan is parasitic upon Zodiark's existence, all the same. It wouldn't work without him.

Were the ascians guilty of genocide? Sure. But so was Venat. And I rarely see anyone on Team Hydaelyn acknowledge that fact. And tbqf I want to have a way to break the timeline into two separate ones so the Ancients can have the happy ending they deserve too. If Venat had not committed genocide first with the Sundering the Ascians would never have even been a thing.

Absolutely. She's the very person who put them into that situation with no real understanding of why. She does not escape culpability in all this.

Rejoinings are 100% a power increase. This is why the Ancients are all so magically gifted and WoL is able to contain the Light after rejoining with Ardbert, because higher aetheric density means higher aetheric capacity. The denser your soul, the more aether you can take on.

We don't know the actual density of the residents of the First compared to other shards, and with the introduction of Dynamis there is an alternative way for less dense souls to still exhibit exceptional power, consider the extremely zealous Ran'jit (the only notable trouble WoL actually has on the First) for example.

Indeed. Here is a source on it:

4. Emet-Selch remarks that we are of the Source, "seven times rejoined". Is he talking about our soul, or only the world? If our soul has been rejoined, does that mean everyone on the Source has been rejoined to another soul-fragment each Calamity, or are we (and perhaps other specific characters) special in some way?
Oda: Each time there is a rejoining, any living things have the souls rejoined. This is true for everyone equally. The souls get more dense, and potentially more powerful.

Yoshi: The Rejoining isn't just for the characters, but for the whole world. Of course, this does apply to yourself, as well.

As you point out, this allows the WoL to carry more aether and there are ambiguities which make direct 1:1 comparisons between First/Source denizens difficult to make, plus none evidently come much closer to ancients, but they definitely do point out they can grow more powerful out of this process.

Yo dude, can you help me destroy the world and all life upon it including your own and everyone you care about? I swear it's for your own good.

What do you mean no! How unreasonable!

Ironically, how Venat would've sounded to the ancients.

[Lium]

If the plan seems idiotic, it's because you've completely misunderstood it...(snip)

It was idiotic not because I misunderstood it, but because apparently there are a number of people who completely missed what the entire story was actually about. It can be summed up in one scene - right hereZodiark forestalled The Final Days, it would not have stopped them. In the end, their civilization would have fallen to apathy and sought death as a release even and especially if they all came back. This is not conjecture or headcanon, this is what we were actually shown in Elpis. The entire notion of once your purpose has been served you "return to the star" is tantamount to saying there is nothing to live for once you've achieved whatever it is you want to achieve. If you do some of the sidequests in Elpis, it is even more on the nose.

There was also a second hint on where the star was headed with Amon and Emperor Xande, which in many ways was parallel to Alexander the Great's "For there were no more worlds left conquer." Xande likewise sought death as a release.

The plan to summon Zodiark is idiotic because it is a temporary solution (albeit one that lasted thousands of years) to a catastrophic problem. "Why can't we just go back to the way things were?" That's what the Ancient who turned to Venat asked. Therein lies the problem. A problem which the only solution was to Sunder. This accomplishes two things. First, on a metaphysical level, the act of suffering brings balance to joy.

"The truth has to be melted out of our stubborn lives by suffering. Nothing speaks the truth, nothing tells us how things really are, nothing forces us to know what we do not want to know except pain. And this is how the gods declare their love. Truth comes with pain." - Aeschylus, The Oresteia.I'm a Greek mythology nerd and there is some serious Greek tragedy influence all over Endwalker.

Pain and suffering in the context of the story provides a bulwark against the apathy that was already creeping throughout Ancient society. The Ancients lived in a utopia where they wanted for nothing. That is why it was so unusual for Hermes to experience despair. They knew very little of it. Again, THIS IS THE PROBLEM. As long as this "perfection" exists, there will come ruin. No amount of sacrifices is going to stop that.

Second, on a strategic level. Thinning out our aether makes us more susceptible to dynamis, and therefore better able to combat it. Coupled with the hard road of suffering and failure, to stay the course no matter what, this is what gives the star the best chance of survival.

And I said earlier in this thread, I am hard-pressed to think of a worse idea than Venat telling the Convocation what she knew. It would have made a bad situation infinitely worse.