*Spoilers* Anyone feel joining Emet would have been better

[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.

[Cilia]

Except that isn't how Rejoinings work at all.

Metaphysical sophistry about souls notwithstanding, that is exactly how Rejoinings work.

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. Let them sacrifice the plants and animals, tbh I don't see the problem with them sacrificing non sentient life to get their people back from Zodiark.

It's been acknowledged and the story portrays it as a necessary evil. Shouldn't need to be repeated ad nauseam.

More pointedly Venat's main objection was that the Ancients were willing to sacrifice themselves and new life, and the infinite possibility that comes with the future, for the sake of a past that never was and never will be. The "perfect paradise, free from sorrow" the Ancients wanted back never existed to begin with; they were just looking back with rose-tinted glasses (seems to be a worrying issue with Ancients in general) and unwilling (or perhaps unable) to cope with traumatic loss because their relatively carefree lives of peace and contentment were upset for the first time anyone could remember. More pertinently, Zodiark was an irresistible temptation to achieve that rose-tinted "perfect" past because with enough input he could actually make that... but would the cost be worth the sacrifice? And I'm not talking about aether.

[nighttimebunny]

He wouldn't give us the time of day unless we could contain a crapload of light and he likely planned to raise us to the seat of Azem like he did with Fandaniel. Once he saw we couldn't contain the light he tossed us aside like trash. He wanted us to be an Ascian and help with rejoinings, killing billions in the process, so no thanks. His situation was very sad but he's free now.

[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.

[MikkoAkure]

Shards, yes. Calamities destroy shards and end all life on them. They do not do that on the Source, which is where the Ascians would've benefitted most from willing participants. Furthermore, Calamities do not in fact cause damage to everything on the Source. Every Calamity we possess a substantial amount of knowledge about is shown to have caused comparatively little damage in the grand scheme of things. Calamities do tend to come with a large loss of life, but they are not shown to constitute global catastrophes of a nature that poses anything resembling an existential threat.

All that aside, I would note that individuals living on the Source during a Rejoining reap a great boon in the form of increased aetheric density. Most people, regardless of the era, would leap at the chance to grow more powerful.

Gonna need a source on that because I don't remember anything about people on the Source suddenly becoming stronger after the most recent calamity 5 years ago. If we did get stronger every Rejoining, then the people on the First or the other Shards we fight in that one dungeon would be a fraction of our power and prestige and wouldn't have been as much trouble as they were with us at roughly "half an Ancient" and them at "1/14th an Ancient". Considering we're the same size, general health, ages seem the same relatively, etc. as those on the First, I don't believe that our soul becoming a little denser necessarily leads to us getting stronger.

Would people who don't have the Echo even get stronger? Echo bearers have the Echo only because their reincarnated souls were alive at the time of the Sundering. And Echo users make up a VERY small portion of the world. As strong as Y'shtola and gang are, none of them had any reaction at all to the Starfall. Pre-ARR Echo users also operated in a small secret society that barely anyone knew about, so there can't be too many of them.

Then it's all moot in the end anyway because after all the Rejoinings are done, Elidibus hops into his Zodiark robot and Third Impact's the world, killing everyone to revive the souls that were sacrificed 12000 years ago. Unless there's a special development, I don't believe that getting your soul filled up to 14/14 automatically turns you into the exact person you were back then, and as I said before, the vast majority of people alive today are probably not reincarnations from people who were alive back then. The people who died as a result of the Final Days and the people who did not get sacrificed to Zodiark are probably lost forever, and that's a very large chunk of the Ancient population.


Calamities are also historically very destructive. The most recent one was partially aborted mid-Calamity by Louisoix doing his Phoenix thing before Bahamut could have caused more damage and that still changed the topography and climate of Eorzea.

The 2nd Calamity involved ash clouds covering the skies in darkness, endless lightning destroying fields, boiling lakes, destroying fortifications and the storms lasted for a full year. The people went into hiding in caves where diseases spread.
In the 3rd Calamity, the sun grew larger and fields and forests turned to dusty wastelands.
The 4th Calamity affected "the entire realm" which for the Allagans was from Meracydia to Othard and everything in between, and mountains toppled and the land ripped apart which destroyed the entire empire.
The 5th Calamity was an ice age where everything in the northern areas was covered in ice to the point where the seas in southern Ilsabard froze over and the Miqo'te were able to return to Eorzea and skip the Gyr Abanian mountains. Survivors had to migrate towards the equator.
The 6th Calamity flooded the world. Tidal waves hit the coasts and rivers overran their banks. The area around Mhach turned into a salty swamp from the floods, Nymians had to flee to the mountains of Vylbrand while their coastal homes were reduced to reefs. The floods also initially put Amdapor (very inland) underwater and the survivors from there and Mhach had ended up becoming refugees in a flooded world and made for the Highlands in Gyr Abania. According to a sightseeing entry Eorzea "was transformed into a sea".

The Calamities are enough that Y'shtola herself says that nothing left from Amaurot would exist on the Source. And to me, all of the Calamities I mentioned above count as "global catastrophes", they certainly would have to the people who lived through them. It took 400 years for society to recover after the 6th Calamity. That's not something small.

[KariTheFox]

If events that routinely completely destroy civilizations do "comparatively little damage in the grand scheme of things" I'd like to know what qualifies as a lot of damage.

[Berteaux_Braumegain]

No, Emet-Selch was a terrible person with a bad plan. Not only would you have ended up with a worse world, you would've ended up with one that had no hope of stopping the End of Days.

That and all of the mass genocide that would occur in trying to recreate Amaurot.

[Slatersev]

Also at no point is it ever actually shown that people from the Source become stronger after a Rejoining, "denser" is the term used and its not described as a power increase.

If it was a power increase then nothing that happens in Shadowbringers makes much sense because we should logically be able to cut threw every non Sin Eater we fight with ease.

That's not even getting into how Ardbert and co were clearly well above most people from the Source and able to match Scions.

Emet's emphasis on us being from the Source and Rejoined 7 times is more about how he views the Source then it is about like, power level of Sundered people.

[Cleretic]

Also at no point is it ever actually shown that people from the Source become stronger after a Rejoining, "denser" is the term used and its not described as a power increase.

If it was a power increase then nothing that happens in Shadowbringers makes much sense because we should logically be able to cut threw every non Sin Eater we fight with ease.

That's not even getting into how Ardbert and co were clearly well above most people from the Source and able to match Scions.

Emet's emphasis on us being from the Source and Rejoined 7 times is more about how he views the Source then it is about like, power level of Sundered people.

Yeah, if people on the Source were stronger after a Rejoining, then Shadowbringers would've been an entire expansion of the experience of going into the Shroud with a max-level job and just cleaning house through all the yellow quests.

[Veloran]

More pointedly Venat's main objection was that the Ancients were willing to sacrifice themselves and new life, and the infinite possibility that comes with the future, for the sake of a past that never was and never will be. The "perfect paradise, free from sorrow" the Ancients wanted back never existed to begin with; they were just looking back with rose-tinted glasses (seems to be a worrying issue with Ancients in general) and unwilling (or perhaps unable) to cope with traumatic loss because their relatively carefree lives of peace and contentment were upset for the first time anyone could remember. More pertinently, Zodiark was an irresistible temptation to achieve that rose-tinted "perfect" past because with enough input he could actually make that... but would the cost be worth the sacrifice? And I'm not talking about aether.

So Venat sundered people from that temptation by knowingly throwing the Ascians into a situation where they would follow through on it seven times en-mass?

He wouldn't give us the time of day unless we could contain a crapload of light and he likely planned to raise us to the seat of Azem like he did with Fandaniel. Once he saw we couldn't contain the light he tossed us aside like trash. He wanted us to be an Ascian and help with rejoinings, killing billions in the process, so no thanks. His situation was very sad but he's free now.

I don't think this is a good reading of the situation. Rather, if WoL had suddenly given in to all the temptations Emet had dangled to join the Ascian cause, Emet would have rejected them because that is something Azem would never do, thus proving even the best of mankind unable to overcome their base urges.

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

Unlike Venat Azem was anti-sacrifice from the very inception of the plan, which is a more principled stance.

Gonna need a source on that because I don't remember anything about people on the Source suddenly becoming stronger after the most recent calamity 5 years ago.

Also at no point is it ever actually shown that people from the Source become stronger after a Rejoining, "denser" is the term used and its not described as a power increase.

Yeah, if people on the Source were stronger after a Rejoining, then Shadowbringers would've been an entire expansion of the experience of going into the Shroud with a max-level job and just cleaning house through all the yellow quests.

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.