*Spoilers* Anyone feel joining Emet would have been better

[Lauront]

I'm well familiar with the passage, having cited it to you on previous occasions. What's the relevance here? The Convocation were short-sighted in assuming that Zodiark was a permanent solution, sure. But the Convocation were convening over the plan to sacrifice non-Amaurotian souls to free their friends. That has nothing to do with addressing the Final Days at all.

If you're familiar with it, then how are you missing the part where both Hythlodaeus and Venat mention stewardship of the star what's at stake? Here you said:

Meteion's report isn't relevant to the Convocation's proposal, however. It doesn't matter if they viewed Zodiark as a temporary solution or a permanent one. They planned on bartering for the souls of their friends with the souls of non-Amaurotian life. This really had nothing to do with protecting the star.

It is something you claimed was not relevant when discussing the third stage of sacrifices, and yet both someone close to the Convocation (Hyth*) and Venat mention it. As far as they were concerned in the SHB scenes, the Final Days were forestalled. It is only with EW that we learn that they were not, and this is concerning knowledge solely privy to her. And of course that stage of sacrifice in and of itself is not directly relevant to Meteion's report - the motivation behind it is, i.e. doing what they believed was best for the star, again, as per Venat and Hyth. Why is it relevant? Because given this motivation, which Hades himself reaffirms at the end of KH, if their plan would in fact harm the star (but also themselves) and they were given some good evidence of this that they could at the very least probe further, there is a possibility that they'd reconsider it.

*Well shade of him but that just equates to Emet's will anyhow so even better in a sense to convey what the Convocation was thinking...

Your entire argument hinges on "What if Venat told everyone what she knew? How would the Ancients have adjusted their views had they known?" You know what we call that? Conjecture. Because we'll never know.

You are saying I misunderstood or that it is conjecture when you are quite literally doing the exact...same...thing. You are clinging to a "What if" scenario where one does not exist.

I'm not talking about the theme, I'm talking about the actual story. As in, what the writers have put in the game. Whether you like it or not is a matter of opinion, and that's fine. But this is what it is. Being free to interpret it the way you like is also fine, but we have a word for that. Do you know what it is? Headcanon.

So, once again. You are doing the exact same thing.

It's fine to disagree and I love these debates about the story. But not when you are accusing people of doing something that you yourself are doing. Almost to the letter.

Well yes, I am saying that calling their plan idiotic when your understanding of it is not consistent with either what EW or SHB shows is a misunderstanding. To go back to it:

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.

Here is the stages we know of from SHB:

Stage 1: Bring forth Zodiark to halt the crisis and reinforce the celestial currents.
Stage 2: Use him to restore the star's proper functioning since it had been so badly depleted.
Stage 3: The debate over whether to sacrifice the unspecified new life to restore their own people within Zodiark, in an exchange of life to resume their role as stewards of the star while presumably also keeping him at full power (why? in case another seemingly random event hit them would be a good guess...)

We can assume stages 1 and 2 must've taken place, or else the world pretty much would be non-existent given the devastation it suffered. Her plan hinges on it for the star both to exist and last long enough to devise a way to defeat Meteion. Now since you are referencing sacrificing more to bring their people back, I can only presume you're referring to stage 3, because the EW cutscene gives the impression that it is themselves they'd sacrifice to restore the lives they once had before the star was struck with crisis (reinforced by the state of the sky in that scene, with monstrosities still amok - this is consistent with stage 2 IMO and I take Veloran's point that they may have used this scene to entirely sidestep the issue of stage 3 and have the Sundering take place during stage 2...) The way you framed it was stage 1->3->2, which to be frank, would seem stupid, because it omits the stage whereby they revitalise the star; again, if we are referencing this stage, the SHB sources become relevant, because that's where it comes up. Their impression, not knowing about Endsinger, was that stages 1 and 2 had curtailed the crisis. They did not know of the Plenty. Stages 1 and 2 as I said are required to even have a star at that point. Thus do I struggle to see how, when you properly sequence the events, and qualify the knowledge that they had, to label the plan idiotic. Hopeless? Perhaps, but we're also coming at this plan with more knowledge than they were given.

If we're in agreement that the scenario in the Dead Ends was a possible outcome of their civilisation were they to follow through with the same pursuit of perfection, never having been given a proper accounting of what happened, but that this was not an inevitability if they were to be provided this info, there is no argument from me, and we're in agreement that it's open to interpretation...