The Reasoning behind The Sundering? (*6.0 Endwalker Spoilers*)

[Jandor]

I still don't get why Venat thought not telling the Convocation or her followers about Meteion or about Dynamis was a good idea.

Hermes was nuts and Lahabrea ain't looking super sane so far, 50% of the Convocation that we know about had a few screws loose.

I think people seriously overestimate how resilient the Ancients were. Hermes was already spiralling a bit from having to put rabid dogs down, he totally flipped when his experiment didn't pan out how he hoped, and no-one seemed to pick up on how unstable he was and he was made a member of the governing body of their society.

And if we go with the whole 'Hermes wasn't the only person who could make Meteia/knows about dynamis' thing, then any Ancient that doesn't take the news too well could potentially start making the problem worse.

[EaraGrace]

Hermes erased his own memories though, Venat's a smart woman she doesn't need to go "Hey Hermes remember when you erased your memories after sending the Meteia out to cause our world to self destruct?" She could have found a more conductive way to guide the Convocation into investigating the true source of the cause of the Final Days. They started disregarding her because she refused to open her heart to them and apparently wouldn't tell them anything besides insisting they were wrong to do what they were doing, but offered no way to solve things, and they sensed she was hiding something from them.

I’m not sure if they’ve ever stated that they’re reason for rejecting her was because they could tell she was hiding something. In fact, since the Convocation was divided after Venats faction began making its arguments, we actually have reason to believe that her method was working until Elidibus returned.

The problem with telling the Convocation anything of substance is that showing, in any way, that she possessed special knowledge of the threat behind the Final Days raises the question of how she came to know what she knew. The questions that would inevitably result would either require her to openly show she’s not willing to discuss details or would mean divulging details of Elpis and Meteion, both of which would be very dangerous topics to openly discuss given Hermes’ role in Zodiarks creation and his role on the Convocation. Then there’s the general issue of the implications of Meteions conclusion, born as it was from her expedition. If the world found out right after suffering the trauma of the Final Days that the being responsible, that they could not kill, was sitting in a place far beyond their current reach, building a “nest” out of the dying desires of every other known species, some more advanced and prosperous than even Amaurot, the situation would (as she again states) “spiral out of control.”

There's absolutely no indication that it would have returned to normal. Just as Ala Mhigans hope for a better future where the pain of Garlemald's invasion will be forgotten, so did the Ancients work. But we know that the invasion will not be forgotten, and we know that the Ancients would not be able to forget the catastrophe.

Ehhhhhh.

They in fact had no time to really recover and come to this realization because Venat's group started the Sundering, so all we have are the recordings of what ghosts say and Emet-Selch's weird "yeah Venat was right the entire time, we never would have won", even though the Convocation was working with not even half the information Venat had and purposefully withheld from everyone (including her own followers).

I would love a clear timeline of events I will admit.

On Venats followers not knowing, I am once again not sure where this is coming from. Based on the recording at Anyder they knew that Zodiark did not solve the Final Days, a fact that only makes sense if one knows of Meteion. Is there evidence showing this is not the case?

[KizuyaKatogami]

Hermes was nuts and Lahabrea ain't looking super sane so far, 50% of the Convocation that we know about had a few screws loose.

I think people seriously overestimate how resilient the Ancients were. Hermes was already spiralling a bit from having to put rabid dogs down, he totally flipped when his experiment didn't pan out how he hoped, and no-one seemed to pick up on how unstable he was and he was made a member of the governing body of their society.

And if we go with the whole 'Hermes wasn't the only person who could make Meteia/knows about dynamis' thing, then any Ancient that doesn't take the news too well could potentially start making the problem worse.

What’s making Lahabrea not look sane? We literally haven’t even seen him yet and people are already jumping to conclusions? The only thing we know so far is he’s a workaholic. Which is what we’ve known for the past 2 years.

[RyuDragnier]

What’s making Lahabrea not look sane? We literally haven’t even seen him yet and people are already jumping to conclusions? The only thing we know so far is he’s a workaholic. Which is what we’ve known for the past 2 years.

To be fair, considering how Hesperos is obsessed with him to a Tempering level, it already doesn't look good for how sane he is, since he may have accidentally or purposefully created Tempering, or at least that's how it looks right now. Though we'll find out at least at 6.2 for the next part of the raid story.

[Cleretic]

We don't even know who in the Pandaemonium storyline is the 'present' Lahabrea, if it's anyone we've actually met, so we can't yet pass judgement based on that. But the final Tales from the Shadows directly confirmed that the 'present' Lahabrea wasn't exactly all there anyway.

"Lahabrea is gone," the voice said softly.

I could hardly continue to feign slumber at that, so I righted myself and turned to face Elidibus. The silence that stretched between us then only affirmed the truth that had gone unspoken.

For us, death was not the end. But "gone"...

"We knew this day would come."

I closed my eyes, letting out a measured breath, or what passed for one in the emptiness of the rift. He was right, of course. Lahabrea's boldness had only grown with the passing of ages─segueing inevitably into recklessness. Across many vessels and many worlds he blazed his trail, each mad leap forward leaving him that much more broken. Not satisfied with having brought about the Seventh Umbral Calamity, he labored needlessly to prolong it.

Was it his affinity for concepts of flame that made him so like the fire itself? From peerless Ifrita to that hopelessly immortal bird, his creations had burned bright and beautiful─as did he.

He should have known what becomes of the flame once all else is ash.

I opened my eyes to take in my brother's face, but the lips visible below his mask bore no expression. Would he never again show what he felt for us, as he once had so readily? Were those very sentiments long lost?

If you want to get meta about why they wrote that in, it's probably because they wanted to link up how Lahabrea's big rambling speech in the Praetorium was... well, let's say only about 70% right.

[Rannie]

We don't even know who in the Pandaemonium storyline is the 'present' Lahabrea, if it's anyone we've actually met, so we can't yet pass judgement based on that. But the final Tales from the Shadows directly confirmed that the 'present' Lahabrea wasn't exactly all there anyway.

.

Hmmmm, I believe that many are seeing the current Lahabrea in pandaemonia being the same one that we killed is due to this portion of the tales story

From peerless Ifrita to that hopelessly immortal bird, his creations had burned bright and beautiful─as did he.

Which is the probably the third boss Phoinix (their spelling) and the Phoenix has been attributed to Lahabrea


Edit: this was also the same bird Emet had to deal with in the Through His Eyes story after he was first raised to the seat of Emet-Selch


Either way he does seem to be starting to go a bit guano whether from being a workaholic or just passage of time to body jumping too much. I dunno

[Absimiliard]

What’s making Lahabrea not look sane? We literally haven’t even seen him yet and people are already jumping to conclusions? The only thing we know so far is he’s a workaholic. Which is what we’ve known for the past 2 years.

A few things.
1.) The shorts.
2.) Some of the scant few NPCs that directly allude to him make it pretty clear they don't think he's all that stable.
3.) Just look at all the crap in Pandaemonium.

[Vyrerus]

Guano

Pretty sure it's going to be from losing his wife. I know Erichtonios said there wasn't a lot of love there or something like that, but love is more than being able to see displays of affection.

Anyway, I'm betting we get a boss that turns into a Scathach-alike next raid tier. Corpse wife or idk, an Edda Blackbosom situation when she tried to revive her bad tank boyfriend in Tam Tara Deepcroft HM.

[Rannie]

Pretty sure it's going to be from losing his wife. I know Erichtonios said there wasn't a lot of love there or something like that, but love is more than being able to see displays of affection.

Anyway, I'm betting we get a boss that turns into a Scathach-alike next raid tier. Corpse wife or idk, an Edda Blackbosom situation when she tried to revive her bad tank boyfriend in Tam Tara Deepcroft HM.

That is true i hadn't even thought of that It could have driven him into the workaholic and then it just spiraled down from there especially if he refused to acknowledge his son. (If my dad hadn't have been willing to let me help him and do what I could for him, he probably wouldn't have been able to handle my mother's death as well as he did and he didn't even handle that well and didn't even go to work for 3 months from grief)... or it could be a mixture of all of it.

[vehere]

I would love a clear timeline of events I will admit.

On Venats followers not knowing, I am once again not sure where this is coming from. Based on the recording at Anyder they knew that Zodiark did not solve the Final Days, a fact that only makes sense if one knows of Meteion. Is there evidence showing this is not the case?

How would knowing of Meteion make things make sense when they still agreed to the Sundering and leave everything up to the gamble that some person in the future will solve the problem? There was absolutely no mention of Meteion or that "there's a mysterious energy coming from outer space coming from a bird girl making our powers go nuts" in Anyder. It's very clear that they only knew it to be something coming from within the ground, that somehow the aether was weakening. The recording at Anyder shows not that they don't believe Zodiark hasn't fixing things but that they think the effort to return to normal isn't right at the expense of other life.

And even if they did know, then the Convocation would have found out too, wouldn't they? Unless you're suggesting Venat told her group to not tell the Convocation about Meteion's existence so they could do the Sundering unimpeded?

Because if they did know, and if they did decide that trying to pursue Meteion was just too hard for them, then they're just as bad as the Convocation. Giving up so that someone else will hopefully fix the problems.

Hermes was nuts and Lahabrea ain't looking super sane so far, 50% of the Convocation that we know about had a few screws loose.

I think people seriously overestimate how resilient the Ancients were. Hermes was already spiralling a bit from having to put rabid dogs down, he totally flipped when his experiment didn't pan out how he hoped, and no-one seemed to pick up on how unstable he was and he was made a member of the governing body of their society.

And if we go with the whole 'Hermes wasn't the only person who could make Meteia/knows about dynamis' thing, then any Ancient that doesn't take the news too well could potentially start making the problem worse.

I mean... we have Edda and Thordin and Ala Mhigo's old king, Zenos, there's others... if we're judging a faction based on how many unstable folk are in it, we aren't looking too good ourselves. This isn't getting into how many people turned into Blasphemies because they were (like Hermes) at the depths of their despair, anger, or sorrow.