What was it like after hours on old Etheirys?

[Rosenstrauch]

Unless of course the whole thing is a booby trap designed by Emet as part of his recreated Amaurot rather than representing the original, hoping our goody-two-shoes sidequesting instincts will lead us to taking up the offer and getting swamped by playful jellyblobs before he ever has to deal with us himself.

I know this is said in jest, but I think it's closer to the truth than "Wow, that man's such an arse he tried to foist murder machines on children!". The Amaurot we see in Shadowbringers is an elaborate stage. What appear to be flesh and blood Ancients are really just props playing out an illusion of life. And as a few characters in this stretch of the story note, any attempt to push these props out of their intended behavior accomplishes very little.

I believe this quest was there to highlight the necessity of Amaurot's bureaucratic methods and the dangers creation magic could pose even when used benignly, but also to showcase a moment of glamour failure by having one of the illusions Emet-Selch crafted push the boundaries of what he expected it to do.

[Iscah]

I know this is said in jest, but I think it's closer to the truth than "Wow, that man's such an arse he tried to foist murder machines on children!". The Amaurot we see in Shadowbringers is an elaborate stage. What appear to be flesh and blood Ancients are really just props playing out an illusion of life. And as a few characters in this stretch of the story note, any attempt to push these props out of their intended behavior accomplishes very little.

I must have just missed seeing this post when I wrote my second one earlier.

And yes, definitely all that we see in Amaurot, or at least the vast majority of it (minus one accidentally-sentient "new old friend" and any other similar slip-ups) has to be planned by Emet. It's just about a meta thing where he in-universe would have gone about it in much the way the game creators did: place a person here, give them a role and some fixed lines of exposition to repeat: NPCs with the illusion of sentience until you attempt to go off-script.

I have a side theory that the shadowy faceless forms we see in Amaurot and in the recordings at Anyder are a sort of anonymising effect they used in their recordings originally, and Emet used it for his recreated shades so they're not representing particular people. (And then he chose to manifest as one at the Seat of Sacrifice for... reasons.) That's my best shot at rationalising why they look like that instead of the real people we now know them to be.

[Alleluia]

I know this is said in jest, but I think it's closer to the truth than "Wow, that man's such an arse he tried to foist murder machines on children!". The Amaurot we see in Shadowbringers is an elaborate stage. What appear to be flesh and blood Ancients are really just props playing out an illusion of life. And as a few characters in this stretch of the story note, any attempt to push these props out of their intended behavior accomplishes very little.

I believe this quest was there to highlight the necessity of Amaurot's bureaucratic methods and the dangers creation magic could pose even when used benignly, but also to showcase a moment of glamour failure by having one of the illusions Emet-Selch crafted push the boundaries of what he expected it to do.

I must have just missed seeing this post when I wrote my second one earlier.

And yes, definitely all that we see in Amaurot, or at least the vast majority of it (minus one accidentally-sentient "new old friend" and any other similar slip-ups) has to be planned by Emet. It's just about a meta thing where he in-universe would have gone about it in much the way the game creators did: place a person here, give them a role and some fixed lines of exposition to repeat: NPCs with the illusion of sentience until you attempt to go off-script.

I have a side theory that the shadowy faceless forms we see in Amaurot and in the recordings at Anyder are a sort of anonymising effect they used in their recordings originally, and Emet used it for his recreated shades so they're not representing particular people. (And then he chose to manifest as one at the Seat of Sacrifice for... reasons.) That's my best shot at rationalising why they look like that instead of the real people we now know them to be.

I took it as Hades either not knowing their faces (all the people he generally didn't know and were just kinda there as placeholders for Amaurotines) or not wanting to think about their faces too hard (ppl he actually interacted with; Hythlodeaus). The latter b/c its both too painful and also b/c of shame. As he said in Elpis, he considers the glamour in the Tempest to be disrespectful to their memory; and he likely still does, even as his loneliness drives him to do it anyway.

Same with the actual souls on the moon being hazy, half-there and resulting in that form; though there it was due to the passage of time, the fugue state Hyth mentions, and also probably from Zodiark having chomped their (both corporeal and memetic?) aether to work his magic.

Hades in Seat of Sacrifice was summoned via Azem's magic, technically, so maybe it was our lack of skill with that magic, lack of knowledge of his ancient self's form, and the fact that it was a summoning call made out of pure desperation (and presumably done unconsciously) that resulted in him appearing like that?