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

[redheadturk]

To clarify, when I'm saying 'don't want to come back' I mean 'in their current contiguous consciousness'. All the people I mention in the first list have basically come to terms with the fact that's going to happen (except for Venat, which I'm still not really comfortable with, but even she seems okay with her fate), while Lahabrea clearly isn't a fan of it.

I point out though that all of the Unsundered ancients are quite likely to return with memories intact due to them being aetherically dense enough for the lifestream not to strip their memories and consciousness, so "continguous consciousness" is likely to remain upon reincarnation. Hythlodaeus and Emet Selch are clear proof of the fact that the Unsundered retain consciousness and coherence within the Lifestream.

[Jandor]

I point out though that all of the Unsundered ancients are quite likely to return with memories intact due to them being aetherically dense enough for the lifestream not to strip their memories and consciousness, so "continguous consciousness" is likely to remain upon reincarnation. Hythlodaeus and Emet Selch are clear proof of the fact that the Unsundered retain consciousness and coherence within the Lifestream.

They hadn't gone through the lifestream, so much as bobbed about on its surface watching what was going on. I suspect you've got to sink to the bottom, as it were, to get reincarnated.

Honestly, one fault I do have with Endwalker is that it showed too much of the afterlife. Seems to me that the afterlife is basically chilling with your mates, with all your memories restored, watching the goings on of the material plane like it's a movie you all watch together. Actually being alive is something you only do if you fancy it, as a bit of a change of pace.

[Cleretic]

And of course, Hermes was needed because he's the only qualified expert on dynamis in the Convocation, which is pretty useful when you have a dynamis-centric disaster on your hands. Everyone else is about as knowledgeable about it as I am about quantum physics (which is to say 'I can kinda follow the first few sentences of a discussion on it and recognize a few terms').

I point out though that all of the Unsundered ancients are quite likely to return with memories intact due to them being aetherically dense enough for the lifestream not to strip their memories and consciousness, so "continguous consciousness" is likely to remain upon reincarnation. Hythlodaeus and Emet Selch are clear proof of the fact that the Unsundered retain consciousness and coherence within the Lifestream.

A couple pages late on this (because I had to sleep and work, go figure), but... uhhh, that's not how it works. At all. Emet-Selch and Hythlodaeus weren't cleansed because it hadn't been long at all since their deaths, and because generally having business in life gives people's selves the strengths to hold on longer. Remember that the earliest death reflected in the Aitiascope is Rhytatyn, and he's basically fine, which kinda showcases a minimum of how far both of these can hold.

If pure soul density was the culprit, then Ancient society wouldn't even consider death to be any form of finality at all, because someone would come back with all their memories. Death would just be a bit of a break before they bounced right back as exceptionally productive babies. And we know that's wrong, because Fake Amaurot's denizens treated us like children solely because of size, meaning that the Ancients had a concept of 'small person = child who does not yet know the ways of this world'.

EDIT: I don't really like the overall Amaurot and Sundering discussion all that much because I find the subject fairly uninteresting and overtalked at this point, but one of the funniest parts to me is when we occasionally have to step back and establish such base-level concepts as 'the existence of children'.