The Ancients still deserved better, after everything

[KizuyaKatogami]

I get what you mean. It's sad that the Ancients were wiped out by events they didn't even see were going to happen and couldn't understand why. We are the survivors, we are what's left of the Ancients with our souls sundered and our aether weakened that we cannot use creation magicks in the same way they did. The likes of Venat and Elidibus are lost to us forever. Emet-Selch could come back reborn as one of us if he wanted since his soul wasn't obliterated like the other Ascians we've encountered, but he explicitly expressed his desires not to.

Venat made the decision not to tell her people about Meteion because if they had succeeded in changing the past it would've created a paradox where we never would've existed to warn her about the Final Days in the first place. Elidibus warned us for that very reason before he gave up his last remnants of his soul to open a gate to the past that we were not to try to alter the past nor prevent the Final Days from happening. In fact just before his soul was obliterated he recalled us visiting him in the past stating that it was a warming memory that he had forgotten, so even before we learned we could go there a version of ourselves had already been into the past and intervened.

As for Hermes he believed all life had the rights to live even if it meant destroying everything else and developed an emotional attachment to everything. He could not accept the standard ways of his people who would create and unmake creations without remorse or regrets and once they believed their work was done would give up their own lives for someone else to fill in their place. The other Ancients were far too occupied with duty and acceptance of their ways to notice how unstable he was becoming and put their bets on him becoming the next Fandaniel would occupy him enough to forget his troubles. He secretly created Meteion to question what does it mean to live on other worlds but when his answer was that there was no other significant reason for living it pushed him over the edge and he sided with Meteion's judgement that to exist was to suffer. Even though he was reborn as a sundered Ascian the question still haunted him and with each rebirth he felt even less about life and longed for the cycle of death and rebirth to come to an end.

Except we already have another time travel situation and it didn’t result in a paradox, it resulted in a split timeline. 14 keeps changing its rules and laws to fit the narrative and its biting the writers in the ass this time because people aren’t pretending to be oblivious to it anymore. It’s completely half-assed and makes very little sense, as does Venat’s reasoning for not telling the ancients. We understand how Hermes feels, what Venat thinks etc etc, no one is confused on that. People are simply calling out the bs writing that surrounds Elpis as a whole because the entire plot has so many holes it’s like it’s made out of swiss cheese.

[WlyemR]

They did have the drive to do better though, that’s literally their whole thing. You’re acting as if they’re nothing but a hive mind when there’s nothing at all that suggests that. We’re literally shown how much of a debate oriented society they are. That’s exactly what Elidibus left Zodiark to do, mediate both sides of the conflict. Presumably he had no chance to as Venat decided to take agency over the lives of millions if not billions without their consent and shatter them. Imo a better gamble would’ve been….idk….trusting in her own people for once, telling them the truth, and working with them to find a better way. The sundered world had what….6 people that were the only reason they made it out? Every other sundered was either giving in to despair or fighting each other lol.Not to mention how much outside help they needed, i’m not exactly sure the drive to do better was entirely….fair. Also, what injustice of life are you talking about exactly?

Everyone is acting as if Venat went straight for the "Sunder" option. We are shown she didn't. She begged, pleaded, for them to see that there was no going back. The world was irrevocably changed. She did all she could to get them to see that the, as the one Ancient put it, "perfect paradise" they once had was unobtainable. Zodiark's intervention did save them in the short term, but in the long term, there would be an endless, repeated cycle of sacrifice and conflict. The adherents of Zodiark made it clear that they would do whatever it took to restore the old world, up to and including the murder of countless new lives. Everyone who puts the Ancients on a pedestal seem to forget that.

[KizuyaKatogami]

Everyone is acting as if Venat went straight for the "Sunder" option. We are shown she didn't. She begged, pleaded, for them to see that there was no going back. The world was irrevocably changed. She did all she could to get them to see that the, as the one Ancient put it, "perfect paradise" they once had was unobtainable. Zodiark's intervention did save them in the short term, but in the long term, there would be an endless, repeated cycle of sacrifice and conflict. The adherents of Zodiark made it clear that they would do whatever it took to restore the old world, up to and including the murder of countless new lives. Everyone who puts the Ancients on a pedestal seem to forget that.

From what we saw, in her biased recollection of events(which btw, we know from bozja is easily malleable and changed based on someone’s emotions), we see her approaching people during the final days. My point is, she did not tell them BEFORE THE FINAL DAYS, when she had the chance. Where are you getting there would be endless sacrifice? The only sus sacrifice is the 3rd one and we don’t even know what that new life entailed. But we are told after that they would return to their duties as stewards to the star. But if you want to talk about a cycle of sacrifice and conflict, that’s literally the sundered world she created. She created it knowing entire shards would be destroyed and those lives lost. She created it knowing she was introducing death to aging,illness,wars etc. Things that don’t exist in the ancient world. So please if you’re going to mention a cycle of sacrifice and conflict, you had sure as hell include the sundered world under that umbrella.

[redheadturk]

Everyone is acting as if Venat went straight for the "Sunder" option. We are shown she didn't. She begged, pleaded, for them to see that there was no going back. The world was irrevocably changed. She did all she could to get them to see that the, as the one Ancient put it, "perfect paradise" they once had was unobtainable. Zodiark's intervention did save them in the short term, but in the long term, there would be an endless, repeated cycle of sacrifice and conflict. The adherents of Zodiark made it clear that they would do whatever it took to restore the old world, up to and including the murder of countless new lives. Everyone who puts the Ancients on a pedestal seem to forget that.

They were traumatized. Expecting traumatized people to be reasonable when you're telling them "You have to leave your loved ones in limbo inside a giant primal and rebuild by hand instead of sacrificing non sapient creations because they may become sapient one day, sorry." is frickin' ridiculous. I for one agree with and support the third sacrifice.

[geekgirl101]

Except we already have another time travel situation and it didn’t result in a paradox, it resulted in a split timeline. 14 keeps changing its rules and laws to fit the narrative and its biting the writers in the ass this time because people aren’t pretending to be oblivious to it anymore. It’s completely half-assed and makes very little sense, as does Venat’s reasoning for not telling the ancients. We understand how Hermes feels, what Venat thinks etc etc, no one is confused on that. People are simply calling out the bs writing that surrounds Elpis as a whole because the entire plot has so many holes it’s like it’s made out of swiss cheese.

But here's the thing, G'raha went back in time to change events that wouldn't result in the future still being destroyed. If we had gone back into the past and warned everyone about Meteion then what could the Ancients have done about it? Her sisters were already out scouring the universe at the time we arrived. The Ancients had no means to reach out to stop her, and besides she was made from Dynamis which was an energy that very few Ancients knew anything about. As Ancients they were unable to interact with Dynamis, but as sundered Ancients we could. Zodiark only prevented Meteion from destroying the world by strengthening the aetheric currents, but over time he would've weakened and the aetheric currents would've started to weaken again, then what? Start sacrificing more Ancients to give him the energy required to restabilize the aetheric currents? All they'd be doing is delaying the inevitable at the cost of more souls being sacrificed over time until their race would've been shrunk to too few in number. Meteion herself needed to be stopped and as unsundered we were unwilling to accept strength through tragedy, it was only when we were sundered we faced suffering and a passion for life to strive forward even in dark times which was the answer Meteion was looking for to put an end to her song of oblivion. All the other worlds her sisters visited failed - they either wiped themselves out in conflict, suffered endlessly to their deaths, or believed that life was not worth living and gave up.

[anhaato]

Everyone is acting as if Venat went straight for the "Sunder" option. We are shown she didn't. She begged, pleaded, for them to see that there was no going back.

She begged, pleaded, hid the truth, came up with excuses, went on a vacuous political tirade that offered no solution, straight up lied to her followers about the purpose of Hydaelyn, shoved her beliefs down their throats, and ultimately punished everyone for wanting life to be good again. Then, as if murdering the entire world wasn't enough, she let the few that escaped go on to kill half of the shards knowing that was exactly what they would do. She didn't trust her people for a moment, she gave up on them and hubristically decided to become their god. She had her own personal idea of the right way, and decided that every life destroyed in the process was expendable and justified by the ends. Zodiark and the sacrifices could've quite easily been nipped in the bud if she just trusted them to come up with a different way to put an end to the final days because SHE KNEW WHAT WAS CAUSING IT! And we know manipulating dynamis was not an issue like she pretended it was because they created Meteion to begin with.

The world was irrevocably changed. She did all she could to get them to see that the, as the one Ancient put it, "perfect paradise" they once had was unobtainable. Zodiark's intervention did save them in the short term, but in the long term, there would be an endless, repeated cycle of sacrifice and conflict.

12,000 years and counting of effective protection is nowhere near "short term," also here we go again with the blood god shit, that's how I know you weren't paying attention. Three sacrifices, all amounted to less death than the sundering. Also, no, she quite openly believed that their paradise was attainable and that attaining it was a bad thing. The devs themselves said that was her primary motivation.

The adherents of Zodiark made it clear that they would do whatever it took to restore the old world, up to and including the murder of countless new lives. Everyone who puts the Ancients on a pedestal seem to forget that.

Nothing to say to this that wasn't already covered by this post here:

I put together the sources on this a while ago here. The TLDR short of it is there was nothing indicating they were sacrificing babies as such, because the story does not elaborate. Here's a theory on what may have been the case.

[Misplaced_Marbles]

I think people are just thinking too hard about Venat. As for me, i think it's as simple as she's a sadist.

You know the final days came, there was lots of destruction, suffering and death around and nobody was having a good time... except Venat who acquired a new fetish. When they decided to stop summon Zodiark, she obviously didn't want it to stop, so she tried to stop them without actually giving them any info (and without revealing her true desire) to keep the good times (for her) rolling. When that didn't work, she took some drastic measures (and you gotta hand it to her, making the unbeateble super race dumber and weaker to exacerbate any situation while turning disagreements and arguments into conflicts and wars, she really new how to set up a killing field) and it worked out for her better than anyone could have ever expected. After 10k years (or however long it was) of a smorgasbord of her favourite thing, she did what the ancients did and accepted death (but also wanted to finally inflict some pain by her own hand, so fight time!). Everything she said to her army of minions (that includes the scions and WoL, of course) were lies and/or half-truths just to hide the simple, sickening truth, which is why it's all so confusing and seem to contradict herself in every way. The person she presented to others was just a facade.

Who knows what went through the writer's heads and what they were trying to convey with their lunacy, but I'm going to go with my version, since, it in a way, "explains" basically everything that she did that don't make a lick of sense.

Anyway, Venat fans, rip me a new one if you feel like it. I'm out.

[KizuyaKatogami]

But here's the thing, G'raha went back in time to change events that wouldn't result in the future still being destroyed. If we had gone back into the past and warned everyone about Meteion then what could the Ancients have done about it? Her sisters were already out scouring the universe at the time we arrived. The Ancients had no means to reach out to stop her, and besides she was made from Dynamis which was an energy that very few Ancients knew anything about. As Ancients they were unable to interact with Dynamis, but as sundered Ancients we could. Zodiark only prevented Meteion from destroying the world by strengthening the aetheric currents, but over time he would've weakened and the aetheric currents would've started to weaken again, then what? Start sacrificing more Ancients to give him the energy required to restabilize the aetheric currents? All they'd be doing is delaying the inevitable at the cost of more souls being sacrificed over time until their race would've been shrunk to too few in number. Meteion herself needed to be stopped and only as unsundered were we capable of doing that, not only that but our own suffering and passion for life to strive forward was the answer Meteion was looking for to put an end to her song of oblivion.

Except he acknowledged there was the possibility in changing the past, it would erase their timeline. This was something both him and Ironworks acknowledged but went through with it anyways. Why is it any different for the ancients? As for defeating Meteion, im not sure how many times i tneeds to be said, Venat had knowledge on it all. All she had to do was tell the ancients the truth, and almost undoubtedly within 12k years they could come up with a solution. If you really think a race that has strived in high intelligence and debate wouldnt be able to eventually defeat Meteion after thousands of years....i dont know what to say. To me thats being willfully obtuse.

Not to mention we arent even completely sundered. We're what, 9/14? Thats only 5 shards away from being fully rejoined. Yet we have 0 problems manipulating dynamis. So either the writing is absolute shoddy on dynamis, dynamis just immediately stops being manipulated once you hit number 12 or 13 or whatever, or its just something that needs to be investigated and honed by the ancients, something they had thousands of years to do.In the end though, its pretty sad to see they wrote themselves in such a corner by making the ancients so powerful they had to come up with an asspull excuse to try and weaken them. Not sure how anyone can find that as good writing.

[geekgirl101]

Except he acknowledged there was the possibility in changing the past, it would erase their timeline. This was something both him and Ironworks acknowledged but went through with it anyways. Why is it any different for the ancients? As for defeating Meteion, im not sure how many times i tneeds to be said, Venat had knowledge on it all. All she had to do was tell the ancients the truth, and almost undoubtedly within 12k years they could come up with a solution. If you really think a race that has strived in high intelligence and debate wouldnt be able to eventually defeat Meteion after thousands of years....i dont know what to say. To me thats being willfully obtuse.

Not to mention we arent even completely sundered. We're what, 9/14? Thats only 5 shards away from being fully rejoined. Yet we have 0 problems manipulating dynamis. So either the writing is absolute shoddy on dynamis, dynamis just immediately stops being manipulated once you hit number 12 or 13 or whatever, or its just something that needs to be investigated and honed by the ancients, something they had thousands of years to do.In the end though, its pretty sad to see they wrote themselves in such a corner by making the ancients so powerful they had to come up with an asspull excuse to try and weaken them. Not sure how anyone can find that as good writing.

Except they didn't. If that were true Hydaeyln herself would've defeated Meteion without our intervention and she was more powerful than any Ascian. On top of that we had great difficulty convincing Emet-Selch about the Final Days. Without any kind of proof Venat would've been ignored and shamed for trying to make herself out to be a hero of her people and our pleas would've gone unheard. Meteion was gone, there was no sign of her and Hermes's memories had been wiped, so there was no evidence for our claims that she had travelled to the far ends of the universe to bring a plague of death.

G'raha's travel back into the past wasn't one that he would be returning to the future at any point. His reason was to ensure that his timeline never happened so that people including the Warrior of Light didn't die. As I mentioned earlier if we went into the past and stopped the Ancients from dying out or being sundered then we would be unable to return to our timeline as we would've severed ourselves from it and have created an alternate one where we never existed. The Ancients would've had no means to stop Meteion other than to wait out the inevitable over thousands of years. Having not experienced life through hardships they would not have been able to defeat Meteion. It was through our struggles as sundered beings and yet fighting foward with hope for a better tomorrow that a field of Elpis flowers bloomed at Meteion's feet, correcting her judgement that there was no hope in living and that all life was doomed to end miserably and with resent.

[PawPaw]

Except they didn't. If that were true Hydaeyln herself would've defeated Meteion without our intervention and she was more powerful than any Ascian. On top of that we had great difficulty convincing Emet-Selch about the Final Days. Without any kind of proof Venat would've been ignored and shamed for trying to make herself out to be a hero of her people and our pleas would've gone unheard. Meteion was gone, there was no sign of her and Hermes's memories had been wiped, so there was no evidence for our claims that she had travelled to the far ends of the universe to bring a plague of death.

For what I think is the millionth time, has everyone just completely forgotten the Echo and the scene where she explicitly shows us how everyone in her time can view the events of the past by just being in a place where something has happened and reading the environmental aether? Not to mention the many, many witnesses in Elpis who saw all of us together. Not to mention that the Convocation can just look into your own memories to find the truth. Not to mention that she is a respected former Convocation member and not someone that would be brushed aside or ignored. She could have told and shown anyone the truth and they would have been able to see it for themselves. She chose not to.