Who knew the 6.15 Omega Quests… (Spoilers)

[redheadturk]

Except they could have counteracted Meteion had Venat, I dunno, told them what they were dealing with? her excuses never sat right with me.

[Cleretic]

Except they could have counteracted Meteion had Venat, I dunno, told them what they were dealing with? her excuses never sat right with me.

No. You can't just say that without evidence, and all the evidence is on her side that she had to be careful about this.

We know that she can't just be completely open with this, because the general public would take this information extremely poorly. ...as we see very clearly when the End of Days actually comes and they take it extremely poorly. As to who else she could've told, the big problem is Hermes; as mentioned, if he learns what he wiped from his memory he's likely to fall into a depression that either makes him go turncoat or drop off completely--which is bad, because his knowledge of dynamis is required to make Zodiark, which is a necessary element of making sure the planet doesn't just get turbo-murdered. This also means she has to keep people who would tell Hermes in the dark--that counts out the 'tell the public' approach on a second count because you know protests would hit him eventually, but it also shuts Emet-Selch out of the picture because he's a known stickler for the process, and the process has already failed us. The same approach is probably why most of the Convocation was kept in the dark, to make sure nobody either told or ousted Hermes. We know she actually did try to contact Azem, so they were a potential (and probably good at keeping their mouth shut if they're anything like us), but they didn't pick up the proverbial phone for reasons intentionally left ambiguous.

So who else could she tell? Hythlodaeus, who may not have any relevant skills, and is also kind of a blabbermouth? Themis, who she may have never met, and probably got inducted into the Convocation soon after? Reasonably, the people she got together actually were the best people for the job--and we now know thanks to The Watcher that they were at least partially comprised of academics, who actually could have thought out this problem. Venat actually said that she didn't want the future we told her about to come to pass, so her and the brains trust she compiled probably did think out the problem put ahead of them. And they came to the Sundering decision, with a heavy heart--Venat knew that was the plan that worked in one timeline, but that also wasn't evidence that she could communicate to others, so they had to have come to and agreed to it through independent thought.

If you think they had a better option, you'd better have a damn good piece of evidence for it. You can argue with decent grounding that they might not have needed to take the fight to Meteion anyway, Zodiark would've held up indefinitely, but you can't argue that there was any other way to take that swing. Even Emet-Selch disagreed with you about that from beyond the grave.

[SpectrePhantasia]

No. You can't just say that without evidence, and all the evidence is on her side that she had to be careful about this.

You don't get to have your cake and eat it too, demanding the hard evidence for any kind of alternative to the Sundering, and then base the entirety of your previous post decrying their society as "there probably was agony and strife around, we just didn't see it!" Obviously their society was not perfect, they have struggles in their lives, but I say more power to them then, it humanizes them more and we've just recently learned that being actually perfect is bad. Come on, even Hermes, the #1 Ancient hater says they go out of their way to make sure their creations do not suffer unduly. It's just that wasn't enough for him, because he knew they sensed their impending demise. I get you're searching for ammo where there is largely none to suit your narrative, but there has to be something better to use than that.

At the end of it all, and this is now further supported by this Omega quest, all of this is predicated on belief. Even the devs told us that Venat was acting according to her 'beliefs.' The Watcher here just told us that he 'believed' the Ancients would eventually fall, and that the WoL may very well disagree with this notion. There is nothing objectively correct about her decision, and thus people are free to speculate unaddressed alternatives all they like, because they really should have been addressed. They're not doing any greater amount of filling-in-holes with fanfiction than you are. Me, I'm content to just call it questionable writing, that so many things need fanon explanations on forums like this.

But speaking of a lack of evidence, Hermes is never accredited with Zodiark's construction. Never. Not one time. If he was at all vital to Zodiark's innerworkings, that is something that needs a thorough pointing out, because from where I'm sitting, he has no further involvement than any other Convocation member. A primal that is using an aether shield does not need a dynamis expert. All of his 'vital' knowledge of the root cause of the Final Days only remains vital because Venat chooses to keep under wraps that she learned basically everything valuable from him secondhand already. To be honest though, this is all from the 'rushing you out of Elpis' epilogue scene that I already have several very strong issues with.

But ahh, its been this long and people are still taking Emet-selch's 'our methods' line as him saying 'there was nothing our society ever could have done to combat this threat.' You know, the society that he still believes is superior and just got finished telling Meteion his answer as a representative of, for the sake of 'all lives, past and present.' That totally makes sense. Sure, let's just extrapolate that instead of taking it as him meaning, far more sensibly, the Ascians and the Rejoinings.

[redheadturk]

snip

^This. And the french translation [which is generally closer to the original Japanese in every single case] makes it clear he was talking more about them not getting to Ultima Thule using their methods than that they wouldn't have been able to save society with them.

[Havenchild]

But speaking of a lack of evidence, Hermes is never accredited with Zodiark's construction. Never. Not one time. If he was at all vital to Zodiark's innerworkings, that is something that needs a thorough pointing out, because from where I'm sitting, he has no further involvement than any other Convocation member. A primal that is using an aether shield does not need a dynamis expert. All of his 'vital' knowledge of the root cause of the Final Days only remains vital because Venat chooses to keep under wraps that she learned basically everything valuable from him secondhand already. To be honest though, this is all from the 'rushing you out of Elpis' epilogue scene that I already have several very strong issues with.

The Watcher specifically states the first time you meet him that Hermes was the one who discovered the pattern of places where the Aether Currents were weakest and where the "Dynamis" corruption appeared first. We directly know this attributes to the "solution" of Zodiark, both Venat confirms that (before we leave Elpis) and the Watcher alludes to it just enough which means his knowledge on Dynamis is instrumental on countering Meteion first Final Days to whatever degree possible. While it's undetermined how much beyond any other convocation member Hermes participated in the construct, I think the convocation members would have been the most informed people in the solution (Zodiark). That doesn't need to be explicitly stated, as we already know they are essentially the highest members of Amaurotine society.

[SpectrePhantasia]

While it's undetermined how much beyond any other convocation member Hermes participated in the construct, I think the convocation members would have been the most informed people in the solution (Zodiark). That doesn't need to be explicitly stated, as we already know they are essentially the highest members of Amaurotine society.

And there's the crux of the issue. It's undetermined, like so many other things in this plot. What you've given me doesn't answer the actual dilemma in what I was saying. Why is Hermes still vital, at a point where Venat already knows the root cause is in the aether currents, that Meteion is the problem, and that dynamis is a major factor in the Final Days? Are you trying to tell me he is the only person alive who can point to these aether currents? When the entirety of the Convocation is made aware of the problem by someone else, he will still be the only person in the entire world capable of solving this issue?

Even if your answer to this is yes, I would take great issue with the plot's decision to make it so.

[Havenchild]

And there's the crux of the issue. It's undetermined, like so many other things in this plot. What you've given me doesn't answer the actual dilemma in what I was saying. Why is Hermes still vital, at a point where Venat already knows the root cause is in the aether currents, that Meteion is the problem, and that dynamis is a major factor in the Final Days? Are you trying to tell me he is the only person alive who can point to these aether currents? When the entirety of the Convocation is made aware of the problem by someone else, he will still be the only person in the entire world capable of solving this issue?

Even if your answer to this is yes, I would take great issue with the plot's decision to make it so.

I don't think it does. Just because you know what the cause is, how would Venat prove that to the rest of the society when she literally doesn't understand Dynamis (none of them really did). Hermes's brain as the principal scholar of Dynamis is automatically vetted as the most important person in the room in regards to the solution. Maybe not the only person who could notice aether current fluctuations, but the only person who can make the connection and PROVE it to his compatriots, which seems very meticulous on facts.

[Cleretic]

And there's the crux of the issue. It's undetermined, like so many other things in this plot. What you've given me doesn't answer the actual dilemma in what I was saying. Why is Hermes still vital, at a point where Venat already knows the root cause is in the aether currents, that Meteion is the problem, and that dynamis is a major factor in the Final Days? Are you trying to tell me he is the only person alive who can point to these aether currents? When the entirety of the Convocation is made aware of the problem by someone else, he will still be the only person in the entire world capable of solving this issue?

Even if your answer to this is yes, I would take great issue with the plot's decision to make it so.

I'll tell you this one, because we actually have a decent idea of what exactly Fandaniel was doing even if it wasn't directly stated, but Havenchild's mostly hit it: The role of Fandaniel is the pursuit and understanding of 'existing phenomena'. We're talking magnetic fields, aether currents, and--wouldn't you know it--dynamis. It's a good thing Hermes was already fairly knowledgeable in this, because once a dynamis-related event came up, it's on the guy in the seat of Fandaniel to explain to everyone else what the hell they're even looking at, and what to do with it. There's a note in Ktisis describing the previous Fandaniel's knowledge of magnetic fields being integral to inventing migratory birds, for example.

If Hermes is not there then EVERYBODY DIES, because he's the one who figures out what they're dealing with and how to stop it. Which is both a matter of luck that he's present for it, and also a matter of duty; remember that the Fandaniel seat was vacant at the time. It is a Fandaniel's job to figure this out, but it would've been a new Fandaniel no matter who it was, someone who probably wasn't completely on top of their duties. Hermes was exactly the 'new Fandaniel' needed at the time, because he was already familiar enough with dynamis to know what he was looking at.

[Cleretic]

You don't get to have your cake and eat it too, demanding the hard evidence for any kind of alternative to the Sundering, and then base the entirety of your previous post decrying their society as "there probably was agony and strife around, we just didn't see it!" Obviously their society was not perfect, they have struggles in their lives, but I say more power to them then, it humanizes them more and we've just recently learned that being actually perfect is bad. Come on, even Hermes, the #1 Ancient hater says they go out of their way to make sure their creations do not suffer unduly. It's just that wasn't enough for him, because he knew they sensed their impending demise. I get you're searching for ammo where there is largely none to suit your narrative, but there has to be something better to use than that.

You've misunderstood what I was pointing out.

I was not saying 'there probably was homelessness and starvation that we didn't see then'. I was saying that our windows into Ancient life are all areas of extreme privilege where homelessness and starvation wouldn't have been present anyway, so we can't take absence of evidence to be evidence of absence on this. However, so far the existence (or lack thereof) of these problems has never been a relevant part of the story of the Ancients, so until it comes up (which at this point could only appear in Pandaemonium or Tales short stories), the notion doesn't really impact either way.

However, it is a CENTRAL element of the story of the Ancients that Venat had no other options for the goal of 'stop the End of Days and also constant Zodiark summonings'. It is stated from several angles--from her noting that her options are limited, to her allies mentioning they've exhausted their other avenues, to even Emet-Selch freed from duty, tempering and memory loss saying that her plan got them further than any other could have. It is an open and subjective question if she was morally right to do it, and that's a question that we have now been directly asked, so this was clearly the intention of the story.

If Venat was not taking the best option, then the story no longer functions as intended. It is no longer people making different but valid and internally justifiable moral decisions, and frankly, I don't even know what the story IS anymore if not that. So you can't throw 'she had better options' without significant proof that said better options existed, not just to overcome the story's own evidence and testimonies, but also to provide an alternative definition for what this story is.

If you don't have that evidence, then any alternatives you draw up are fanfiction. I can appreciate some good fanfiction, but we should recognize it for what it is.

[SpectrePhantasia]

If Venat was not taking the best option, then the story no longer functions as intended.

Yes, you're using things completely contrary to the Ancient's intended presentation and using it as fodder for your argument, that is not lost of me. If you want to talk about things no longer working from certain points of view, I would ask you to take a look at the moral dilemma of 5.0, where traditional humanity is confronted with the concept of a society that wasn't prone to countless bouts of violence and death, and for just a single moment, actually being introspective as to faults of themselves as a people. When you try to claim that the Ancients had all of these vices anyway tucked away someplace else without any evidence, and Emet is just a sorry old genocidal boomer who just wants his flavor of problems back, I'm of the belief that the story no longer functions as intended.

You see? It doesn't matter. I don't think the story functions at all, so handwaving every contradiction with writer intention solves nothing. There are plenty of stories that carry moral weights like this and don't have nearly as much controversy. The people who say these things know very well it is not what the story 'wants' you to think, and while there will always be outliers, it is the writers' job to convey with enough certainty that the destruction of a people and their way of life was the only option. What this quest is telling us, in a way that I can finally respect, is that there was no 'best option.' She was acting according to her own morals, and even though it ultimately worked out in success for the Sundered, it came at a cost great enough for you, the player, to disagree that it was justified. SHE, in her own mind, had no other options, that does not mean that no other options existed. Venat is not an arbiter of objectivity and correctness, she is just another person, and we are finally allowed to say as such. I'm sorry if the story falls apart for you, for that to be the case, but welcome to our world.