Quote Originally Posted by Cleretic View Post
So, let's perhaps revise the argument's direction for you: the third sacrifice isn't 'substantial enough for Venat to object to'. It's 'substantial enough for at least eleven environmentally-conscious academics to object to'. Essentially; what level of sacrifice do you think would have been enough to set off a room full of people like the Watcher?
Probably the same level of sacrifice that upset the researchers on Elpis.

I know it’s become the fashion in some circles to assume that the Ancient perspective is the same as the Ascian perspective, but that’s not the case. The Ancients saw their role on the planet to nurture life and evidenced no small amount of distress when even the life of animals was “cut short.” It’s a gigantic shift from seeing your society as one that protects and balances life to deliberately cutting short the lives of those creatures the planet has seen fit to provide souls for your own benefit. I can very easily see that becoming the source of a heated, ugly debate.

You can say the Ancients were callous to their own creations. I would disagree, but even if I accepted that premise, there is a marked basis in canon for them having a clear reverence for ensouled creatures—to the point where Phoenix accidentally gaining a soul and suffering in agony because of it was seen as a crisis that needed the intervention of one of their top government officials to evaluate and decide how to handle it. (As opposed to how we would handle a suffering animal right off the bat: put it down.)