Who knew the 6.15 Omega Quests… (Spoilers)

[EaraGrace]

Never said they should or would. I find it as a good example of how she was burning through her aether and the souls and fit in with the later narrative and what the devs said nicely ^_^

Ah apologies, misunderstood.

[Rannie]

Ah apologies, misunderstood.

Absolutely not a problem

[Renathras]

OP: Agreed that I loved the questline overall, and the thought provoking question given.

Though I honestly don't get all the Hydaelyn hate, but this may come down to how I see the situation. Let me explain:

1) The Ancients were immortal...but DID (or were expected to) voluntarily "die" at some point. That is, return to the Lifestream upon completing their life's work. So while they didn't die of natural causes, per se, they also didn't live forever by custom. Something difficult for us mortals to really grasp the full implications of. They didn't see "death" in the same sense that we see death, as it was viewed more as rest after the culmination of a life well lived. So none of them were expected to live forever, meaning Hydaelyn making them mortal...isn't EXACTLY the genocide that many seem to think it is.

2) The second piece of this is, after the Final days, the Ancients were reduced to 1/4th their original number. Half they sacrificed to summon Zodiark. Half again to restore the world to life. And their intent was to raise "lesser" beings as cattle to sacrifice to eventually bring their fellows back from being sacrificed to Zodiark - something we're not even sure is entirely possible or how that would have worked. Hythlodeus seemed to indicate that they retained some sentience and their "self" in Zodiark...but that stands in stark contrast to all the ones that were hounding you like mindless zombie thralls until he shooed them away. But even if we assume the plan was going to work fine, the Ancients were fully prepared to commit mass genocide of the lesser races. And it's pretty clear that they had no qualms about doing so. The cutscene where Hydaelyn sunders them clearly shows her appealing to them to turn from that path, and they refuse (you can argue "it was just one guy/a small group" but I believe that's more limits of the game engine and supposed to imply her talking to all the people and getting that same general response). So even if we ignore (1) above, this is kind of like supposing the Nazis planed to nuke the entire planet, and every last German citizen was in agreement on it, but the US/UK nuked them first instead. While justifying genocide is a slippery slope, even if we ignore (1) (and (3) that follows) and openly assume genocide here, the argument is more akin to committing genocide against a group that is, to a man, 100% intent on committing genocide themselves. Indeed, for all we know, despite them retaining some sense of self, it's clear that they WERE Tempered, and we don't even know for sure that the plan would have worked or that Zodiark wasn't lying to them to just get more power. We never got to meet the "true" Zodiark, so we honestly don't know. But even if we assume the absolute BEST of them, as Emet-Selch made clear, they had no qualms about mass genocide since they simply assumed anything that WASN'T them was a lesser thing that wasn't even truly alive. The Ancients suffered from a DEEP case of racial (Ancient) Supremacy, which is hardly laudable.

3) Sundering is not murder. While one can argue diminishing someone is horrible, and we ignore (1) and (2) above, sundering is not killing someone. While it's not exactly a positive - it's more akin to mass maiming of people - everyone sundered lives on. There's a not-sure-if-canon crossover with SOME game that implies that they lost memories, but there's nothing in FFXIV's own canon that suggests this directly. The modern day equivalent would be a global EMP being set off by someone driving our technology and knowledge ROUGHLY back into the Feudal Age/Industrial Age by destroying all of our computer and electronic systems, records, and knowledge that isn't contained in books/non-digital copies. While that would absolutely suck, it isn't quite the same thing as mass murder. Consider our world in such a state (or a Carrington Event). Computers, cell phones, most modern vehicles, anything with computer chips would no longer function. All data that is digital stored only would be lost. But we would still have books and people with specific knowledge would still have it, we would still have access to our more primitive technologies (e.g. cars built before 1980 or so), and the knowledge to at least reconstruct some of it, with more over time. While the gap here is greater (sundering knocked them back closer to the iron age), it still isn't genocide, though you can well argue it would cause suffering and premature deaths (reduced medical technology, if not knowledge), note (1) above that the Ancients were not exactly immortal by custom anyway. And, further...

4) We also don't know, but it's heavily implied, that the Ancients were going to eventually either repeat the mistakes of the past and all die off again ANYWAY, or alternatively, go the path of the paradise world in the final EW 4 man and commit collective suicide to end their eventual boredom. Ignoring (2) that they were planning genocide THEMSELVES, they weren't exactly paragons of virtue, as the Elpis story and Hermes' issues with their callousness towards the lives they created, experimented on, and terminated shows. Indeed, their planned cultivating of life just to sacrifice it to Zodiark was an extension of this same concept. They were effectively about to engineer slave races, raise them, and then sacrifice them to their god. That's not exactly a mark of a virtuous society. And as the cutscene with Hydaelyn appealing to the crowd shows, they had no qualms about any of it, as long as THEY could live in opulence and carefree luxury. It's Chrono Trigger's Kingdom of Zeal all over again...complete with floating islands. They very clearly were not interested in restoring themselves to a caretaking, egalitarian society that preserved and protected the planet, instead looking to bending the world and all life on it in service to them and their radical religious zealotry (via tempering) to their dark god.

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While this doesn't mean that what Hydaelyn did was the best option, and "the ends justify the means" is never a great argument, and while this also isn't absolved by her simply trying to follow what she might have seen as a set timeline (though her conversation/attempt to persuade the others indicates she WAS trying to look for an out other than Sundering, and only resorted to Sundering when it was clear the others had no interest in turning away from their own path of mass genocide - that is, she very clearly DID try to appeal to them to find another way), it's clear she wasn't some heartless witch that chose to make other people suffer for funzies.

My answer in the end was that none of them were right, though I was 50/50 on it and them all being right in their own minds. A saying I live my life by, attributed to Gandhi (though who knows if that's apocryphal or not):

"Never assume malice when ignorance is a possible explanation; Humans are far more often stupid than they are evil."

Hydaelyn was clearly trapped in a bad situation. Her people were morphing into genocidal maniacs hell bent on mass genocide so they could live a life of comfort and opulence, wouldn't listen to any alternatives, and were insisting on walking a path that, AFTER said genocide, would have led very likely to eventual mass suicide anyway. She tried to convince them otherwise, and they refused. She had knowledge of the future to know Sundering was "supposed" to happen, though she still tried to avoid it. The people she sundered were racial supremacists hell-bent on mass genocide and functionally mass slavery. And Sundering was not genocide anyway.

Taken together, Hydaelyn was still clearly a good aligned person, trying to do the right thing, stuck in a bad situation that had no good options. She chose what is arguably the least bad OF those options, for better or for worse. And again, ends don't justify the means, but it is worth noting that it was also the ONLY path that would lead eventually to the silencing of the Song of Oblivion. All other paths would have likely lead to the opposite - an embrace of oblivion.

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What was right or wrong is an open question since there was no right answer and there was merely a slate of various BAD answers. But the idea that she was some evil witch reveling in the suffering of others is VERY CLEARLY not the case, by any metric we use. The idea she was some genocidal maniac herself is clearly not the case, since she tried what means she had to avoid Sundering in the first place and was trapped by the intransigence of ACTUAL genocidal maniacs.

But again, this may come down to how I see the situation. How I viewed their society before and after the Final Days, what of their social norms we're actually aware of (e.g. the voluntary death part), that their society was on the road to genocide, slavery, opulence, and oblivion, and that she seemed to try her best to turn them from that path, by any means necessary.

If you thought your society was about to follow in the footsteps of the Nazis, would destroying your technology and plunging your nation and people back to the stone age seem the lesser evil? It's a hard question to truly answer...

[CrownySuccubus]

1) The Ancients were immortal...but DID (or were expected to) voluntarily "die" at some point. That is, return to the Lifestream upon completing their life's work. So while they didn't die of natural causes, per se, they also didn't live forever by custom. Something difficult for us mortals to really grasp the full implications of. They didn't see "death" in the same sense that we see death, as it was viewed more as rest after the culmination of a life well lived. So none of them were expected to live forever, meaning Hydaelyn making them mortal...isn't EXACTLY the genocide that many seem to think it is.

Even if that were true, it wouldn't matter -- because the definition of genocide includes things like destroying a HISTORY or CULTURE of a people. Not just their literal life. For example, the Christian Church destroying pagan religious beliefs, texts and artifacts is a form of genocide, along with the Transatlantic Slave Trade, and the United States' barbaric Native American schools which tore them away from their parents to conform them to American society. All of these meet the criteria of genocide, despite not intentionally trying to wipe out or kill the the people themselves.

But, I said "even if" that were true -- which it isn't. The Ancients do not consider themselves the same beings that came after the Sundering, and the Sundered do not ever remember being Ascians. If someone took a mutation ray and turned, say, every Chinese person on Earth into gerbils, that would be genocide. The argument that they are "technically alive" is irrelevant when their physical bodies, memories, and basic means of functioning are completely different. The people they used to be are dead in every way that matters.

[SentioftheHoukai]

Even if that were true, it wouldn't matter -- because the definition of genocide includes things like destroying a HISTORY or CULTURE of a people. Not just their literal life. For example, the Christian Church destroying pagan religious beliefs, texts and artifacts is a form of genocide, along with the Transatlantic Slave Trade, and the United States' barbaric Native American schools which tore them away from their parents to conform them to American society. All of these meet the criteria of genocide, despite not intentionally trying to wipe out or kill the the people themselves.

But, I said "even if" that were true -- which it isn't. The Ancients do not consider themselves the same beings that came after the Sundering, and the Sundered do not ever remember being Ascians. If someone took a mutation ray and turned, say, every Chinese person on Earth into gerbils, that would be genocide. The argument that they are "technically alive" is irrelevant when their physical bodies, memories, and basic means of functioning are completely different. The people they used to be are dead in every way that matters.

Shocking, truly shocking how few people seem to remember mass cultural erasure counts as genocide. I suspect that amongst FFXIV-goers this is intentional.

[Renathras]

...

By that as it may, we again come to the case of dealing with a people that are basically becoming Nazis here. WWII defeated the Nazi power in Germany, and since then, it has been decried and ridiculed. To this day, Nazi-aligned ideologies and parties are attacked and in many places outright banned. Indeed, the very whiff of fascism - real OR imagined - drives most people into a tizzy.

Was it wrong to eradicate it?

By your definition, the Nazis as a culture were destroyed via a genocide, one still perpetuated today. You can try to parse it out to say it isn't, but it arguably meets the concept of a culture/type of culture, and one which has been more or less destroyed (what of it survives is not for wont of trying to eradicate it). Is this cultural/ideological genocide a bad one, or a good one?

As I noted, the Ancients were basically walking down that same path. They had a culture of racial supremacy, were embarking on a program of mass slavery, Human and ecological sacrifice, and were raving religious zealots with near-absolute devotion to their god.

Was this a culture the destruction of which was bad or good?

Some anthropologists have argued that the US Southern culture (both the slave based one prior to the Civil War and the modern one) is effectively a separate ethnic group. The prior one was eradicated. Was that cultural genocide bad? The latter one is in some level of decline and has no protections that other ethnicities do. Is that cultural genocide bad or good?

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Also, I don't think that we should use the same word for those two things. There is a difference, even if slight, between outright killing people and not killing people. That's not a minor quibble, at any rate.

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EDIT:

I suspect that amongst FFXIV-goers this is intentional.

I'm not sure what this means, but if I guess correctly, I think it's a pretty grave insult you should take back...

[Rulakir]

As I noted, the Ancients were basically walking down that same path. They had a culture of racial supremacy, were embarking on a program of mass slavery, Human and ecological sacrifice, and were raving religious zealots with near-absolute devotion to their god.

This is why you don't understand the Hydaelyn hate. This is so wildly different than frankly any interpretation I've seen I'm kind of fascinated how you arrived at it. (Not to mention full on veering into headcanon, but that's par for the course around here.)

[Renathras]

This is why you don't understand the Hydaelyn hate. This is so wildly different than frankly any interpretation I've seen I'm kind of fascinated how you arrived at it. (Not to mention full on veering into headcanon, but that's par for the course around here.)

What do you mean?

They VERY CLEARLY had a culture of racial supremacy. This is shown outright in the Elpis quests and was shown in ShB with Emet's conversations about us not really being alive and being lesser beings.

They were literally growing what WE would consider sentient life forms to use as chattel sacrifices to Zodiark. Mass slavery, Human sacrifice, and ecological sacrifice (they were also going to do this with plant life) was 100% part of their objective to generate enough energy to give Zodiark to restore the Ancients that were sacrificed to summon him.

They were Tempered. That's been made crystal clear. Emet even mentions it as just being par for the course with Summoning such a powerful being, as if it was totally to be expected. While they have freedom in how they carry out the will of their god (unlike Tempered lesser beings), they are still absolutely devoted to Zodiark and his restoration - unless they happen to be bat-shite insane (Amon). Them being what we would define irl as religious zealots is clearly laid out in the MSQ.

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For you NOT to see any of this - and, indeed, to question how I arrived at it - makes me wonder if you skip cutscenes or something. Each of those points was made very clear in the MSQ.

[Iscah]

What do you mean?

They VERY CLEARLY had a culture of racial supremacy. This is shown outright in the Elpis quests and was shown in ShB with Emet's conversations about us not really being alive and being lesser beings.

They were literally growing what WE would consider sentient life forms to use as chattel sacrifices to Zodiark.

Emet considers us "not alive" because we are sundered. A fraction of what we should be. That wasn't a thing that existed in the time of the Ancients.

There is no sign that they are deliberately developing anything like modern sundered humans to use as sacrifices.

What we do have are vague and conflicting statements that the writers did a poor job of fleshing out. Somehow despite being close together in the narrative, there was no logical step from Shadowbringers' loose statements to Endwalker revealing them in more detail – somehow it veered off into different territory altogether and never addressed the nature of the sacrifices.

All we know, unless I have forgotten something key, is that "new life" flourished on the planet following the second round of Ancient sacrifices, and the remaining Ancients intended to trade it for the others' souls. Emet's story in Tales from the Shadows adds that this new life has souls itself, but as far as we know in this setting, all beings and not just human-like ones have souls.

The writers avoided answering our questions on whether this new life meant human life or not, and by the time we reach Endwalker, it goes completely unmentioned.

From what we currently know, the modern races were born from the Ancients themselves, not created by them.

[Enkidoh]

From what we currently know, the modern races were born from the Ancients themselves, not created by them.

The playable races at least came about after the Sundering as genetic offshoots of the Ancients, yes, but several other races were originally Ancient creations (or at least strongly hinted to be) - a quest in Elpis called 'Terror on Two Legs' revealed the matanga/arksardora appear to have been created by the Ancients (the quest involves a tiny matanga running around crazily, and you have to capture it so the researcher assigned to study it's concept can do his work), and Lyssa, the first boss of Ktsis Hyperboriea, was strongly hinted to be the progeneitor of the lupin (based on the comments of the Trust npcs and a research document found later in the dungeon).

Even the lumbering, brutish, vaguely intelligent minotaurs were Ancient creations (created, as I recall a NPC stating in Elpis, to serve as security guards at restricted facilities).

Considering we know in the present day that the ixal were created by the Allag, this would ring true.