*Spoilers* The Past and After the Endwalker MSQ End

[Cleretic]

They absolutely could have failed at these things as a society, I don't think anyone would argue otherwise there, but we could have too and likely would have without the whole zenos ex machina stuff.

The whole "why are you paying a sub" thing I just have no idea how you thought was worth sharing. There is a heap of game here, and only a very small amount of the time playing is spent on MSQ stuff. I think I finished the EW story in less than a week, and the patch story stuff took a couple of hours.

So, I broke down these three specific barriers because I think they're three very different issues that would all prove difficult to impossible to overcome for the Ancients.

Getting to Ultima Thule: So, this requires a space program, and so much aether that we had to consume the Mothercrystal to pull it off. The aether supply is a logistical problem that it seems they didn't really have a solution for; I feel like if they had such a thing they would've used it to summon Zodiark instead of half the planet. Then there's the knowledge problem; do you think they actually understand space travel to a level where they could do this? Could Meteion' technique be scaled up? In the present day the Lopporits swung it, but it's hard to say how much of their space travel solution was there from the word go, or if Hydaelyn basically created an entire civilization with the job of 'figure out space travel, we'll need it in twelve thousand years'. So I'd say it's possible they could manage this one, but it relies on factors we never saw evidence of.

Breathing in Ultima Thule: Remember that this was Thancred's sacrifice. His was a pretty simple sacrifice, though, so the question is 'could any of the Ancients' creations manage this?' And I would actually say the answer to that is no, because something vital but understated about the events surrounding both Amaurots' Final Days and the present day's is that all of the Ancients' creations were turning, without exception; they interpreted it as the magic themselves turning against them, because everything they made tried to kill them. In the 6.15 Omega questline (which is by far my favorite part of 6.1) we saw Omega try to understand why some people turned but others didn't, and came to the conclusion that it was indeterminable because it was a confluence of factors so varied as to be effectively random. My theory is that the reason all the Ancient creations turned, but there was variation among the people of Thavnair and Garlemald, is because most of those factors were things like familial bonds, social contracts, national identity--broadly, aspects of you as a person that you aren't born with. I don't think the Ancients could've survived Ultima Thule, because I don't think their creations would've had the personal identity required to not succumb to dynamis corruption long enough to make such a broad sacrifice as 'my life so that others can live'.

Getting through to the dragons: So this is an extra layer on top of the last one, because it's another thing on the creations' shoulders; getting through the barriers in Ultima Thule requires interaction with dynamis. (The exception is the final one with Emet and Hyth, who essentially short-circuited it by making Meteion do it herself, which only would've worked then.) But it requires more than just that base knowledge; the Scions got through because they were able to use personal feelings and experience to relate to the souls within Ultima Thule. And maybe they could've brought a creation attuned enough to the pursuit of knowledge to connect with the Ea, maybe they could've brought something that struggles with the sense of self enough to associate with Stigma (although I'm not sure on the morality of making a sentient creature with that struggle). But I put forward the dragons, because the dragons only listened to one thing: actual testimony that things got better for them. Not only do I think a hypothetical Ancient expedition would've failed, I think our expedition would've failed if we didn't bring along exactly Estinien.

Succeeding in Ultima Thule was a one-in-a-million chance even for us; I genuinely think that the Ancients' odds were, appropriately for the task, astronomically worse.