Endwalker Story sucked and it's time to admit it

[jameseoakes]

Then trust in Emet who bascially admits to the Scions that even if every planet is rejoined (no idea what they will do about the void) and the people on the source are whole again (thus reaching people status in his eyes) they planned on sacrificing those to Zodiark to get their Amaurotine friends back. It was always just about those. They never cared if the sacrifice at the end would include reborn Ancient souls.

They're two different events, yes the ascians plan was to sacrifice the peoples of the rejoined world but the Amarotines were not planning to do that just funnel aether from the rekindled plant and animal life to him

[Alleo]

They're two different events, yes the ascians plan was to sacrifice the peoples of the rejoined world but the Amarotines were not planning to do that just funnel aether from the rekindled plant and animal life to him

And why would they not use animals and plants in the very first act of summoning Zodiark if its that simple to exchange an Ancient with that? Or at least after the first sacrifice when their creation magic was not running amok anymore? Why were it somehow two times people and the third time which would exchange all these Ancients with their huuuuuge aether reserves would simply be animals and plants?

Also why would the Ascians then somehow change this whole plan and instead of using plants and animals they planned to sacrifice the remaining people on the source after all the rejoinings? These people would be whole again thus "truly alive" in the eyes of them.

The issue here is that sundered beings are, at least some of them, reincarnations of those very same Ancients the Ascians wanted to bring back. Don't need to spoiler tag it here, but the PC is a sundered reincarnation of Azem; in order to get the Ancient "Azem" back, the PC would have to be killed and their soul returned to an Ancient's body. Then of course there's the matter of people whose souls aren't reincarnations of Ancients... if the working theory of the cycle of souls has any weight to it, they'd all need to be killed and their souls filtered back into the aether of an Ancient's soul; whatever's left can go back to the Lifestream to be used in the Aether Farm plan.

The sacrifice of ensouled life was always part of the plan. What form that life took is open to interpretation, but various sources have made it rather clear that new souls were going to be "plugged in to" Zodiark in order to get the Ancients' out. Unfortunately you can just go "Lol so you value cows' lives more than people's?" when arguing this point to ridicule and shut down the opposition, even though the metaphysics of XIV make it rather a bit more complex than that.

We know from Ardbert that a rejoining of the souls does not need both people death. At the same time we also dont see any changes in our bodies after such rejonings, so maybe the new "Ancients" would not even need a new body at all or they are simply powerful enough to change it. After all we have learned that they are somehow able to change their looks.

Also it does show that it was never about us being alive or not. Because if they kill unsundered people to get their "ancient" friends back (which would not be these people anyway because their memories would be gone and I have no idea how that filtering you described would even happen) to then sacrifice them, to get those in Zodiark back, they would still just murder"real people".

Anyways its true that the game leaves it open for interpretation by calling it new life. But with the knowledge that the Ascians would have sacrificed real unsundered people after the rejoinings and that Ancients did not feel that badly about creating and unmaking living creatures, I have my doubts that the third sacrifice was simply about plants and animals.

[Cilia]

That doesn't seem to add up, I thought the point of the sacrifices was to bring back the souls of those trapped in Zodiark. Why would thier souls have reentered the lifestream and be all mixed up among the sundered if they're supposed to be trapped inside Zodiark for 12,000 years.

Wouldn't the sundered just be the Ancients who died to the Final Days, or those who chose not to sacrifice themselves for whatever reason, (Azem, Fandaniel, at least) Like, the thing that makes being trapped in Zodiark so horrific is that your soul is cut off from the cycle of death and rebirth.

Not all the Ancients were sacrificed to Zodiark ("only" 75% of them) and the Ascians' desire was to return things to exactly how they were pre-Final Days. In order to do that they need to bring back all the Ancients who perished in the Final Days and their aftermath. Fully rejoining the reflections to the Source would not bring back Hermes, f'ex; he'd just be a fully rejoined Amon. You'd need to go another step to truly resurrect Hermes (kill Amon and transfer his soul to an Ancient's body, and somehow make his soul identify more with Hermes than Amon). Whether or not this would happen is uncertain, but.

Fresh new souls that aren't reincarnations of an Ancient could still be sacrificed to Zodiark for an Ancient's in return. That still wouldn't bring all of them back - the ones that died in the Final Days probably got sent to Meteion's nest, and the ones that were part of the second sacrifice to Zodiark may have simply sublimated into aether - but that's part of the tragedy of the Ascians: no matter how much death and destruction they cause, the world that was will never return.

And why would they not use animals and plants in the very first act of summoning Zodiark if its that simple to exchange an Ancient with that? Or at least after the first sacrifice when their creation magic was not running amok anymore? Why were it somehow two times people and the third time which would exchange all these people with their huuuuuge aether reserves would simply be animals and plants?

Also why would the Ascians then somehow change this whole plan and instead of using plants and animals they planned to sacrifice the remaining people on the source after all the rejoinings? These people would be whole again thus "truly alive" in the eyes of them.

The planet was pretty devastated before Zodiark was summoned; it's uncertain as to whether or not there was enough life left other than the Ancients to do something like summon Zodiark.

Fully rejoining a soul wouldn't return its vessel (body) to that of an Ancient, and as should be pretty apparent the Ascians do not have a high opinion of contemporary mortals. If a fully rejoined soul makes one equal to an Ancient, and the Ascians still planned on sacrificing these fully rejoined souls, it would become murder in their eyes (maybe) but they'd still find some way to rationalize it as "good" or "right." ("I'm improving your life by making you near-immune to disease and death by old age.") People will always find ways to justify their actions to themselves... unless they're a Saturday Morning Cartoon villain.

[Alleo]

The planet was pretty devastated before Zodiark was summoned; it's uncertain as to whether or not there was enough life left other than the Ancients to do something like summon Zodiark.

Yes I guess for the first summon the Ancients were necessary (since creation magic was still running amok) but for the second? The planet was devastated but the creation magic was back under control since Zodiark shielded the planet from Meteions influence. So either it was so bad that they needed to react on the spot or they could have taken their time without dieing and still choose to sacrifice themselves instead of others.

And the question of course is: Everything is made out of aether. If they did not need other people or beings equal to the Ancients for the exchange, why use beings with souls at all? Why not just simply have everyone give up part of their aether and exchange that? Then let them regenerate and on and on its goes. Is this a sign of their tempering? Or maybe a sign that plants and animals would not be enough?

Would these people even just come back at all? Or would this be another Lakshmi situation? We will probably never get those answers.

Fully rejoining a soul wouldn't return its vessel (body) to that of an Ancient, and as should be pretty apparent the Ascians do not have a high opinion of contemporary mortals. If a fully rejoined soul makes one equal to an Ancient, and the Ascians still planned on sacrificing these fully rejoined souls, it would become murder in their eyes (maybe) but they'd still find some way to rationalize it as "good" or "right." ("I'm improving your life by making you near-immune to disease and death by old age.") People will always find ways to justify their actions to themselves... unless they're a Saturday Morning Cartoon villain.

Would they still be mortals though if the souls are complete? I always thought that its the state of the soul and the amount of aether that made them "ageless" and not the body. Also Emet Selch gave us a big body in Elpis. That should theoretically be possible for the fully rejoined ones too.

And I agree with your view: Just like how Emet moved the goal post constantly so that he could declare us not worthy (we did beat his dungeon after all), they would find their reasons to still sacrifice "real people". Maybe its because the survivors would not be true Amaurotines, since those of the good old days are all in Zodiark.

Honestly though I wonder if the Ascians would have even managed to sacrifice those people if they were successful. After all they did lose against sundered beings.

[KariTheFox]

Not all the Ancients were sacrificed to Zodiark ("only" 75% of them) and the Ascians' desire was to return things to exactly how they were pre-Final Days. In order to do that they need to bring back all the Ancients who perished in the Final Days and their aftermath. Fully rejoining the reflections to the Source would not bring back Hermes, f'ex; he'd just be a fully rejoined Amon. You'd need to go another step to truly resurrect Hermes (kill Amon and transfer his soul to an Ancient's body, and somehow make his soul identify more with Hermes than Amon). Whether or not this would happen is uncertain, but.

But Emet-Selch says that the plan after the rejoinings is to sacrifice the inhabitants of the world in order to bring back those that were sacrificed to bring about Zodiark.

There's nothing about bringing back those that died in the Final Days, or the ancients lost in the sundering (although I would imagine that bringing them back would be another goal of the ascians at this point), it seems like ensouled being sacrifice has always been a necessary component of getting the people trapped in Zodiark out of him.

The ascians actually seem perfectly capable of restoring a sundered soul through memory crystals and whatever Mitron did to Gaia, and to be honest I kind of feel like the body hopping ascians wouldn't particuarly care about any of the restored ancients being in thier original bodies as long as thier memories and souls were restored.

[Cilia]

But Emet-Selch says that the plan after the rejoinings is to sacrifice the inhabitants of the world in order to bring back those that were sacrificed to bring about Zodiark.

There's nothing about bringing back those that died in the Final Days, or the ancients lost in the sundering (although I would imagine that bringing them back would be another goal of the ascians at this point), it seems like ensouled being sacrifice has always been a necessary component of getting the people trapped in Zodiark out of him.

The ascians actually seem perfectly capable of restoring a sundered soul through memory crystals and whatever Mitron did to Gaia, and to be honest I kind of feel like the body hopping ascians wouldn't particuarly care about any of the restored ancients being in thier original bodies as long as thier memories and souls were restored.

To reiterate: it's vague in Shadowbringers but material released since has made it clear enough that sacrifice of ensouled life was always part of the plan.

While it's possible to restore memories via crystals (though this isn't a perfect process; the memories on the crystals are only "as remembered by the [Paragons]" and limited to Convocation seat holders) the body is still important. The soul is part of it, but another part of why Emet-Selch feels contemporary mortals are so inferior to the Ancients is their susceptibility to disease and old age. ("Through His Eyes") Making the soul complete won't mean much if the plan is to return the world to how it was prior to the Final Days.

And yeah, it might be that all these now-complete people will be used as blood sacrifices to Zodiark if the plan is just to release those souls in Him by way of blood sacrificing other souls. They wouldn't be Ancients though, and the Ascians consider non-Ancient lives inferior for reasons beyond their aetherial thinness (not as physically hardy, susceptible to death by old age, more easily bent toward violence, more openly selfish, etc). A fully recompiled soul wouldn't be enough to save you.

At the end of the day everybody's going to die except for the Ascians, either in the rejoinings, as part of a process to restore sundered Ancients, or as part of a blood sacrifice to Zodiark to get the Ancient souls in him out. The particulars of it don't seem all that important to me.

[Lurina]

And yeah, it might be that all these now-complete people will be used as blood sacrifices to Zodiark if the plan is just to release those souls in Him by way of blood sacrificing other souls. They wouldn't be Ancients though, and the Ascians consider non-Ancient lives inferior for reasons beyond their aetherial thinness (not as physically hardy, susceptible to death by old age, more easily bent toward violence, more openly selfish, etc). A fully recompiled soul wouldn't be enough to save you.

At the end of the day everybody's going to die except for the Ascians, either in the rejoinings, as part of a process to restore sundered Ancients, or as part of a blood sacrifice to Zodiark to get the Ancient souls in him out. The particulars of it don't seem all that important to me.

I'm two days late to this, but as far as I know, at no point is it suggested that the Ascians were planning to sacrifice absolutely-no-exceptions-everyone on the Source to bring back their own kind, or that no extant people would become 'Ancients' upon the rejoinings. During the elevator scene in Kholusia, Emet tells outright you that you have nothing to fear from his plans because upon their realization you would be a 'complete existence in a complete world'. Even if one takes a cynical interpretation of Emet's character where he's sometimes insincere, Alphinaud treats the idea that supporters of the Ascians would be allowed to live in the Unsundered World while only everyone else would be killed as a given during the final confrontation in Amaurot.

And I don't know where this idea that the original personalities of anyone on the Source would be destroyed is restoring them to Ancienthood is coming from. Even when a soul is rejoined, it doesn't seem to cause much of a change in personality, since it happened at the end of 1.0 and nobody even noticed. Identity in FFXIV is based largely on memory, not the nature of the soul.

To be clear, this isn't a defense of the Rejoinings, I'm just trying to nix what feels like a misconception.

[DPZ2]

During the elevator scene in Kholusia, Emet tells outright you that you have nothing to fear from his plans because upon their realization you would be a 'complete existence in a complete world'.

Emet-Selch lied.

In the 'original' time line, you're dead as a result of the 8th Umbral Calamity.

In the 'current' time line, you're supposed to die horribly when you actually cause the 8th Umbral Calamity after consuming the light from so many Lightwardens.

He may have been referring to Azem, I suppose. But the Warrior of Light is not Azem, and there is still the problem of the failed 'rejoining' that resulted in the Void.