Endwalker Story sucked and it's time to admit it

[KageTokage]

They would've needed offer more details to sway me because I just can't find myself viewing the sacrifice of non-sentient life as being something so reprehensible.

We don't even know if they'd have been consigned to an identical fate, because Zodiark was trying to preserve the souls of his summoners and it was aether he needed, not souls specifically; though offering ambient aether was out of the question given the harm that would cause to the environment. They may have simply been drained then returned to the cycle like with more conventional summonings.

[Alleo]

They would've needed offer more details to sway me because I just can't find myself viewing the sacrifice of non-sentient life as being something so reprehensible.

We don't even know if they'd have been consigned to an identical fate, because Zodiark was trying to preserve the souls of his summoners and it was aether he needed, not souls specifically; though offering ambient aether was out of the question given the harm that would cause to the environment. They may have simply been drained then returned to the cycle like with more conventional summonings.

The Ancients are bascially ageless beings that most of the time die on their own free will. If they did not need to exchange souls for souls it would have made their decision to sacrifice the new life born after Zodiark even worse...because they bascially could have used themselves as living batteries to feed him. Again take five Ancients and have each one of them give a bit of their aether and in return get one ancient soul back. Nobody died.

Yet seemingly that was not the plan. And seemingly the Ascians would have sacrificed fully unsundered people on the source after all the rejoinings anyway.

I wonder if the ancients who sacrificed themselves to Zodiark knew about the third sacrifice before doing it? If they didn't, would they actually be happy about the life they sacrificed themselves for being slaughtered to reverse that sacrifice?

And if they did know about the third sacrifice, it kind of cheapens thier own sacrifice since as far as they knew, they weren't giving up thier lives so much as agreeing to be temporarily inconvienced.

(I tend to lean towards them not knowing, and the third sacrifice being something that the remaining ancients decided on after the fact.)

I think they may have believed that they would truly sacrifice themselves and only afterwards learned about the plans to get them back. And I think that probably just like the rest of the living ancients, some were happy to be exchanged for another living being while others might not. Some might even enjoy being Zodiark. At least it sounded like that when we meet some of them inside of him. I mean for those that truly believed that they only wanted the best for their star, it may be awesome to bascially be the new will of the planet.

If they of course always believed to be brought back then that does cheapen their sacrifices a bit. And even more Emet-Selchs big speech about how such a huge part of the survivors gave their lifes.