I'd say that the reactions around Hermes' actions are actually surprisingly unified, on a point, in that everyone seems to acknowledge that what he did was wrong irrespective of whether they enjoy his character or not. It's just a question of whether you want to acknowledge that he actually belongs to Amaurot or whether you choose to other him. And this largely comes down to whether his behavior fits in with your narrative of them collectively being superior beings that were justified in mass slaughtering our people to get what they wanted.

I personally find Hermes' interactions with Emet throughout Elpis to be most interesting, in the way that they are foils as characters. Hermes is relatively non-confrontational, and given the option, he seems the sort to maintain the status quo simply to preserve the peace even if he disagrees. You do also get the sense, though, from both this short story and the Elpis events in-game, that he feels compelled to continue down this path simply because he's been pushed into a corner and 'there's no turning back'.

Emet is very much the opposite, in that he'll quite readily force a confrontation in the name of something that he believes in. There's no coincidence that the person who speaks just before Hermes crosses the path of no return on top of Ktisis is Emet. I just think that it's one of those 'emotional intelligence' situations in which you can see the blow-up coming a mile away, including the lighting of the match.

Most stories about fantasy races are by and large still a reflection of our own society on some level, because you can only write from your own reference point. We live in a society in which reason and thought are often viewed as superior to empathy and emotions. But our world is filled with both, and you can't alchemically separate them into twain like Lahabrea and not!Lahabrea did. It's also interesting that this distinction often gets unnecessarily gendered (see: first page of this thread). As humans living in an irrational world, we all need to learn to wield both aether and akasha equally well.

'A mind all logic is like a knife all blade, it cuts the hand that wields it.'