Will Sin-eaters get the Voidsent treatment?

[Necrotica]

i dont think anything would survive if light completely took over since it would bring everything to a perfect standstill.

Void world still has rocks and non moving things. I am sure light world could have plenty of movement things. Arguably a bunch of sin eaters are much faster after being transformed

[JeanneOrnitier]

I'm mostly curious as to what the association between the Amdapori golems and sin eaters is, considering that it's questioned in-game by Alphinaud as though it's something we also should be wondering about.

The Encyclopedia Eorzea says the golems were created in the image of beings from another plane that the Amdapori saw visions of, but if we assume this to mean the First, the timeline doesn't line up unless they were seeing visions of the future.

I headcanon this as the Ascians experimented with light imbalances on at least some other shards and sin eaters existed on those in some numbers, but not to the extent they did on the First. In the same way Voeburt had some voidsent. But that's just my headcanon, there's no evidence for it and no actual explanation for the timeline discrepancy in how Amdapor saw sin eaters.

[Zero-ELEC]

Void world still has rocks and non moving things. I am sure light world could have plenty of movement things. Arguably a bunch of sin eaters are much faster after being transformed

The void has those things because they were created by powerful voidsent. That's what we see in the sky, those red orbs floating over a cloudy abyss, those are the "domains" of powerful voidsent. There mention that even the world itself was lost to the astral energies of Darkness and the Fell Court of Troia is explicitly mentioned to have been made in the image of the original Troia by Beatrice.

[kaynide]

Have to keep in mind that the Voidsent have had perhaps thousands of years to develop into their current form since the fall of the 13th. The sin-eaters are still relatively young- arriving in living memory puts them at 100, maybe 150 years old (I forget exactly, but I do remember one NPC being alive for it as they remembered what the night sky was like).

This isn't to say Sineaters would become like voidsent given time, more that it is a possibility that we just don't know. Certainly, some of the older ones (job quest related) exhibited some intelligence above your average sineater...and of course Vauthry is an example of what a sineater could be.

We also have to keep in mind that Astral (stasis) and Umbral (active) have diffrent aspects- so the nature of aether might also have some effect on their evolution.

[Iscah]

Certainly, some of the older ones (job quest related) exhibited some intelligence above your average sineater...and of course Vauthry is an example of what a sineater could be.

The Virtues are apparently only recent creations, having only started appearing about three years ago.

Also, Vauthry isn't a good example of "what a sin eater could be" because he's half-human.

[kaynide]

The Virtues are apparently only recent creations, having only started appearing about three years ago.

Also, Vauthry isn't a good example of "what a sin eater could be" because he's half-human.

I'm not sure the Virtues are recent as their human bases were essentially there at ground zero- I would argue they are some of the first, just that the population at large wasn't aware of them until recently. Like Eden, my opinion is that they were mindless until recently, only now starting to act on their own motivations.

Regarding Vauthry- being half or born from a human mother doesn't necessarily make him any less of a sineater. We don't know the rules at play here- is being a sineater is not some kind of parentage DNA thing, is it more akin to a virus/zombie-ism? Is it using Tolkien rules? (eg. in Tolkien's LOTR, Elrond was born to a human and elven parent, yet despite his name he is a full elf while his brother a full human).

At the very least we can look to Eden itself as an example of an intelligent Sineater that was mindless until only recently. So certainly the possibility for gaining intellect is there.

[Ascended_Demon]

I'm not sure the Virtues are recent as their human bases were essentially there at ground zero- I would argue they are some of the first, just that the population at large wasn't aware of them until recently. Like Eden, my opinion is that they were mindless until recently, only now starting to act on their own motivations.

Regarding Vauthry- being half or born from a human mother doesn't necessarily make him any less of a sineater. We don't know the rules at play here- is being a sineater is not some kind of parentage DNA thing, is it more akin to a virus/zombie-ism? Is it using Tolkien rules? (eg. in Tolkien's LOTR, Elrond was born to a human and elven parent, yet despite his name he is a full elf while his brother a full human).

At the very least we can look to Eden itself as an example of an intelligent Sineater that was mindless until only recently. So certainly the possibility for gaining intellect is there.

Except we know for a fact the Virtues are creations of Vauthry, I believe Cylva explains that Vauthry had essentially reanimated their corpses. The Warriors of Darkness did not become sin eaters at ground zero because they had the Blessing of Light. Whether their lifeless bodies could be corrupted by the light so long as their souls persisted outside the life stream is uncertain but the theory posed by the Scions is that their bodies should have remained protected by it even in death but that since the aether of their souls was exhausted by Minfillia's efforts to stay the flood they were no longer protected. But the fact is they were 100% created by Vauthry.

And yes Vauthry is a sin eater but it is explicitly stated he is also a man, he is both, but like you said it does not make him any less of a sin eater but by the same token it does not make him less of mortal being. Sin eaters do not have a sense of self, they act purely on instinct; yet he clearly experiences emotions and all the imperfections of being a person. I think it would be more akin to like a symbiotic relationship except the sin eater does not have a self to impart onto Vauthry, it is fused with his very being. Sin eaters must consume living aether in order to survive and we know all too well that he is a cannibal (seen eating meol which is sin eater flesh). So he experiences the benefits of both but also the downsides of being both. He experiences the independent thought and emotions of people, which can be seen as both good and bad. On the sin eater/lightwarden side, he has great power which grants him command over lesser sin eaters but also the drive to consume living aether. Given that voidsent consume each other, I'm gonna say it would not be unusual for other sin eaters to consume each other it was just never witnessed by anyone.

EDIT: It occurs to me the reason for the lack of the blessing's protection was specifically for Ardbert which isn't exactly the same given that his soul technically still exists in a manner of speaking but it has joined the rest of the fragments of Azem within ours. The theory still stands however, if Ardbert was incapable of being reanimated like the other WoDs since his soul still persisted then it would stand to reason that the others lacked this protection because the aether of their souls has disappeared.

[kaynide]

Except we know for a fact the Virtues are creations of Vauthry.

Good point I did not remember- I retract my stance on the Virtues; I'm still not sure on Vauthry, and of course there is still Eden... though perhaps one could argue Eden is something else too (half Ascian, or that Ascian souls do something different when turned)

I still would argue my main point that Sineaters as a "race" are still young, and there is a lot of unknown in that, especially on whether a typical Sineater could eventually become self-aware/intelligent given enough time.

[Iscah]

Regarding Vauthry- being half or born from a human mother doesn't necessarily make him any less of a sineater. [...]

At the very least we can look to Eden itself as an example of an intelligent Sineater that was mindless until only recently. So certainly the possibility for gaining intellect is there.

The thing about Vauthry is that we can't know what the balance of each side was, therefore we can't rule out any human-like behaviour as being a result of his human side.

Eden is also an outlier, having formed from an Ascian rather than mortal soul.

[Puksi]

And yes Vauthry is a sin eater but it is explicitly stated he is also a man, he is both, but like you said it does not make him any less of a sin eater but by the same token it does not make him less of mortal being. Sin eaters do not have a sense of self, they act purely on instinct; yet he clearly experiences emotions and all the imperfections of being a person.

Titania is also described as "corrupted" in this same way--a living being overwhelmed by the power of a Lightwarden. Still retained enough of their former self to be "sick of this cramped old castle", and still retained their form, but apparently now too murderous for even the Fuath.

Maybe it's more a parasitic relationship than symbiotic? The emergence of Innocence never looked like an actual transformation to me, as the face in Vauthry's chest sinks in, and when his back splits open, you can actually see Innocence's head/hair/back/wings inside. It gave the impression of some Junji Ito nightmare meat cocoon. The aether-like sparkles while it was happening suggested the sin eater just absorbed what was left of the host's body, but still retained that twisted version of Vauthry's self as the Il Mheg Warden retained Titania's.

I really wish they had explained things better than that footnote of a cutscene with Emet-Selch and the Former Mayor.

meol which is sin eater flesh

This part has always confused me. Sin Eaters throughout the game were shown to have no blood, bones, or meat. They dissolve into sparkles--the dialogues really stressed the sparkles thing iirc, as those would turn anyone caught in them into an Eater also. Even Tesleen, who recently turned, just poofed when defeated in Holminster Switch.

Did they just dust those buns with sparklies like it was flour? Condense the sin eater down like a soup?

There weren't enough people in Kholusia to "disappear" for twenty years to do all that, without starting a panic. And I'm still not sure why the extra step of bread was required. Meol was an optional dish for the rest of the Eulmorans, and if it was part of some plan, it was a terrible one. It just made some of them sleepy, and the others lurch around and mumble, lol.

Getting back on topic--Voidsent seem a lot more focused and less prone to random outbursts to the Light-corrupted on The First? So far, anyway. Zero doesn't seem a perfect parallel to Vauthry, as Zero isn't hosting another creature in her hitbox, unless maybe Zeromus is hiding under that cool glam. (But that would be too obvious!)