Tales from the Dawn #3: "A Question of Life" (Hermes)

[tokinokanatae]

The intention of the third sacrifice is to bring them back from the dead. Not reincarnate them or let them return to the aetheric sea, but fully and completely restore and revive them.

If that had been successful, then the finality of thier deaths would no longer have any sting. If they had sacrificed themselves assuming they would be brought back to life later, then thier sacrifices would be less meaningful than Ysayle or Papalymo's, who understood they were going to die and there was no coming back.

Edit: And just to be clear, I don't think the people of the first two sacrifices knew about any plans to try to revive them, because I do think those sacrifices are particularly meaningful and show the deep love and dedication the ancients had towards each other and thier star.

I don’t agree with this characterization and can’t think of a place in the text where anyone says anything about restoring the bodies of those that sacrificed themselves—if you know of one I’m missing, please do point it out, seriously—but even taking putting forth your idea as absolutely correct, Hien is still brave and laudable when he faces off against Zenos to buy time until we arrive to take up the fight.

This idea that only the Ancients have to be 100% okay with being forever cut off from the cycle of life and rebirth—to be denied their chance to be the lifeblood of the Star, as is so important to them culturally—in order for their actions to be noble has never made sense to me, admittedly.

[Lyth]

At the end of the day, any argument that you offer up to justify Amaurot's decision start sacrificing non-Amaurotian souls to Zodiark will hinge on the belief that those living individuals have less value than a bunch of dead Amaurotian souls. Which is very similar to Emet's reasoning when he slaughtered the people of seven worlds to have his rejoinings. He justifies it as not being murder because those races, those people, are somehow less than human in his eyes. And it's incredibly hard not to see the problem with that.

I don't see why that last set of sacrifices needed to happen, either. If releasing the souls was all that important, then just destroy Zodiark to release them. That is, if the Amaurotians truly believed that they had solved the problem. If they genuinely planned on keeping Zodiark around forever, then it shows that they willfully ignored the problem.

[Lurina]

It's arguable if Venat did commit acts of violence at all, in Venat's case, her "violence" can be seen as the same kind of violence that a surgeon commits when he has to amputate an infected limb.

Conversation is moving faster than my comfortable speed of posting here, but this is a little screwed up. Whether or not you agree it was justified, the Sundering killed (or at least identity-deathed) everyone on the planet, many of whom were probably not even involved in the the sacrifice issue at all. It was unambiguously a violent act, and I assume even the writers accept that - there's a reason that Venat is depicted wielding a sword in the abstracted post-Elpis cutscene.

Describing the extermination of a culture or group in medical terms (amputating a gangrenous limb, cutting out a cancer, taking bitter medicine, etc) is a dehumanizing rhetorical tool to whitewash violence that has often been employed in the justification of real world instances of genocide. It's silly to say since we're talking about a video game, but you should probably be careful with that sort of thinking.

At the end of the day, any argument that you offer up to justify Amaurot's decision start sacrificing non-Amaurotian souls to Zodiark will hinge on the belief that those living individuals have less value than a bunch of dead Amaurotian souls.

I don't think anyone is arguing the third sacrifice would have been ethical if it actually involved intelligent beings. I assume most people would take Azem's tack and say that Zodiark was probably not a great solution in the first place.

[KariTheFox]

I don’t agree with this characterization and can’t think of a place in the text where anyone says anything about restoring the bodies of those that sacrificed themselves—.

And from A Friendship of Record

His devotees then resolved to sow new life─a bounty of souls to take the place of their sacrificed brethren. In time would they reap this crop, and by rendering it unto their god would the lost be returned, and the world restored to the paradise it was and ever should have been.

[Cleretic]

Honestly, if the third sacrifice was just to put the Ancient souls back into the lifestream I'd probably consider it even worse. At least bringing back all the sacrifices as they were is generally in-keeping with the emotional thrust and flaw of the second sacrifice; it's a different facet of 'put everything back the way it was', sacrificing the new to sustain the old. 'sacrifice new souls to put the old ones back in the cycle of rebirth' doesn't even make any emotional sense, you still don't get back what you lost, and it doesn't really result in anything different because it's just replacing souls with souls. Basically all it would be is a sacrifice for sacrifice's sake.

But yeah, it's mentioned multiple times that it's essentially 'bring back the people we lost as-is'. Emet doesn't want Hythlodaeus' soul back in the Lifestream, he wants Hythlodaeus back as Hythlodaeus.

[KariTheFox]

I had a whole reply typed out and then lost it, but in short I think genocide comparisons are always going to falls short for me because genocide is a modern, industrialized act of violence commited by nation states against peoples, not acts of individualized supermurder.

I have trouble viewing either the sundering or the rejoinings as genocidal for the same reason - that they are so abstracted from anything that could ever happen in real life, and in no way resemble any kind of real life genocide. (But I can see the actions of say, Garlemald, the Allagan Empire or Limsa Lominsa as genocidal,)

[Lurina]

I had a whole reply typed out and then lost it, but in short I think genocide comparisons are always going to falls short for me because genocide is a modern, industrialized act of violence commited by nation states against peoples, not acts of individualized supermurder.

I have trouble viewing either the sundering or the rejoinings as genocidal for the same reason - that they are so abstracted from anything that could ever happen in real life, and in no way resemble any kind of real life genocide. (But I can see the actions of say, Garlemald, the Allagan Empire or Limsa Lominsa as genocidal,)

Genocide is by no means modern. The Achaemenid Empire was institutionally exterminating conquered cultures when western civilization was nothing but a glint in Alexander the Great's eye.

That being said, even if you don't want to call it that, fantastical supermurder is still murder. It's violent, and I don't think you should gloss over it with flourishes of language.

[Thenightvortex]

Really, asking if the Ancient society was perfect is doubly useless because for one, even if it was perfect, that doesn't justify the acts of genocide the ascians enacted in order to try and restore it.

Really, asking if the Ancient society was perfect is doubly useless because for one, even if it wasn’t perfect, that doesn't justify the act of genocide that Venat enacted in order to try and “save” it.

[KariTheFox]

Genocide is by no means modern. The Achaemenid Empire was institutionally exterminating conquered cultures when western civilization was nothing but a glint in Alexander the Great's eye.

That being said, even if you don't want to call it that, fantastical supermurder is still murder. It's violent, and I don't think you should gloss over it with flourishes of language.

The focus i had was less on the academic question of whether or not the actions of pre-modern societies can be characterized as genocide, but more that genocide itself is something that societies to do classes of people in a large, collaborative sense, regardless of the era it happens in.

Taking away someone's godhood, or destroying universes to smoosh fractured souls together exist in a completely different realm of abstraction to me.

[Brinne]

I have trouble viewing either the sundering or the rejoinings as genocidal for the same reason - that they are so abstracted from anything that could ever happen in real life, and in no way resemble any kind of real life genocide.

Really, asking if the Ancient society was perfect is doubly useless because for one, even if it was perfect, that doesn't justify the acts of genocide the ascians enacted in order to try and restore it.

I mean. Okay.

It's weird to me to say you can't take the eradication of a race and culture seriously as 'genocide' simply because the methodology is fantastical, in what has always been a fantasy story. Regardless of how you want to phrase it or handwave it as "taking away godhood", Venat's actions deliberately resulted in the extremely premature destruction of the Ancients both physically and mentally, and she then continued to go on deliberately attempting to erase them from history altogether. This is not something fantastical to me - the latter part in particular is very harrowing in terms of real world atrocities and parallels.

To me, I don't see much distinction between saying "Venat's actions can't be described as genocide because they're too fantastical" and "the Allagan Empire's actions can't be described as genocide because they're too fantastical" because we don't have alien dragons or primals or Tempering or the capacity to create artificial moons with a combination of all of the above to use as a battery. Murder is murder, the forceful ending of one's life is the forceful ending of one's life, regardless of if you're using weird magic as the means to carry it out. And in-game, the Ancients are portrayed as being equally human, full of quirks and idiosyncrasies and emotions and textured relationships and hopes and dreams and frustrations and aspirations, as any other NPC group we interact with. The thematic final word on them in Ultima Thule (from G'raha, if I'm recalling correctly) once again reinforces that they were simply people. And as a people, they were snuffed out wholesale in an act of violence.