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

[EaraGrace]

A couple thoughts. Firstly, if we choose to disregard other in-game conversations and take this one purely at face value, nothing in there indicates the sacrifices to be limited to sapient life. He appears to be speaking of all life, and any kind of assumption otherwise would indeed be mistaken on part of the Scions. However, this is decidedly not what the original Ancients had planned. Conflating the two is disingenuous.

What in game conversations am I disregarding? Fake Hyths statements, the Scions views, Emets speech, the supplemental materials, all fit within an understanding of the Ancients using sapient sacrifices. It's the assertion that they aren't using them that doesn't make sense, and requires ignoring multiple statements by several involved parties and the assumption that these selfsame characters are either incredibly stupid or acting in bad faith.

We are informed rather clearly their original plan was to cultivate life in the world, then sacrifice that life to bring back those sacrificed to Zodiark. The Ancients, and by extension Zodiark, were at no point shown capable of willfully creating sapient life -- or granting a new organism a soul, for that matter.

The clearest way to disprove this is to point to Meteion, who by any definition of sentience meets the threshold. And on the matter of souls, the Lykaons are plainly stated to possess souls. The Ancients may not be able to create souls, but they can create beings the star would give a soul.

Both of these things were dictated not by them but by the planet itself. Even the Meteia were produced only after an absurd amount of experimentation, with all involved acknowledging the one Meteion's full sapience as a fluke. If the Ancients were not able to create sapient life or grant souls, then that does rather limit their choices when it comes to intended sacrificial lambs.

It wasn't a fluke it was the whole point. Hermes at multiple points highlights that the goal was to create an entelechy with free will.

Now on to the second point: It isn't merely that they couldn't form words. They were quite literally incapable of any form of communication, even that facilitated by the Echo (or whatever you want to call the remaining power the unsundered had).

Source for this? I believe the Nier event simply stated they couldn't form words, and Emet once again stresses the Sundering doesn't ones body.

I felt compelled to revisit this briefly. Curious that Emet-Selch's words should be taken at face value at certain times yet handily dismissed at others even when context should indicate he's being truthful at a given time. We're to immediately accept everything he says about the Ascians' grand plan and him willingly going along with it as fact, yet his descriptions of the state the sundered are in directly after the act are inherently suspect.

And I am compelled to point out that either reading of Emets reliability works in my arguments favor. Either he is not reliable, in which case we can't trust him at all and thus we can dismiss the Nier event and his assertions about the nature of the Sundered, or we do believe him and he disproves the theory that the Sundering physically changed the Sundered to such an extent as to make them mindless husks.

My opinion? He can be trusted to tell us what he intended to do and facts about what occurred, but he can't be trusted to make value judgements given his clear bias against the Sundered. In other words, I think he's reliable in descriptive statements, but not prescriptive ones.

The Scions are qualifying clearly in that conversation that they're working on assumptions and speculations, because they're operating primarily from context of the Ascians' current behavior, which obviously has no problem doing harm to other human beings in the name of their mission. They don't know for certain what Hythlo's words mean in the present - the Scions are also clearly speaking purely in context of the Ascians in the present ("their plan doesn't stop with just the Rejoinings...") until Emet-Selch confirms his intentions directly later on in Amaurot. And even then, their initial speculation involves the additional assumption that the Ascians would be able to make distinctions, logistically and specifically, of who and what would be sacrificed and what wouldn't.

So once again this would mean the writers wrote the protagonists to be incorrect, and then from incorrect premises stumble on the right conclusion about Emet and the Ascians plan. If you want to hold that ShB's climax is founded on this idea then sure, but I don't think this is logical to presume. If however that's ok with others then I think thats a perfectly consistent position to take and have nothing to say but "agree to disagree" for now. But again I hope its understandable why I'm more skeptical of this position.

I know you have asked in the past: "so, were the Ascians then planning on sacrificing the sapient beings of the Source out of spite?" And I actually have little problem saying that yes, probably, in largely part. Emet-Selch is lashing out and saying and doing a lot of things out of raw spite and resentment in that sequence already, and using the Scions' speculation that you've quoted, already put forth that people who would continue to doggedly oppose them and refuse to cooperate with them were on the chopping block in the post-Innocence cutscene.

But those wouldn't be the ones Emets sacrificing. The calamities and the natural lifespan of the Sundered would ensure that, a fact he was aware of and used as an argument to convince us to join him. He'd be being spiteful against random people. I have a sour opinion of the Ascians for sure, but this defies even the logic that I as a foremost member of the anti-Ascian squad (I couldn't resist I'm so sorry) disagree with.

Overall, this is what I would say/speculate/interpret: I think the most likely situation for the Ancients is, again, the contents of the third sacrifice is forever unknowable because the plan didn't proceed far enough for them to even come into existence. The Ancients were not able to "nurture the planet until it was bursting with vitality" to be able to evaluate what that vitality looked like and refine their plans from there.

I refuse to believe the Ancients were willing to shove random souls into their ultimate creation. We know those souls would have some sway over the heart, per Elidibus, and I don't believe they would play fast and loose with their savior.

[Brinne]

So once again this would mean the writers wrote the protagonists to be incorrect, and then from incorrect premises stumble on the right conclusion about Emet and the Ascians plan. If you want to hold that ShB's climax is founded on this idea then sure, but I don't think this is logical to presume. If however that's ok with others then I think thats a perfectly consistent position to take and have nothing to say but "agree to disagree" for now. But again I hope its understandable why I'm more skeptical of this position.

No, because the protagonists never make any comment or speculation upon the original, non-Ascian plan to begin with. They only speculate on the implications this has to the current, Ascian plan, as that's the only one that has any relevance to them. They say absolutely nothing about "oh, the Ascians/Ancients were Like This, even before the Final Days and Zodiark!" All they say is, "this probably implies the Ascians won't stop even after the Rejoinings."

But those wouldn't be the ones Emets sacrificing. The calamities and the natural lifespan of the Sundered would ensure that, a fact he was aware of and used as an argument to convince us to join him. He'd be being spiteful against random people. I have a sour opinion of the Ascians for sure, but this defies even the logic that I as a "hater" disagree with.

See, and I'm an Ascian lover, and I have no problem believing this given the psychological and emotional state the Ascians are in in the present day. All of Sundered life, to the Ascian perspective--Emet-Selch's perspective that he's fervently trying to persuade himself of--are "perverted distortions" of the authentic life unjustly stolen, who have lived on the erased corpses, sacrifices, and history of what he himself refers to as "the first people," and ones furthermore embraced by Hydaelyn as "her children." I, as someone who is sometimes capable of a fair amount of Spite myself (shocking, I know!) don't find it a large leap at all to see someone in Emet's position going "Hydaelyn's children? Hahaha, more like Zodiark's dinner, losers!"

Obviously, this is not morally right or fair by any stretch of the imagination. But in terms of raw human emotion? Yeah, I don't have difficulty "getting it," so to speak.

I refuse to believe the Ancients were willing to shove random souls into their ultimate creation. We know those souls would have some sway over the heart, per Elidibus, and I don't believe they would play fast and loose with their savior.

They wouldn't be "shoving random souls" in. Under this idea, they'd evaluate more closely once those souls had properly developed over a period of generations, being nurtured by the survivors, when the planet was bursting with vitality. They're not arbitrarily throwing darts at a board or anything. It's just that, now that we have more understanding of the workings and limitations of the Ancients' magic, they probably literally had no way of knowing exactly how those sprouts of life would develop until they were done developing. I would presume that there would be less trouble "controlling" the souls within Zodiark as the heart were they less intelligent and sapient.

[EaraGrace]

No, because the protagonists never make any comment or speculation upon the original, non-Ascian plan to begin with. They only speculate on the implications this has to the current, Ascian plan, as that's the only one that has any relevance to them. They say absolutely nothing about "oh, the Ascians/Ancients were Like This, even before the Final Days and Zodiark!" All they say is, "this probably implies the Ascians won't stop even after the Rejoinings."

What would imply that? Thats the core of the question I'm asking. The Scions conclude this because of something we told them. What was it and why do the writers believe it to be enough for the Scions conclude the Ascians would sacrifice the Source. The writers had them conclude that for a reason.

See, and I'm an Ascian lover, and I have no problem believing this given the psychological and emotional state the Ascians are in in the present day. All of Sundered life, to the Ascian perspective--Emet-Selch's perspective that he's fervently trying to persuade himself of--are "perverted distortions" of the authentic life unjustly stolen, who have lived on the erased corpses, sacrifices, and history of what he himself refers to as "the first people," and ones furthermore embraced by Hydaelyn as "her children." I, as someone who is sometimes capable of a fair amount of Spite myself (shocking, I know!) don't find it a large leap at all to see someone in Emet's position going "Hydaelyn's children? Hahaha, more like Zodiark's dinner, losers!"

They wouldn't be her children anymore though. They would be Ancients, full and true. Every justification Emet used for what he did against the Sundered would be moot. Even he would not do so out of spite, when he's already clearly struggling to justify his actions so far.

They wouldn't be "shoving random souls" in. Under this idea, they'd evaluate more closely once those souls had properly developed over a period of generations, being nurtured by the survivors, when the planet was bursting with vitality. They're not arbitrarily throwing darts at a board or anything. It's just that, now that we have more understanding of the workings and limitations of the Ancients' magic, they probably literally had no way of knowing exactly how those sprouts of life would develop until they were done developing. I would presume that there would be less trouble "controlling" the souls within Zodiark as the heart were they less intelligent and sapient.

Yet we see in Pandaemonium that merging animals to Ancients has consequences. Pretty much every boss in that place merged with a random creation, and was irrevocably changed from it. I can't imagine Zodiark not being changed by having Lykaon or Behemoth souls.

[tokinokanatae]

But those wouldn't be the ones Emets sacrificing. The calamities and the natural lifespan of the Sundered would ensure that, a fact he was aware of and used as an argument to convince us to join him. He'd be being spiteful against random people. I have a sour opinion of the Ascians for sure, but this defies even the logic that I as a foremost member of the anti-Ascian squad (I couldn't resist I'm so sorry) disagree with.

This actually brings up an interesting point that we see through both Emet-Selch and Hermes--how connected do they consider these people's incarnations to be? While Emet-Selch doesn't come out and call us "Azem" or the name of whoever we were as an Ancient, there are times when we're alone that he absolutely treats us as though we're the literal same as the person he knew, to the point of acting personally put out at our "amnesia", as he sees it.

Same with Hermes. When he speaks to the lykaons, there's this unspoken assumption that they will remember what was done to them and can hold grudges even through the cycle. Most people in Elpis treat reincarnation as a rejuvenation of sorts, like a particularly refreshing dip in the Aetherial Sea. And, in the process, it means that they might never see one another again, but the overall idea isn't that someone will become someone else through choosing to go back to the Star.

While I see this as a fascinating quality of the Ancient perspective, it's also not hard to see how that could be twisted by the Ascians to a horrifying end. Emet-Selch really didn't like Alphinaud's speech to him? Well, he has both the longevity and ability to see that specific soul throughout any incarnation and (mentally) mark it accordingly. To an Ascian, these grudges they might have would not seem arbitrary, because that soul would still be "Alphinaud" to them, regardless of what that weird little Sundered is calling themselves now.