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

[RyuDragnier]

1) We can assume the third sacrifice was sapient beings even if it's not explicitly stated because the story has a broader theme of letting go of the past to secure the future, and it's stated that Hydaelyn's faction wanted the new life to inherit the star in line with the idea of 'let those who walk before lead those who walk after' and of how one mustn't prioritize ones in-group at the expense of others, so it would feel out of place if they weren't sapient.

2) The player races, collectively 'mankind', have always been meant to be Sundered Ancients.

These are mutually incompatible ideas. If 2 has been true from the start, 1 cannot be a consistent application of the theme because, again, the 'new life' didn't inherit the star. We did. And whatever the third sacrifice was has disappeared from the story (or more accurately, been written out).

This brings to mind something I've been pondering for a while. Are the Sahagin, Kobolds, and Sylphs Sundered Ancients, or are they in fact part of the new life?

[KariTheFox]

To reiterate, at the time of the third sacrifice, Sundered humans - the player races - did not exist because the Sundering had not yet happened, and so couldn't be sacrificed. The only form they existed in was as Unsundered Ancients.

Are you saying the Ancients were planning on sacrificing their own kids? That's completely unsubstantiated by the text. A distinction is repeatedly drawn between the 'new life' and the Ancients as beings.

I'm saying that they planned on sacrificing what new life that they could cultivate, and up until that point they had treated thier creations and the life they raised as children.

As self appointed stewards of the star, any life they raise would be in some sense thier children, whether or not we are the literal biological descedants of the ancients doesn't really change that for me.

(People in these threads have stressed, many times, the kindness and parent-like care the ancients show towards thier familiars and creations.

[Foxowl]

I really liked reading the discussion Kari and Lurina have been having, but it does bring me back to the big aspect of the Endwalker Sundering issue that I soured on after stewing on it for eight months.

Like, I would have agreed with you back in the days of Shadowbringers, when the emphasis of the conflict was heavily on how the Ancients 'ought' to have stepped aside and let the new life thrive. (Though I can only recall one actual instance of the third sacrifice being framed as the successors to the Ancients as stewards, which is during the conversation with Hythlo in Amaurot - what else were you thinking of?) Back then, everyone kind of took it as a given that the third sacrifice was the player races. That made the story line up very nicely. The Amaurotines wanted to wipe 'us' out 12,000 years ago to bring their people back, but Hydaelyn stood in opposition to them, which led to us inheriting the world. However, Emet and the Ascians still want the same thing in the present: To kill us and save their own people and bring back their civilization as it was. Nice and clean, right?

...but in Endwalker, the framing shifted towards the player races being descendants of the Sundered Ancients instead, which was ultimately confirmed explicitly in an interview. So now everything is muddled. There's no obvious conclusion to draw about what the third sacrifice was, and despite what Hydaelyn's efforts, whatever they were didn't end up inheriting the star after all - we did. Or rather the Ancients kept it, just Sundered.

This makes the message very muddled. My guess is that the original intent in Shadowbringers was that the player races were the new life, but they decided to change that in Endwalker to fit with the narrative about the Sundering's purpose being to force humanity to understand grief and loss. It's no longer a tale of people resisting passing the torch, but a tale of people refusing to accept loss and change and having it forced upon them, then collectively overcoming far in the future. In Shadowbringers Hydaelyn fights Zodiark to save the new life from her people, while in Endwalker Hydaelyn fights Zodiark to 'save her people from themselves'.

These motives might be inconsistent, but the bigger thing for me is that while they're solid motivations for the character of Venat pre-Level 87 Endwalker MSQ, the time travel narrative somewhat invalidates them in a way that frustrates me, because basically every other part of Venat in Endwalker was (in my opinion) pretty good, and make me like her character. The Walk, too, totally great as a scene. But I really think the choice to not wipe her memory muddles all of the morals and the interesting dynamic between Hydaelyn and the Ascians-- throughout the whole story, the player is obligated to side with Hydaelyn, as our existence is dependent on her action. Alphinaud's point against Emet at the end of 5.0 are always true: no matter how disappointing or sad it is that the Ancient world no longer exists, their society/world is gone. Now as Lurina said, in Endwalker it's sort of retooled a bit so that "humanity" as a general umbrella for all the sapient life is more or less the same as the Ancients, at least in the respect that they have the same great moral issues to tackle (moving forward and accepting the inevitable pains of life to continue that progression in a way that doesn't stagnate society and lead to joylessness and self-prescribed ruin), but regardless, there are probably just more sundered people than ancients (both the ancients that were divided into 14 pieces and the new life that has arisen in the 12000 years since, ie. most of the Scions) so it's still "our" world and not the Ascians'.

Giving Venat the foreknowledge she has in the end muddles this dynamic, since it turns the pure ideological difference leading to the Sundering into what we have now, where Venat's apparent motivations to everyone--which would be consistent with her character, as she says in "A Friendship of Record:"

"What we anticipate and what comes to pass need not be the same," she had once said. "'Tis best we work towards the greatest good without foreknowledge which might cloud our judgment."

I'd like to read this as her resolving to do what she would have done in this situation regardless of her knowledge of the future, the fully Venat choice to move forward because she loves the star.

But that's not exactly great, because we know that her choice is based on a) what she would have done and also b) the fact that she knows what the source of the current Final Days issue is, and how the societal and physical change she could bring about in the worst-case scenario could fix this, as she knows from us that it has happened at least once before in our timeline. The writers also now have to do the jumping-through-hoops that is justifying Venat's inability to do anything except what she always would have done.

So if she was going to have these motives anyway, why add this extra layer that gives people the ability to turn her justifiable motives into "justifiable except not really except here's all the loopholes why she's sort of still justified in the way she would have been anyway."

I think the alternative would have been fine: she loses her memories like the rest, but still maybe retains the moral lessons learned from Elpis (or not, she still has her character traits). Now she's free to have the Sundering come from her, and not from her AND this other knowledge she doesn't tell anyone about. The Walk can literally play out in the exact same way--just with her speaking from the perspective of current Hydaelyn/Venat who knows who the Warrior of Light is and has been Etheirys' Will for 12,000 years. 12,000 years is a long time, so the writers can still have her figure out the sound is coming from somewhere in space, since she would still have the Meteion tracker. She can also still remember us before/during/after the 89 trial, through aetherial sea/memory technobabble. Suddenly Venat is more or less consistent with both Shadowbringers and her established character traits in Endwalker up until she suddenly has to become secretive and cowardly for story reasons, and the player and Scions can still venerate her as the side of the debate who paved the way for the future, without the moral murkiness of "but she withheld information."

I read a lot of posts on the forum and I don't often agree with Lauront's opinions, but I think he said it in a pretty clear way:

Her faction's main goal is to get her people to stop the third sacrifice out of the fear that restoration of their civilisation would result in their stagnation, or worse (and of course, her own direct fear is the Plenty and Meteion.) Using such a narrative to stall and buy time until she was ready to summon Hydaelyn is the most logical way of parsing the event to me. My take on it is her answer is to preserve the timeline as is required and provide her followers an adequately persuasive narrative to stall towards that end.

Turning Venat into a strict timeline-preserver instead of having her motives fully and naturally come out of her love for the star and ideals about progressing society really just sours what is an otherwise satisfying plotline--I mean it's literally out of character with who she is not one quest before.

Sorry for adding more to what is already a beaten-to-death, bloated, endless discussion about this plotline that's been going on since December, but I think this is my final opinion on it--one very clumsy, hasty writing choice at the end that makes the rest disappointing. Honestly I really hope we just avoid any more Sundering stuff in the game, in the short stories, etc. as we move on to the other super interesting parts of the game, although who knows if the 6.2 stinger is suggesting we're getting more about it. This post is also off-topic for this thread more or less, but I did see some more productive/new discussion of the same topic (from Kari, Lurina, and Lauront) that piqued my interest to write a forum post, which I haven't really done before.

As for the Tales from the Dawn, I've enjoyed all three so far even if they mostly cover events we've already seen. Doubt tomorrow's is Ancient-focused, would wager Garlemald/Thavnair/maybe Ultima Thule. I'm hoping it'll be Garlemald, which hasn't had much of a presence in 6.x apart from the role quest capstone, and I could see Dawn #4 being a Jullus story. Thavnair has been used a lot in MSQ and they might be saving UT stories for the Omicron Quests. Whatever it is, I do hope it covers an event/events we haven't already seen.

[Puksi]

This brings to mind something I've been pondering for a while. Are the Sahagin, Kobolds, and Sylphs Sundered Ancients, or are they in fact part of the new life?

I think the only member of any of the tribes to have the Echo was the Sahagin priest from ARR, but that was via Ascian shenanigans. iirc, the Ixal were outright confirmed to be of Allag creation in the Fractal Continuum. Not sure about the rest...I really have to play through the MSQ again. I think there were hints in Elpis of some of the other tribes having started as creations of the Ancients, but I don't think anything was definite.

[Lurina]

This brings to mind something I've been pondering for a while. Are the Sahagin, Kobolds, and Sylphs Sundered Ancients, or are they in fact part of the new life?

It's ambiguous, though we know at least the Lupin were (probably) made in Elpis and not part of the new life since there's a log that seems to be describing them in Ktesis.

Though it's impossible to confirm either way, I think the least awkward fanon to make with the narrative the developers ended up painting is that the 'beast tribes' are broadly the new sapient life created by Zodiark. However, this opens its own can of worms insofar as it creates a hard separation between the human and beastmen races that the developers seem to have been trying to move away from.

You can't really say 'there's no actual difference between the player and beastmen races, it's all just a cultural construct invented by Ul'dahn merchants' and 'the beastmen races were literally created by the ancestors of the player races' at the same time without it being extremely dissonant.

I'm saying that they planned on sacrificing what new life that they could cultivate, and up until that point they had treated thier creations and the life they raised as children.

As self appointed stewards of the star, any life they raise would be in some sense thier children, whether or not we are the literal biological descedants of the ancients doesn't really change that for me.

(People in these threads have stressed, many times, the kindness and parent-like care the ancients show towards thier familiars and creations.

I'm sorry to be rude, but you're fudging.

The Ancients might have treated their creations like children, but they weren't their literal children, and they obviously held that distinction to be a significant one when they decided to start sacrificing them to Zodiark to bring back their actual families.

So I think the point I am trying to make is still pretty clear. The 'children' of the Ancients Hydaelyn was fighting to preserve did not inherit the world. Their literal biological next generation - Sundered humanity - did. Thus, the developers did not follow through on their theme in that instance. The 'new life' did not become the new stewards of the star, despite Hydaelyn's stated motive, and seemingly vanished from the story altogether.

So we cannot reasonably infer anything about them.

This is one of the big instances of the Sundering plot working well in terms of vibe, but falling apart mechanically once you examine it closely. Even if the general thrust remains intact, what the developers intend different aspects to suggest both literally and thematically is not consistent across 5.0>6.0.

[Iscah]

they soft-retconned it to make way for their new storyline without really thinking through the repercussions it would have on the story.

Endwalker's problems in a nutshell.

[Absimiliard]

Any plans pertaining to the creation or usage of Zodiark came into being after all but the barest thread of the Ancient population remained. The Final Days did most of them in, and Zodiark wound up requiring a rather substantial chunk of the handful that remained just to prevent the planet's death. Another fairly large portion of Ancients willingly sacrificed themselves afterward so the primal would have the power it needed to restore the world to a life-sustaining state and subsequently seed it with new life.

Bearing the above in mind, how were the Ancients supposed to shepherd anything? The plan, as I understood it, was to give this new life the time to propagate itself. I've no doubt the Ancients would've helped as much as they could, but the only way their plan would've worked is if the lion's share of work was done by nature simply running its course.

Using life seeded by Zodiark as fodder to restore the sacrificed Ancients is rather far removed from some dude rolling up in a field and giving his own beloved creation the Old Yeller treatment.

[RyuDragnier]

It's ambiguous, though we know at least the Lupin were (probably) made in Elpis and not part of the new life since there's a log that seems to be describing them in Ktesis.

Though it's impossible to confirm either way, I think the least awkward fanon to make with the narrative the developers ended up painting is that the 'beast tribes' are broadly the new sapient life created by Zodiark. However, this opens its own can of worms insofar as it creates a hard separation between the human and beastmen races that the developers seem to have been trying to move away from.

You can't really say 'there's no actual difference between the player and beastmen races, it's all just a cultural construct invented by Ul'dahn merchants' and 'the beastmen races were literally created by the ancestors of the player races' at the same time without it being extremely dissonant.

The only way around it IMO would be that while the tribes themselves were in fact the new life, the souls in them are not (at least in the current times). Since we know the power the Ancients had were linked to the soul and how long it has remained before returning to the planet (as proven with auspices in a sense), and that most (if not all) souls are constantly being reincarnated upon death, we can likely surmise that whatever advantages the Sundered Ancients had have long since eroded. It's an equal playing field at this point, and that's not taking into account the likely possibility that Sundered Ancient souls can also be born into the bodies of members of the tribes.

[KageTokage]

I feel like the questions of where souls come from and precisely how/why Ancient souls differed from ordinary ones are something that could still end up being a major factor in the future, especially considering the implications of some Lifestream-related weirdness going on...which might already be manifesting to some extent with the present Pandaemonium shenanigans.

[Rannie]

Hmm and what about the Ancients who were killed during the final days and before the final days(maybe not exactly killed before the final days but the ones who had died and were actually part of the underworld and lifestream when it happened).... do we know if the bird sisters were able to harvest them before zodiark was made?

On an off note this could be a viable reason as to why the Echo doesn't awake in everyone and yet they still feel sadness and such *shrugs* atleast the ones who returned to the star prior to the incident