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

[Tehmon]

With how this debate has been going the past 10 months or so, what does it matter whether the third sacrifice was actual people or not though? Ultimately you can go back to saying '' ancients and the convocation bear no responsibility for their morally questionable actions because Venat didn't tell them what she knew, so all of this could've potentially been avoided if Venat revealed everything to the ancients '' so it doesn't really matter how heinous the third sacrifice could've been, as it's all Venat's fault in the end, supposedly lol. I mean, this is just what I have come to expect from this discussion, though perhaps I'm just too cynical?

[redheadturk]

With how this debate has been going the past 10 months or so, what does it matter whether the third sacrifice was actual people or not though? Ultimately you can go back to saying '' ancients and the convocation bear no responsibility for their morally questionable actions because Venat didn't tell them what she knew, so all of this could've potentially been avoided if Venat revealed everything to the ancients '' so it doesn't really matter how heinous the third sacrifice could've been, as it's all Venat's fault in the end, supposedly lol. I mean, this is just what I have come to expect from this discussion, though perhaps I'm just too cynical?

But where is the lie? Venat does bear some of the responsibility by not telling at the very least Lahabrea what she knew. As well as creating a hole for the three Unsundered to slip through. All in service of maintaining a closed loop which was patently not necessary as G'raha has already demonstrated that split timelines are possible.

[RukoBoshi]

But where is the lie? Venat does bear some of the responsibility by not telling at the very least Lahabrea what she knew. As well as creating a hole for the three Unsundered to slip through. All in service of maintaining a closed loop which was patently not necessary as G'raha has already demonstrated that split timelines are possible.

But G'raha doesn't know that his timeline still exist. The people from the 8th umbral calamity world didn't know if they timeline would change or not, they just decided to risk their existence to save us.
Likewise, Venat can't possibly be sure that changing events in her time would erase the WoL timeline or not.
She'd rather not risk deleting a future where she knows human have a fighting chance. She need this fighting chance if all else goes wrong and she judge her people incapable of defeating Meteion.

My issue with her is that, even if it was the last resort, she still destroyed humanity, and doomed the world to live throught Calamities, and the unsundered to have to endure this unjust duty.
The plot didn't call her out on that, and we quickly moved to the next plot point. It doesn't help that we don't have a proper representation of how the sundered actually were like when they first came into existence.

I also don't understand why she couldn't interfere more once the sundered were born. Now that the perfect fighting chance was created, why let these people suffer under the ascians's calamity for ten thousand years ?
Why wait for the Warrior of Light to be born to deal with it, instead of trusting these new dynamis powered humans ?

The devs obviously want Venat to be sympathetic, but they skimmed over a lot of things she did that the Ascians got judged for. Even if we know she had good reasons to do what she did, so did the ascians.
Personally i still like her, but they should have elaborate way more on her actions during and post sundering.

[Teraq]

In a truly shocking turn of events, it turns out that people who don't like EW's writing don't have to be part of the one horrible, no-good hivemind of probably politically conservative Ascian enjoyers and Theodric alts. Well now! Quite upsetting.

"Venat didn't tell them what she knew, so all of this could've potentially been avoided if Venat revealed everything to the ancients''

I know you don't want it to be true, and you intended this to be seen as absurd, but indeed where is the lie? We cannot know what might have happened had Venat told anyone what she knew. Because the evidence we do have indeed points to her not telling the Convocation, nor her own partisans. The Watcher as a human only knew what Venat had in mind involved space at best - it is interesting the short story just hammered down the point of Venat not telling people who by all means should be in the know, rather than... going a more reassuring way.

And you are also right about "what does the third sacrifice matter?", because indeed, it doesn't at all. Its contents have never been a concern for Venat herself. In the Anamnesis scene, this isn't the basis of her disagreement with the Convocation at all, in fact she acknowledges they are doing what they think is best for the planet. She is only concerned about Zodiark being a temporary fix. The problem has never been with the third sacrifice itself, but rather what it would lead to, and the February lore Q&A only ever talks about the past vs future argument and her wanting to maintain the time loop.

It looks very much like this entire argument of what they were sacrificing is manufactured by the fan base taking the very vague canon we have and twisting it in ways to make Ancients look bad. I know what the argument is, of course: "but if they weren't sacrificing humans or human-like beings and being obviously Very Bad, then Venat wouldn't have much of a point!", and I would argue this is fallacious in and out of itself when we consider what we know about Ancient culture. We know they had a deep reverence for the planet, the natural cycle of life, and maintaining the diversity of the ecosystems (see the pamphlet in Akademia Anyder). We see Elpis employees mourn the okyupetes killed by the firemurderwolves because they returned to the planet before achieving their purpose. Knowing all this, why, then, would it be so farfetched for a number of Ancients to oppose the third sacrifice on the sole basis of killing a massive chunk of very recently restored nature, without any sort of consent and for their own benefit, and for this to be a sufficient moral quandary all on its own?

Never mind that we have no solid evidence of there being any sapient life that wasn't Ancients. At best I've seen arguments made about the tiny Matanga that would have its intelligence made better so it doesn't just run around like a headless chicken, and the notion of "handing the planet over to the new life". Again, I don't think the latter has to imply sapience, it could simply be meant in an "our civilisation is done, let nature take over the reins", which is how I've always interpreted it in the context of Zodiark remaking the natural ecosystems. As for the Matanga, we don't know what happened next - might be that it only got enough intelligence to stop running around like a headless chicken. It might be that it only evolved sapience millenia later in the context of a sundered planet. Maybe the planet, in its sundered state, simply started putting human souls into "beastmen". We don't know nearly enough about how souls work, or what happened, or what could have happened...

...which brings us back to 1. Endwalker being completely sloppy about the setting's backstory and fundations, 2. None of this even matters to Venat's motivations as we now know, why are we even discussing this anymore?, and 3. Had any of this been relevant, you would think they would have taken the opportunity of the Watcher's short story to drive the point home rather than... having it do nothing but throw even more doubt onto Venat's actions.

Blame Endwalker, not us.

[Lyth]

I think that if Venat was given every last detail about what happened, she would also know that the entire Convocation outside of Azem was made up of a group of murderous psychopaths that slaughtered countless civilizations across seven worlds, and rendered an eighth completely uninhabitable. Not the sort of people anyone would typically trust.

[jameseoakes]

I think that if Venat was given every last detail about what happened, she would also know that the entire Convocation outside of Azem was made up of a group of murderous psychopaths that slaughtered countless civilizations across seven worlds, and rendered an eighth completely uninhabitable. Not the sort of people anyone would typically trust.

Given Venat betrays and murders her own people she just as bad if not worse than them.
Edit, she makes that convocation intentionally. We see what Emet, Elidiabus and Lahabrea what like before what happens they are not the trauma riven wrecks that go on to meet.

[RukoBoshi]

I think that if Venat was given every last detail about what happened, she would also know that the entire Convocation outside of Azem was made up of a group of murderous psychopaths that slaughtered countless civilizations across seven worlds, and rendered an eighth completely uninhabitable. Not the sort of people anyone would typically trust.

Considering that she watched it happened for 12 000 without interfering while knowing they would do it, i don't think she's blameless here. Especially when she let them escape so that they could do it.
But hey, she only destroyed one civilization so i guess she has that going for her.

I know she had to do it, but she wasn't held accountable nearly enough. Despite the terrible situation and dilemmas, she did what the ascians did, except for our races instead of theirs. We should have gotten a proper acknowledgement of that, instead of it being hand waved by 2 lines from Venat and Y'shtola.
At least let my WoL voice his opinion about that outcome.

[Lauront]

I took their decision to use the formerly sundered as sacrifices as a cleansing of sorts because they'd inevitably become an obstacle to the Ancients asserting their "rightful" claim to the star and it's unlikely they'd be willing to just submit to living by their strict standards even if given the chance.

Cultural and societal differences would be liable to have made them inherently incompatible with one another.

Another point is that, as Yoshi noted in the Q&A, the unsundered souls entering the Aetherial Sea won't be reborn as ancients in full. I'd say it's likely due to the limitations of sundered bodies, hence they'd need to wipe the slate clean to circumvent this.

With how this debate has been going the past 10 months or so, what does it matter whether the third sacrifice was actual people or not though? Ultimately you can go back to saying '' ancients and the convocation bear no responsibility for their morally questionable actions because Venat didn't tell them what she knew, so all of this could've potentially been avoided if Venat revealed everything to the ancients '' so it doesn't really matter how heinous the third sacrifice could've been, as it's all Venat's fault in the end, supposedly lol. I mean, this is just what I have come to expect from this discussion, though perhaps I'm just too cynical?

I disagree with the way this is framed. The contention of those making this point is that it's unclear how "morally questionable" the sacrifices were because the writers left this vague and the lore on this does not help narrow it down decisively, one way or another and that, in any case, it would not suffice as an excuse to genocide them. Particularly when her side's concern had to do with civilisational stagnation (and hers, specifically, is the Plenty and Meteion.) They would also argue that the ancients were in a position of extreme duress at the time, having nearly lost their entire damn planet and 75% of their remaining people, and that the arguments her side was using to convince them were likely not adequate to alter their minds in such a case - whereas the information she did have could've been more persuasive in this respect. Bearing in mind, once more, that the point her faction wished to convince them of was to move on without restoring their own kind; not that the sacrifices themselves, by virtue of what they were, were "immoral". Hence it's less to do with moral responsibility in the respect you outlined, and more to do with them being given the information needed to make a decision on how to react to the truth of the cause of the Final Days.

I have been abundantly clear, for my own part, that any "themes" that try to demonise the ancients in service of justifying their annihilation would sit poorly with me, and yes, if the writers had been less shy in using the third sacrifice in advancing such a theme, be it of "hubris" or something in a similar vein, I'd probably leave my thoughts, and say farewell to the game. The theme I took away from SHB was of a reconciliation achieved through putting aside grievances from the past, even if they arguably had legitimacy to them, and finding a way to move forward from there and make peace with matters to avoid further bloodshed and finally rest. This does not mean I wanted Venat to be a villain - I simply had little appetite for them attempting to "objectively" justify what was done to the ancients. I'd have been fine with her being a character like Yunalesca, operating on a set of beliefs that she may have been misled into/come at a considerable cost etc., who genuinely meant well but nonetheless is confronted for her forceful methods.

As it stands, they were not shy in pushing those themes that were central to EW, even taking a preachy tone with it, mostly revolving around "accepting" the purported necessity of suffering and reconciling the will to persevere and sense of purpose with death that is often pointless and also inevitable, coupled with what I'd consider to be a somewhat weakly argued stance against the bludgeon of "perfection". By contrast, they have continued to remain silent on the third sacrifice while making it abundantly clear that the motivation behind the Sundering is in service of the themes I just outlined. As Lurina has said, it's not even entirely clear that the writers are on the same page on this front. So I consider it something of a fool's errand to try force an answer to this vexed question through what is a tangled knot of "themes". Themes where it isn't even clear, in each case that it can be pointed to, that it is being employed here. A point the writers themselves have to some degree left it open to the audience to introspect upon based on past interviews, rather than forcing a singular answer.

Lyth can fulminate all she likes about how "obvious" things are based on the Ascians (even though the story goes to no small lengths to show how they changed over time from their ancient selves), and try paint what I consider to be an extremely disingenuous portrayal of the ancients as "psychopathic villains", but the fact is, other than her caricatures of the lore that she routinely refuses to back up with sources other than by exception, there is a lot of ambiguity here around the sacrifices, and the act it's all in service to justifying (=ending the ancients for the purported goal of defeating Meteion/avoiding a feared self-annihilation) is one that is extremely controversial.

This for example?

We come in to the story of Amaurot knowing full well that the majority of their leadership were a group of murderous psychopaths who looked down on non-Amaurotine societies with delusions of racial supremacy. You should not require any additional help from the writers to spell out for you that these are not lawful good exemplars of virtue or to be able to grasp the fact that they always were going to be written as a fallen civilization.

Yeah, I am not obligated to accept this portrayal, and the poster can rage and name-call all they like over it, because what I read into this is not a theme as such (other than in this person's posts), but a derangement towards the ancients pushed through highly motivated reasoning, partly wed to her none too thinly veiled dislike of fans of the ancients. In case there is any doubt that she's trying to push this interpretation in what she's saying? See here.

As I stated, the Sundering is itself divorced from the content of these sacrifices, and is concerned with their outcome. So in that sense? Yeah, the content of the sacrifices does become quite a bit less relevant as the pivotal point, and I think it's clear by now that the writers don't want to touch that topic further, and have given us other motives to consider. I'd also echo every point Teraq made.

But G'raha doesn't know that his timeline still exist.

He does theorise upon the implications of his persistence in the timeline. I'll grant you this point, though, that it's far from certain insofar as the characters are concerned and it'd require further research/interrogation to definitively establish, but at the same time, the ancients seemed to at the least have a theoretical conception of time travel and the WoL did spill the beans to her, no doubt accounting for this fact given how pivotal it is, so there is, I'd say, food for thought for her in this regard.

[Alleo]

I took their decision to use the formerly sundered as sacrifices as a cleansing of sorts because they'd inevitably become an obstacle to the Ancients asserting their "rightful" claim to the star and it's unlikely they'd be willing to just submit to living by their strict standards even if given the chance.

Cultural and societal differences would be liable to have made them inherently incompatible with one another.

So bascially that they are willing to kill real people because they believe that their race is superior. Not a great look of them either. Especially since they outright know that Ancients have been reborn too. But I guess since the unsundered died to sundered ones I really doubt that they would win at the end anyway. After all they would go against those that have become whole again.

[Lustre]

I think that if Venat was given every last detail about what happened, she would also know that the entire Convocation outside of Azem was made up of a group of murderous psychopaths that slaughtered countless civilizations across seven worlds, and rendered an eighth completely uninhabitable. Not the sort of people anyone would typically trust.

And here we see the world's most disengenious take ever. Stay tuned folks to see how this is topped in the future!