Endwalker story doubt: spoiler alert

[Cleretic]

Is that in response to me? That's just fact. At the point the WoL arrives in Elpis, they believe Hydaelyn's plan is to escape the planet. Therefore the WoL – and by extension, everyone in contact with the WoL – needs to be told that's the plan, even if Hydaelyn's real plan all along was to send them to fight Meteion.

So when the Sharlayans come knocking, she tells them the plan is to escape, and sets them working on an interstellar-capable spaceship even though they allegedly only need to get to the moon and back.

Only once the WoL has been to Elpis, she can speak freely without disrupting the WoL's knowledge as relayed to her back then, and she can reveal (or rely on us to find) that the true solution is to take the spaceship and go to Meteion's nest.

What part of this is not ascribing a multi-layered plan to her?

Sorry, I kinda jumped the gun there; I'm so used to people completely ripping all agency from her in favor of 'BUT THE TIME LOOP' (usually in bad-faith attempts to make Endwalker look worse), I immediately leapt to the worst interpretation. I shouldn't have done that, and I'm sorry.

I still disagree that she would've disclosed that without the time loop situation, just because tactically it's kinda the right move for that plan; she needs Sharlayan to help with the evacuation and spaceship-construction part, but not only does that part not require the knowledge of Plan A, I feel Sharlayan's likely to get distracted by Plan A to the point where they might neglect the thing they really need to chip in on. It's kinda hard to tell exactly when Hydaelyn gave them the rundown of all this--like, was this in the Antitower days or did they get details through the Aitiascope--but if it was to generally the same rather conservative Forum that we met I could absolutely see them going 'no, we'll focus entirely on blasting this bird out of the sky ourselves', thereby screwing up not just the evacuation plan, but also the Plan A.

If it was Thavnair that contacted her, I think they could be trusted. But Sharlayan? No, they would genuinely do a better job if they're not given the whole picture until later.

[Carin-Eri]

I think it's a bit ambiguous whether her Despair-Bear-Stare was like a focused thing or just a general wave that could cover the entire universe. If the former, then the escape plan could work for a little while at least. If the latter, then it would obviously fail pretty fast, but I don't think anyone knew which of the two it was. And fleeing was always the back up plan, Plan A was for the Warrior of Light to be badass enough to fix things.

Agreed - a backup plan necessitated by the possibility of the Warrior of Light not actually being alive to confront Meteion. And, in fact, we know there is at least one timeline where the Warrior of Light didn't survive to do so.

[Kozh]

Okay, three things here:

A: You're assuming Meteion even knows about the moon enough to keep track of it. It wasn't there when she left as far as we know, and her despair waves weren't getting anywhere near it.

B: You're also assuming Meteion cares enough to look, or even know if people would've left, and I genuinely don't think she does; I don't even get the idea she's keeping tabs on Etheirys now. Not only that, but recalibrating her aim to follow the moon actually goes against what her goal is anyway: to test Etheirys itself against the inevitability of death.

Meteion's what I call a 'broken robot' character, even if she isn't that in a literal sense; she's got an outlook and plan that's rigid, completely logical and internally consistent, that happens to be utterly broken when looking at it externally. Therefore, if her goal was simply to aim and fire at Etheirys to prove it can't stand her oblivion, it doesn't really matter to her if people escape, nor to keep track of the people that do; the notion of escapees just aren't part of her logical series of parameters, nor are they relevant enough to her goal to factor in anyway.

And C: Of course, we should also remember that Hydaelyn's Moon Escape Plan was ultimately a very visible and obvious (to the people on the Source; again, Meteion didn't see it) Plan B or C masquerading as the Plan A. Her goal was always to get us to follow Meteion and try to stop her, the moon was just a fallback that also existed to provide plenty of hope for the future and competent space-travelers. So the escape plan having some holes makes sense; if it was surefire and foolproof, it wouldn't be the backup plan.

She did focus her beam towards etheirys, but that’s to break the barrier. And you know she notice the instant it broke/zodiark died. Her song of oblivion, which to hasten heat death of the universe, as the name implies, affect the whole universe. There’s no escaping that. Now you might say “well that’s different than FD”, yes but it shows that her attacks could (and did) affect everywhere. The moon plan will only buy them little time, since it no longer have zodiark in it.

Second, idk where tou get the idea of her focusing to destroy the planet only. Ever since ktisis, up to UT, she repeatedly said that her action is a gift for mankind. Her focus is “saving mankind from suffering” by ending them.

[TowaIsBestGirl]

Meteion didn't need to attack the Star itself though, did she? It's the people that need to turn to Blasphemies, so that their souls may be added to the Egg.

[Cleretic]

She did focus her beam towards etheirys, but that’s to break the barrier. And you know she notice the instant it broke/zodiark died. Her song of oblivion, which to hasten heat death of the universe, as the name implies, affect the whole universe. There’s no escaping that. Now you might say “well that’s different than FD”, yes but it shows that her attacks could (and did) affect everywhere. The moon plan will only buy them little time, since it no longer have zodiark in it.

Second, idk where tou get the idea of her focusing to destroy the planet only. Ever since ktisis, up to UT, she repeatedly said that her action is a gift for mankind. Her focus is “saving mankind from suffering” by ending them.

We don't know she noticed, there's no evidence of that. If you're about to bring up the line spoken while we're looking at the planet, that one, weirdly, changes by language; in Japanese that one's instead spoken by Hydaelyn. I have literally no idea what to make of that change or what the intention was, but there you go: in the original Japanese, Meteion definitely didn't react to Zodiark's fall.

As to your second point... we're hitting a communication issue here. When I say 'test Etheirys' I mean that she's testing the planet and everything living on it, the same way one would describe a 'global threat'. And while yes, obviously Meteion was directing her test/gift/whatever you want to describe it as towards mankind, she's always going to aim it at 'the rock the humans are on' because that's just logic.

And again, we know she was aiming at the planet, because Mare Lamentorum was completely fine. Reasonably speaking, if it was in trouble it would've gotten the level of full-bore despairpocalypse that Thavnair got because it's completely outside the atmosphere. We know 'beastmen' like the Loporrits are vulnerable to such a thing, and we know that some of them were also handling some emotional problems at the time; they wouldn't be immune, and yet they never turned, so it stands to reason they were never being hit.

Ergo: Meteion was aiming squarely at the planet. The rest of the universe was doing worse as well, but they're not exploding into Blasphemies, so anywhere else was better than there. It's still not ideal, or else it wouldn't be the Plan B, but it's there.


...but also, an additional point: consider what Venat knew in the first place. Venat was not omniscient, she and her group were working from a limited amount of knowledge. She didn't actually know how the rest of the universe would handle against Meteion's collateral damage, so exactly how badly they're doing doesn't really enter the discussion. However, what she did know was what Meteion reported back to them in Ktisis: that there were, in fact, other civilizations out there. They all died, sure, but that proves that other planets A: exist, and B: are habitable. No matter how suboptimal they are, that's better than a planet that's gonna get depression'd into oblivion.

[Alleluia]

Meteion didn't need to attack the Star itself though, did she? It's the people that need to turn to Blasphemies, so that their souls may be added to the Egg.

She'd still need to decimate the planet itself for that to work. As long as there is a working lifestream, their life cycle would continue on Etherys, nrather than joining the cosmic flow that would eventually lead to her egg thing.

That part doesn't make complete sense to me b/c souls are supposed to be aether and they specifically said blasphemies had none, implying that the process annihilated their aether. However, I assume that there must be some kind of aether to dynamis transformation going on there instead of actual annihilation; like how energy can be converted in to matter and vice versa. Otherwise why was Meteion bothering to gather the cosmic aether in the egg? She could just have focused on making blasphemies of everyone who ever lives instead. She'd have annihilated them all eventually if that's really what making a blasphemy does.

[Kozh]

We don't know she noticed, there's no evidence of that. If you're about to bring up the line spoken while we're looking at the planet, that one, weirdly, changes by language; in Japanese that one's instead spoken by Hydaelyn

I haven't looked it up yet according to my friend who play on JP, it is meteion's voice but deeper. But also, even if you're right, meteion did notice our ship. We were still on the way to UT but she noticed us nevertheless.

As to your second point... we're hitting a communication issue here

That's not logic, that's your copium. She did aiming towards etheirys, but because she knew people are still living on that planet. Yes she might prioritize killing the planet first destroy its lifestream, but doesn't mean she won't notice or will let the sundered escape.
And no, meteion didn't consider her action as a test, it was hermes who does.

[Kozh]

And again, we know she was aiming at the planet, because Mare Lamentorum was completely fine.

The lopporits despair (if you even called it that), only start to be noticeable after they are no longer useful after meteion died. And throughout the millenia, they spend a lot of time in hibernation. And it might have be that zodiark barrier also big enough to encompasses the moon.
*Lopporits aren't even the same beastmen as ones in the planet.

The rest of the universe was doing worse as well, but they're not exploding into Blasphemies, so anywhere else was better than there

Each planet has different manifestation of despair. Simply because others might not result in blasphemies, we can't really say it's better. In the end, they all experience the same, which is the planet dying. We saw what happen with Dragon star, and it's the same as etheirys during it's first FD. Where the star couldn't sustain new lives, the wind stop blowing, etc.

but also, an additional point: consider what Venat knew in the first place. Venat was not omniscient, she and her group were working from a limited amount of knowledge. She didn't actually know how the rest of the universe would handle against Meteion's collateral damage, so exactly how badly they're doing doesn't really enter the discussion.

Okay, and?

[Kozh]

Oh actually, it isn't stated that her despair is a beam. It seems to be more similar to repeated despair waves, which hit everything. So yeah, unless the moon has its own strong aetheric shield, they'll die.

[Lunaxia]

We don't know she noticed...

I'm too tired to try and make sense of the rest, but the Loporrits are not normal beastmen. They are Venat's creation, which means a) it's more than likely she would have made them impervious to the effects of dynamis, b) they are composed of aether anyway, which drowns it out regardless and c) Zodiark, the source of whatever the story mentions was repelling Meteion's song, was on the moon itself, so it's safe to say it likely would have been afforded some form of protection. The reason it appeared to suffer no ill effects past the Zodiark trial was because there are no living creatures on it, and that in all likelihood Zodiark's... essence (?) was and is visibly present there to some degree. It's so close to the planet, and the range of her song would have to be of a considerable size to reach and envelop the entirety of it that it's pretty hard to imagine it would somehow be "missed" even if she did barely pay attention to it.

I don't think "the universe not exploding into blasphemies" is exactly a fair barometer for gauging the effects and scope of Meteion's song either, when it had already been specified the majority of life on the other stars were long since dead prior to her creation and the few civilisations (or their remnants) that remained soon perished under her influence due to their collapsed nature. We don't have any other stars comparable to ours to be able to make an adequate judgement on that.

Your original post just sort of... makes enormous assumptions about what Meteion is and isn't aware of in terms of mankind that don't really have a basis in anything other than your own suppositions. And they're pretty strange ones, since what prompted Meteion to sing the doom song was her original purpose of observing and interacting with living beings to come up with an answer to the meaning of life based on the answers they provided, and the fallout from what she heard and how she interpreted it. Her fixation is with the inhabitants of these stars, not the stars themselves. It makes more sense that she very much would notice and at least attempt to pursue them, which makes the moon escape plan pretty much a forestalling of the inevitable. I guess you could argue it would give the humans more time to... come up with a different solution or something, if you were feeling charitable, but then it starts calling into question the logic of the sundering and the entire premise of the whole plan becomes tenuous again anyway.