Zodiark's Codex entry what do we think about it?

[Brinne]

What is an easier solution? Trying to squirrel away a small selection to try and fix the real problem in secret while ignoring a cycle of sacrific? Or to not allow said cycle to continue to perpetuate even if that means said new life is getting a crappy inheritance while still being able to aim to fix the real problem?

I mean. I guess wholesale just killing everything would be an "easier solution" than trying to actually save lives, yeah...

[RyuDragnier]

What bothers me the most about this argument is how it's supposed to be in Hydaelyn's favor, but she ends up annihilating any and all human life on Etheriys regardless, so I don't understand how this is meant to aid in justifying her actions in any way.

I wouldn't call it annihilating, as life still exists. If anything, the Convocation's plan is essentially "replace X Ancient souls with X new souls." Basically just replacing life with the same amount, with them only wanting their own lives to matter here. Venat's is essentially "Cleave X souls and world into 14, multiplying them into Y souls," with 14X = Y being the mathematical formula. Does it change the fact it was horrific? Oh hell no, but in the end it made more life than it took.

[Lurina]

I wouldn't call it annihilating, as life still exists. If anything, the Convocation's plan is essentially "replace X Ancient souls with X new souls." Basically just replacing life with the same amount, with them only wanting their own lives to matter here. Venat's is essentially "Cleave X souls and world into 14, multiplying them into Y souls," with 14X = Y being the mathematical formula. Does it change the fact it was horrific? Oh hell no, but in the end it made more life than it took.

I mean. Even if you put aside that everyone currently alive effectively died, I wouldn't bet on it. Going from a post-scarcity society to a hunter-gatherer one probably entails a die-off that makes the Bronze Age Collapse look like an outbreak of chicken pox.

[RyuDragnier]

I mean. Even if you put aside that everyone currently alive effectively died, I wouldn't bet on it. Going from a post-scarcity society to a hunter-gatherer one probably entails a die-off that makes the Bronze Age Collapse look like an outbreak of chicken pox.

You're thinking of the First Astral Era, which was after the first Calamity, the Calamity of Wind. We know nothing of the time between the Sundering and the Calamity of Wind, absolutely nothing, so sadly we can't say anything for certain. It's believed that the First Astral Era was the time when people started making tools for their survival (meaning stone age).

[SannaR]

I mean. I guess wholesale just killing everything would be an "easier solution" than trying to actually save lives, yeah...

Isn't that sort of what happens with most great flood myths? God(s) feel man has committed too big of a sin and the world needs a reset. Or they have a fight and some feel the world needs a reset. I've never said the sundering is pretty. Heck I was hoping it was accidental. But I'm in the camp of those who accept it only on the basis of it had to happen due to the world the game takes place needing to exist and continue on. I like the unsundered world even if I might not like the conformity of it or at how blasé they about unmaking a creation in the same way we might be towards something we find just as mundane. I'd love to get a glimpse of a broader look at ancient life was outside of research facilities and the seat of government. I just accept that it probably won't happen and if it does it won't happen in the game.

[Brinne]

This story is not presented as a myth, and Venat is not presented as a God. What happened is something we largely see play out in real-time before us with people we have tea with, help with mundane tasks, all while enjoying their charms and quirks and personality nuances. Much of the pathos of Venat's story is from meeting her as a person, and coming to understand that rather than a God, she was simply a single human person who made decisions on behalf of her vision of what humanity should be and her vision of the greater good for all of life and existence.

The attempted re-painting of our encounters of the Ancients, and the actions they committed, both for good and ill, as 'simple myths' or 'ancient history' always feel weird to me, because this is a video game where there is no meaningful distinction between the NPCs we talk to and accept quests in the 'present' and the NPCs we talk to and accept quests from in the 'past' (which we can access simply by clicking the teleporation button.) Either way, in our immediate moment, we talk to them, get annoyed, laugh at them, engage with them equally as pretend-living people in front of us. Even beyond one of Shadowbringers's prime writing goals being stated explicitly as "humanizing the Ascians," Endwalker itself is as firm as it can be in the final word on the Ancients through things like the DoH quests, or G'raha's remark in Ultima Thule: they were simply people.

"God" gets away with causing the great flood because he is a legitimate god, fundamentally inaccessible and incomprehensible. (And even then, opinions vary - I'm not religious myself, and the suggested nature of most 'gods' in theism is one factor as to why.) Venat is (and the rest of the Ancients, and the Ascians) explicitly a relatable human person, so suggesting we should downplay the decisions she, or the rest of them, made as relatable human people by acting otherwise is very strange and does the story a disservice in and of itself.

If the argument is that "it had to happen because video game," sure, that's fine, but then I don't see much sense in actually meticulously parsing in-lore descriptions to try to figure out characters' actual reasoning and to contort things to try to make them reasonable from that position as well. Venat made a very weird, dissonant decision ultimately because Video Game and validating the player experience comes before all else, and the in-universe writing around it was kind of weird. It is what it is.

[Teraq]

Once again, this great community is grasping at straws to make the Convocation evil and Mommy good and right. OMG! The Convocation literally lined up every one in Amaurot and shot anyone who dissented! They made everyone goose-step right into the Zodiark furnace!!!

Half sacrificed themselves; which means that the other half chose not to and that was fine.

So I threw Eric's lines from Pandaemonium into my favourite Japanese dictionary, as it's a modest step above Google Translate and I was curious. I'm not the guaranteed conveyor of nuance some of you are searching for, but for those also interested:

In English, he says "I must defy the directive (of the Convocation.)"

In Japanese, it's "(十四人委員会)の方針に従わない." 方針 is defined as a "course, line or policy", while 従う (which Eric uses in the negative) means generally "to obey" or "to follow", seemingly both in the loose and absolute sense of the word. xの方針に従う typically translates in most instances as "abide by, follow or comply with x's policy."

So on reflection, I actually think SE's original translation is quite accurate here, given that "directive" to my mind has a similar nuance of "instruction" or "direction" the original Japanese possesses, and makes more sense given the context than alternative translations. My own interpretation of the matter is, being the approximation of our government, they put out an official guideline on how they planned to deal with the Final Days that they expected the citizens would naturally comply with as a matter of course, given the general view of the Ancients was that they lived to better their star; I don't think the Convocation would even have thought to give direct orders, as it was beyond the bounds of consideration that they wouldn't, if that makes sense?

Japanese has other words for more concrete forms of command (the word I see most often used in that context is 命令, which means "order"), so while this is merely my take on it, I do believe that's more what they were trying to suggest with that wording. Anyone with more insight is free to correct me, of course.

Thank you for your sanity. FR says "Hence, I do not intend to follow the directives of the Convocation", and I do believe it's been shown time and again that FR as a localisation is much closer to an actual translation of the original Japanese than whatever the English team is doing.
(As an aside, FR Lahabrea also does not call his future self a "hypocrite" or say anything about "surface level" or whatever. He merely says it was foolish to use the Heart of Sabik because he inadvertently helped along Athena's plans.)

Nothing to me points at a harsh command or obligation. Of course they actually needed to power Zodiark, and from what we see of Amaurot there was pretty much nothing left by then but humans themselves. The situation was desperate. And still it seemed to boil down to a choice people were free to make.

By the way, portraying Emet-Selch, the Angel of Truth, as an unreliable narrator while the opposing side, Venat, has been known to keep vital secrets and lie for twelve thousand years straight, is high grade copium. Emet-Selch, as an actual sitting member of the Convocation at the time, would have been privy to everything entailing their conduct. Venat did not. But still: if you're going to dismiss Emet as an unreliable narrator because of underlying motivations, then you should extend the same courtesy to Venat the duplicitous.

God. This community and its shameless Ancient hate. No wonder Endwalker was liked.

It's a little funny to me that the aim of this thread, even if meant with all the good faith in the world, was effectively to call attention to how the Convocation might have conceivably ordered the Ancients to kill themselves, before proceeding to subtly highlight in contrast the morality of Venat's actions by pointing out how she wanted to preserve new life of potential importance...

of course lmao

[Lurina]

We know nothing of the time between the Sundering and the Calamity of Wind, absolutely nothing,

Yeah we do. There was that NieR crossover short story.

[Cleretic]

Yeah we do. There was that NieR crossover short story.

That's a two-degrees removed tale, clearly taking heavy liberties, where at least one of the two sources was heavily biased. And from what I've heard from Nier Reincarnation players, Mama isn't the most reliable narrator either.

I'd struggle to enter it in as evidence for much of anything.

[Brinne]

That story was personally written by Ishikawa herself and is our only insight into what the Sundering and its aftermath actually looked like. It was broadly new information. Nothing contradicts it, either, or actually suggests in the text that it's a distortion, beyond people making very, very heavy inferences cross-referencing their own interpretation of characterization from completely separate scenes across platforms and games.

So claiming Ishikawa wrote the entire thing as a fakeout for some unspecified reason, and trying to write it off as "that depiction didn't count because I said so and it takes unspecified heavy liberties because I said so" seems... odd.