What's the point with that quite lackluster story in Endwalker?

[Lauront]

Venat isn't perfect. But with the information she had at the time, and the future she saw through us, she had hope that humanity would be able to find a way to deal with the Meteion problem where the Ancients could not. The Ancients didn't have resilience, how could they? What trials and tribulations did they ever encounter? The Final Days laid one thing bare for them; they couldn't go on unless they could live perfect lives and to live any other way was to live in despair. The sundering at least gave us the opportunity to learn and grow and become resilient over our many lives. Couple that with our newfound ability to interact with dynamis and you end up with a very special group of individuals who are spearheaded by one person who has all the ingredients for a counter to Meteion; thinness of Aether, resilience to despair, and hope for the future.

They clearly had enough to muster enough sacrifices for Zodiark to be summoned in the first place, to save their star, and then again to restore the star. Resilience is also an acquired trait, not just an inherent one. The ancients were shown, in virtually all of their depictions, as a very ascetic, pragmatic people who valued efficiency and the well-being of the star above all else. Though they possessed great inherent power, it came with its own risks (e.g. shown in Venat's side story), and they learnt to manage these. You can imagine many other a species, possessed of such power, ending itself in a crescendo of bloodshed. The notion that, if confronted with the truth of what hit them, they would not adjust as necessary to ensure the survival of their star to me is a rather laughable one. Among the destroyed stars we're shown, they alone turned it around (the dragons had to enact an exodus to survive) - it was the lack of faith of one of their own, thanks to what she was told, that undid them.

But we're not shown Venat providing this information to them. We're shown some scene with some straw ancients prattling on about "perfect paradises" etc., which is not congruent with what we saw detailed about the 3rd sacrifice, i.e. that it was to be undertaken for their brethren, who we now know to be in a limbo of sorts in Zodiark, in order to release them. Meanwhile Venat responds with the equivalent of Hallmark greeting card platitudes about despair that I would not blame anyone in that situation for shrugging off. The arguments shown in Venat's stylised cutscene (and it is indeed stylised as it fits none of the details we know about the 3rd sacrifice), without the context informing them, are not convincing ones and border on tone-deaf. Even in Anamnesis Anyder, Venat (probably because she knows her former colleagues have good reason to doubt what is being said due to the information she's not providing them) refuses to speak ill of the Convocation, noting that they too do what they think is best for the star.

Meanwhile, for all their supposed 'resilience', the sundered are no less susceptible to succumbing to despair, as shown in Thavnair. The Omega sidequest elaborates on this in articulating that there is no single one character trait or attitude that makes one resilient to despair - sometimes even strength of character can result in this, and tentatively attributes this variance to the sundered, dragons and ancients possessing, unlike his species, variety in individual perspectives. In the 8UC we see the Ironworks convinced they had to go back in time to save the WoL (at the potential risk of their own timeline fading) and 'right' the timeline, because they deemed the path of their timeline doomed.

There is an irony in the words as well given that the WoL is in fact one of the most rejoined sundered, being 9/14ths as opposed to the usual 8/14th of the Source and is reliant on a variety of ancient props, such as Azem's crystal, and Emet's fondness and Elidibus's sense of duty, without whom their efforts would've resulted in an absolute failure. Really, barring thinness of aether (which indirect methods could've maybe accomplished, like the Resonance allows Garleans to use magic), the ancients generally and the Convocation specifically exhibited all of the bolded in that quote, and to it I'd add a measure of selflessness.

The Convocation, now tempered, was going to sacrifice the NEW life brought about after restoring the planet in order to attempt to restore those Ancients lost in the first two sacrifices and, after doing battle and attempting and failing to subjugate Zodiark, knowing His tempering would mandate repeated sacrifices in order to sustain Him, Hydaelyn sundered everything.

? This is pants on the head wrong. Never ever was it mentioned that his tempering would be the source of any "mandate" for repeated sacrifices to sustain him. It's not even shown that either Zodiark or Hydaelyn require constant aether like this. In fact, the Q&A contradicts this:

Q: Venat said that not even her soul would remain but what does that mean? I’m very fond of her character and would like to see her again.
A: The answer is that souls are also made of Aether, and she gives up so much Aether that includes all of her soul as well. By contrast Zodiark was summoned using sacrifices of a lot of people, yes? But he was able to only use their Aether aside from their souls up because Zodiark was really strong and summoned by the Convocation of the Fourteen and so on. Hydaelyn had a much weaker summoning and because of that she didn’t have the option to leave the souls untouched, and that includes Venat she ended up using all of her Aether. In 5.2 there was some discussion of Venat’s group that assisted her in doing this and also how much of the Ancient people were sacrificed to create Zodiark so if you look back at that time it might be of your interest now. At the very end, Hydaelyn still had her own soul, which is Venat’s. That was the very power that she used to fight the Warrior of Light. When she tells you before the final bout she had saved enough Aether specifically to fight you, and that specifically points to Venat’s soul.

The reason the Convocation and the parts of the populace who agreed with them wanted to undertake this sacrifice is known from Hythlodaeus's shade - it is to restore their brethren within Zodiark. Tempering is not alluded to as a factor, and at the end of the day, the tempering only affected the Convocation and is from a primal with no real will of its own when not controlled by Themis, who in turn, as shown by Fandaniel controlling Zodiark, could suppress the souls within him when controlling the primal if needed. So the above is Reddit headcanons on steroids and doesn't line up with what either Hydaelyn herself, her group or Yoshi say about their motives.

Oh and "genocide"?


Doesnt fit, does it?

How does it not? She eliminated them as a species for the very purpose of them becoming abler to directly wield dynamis (the logic of which is itself questionable, and also renders the sundered more susceptible to it.) Before you say it didn't kill anyone - it did. It cut the ancients' lifespans to a fraction of what they once were. This is no different to killing by poison. They also devolved to such a degree that they had to evolve into the sundered races to cope with their much weaker forms, as per Yoshi in the Q&A. Consider that from what we're shown of ancient facilities, they require creation magicks to be operated. They're not going to be very usable to the sundered (who are also much smaller), are they? Nor will they be available to deal with the predators roaming the star. Venat went even further than this in desiring that memory of her people was forgotten. This is a genocide in every single facet. There isn't a credible definition by which this is not a genocide. Yoshi even refers to Emet as being spared from being killed in discussing him, and Hermes's short stories likewise refer to him as being killed by the Sundering (not the EN one, of course.) And in order for her plan to work, which as Yoshi said, can be read as trying to preserve the timeline, it requires yet more genocide. Why? Because that in turn requires the Rejoinings to reach the present day state of affairs. She spared Emet to help enact her plan.

The NieR short story (authored by Ishikawa) gave a taste of what the situation was like after the Sundering, since the game itself neglected to show it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YC0U_aTv0EI

Azem / Venat made a hard, horrible, terrible choice..but yes it was necessary.

Don't lump Azem into this. She made a hard, horrible, terrible choice, but the necessity of it is eminently debatable.

Only they were not eradicated, they were Sundered. Not the same thing, also ignoring the fact they were doomed anyway.

Sorry but changing a word here isn't going to make it not a genocide. The claim that they were 'doomed' anyway is similar logic to what Emet-Selch uses regarding the sundered. And it could be true - how many of the dead ends are the sundered subject to, both including ones where supposed 'perfection' is the cause of the end* and affairs such as war or the plague? We've already seen them fall prey to such ends on a micro-scale. How easy would it be for some future antagonist or villain to say "I've glimpsed your future, all paths end in doom, it's time to end it." I have a hunch that if that happens, even if the proposed solution is the totally-not-a-genocide called Sundering, it won't go unopposed and people won't excuse it on the basis of "maybes" in the future - sort of how like with the Rejoinings there was never this humming and hawing about whether they're genocides. They can even have Clive come over from XVI and remind this future not-Venat that "Where there's a chance, there's still a choice" (paraphrasing.)

*Remember, the Nibirun became that way from a state similar to the sundered... funnily enough the tribe quests then go on to show there's hope even for this race of strawmen, who incidentally remind me much more of certain quarters of the 14 fandom than of the ascetic ancients.

I mean... they killed half the population to create Zodiark, then the half of the half to nurture life again, and then they were gonna kill EVERYONE new to bring back the old.

No, not really:




It's only with EW that a third and by all accounts final sacrifice, detailing "a portion of it", of this ambiguous life, somehow becomes interminable sacrifices... and all of this based on a stylised cutscene from Venat's perspective. It's EW canon based off what is little better than headcanon. It doesn't even make sense for the sacrifices to be interminable on another basis: their restored brethren would likewise possess creation magicks. So the notion that they'd run to Zodiark for every little thing, whether informed by Venat about the truth regarding Endsinger or not, is implausible.

Without the first two sacrifices, there is no star. They had tried other methods but none worked (known from JP dialogue from Emet in the Amaurot dungeon) due to the Final Days messing with their creation magicks. A certain someone didn't give them enough information to try another effective solution earlier, so they had to resort to large-scale sacrifice to preserve and revive their star and, later, to retrieve their brethren from the limbo that was being inside Zodiark.

Have to agree on one thing though, this topic has worn thin for me as well.

Hermes apparently didn't receive the amount of mental health care he needed? "Wow their society were a bunch of evil unfeeling fascists who deserved to die".

And at the end of the day, they did try listen to him, but he wasn't described in his short story as being particularly receptive. Judging their society by him alone (where really, it's just a case that his despondent mentality was difficult for the others to grasp viscerally) would be like me judging sundered society on the basis of Ilberd, Amon, Yotsuyu, Zenos etc. and saying "wow these sundered are kind of psychotic/scary and don't grasp mental health concepts, time for them to all die!" GCBTW "empath" logic on the ancients, though.

prior to Thordan's betrayal.

Please don't villainize the dragons for no reason.

Yeah but don't also try ignore the fact that Nidhogg himself had delivered a less than favourable view of the sundered, claiming that they were ill fit as stewards of the star. This is understandable, to an extent, because he was tasked with protecting his kind and we know from EW that other attempts of theirs to settle on other stars were met with very harsh conflict, and it certainly doesn't justify Thordan's killing of Ratatoskr, which still seems to have come down to powerlust, but it's not like Nidhogg conveyed an intent to just co-exist and sing kumbaya. It can readily be interpreted as a threat of future violence. Of course this is where diplomacy should've come in.