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

[Supersnow845]

^yes but zodiarks barricade is failing and it didn’t protect the ancients properly, so if she didn’t sunder the ancients then the final days would have consumed them and then the rest of intelligent life would have failed when zodiark’s barrier failed

Venat sundering bought the source 10,000 years for humans to recover enough to stop Meteion before zodiarks barrier failed

This is not to say that venat was responsible for the barrier of zodiark but the ancients were still at a dead end, they couldn’t stop anything and their only plan was to keep sacrificing more to bring back people they had already sacrificed

Venat was the only way forward even if that way was through an ocean of blood

[Theodric]

^yes but zodiarks barricade is failing and it didn’t protect the ancients properly, so if she didn’t sunder the ancients then the final days would have consumed them and then the rest of intelligent life would have failed when zodiark’s barrier failed

Venat sundering bought the source 10,000 years for humans to recover enough to stop Meteion before zodiarks barrier failed

This is not to say that venat was responsible for the barrier of zodiark but the ancients were still at a dead end, they couldn’t stop anything and their only plan was to keep sacrificing more to bring back people they had already sacrificed

Venat was the only way forward even if that way was through an ocean of blood

On the contrary, Zodiark did stop the crisis and shielded the Sundered from Meteion's assault for 12k years, the Ancients didn't know what the root cause was because Venat didn't tell them.

It's also a common misconception that Zodiark was going to involve endless sacrifices. This was never actually stated, as per Hythlodaeus outlining what the actual plan was set to entail back in Shadowbringers during the Amaurot segment of the MSQ's. The story also never said his barrier was failing. It just asserts she feared they'd become caught in a cycle of sacrifice, a point not evident from other sources which indicated a terminal point to the sacrifices. She also believed they wouldn't be able to directly wield Dynamis, ignoring the possibility of workarounds. What ended the barrier was Fandaniel fighting you using Zodiark to end him. She never told the ancients about the root cause of the issue so they can't really be blamed for not knowing about Meteion or devising a solution to her. Furthermore, Venat was a respected member of their society and so if she spoke up to share her actual concerns instead of acting as an active saboteur then it is more likely than not that her people would have listened. We know Emet-Selch cast doubt on the circumstances surrounding the Warrior of Light visiting Elpis but based on the slim chance that the Warrior of Light was telling the truth, he cited his love of Etheirys and his people as reason enough to pursue it further 'just in case'.

A number of individuals who came together through this thread created a video series involving a deeper and critical look at Venat's actions, complete with sources. It's broken into different sections for easier consumption though the most relevant to this particular subject would be:

Third Sacrifice:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySzci_6Hmqs

Excuses:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrDHyu5wJ6M

For those interested in the full package, it can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsk412wCrJY

[Nayukhuut]

Venat's plan was terrible. We will never know if the Ancients could have come up with anything better, because she never gave them that choice. She decided that they were wrong, and the world needed to be the way she thought it should be. She destroyed the planet, including the new life she claimed to want to protect, and then watched as multiple Shards full of life were destroyed in an attempt to get to the point where her plan might work. All while creating gods we need to pray to in order to keep the world from being destroyed, which makes her distaste from people worshiping Zodiark basically just her being annoyed they were worshiping the wrong gods.

There is zero reason that a group of people over thousands of years could not have come up with a solution to Meteion, but they were never given the facts, and they were never given the choice before Venat just decided for them.

[fulminating]

^yes but zodiarks barricade is failing and it didn’t protect the ancients properly, so if she didn’t sunder the ancients then the final days would have consumed them and then the rest of intelligent life would have failed when zodiark’s barrier failed

Venat sundering bought the source 10,000 years for humans to recover enough to stop Meteion before zodiarks barrier failed

This is not to say that venat was responsible for the barrier of zodiark but the ancients were still at a dead end, they couldn’t stop anything and their only plan was to keep sacrificing more to bring back people they had already sacrificed

Venat was the only way forward even if that way was through an ocean of blood

What I’m saying is she had more than enough information to negate the need to summon zodiark and all entailed issues. I genuinely cannot tell if she’s meant to be a parody of competent people wanting more difficulty in the game and unable to fathom that not everyone finds it as easy as them or if despite intuiting time travel from a glance, managed to miss the obvious implications of crystal Graham’s survival.

[Supersnow845]

The barrier protected the sundered but it didn’t protect the ancients, if venat didn’t sunder the ancients then the final final days would have continued unimpeded while they tried to come up with a solution to a problem they didn’t understand or couldn’t properly interact with (since ancients can’t interact with dynamis properly)

So it basically amounted to a split second decision
1) risk it and hope someone fixes the problem before the final days consumes everything and removes any future chance of them fixing the problem
2) sunder the world to buy time to fix the problem

I 100% agree that venat is in the wrong for not attempting to do anything with the convocation to alert them of Meteion but we also don’t know how much time passes between elpis and amurout, the EN version of Elpis strongly implies it’s not a lot at all, plus with Hermes being Hermes how much can venat really trust the convocation beyond Azem, how does she know that the rest of the convocation minus emet selch doesn’t support Hermes plans

[Nayukhuut]

It did protect the Ancients. The world had been stablised and was recovering when Venat decided to destroy it. She did what she did because she was on the faction that didn't want the new life to be sacrificed to get the Ancient souls out of Zodiark. Though the devs never did exactly explain what the new life was, it all ended up being moot because that was wiped out when she Sundered the planet anyway.

[Supersnow845]

If the barrier truly did protect the ancients I’m happy to rescind my point because if so then yeah venat is an idiot for jumping straight to the sundering

But everything I read of the story implied the barrier didn’t help the ancients, zodiark brought forth new life but the ancients were still being consumed by the final days

If I’m wrong on that then yeah I agree venat is wrong here

[Theodric]

With all due respect it's all addressed in the video, with sources. The video itself was created specifically to help counter the common misconceptions surrounding the Sundering and adjacent events.

At no point is it ever stated that Zodiark's barrier was failing prior to the Sundering and as we see from the second coming of the Final Days, the Sundered are more vulnerable to the effects of Meteion's rampage as unlike the Ancients who simply had their powers hijacked, the Sundered directly transform into Blasphemies.

[Supersnow845]

With all due respect it's all addressed in the video, with sources. The video itself was created specifically to help counter the common misconceptions surrounding the Sundering and adjacent events.

At no point is it ever stated that Zodiark's barrier was failing prior to the Sundering and as we see from the second coming of the Final Days, the Sundered are more vulnerable to the effects of Meteion's rampage as unlike the Ancients who simply had their powers hijacked, the Sundered directly transform into Blasphemies.

The barrier wasn’t failing prior to the sundering but it was known to be failing leading up to the events of the game, ignoring that zodiark was going to break free after about 1-2 more rejoining the barrier wouldn’t have lasted 5 more rejoinings anyway

And while I appreciate the video if this isn’t explained clearly in the game itself I more consider that a failure on the games part

I’ll fully admit I’m wrong for arguing from a false premise but im also going from my interpretation of the game itself, I shouldn’t need a lore video to correct common misconceptions about the game because it’s a failure on the game that they are even there

[Nayukhuut]

The barrier wasn’t failing prior to the sundering but it was known to be failing leading up to the events of the game, ignoring that zodiark was going to break free after about 1-2 more rejoining the barrier wouldn’t have lasted 5 more rejoinings anyway

And while I appreciate the video if this isn’t explained clearly in the game itself I more consider that a failure on the games part

I’ll fully admit I’m wrong for arguing from a false premise but im also going from my interpretation of the game itself, I shouldn’t need a lore video to correct common misconceptions about the game because it’s a failure on the game that they are even there

The barrier was never failing. The only reason it failed at all is because we literally murdered Zodiark. What was failing was Venat's hold on Zodiark. The barrier that he himself put into place was just dandy though. In fact, his power was getting stronger as he became more and more whole. He would have kept his barrier going for a while yet. The problem was that no one but Venat knew what was causing the problem to begin with. The Ascians were fighting for their world, but still had no idea what was attacking them.

Edit: Not the Ascians killing everyone was right either. I would have prefered Venat just tell everyone what was up before we had to head into thousands of years of forced mass sacrifice.