(EW Spoilers) Tales from the Dawn #5 - Days Gone By, Days Yet to Come

[Cleretic]

Seeing a sable soul as Fandaniel's description, I thought the color of his soul was revealed. But in other languages, the description means only a dark unit, a dark figure: 黒の塊 (JP), masse noire (FR), ein schwarzes Etwas (DE). A dark color was possibly implied but wasn't stated.

Another lesson to myself to mind the poetic spirit of the English translation…

I mean, either way it was gonna come out as 'dark'. If anything I think the poetic angle gives more useful and relevant context (albeit, again, nothing we didn't already know): That Hermes' current/eternal state of 'having a bad time' is down to the soul level. You don't say someone's soul is dark unless you want it to have meaning.

On the other hand, I don't really know what a color of a soul would actually do for us. We know souls have colors at least by some forms of observation--according to an ALC quest ours is blue--but there's never been any indication those colors mean anything. Like, genuine question, not being rhetorical or sarcastic: what would it even mean for... anything, if Hyth said someone's soul was puce? What meaning could that even carry?

[Zero-ELEC]

Male Artemis (Eden) uses male pronouns

This is actually not factual, Mitron is never referred to by male pronouns in the English script as far as I can tell. Even the journal goes out of its way to never use gendered terms, using "the Ascian" in places where a pronoun (even a gender neutral one) would read better.

They are very consistent with this.

Seeing a sable soul as Fandaniel's description, I thought the color of his soul was revealed. But in other languages, the description means only a dark unit, a dark figure: 黒の塊 (JP), masse noire (FR), ein schwarzes Etwas (DE). A dark color was possibly implied but wasn't stated.

Another lesson to myself to mind the poetic spirit of the English translation…

I mean, sable is just heraldric for "black", which all the other translations use directly (kuro, noire, schwarzes). If any colour is implied in any of the languages, it is, undeniably "black" and not simply "dark". Not that this implies anything about the "actual" colour of Fancy Dan's soul here, but there's no mistaking the term "black" there.

[Alenore]

I think what Reginleif meant was that English uses the word "soul", whereas other language just comment on the physical Fandaniel: a black lump, a black mass, and a black thing in EN, FR and DE.

On the other hand, I don't really know what a color of a soul would actually do for us. We know souls have colors at least by some forms of observation--according to an ALC quest ours is blue--but there's never been any indication those colors mean anything. Like, genuine question, not being rhetorical or sarcastic: what would it even mean for... anything, if Hyth said someone's soul was puce? What meaning could that even carry?

It's a characteristic like any other. What does it do in the grand scheme of thing? Nothing. But for small details about xharacters and trivia? Cool!

[MikkoAkure]

I think what Reginleif meant was that English uses the word "soul", whereas other language just comment on the physical Fandaniel: a black lump, a black mass, and a black thing in EN, FR and DE.

Yeah, I think here "soul" is being used in the same way you could refer to people in English as "souls" rather than mean their spirit. The writer does the same thing earlier in the story when they refer to someone as an "industrious soul".

Though considering Hythlodaeus is a character who can actually see the colors of peoples' souls and is switching between normal and soul-sight in order to track Azem, I probably would've used a different word here instead of "soul" to avoid confusion.

[Vyrerus]

Seeing a sable soul as Fandaniel's description, I thought the color of his soul was revealed. But in other languages, the description means only a dark unit, a dark figure: 黒の塊 (JP), masse noire (FR), ein schwarzes Etwas (DE). A dark color was possibly implied but wasn't stated.

Another lesson to myself to mind the poetic spirit of the English translation…

Sable as an adjective means dark, black, or gloomy.

Though all the first things you'll see refer to a type of weasel, and the color usually refers to said weasel's pelt color. Which is a greyish shade of brown.

---

Also, I enjoyed the short story, but I voted for Aiatar. :^) Clearly most people in the XIV playerbase just want more Ascian society. Will XIV ever gain a more popular set of characters?

[Cleretic]

Also, I enjoyed the short story, but I voted for Aiatar. :^) Clearly most people in the XIV playerbase just want more Ascian society. Will XIV ever gain a more popular set of characters?

It'll be interesting, because we know the formula that works now, so they could quite plausibly try repeating it, but there's a few unknowns:

A: How many Ancient fans are now rusted onto the Ancients specifically, versus who are more inclined to accept new characters that fit their tastes. There's probably a fair amount of people who won't even care if they try, they've got their favorites and will just make fanworks about them forever.

B: Similarly, how much patience we'd actually have for 'Emet-Selch 2'; honestly, this playerbase is completely unpredictable as to whether they'll eat up an attempted repeat of a formula (i.e. Hildibrand), or reject it categorically (i.e. Bozja, Ran'jit). This is just sort of a 'never know until you try' thing.

C: If they even want to. Maybe they're just done with that sort of story for any number of reasons, and they just try entirely new things that can work in entirely different ways. After all, everyone who'd bite on an Emet-Selch probably already has.

[Nayukhuut]

I quite liked the story. It was more or less fluff, sure, but I like the glimpses into pre Sundering Ancient society, and I like seeing more of the characters that we left behind. We will never see em again in game, so stories are the next best thing. Any Ancient story that doesn't focus around Venat and her followers is basically my bread and butter for this game.

Edit: I also like the idea that Azem was out trying to find a better way to save everyone. That is pretty much what I would have been doing too, so that works for me. Doesn't make it any less awful that the Ancients all died in the end, but at least Azem went out fighting.

[reginleif-]

I think what Reginleif meant was that English uses the word "soul", whereas other language just comment on the physical Fandaniel: a black lump, a black mass, and a black thing in EN, FR and DE.

Yeah, I think here "soul" is being used in the same way you could refer to people in English as "souls" rather than mean their spirit. The writer does the same thing earlier in the story when they refer to someone as an "industrious soul".

Though considering Hythlodaeus is a character who can actually see the colors of peoples' souls and is switching between normal and soul-sight in order to track Azem, I probably would've used a different word here instead of "soul" to avoid confusion.

Exactly

As for the sable color—in everyday life, it really is a hue of brown. Google for reference sable paint, sable hair, sable nails, sable dogs. The elaborated wording collided with the common, widespread meaning of the word. So we got “a soul of a brown color” in English versus “a dark figure” in the original.

On the other hand, I don't really know what a color of a soul would actually do for us. We know souls have colors at least by some forms of observation--according to an ALC quest ours is blue--but there's never been any indication those colors mean anything. Like, genuine question, not being rhetorical or sarcastic: what would it even mean for... anything, if Hyth said someone's soul was puce? What meaning could that even carry?

I think the color itself is not important, it can be any. Promising is the context of the color of an original soul and its later reincarnations and shards. Like Hythlodaeus says in Elpis that the color of our soul “is almost identical to Azem's,” and that almost has nothing with the aether density, its thinness is discussed separately. This opens a room for guesses. (If I have missed some context, I'm open for corrections!)

Also, before this story, the color of Fandaniel’s soul was twice brought to our attention: in 5.1 by Zenos as “That hue. Your soul is...”, and in 6.0 by Hythlodaeus as “That color I know.” The mention of the color in the story felt like the resolution of the rule of three storytelling device—after two teasings the color is finally revealed. I’m glad I checked other languages before jumping to conclusions.

[Alleluia]

Edit: I also like the idea that Azem was out trying to find a better way to save everyone. That is pretty much what I would have been doing too, so that works for me. Doesn't make it any less awful that the Ancients all died in the end, but at least Azem went out fighting.

I always feel mentions of this just call attention to something left undone. Azem failed. We ran off; left our best friends behind (who we made special magic just to call to us when we feel like it, that we didn't use), in their direst hour, leaving them to meet their end with no goodbye from us; and all to fail them in the end -- to go off and try to find some solution that we never actually found, and then, for all we know, we just died in a ditch somewhere.

Is it realistic in a "best laid plans of mice and men" kinda way? Yes. Is it a story I like? No.

The only way I can enjoy being reminded of this is to interpret it as a future story thread. There needs to be something going on there that we will be told eventually and will justify why Azem spent his/her final moments chasing their tail instead of being with those who loved them. Otherwise, I kinda hate being reminded of it.

And I'm an ancients' fan. I like this story a lot. Gimme all the World Unsundered content. Its just that having the "Azem left and that's the last we saw of them" button pushed makes me sad. Especially when the story takes pains to tell us that Hades held out hope to the last. I'd have a hard time forgiving us, if I was him. In fact, it probably explains some of his ShB behavior a bit more.

[Lunaxia]

I always feel mentions...

See, I always thought of that course of action as spot on for what Azem as we know them would take, considering they're essentially an incarnation of the WoL. Given everything we've seen up until now, I couldn't ever see our character simply accepting that half of their people had to die so the other half could live, when we've very much always been about going against the grain and trying to save everyone, no matter the odds (which is why Endwalker annoyed me so much.) The story also makes a point of emphasising their travels and the connection it led to them building with their people, as opposed to the somewhat more insular Amaurot, and it makes sense to me they would naturally be far more reluctant to go along with such a plan and saw it as too high a price to pay. They notably didn't respond to Venat's group either, which to me also supports this; I very much doubt Azem was ever a "for the greater good" kind of guy, just like we never were until Endwalker.

And I think that's part of what made the Ancient storyline so good, and so tragic - everyone was pretty much trying to do what they thought best with a terrible situation, only it wound up pulling them apart in the process, which is unfortunately what tends to happen in these types of situations where conflict is near inevitable. And as angry as Emet-Selch might have been, and hoping for our return, I also think a part of him and Hythlodaeus knew that was exactly on brand for Azem and part of what he admired them for the first place - for their courage and compassion and willingness to do what they can to help others, especially as he was always the more serious and pragmatic sort himself. Fate just dealt them a cruel hand and their ideals took them down different paths, which neither regret even as what it meant losing might be lamented.