Quote Originally Posted by Lady_Silvermoon View Post
No bodily harm? Their genes are so degraded by her actions that the gaps get filled in with cat ears and bunny tails. Like you get that's why the new races exist right? Because she mutilated the Ancients so bad they picked up animal genes to fill in the gaps.

Also, their lifespan was shortened from thousands of years to a hundred, tops.

Also, their ability to use magic was significantly reduced to the point where they no longer live in a post-scarcity society and must fight like animals to survive.

The only way I can imagine you'd argue they "were not harmed" is that you view your existence as the "default" and so they were simply "brought down to the default." But perhaps to really grasp what happened to them, imagine if your default was "brought down." Imagine someone turned you into a cockroach erasing your memories, history, culture and family ties and then within a year you died of the natural causes of a cockroach.

Would you be arguing someone who did that to you did not harm you?
Do we even know if they had genes? These are not humans-- they are humanoids. If the game explains their constitution beyond form and soul, I am not aware of that. They were not turned into cockroaches, they were turned into what we would conventionally call humans. Someone mentioned when Alphinaud talks about genocide in game, but notice he's calling out the targeting of a group of humans.

Taking away magic or even the way lifespans decrease here are fictional concepts, so making it 1:1 with reality is (I suppose) an interesting ethical analysis. Ultimately though when you kill someone in reality, there's no mechanism to reconstitute them or commune with their souls. I'm not saying what happened isn't tragic, I'm just saying it isn't a genocide. There may be a word for it, but due to this being a fictional story about not humans, I am unsure what it would be. Moreover, the game is arguing it was inherent to survival. The Ancients don't even refer to their own massacres as genocide-- and I'm not talking about the initial voluntary participants. They had later plans to sacrifice lesser beings to Zodiark as well. I wouldn't exactly call that genocide either because it lacks any political or ethical context-- Zodiark needs fuel that's inherent to survival (from their perspective). So is sacrificing those lesser beings genocide? I am unsure.