Omicrons and The Endless (Do Endless Dream of Electric Sheep?)

[VoidsentStatus]

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The issue with going back to old descriptions is that they're extremely vague.

"each Soul had a distinct colour" -> What is a colour? That is not a scientific term. All of the old definitions of soul have to be separated between Soul Aether alone or Soul Aether+Memory Aether. I personally took all of the old definitions to mean SA+MA given that they create things with living behaviors, movement, decision making, but still consider them not to have a soul. You can manipulate and move rocks as much as you want, but you're not creating a Golem that's human shaped, acting on its own, being referred to as "commanded" and having "temporary life" without a soul aether attached, and yet it's considered to not have a soul and be a magical construct still. If I'm hurling rocks at someone, regardless of the formation I use of those rocks, I wouldn't call that temporary life.

Another reason is that most abilities from the Echo, which Ancients were masters of, are all tied to MA.
"Yours is the power to transcend the boundaries of the soul--a power known as the echo. The echo allows you to pass through the walls of a man's soul" -> MA is inside of the Soul completed form. This sentence could be referencing the location.
"hear the resonations of his past" -> memories
"the Echo will enable you to know a man's mind" -> thoughts and emotions are in MA

This applies to combat prediction, body possession, as well as tempering affecting your thoughts/actions, but not changing you physically like affecting your soul aether would do. If the Echo is a mastery of MA that would explain why it is a defense to tempering.

And from there, I concluded that likely what Emet and others are able to see as their specific gift related to the Echo is actually the MA inside of an individual. Instead of just passing into the MA of someone else through visions to see their past, you are able to see the identifying features & personality inside of it as a whole. Similar to how we see beings in Living Memory. This also links back to Origenics where it mentions residual MA is possible even after the initial separation process, and extra steps are needed to be done to fully remove it. If the lifestream is not as thorough as this process, that would mean MA would be able to be passed generation to generation albeit only in an extremely small fraction that people like Emet would be able to see. Even if Hydaelin sundered everyone's MA, if she wasn't thorough enough, Emet would be able to see what once was.

The idea of a SA having any noticeable influence on personality and personhold is also disproven when you have humans receiving dozens, if not eventually hundreds of other human SA and having 0 shift in who they are as a person, both as regular citizens with regulators as well as Endless. Memory aether excessively dominates recognisable personhood. The only time they suffer changes, is when they take SA from an animal, instead of a human.

[SongOfTheWind]

How many could be convinced to aid us to find an alternative solution if it was explained to them?.

Erasing their medical professional and historian (side quests) certainly didn’t aid the matter. My friend compared it to burning of the Library of Alexandria. All the knowledge and experience and we are told to let it go and embrace nature, I guess.

[Turtledeluxe]

And why do we care if she was interested or not? Us defeating her has nothing to do with the fate of the Living Memory. She didn’t even notice we shut down it already. The question of why we were doing it before confronting her was never answered.

That's called bad writing. You're clearly admitting here that you expected characters to have foreknowledge that turning off the terminals would result in bad writing where the writers forgot to have Sphene even address it.

This is why your take is so pretentious and annoying. You are not the characters and you didn't write the story.

The "why" is clearly answered. You are ignoring the intentions because it is inconvenient for your argument.

[SongOfTheWind]

That's called bad writing. You're clearly admitting here that you expected characters to have foreknowledge that turning off the terminals would result in bad writing where the writers forgot to have Sphene even address it.

This is why your take is so pretentious and annoying. You are not the characters and you didn't write the story.

The "why" is clearly answered. You are ignoring the intentions because it is inconvenient for your argument.

So, I wonder then if you yourself played the game. As the characters are asking why they have to do it while the objective is Sphene and the answer there is a dismissive “just do it” which they for some reason accept.
But given your tone - don’t bother to answer, you are clearly not fit to have a discussion so enjoy my ignore list.

[ChrysOCE]

We didn't have time. Sphene was making calculations to begin enacting her plan. Did you even play the game???[/B]

We certainly had time to do several quests, take a gondola ride, buy some ice cream and take a quiz....

[Turtledeluxe]

So, I wonder then if you yourself played the game. As the characters are asking why they have to do it while the objective is Sphene and the answer there is a dismissive “just do it” which they for some reason accept.
But given your tone - don’t bother to answer, you are clearly not fit to have a discussion so enjoy my ignore list.

I have. I can read too.

Cahciua: I want you to erase us. Erase the Endless.

Cahciua: Being alive, you are the only ones who can do this. And you won't have a better opportunity while Sphene is busy preparing...

Wuk: It's wrong to sacrifice others to sustain the Endless. This I firmly believe. But talking to you now, you seem as real as of us. If you need an answer right away, I donf know if I can give it. Is there a reason to act so soon?

Cahciua: Because as you've just said, It's wrong to sacrifice others to sustain us. Remember, we need life force. Other forms of aether do not cut it.

Erenville: but does it need to be done now? Can't we stop Sphene and then do this?

Cahciua: It is precisely in order to stop Sphene that it must be done now. Her own memories are stored within the Meso Terminal. Once we are gone, Sphene will have no reason to plunder other worlds of aether.


It's all in the game.

Sphene not acknowledging is just bad writing and doesn't alter their intentions or points whatsoever.

We certainly had time to do several quests, take a gondola ride, buy some ice cream and take a quiz....

This is also just bad writing. It doesn't change the fact the intentions behind turning off the terminals are sound and occurred prior to Sphene finishing her calculations (which was the goal).

[MikkoAkure]

We certainly had time to do several quests, take a gondola ride, buy some ice cream and take a quiz....

I don’t think we’re going to solve Living Memory’s energy issues in an afternoon when the Alexandrians couldn’t find an alternative in 400 years.

[Vyrerus]

So, I wonder then if you yourself played the game. As the characters are asking why they have to do it while the objective is Sphene and the answer there is a dismissive “just do it” which they for some reason accept.
But given your tone - don’t bother to answer, you are clearly not fit to have a discussion so enjoy my ignore list.

THe reason we "had to" or "should" was that it would slow down the calculations of the Meso Terminal/Sphene *might* give up doing it when there's no one to protect.

But what's funny is that, what would the Interdimensional Fusion have achieved? It would have fused Living Memory to the top of Everkeep like it was supposed to be... which I guess would have given her direct control of Everkeep's Robot army, but it wasn't even an instant win for her. She still would have had to fight us, and would have had to fight us in the real world, not just in the computer generated portions of the Meso Terminal like we did.

DT ending has some interesting bits, but it's a big piss colored mess.

[Rowde]

I don’t think we’re going to solve Living Memory’s energy issues in an afternoon when the Alexandrians couldn’t find an alternative in 400 years.

We have knowledge that they do not. There are several moments where we can say things to Sphene and she's like... "wow, I wish I had known that"
unfortunately as far as i can tell NG+ isn't available for DT yet, cuz I was curious to see all the different answers and responses.

[ElHeggunte]

And why do we care if she was interested or not? Us defeating her has nothing to do with the fate of the Living Memory. She didn’t even notice we shut down it already. The question of why we were doing it before confronting her was never answered.

Because we were trying to find a peaceful solution first? The first thing we did upon arriving was confront her and ask her to stop until we could figure out a solution that would benefit all parties. She said "piss off, kupo" and started purging the memories that made her even remotely reasonable before initiating the countdown to her plan, leaving us little time for anything else. Because remember, the entire reason this topic keeps coming up is because some players are upset that we "killed" the Endless without bothering to find a solution, completely ignoring the fact that we did try, were immediately rebuffed, and then put on a strict timer where the only solution really available to us was to alt+F4 the Endless.

Us defeating her had everything to do with the fate of Living Memory and the Endless. There was no way to stop her without "killing" the Endless at the same time. Sphene was sustained by the Meso Terminal. The Meso Terminal in turn ran everything else in the Living Memory. The Endless were going to "die" no matter what we did. Hell, even if we rolled over and let Sphene have her way, the Endless were on borrowed time anyway. The whole point of contention is the system was unsustainable and the twisted reasoning of her programming wouldn't allow her to see it or care. Even when Wuk Lamat managed to Talk no Jutsu her personality back, Sphene doubled down on her position.

She didn't notice at first, because as the story points out, she was busy with the calculations required to put her plan into action.

And they did mention why we chose the route of shutting down the Terminals first. First and foremost, the idea was hedging the bet that if Endless no longer existed, Sphene would abandon her goal. Unfortunately she didn't. Second, there was a fear that immediately attacking her directly would possibly force her to accelerate her timetable, giving us even less time to stop her.



Whatever. You folks are welcome to die on the hill that the Endless are alive and that we "genocided" them without making an effort to save them. That's you asserting your headcanon over what the game explicitly tells us about the situation, but you're free to reject that reality and substitute it with your own.