Raiding in The Arcadion: Our Heroic Hypocrisy

[Chiru_Kai]

Alexandrians were not evil for the way how they used souls. They turned evil for FORCING LIVING BEINGS to be used for their technology/culture.


You ARE allowed to manipulate souls. Quickly gets into questionable ethics, but you know, not necessarily a bad thing. If you do it respectfully and honorably, you too can manipulate souls.

Pretty sure that there is also an ethical difference between having a soul be turned into a weapon, such as for a relic, which is still 'its own thing', so to speak. Or if you just... soak it up into your own soul, let it transform your physical body, and then discard it when used. There's a difference in value here, and in the amount of respect a soul is given. Pretty sure there's also a hint at the destructive nature of consumerism here.

Not really okay to force a soul into submissive gladiatorial combat for entertainment. Especially not after it turns out that doing so harms the combatants and they get sickies from it too. Kind of an indication that, whatever they're doing, is kinda bad™ for their Soul Health Bars. Where as we, with our magical soul weapons and armor, never really had an issue with the other souls eating away at us. So we likely did something right.

[TheMightyMollusk]

So we can avoid a whole pile of hypocrisy by....not doing the old relics?

Good, I'm far too lazy to go grind them out and I hate excessive glows anyway.

[Kaurhz]

I don't recall the relic storylines much.

But I don't think the situation between us/Ardbert to be even remotely equivalent or comparable for that matter.

[GTK0HLK]

I still don't see the Hypocrisy.

And in the end, it all just seems like folk as of late are In search of the next topic to point out Hypocrisy or Holes.
(Which are then likely to be used in other topics)

The only Reason Memories matter as much when it comes to existing, living beings. Is that it's necessary to not have rejections of sort. or Risk Danger of Corruption of the "Self".

(Which most would agree ends up being the soul that remains, and is reborn.)

Memories have always been so malleable and discardable.

But if something was to be help for imperpetuity that is so cleanseable in the natural part of death and Rebirth. or lost in Fragments that can enlighten or empower
Vs ones soul.

I don't see the hypocrisy.

[Voidmage]

had to snip a bit here.

I see where you are coming from but I don’t agree.
It’s a philosophical question.
Imo you would be right if we initialized the rejoinings to get our dense souls but we didn‘t. We even fight against future rejoining.
Hypocrisy would be if we louded our denser souls over the rest.
It’s like a sin of our ancestors. We don‘t bear it ourselves. We just make the best of it, using our strength to avert future tragedy.

On the ARR weapon.
You are correct then with the word soul in there. I admit it.
But is it a soul out of our enemies souls or is one made of ambivalent either.
We only create a self conscious soul in HW.
Is this one more akin to a construct or is it a real soul?
I think Anynomoose could help here because I don‘t find anything on it in the encyclopedias.
Maybe it’s also an old leftover and the devs have since then took a new approach.

HW relic:
Yes it is sentinent but it also wants to help us.
The Alexandria’s force the soul into action by absorbing it.
Anima is more like an ally fighting on our side.
And mind you, we also only fight in the tournament to free the other souls.

Good point on the soul color. I didn‘t think of it.
Yes memories are important to make a person but:

We do know that a memory is washed away in the aetherial sea.
Only those with the echo regain a trace of it (the starshower) but other then that even they are reset.
That’s also why the Ascians „give“ the other members old memories. It’s kinda like the Backup from Solution 9.
So is the memory truly the true part of a soul or is it just the personality and the true soul is the part that is reborn?
If the memory is washed away and the soul of an echo user is reborn aren‘t they just another person but with the same soul? Like us and Azem?
We don‘t even have the slightest memory of our time then but we are said to be extremely similes to them in personality. So it can‘t all be memory.

How important is a memory for the dead and or reborn?
I‘m of the opinion that the soul itself is the core of a person. The memory is important while we live and I like the theme of DT that a person is not dead as long as they are remembered.

So in that view I personally don‘t see the problem with Eureka.

It is an interesting philosophical discussion though.


I also give back the compliment with the thought out post.

[DiaDeem]

[Kaecilius]

The topic is interesting. I looked up the quest dialogue options, because I didn't remember the specific wording and they are:

1) Using souls for entertainment is wrong.
2) The souls in your repository should be set free.

So the WoL doesn't seem to have an issue with the usage of souls per se, but with the banality of the situation and the idea of trapping those souls.

The first point speaks for itself; Whenever we crafted those relics it wasn't for entertainment. The second point is more judgmental of the entire Alexandrian way of life because it condemns the entire soul cell economy, but this wouldn't be exactly out of character because we *just* dealt with an entity that was trapping souls in a dead star to stop the cycle of rebirth and we know how bad it can get.

[CVXIV]

In regard to using beast souls to enhance oneself and transform, we are shown the direct consequence of doing so through Black Cat's older sister. Excessive and constant use causes the fighter's life to dwindle, and they do not live past the age of 20, which I believe was mentioned during the cutscenes.

We are explicitly shown that this practice is wrong and should be avoided due to the adverse health effects, which none of the fighters are aware of.

These fighters are then left to die, but not before having their regulators removed so they are not forgotten. This allows the lie to perpetuate that these fighters live it up in the suite life which in turn draws more participants.

In the end, these fighters are essentially being used for entertainment and then cast aside when they can no longer perform, while everyone else remains blissfully unaware of the consequences of using these souls.

Although we only agreed to fight in the tournament as long as the souls we fought with were released, we learn that something isn't right behind the scenes. There is something more sinister and malicious going on, which is why we continue fighting to bring this truth to light and put an end to the use of souls in the coliseum.

The use of souls in the coliseum is also a recent practice, right? Perhaps I am mistaken and need to reread the cutscenes, but I was under the impression that the souls were used for entertainment after Zoraal Ja's influence, which he then reserved for his army in his path of conquest.

This also raises the question: if using the souls of beasts has this impact on the user's body, wouldn't using another person's soul have the same effect? It's been a while since I finished the MSQ, so I need to refresh my memory, but I could have sworn there was a direct reference to Lahabrea and his actions—that excessive use leads to the deterioration of one's sense of self.

As another user had pointed out, the two options provided are about using these souls for entertainment being wrong and that the souls in the repository should be set free - both which align to what we know and what we have seen through the events of the story.

[Vyrerus]

The first point speaks for itself; Whenever we crafted those relics it wasn't for entertainment.

Debatable. We didn't have to make them to get equivalently powerful weapons, and the entire process is experimental, worked on in tandem by multiple individuals. Generally Gerolt and Thavnairian Alchemists.

There's even a quest after you finish an ARR relic to make the ultimate tea kettle by going through the process one more time, albeit with truncated steps. Granted I don't think that one involved atma, but I can't quite remember how far Gerolt took the process before asking for 50 Alexandrites. Then Jalzahn asks for the same materials needed from Ifrit, Titan, and Garuda, meaning this tea kettle required that the beastmen summon their primals again... Which generally entails people getting hurt and more beastmen getting tempered. EDIT: And actually these were the key items from the EXTREMES, and in ARR the Extreme Primals require the sacrifice of a Beastmen Priest body and soul into the primal to make the summoning more powerful. So uhh, yeah, we made a tea kettle out of no less than 3 souls.

(then there's the meta fact that since XIV is a game for entertainment, we literally did make them for entertainment, and they even feature as entertainment in FF content creator achievement hunter video type stuff... Souls used for making weapons. TEN POINTS - but we'll ignore this fact because it dilutes the conversation)

[SieyaM]

A lot of this hypocrisy seems to hinge on holding us responsible for the sundering or the rejoining, which we are not. As for relic quest lines, I would guess the writing and localization team didn't think 10 or so years down the line their use of the word soul would be so closely scrutinized and just used it because it seemed like a good idea at the time.