Is this a plothole? Question about the Endless

[Turtledeluxe]

As for Erenville seeing his mother again. This...is tricky. I always took this as an optimistic assumption, but all I can assume is that once released from the cycle, memories will return to the lifestream, same as souls. What we don't know is what happens to these individual memories, or if they will simply disperse, as even a natural soul tends to, eventually, be cleansed of most memories, and what's left is little more than faded marks on a reincarnated soul. For any of this to be true, though, the Terminals would almost have to act like RAM, where as soon as power is cut off from it, all the data is lost--and in this case, allegedly released. But this last part is all conjecture, right now. It's not explained in great detail compared to the rest.

This is what I'm wondering as well and I have a feeling the answer is a very "have your cake and eat it, too" kind of thing. Endless are to be regarded as instances of the original person, that's something I think made clear in both the journals and dialogue. The question for me is what happens to the memory "data" accrued during time as an Endless? I am assuming it is etched into the memory aether, which then magnetically attracts back to the soul as you have suggested. That's the only way Erenville could meet his mother in the Aetherial sea. So it's like he will meet the original her included with the new Endless memories as well.

[Basteala]

This is what I'm wondering as well and I have a feeling the answer is a very "have your cake and eat it, too" kind of thing. Endless are to be regarded as instances of the original person, that's something I think made clear in both the journals and dialogue. The question for me is what happens to the memory "data" accrued during time as an Endless? I am assuming it is etched into the memory aether, which then magnetically attracts back to the soul as you have suggested. That's the only way Erenville could meet his mother in the Aetherial sea. So it's like he will meet the original her included with the new Endless memories as well.

Could be. From what we've seen, memories themselves are aetheric alterations of the soul, which are often cleansed in the lifestream (but we have enough instances in role/side quests, and even MSQ to hint this cleansing is not absolute--sort of like a pencil eraser).

There's very strong implications in Pandaemonium's third wing that the process of a soul being cleansed is by no means fast (namely the first boss, where we have a soul of someone that's very obviously a black mage--the absolute latest that could date back is 100 years ago, with the early 6th Astral era or even the 5th being more likely).

I really should rewatch the cinematics with Lahabrea, Themis, and Ericthonos there, as how those memories endure and when and how they disperse could probably tell us a fair bit. As manifestations of memories they're at least close to what an Endless would have been on an aetheric level.