Did I skip something in the MSQ? This part doesn't make any sense to me

[Jeeqbit]

I think it's essentially that if you try to preserve everyone in Living Memory, each possessed of a soul from the aetherial sea, then eventually there will be no souls remaining for the actual living and everyone will merely be in Living Memory. But worse, this was headed to come at the expense of the souls of other shards.

Ultima Thule differs because they aren't being endlessly created. Those that exist now, exist. They may have off-spring, but there is no guarantee that their parents can't pass on. The Omicron are also unlikely to have more of themselves created. It's limited overall by the supply of Dynamis there, which isn't infinite, so something would eventually give. Which is probably why when you finish the tribal quests, it's not as complete as you'd perhaps want.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

I think it's essentially that if you try to preserve everyone in Living Memory, each possessed of a soul from the aetherial sea, then eventually there will be no souls remaining for the actual living and everyone will merely be in Living Memory. But worse, this was headed to come at the expense of the souls of other shards.

Ultima Thule differs because they aren't being endlessly created. Those that exist now, exist. They may have off-spring, but there is no guarantee that their parents can't pass on. The Omicron are also unlikely to have more of themselves created. It's limited overall by the supply of Dynamis there, which isn't infinite, so something would eventually give. Which is probably why when you finish the tribal quests, it's not as complete as you'd perhaps want.

Living Memory doesn't run off souls. There are no souls in living memory besides those of the player character and our party. The Endless are made of memory aether and corporal aether (life force) making them more akin to digital vampires. Souls are eternal, had they been left with their souls and simply kept out of the aetherial sea then they would be ghosts with no need to take anything from anyone. And if we killed them under those conditions, then we'd be the ones attempting to take their aether, so it's pretty clear why they didn't use the easy obvious method to achieve their goals that harms no one. They needed a contrived reason for conflict.

While the residents of Ultima Thule can pass on, several of the species they are modeled after are immortal and given when one decided to end his existence after fulfilling his purpose, we told him, "No, wait, don't, just find a new purpose." So...are we gonna go back and be like, "Our bad, based on new data, you should just off yourself after you've completed your function."

Also, not only is dynamis the most abundant energy in the universe, the universe someday ends. We convinced all those people to keep living life knowing that someday the whole server's getting shut down. We'd look crazy going back like, "Actually, nevermind, you should just stop existing now, even though we endured 12k years of torture to teach you how to live through any hardship you may face. Our bad. Big misunderstanding. Upon further thought, not enough energy in the universe to go around, so maybe you should consider packing it up."

I'm pretty confident the heat death of the universe will reach us before the residents of Ultima Thule breed us out of existence.

[kaynide]

Endless~!

Just to add, it's probably better to think of the Endless as digital copies a la the game "Soma".

That is to say, Otis, the original, died. Dead-dead. When he died, his entire memory was able to be copied digitally, which resulted in both the robotic doll and at a later time, the Otis we meet in Living Memory.

Neither of these are the actual Otis as he lived. It just happens that one requires additional life force to keep it running.

The big problem in the writing is, it's never really clear EXACTLY what it is this "life force" is, aside from maaaybe it being Dynamis...because otherwise they had the tech to convert Aether A into Aether B as much as they liked.

It's weird "science" and doesn't really make sense given the established lore we have in that, as far as we know, Aether is kinda like matter/energy in that is can't be created or destroyed but rather converted into something else. So, really really not clear what the "Corporeal Aether" (as you said) is, unless it's actually Dynamis..which has a lot of question marks.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

*snip*

The reason why I picked digital vampires is because it helps conceptualize what they are actually taking from the living. In a lot of fiction, the reason vampires need blood is it's life force, which the vampires themselves lack due to being dead. Corporeal aether is physical aether that makes up the body. People think the Endless are soul eaters and understandably so because the regulators run off souls. But it's important to distinguish that they don't, given that we erase them not because we believe they can't be helped, but that they shouldn't be helped. So the question of if we should stake all vampires, no matter how nice they are, due to their existence being unnatural is the actual question we're being asked here.

We've already know what happens when something is memory and soul. The Ascians can go on forever because they are able to avoid returning to the aetherial sea upon death which is why we have to capture them in special crystals and slowly feed them into the aetherial sea to successfully kill them. The Scions lived for years on the First as memory and soul and were physically solid and could interact with things. Unukalhai and Cyella are just hanging out at the bar minding their immortal business. The story is full of ghosts living forever without issue and without us attempting to shove them back down into the aetherial sea if they aren't causing any harm. And the Alexandrians have already developed a way to keep memory and soul from going to the aetherial sea with the regulators, so they already have a better solution to their goals than making everyone digital vampires.

While it may take reading the codex to get what they are doing, it's actually pretty clear what Living Memory runs on. When they drain the lady, they grab two balls, the second one is meant to be her life force, her corporeal aether, her "blood." If they were using souls then it would have been best to leave everyone with their original souls as it would have removed all need for conflict and destruction. What they are trying to set up is a scenario like in Daybreakers where everyone becomes a vampire and then they all start to starve because now there are no humans around to get blood from.

As for dynamis, no. The people of Etheirys are aether-based beings and while we can manipulate dynamis because our aether is so thin, we are in no way made of dynamis. So that isn't what they are taking because we don't actually have any to take.