Quote Originally Posted by Shookbeast View Post
In some ways, aren’t Calyx’s creations, the Endless, an altered version of the Ancients’ idea of Concepts? Aether powered beings, who seem to have no “soul.” Hermes might want to have a word about shutting down Living Memory.
The Endless are closer to the phenomenon explored in the Dark Knight quests where the aetherial residue (memories) of an individual—Fray Myste—etched into a job crystal manifests a facsimile of said individual in the presence of sufficient aether. Fray's situation differs from the Endless in that he was able to manifest at will and was largely limited to interacting with the WoL bearing the DRK job crystal, whereas which Endless were able to manifest was regulated by the Meso Terminal and that they could interact more directly with the environment.

Overall, we have fewer instances of the Ancients directly interacting with aetherial residue (memories) until the Convocation and Venat went about their plans to save the star. I would suspect that they archived an individual's memories before they chose to return to the aetherial sea, but AFAIK that isn't stated outright. However, what we see the Ascians do with the convocation crystals to restore their numbers (as Emet-Selch did to Amon, restoring Fandaniel, and as Mitron attempted to do to Gaia) is more akin to using stored aetherial residue to stamp memories and personality onto an individual, which would be akin to trying to overwrite a living individual with the data of an Endless.