Is Zodiark evil?

[LineageRazor]

This is not true, from what I've been able to find. Literally the first thing the WoD tell us when we meet them is this.

That doesn't change the thrust of my argument, that doom is not inevitable. (And, in fact, by "imbalance", I meant upset of the natural state of Dark/Light balance, not to imply that the two are necessarily equal.) Left on their own, the worlds might be perfectly stable. The only ones that have gone boom are ones Ascians have been messing around on.

[Rannie]

Honestly, I cant agree with the whole the ends justify the means with that Misty. We unfortunately have no idea what will happen to those millions of souls that die with the rejoining. For what little we do know, it could end up that once that life is dead they're completely gone since the Lifestream that they were used to changed completely then again it may not. Remember for thousands of years these calamities have been happening. I think for that portion of it, it's better to wait and see if we can find out as opposed to jumping the gun and saying hey yeah let all those deaths happen.

[Cilia]

"Evil" is a point of view. From our perspective, Zodiark may or may not be evil; we know next to nothing about Him and have had no personal contact with Him. All we have is secondhand information coming from Hydaelyn (as "The Word of the Mother") and his agents (the Ascians).

Either way, from what we've been told Zodiark's resurrection will mean the end of mortal life as it's known... and the people of Hydaelyn happen to like mortal life as they know it, so that's reason enough to oppose His resurrection.

[CerusSerenade]

The WoL are the agents of Hydaelyn, the Ascians are the agents of Zodiark. Just as there are numbers in the Ascians such as Elidibus who realize that there must be a balance between light and dark, so too does the WoD and soon the WoL. Both Ascians and WoL can bring a world to ruin through an extreme of light or dark.

It's far more likely that Zodiark is fairly reasonable in person just like Hydaelyn is, but the Ascians take his will too far and wish to establish their patron deity's utter dominance, just as the WoL does until they learn of the truth from the WoD.

[Vivian_Vex]

The Light is not good and the Dark is not evil. They are simply two sides that must remain in balance.

[Abigorium]

My general summary is pretty much....not yet.

A plot point I think many people forget or outright ignore is that everything that happened is ultimately Hydaelyn’s fault, and all evidence points to this being the case. Hydaelyn CLAIMS Zodiark tried to usurp power, which would upset the balance. So in response to this, Hydaelyn somehow seals Zodiark—effectively her other half—away, which is what triggers the event that creates the 13 reflections. This CREATED the initial imbalance between the two.

Upon closer inspection, Hydaelyn’s actions seem to be both far less consistent and make far less since unless you consider it from a perspective of a cosmic horror trying to retain power. Mind you, by 2.0 there have been no less than 7 rejoinings. There is no way by this point Hydaelyn somehow remains unaware about how it work, or the dangers of imbalance. Yet it is never addressed.

In comparison, the Ascians: APPEAR to be carrying out the will of their deity, and do so with presumably far more information and knowledge than Hydaelyn offers us. The supposedly super-evil Zodiark has an emissary, whom at least ATTEMPTED communications and even gave us information we previously lacked about the balance. Despite the obviously terrible cost of lives it would take to trigger the rejoining, Zodiark’s end goal appears to be more in line with keeping balance than Hydaelyn has ever been (the only evidence to the contrary being the method of rejoining)

In comparison to that we get: Next to zero information and direction, up to and including things like not knowing Iceheart was a WoL until she dies, Hydaelyn making questionable decisions that make absolutely no sense such as randomly calling her most devout servant to her side because she was growing to weak to communicate (supposedly) only to be too weak to do so anyway and proofing until she conveniently found the strength to go and absorb a planet with the WoDs cake along, claiming she would save it (which she obviously did a shit job at or else 5.0 wouldn’t be happening). I just find it hard to believe that a being that was apparently powerful enough to seal her other half away lacks the strength to adequately assist her champions with keeping darkness at bay. We have yet to see Zodiark need to possess someone, or outright ignore his followers begging for help, or anything that lends to him being evil other than the brutal methods of his followers and his other half who is arguably more malicious saying so.

This sentiment is somewhat aided by the Omega storyline hard confirming that there are other planets with life besides dragons in the cosmos, meaning that Hydaelyn likely is not the only being like this.

TL;DR: Hydaelyn is far more suspicious when you objectively observe the actions (or perceived actions) of both Zodiark and Hydaelyn respectively. I could go on forever but this is disorganized and lengthy enough.

[LineageRazor]

I just find it hard to believe that a being that was apparently powerful enough to seal her other half away lacks the strength to adequately assist her champions with keeping darkness at bay. We have yet to see Zodiark need to possess someone, or outright ignore his followers begging for help, or anything that lends to him being evil other than the brutal methods of his followers and his other half who is arguably more malicious saying so.

To address this point, it's been very strongly implied in this game that Hydaelyn now is MUCH WEAKER than she used to be. The very act of sealing Zodiark likely took a lot out of her, and she's spent a lot of resources since opposing the Asicans. Protecting us from the Ultima spell at the end of 2.0 almost drained her completely, and she wasn't even able to talk to us again until she took Minfilia on as an Emissary. And she wasn't able to even do THAT without taking advantage of Y'shtola's spell to bring Minfilia into the Lifestream.

Hydaelyn has spent a lot of her resources over the millennia, trying and failing to protect her worlds from the Ascians. A popular fan theory is that the Twelve were all Warriors of Light of their era - twelve (thirteen) at once! In the present day, she can field only one or two (thankfully, one of those few is us); if so, Hydaelyn was likely a lot stronger back then. Draining her resources over time is very likely a deliberate strategy on the part of the Ascians; they likely acted much more slowly and subtly when Hydaelyn was at her strongest. Now, with Hydaelyn at her weakest, they are free to move much more boldly.

The fact that she does so by empowering mortals rather than by acting directly implies that something about the nature of her being prevents or discourages her from acting directly. It's not as though she has physical hands or limbs, and the rules of what she can and cannot do whether she is at full strength or not are unknown to us. The ability to overwhelm a being similar to herself existing in the same realm as herself does not necessarily translate to the ability to do anything she wants on the physical plane we're used to.

[Abigorium]

You’ve made a lot of good points, but none of them really address the suspect nature of Hydaelyn’s actions in my opinion—Minfillia being the greatest example of this because in hindsight she basically possessed her for a reason she FAILED to carry out (she supposedly possessed her so she could stay in communication with us and the not only failed to do so, apparently failed to do this with ALL of the WoLs at the same time. Even if we don’t count 1.0 canon where she was throwing out the echo enough for there to be an entire organization bigger than the 2.0 incarnation(the path of the twelve), there are still WoL besides THE WoL operating around the world(s), and Hydaelyn has done little to nothing to make them aware of and work with one another.

Even if we ignore that Hydaelyn ripping herself in half somehow weakens her and not her counterpart, it still doesn’t explain how she suddenly found the strength to go and help the first shard until she was directly confronted about the problem (remember EVERY SINGLE WoL has had SOME kind of interaction with Hydaelyn), and still appears to have failed to fix the problem, even if it turns out she has somehow delayed it. If this is the case, that opens an entirely new can of worms about the nature of Hydaelyn and Zodiark respectively.

In conclusion, until I see proof of otherwise I’m going to assume most of what we see of her is an act in some cosmic game of chess or something. Too many things that she has done appear (to me) to benefit Hydaelyn. Yet when the world(s) need her suddenly she lacks the strength.

This is not to say that Zodiark ISNT malicious as well, only that so far its actions seem far more in line with what a deity might do than Hydaelyn.

[Ghostwalking]

Well everything we've learned and experienced so far are from Hydaelyn's perspective. She gave us power to defeat her "nemesis", the way I see it this is probably another classic tale of 2 gods using mortal as their pawns to battle one another. We have to see in Shadowbringers, but for now, I would say no, Zodiark is not evil because we don't know the facts.

[YianKutku]

Well everything we've learned and experienced so far are from Hydaelyn's perspective. She gave us power to defeat her "nemesis", the way I see it this is probably another classic tale of 2 gods using mortal as their pawns to battle one another. We have to see in Shadowbringers, but for now, I would say no, Zodiark is not evil because we don't know the facts.

Hydaelyn gave us power to stop the Ascians. I think we can all agree that the Ascians are bad people, simply due to their methods.

That the Ascians happened to be serving Zodiark is almost irrelevant. If Zodiark doesn't want us to oppose him, and he (as you imply) has any control over the Ascians, then he should just tell them to stop bothering us. Since he hasn't, this means he either approves of their actions (which makes him at least complicit in evil, if not actively encouraging it), or he is powerless to stop them, in which case our actions would still be the same, since all we want is for the Ascians to not kill our friends.