Something about the new Ascian lore

[Tharne]

During the sidequest about their views on nonconformity, the one you're first sent to talk to mentions that even the slightest distraction during the creation process can alter the results. They were creating robes, they noticed a group of children running by, and as a result they got a bunch of child-sized robes that they had to desynthesize. If an attempt at a large-scale concept went wrong and created a cacophony from underground, any ongoing creation within the entire city could be radically altered by fear, and that fear could spread like a pandemic.

Their magick is creation not alteration that's why that dude can't just change the clothes he just failed to create the way he saw it. The living creatures were also affected and being distorted. Their magic can't do that, ergo it was something else.

You all just seemed to want to pin the blame on them for I don't know what reason. ("The Ascians are the bad guys, of course the downfall of their civilization was of their own doing.")

The only wrong people I see in this story are the one that decided to summon Hydaelyn.
(And no, I don't think we are one of them. We are the 14th, but the same way we didn't want to summon Zodiark, we probably didn't want to summon Hydaelyn.)

[Daralii]

Their magick is creation not alteration that's why that dude can't just change the clothes he just failed to create the way he saw it. The living creatures were also affected and being distorted. Their magic can't do that, ergo it was something else.

You all just seemed to want to pin the blame on them for I don't know what reason. ("The Ascians are the bad guys, of course the downfall of their civilization was of their own doing.")

The only wrong people I see in this story are the one that decided to summon Hydaelyn.
(And no, I don't think we are one of them. We are the 14th, but the same way we didn't want to summon Zodiark, we probably didn't want to summon Hydaelyn.)

But the same sidequest also had the clerk transmute a living creature into a crystal which we were then supposed to use creation magic on to create a robe. Between that, all the other information in the city, and the fact that the last area of the dungeon is named something to the effect of "but in the end, it was our sins that doomed us", yes I'm willing to say that the Ancients(not just those that would survive the Sundering and become Ascians) caused it.

[TankHunter678]

Their magick is creation not alteration that's why that dude can't just change the clothes he just failed to create the way he saw it. The living creatures were also affected and being distorted. Their magic can't do that, ergo it was something else.

You all just seemed to want to pin the blame on them for I don't know what reason. ("The Ascians are the bad guys, of course the downfall of their civilization was of their own doing.")

The only wrong people I see in this story are the one that decided to summon Hydaelyn.
(And no, I don't think we are one of them. We are the 14th, but the same way we didn't want to summon Zodiark, we probably didn't want to summon Hydaelyn.)

They did have alteration as part of their abilities, was part of the very same quest as the one you were told that even the slightest distractions or errant thought alters the results. In case you forgot we literally put a living creature in a bag and handed it to the guy who was to give us the robe concept who promptly turned it into a crystal with the robes concept included for you to make your robes.

Which outright debunks your assertion they did not have alteration.

The Ascians are the bad guys because they are going against the very wishes of their own people who wanted to keep moving forward instead of stagnating and sticking to the past. This point of view was actively shown in side quests. The very same kind of people who probably summoned Hydaelyn because others wanted to use Zodiark to shackle everyone to being obedient tempered drones of Zodiark and to the past, instead of trying to look to the future in a post calamity world.

[Lium]

Really quick. I just wanted to say thank you for the well thought out and detailed posts in this thread. These are the kinds of in-depth discussions I love to participate it. Way better than what's over on Reddit.

Back on-topic. Based on my own experience completing the MSQ two things became apparent to me: 1) the Warrior of Light is an Ancient, likely the 14th member of the Convocation, was likely female and was someone very important to Emet-Selch and Amaurot society in general. And 2) Hydaelyn, along with Zodiark, has to go.

If Zodiark is ever dealt with permanently, then hard on the heels of his ultimate death must her death come as well. It will be very interesting to see how this all plays out over the years. To say the least.

[QT_Melon]

Sorry. But It has been mentioned that the gender changes based in the one you choose. So if you are male, so is the reference to said Ancient and aame with female

[Lium]

Sorry. But It has been mentioned that the gender changes based in the one you choose. So if you are male, so is the reference to said Ancient and aame with female

Ah, did not know that. Haven't played through as a male character yet. That'll be my next playthrough.

[Alleo]

It was said that the sound was "distorting all living things within earshot and also wrested control of their creation magicks". They weren't in control anymore. The chance of something like that happening again ? We can't really know for sure since we don't even know what was the source of this sound, but wasn't it stopped by the summoning of Zodiark ? Then he probably acts as a fail safe against that, even then they probably would have try to take measure to avoid such a thing to happen again.
I don't see any needless sacrifice with what they were going to do.
Emet explains that if Hydaelyn strikes you, it creates a clone in appearance but everything else is halved, are you still you then ? No, you are not, the Real Original You is no more, I equate that to killing yes.

But if these really powerful beings lost their control thanks to that sound and then got overrun by their fears which created even more monsters then (as TankHunter points out) how would they make sure that this wont happen again? Maybe it was a sign for some that this magic was better not left unchecked.

I do believe that the ability to split things apart in their essence was given to her through the summoners, because its those that mold the primal. And seemingly those that did summon her to protect the future of the new life did this with great consideration and probably believed that this was the only way to save the new life.

The thing is that people might have lost their memories when they were split (because as Seto said, its actions and your memories that define who we are) and one could see it as death but if they had not done it, these people would have truly been death and part of Zodiark too. This way they at least have the chance to start new again and create new memories too. Its not the optimal solution but at least one that had a future left.

Of course one could say that Zodiark is also not truly evil in the moral sense since he also was just created but his actions or how he does things (which might be the fault of his summoners) are not good. Thus he needs to be asleep or put down if awake. Hydealyn on the other side has not shown any of such side effects right now and is seemingly quite fine to leave our lifes to us if no Ascians are there to mess things up. So her actions are good, at least to us.

During the sidequest about their views on nonconformity, the one you're first sent to talk to mentions that even the slightest distraction during the creation process can alter the results. They were creating robes, they noticed a group of children running by, and as a result they got a bunch of child-sized robes that they had to desynthesize. If an attempt at a large-scale concept went wrong and created a cacophony from underground, any ongoing creation within the entire city could be radically altered by fear, and that fear could spread like a pandemic.

And in the same quest the NPC even states that she was going to create a white lion and just an eagle flying by was enough to break that concentration and created something quite new. Heck even Emet seems to have somehow given that one shade his own mind without wanting too and that shade says it could have simply happend with Emet thinking stuff like: He would see through this. Its seemingl so easy to lose controll of it. And as the quest with the robe also taught us, its seemingly not that surprising to have people with different mastery of this. We have those at the highest seats, who are the wisest and best in their deparment, so it would not be surprising that some could be worse at that and seemingly let things spiral out of control.

We do blame them for it because the story gives us hints that they are part of the reason for their own downfall. Its 100% a fact that it was made at least worse thanks to their fears. Its also quite shown that Amaurot sat on their butts until it was on their own doorstep. This is just shown to tell us that no this race was far from perfect and that Emet has no rights to look down on us. We would have not been if they had not messed up in at least some parts. And Hydealyn would not have needed to be summoned if they had accepted the sacrifice of their people and moved on...it only became a direct problem when they wanted to sacrifice the future and its people to try to bring back the past. Not sure how that would make them right, because the future generation was still ancient ones with complete souls. So they were ready to kill their own kin to get others back.

Really quick. I just wanted to say thank you for the well thought out and detailed posts in this thread. These are the kinds of in-depth discussions I love to participate it. Way better than what's over on Reddit.

Back on-topic. Based on my own experience completing the MSQ two things became apparent to me: 1) the Warrior of Light is an Ancient, likely the 14th member of the Convocation, was likely female and was someone very important to Emet-Selch and Amaurot society in general. And 2) Hydaelyn, along with Zodiark, has to go.

If Zodiark is ever dealt with permanently, then hard on the heels of his ultimate death must her death come as well. It will be very interesting to see how this all plays out over the years. To say the least.

It is also a possibility that both will be killed but I honestly dont believe that she HAS to die. We do learn that they are not existing at the same time thus the death of one should probably not mess anything up because Zodiark was quite fine when alone. Of course one could argue (and maybe that will be the reason) that she is a primal and thus needs to die but the only reason why we even kill them is because they take massive amount of aether from the world. Hydealyn has been "living" for such a long time but the only true damage to the planet is done thanks to the Ascians. If she does need constant aether like the normal primals do then shouldnt the source be death by now? I also doubt that the ones that summoned her would do the same mistake and let her need souls as food to continue on. Other than sending out WoLs to fight against Ascians at the times of calamities, she seemingly does not interact with the mortals that much. Why would we then need to kill her?

[Sakei]

Their magick is creation not alteration that's why that dude can't just change the clothes he just failed to create the way he saw it. The living creatures were also affected and being distorted. Their magic can't do that, ergo it was something else.

You all just seemed to want to pin the blame on them for I don't know what reason. ("The Ascians are the bad guys, of course the downfall of their civilization was of their own doing.")

The only wrong people I see in this story are the one that decided to summon Hydaelyn.
(And no, I don't think we are one of them. We are the 14th, but the same way we didn't want to summon Zodiark, we probably didn't want to summon Hydaelyn.)

Emet-selch also mentions that they were creating their own destruction, though. As things started to get really bad, and is portrayed in the final dungeon, he mentions that their fears started to create the monstrosities he was attacking us with. Their own fears led to more monsters being created. Hydaelyn being summoned is really the only way to stop the followers of Zodiark. They sacrificed half their numbers, then half more, then wanted to sacrifice more in order to return some that had been sacrificed before. They were already gone. At what point do you start to let go of the past? Hydaelyn was the only option to prevent a possibly never-ending wave of death.

[Sakei]

I think that was just him seeing our old form. With Ardbert we gained another part of the original complete soul and maybe in that short time Emet was then able to see who we were once. (And its hinted that we were friends with him) He does not want to believe that thus he throws away the possibility that we are his old friend and fights us. But maybe after all was done he realized the truth thus why he says the words to us. I dont think that Hythlodaeus had anything to do with it. I just think that NPC was there to point out that we are a special soul, that Ardbert is part of our soul and that we might even be the 14th member.

I take the encounter to mean the opposite. Emet-Selch was friends with Hythlodaeus. He mentions this at the start of the conversation. I don't believe that Emet-Selch was friends with the WoL/WoD. I think he finally recognizes who we really are only after joining with Ardbert. I am thinking that the Hythlodaeus shade could recognize the warrior of light/Darkness even though it was only faintly because he was good friends with the WoL/WoD. He does say goodbye addressing you as his new, old friend. I think that Hythlodaeus was a mutual friend of Emet-Selch and the WoL/WoD. He had a stray thought in his creation magic remembering his old friend that had more of the real Hythlodaeus shine through than Emet-Selch ever intended.

[Kallera]

Hydaelyn’s sole purpose in summoning was to counter Zodiark and be a check on His power. If Zodiark were to completely perish, putting aside any ill effects that would happen from His demise, Hydaelyn would have no further purpose to Her continued presence.