Thread: Revelations from Patch 5.5 (Part 1)

Originally Posted by WhiteArchmage

I mean, it's... very different. The Ascians' plan involves literal genocide to bring back people who were sacrificed, making a horrible cycle of sacrifices over and over to retain something that is lost. The "Ironworks of the Future"'s plan involves going back in time and preventing the Calamity from happening in the first place, making a better Future. It's even mentioned IN that side-story, once G'raha is sent to the past, that the leader wonders (too late, he thinks) if they'll be erased from existence if G'raha suceeded (will succeed, Time Travel Tense Problem). He refuses to believe that G'raha failed, so he concludes they must have created an alternate timeline and resolves to do the best with the Present they got.

Even if, in the discussions of the theory in Time Travel, G'raha's involvement would have deleted POSSIBLE lives (not existing ones, like the Ascians), they would have saved infinitely more by averting a Calamity in the first place.

Basically, the Ascians are "Sacrifice the Present and live in the Past forever because 12 people don't like the Present", the Ironworks' is "Go back to the Past and Give those people a fighting chance".

Except, it’s not just that they don’t like the present. The sundering made the world unstable. Not only that but in regards to your genocide comment.It wouldn’t be a cycle of sacrifices. It would be one set of sacrifices to rejoin the worlds and bring back their loved ones. Also in regards to saving lives, that’s something the rejoinings would do in the long run anyways. Comparing how many lives are lost due to the sundering and mortal bodies dying off from illness and age, whereas the ancients lived far far longer and didn’t seem to be affected by illness, it would outweigh the loss eventually than just letting the cycle of the death caused from the sundering continue. It would be a better future.

Originally Posted by KizuyaKatogami

Except, it’s not just that they don’t like the present. The sundering made the world unstable. Not only that but in regards to your genocide comment.It wouldn’t be a cycle of sacrifices. It would be one set of sacrifices to rejoin the worlds and bring back their loved ones. Also in regards to saving lives, that’s something the rejoinings would do in the long run anyways. Comparing how many lives are lost due to the sundering and mortal bodies dying off from illness and age, whereas the ancients lived far far longer and didn’t seem to be affected by illness, it would outweigh the loss eventually than just letting the cycle of the death caused from the sundering continue. It would be a better future.

But the world was unstable before the sundering as well. "The fabric of our star began to fray" is the second line line heard in the Amaurot dungeon and summoning Zodiark to rewrite the rules was a Hail Mary. The fact is, we don't know enough about the pre-sundered world to really speak to how much better it was. Were all the races the same? Were they all functionally immortal? What about those people alive now that were never Amaurotines and didn't feel that sense of profound loss when exposed to the star shower? What we saw was a sliver of a whole world that we're just beginning to get glimpses of so unless we get more information the ethics of the Rejoining are going to come down to one's feelings on the actions of the post sundering Ascians.

We do know that Zodiark would require additional sacrifices to bring back those who made the initial sacrifice. We know that there were Amaurotines who felt that enough had been sacrificed and to sacrifice new life was unethical. We know that Zodiark was a reprieve, not a long term solution, from the Sound. We know that the majority of those in Amaurot supported the Convocation, but you're also looking at immortals who were facing the possibility of true death for the first time.

For all we know if the rejoining were to happen than we'd be looking at the end of Amaurot all over again since Zodiark wasn't a true solution to whatever was happening. At the end of the day, we just don't have a full enough picture of what happened yet.