Quote Originally Posted by WhiteArchmage View Post
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.