A Dark Thought on Amaurot

[Vyrerus]

So, as I was musing about Rejoinings, The Sundering, Ancients, Hydaelyn, Zodiark, Hades, and Venat my mind trailed off to what their society must have been like. Well, may have been like.

I started to think about the Dotharl from the Azim Steppe. They are a tribe based around remembering every tribe member, as they believe they merely reincarnate after death, and that their leader can tell who has been reborn with each and every birth.

We know that the order of life in the world of FFXIV is that when people die their soul goes to the Aetherial Realm by way of the Lifestream, where it cycles through, and is eventually reborn into a new body as a new person.

The Amaurotines had children, so we can extrapolate that things were at least similar if not the same. They led seemingly nearly immortal lives though, so I suspect death was uncommon.

Among the Amaurotines there were those who could discern the hues of souls, allowing them to identify specific souls, even after The Sundering. I suspect this is what the Dotharl's Khagan is capable of, but I digress.

We don't know a lot of specifics about their ancient society. We don't know if there was much crime. We don't know if they had wars. We don't know how they dealt with dissidents or ne'er do wells. We don't know about the actual foundation of their utopia. So my thoughts take me to think about that.

Like the Dotharl, or the Dotharl like them, they seem to be a society that takes great pride in remembrance, even taking steps in cataloguing and curating everything that there is or was. How else would the Ascians actually get Zodiark to bring back those they lost? It must have been a grave punishment to not be remembered.

I suspect they dealt with dissidents thusly. Their names were stricken from the public record(expunged from history's weave). When a newborn came into the world, they were looked at with the special soul sight. If they had the soul of a dissident from before paradise, then they were discarded, their soul sent back to writhe in waiting. Wild supposing, I know, but I just want to float the possibility out there.

If it sounds too outlandish to you, a real world analogue would be China's restriction on childbirth, along with their long history of female infanticide. Not suggesting that China is a utopia, just saying that real world childbirth restrictions imposed by government have, had, and do happen. There are also examples of abortions performed due to the predicted sex of the child(most performed in China and India).

Not to get too far off track into the real world. This was just one dark thought about possible flaws in the Ancients' society.

Have you any thoughts on what the Ancients' may have been doing that may have lead them to the Final Days? What other possible costs could have come for them to maintain their paradise nation? I mean, if it even truly was one.

[KizuyaKatogami]

This seems to be based on close to nothing tbh. There isn’t really anything at all that supports this and i doubt even if it did happen, we’d get hardly any information on it as it’s largely irrelevant to the overall plot. I don’t think any particular thing led the ancients to their demise or to the final days. It seems pretty clear and cut that what attacked them was some form of extra terrestrial. We’ve already seen numerous ones such as omega or Ultima, with Ultima even having the description of being able to unfurl the laws of creation or whatever. We also know Omega’s homeworld was destroyed by some mysterious otherworldly entity.

[KageTokage]

There isn't much to suggest the "sound" was necessarily being caused by some specific malicious entity, either.

I have little doubt that the root of the Final Days lies with the aetherial sea/Lifestream/underworld, though. Something I find it a little odd in that regard is that while the way the cycle of life and death is stated as currently working is that souls are pulled out of the lifestream to inhabit the bodies of new lives, the first short story about Emet Selch also claims that souls would just spontaneously manifest in new lives, and given the Ancient's ability to glimpse at the very color of souls, it's safe to assume they weren't mistaken in that regard.

Did something about the natural order fundamentally change at some point, making it so new souls are no longer being born or is it simply luck of the draw whether a new life has a fresh soul or a "recycled" one?

There are many things we do know but also don't know about the nature of the world's souls, such as the fact that an Ascian's soul is not completely destroyed when it is "shattered" and rather is simply forced back into the cycle of life and death. But where exactly does that place the souls of those sacrificed to summon and empower Zodiark, though? Are they being held in limbo as part of his being (Emet Selch describes them as dormant and slumbering), unable to return to the cycle without some kind of intervention, or did they simply return to the lifestream and the Ascians intended to have Zodiark pluck them from there (Assuming they hadn't already been reborn) and restore them to life in new bodies?

Their whole scheme seems rather...flawed the more I think about it, and hinging more on possibilities then things they actually confirmed to be doable.

[Veloran]

I suspect they dealt with dissidents thusly. Their names were stricken from the public record(expunged from history's weave).

I can see this as being something they did. Both because Emet taunts WoL about it, and because the phantom Ancients never refer to Azem by name. That said they never refer to anybody by name, and from the Hades extreme info it seems one's name was an extremely personal and private thing, shared with very few others, and possibly only revealed upon someone's death. And they never refer to Azem's seat of office before it comes up in 5.3 either anyway.

But nevertheless, it's a reasonable idea. However I doubt they would just be killing reborn children. They would probably just be born again somewhere else anyway.

[Jandor]

It seems pretty clear and cut that what attacked them was some form of extra terrestrial.

The sound was described as coming from within the earth. Intra-terrestrial if anything.

[Alenore]

Did something about the natural order fundamentally change at some point, making it so new souls are no longer being born or is it simply luck of the draw whether a new life has a fresh soul or a "recycled" one?

What makes yo uthink something about that changed? Population increase means new souls need to manifest at some point. Emet also remarked that we only stood to benefit from rejoinings since we were a shard of an old soul, which means some people aren't.

The sound was described as coming from within the earth. Intra-terrestrial if anything.

The whole idea is based on Chrono Trigger, where Lavos, an extra terrestrial being, crashed on the planet eons ago and only started causing havoc later.

[Veloran]

Emet also remarked that we only stood to benefit from rejoinings since we were a shard of an old soul, which means some people aren't.

He says that in the context of the denizens of the Source, into which the other shards were being rejoined.

[Layte_Aeon]

The mention of souls just suddenly materialising reminds me, we’ve seen that phenomenon happen ourselves.

Alpha in the Omega raids couldn’t talk to us as he had no soul for the echo to work on, but at the end of the raid he bids farewell with words, meaning he now has a soul.

Though that raises another proposal: If an aetherial construct like Alpha could gain a soul and become something more real, could the same happen to other aetherial constructs, like for example, primals? A bit of me wonders if that happened to Hydaelyn and/or Zodiark.

[Veloran]

It really does significantly complicate things. Like if constructs can gain souls, where do they come from? Are they born from the construct itself or are they generated by the Lifestream? And if the latter, how does that interact with all the shards and fractured souls? Ishikawa did say to play Omega, so I'd guess Alpha will come up in some way.

[Cilia]

It seems pretty clear and cut that what attacked them was some form of extra terrestrial.

It's neither clear nor cut; the idea that a malevolent extraterrestrial entity is responsible for the Final Days is just headcanon, no more confirmed to be true than the idea that the Final Days were the planet itself punishing the Ancients for their hubris. We don't know if it's one or the other, or something else entirely.

On topic... we do know Amaurot excommunicated and struck from history those who violated their laws and regulations based on Azem being stricken from history. That said few among them supposedly had the "soul sight" that enabled the observation of specific soul hues; only Emet-Selch / Hades is known to have possessed that ability, though it's implied Hythlodaeus may have had it as well (and Zenos inherited it either way).

Ultimately we don't know what caused the Final Days, and that's one of the big mysteries we need to unravel in Endwalker.