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.

[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.

[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.

[Vyrerus]

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

I certainly didn't formulate my idea fully nor write it out as well as I would have liked.

What I was trying to drive at was that the Amaurotines may have rejected souls for so long in their society that it caused something like an Exdeath situation but in the Lifestream. Instead of a tortured tree twisting to be malevolent via the souls of the war dead, it's the planet via souls not allowed to inhabit the bodies that the planet wants them to inhabit.

One thing that strikes me as odd is that while Hades showed us a harmonious society, harmonious until Team Hydaelyn, it definitely seems they were only that way within the confines of that society. The life outside of it on the planet was something they viewed as beneath them, on average, proclaiming themselves masters over everything.

But we get that nice admittance in, "Through His Eyes" that they didn't understand the Lifestream, though they could view it and analyze it and even draw power from it.

The closest comparison I can draw is think of the Cetra from FFVII, but rather than living as one and being actually able to commune with the planet they were only so deeply tied to each other. They also built cities instead of living as nomads, building towers to themselves.

The idea that they expelled particular souls or people from their society also relates them to the Zilart from FFXI, who expelled all those who were afflicted with the Emptiness, being incapable of telepathy, "Whisper of the Soul" because of it. Those people were called the Kuluu. The Kuluu found the slumbering elemental gods in the wilds, and developed summoning magic in order to survive. The Zilart then waged a war of subjugation against them, which ended in the Kuluu stopping the Zilart from opening the Gates of Paradise causing an event known as, "The Meltdown." It destroyed Zilartian society almost completely, while mutating many of the surviving Kuluu into Tonberries, but it did spare the planet and the lives upon it.

Reaching tangent territory. Course, the premise of the thread is a bit of one, anyway. I just wanted to get out all the ideas and parallels that I see before they are matchsticks dashed against the rocks come Endwalkers.

[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.

[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.

[TheMightyMollusk]

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.

Part of the problem here is that, by Emet-Selch's own admission, the Unsundered were all tempered by Zodiark. They're compelled to follow his purpose, to ensure the order of the star. And that means they're compelled to keep trying to restore it to its pre-Sundering state, no matter how long it takes, or if it's even possible. I would've liked to see someone bring up the question of how they planned to rejoin the Thirteenth, but it never came up.

[Vyrerus]

Part of the problem here is that, by Emet-Selch's own admission, the Unsundered were all tempered by Zodiark. They're compelled to follow his purpose, to ensure the order of the star. And that means they're compelled to keep trying to restore it to its pre-Sundering state, no matter how long it takes, or if it's even possible. I would've liked to see someone bring up the question of how they planned to rejoin the Thirteenth, but it never came up.

As far as Tempering goes, it varies primal to primal. Iirc, one of the most prominent examples of differences is showcased with Ramuh and the Sylphs. The Sylphs not tempered by the summoning itself asked to straight up be tempered, and Ramuh was like, "Well, if you insist, I suppose. Oh, but don't got bringing me a feast or anything. I only want to eat just enough aether to maintain my beard."

Hades said he was Tempered, but he didn't expound on at what intensity.

As far as returning the Source to its original state... on an aetherial level I think it can be. On the physical one... Mmm... not sure. Just one calamity rearranged its physical face an uncovered things once thought lost for thousands of years that were also buried by calamities. All of the works built over time piling up... I think it'd still be different.

As far as Rejoining the 13th goes... I believe most of its aether is tied up in the Voidsent. Once the other shards had all been Rejoined, the Source would be the only place they could go to get a snack. I think it would be just a matter of opening the door for them to come along, and then destroying them, letting their aether wash over the Source through its physical form. Kinda like busting Primal-likes in the Eden line.