*Spoilers* Anyone feel joining Emet would have been better

[Slatersev]

I don’t think this one example makes Emet’s justification flawed, especially when there’s numerous other examples to look at. They are pretty noticeably better at it though because again, they do hold ceremonies for them, and i don’t see any poachers around Elpis so… yeah.

Elpis is a remote preserve in the sky you can't even go to without permission. If they DID somehow manage to let any type of poacher get there it would display a stunning lack of competency, but even then the Sundered have there own preservation that lacks any poachers. IE Labrinthyos.

And the ceremony they hold was sweet, but its not treated as standard fair at all.

[KariTheFox]

Elpis is a remote preserve in the sky you can't even go to without permission. If they DID somehow manage to let any type of poacher get there it would display a stunning lack of competency, but even then the Sundered have there own preservation that lacks any poachers. IE Labrinthyos.

Also - what incentive is there to be a poacher when you have godlike powers and want for nothing? There is no trade in illicit monster parts, and no economic incentive for the ancients to take up illegal poaching. (Or if there is, then thier society is even more flawed than I thought.)

[KizuyaKatogami]

Elpis is a remote preserve in the sky you can't even go to without permission. If they DID somehow manage to let any type of poacher get there it would display a stunning lack of competency, but even then the Sundered have there own preservation that lacks any poachers. IE Labrinthyos.

And the ceremony they hold was sweet, but its not treated as standard fair at all.

Doesn’t change my point though. Poachers have 0 respect for wildlife. They don’t hold any ceremonies. I mean even non-poachers, the sundered we see slaughtering animals left and right seem to do so with no remorse where even the Ancients did. So i don’t see how they’re arrogant. It’s like with some people takes the ancients are damned if they do damned if they don’t. People keep trying to find ways that the ancients aren’t superior to the sundered when for all intents and purposes based on what we’re shown they kinda are lol. Like i brought up before, we literally summon our own creations who are actually more advanced than 90% of the ancient ones we see in Elpis, as the ones we summoned could speak, and then we slaughtered them There's the familiars we see led by Matoya where theyre effectively slaves to do her bidding, or the smn egi's etc. There’s a pretty stark contrast there.I think in the end people realize they’re living in a very flawed society and so the thought of even a fictional society being better than theirs rubs them the wrong way, so then they try and tear said society down brick by brick looking for the smallest of flaws(when half of them don’t even make sense)

[Denishia]

If anything, I wouldn't be surprised at a strong black market around the equivalent of patent theft, with how preoccupied they are with following trends and fads (the sharks) and worry about their creations seen as too close to or derivative of someone else's, and effort made to suborn or use nepotism and connections to influence the Bureau of the Architects and Convocation to influence whose creations are seen and/or approved.

[SpectrePhantasia]

We cant prove what life it was. But it is imo quite telling that the end goal of the Ascians was to sacrifice the remaining people of the source after every rejoining was done. Those would have been people with complete souls. People who once might have been Ancient themselves. So I have a hard time seeing how back in the days when they were also already tempered they would not think about "lesser" races as not suitable.

I don't think its very fair to compare to the Ascians of the present to the Convocation of back then. I mean look at them; Lahabrea had lost his mind, Elidibus was a forgetful shell of his former self, and Emet-selch was so plagued with spite and loneliness that his morals sank into depravity for the sake of the Rejoining. That's part of why he was so disgusted with the version of him that was described in Elpis, as you pointed out. So no, I do not really think it's the best basis for comparison. The Ascians at that point have all endured millennia of suffering and despair, and are likely far more desperate for their old lives than they would have been in the past. If you want to talk about things that we really don't know, its to what extent Zodiark's 'tempering' had an effect, if at all. He wasn't summoned using a corruptive method, as we were told, and yet still has a sort of "pull." But towards what? He has no will of his own, outside of Elidibus. We know he wasn't demanding sacrifices or anything like that. He was, for all intents and purposes, a revered tool. Emet-selch is also, compared to basically every other tempered person we've seen, extremely high-functioning and essentially exactly the same as he always was. In fact, when we see Emet again in Ultima Thule, soul cleansed and all, he regrets nothing about what had transpired before, and basically just concedes his defeat. If Elidibus is able to disconnect from him and seek peace with Venat at the cost of Zodiark's power and influence, this tempering can not be anything significant, in my view. But again, it's pretty vague, so it's up for debate.

[Lauront]

Fair enough then.

I think with Emet-Selch, he knew for a very long time that he was wrong but was so overcome by grief and sorrow that no matter what he did, he couldn't accept it. And one of the tales from the shadow, he did almost give up the whole rejoining thing. The line about the Ancient society being perfect, well, of course, he thinks that, his society was indeed perfect for him. Like a pair of the ultimate rose-colored glasses. So yeah, clearly he's bias.

I wouldn't concede the point so quickly, because we're talking about something that is effectively, in their eyes, an arcane construct - Elidibus sent you back into the past much in the way he summoned some of the aether of the WoLs during SoS (albeit weaker), and Emet fortified that a bit - they had originally thought you were a familiar created by Azem and attributed any similarity in your soul hue to that (implying I think that the creator could pour some of their own soul aether into the creations) - you are then to present yourself as a familiar. Hythlodaeus and Emet-Selch possess exceptional soul sight, so for ancients lacking this, they had little reason to think you're anything but a familiar; and even those who could discern a soul might think it is aether imbued by the creator of the concept. Bearing in mind even various plant and animal lives would gain souls and thus become living beings (and much like with us humans, they don't automatically assume that because something is a living being, that it's of equal status to them; a very niche and questionable moral position anyway), and that we know from Hermes that the assessment of whether a creation actually gained a soul was a complex business that fell to Hyth's office (probably for the very reason I mentioned about Azem's soul hue), it is an extremely low threshold, a being similar perhaps to an egi or if we ramp it up, a primal. Pretty human-like beings in guise potentially, but not necessarily actual people. Perhaps some, having gained souls, could come closer to it, but that's a separate matter - certainly if it was the case with the Meteia, Hermes withholding examination of the concept meant there was no definitive answer on that. Emet-Selch shifted his perspective on the sundered over time, and only once he became satisfied that they could suffice as stewards of the star, or at least was reaching that point (i.e. the Amaurot reconstruction.) Here is the rub: the sundered are not ultimately familiars cooked up in Elpis. They just look like them because they're so aetherically thinned out. In context, the sundered are Emet's people, but fractured, and the focus of the Ascians is on restoring these souls to their complete form. Any such inferences about the sundered are therefore not transitive to the creations in Elpis. To say he is wrong requires one to say the sundering was justified - in turn, that requires one to accept that Venat's plan was the only one that could've worked, which is nothing but supposition ultimately. Hades made his peace with her plan as ultimately the writers' goal is fan appeasement where everyone's fan faves gets a happy ending more or less, that we're now stuck with due to the time travel gimmicks. But to me, I am not committed to taking his word for it that her plan secured a better future than they could've. It does not suffice for me.

[Denishia]

When it comes down to it, for me, no I don't see the Unsundered World as a utopia- or at least one that appeals to me. The society itself I find off-putting. And even if I didn't have the attachment of playing through as my WoL, if I was offered two game choices, one playing as Azem in the Unsundered World, and the other playing, oh, as Ardbert in the First - I am going to pick Ardbert. As a game and as the one more relatable to IRL mortal me. Plus, even as much as I grew to like Venat and like what little we have so far of Erich and Themis, they aren't more interesting or entertaining or charismatic than all the cast of Sundered characters. So that boils down joining the Ascian plan/working to preserve the Unsundered world at the cost of the Sundered or not to its bare essence and why I choose what I will.

[Lauront]

Cool. And for some of us, we prefer the ancients. So choose what you will. Others will choose differently. It matters little because the story is written as it is regardless.

[Lauront]

This does not sound like animals being sacrificed to me.

Why would it? It is post-Sundering... so it clarifies nothing.

[Garnetiferous]

I wouldn't concede the point so quickly,

While I agree with you on some aspects I don't think saying that Emet is wrong requires saying that the sundering is justified. From the perspective of the sundered like the WoL, who had no choice in the matter, then he's wrong. He wants to destroy their world regardless of whether he has a good reason for it. And from the perspective of the sundered as we see with Ardbert and the WoL, separate pieces of the same soul behave as different people. So, those people are perfectly justified in saying to the Ascians, "even though the event that created us maybe shouldn't have happened, you don't have the right to tell us that we're mistakes and should die for the sake of your people". Even if we take the view that the sundering shouldn't have happened, 12000 years later, the already existing sundered have a right to defend themselves.

Regarding the sundering and its necessity, I've pretty much maintained a neutral stance on this because I feel like there's several questions that need to be answered before I can make a judgment on Venat's actions. Like, how long from the 2nd sacrifice was it until the sundering? What was Azem doing? What was the life that was to be sacrificed to bring back the ancients? Was it just plants and animals or was it creatures much like modern people? Either way I don't think it was morally correct to do so which even Venat admits herself, but the answers to some of the questions would clear things up for me in determining whether it was truly a necessity or not.