Thread: The Reasoning behind The Sundering? (*6.0 Endwalker Spoilers*)

Originally Posted by Tsiron

So the current races are not the "new life"... but then Yoshida revealing that they all "evolved" after the Sundering feels like a pretty big fuck up? Why are they the same on the First (and, I assume, the other Shards) then...? There's no longer a reason or explanation

(I will not accept "convergent evolution" as the explanation)

Yeah... I'd rather hear what Oda/Ishikawa/Koji has to say on that. Several of his answers in the Q&A he mentioned he had Oda or Ishikawa help on, like the one about Venat's thoughts on the Ancients, but that one felt like he just said whatever was on his mind without thinking about it all the way. The Mystel do seem different from the Miqo'te in that their gender ratio is evenly split, but otherwise they're completely the same and it's a bit weird to give what he gave as an answer when a lot of the other answers were much more detailed and thought out.

I feel like having the player races be the "new life" that was going to be sacrificed to resurrect and free the Ancients that summoned Zodiark would have been an elegant if dark solution to our creation. It would kind of obviate Emet-Selch's blustering about how we weren't people because we were sundered, if the Ancients didn't view us as real people to begin with, however.

I can't help but wonder if perhaps the Sharlayans are aware of the origin of the races but classified it as sensitive information that needed to be kept under lock and key in their forbidden archives.

There's a rather significant gap in recorded history prior to the fourth astral/umbral era, but they evidently do possess tomes that are believed to hail from the eras prior to that.

Originally Posted by Cleretic

Actually, I think that of all zones in the game, the Thavnair revisit is the one where the WoL is the least influential on the eventual positive result. All we really did was kill the Blasphemy (even then not solo), which didn't exactly do a whole lot in the short term. The real contributors to overcoming the End of Days--which is much more a psychological battle than anything--are Vrtra, Ahewann, Matsya and Estinien. And Estinien was mostly just Vrtra's moral support.

There's a good few zones and side stories where the story can essentially boil down to 'it's a good thing Superman turned up', but the Thavnair revisit is perhaps the one that has that going on the least, we're mostly just seeing Thavnair handle itself. Hell, we don't even get full credit for the baby save, that's a three to five person job depending on if you give the twins an assist credit. I think Y'shtola has more influence on the story in that stretch than we do, and her contribution is 'being blind'.

And Vrtra is hardly an external factor in Thavnair. He's a Thavnairian citizen as much as anyone else, and doesn't actually contribute by way of 'being a dragon', he contributes by way of being a trusted leader who steps up when he needs to.

Afaik, the baby only survived because we showed up. Afaik, Matsya only survived because we were there to hold the monsters off from the baby while Matsya ran off. Which, afaik, Matsya only survived because of Vrtra showing up. And again, we have an entire settlement and then clearly some more considering the amount of blasphemies in the sky that seem to show the majority of thavnair turned. Hell, one of them turned because a business inquiry went sour and the guy was scared of losing his job. That’s how susceptible they were.

That's truly a bizarre interpretation. Suffering is an emotional state that occurs in response to pain. It's internal, not external. Amaurot wasn't a society of emotionless robots.

Originally Posted by Lyth

That's truly a bizarre interpretation. Suffering is an emotional state that occurs in response to pain. It's internal, not external. Amaurot wasn't a society of emotionless robots.

I'm not sure how it would qualify as 'bizarre'. Perhaps you could read my post again? I specifically stated:

Originally Posted by Theodric

I'd also note that suffering wasn't a natural part of life in the way in which it was introduced, either.

I didn't suggest that the Ancients were a society of emotionless robots, either - so I'm not sure where that claim is coming from.

People aren't obligated to just go along with whatever tragedy subversive societal elements decide to inflict upon everybody else, especially if they're in a position to mitigate said event.

Suffering was always a part of life because even the Amaurotians had emotions. It was never 'introduced'. It was always there. It will always be there as long as you're writing about a human society.

Originally Posted by Lyth

Suffering was always a part of life because even the Amaurotians had emotions. It was never 'introduced'. It was always there. It will always be there as long as you're writing about a human society.

You seem to be misinterpreting my point. Again, please pay attention to the bolded statement:

Originally Posted by Theodric

I'd also note that suffering wasn't a natural part of life in the way in which it was introduced, either.

I'm not suggesting that suffering wasn't present in the Ancient world. We've seen that it was. I'm explicitly pointing out that both the Final Days and the Sundering were not natural events. They were sprung upon the Ancients entirely out of the blue and they had no obligation to just go along with it. Much in the same way as how if our world was reduced to ruin by a zombie apocalypse or a nuclear war, it wouldn't be reasonable to stop people from trying to rebuild what was lost.

Your designation of events as 'not natural' is artificial in itself. Bad things happen. There doesn't have to be some higher meaning behind them. That's life. We pick up the pieces and we move on. People rebuilt, in their own way.