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

Originally Posted by Kordarion

If an ancient has to become a primal, merge themselves with a mythic beast or cheat death by going to an in-between world when they should be returning to the aetherial sea to become immortal it doesn't mean they are naturally immortal. If a modern human found a way to become immortal that only affected themselves you wouldn't go around saying that all modern humans are immortal would you? To be fair whatever it is that the unsundered did to return after death could be something inherent to all ancients but as far as I am aware there is nothing that says it is.

Also you are sort of right when you say they don't die when their physical bodies do. As evident by Emet, Hythlodaeus and sundered like Livia, Ilberd, Minfillia and others when people in FF14 die they do remain themselves in the aetherial sea for a time, but evidently they don't permanently remain the same person in the aetherial sea as otherwise every character we meet would be able remember their past lives and the sundering memory loss wouldn't matter after a generation. Not to mention their are real world religions where when you die you still exist as yourself in the afterlife so that doesn't mean existence after death means you never died.

In a scene in The Ocular in Shadowbringers, Emet outright says that his own longevity is nothing unique, and there was a time when everyone could expect to be able to live as long.

"I do not claim we Ascians are special. That is another misconception. In the beginning, everyone - everyone lived nigh for eternity. Such was the natural order of things."

Originally Posted by Lyth

Stock villain speech aside, it's a bit of a strange boast to be making in the company of a couple of other supposed 'gods'. If the Ancients are all immortal to begin with, then why is that so special? Why does that quality make him, specifically, a 'demi-god'?

The Ancients are mortal insofar as they are all flesh and blood - they might have essentially perpetual longevity, but as we see in Akadaemia Anyder, being mauled by a fish monster will still do them in. Implicitly, Hesperos is talking about ascending to a state where his power is such that he can no longer be killed.