When are we supposed to stop fighting?

[SannaR]

They had more than 14 during that 2.x scene though. We also know from the Hythlodaeus shade that they hadn't refilled the seat. I highly doubt Emet would have secretly made the Azem crystal and then go and refill the seat using some random person. It also doesn't make sense as to why you'd want a person who's job practically is to go do what a WoL does. Especially when Elidibus was already occasionally doing that in order to try and keep some form of balance. Even if they had found a shard of Azem and tried to do what happened in the Eden storyline to them. I just don't see said shard agreeing with the rejoinings.

[EaraGrace]

This is where i’m confused. How exactly is Zodiark an easy solution? It required people sacrificing themselves for other to even create him. How exactly is that an easy solution compared to….the sundered having everything handed to them.

Zodiark was granted power beyond imagining, and was summoned with one intention, salvation. So long as He was an active presence in the world, He would do everything to answer the prayers of those living on Etheirys. Any issue, any conflict, any suffering he would act upon. We see this happen when Elidibus involuntarily comes to meet with us on the outskirts of the Crystarium. Even removed from him, Elidibus still possessed that all encompassing desire to answer the prayers and fears of those around him, though not strongly enough to make him abandon his mission. As I’m sure Venat realized, this creates a problem when faced with a being more powerful than Zodiark that cannot be defeated without overcoming suffering and despair with hope. Few given the choice would never choose the harder path, after all who would willingly choose to feel soul crushing grief or loss or pain if they didn’t have to? That’s why it’s the easy path.

From a goddess looking out for them in no way different than Zodiark tbh, to having time travel just thrown into their hands(an ancient had to sacrifice himself to make this possible by the way in case you forgot) and the spaceship we take was done again….via a higher up being.

Hydaelyn was removed from the wider world for most of Her existence, a myth and legend only interacted with in the most dire of circumstances. Did She offer aid? Sure. But never did She willingly engender worship, or shift peoples faith away from themselves and onto Her. The closest to what the Amaurotines were to Zodiark was the Church of Light on the First, and they’re as much Hydaelyn worshippers as the Nights Blessed are Zodiark believers.

And tell me how much use did the moon get after Zodiark fell?

The only thing you can really argue the sundered triumphed in were the ultima thule sequences, but they were able to come back, the ancients weren’t. The ancients had to content with the full force of the final days.They were barely able to handle the towers and the final days hitting some of the city states and thavnair/garlemald. The ancient final days was a world wide threat. The only difference being that the sundered final days actually resulted in peoples souls completely snuffed out with no hopes of reincarnation.

Whether there’s zero chance is debatable with the role quests. For most I’d agree there’s nothing to save though.

And what does that have to do with the triumph of the Sundered? The Ancients would not have survived Ultima Thule even should they have made it.

[Lauront]

The Final Days didn't warp their creations into Blasphemes. Rather Terminus Beasts were created through their magic being forcibly usurped and the concepts being siphoned from their minds against their will. The quote you posted is nothing but speculation of how it might work, and note that it's not saying that it afflicted their creations, but rather their magicks themselves.

Yep and it fails to account for how dynamis would even affect them to put them into a state of despair in the first place if it were not possible at all. The natural conclusion here is that the transformation is what their denser aether inhibits. We see the creations discussed here even before the incident spread like wildfire to the point that mass panic occurred, as incidents of "spontaneous creation". My guess is that that "readily" Hermes specifies is meant to be taken in conjunction with both the ability to manipulate dynamis, and to be affected by it, because the latter quite clearly is possible through rendering them in a state of despair in the first place. Indeed this is how it reads in the FR version, where it simply premises it as interaction with dynamis becoming easier if the aether is thinner.

Meanwhile the shade's description on it is emphatic:

Have you not heard? Though yet confined to the lands across the sea, a terrible phenomenon afflicts our star. They are calling it the “Final Days.”
'Tis said it starts suddenly, a cacophonous keening from beneath the earth. The sound distorts all living things within earshot, and wrests from us control of our creation magicks.
Once that happens, all is lost. Fear, pain, despair...every dread impulse is siphoned from our minds and given substance: an eternal fall of fiery rain; an incessant spawning of nightmarish beasts...
None can point to the source of the phenomenon. 'Tis as if the star itself has fallen ill─as if a force inimical to life now festers and spreads.
'Tis only a matter of time until Amaurot, too, resounds to that discordant squall. You should stay with your loved ones, child... Stay with them...

So I think that quote does not make the point that their creation magicks could not be affected (indeed, his own words contradict that) - all it seems to be saying is that it did not affect their bodies (and souls?) wholesale via transformations because of their denser aether. Emotional states, and yes, seemingly even control over creation magicks, could be affected. The ancients already knew they could accidentally create things sometimes (underscoring once more how natural this ability is to them) – so I doubt the loss of control would even have been seen as noteworthy if it were not for the precipitating factor (=keening) that led to it, as opposed to the usual accidental use of such magicks in situations of panic, shock etc. You could just drop it and attribute the loss of control to the despair - yet this isn't how it's described at all, hence this loss of control seems to be pivotal here as a differentiating factor.

The subterranean keening aspect appears to remain unexplained, and perhaps Pandaemonium may touch on it. The 1.0 CNJ quests detailed similar events with the elementals whereby their wrath results in a keening and they seize control over the will of man; the game is silent on the role of the elementals in the ancient world, to the extent that they even existed and, if they did, how they’d react to a sustained onslaught of despair beyond the rather ephemeral Final Days the current timeline saw. Possible red herring but I find it interesting.

[Lyth]

The Meteia are entelechies. They don't directly create despair themselves. They take the emotion that they encounter in others, amplify it, and give it form. You'll remember, for example, that Meteion enjoys candied apples, even though she cannot eat, because of the emotion she feels from Hermes when he does. If joy was the predominant ambient emotion that the Meteia had encountered on their travels, then we'd be fighting off sunshine and rainbows.

We know for a fact based on the in-game text that the Amaurotians can neither manipulate nor be manipulated by dynamis due to their aetheric density. If it was that easy, then they would have simply killed themselves like many of the other civilizations that the Meteia encountered. Their underlying emotions can still be perceived by entelechies, however. We know this from the Elpis bloom phenomenon. The Amaurotians' despair was their own, not Meteion's.

We also know that there always needs to be an initiating event to get the ball rolling. In Thavnair, Khalzahl's business fell on hard times and he lost a critical trade deal, causing him to go into abject despair. It's only after he transformed that the sky began to burn. Likewise, there would have needed to be an initiating event in Amaurotian society, where someone's despair got the best of them, leading to the creation of the first terminus beasts.

The Amaurotians themselves tell you that it's quite common to accidentally give form to an altered concept based off of the workings of your unconscious mind. In some cases, this leads to a fortuitous discovery. With Meteion's influence, however, none of that was safe. Nor, I suspect, were any of their existing creations, while we're at it. Perhaps even moreso given that Lahabrea's group were experimenting with merging souls with creation magic at precisely the wrong time. Who knows what happens if a less aetherically dense construct fused with an Amaurotian soul, like a hemitheos, catches the dynamis flu. I wouldn't be surprised if the raid series elaborates on this further.

[KageTokage]

The subterranean keening aspect appears to remain unexplained, and perhaps Pandaemonium may touch on it. The 1.0 CNJ quests detailed similar events with the elementals whereby their wrath results in a keening and they seize control over the will of man; the game is silent on the role of the elementals in the ancient world, to the extent that they even existed and, if they did, how they’d react to a sustained onslaught of despair beyond the rather ephemeral Final Days the current timeline saw. Possible red herring but I find it interesting.

I kind of feel like that's a plot thread that they might latch onto going into the future, because there was a noticeable lack of the natural disasters that were tearing the world apart that were present with the original Final Days, which to me suggests they might've been coming from somewhere else. Either things simply didn't progress far enough to trigger them, or worse, we haven't actually seen them manifest yet.

The prophetic words of the Golden Dyhata suggesting the Lifestream itself will eventually be responsible for widespread disaster is something that raises particular concern to me.

[RyuDragnier]

I kind of feel like that's a plot thread that they might latch onto going into the future, because there was a noticeable lack of the natural disasters that were tearing the world apart that were present with the original Final Days, which to me suggests they might've been coming from somewhere else. Either things simply didn't progress far enough to trigger them, or worse, we haven't actually seen them manifest yet.

The prophetic words of the Golden Dyhata suggesting the Lifestream itself will eventually be responsible for widespread disaster is something that raises particular concern to me.

I feel the same too. If Pandaemonium does not cover this, then it's very likely this is what Azem was off doing during Zodiark and Hydaelyn and the Sundering. If this also leads to what was originally causing the weakening of the Aether as well, then we have an underlying link for things. Especially considering how the FSH quest for the Studium pointed out how the fish ended up going all over the place into regions they're not supposed to be with Zodiark's death, the aethercurrents went out of whack with his departure.

[KageTokage]

It's more that the world is attempting to return to its natural state since Zodiark was redirecting aether into the heavens to form a ward against the dynamis. It seems extremely unlikely that such a shift won't have deeper repercussions then simply causing aether sickness in wildlife present in regions where the aether levels are increasing.

The "serpent shedding its skin of old" that the dhyata mentions could be referring to that and it was also mentioned that anomalies were being detected within the Lifestream in the same questline, so this really feels like another calm before a storm.

As for how it could end up leading to future conflict, I feel the source of the problem might be isolated to Meracydia or the New World and we'll inevitably end up getting entangled in their political matters trying to get at it.

[Veloran]

We know for a fact based on the in-game text that the Amaurotians can neither manipulate nor be manipulated by dynamis due to their aetheric density. If it was that easy, then they would have simply killed themselves like many of the other civilizations that the Meteia encountered. Their underlying emotions can still be perceived by entelechies, however. We know this from the Elpis bloom phenomenon. The Amaurotians' despair was their own, not Meteion's.

Just before this you said Meteion takes despair and amplifies it. She had the accumulated despair of hundreds if not thousands of dead and dying worlds at her disposal to inflict upon the Ancients. Even if you want to say that she was only amplifying their despair, which is clearly not all there is to it, that's still manipulating them. And we know that in truth they could manipulate and be manipulated by it, as evidenced by Meteion and the Elpis flower being capable of reading their emotions, which is facilitated by a Dynamis reaction.

The Amaurotians themselves tell you that it's quite common to accidentally give form to an altered concept based off of the workings of your unconscious mind.

Yes. When attempting to utilize creation magic. You do understand that you are insisting here that the Ancients created millions of horrific monsters which set to killing them because they were just so stubborn and stupid that they couldn't recognize that "trying to use creation magic = death", right?

[RyuDragnier]

It's more that the world is attempting to return to its natural state since Zodiark was redirecting aether into the heavens to form a ward against the dynamis. It seems extremely unlikely that such a shift won't have deeper repercussions then simply causing aether sickness in wildlife present in regions where the aether levels are increasing.

The "serpent shedding its skin of old" that the dhyata mentions could be referring to that and it was also mentioned that anomalies were being detected within the Lifestream in the same questline, so this really feels like another calm before a storm.

As for how it could end up leading to future conflict, I feel the source of the problem might be isolated to Meracydia or the New World and we'll inevitably end up getting entangled in their political matters trying to get at it.

If not isolated, then cases could end up showing up in both regions as a showing of the Lifestream's changing, perhaps leading to a new world ending threat (if the devs so wished to escalate again). If not, then it'll be a simple case of "go to this region, fix its aether."

[KageTokage]

The prophecy did mention that there would need to be multiple stakes driven into the figurative serpent's back.

That could be the reason for our zone-hopping in the next expansion, or it could be a much longer term process with us needing to scour the entire world for anomalies as the next story arc.

It would be all the more fitting if it turns out that was the mysterious task the original Azem had seemingly devoted themselves to doing in lieu of taking sides in the Hydaelyn/Zodiark conflict, but ultimately was not able to fulfill due to the Sundering throwing a wrench in things.