Sundering stuff established in the Q&A

[polyphonica]

See, THIS is the Venat I love. That's why I said in one of my previous post that pre-elpis venat and post-elpis venat are written for different story directions. Pre-elpis venat is the one who says "[the Ancients] are flawed, but I'm going to save it, warts and all" and "nothing is impossible". She's the one who had traveled the world, find the beauty of both her world and people, and want to save it. Meanwhile post-elpis venat is written more as "the end justify the means". If the sundering had a term&condition that explains how it comes with the risk of rejoining and how sparing emet would significantly increase that risk, she definitely read and tick the box. Even if she meant for emet to survive for his role in ultima Thule alone (though it's near impossible since she can't predict that far), it doesn't change the fact she accepted the chance for rejoining to happen.

I think one of the biggest differences between Emet-Selch and Venat in this context is what they consider "their people." It's also tied to the wider conversation about how Ancients viewed death. Emet-Selch says that post-sundered people's aether is so weak he doesn't consider them fully alive, and believes they'd stand no chance against the Final Days (until he finally decides to give them a chance at the end of 5.0). But for Venat, she views sundering as a sort of limiter she's placing on her people that in turn gives them the potential to find hope amidst despair and face Endsinger. So Venat still very much considers sundered life "her people" -- they are souls of the Ancients in new form. Because of the lifestream and the reincarnation of souls, sundering keeps her people alive, as opposed to the alternative proposed of sacrificing more life to Zodiark (which keeps their souls trapped, and might not lead them any closer to a solution). Even the rejoinings, while unbelievably tragic, still result in the joining of souls -- death is only transient, so long as she can preserve the cycle of rebirth (and not allow the Ascians to accomplish their ultimate goals).

But the other point here is... even having accepted that she wouldn't be able to stop suffering from occurring didn't mean she could just let it happen unchallenged. Her power was weaker than Zodiark to begin with and more limited after the sundering, but she had to assume that all those bad things happened despite her best, most earnest efforts to stop it. If she had just accepted the inevitability of what we told her and done nothing to intervene in all the years (acting purely on faith that the future was inevitable and would work itself out), that could also have broken the time loop and made things even worse for us (or resulted in everyone just killing themselves off or otherwise not surviving to be able to face Meteion). So given that she didn't know exactly what she did in all those intervening years, she had to always strive fervently to nurture hope despite having birthed a world of suffering.

Personally I don't think there's a discrepancy in pre-Elpis and post-Elpis Venat, provided you can accept that she considered this to be the "nothing is impossible" best way to save her world and her people -- that she earnestly believed the only way forward was to accept the "I acknowledge all must suffer to have the best chance to save the future" checkbox. And yeah, as Yoshida said, that's one heck of an agreement for her to unilaterally sign on behalf of the entire planet, but in the end she proved that it was at least "a" path forward. (I would still also point out again that this was a path that Emet-Selch himself had opened for her to pursue as well through his actions in Ktisis Hyperboreia; he knew that this is one of the possible futures that could result, even though he didn't want to believe it.)

Perhaps you could also say that, if you follow the sort of multiverse of time-travel theory, we live in the future where she did pick this path, and so that makes her a hero from our point of view (because otherwise we wouldn't be alive). But perhaps there are a whole lot of parallel time dimensions where she made different choices, some of which worked out in a different way, some of which ended with the Ancients calling for Ra-la to kill them. We can't ever know those other paths because, from our point of view, those other paths never existed. Who is to say that we live in the "perfect future," but it is a future where we exist, faced the Final Days, and lived on to tell the tale -- so, from our (the WoL and friends') point of view, it's the good end.

[RyuDragnier]

I find it really jarring they won't tell us what happened to Azem just to preserve people's self inserted role play over critical lore elements that control the entire plot of the game. It's really frustrating to not receive answers because some people might have their immersion broken over it. The fact headcanon is left to Azem's fate, really upsets me as a person who has done extensive lore research over the subject.

I'm wondering whether or not that's the actual reason, or if they can't tell us for a reason because it may tie in with whatever plans they have for the next ongoing story arc. They said they haven't written out what's coming next in full yet, but I'm pretty sure there are a few things on the table for ideas, what Azem was doing among them.

[Iscah]

I find it really jarring they won't tell us what happened to Azem just to preserve people's self inserted role play over critical lore elements that control the entire plot of the game. It's really frustrating to not receive answers because some people might have their immersion broken over it. The fact headcanon is left to Azem's fate, really upsets me as a person who has done extensive lore research over the subject.

You could look at it the other way up: because they won't set in stone what Azem is doing, it isn't a critical lore element so we're not missing out on anything.

G'raha managed to rewrite the future so its highly probable that Azem thought they could do it too. Infact anyone that knows what the future holds would attempt to rewrite it so this is probably what happened. Azem likely didn't interfere with Zodiark or Hydalyn because they probably never found a solution of their own and time was of essence.

Firstly that depends on Venat telling Azem that there is a future to be rewritten, which she may or may not have done, depending on what she said to convince Azem to the cause and what she intended to withhold until they were within her circle of confidence.

Secondly, there isn't a really clear thing for Azem to do in response. Even if they know about Meteion they have no clear thing to do about an intergalactic threat, and still have the physical limitations of an Ancient being unable to track Meteion down if she intends to hide.

And ultimately, if they did succeed and avert the Final Days and the need for Zodiark and Hydaelyn? We wouldn't know. From the perspective of that "saved" timeline, everything we know is to them the equivalent of the Eighth Umbral Era timeline to us: an alternate branch of time that will never come to pass for them, but nevertheless continues to exist and even supports the existence of their better timeline.

(At least, hopefully it's a better timeline and Venat wasn't right about their civilisation being doomed to universal stagnation and apathy if they continued. Which is a very caricatured way of thinking to begin with, but it seems to be all over Endwalker as conceivable to happen to countless civilisations already.)

[Brinne]

I think it’s very possible to reconcile Venat’s words in Elpis with her actions in attempting to adhere to the timeline, to the point of knowingly encouraging the Rejoinings by letting the Unsundered live. It’s a matter of understanding that her broader goals never changed, but her tactics did in response to the Ancients disappointing her.

Venat, fundamentally, is an ideologue. Her sense of love and wonder is sincere and true, but she is a big-picture person in the extreme, who thinks in the abstract. When she says she loves, it’s not of any specific person or thing. It’s love of “humanity’s potential.” It’s love of “a flawed world,” of “mankind’s ability to find a way forward,” - a particular way of seeing the world that she believes only she, at this point, has, that she waxes poetic about in her big speech leading up to her question of her journey. Our Azem is quoted as describing her as "both close and incredibly distant," "akin to a force of nature," and that seems very apt. She also admits that she, like Hermes, is dissatisfied with the world order as it exists now – she wants others to see the world as she does. To welcome struggle and strife and flaws and therefore, in her eyes, truly treasure the “miracle of creation.”

Connecting her to Hermes, in terms of her dissatisfaction with the world and taking it upon herself to force it to change, in that sense, basically makes everything fall into place. People have pointed out Venat gives some vague lip service in the aftermath of Ktisis about why she can’t warn the Convocation – before she lands on the conclusion that “actually, mankind must pass Hermes’s test.” Venat, like Hermes, wanted a fundamental change in her society, and was hoping that the Final Days would trigger that change – so that they would, like her, learn to love “a world with flaws,” a world “with warts and all.”

The way Hermes sent out the Meteia in hopes that he would discover an outside answer for a better way for the world to exist? Venat actually got exactly that, dropped into her lap – in the form of the WoL. It’s clear she completely falls in love with us and the picture we paint of our world. She’s constantly showering praise about how, despite the state of the world, we’re so resilient and strong, more than she dared hope, and our world sounds so exciting, so full of hardship, and yet the beauty of people enduring it.

Boiling it down, all of her praise and wonder at us, connected with her future actions, comes down to “the Sundered world sounds ideologically awesome to me, the more I see and hear about it from WoL.” See her insistence in her speech that accepting suffering (like the WoL does!) would lead to the path of "finding true happiness" - as opposed to the more shallow, fake happiness she seems to believe her people held prior to that point.

Largely because of her interactions with us, the portrait she receives of someone from “a flawed world full of suffering,” Venat further romanticizes the idea of beauty and strength in the face of struggle and suffering. She sees that version of the world as more exciting, more appealing than the one she lives in now, which she sees as misguided and indolent – she already had, hence her being extremely receptive to hearing Meteion’s two-sentence description of the Plenty, and deciding the Ancients were on the same path based on that.

Her goal was always to create a world like the one she heard the WoL describe, that she fell in love with through their stories. But again, Venat is a big-picture, thinking-in-the-abstract kind of person. She wasn’t necessarily pursuing the WoL’s exact, specific world from the onset. She was initially hoping that the Ancients would convert to her viewpoint in the wake of the Final Days – have a deep, divine-feeling revelation, the way she had. That they could organically agree to live in a world and in conditions similar to that of the Sundered one. And, yes, to her own beliefs, one that stood a better chance of standing up to a threat akin to Meteion. When they refused, she switched her tactics to pursue the literal realization of the WoL’s world by signing off on and pursuing their exact timeline.

(Sucks for the Rejoined shards! But again, according to Venat's way of thinking, there is no concrete sacrifice not worth making if it means "mankind" can "find a way forward" as a whole.)

[Skyborne]

...

Pretty much, and why I personally dislike her/the writing around her. And the poor WoL, who ended up causing all of this.

[polyphonica]

(Sucks for the Rejoined shards! But again, according to Venat's way of thinking, there is no concrete sacrifice not worth making if it means "mankind" can "find a way forward" as a whole.)

In the end, it ends up just being a question of what the sacrifice should be and what should be the result. They basically all believed that there is no concrete sacrifice not worth making for the sake of Etheirys's future, but disagreed about what that future should look like.

The key fork in the road here happened when the Convocation decided they were ready to seed and sacrifice all non-Ancient life on the star to bring back their own past sacrifices. If they did that, how does that get them any closer to beating Meteion? Doesn't it entirely prove the reason for Hermes's own despair with Ancient society to begin with (at how little they valued the lives of those they considered inferior to themselves)? Doesn't it strongly support the argument their that their own decadence was leading to their inevitable downfall regardless? So it's at that point (to counter the third sacrifice-to-Zodiark plan) she decides that pursuing the sundering path that led to the WoL was the more hopeful option. She was told about the rejoined shards she wouldn't be able to save, but better that (and to have their souls rejoined) than to kill all other life on the planet just to appease what is essentially the Ancients' inability to accept the pain of loss.

I'm not so sure that all this is because she became enamored with the WoL to exactly the degree stated, but at the very least she saw a path with potential there, despite knowing the cost it'd take to reach it. So the decision she had to make was to weigh the cost of that path (and all the sacrifices involved) with the cost and likely result of the path the main faction was pursuing. They were all gambling with lives at an unbelievable scale. With respect to the criticisms offered, perhaps it could have helped to spend more time covering that interim period, all the alternate things that were tried, and exactly what led to Venat realizing she had no choice but to go this way. (Clearly it wasn't her first choice because she let the Convocation do the first two rounds of sacrifices to the Zodiark; she wanted them first and foremost to pass Hermes's trial on their own. But the third round was the bridge too far.)

[Kozh]

snip

I can see where you're coming from, and at the very end, I also can accept how pre-elpis venat is the same post-Elpis Venat. Sort of. I'm still disappointed though >

If I have to guess, I think my disappointment with the story writing and direction may influence how I see post-Elpis Venat a little bit. Because when I was nearly done with elpis, I was doing it with the mindset that is "multiple timeline is a thing", due to ShB. Imagine my surprise when they decided to have the story as strict closed time-loop. Not only that, it's done with a very poor "yeah your friends got amnesia, and the other person who knows about it decided to keep quiet about it because reasons".

And the plan thing she was talking about? We ended up never truly seeing it. Not even a single flashback scene during the wormhole thingy. All we got from the final days montage is apparently venat had decided to do "it's for the greater good". Ever since anamnesis anyder, what plan or action her faction did? Because if we only use the information provided, they're only doing talking and preaching. I would prefer if they at least show how she tried to gather scholars who knew about dynamis, maybe even tried to research dynamis herelf. Show her being frustrated at how her every attempt to harness dynamis or reaching meteion ended up in dead end.

And this hasn't even touched on the subject of her keeping silent about meteion and let her people got surprised by the final days is just... Very dumb imo. She wants to prevent panic? Cool, then at least told them after zodiark was summoned. She's basically doing the pitch meeting thing

Venat: guys, we need to accept death and despair
The Ancients: but why?
Venat: because!
The Ancients: that works! (that's what she hope)

Sorry this turn into more rant, but I'm really frustrated by her and EW writing. And how the game skimmed over her "sins", just like how they often did to any questionable decision made by the protagonists/the good guys.


But uh, hey, at least she has armiger though, which is the best thing from her existence. I'm willing to sacrifice my first newborn to yoshi-p so he decides to make armiger system into a proper ff14 job XD

[Kozh]

The key fork in the road here happened when the Convocation decided they were ready to seed and sacrifice all non-Ancient life on the star to bring back their own past sacrifices. If they did that, how does that get them any closer to beating Meteion? Doesn't it entirely prove the reason for Hermes's own despair with Ancient society to begin with (at how little they valued the lives of those they considered inferior to themselves)? Doesn't it strongly support the argument their that their own decadence was leading to their inevitable downfall regardless?

Because they never learned about meteion? Or even the story message of the ra-la society? They fully believe the Final Days was some sort of freaky natural phenomenon originated from the star itself, that has zero relationships to their way of living.

As I have ask many times before, how do you expect people to change if they doesn't even fully understand why their action is "bad". (honestly, it's only bad if we applied our standard as a mortal to what essentially an immortal fantasy race)

Clearly it wasn't her first choice because she let the Convocation do the first two rounds of sacrifices to the Zodiark; she wanted them first and foremost to pass Hermes's trial on their own.

No, she let them because sundering or no, zodiark is needed for them to survive.

[polyphonica]

And the plan thing she was talking about? We ended up never truly seeing it. Not even a single flashback scene during the wormhole thingy. All we got from the final days montage is apparently venat had decided to do "it's for the greater good". Ever since anamnesis anyder, what plan or action her faction did? Because if we only use the information provided, they're only doing talking and preaching. I would prefer if they at least show how she tried to gather scholars who knew about dynamis, maybe even tried to research dynamis herelf. Show her being frustrated at how her every attempt to harness dynamis or reaching meteion ended up in dead end.

I can respect why you felt that way, even though I honestly didn't feel it to the same degree in my own playthroughs.

Especially, I can see where it might make sense for the story to spend a bit more time covering that interim period rather than doing a montage. The montage, for example, makes it look like in the end this was a decision Venat made on her own, but we know there was a societal disagreement and she had her own faction supporting her as well. And yes, we don't see what other things Venat and her faction tried, what efforts they went through to try to convince people to go a different way, or of course what Azem was doing in all this (as others mentioned). We can probably assume that, if they had made the decision to spread this story over multiple patches or expansions, they could have spent more time developing all these points, but the montage serves as a sort of summary that leaves a lot unsaid and left to assumption. And for all of us who like to dig into the details of lore, these areas left to assumption and "connect the dots" can be frustrating.


But on this one point...

And this hasn't even touched on the subject of her keeping silent about meteion and let her people got surprised by the final days is just... Very dumb imo. She wants to prevent panic? Cool, then at least told them after zodiark was summoned. She's basically doing the pitch meeting thing

For this one thing, I honestly feel like I can justify it, at least if I think about it from a personal point of view. If I were the only one with a tenuous link to the future that I think has a chance of providing an emergency way out, I would be deathly afraid of doing anything that could sever that link. Going off in a bold different direction using the future knowledge she had could create any number of alternate futures that could be infinitely worse. She outlined some of the reasons why that could be the case, but to me it's broader than that -- she knew that, in the future you came from, Emet-Selch didn't know about the cause of the Final Days (because he told you as much in Amaurot). If she were going to tell anyone on the Convocation what happened, it'd basically have to be Emet-Selch given his involvement in the affair. When you're already gambling with the lives of the entire planet, choosing the "evil you know" can get to the point where it's a lot less risky. After Emet-Selch let her escape and they agreed to Hermes's "fair" trial (albeit IMO in utterly unfair circumstances), I think she would basically consider it her job to be the one person protecting that escape route, even if it meant keeping secrets. (And I think that's consistent with her justification for the other secrets she kept from us along the way.)

But still, I can see where here too if the story could have spent more time on this point, developing these arguments and concerns and showing clearly how she aggravated over this 'till the last second (for example), it could have helped for those who felt her decision felt arbitrary or unreasonable. And I can also see where people say that it's the WoL's own presence in Elpis that created this unreasonable imposition upon her (that led her to feel compelled to choose us over the millions of other possible options that could have been explored). In that sense, I can see why some dislike the "going to the past to write our future" plot twist of Elpis.


So anyway... on the whole, at least I feel like I better understand the argument now. I think there's room for criticism in every story, but how much each factor weighs is different in all of us.


Edit: Oh just to add this point:

Because they never learned about meteion? Or even the story message of the ra-la society? They fully believe the Final Days was some sort of freaky natural phenomenon originated from the star itself, that has zero relationships to their way of living.

As I have ask many times before, how do you expect people to change if they doesn't even fully understand why their action is "bad". (honestly, it's only bad if we applied our standard as a mortal to what essentially an immortal fantasy race)

I'm not necessarily sure I can offer clear agreement or disagreement here, honestly, but it's at least interesting to look at Hermes's trial conditions more closely: "If [mankind] can learn to value all life and retain his will to live, even should his end be justified, he will surely find a way to avert his demise. If not, he will perish from the star." This is the core realization that Hermes himself had come to in his time as Overseer of Elpis, and he put himself on "Team Ancient" under the same memory wipe conditions. That was, in his view, what made the trial fair. So was this really a test of the depth of his own convictions, and whether they would hold even after his memories of those few days were lost?

I personally do think that the trial conditions were inherently unfair. Even though I believe that Ancient Hermes was trying whole-heartedly to save the world, his conditions put them at a disadvantage all along and could never recover from. For Hermes to presumably go along with the "sacrifice all other life" plan, he himself failed his trial (although we didn't see that debate occur so can't be 100% sure of his viewpoint). But, also, I don't believe that Venat telling them the truth was a prudent decision given that Emet-Selch had purposefully let her (and the WoL) escape to guard that knowledge/possibility. Either way you're taking an unbelievable risk, but as I said above, I can understand why she chose to guard the one path she knew rather than risking severing that link for unknown possibilities. But I 100% respect that others can't see it that way, and that the story could have shown more to justify it.

No, she let them because sundering or no, zodiark is needed for them to survive.

Well, I'd say it's likely both here, although I realize the lack of it clearly being shown means you have to infer. I certainly don't think I could assume that Venat was actively hoping that they would fail all along so that she could bring about her sundering plan, or that her decision to not reveal the future was because she was deliberately trying to sabotage them. Otherwise, why bother showing her in the montage trying to convince her people to go a different way before she did what she did. But certainly as their actions led them down the ordained path, she would have eventually realized she had to keep walking down it.

[Rulakir]

If I have to guess, I think my disappointment with the story writing and direction may influence how I see post-Elpis Venat a little bit. Because when I was nearly done with elpis, I was doing it with the mindset that is "multiple timeline is a thing", due to ShB. Imagine my surprise when they decided to have the story as strict closed time-loop. Not only that, it's done with a very poor "yeah your friends got amnesia, and the other person who knows about it decided to keep quiet about it because reasons".

Same. Having never done Alexander, the only time travel I knew of in FFXIV was from ShB, so when Elpis did not split into an alternate timeline and instead was a loop (which I hate), I was frustrated and disappointed. Even moreso because, like you said, due to the BS mind wiping plot device. The whole thing felt so contrived to produce a 'full circle'.

As I have ask many times before, how do you expect people to change if they doesn't even fully understand why their action is "bad".

Exactly. The Plenty may have been their vision of the direction the Ancients were headed, but that was without the knowledge that they needed to change anything about themselves. It was also likely without the Final Days as well. The trauma of that event was seared onto their souls, their society wasn't going to be able to go back to the way it was regardless of how much they wished it. They were still going to have to deal with having collectively experienced an apocalypse together.

Not to mention that we don't know that Zodiark could've brought anyone back to life, he may have only been able to release the souls back to the star to be reborn. There are simply too many unknowns to be able to accept Venat's gamble, which in itself was problematic since 12k+ years into the future you have the WoL having to travel back in time because we still don't don't how to avert the Final Days (and still came close to not managing it when all was said and done).