Tale of Emet [FF14 x Nier Reincarnation event story]

[Jandor]

Long, long ago, in an age now past, this star was as paradise.

Men knew naught of fear, loss, despair...

With lifetimes unto eternity, their days were peaceful and bright.

-----

Of its magic were born myriad creations.

Mankind's spires towered proud, their stones never to crumble.

Even the dark of night would softly smile to see the shining crystal nestled within.

-----

Within those walls, the people laughed and loved to their hearts' content.

-----

A solitary man stands in the street.

His robes are black, as is the custom.
Only the mask concealing his face differs from the other's in shape and color.

It marks this man as a leader.
He is a most powerful mage.

-----

"Early as always, I see."

Beside the man, a companion appears.
A beloved and trusted friend.

Soon, another will arrive, and the trio will revel until dawn.

Just as they have time and time again.

----

This age, now long past...

will always be his paradise.

The end arrives all too suddenly.

-----

Calamity swallows the star.

Meteors rain in cataclysmic deluge as if to scour away all life.

Land buckles; cities burn; blood flows.

-----

The powerful mage and his clever fellows create a god that will stabilize the star.

...Sacrificing half of mankind to do it.

The dark god they birth does its work.

-----

When the danger has passed, the people gaze upon their ruined world.

"We must put this right."
"We shall return to paradise."

They further sacrifice unto their god.

-----

Yet some would oppose them...

"We must move forward."
"What's done is done; the future awaits."

These souls create a brighter god to challenge the others' dark deity.

-----

The gods clash for days without end.

At last, the Light of the future-the bright god emerges victorious.

-----

The decisive blow is so strong, it sunders both Darkness and the star...

-----

Thus does one world become fourteen.

Unnngh... Aaah...

Pitiful moaning of malformed creatures...

They can no longer shape words.
Language, culture, knowledge-forgotten.

-----

Such an outcome is unbearable.

The man throws himself into restoring his star, his people... his paradise.

-----

Decades... Centuries... Millennia pass.

As he works tirelessly, the wretched creatures begin to learn.

They speak in new tongues.
They worship new gods.
They forge new histories.

-----

He looks upon this and is repulsed.

These wretches are fragile and weak.
They can barely comprehend magic.

Ignorant, intolerant, misbegotten husks.
Fighting each other without aim or end.

Their pitiable lives are fleeting.
In the simplest of ways, they die and die.

-----

Yet they claim the mantle of "mankind"?

He looks upon this and is repulsed.

No matter what he does...
No matter how much time passes...

The hatred and heartbreak remain.

Long, long years have passed since the star and its people were sundered...

Yet the man still lives...

Still fights to reclaim his paradise.

-----

At times, he mingles with the wretches, assuming false names and false lives.

Today is no different.
With borrowed eyes, he scorns the world.

-----

Back curled under exhaustion.
Sigh harmonic to a heavy countenance.

Before him stands a cluster of miscreants.

Gaze shrewd enough to pierce the spirit, the man spots a familiar hue...

The precise color of an old friend's soul.
A broken relic of paradise...

-----

But he has already passed an eternity with hope and grief.

He has watched them die. Forgotten them.

-----

Now, he simply does what can be done.

Grasping the last wisp of a dream that stubbornly fails to fade.

-----

A lone player in this tale of the star - his monologue an elegy.

Transcript of the video, let me know if I missed anything.

[Iscah]

"Unnngh...Aaah..."

Pitiful moaning of malformed creatures...

They can no longer shape words.
Language, culture, knowledge--forgotten....

Even though that is inarguably what has been written, it doesn't sit right with me, because we have demonstratable proof that they were not so thoroughly reduced to unintelligibity – specifically, the paintings in the Qitana Ravel.

Either people retained both enough memory and artistic skill to record these images as first-generation Sundered, or they possessed the ability to retell it to their children and pass it into legend.

If they were truly reduced to nothing of their former selves, that story could not have survived.

At worst, they could have been in a situation where they had lost language but retained intelligence – but is it alternately possible that Emet, being still unsundered, simply perceives it as thinned down compared to himself? As if everything that was once solid has turned to smoke, voices muted to the slightest whisper? But perhaps it doesn't seem quite the same way to those caught up in it.

It just doesn't add up – and while it's not the first time that Emet's account in Shadowbringers has been contradicted, this time it is another story from his own perspective and not someone else's conflicting understanding.

[sidurgu-12]

Even though that is inarguably what has been written, it doesn't sit right with me, because we have demonstratable proof that they were not so thoroughly reduced to unintelligibity – specifically, the paintings in the Qitana Ravel.

Either people retained both enough memory and artistic skill to record these images as first-generation Sundered, or they possessed the ability to retell it to their children and pass it into legend.

If they were truly reduced to nothing of their former selves, that story could not have survived.

At worst, they could have been in a situation where they had lost language but retained intelligence – but is it alternately possible that Emet, being still unsundered, simply perceives it as thinned down compared to himself? As if everything that was once solid has turned to smoke, voices muted to the slightest whisper? But perhaps it doesn't seem quite the same way to those caught up in it.

It just doesn't add up – and while it's not the first time that Emet's account in Shadowbringers has been contradicted, this time it is another story from his own perspective and not someone else's conflicting understanding.

could be that anything less than pre sundering automatically looks less than human and any precieved intelligence is ignored.
edit: or it could be a largely non canon story written for another game.

[Rulakir]

Even though that is inarguably what has been written, it doesn't sit right with me, because we have demonstratable proof that they were not so thoroughly reduced to unintelligibity – specifically, the paintings in the Qitana Ravel.

Y'shtola says the paintings predate the Ronkan empire, but I don't remember how long ago that was nor do I recall mention of how much they predate it. However, memories are etched upon the aether of the soul, so they could have been painted at any point after the sundering. Perhaps they were dreaming about it like Zenos was or a shooting star triggered a memory.

[EaraGrace]

Y'shtola says the paintings predate the Ronkan empire, but I don't remember how long ago that was nor do I recall mention of how much they predate it. However, memories are etched upon the aether of the soul, so they could have been painted at any point after the sundering. Perhaps they were dreaming about it like Zenos was or a shooting star triggered a memory.

They remembered clearly enough to know of Zodiark, a god Venat was trying to hide, and Hydaelyn herself. Emet says it was just fragments and fleeting memories so not enough to fully remember but enough to know some things.

And I really do have to stress that Sundering meant the loss of the echo, which was almost certainly important to language development. The fact that all the shades talks to us in those odd noises, even when it’s a recording, should probably indicate that speaking with them is weird. Put it with the loss of creation magicks and the impact that had on prehistoric tool development I say.

[Cleretic]

Even though that is inarguably what has been written, it doesn't sit right with me, because we have demonstratable proof that they were not so thoroughly reduced to unintelligibity – specifically, the paintings in the Qitana Ravel.

Either people retained both enough memory and artistic skill to record these images as first-generation Sundered, or they possessed the ability to retell it to their children and pass it into legend.

If they were truly reduced to nothing of their former selves, that story could not have survived.

At worst, they could have been in a situation where they had lost language but retained intelligence – but is it alternately possible that Emet, being still unsundered, simply perceives it as thinned down compared to himself? As if everything that was once solid has turned to smoke, voices muted to the slightest whisper? But perhaps it doesn't seem quite the same way to those caught up in it.

It just doesn't add up – and while it's not the first time that Emet's account in Shadowbringers has been contradicted, this time it is another story from his own perspective and not someone else's conflicting understanding.

The exact wording used in this is stuff we've only ever seen from Emet's own perspective--in the soul crystal in Etched in the Stars, and in the Tales from the Shadows story with a bit of him as Solus. So this isn't an impartial external narrator, it's a third-party telling of Emet-Selch's perspective.

Meaning that it's not that they literally didn't know anything and couldn't say anything, it's that they fell below Emet's bar of 'being people'--a bar that even the Garleans didn't actually get over.

[Erendis]

The fact that all the shades talks to us in those odd noises, even when it’s a recording, should probably indicate that speaking with them is weird.

It always bothered me that ancients in Elpis did not speak in squeaky door language...

[Lurina]

Even though that is inarguably what has been written, it doesn't sit right with me, because we have demonstratable proof that they were not so thoroughly reduced to unintelligibity – specifically, the paintings in the Qitana Ravel.

Either people retained both enough memory and artistic skill to record these images as first-generation Sundered, or they possessed the ability to retell it to their children and pass it into legend.

If they were truly reduced to nothing of their former selves, that story could not have survived.

At worst, they could have been in a situation where they had lost language but retained intelligence – but is it alternately possible that Emet, being still unsundered, simply perceives it as thinned down compared to himself? As if everything that was once solid has turned to smoke, voices muted to the slightest whisper? But perhaps it doesn't seem quite the same way to those caught up in it.

It just doesn't add up – and while it's not the first time that Emet's account in Shadowbringers has been contradicted, this time it is another story from his own perspective and not someone else's conflicting understanding.

It doesn't really feel like a big mystery. You don't need knowledge to do basic art; even someone with 0 experience can smear a very rough image, like what you see in the cave paintings, just by recognition and imitation.

Language, on the other hand, requires knowledge. Anthropologists actually believe that painting predates complex speech. https://www.inverse.com/article/4151...uage-evolution

[MikkoAkure]

It doesn't really feel like a big mystery. You don't need knowledge to do basic art; even someone with 0 experience can smear a very rough image, like what you see in the cave paintings, just by recognition and imitation.

Language, on the other hand, requires knowledge. Anthropologists actually believe that painting predates complex speech. https://www.inverse.com/article/4151...uage-evolution

In the same room with the murals, in the same scene they’re revealed, Emet-Selch said that the memory of the Sundering was passed down in “song and scripture and paint”, which implies language.

While I can accept the revelations in NieR as canon, I also believe that Emet-Selch is also an unreliable narrator and like his Tales from the Shadows, he views the Sundered as not-people so his take on things is going to be colored by that perception.

The NieR tale isn’t a lore dump, it’s a story told by one person from their point of view. Just as a lot of people disagree with Venat’s point of view and how it was presented, the same could be said of Emet-Selch’s.

[Lurina]

In the same room with the murals, in the same scene they’re revealed, Emet-Selch said that the memory of the Sundering was passed down in “song and scripture and paint”, which implies language.

While I can accept the revelations in NieR as canon, I also believe that Emet-Selch is also an unreliable narrator and like his Tales from the Shadows, he views the Sundered as not-people so his take on things is going to be colored by that perception.

The NieR tale isn’t a lore dump, it’s a story told by one person from their point of view. Just as a lot of people disagree with Venat’s point of view and how it was presented, the same could be said of Emet-Selch’s.

Paint comes first, then the other two.

I don't really think you can argue unreliable narrator for a situation where the script directly quotes the grunts and moans of the people without the knowledge to speak. More to the point, if they weren't speaking a tongue Emet could understand, that means it was certain the "first generation" Sundered didn't have language. They take generations to develop; a new one wouldn't just appear spontaneously for him to then be ignorant of.

Though, the writers could just have a loose or divided understanding of the facts themselves, obviously.