Who knew the 6.15 Omega Quests… (Spoilers)

[Iscah]

The "but they sacrificed themselves willingly" argument always elicits a very special kind of "what" for me. Just because someone is selfless enough - and/or loves you enough - to take a bullet for you, doesn't mean you don't immediately do everything in your power, once the immediate danger is passed, to save them and hopefully restore them to a pre-gunshot existence, or as close to one as possible. You don't watch them continue to writhe in pain and bleed out because, well, they took the hit willingly, after all! Who's to even say they'd want you to have them take up any precious resources to help them, huh? Nothing for it!

That's not the right analogy for this sort of situation, regardless of what you think of the rest of it.

The sacrifice in this case is not a one-off defence from a momentary danger, but an ongoing protection. They didn't "take a bullet" but granted you permanent ongoing protection from bullets so long as they remain sacrificed, and you are in ongoing danger of being shot.

[SannaR]

On who was the equivalent of their Kahlzahl I doubt we'll ever know that. Unless we're talking about the first person in Amaurot. Since it started to spread from a town/city that's suggested to be of some distance from Amurot. Now it's been a few years since I've done the should we even send help debate quest, but iirc that even if you choose the Louisoix option the person who was for sending help ended up on the side of we shouldn't interfere. Which I swear is their go to. Yes there isn't a third instance where non interference is preferred in order to make it become a pattern and not seen as just a coincidence. Yet the devs at least when dealing with the Ancients so far; has only given us two examples for what one could take as the norm.

As I've said many times we can't answer ourselves a lot of questions relating to the original Final Days as currently there isn't enough information. I also doubt that we will be getting much more if any. Unless they throw us a bone in the form of a Talse from story, a third lore book, or another lore focused Q&A. I do wonder what the JP lore section looks like as there has been a few times that the dev team has shown surprise that there's enough interest in a subject or that enough people took note of something. And I'm not saying that speculation is bad. Just that on some things there can be little to nothing backing up one's speculation to say that things could actually have a miniscule possibility of turning out in such fashion.

[Brinne]

That's not the right analogy for this sort of situation, regardless of what you think of the rest of it.

The sacrifice in this case is not a one-off defence from a momentary danger, but an ongoing protection. They didn't "take a bullet" but granted you permanent ongoing protection from bullets so long as they remain sacrificed, and you are in ongoing danger of being shot.

The actual core of this, beyond the precise mechanics of an exact analogy (where none exists because this is a fantasy situation in a fantasy story), is that "someone is willing to endure injury and pain to protect you, therefore it's acceptable to just leave them in that state of injury and pain, where said injury and pain will probably continue to worsen" is ridiculous and fundamentally self-justifying more than anything else. If you care about that person and have humanity for them, you look for a way to get them out of that situation. If the (vague and ill-defined) third set of sacrifices is an unacceptable way to go about this, then aid in exploring other alternatives, whether that's searching for another source of aether fuel that's less contentious, formulating some kind of system where everyone takes turn fueling Zodiark in shifts, or - heaven forbid - telling them what you know about the source of the attack so it can be dealt with permanently. What you DON'T do is shrug your shoulders, go welp guess all your loved ones are just doomed to be in anguished purgatory forever, and expect people to just move on with their lives while carrying that knowledge.

As soon as it became clear that the souls were stuck in a terrible prison, and were intact and retrievable, the entire moral calculus of the Hydaelyn faction's arguments versus Zodiark's completely shifted.

[Lyth]

...

It's an important plot point to be able to explain, though.

'...Wait. Did I hear you correctly? The beast manifested before the sky began to burn?'

According to what we know about Kahlzahl from 'The Blasphemy Unmasked' and 'Amidst the Apocalypse', the Final Days of Thavnair didn't actually start until the first transformation of a Blasphemy. The index case has to happen first. This is similar to what we know about the Amaurotian Final Days, as the Watcher reiterates:

'One day, from within the earth, a terrible cry issued forth, affecting a profound change in all manner of life.'

But there's a couple of problems with this. The first is that Amaurot was supposedly an advanced society where everyone's wants and needs were generally fulfilled. This in itself makes the index case provide an interesting insight into their society. Second, even if an Amaurotian were to enter the depths of despair, they would be unable to transform because their Aether is too dense. Third, their creation magic, which is of the correct density to be influenced by dynamis, typically produces Arcane entities without a soul. So strictly speaking, the index event in Amaurot, the first Blasphemy, is likely going to be something with the soul of an Amaurotian, but with the physical aetheric density of creation magic. I could have sworn I'd seen something like this somewhere before, in the depths...

[Kolsykol]

We're finally getting a say on the matter, after we were not allowed to voice any kind of criticism during all of EW.

Maybe there's still hope for the game. If you wanna be morally grey, you gotta expect people to have different opinions.

Cmon rofl...
What do you mean, the forum is full of people complaining about EW and even going beyond just actual criticism and are engaging in personal attacks towards the writers.
How can you say that it wasn't allowed?

Can we just stop with the victim mentality constantly?
It's the same when people disagree with peoples negative opinion on it, people love to criticize ( or actually just be shitty ) but then are incapable of handling disagreements themselves.
People disagreeing with you doesn't mean that you're '' not allowed '' ( even if the devs and writers disagree )
And in the end of the day we've never had full control over what the WoL thinks and feels about things.

I think a lot of people are also engaging in a whole lot of '' would've should've '' hindsight when it comes to a lot of the characters.
Who even knows if Hermes would've done the same thing if he had actual time to process everything for example, he felt compelled to make a choice and he made it in the moment.
The same could to atleast some degree be said about Venat too even in the post-Elpis cutscene.

I'm...confused as to who/what you're referring to by that.

If it was in reference to that third round of sacrifices to be offered to Zodiark, we have virtually no context behind what they were and one has to remember that the Sundering affected all life negatively. Even if she truly had done it with the intent of protecting lives as opposed to subjecting mankind to her own trial, she irreparably damaged every being upon Etheriys in the process, though the Ancients seem to have gotten the worst of it due to being considerably denser in aether then any of their creations.

I imagine that even if the other life was unaffected they'd still be screwed because of the beasts created when their creation magic ran wild.
I mean we saw what was happening at the end of the last MSQ dungeon in SHB, the whole planet was screwed.

The actual core of this, beyond the precise mechanics of an exact analogy (where none exists because this is a fantasy situation in a fantasy story), is that "someone is willing to endure injury and pain to protect you, therefore it's acceptable to just leave them in that state of injury and pain, where said injury and pain will probably continue to worsen" is ridiculous and fundamentally self-justifying more than anything else. If you care about that person and have humanity for them, you look for a way to get them out of that situation. If the (vague and ill-defined) third set of sacrifices is an unacceptable way to go about this, then aid in exploring other alternatives, whether that's searching for another source of aether fuel that's less contentious, formulating some kind of system where everyone takes turn fueling Zodiark in shifts, or - heaven forbid - telling them what you know about the source of the attack so it can be dealt with permanently. What you DON'T do is shrug your shoulders, go welp guess all your loved ones are just doomed to be in anguished purgatory forever, and expect people to just move on with their lives while carrying that knowledge.

As soon as it became clear that the souls were stuck in a terrible prison, and were intact and retrievable, the entire moral calculus of the Hydaelyn faction's arguments versus Zodiark's completely shifted.

We don't really know everything that happened from Elpis to the Sundering, regardless tho I really doubt they'd believe Venat especially if you have three other people with a totally different memory of what happened ( one of who is a convocation member plus they're already opposed to Venat ).
If there was another way to '' fuel '' Zodiark I'd imagine they would've found it by then and I doubt Venats help would've changed anything either and even if they agreed to go after Meteion I rly doubt she'd get everyone aboard it'd most likely just divide the Ancients even further than they already were and weaken them even further.
Plus they were kinda preoccupied to go searching or start heavily researching some new way to fuel him, I mean I have to assume that human sacrifices was a desperate measure.
There's also just the side of things that we wouldn't have had a game at that point.

I mean you can come up with a lot of these alterior paths with Anakin in Star Wars too, or with essentially any story.
And people are flawed and don't always make '' the best '' choices that goes irl too I mean we're looking at this from the outside with again the whole '' would've should've '' mentality but for all that we know if she had done what you suggested it would simply have gotten worse and been too late.

Stepping away from the Venat/making a choice discussion for a moment....

I, personally, feel that they missed an opportunity here somewhat. During Endwalker I was disappointed that mini-Midgardsormr didn't appear when we visited the Ultima Thule recreation of Reah Tahra. By the same token I can't help but think that taking Omega to the Base Omicron recreation would've proved interesting too.

I kinda wish Midgardsormr appeared in EW, he talked quite a bit about Hydaelyn.
I was kinda expecting him to appear and guide us a little.

[SannaR]

It's an important plot point to be able to explain, though.

'...Wait. Did I hear you correctly? The beast manifested before the sky began to burn?'

According to what we know about Kahlzahl from 'The Blasphemy Unmasked' and 'Amidst the Apocalypse', the Final Days of Thavnair didn't actually start until the first transformation of a Blasphemy. The index case has to happen first. This is similar to what we know about the Amaurotian Final Days, as the Watcher reiterates:

'One day, from within the earth, a terrible cry issued forth, affecting a profound change in all manner of life.'

But there's a couple of problems with this. The first is that Amaurot was supposedly an advanced society where everyone's wants and needs were generally fulfilled. This in itself makes the index case provide an interesting insight into their society. Second, even if an Amaurotian were to enter the depths of despair, they would be unable to transform because their Aether is too dense. Third, their creation magic, which is of the correct density to be influenced by dynamis, typically produces Arcane entities without a soul. So strictly speaking, the index event in Amaurot, the first Blasphemy, is likely going to be something with the soul of an Amaurotian, but with the physical aetheric density of creation magic. I could have sworn I'd seen something like this somewhere before, in the depths...

I would love to find out where it started, when it started and how fast it spread. As when we get told about through exploring phantom Amaurot and doing the side quests we find out that at least two different areas have already had to deal with murderous creations running rampant.

I really hate my brain at times cause while I was thinking about who the distressed person could have been my brain shot out an "Oh that would really suck and be awful" idea of it being Azem's fault. I mean it started outside of Amaurot and seemed to slowly spread. Now we have seen with just the WoL how much pressure and stress they get put under. Azem comes off as someone who's not in town often due to what their seat asks them to do. Which is to travel around helping people out and being the average person's voice. They also don't seem to be good in some aspects of magic let alone creation magic as if they were capable of solving the erupting volcano incident themselves you'd think they wouldn't have needed to ask Hythlodaeus to loan them Ifrita. That is unless Azem really did just love fighting things. Or one of their unamed companions turned the getting Ifrita and not losing their seat into a dare or a bet of some sort. But yes I would love to learn more of the specifics about the original Final Days even if it has to be something that no one in game who's still alive doesn't end up knowing. I just don't hold out hope for getting more pieces to the puzzle.

[Iscah]

The actual core of this, beyond the precise mechanics of an exact analogy (where none exists because this is a fantasy situation in a fantasy story), is that "someone is willing to endure injury and pain to protect you, therefore it's acceptable to just leave them in that state of injury and pain, where said injury and pain will probably continue to worsen" is ridiculous and fundamentally self-justifying more than anything else. If you care about that person and have humanity for them, you look for a way to get them out of that situation.

And what if the way to "get them out of the situation" was to undo and destroy the thing they put themself into the situation to protect? What if they would rather be left in that state then to have that reversal happen?

If they sacrificed themselves to revive the planet and let life flourish, would they want that flourishing life to be torn apart again to bring them back?

[Brightamethyst]

I'm referring to the mini version who often popped up to offer us advice.

So was he. Midgarsormr went into hibernation at the end of the Omega quests and still hasn't awoken. At least not to the point where he's openly up and about again.

[WillIrishclover]

Just gonna say this, I can't wait for the next big overall story for XIV, so this the Hydaelyn V Zodi debate gets replaced with the next morally continuous argument, IDK some character arguing that Tidus is pronounced teedus or somethin

[Lyth]

...

I suspect it has something to do with the 'threat to the star' on Elpis, and more specifically, Pandaemonium's hemitheos experiments.

Much like Elpis is the spirit of 'hope' in Greek Mythology, Asphodelos is a flower that illuminates the way into the Underworld. What better place to go looking for the soul of a lost loved one?

Either way, I suspect that a few of these questions will be answered by 6.4/6.5 in a way that might turn these discussions on their head.