Who knew the 6.15 Omega Quests… (Spoilers)

[Lyth]

...

Here's the thing, though. You don't know nearly enough to pass judgement on the situation at present, and 6.2 looks to have some fairly important missing pieces. We know how the index transformations occurred in the modern era, one for every nation. We don't know the first thing about Amaurot's index transformation. We don't know how the Convocation responded to it. We don't know how Azem responded to it. We don't know if there was any bad blood between the Convocation and Azem or the Convocation and Venat. We don't know exactly what the Amaurotian people were told. And in the absence of the necessary information, you've assumed that the characters are acting in bad faith in order to justify your incorrect prediction from last expansion.

The only thing that you can pass judgement at present is what the Convocation, which is to say the Ascians, did to our society. And there's absolutely no justification for what they did. If you want to take issue with Amaurot as a whole, that makes sense. But pointing fingers at Venat isn't going to render the Ascians any less culpable.

[CrownySuccubus]

That's not true. The idea of innate human rights predates any democracy that embraced the notion. In fact, pure democracy is contrary to the idea of innate human rights, per J.S. Mill's "Tyranny of the Majority."

Basic, loose ideas of innate human rights existed prior to democratic states, but were usually superceded by the fact that the ruling class (especially any sitting tyrant) could literally just snap their fingers and override them. On that note, tyranny of the majority still requires giving voting and/or vetoing rights to a majority of people on a specific motion, which a dictatorship is antithetical to.

And that's why the group of people that penned the US Declaration of Independence, one of the earliest declarations that people have "inalienable rights" and perhaps the first that wound up a foundational document of a nation, didn't even attempt to create a democracy.

Instead, they created (eventually) a democratic republic, in the hope that the worst features of pure democracy (oppression of minorities by the majority. a.k.a. mob rule) would be forestalled by the intermediation of representatives who would hopefully be a little wiser and little less viscerally motivated than the electorate. And then they created an unelected and insulated judicial branch -- hoping they'd be the next-best-thing to the ideal of the benevolent philosopher-king -- just in case the elected representatives didn't live up to that expectation.

A democratic republic is still, ultimately, a "democratic system" of government -- as per the name. Yes, not an absolutely democracy, and the right to vote has never been completely universal, but the system of government still allows for some measure of democratic power, which rises and falls depending on how conservative or progressive the current era may be.

I think they might be a bit disappointed by how it all turned out, but to paraphrase Sir Winston Churchill, it's still "the worst form of government, except for all the others."

A good number of the Founding Fathers wanted commonfolk, women and certain ethnicities to be completely without any input into the democratic system, so what they would or wouldn't be disappointed with is rather "meh". However, I'm pretty sure that, say, a Black woman who is able to vote for or hold public office has a muted appreciation for how that system has expanded, even if imperfectly.

[Teraq]

So really there is little seperating an Ancient from a sundered mortal other than the immense aether levels and having a limitless lifespan, and especially from a psychological perspective, the Ancients had a lot of suppresed emotional baggage they were barely containing (their society being so conformist with anything that did not fit that ideal, was shoved under the rug) - I mean, look at Pandaemonium, it's very architecture and design clearly states that it was not the work of a sane man - as if we didn't need further proof Lahabrea was short a few candles in the chandelier).

The actual proof that the Ancients were an admirable people here is in what is left unsaid: in spite of the massive potential for destruction that was in every Ancient due to their physiology, their society flourished. Every single one of them with the potential to throw a baby tantrum like Hermes and conjure a universe-ending threat. And until Hermes, they hadn't. They lived in peace as far as we can see. The Elpis flowers only ever pick up the employees' ambient happiness when Sadboi Edgelord isn't around. Though of course the fact that Ancient society had so many laws, rules and processes, customs about sharing individual ideas (how conformist!) rather than keeping ideas to oneself, their emphasis on togetherness... may hint at their history not being as peaceful as it now is. And yet, in spite of it all, they haven't reduced Etheirys to a dry lifeless husk; on the contrary, all we're shown points to them attempting to use their natural powers in the most responsible ways possible for the planet to flourish. I would say that takes exceptional strength of character, and I have zero doubt the Sundered, if given the exact same powers, would blow themselves and the whole planet up in a hot minute by unleashing concepts of mass destruction, driven by selfishness, individuality and fear of their fellow men.

the Convocation, which is to say the Ascians

Not really, though. Never mind that only 3 members out of 13 are technically the same persons, equating the two ignores the massive context shift brought upon them by Venat's actions. The extreme and cruel decisions they have ended up taking for the sake of saving their civilisation and loved ones, as sole survivors of a planet wide genocide as well as world leaders who would naturally feel a responsibility to do their best for their people, are most likely not representative to how the actual Convocation of Fourteen conducted politics in normal times. The comparison feels disingenuous at best... much like comparing Ancients to an alien civilisation from a distant planet with fundamentally different physiology we have incredibly little context on.

But I suppose disingenuity is the name of the game when you keep using "Amaurotian" in spite of multiple corrections.

[Alleo]

That's not why they did the rejoinings, but I mean...

they kinda ARE superior to the sundered in every way.

And yet we sundered beat them and invented time travel. If they are so much better than us why are they all dead now and could not invent such a thing which basically would have given them the power to go back in time and stop the sundering from happening? It could have saved them thousands of years of having to do all these planet destroying plans.

[Lyth]

The Amaurotians are people from Amaurot. It doesn't make any sense for them to refer to themselves as 'Ancients'.

The sundered Ascians were still altered, if you will, by the memories that they absorbed from the Convocation soulstones. That's why, as you see in E12S, as Mitron forcibly enters into Ascian Prime form with Gaia against her will and starts systematically destroying all her memories, she becomes less like herself and more like Loghrif. And in the Savage version, you have to fight Loghrif in her true Amaurotian form as a result. You can't really discard Emet's pawns as easily as he did.

And even if you want to just focus on the Unsundered Ascians, their actions were monstrous on account of orchestrating the deaths of millions. Elidibus deceived the survivors of broken worlds with false hope and used them as his pawns. He tried to use chemical warfare to kill the people of Eorzea. Not only was he stopped by an oddly ethical Zenos, of all people, but he fled his borrowed body in the height of cowardice, quivering in terror, despite having the upper hand. Emet oversaw the destruction of seven worlds. He abandoned his own ally, Mitron, in a semi-comatose state for one hundred years because he was 'replaceable'. He turned a baby, still in womb into a sin eater in order to destroy the nation of Eulmore. He watched, laughing, expecting our own transformation into a sin eater to grant him a rejoining of the First. And it's only the fact that that self-same light impaled him with prejudice that finally put the matter to rest. And Lahabrea... well, let's just leave this one for now until 6.2 tells us his sob story.

They're charismatic, sure. Antisocial personality types often are. But anyone can understand full well why Gaius hunted the last of them from the face of the planet offscreen, for the sake of everyone else.

[SannaR]

And yet we sundered beat them and invented time travel. If they are so much better than us why are they all dead now and could not invent such a thing which basically would have given them the power to go back in time and stop the sundering from happening? It could have saved them thousands of years of having to do all these planet destroying plans.

Which points to the fact Elidibus at least didn't keep a closer eye on us. Since Emet was trying to take a nap and float around the rift while also not getting eaten by one of those "will undo anything" bubbles. To me Elidibus seemingly doing nothing but rousing Emet from his slumber after Lahabreha and Igthorm got dead comes off as a mis step. How none of them knew of what happened with Alexander or Omega is beyond me. Since we fully know that even if we don't see them they're fully capable of watching us from off screen. Elidibus when Lahabreha wasn't constantly spying on us seemed to know what we had been doing at least during the MSQ bits.

Yet they both seem to not be able to think of what you would have to do inorder to maneuver the Crystal Tower from a different time to the "present" on the first. It's not like they didn't know about Omega. The Allags had a golden era from adapting some of its technology. Elidibus even had the answer when he stole the Exarch's soul crystal. Yet it comes off as though he either ignored that part, didn't care about it or didn't understand it until his soul got slapped into the tower. It's not as though they didn't know about time manipulation powers if what Gia can do was also what she was capable of as an Ancient.

[Lurina]

And yet we sundered beat them and invented time travel. If they are so much better than us why are they all dead now and could not invent such a thing which basically would have given them the power to go back in time and stop the sundering from happening? It could have saved them thousands of years of having to do all these planet destroying plans.

Not to be pedantic, but he Sundered didn't exactly develop time travel. You learn in the Twinning that the future Ironworks in the 8th Umbral timeline used a copy of Alexander to make it happen, which itself was created through a combination of Ascian instruction and the Enigma Codex, which in turn contained knowledge from a time paradox (ie: nowhere).

[SannaR]

Why would veering off into a tangent about Dragon Ball Z with a single sentence about FFXIV suddenly make things make more sense? Magic doesn't even translate well in Dragon Ball, and power levels are bullshit.

Sorry my brain at the time wasn't recalling the Slave Crown and Tera from FFVI. As an example of a person wearing something that inhibited/restricted a person from accessing/using their full abilities that included magic. While wearing it she could still function as a spell casting fighter for the Ghestal Empire while unknowingly at the time unable to cast bigger magics or use her Esper form. When trying to explain how I felt the Convocation sigils worked. I still think they do in a way since either Venat is that much stronger then Emet or she wasn't restricted via the sigil when she fairly easily broke from Herme's chains. While Emet broke free after having his light up iirc.

[SannaR]

Not to be pedantic, but he Sundered didn't exactly develop time travel. You learn in the Twinning that the future Ironworks in the 8th Umbral timeline used a copy of Alexander to make it happen, which itself was created through a combination of Ascian instruction and the Enigma Codex, which in turn contained knowledge from a time paradox (ie: nowhere).

But they did. Mide and her boyfriend ended up Grandfather Paradoxing themselves. They're the ones that started the whole myth about Alexander that they then learned of after a long enough time forgot the names of those who started the tale. So they knew about Alexander and how they thought he'd work once summoned. The only named, muddied history, ranking and non convocation member who was a dangling plot thread; that also happened to have a highly aether soaked horn (which was also a dangling plot thread) gave them it so they'd have enough power to summon Alexander. Who might have gone back to being a dangling plot thread as I don't remember him dying. Not that any of the Unsundered seemed to care if he had survived the 7th Umbral calamity or not since again black masked and sundered were seen as replaceable. Present day Mide didn't know about Alexander being able to do manipulate time until the story got to that point. The actual physical travel part comes from Omega's ability to travel the rift. Why you get parts of Escape playing in the dungeon and how some of the memories when fighting the Tycoon shows scenes from the Omega storyline instead of just Alexander and Gobbie fun.

[MikkoAkure]

You can't label a group of people an entirely separate race just because of the CITY THEy LIVE IN, are you kidding me?! The "Ancients" refer to the race of immortals that predated the Sundering of the Star Eitherys. This "Amaurotia" never existed, Lyth. No matter how much easier it may be to hate the Ancients by Othering them, it isn't right to do so and it isn't done in story so let's not do such things here shall we? There's truly no such thing as a race called "Amaurotians" upon the face of Eitherys, and there never was.

The game itself has characters named "Amaurotine"...

Amaurotine Firebrand
Anxious Amaurotine
Approachable Amaurotine
Eloquent Amaurotine
Gentle Amaurotine
Kindly Amaurotine
Loquacious Amaurotine
Optimistic Amaurotine
Patronizing Amaurotine
Passionate Amaurotine
Pragmatic Amaurotine

They even refer to themselves in the script as Amaurotines.

An Amaurotine of character shares their creations with the community─they do not hoard them for their use alone.

Items in game from earrings to walls are called "Amaurotine" as having to do with the city of Amaurot.

We are made aware that there are other cities and even villages out there during the ancient days, but we have no input from them and do not know if they too referred to themselves as Amaurotine, but at least one of those villages was under the purview of the Convocation.