Rewritten MSQ - Garlemald and EW

[Skyborne]

Women in Garlean culture can't rise above a certain rank (wir) and aren't allowed to inherit the throne.

I don't know where the OP got the idea of "grand duchess" but that title doesn't exist in Garlemald and their idea of Svetlana would not be able to happen. I think I remember an interview where one of the lore guys said it was another reason why Garlemald was a bad country.


Some of the writing was alright but the bits with Svetlana and Venat were kinda cringe ngl.

Yep indeed, it's more that they just have... zero presence in the game and none are named at all is my beef (aside from Zenos' mother dying shortly after his birth iirc). I'm willing to handwave the "can't inherit the throne" part on account of Garlemald crumbling apart -- anyone who is backed with power (like having a one-man army demigod WoL in the pocket) could march in and stabilize things at this point. Her name and title could also stand to be changed to be more in line with the Roman naming scheme in the game.

[Lauront]

One survivor and two accidental ones mean it's not a genocide? What are you even smoking?

Furthermore, not once do the writers allude to the 3rd sacrifice as even registering on her radar as a motive. Not once does she do so, except when discussing them as the instrumental means to return to how things were, and there it is because she wants them to accept the 'necessity' of suffering. She does not even question the Convocation on the morality of this whole affair and states they sought to safeguard the best possible future for the star. Her concerns are solely presented as dynamis manipulation and their fate resembling the Plenty. If you want to bring in the supposed immorality of the very sketchy third round of sacrifices, which her people were already divided on, I am going to ask for sources - good luck, because I know these sources, and I can tell you, you and others are headcanoning this in to being her primary motive as well as liberally filling in details as to what they were, to try make it seem far more nefarious than we're told.

How would allowing the Ancients proceed to performing the third sacrifice not be equally reprehensible if not more so? They weren't going to just exterminate one new life form - they were intent on exterminating them all for the sake of people who were already dead and unable to return to life if what Sri Lakshmi said in Stormblood is true.

Their souls quite literally persist whole in Zodiark, and were cut off from the Underworld (return to which they valued as a species) as a result of the desperate measure they had to undertake to protect their star. So irrespective of what some amateurish, third-rate primal said, which has zero bearing on what Zodiark and his creators could do, they would still need to be freed from within him at some point to be released from that purgatory.

If one is gonna make a villain do something you give a reasoning for why they did it, thats simple story writing. Couldn't care less if it wasn't putting venat in a good light or not since this is a AU situation. Zenos does what he does because he wanted to feel something, Hades and the unsundered do what they do to bring back their lost civilization, Meteion does what she does because of all the sadness she absorbed from the countless lost stars they visited and the twisted answer she got from it.

If Zenos and Hermes are the minimum threshold here, we should be good.

[TimotheusReed]

I feel some people are forgetting the whole "time aspect" when judging Venats actions. Because of our time traveling we basically created a time paradox.

The reason for us, the WoL, to appear at this moment was all because stuff happened exactly the way it was supposed to happen.
Also even Venat and WoL escaping from the memory wipe was all because of everything that happened before and led us to Elpis.
We don't know what would have happened if we weren't there. Meteion would have propably escaped and without our help the memory of all of them would have been wiped.
Maybe Venat wouldn't even have joined the group. The reason we appeared at this moment was BECAUSE all that terrible stuff after this happened.

This means that Venat HAD to ensure that everything has to happen the same way, so we end up in Elpis again.
Regarding to time travel, everything up to the moment where we travel back in time was already set in stone. Otherwise we wouldn't have got to Elpis in the first place.
Anything else might have led to a situation which changes the timelines in a way that we might not even appear in Elpis, which in the end would have led to a situation where Venats memory would have also been wiped for example.

I mean if I were in a situation where some time traveller warns me about terrible things happening in the past I propably would also ensure that everything happens the way it is supposed to happen.

But I also kind of understand why people might not like her reasoning.

@OP: You put a lot of effort into the story. I like it. On the other hand I am also not in favor of characterizing Venat as the villain. And there are some plot points I don't agree with.
But one can see how much effort you put into this.

[redheadturk]

I feel some people are forgetting the whole "time aspect" when judging Venats actions. Because of our time traveling we basically created a time paradox.

The reason for us, the WoL, to appear at this moment was all because stuff happened exactly the way it was supposed to happen.
Also even Venat and WoL escaping from the memory wipe was all because of everything that happened before and led us to Elpis.

This means that Venat HAD to ensure that everything will happen the same way, so we end up in Elpis again.
Anything else might have led to a situation which changes the timelines in a way that we might not even appear in Elpis, which in the end would have led to a situation where Venats memory would have also been wiped for example.

I mean if I were in a situation where some time traveller warns me about terrible things happening in the past I propably would also ensure that everything happens the way it is supposed to happen.

But I also kind of understand why people might not like her reasoning.

@OP: You put a lot of effort into the story. I like it. On the other hand I am also not in favor of characterizing Venat as the villain.

I say bring on the split timeline, tbh. No, I do not care if it creates a paradox, it's already been shown that paradoxes lead to timeline splits in XIV, and that is what I want. A timeline in which the sundering never happens.

[Lustre]

Can someone replace the writers with just OP please. That was a surprisingly captivating read, and also a sorta depressing one knowing we're left with actual endwalker. This is a fan script and the in game plot somehow has less depth lol

[EgilTheStressedMage]

EW was written to justify the game’s existence more than anything else. If Venat had told the Convocation and they were able to stop Meteion, we would have no game. There’d be no Source, no First, no Varis, no WoL. They wrote themselves into an inescapable corner when they made the Ancients and allowed us to visit them instead of showing us a lengthy memory flashback. If they wanted Venat to still be any sort of decent, they could have had her split between Hydaelyn and herself where the former has all the ego of “suffer good” while the latter laments in solitude at how hard she screwed up. This separation would happen during the Sundering where Venat would be forced out and Hydaelyn would be in control. At this point I don’t care if I’m pulling from other games because other games did this so much better.

[Cleretic]

Emet would not have done the right thing if told, and we know that because there was a sequence of events wiped from his memory where he was told, and explicitly made things worse. Emet was going to stick to a process, because that is who he is, but said process would remove Hermes from the position he needs to be in to make Zodiark, who will then defend the world from the End of Days. However, as Zodiark tempered his summoners, even the plan of 'tell the Convocation after summoning Zodiark' wouldn't have worked.

Having to keep a big secret is sad, and probably weighed on her. But given that she's trying to avoid the literal thing we saw happen that led to the problem in the first place, I think it's far from the worst thing in the ledger of anyone involved.

I've seen some of your YouTube videos and considering how hard you go on the Ascians, I don't think you should be acting as if you're the champion of fairness.

Ah, good to hear from someone who watches my videos! And as someone who watches my videos, you would know that I only talked about the Ancients before the Sundering twice; once as a scene-setter to talk about the origins of the guys who'd go on to be the Ascians, and once in one of the two political breakdown videos talking about the politics of Amaurot, and how it's more or less a parable of a nation's fall to their own faults (and some professed in-bad-faith picking apart of their political system, which sounds iffy). Every other mention of the Ascians has been as the Ascians--that is to say, the villains and origins of most of the game world's problems: the whole Ascian video of course, as well as mentions in the other politics video in the context of Emet inventing the Garlean Empire and their political outlook, as the instigators of the video subject in the Voidsent and Illuminati/Alexander videos, as the proliferators and saboteurs both of the ritual to summon primals, and Loghrif and Mitron getting a whole section in the Eden video.

You would also know that I've only talked about Venat twice, in the Ascian video and the Amaurot section of the politics video, both times in passing, and I was not interested in adjudicating her choice. Hydaelyn came up in the Blessing of Light video, but without talk of Venat as we didn't know how important she was to it. (And that video has inaccuracies thanks to Endwalker, but that's a separate subject!)

As I said: to properly take a side on this view, we must accept the darkness of where we stand. For the side of Zodiark, a vast majority of that darkness comes after the Sundering, as their tale is one of supposedly good people who go on to unrepentantly perform horrible acts, snuffing out likely more lives than they're trying to save and creating evils like the Garlean Empire. For Hydaelyn, most of that darkness is concentrated in a single act, as she performs an act of... well, I wouldn't say textbook genocide mostly because that textbook would be insane, but definitely performing an act that ended countless lives for the sake of ensuring that more wouldn't die.

As someone who sides with Team Hydaelyn (although as my videos show, not someone who cares all too much, I have greater interests), I accept that she performed an act that ended lives in extreme circumstances where doing so was the only way to avoid even greater long-term loss; an act that may be heavy and regretful, but was not a mistake. I assume you, as someone who sides with Team Zodiark (I don't know how strongly), can recognize the evils they brought into the world in their efforts to do so?

You say that like you know that for a fact. Are you reading my Oatmeal x Emet x Hythlodaeus fanfiction?

Also we are literally in a thread, right now, that someone made because they wanted to write and share their Endwalker rewrite fanfic.

[Lauront]

Emet would not have done the right thing if told, and we know that because there was a sequence of events wiped from his memory where he was told, and explicitly made things worse. Emet was going to stick to a process, because that is who he is, but said process would remove Hermes from the position he needs to be in to make Zodiark, who will then defend the world from the End of Days. However, as Zodiark tempered his summoners, even the plan of 'tell the Convocation after summoning Zodiark' wouldn't have worked.

The bar here is so high that this just does not stack up. The alternative here is they get wiped out as a people. If she lacks the people skills to figure out how to get Emet or any other member of the Convocation, or even Hyth, in a position where she can calmly explain to them what happened, then how did she even act as Azem before then? You claim tempering meant this would not work, and take this as axiomatic, but Emet is able to change course in the test he puts forward to the WoL. There is absolutely nothing in the story to date suggesting this would prevent her over approaching her people on a topic they were already divided on to divulge the truth of the matter - and I mean the actual truth, not platitudes about 'suffering'. Moreover, Hermes is specifically credited with contributions to identifying the a pattern in the celestial currents that enabled them to deal with the issue, not for Zodiark in his entirety, which was research Akadaemia Anyder was focused on.

Having to keep a big secret is sad, and probably weighed on her. But given that she's trying to avoid the literal thing we saw happen that led to the problem in the first place, I think it's far from the worst thing in the ledger of anyone involved.

Hmm no I'd say it's pretty bad, especially if alternatives could be conceived. There may be reasons why she felt constrained in what she had to do, but they are nonetheless conscious decisions.

As I said: to properly take a side on this view, we must accept the darkness of where we stand. For the side of Zodiark, a vast majority of that darkness comes after the Sundering, as their tale is one of supposedly good people who go on to unrepentantly perform horrible acts, snuffing out likely more lives than they're trying to save and creating evils like the Garlean Empire. For Hydaelyn, most of that darkness is concentrated in a single act, as she performs an act of... well, I wouldn't say textbook genocide mostly because that textbook would be insane, but definitely performing an act that ended countless lives for the sake of ensuring that more wouldn't die.

Has the Q&A already slipped your mind?

Q: I am interested to know how unsundered Ascians such as Lahabrea, Elidibus and Emet-Selch avoided being kicked into 14 pieces by Hydaelyn.
A: As you think back to the text towards the end Emet-Selch did imply that Venat let him live unsundered. In fact Venat did intentionally leave a tiny floor in her Sundering attack - a crack that Emet-Selch can wiggle through. Sort of like…yes it was a powerful attack but intentionally chose to do it in this fashion. So we said this in the actual game as well which is when Hydaelyn did the attack, it was a really strong one. It was delivered at the limit of her power so she couldn’t really fine tune it. So as intentional as this was when she did that big massive light attack that sundered the world, she couldn’t guarantee that Emet-Selch would live and she was kind of making a gamble. In fact what happened was, at the time that Hydaelyn performed the sundering, Emet-Selch was with Lahabrea and Elidibus (the time he was already out of being Zodiark core so he’s a little bit different than his original but nevertheless he was there) so they ended up joining forces, and escaped to the rift without being Sundered. You may recall if you read Tales of the Shadows that Elidibus, when he came out of Zodiark he ended up losing some of his memories as well as some parts of himself and that’s sort of the point in Patch 5.3 and when he “dies” you sort of know that he lost a lot in the process as well just like Emet-Selch. So yeah, basically they worked together at that time and escaped being Sundered.

Q: I don’t really understand why the Warrior of Light messing around in Elpis didn’t create any alternate timelines. What happened?
A: Well, I think the most important thing is that you can come up with your own theories for this one. In my personal interpretation however is that the timelines were always the same. Another interpretation you can have is that maybe Venat worked really hard behind the scenes to ensure the timeline didn’t go awry. Therefore the Warrior of Light was always acting in accordance with this plan of Venat so the timeline that we are aware of didn’t change when we went back to the affected. I personally think that when we went to Mare Lamentorium and we first met Argos and Argos really took to us when we were able to ride it, that's basically the proof that at that point, the timeline is going accordingly. We are adding all these stuff to New Game+ in 6.1 so if you’re interested in this I suggest you replay it and think about these questions when you’re playing it.

How are you divorcing the Ascians coming into existence from what she did so cleanly when she ensured Emet-Selch would escape under the guise of potentially aiming at preserving the timelines? She may not have a line by line explanation of what would follow, but she knows enough of the significant details based on the WoL's account to realise what was happening. The Ascians doing what they did is not some mere accident, it is integral for her plan to play out as it did, with all the risks it featured.

Her choosing to commit to the WoL's timeline is a decision with some heavy costs attached to it. And I am fine with people saying they accept these because they're perceived as necessary for the sundered not to poof out of existence (although the 8UC short story featuring an AU throws this into doubt), but equally I am not going to pretend this is the best possible plan in the absence of knowing what the alternatives actually were.

As someone who sides with Team Hydaelyn (although as my videos show, not someone who cares all too much, I have greater interests), I accept that she performed an act that ended lives in extreme circumstances where doing so was the only way to avoid even greater long-term loss; an act that may be heavy and regretful, but was not a mistake. I assume you, as someone who sides with Team Zodiark (I don't know how strongly), can recognize the evils they brought into the world in their efforts to do so?

Sorry but if your posts here are any indication, I am going to call into dispute how little you care about this or whether you're even approaching this in good faith. Nevermind how that entire post is laced in headcanon. Though by all means, if thinking I am just "ignorant" helps you cope, continue doing so.


With that said, these discussions have been had multiple times now, none of us are anywhere near agreeing, the lore remains exactly as it was, and the OP is asking for feedback on this idea and not a replay of this debate.

[aveyond-dreams]

Could you elaborate what you mean by "kill magic"

“Killing magic,” in my view, is when the major magical forces or entities of a game are eliminated by the story’s end. Depending on the game, the protagonist may or may not lose their powers and abilities as a result, but more often that not it comes along with not only that but also the disappearance of creatures like Espers/Aeons too. I feel that this quite literally saps the magic out of a game world, especially if it’s an MMORPG that is meant to continue onward. I think that eliminating both Hydaelyn and Zodiark without any entities to “inherit their will” was a poor choice that led to the Void being pushed on us so rapidly, instead of taking the time to ground Season’s 2 story with a Heavensward-type expansion. It also eliminates the possibility of using religion as an intriguing plotline in the MSQ, because we already know that the entities who were in charge are no more so there’s no mystery to that.

With two new entities slowly building up their strength over time, the WoL/Adventurer would be free to spend an expansion or two resolving local conflicts in a given region. Heavensward is the most brought up example of this because it is a lot more concise and less spread out in scope compared to Stormblood or Shadowbringers. People have expressed wanting to see places like former Imperial territories, Meracydia, etc. but there are also people who are understandably concerned that we’ll be shipped off to the Void as early as 7.0. A comparison is often drawn between that possibility and WoW because of that game’s trend in sending the player character into more and more alternate worlds and realities/dimensions, culminating in way too much cosmic-level storytelling to make any sense.

[Rymi64]

“Killing magic,” in my view, is when the major magical forces or entities of a game are eliminated by the story’s end. Depending on the game, the protagonist may or may not lose their powers and abilities as a result, but more often that not it comes along with not only that but also the disappearance of creatures like Espers/Aeons too. I feel that this quite literally saps the magic out of a game world, especially if it’s an MMORPG that is meant to continue onward. I think that eliminating both Hydaelyn and Zodiark without any entities to “inherit their will” was a poor choice that led to the Void being pushed on us so rapidly, instead of taking the time to ground Season’s 2 story with a Heavensward-type expansion. It also eliminates the possibility of using religion as an intriguing plotline in the MSQ, because we already know that the entities who were in charge are no more so there’s no mystery to that.

With two new entities slowly building up their strength over time, the WoL/Adventurer would be free to spend an expansion or two resolving local conflicts in a given region. Heavensward is the most brought up example of this because it is a lot more concise and less spread out in scope compared to Stormblood or Shadowbringers. People have expressed wanting to see places like former Imperial territories, Meracydia, etc. but there are also people who are understandably concerned that we’ll be shipped off to the Void as early as 7.0. A comparison is often drawn between that possibility and WoW because of that game’s trend in sending the player character into more and more alternate worlds and realities/dimensions, culminating in way too much cosmic-level storytelling to make any sense.

With the death of Hydaelyn and Zodiark we literally lose nothing. We still have the travelers ward, people will still summon primals in desperate times, nothing really changes with their death other than the remaining ascians can do whatever they want to do but thats more from the death of the unsundered. The void wasn't really pushed on us rapidly since we've been dealing with it and it's denizens for years on the back burner in every expansion. We've only had 1 patch and we dont know if we're going to go into the void or somewhere else, could be we deal with the void by 6.5 (as side content or msq) or could be we completely go in 7.0 but one patch is not enough to even make such a guess. You can still use religion as a plot point since you don't have to narrow it down to just hydaelyn or zodiark. I wouldn't even consider hydaelyn central to any religion since she's not really worshiped, the twelve are but not her.

We don't need to have two new entities that are on the scale of H&Z to take their place to just go adventuring and its better not to since if you need a new overarching villain you can just make them fit anywhere in the world and be in the background and can stop using them at anytime without going to the same scale as endwalker. Shadowbringers isn't that spread out in scope compared to HW and ARR since its basically the arr map anyways, SB and EW are the most spread out expansions we have unless they're saying SHB is spread out because its on the first instead of the source which in that case still doesn't make it spread out. And unlike WoW the ff14 writing team is actually good at what they do.