Interesting Question Regarding Voidsent.....

[Cleretic]

That's a lot of text to avoid saying it's your headcanon.

It's a lot of text saying 'I jumped the gun and I apologize, but here's all the evidence that got me there'. Whatever their plan was for the Thirteenth, all evidence suggests Zodiark was a part of it.

It's always important to question your preconceived notions; the things that you internally take as a given, but have perhaps forgotten why you landed on that. Oftentimes it ends in things like this, where there's a few possible readings but it was never resolved and is no longer relevant, so you accidentally go from 'I think it's like this' to 'I'm sure it's like this'. Thanks, Jemachu; asking for evidence when it isn't clear is always important.

[anhaato]

It's a lot of text saying 'I jumped the gun and I apologize, but here's all the evidence that got me there'. Whatever their plan was for the Thirteenth, all evidence suggests Zodiark was a part of it.

It's always important to question your preconceived notions; the things that you internally take as a given, but have perhaps forgotten why you landed on that. Oftentimes it ends in things like this, where there's a few possible readings but it was never resolved and is no longer relevant, so you accidentally go from 'I think it's like this' to 'I'm sure it's like this'. Thanks, Jemachu; asking for evidence when it isn't clear is always important.

I'm a longtime lurker in this section of the forum because I always find it hard to post between the childish debates that go on in here, but because of said lurking I'm well aware of your derangement towards the ancients. So forgive me if I find it quite hilarious that you've essentially made up a headcanon about their plan and used it to color your discussion of them in this thread, especially when said thread had nothing to do with the ascians to begin with, and are unable to back it up. Funnier still, despite what you said about jumping the gun, you're still doubling down by saying "but it's LIKELY" as if we should believe you anyway.

[Cleretic]

I'm a longtime lurker in this section of the forum because I always find it hard to post between the childish debates that go on in here, but because of said lurking I'm well aware of your derangement towards the ancients. So forgive me if I find it quite hilarious that you've essentially made up a headcanon about their plan and used it to color your discussion of them in this thread, especially when said thread had nothing to do with the ascians to begin with, and are unable to back it up. Funnier still, despite what you said about jumping the gun, you're still doubling down by saying "but it's LIKELY" as if we should believe you anyway.

'Derangement about the Ancients', starting off on a great foot. You should be able to notice pretty quickly on a re-read that I wasn't the first person to mention them by any means.

So what do you think their plan was for the Thirteenth?

[anhaato]

'Derangement about the Ancients', starting off on a great foot. You should be able to notice pretty quickly on a re-read that I wasn't the first person to mention them by any means.

So what do you think their plan was for the Thirteenth?

The issue isn't what I think their plan was; we don't have enough information for what restoration of the thirteenth entails, other than a need to rebalance the aether somehow. We don't know if 13/14 rejoined Zodiark is powerful enough to do that, and because we don't know any of this, I won't go so far as to make assumptions as to what their plan was. What you were doing was essentially, "Ugh, I just know those sacks of shit were going to sacrifice more lives to fix the thirteenth!" It's your confirmation bias in action; knowing that Zodiark required potent sources of aether past that of typical crystals in order to maintain essentially an aether barrier which propelled the ancients to offer up their own bodily aether in absence of any better sources, and that they later needed more aether sources to reembody the souls within him, you assume that this is required for every action he could possibly take because it supports your image of the ascians/ancients in general as cultists feeding their blood god. You got rightfully called out for stating a confirmation bias headcanon as fact without any evidence to actually back it up. Trying to say "well what do YEW think they were gonna do, huh!?" is trying to posit yourself as right, again, without evidence, by deflecting instead and implying that the assumption is that you're correct unless someone can be "more correct" in their headcanon. How about we try discussing facts here instead?

[Cleretic]

How about we try discussing facts here instead?

Okay.

Zodiark's main reason for creation was aether stabilization. It was capable of other things, but the literal reason it was summoned was to create a stable aether atmosphere, and the second sacrifice was to fuel a stabilization of the world's aether.

Unlike several of the other things put on Zodiark's plate by the Ascians, this one actually is right up Zodiark's alley in terms of required tasks, it's a remix of the original requirements, on a theoretically smaller scale. Why wouldn't they use Zodiark for that, and why wouldn't a 12/13 nearly-complete Zodiark be able to do 1/14 of his original job? And given every other great act of Zodiark needed sacrifices, why wouldn't this one? The Ascians wouldn't be super inclined to use Zodiark's internal energies even if they could, since the whole mission statement is to save the lives inside it.

[anhaato]

Okay.

Zodiark's main reason for creation was aether stabilization. It was capable of other things, but the literal reason it was summoned was to create a stable aether atmosphere, and the second sacrifice was to fuel a stabilization of the world's aether.

Unlike several of the other things put on Zodiark's plate by the Ascians, this one actually is right up Zodiark's alley in terms of required tasks, it's a remix of the original requirements, on a theoretically smaller scale. Why wouldn't they use Zodiark for that, and why wouldn't a 12/13 nearly-complete Zodiark be able to do 1/14 of his original job? And given every other great act of Zodiark needed sacrifices, why wouldn't this one? The Ascians wouldn't be super inclined to use Zodiark's internal energies even if they could, since the whole mission statement is to save the lives inside it.

Dude why are you still going on this? Yes, I'm sure Zodiark could easily do it, yes, I'm sure they would use him to do it, no, we don't know if it would require sacrifices since this is a nearly-fully-formed Zodiark trying to cover a world 1/14th the aetheric density of the one he was created to protect. And further, this is the rebalancing of an aetherial atmosphere, rather than the maintenance of one in the face of an onslaught of dynamis. Nothing points conclusively in any direction regarding whether or not they needed to sacrifice any lives to accomplish this, so there's no way to factually state any "yes they would" or "no they wouldn't." It's like you're intentionally missing my point so you can keep prattling on about this. This is why I said derangement towards the ancients, this is derangement in action.

[Cleretic]

You asked to discuss facts, I threw down the facts. I could go into extra math to explain how much of a sacrifice it could be (in brief: I hope you have a least favorite continent on Etheirys), but I see it's not really welcome.

I would caution not conflating 'ancients' and 'Ascians', though. My opinion on the Ancients is actually mostly 'eh', but we weren't really talking about them here. We were talking about the Ascians--explicitly post-Sundering, present-day Ascians, who've gone through a very tragic but very long arc that's ended in them being villains with a lot of impact on the game world; they haven't done a whole lot of good for people living in the Seventh Astral Era, and it's a disservice to the Ancients to claim that aspersions cast on the Ascians are really directed at them.


To get back on the subject, a related subject to the OP's original post: so, is the Cloud of Darkness dead? We know that you can't kill Voidsent on the Source and they'll just snap back to the Thirteenth, but she's the only one of note we actually did fight there. The Thrones talk about us and her as if we killed her, and she's referred to in the past tense, but if we actually look back at the Crystal Tower raids, she didn't die after the fight, and we leave the Thirteenth pursued by her particle beams.

So... did we kill her and they just forgot that last scene? Did she take a while to bleed out? Did someone else kill her afterwards (maybe Obvious Golbez)? Is she still around, but no longer relevant? It's just very odd, because everything's playing out like she died... except for the part where she didn't.