Tales from the Dawn #3: "A Question of Life" (Hermes)

[KariTheFox]

Scientific detour – if we're actually physically taking all the atoms in a person and arranging it into two "scale models" of the person (half the volume), they're going to be more around 80% of the height of the original.

(Or perhaps the same size but extremely un-dense, and then they evolve and collapse down over a few generations or something.)

Incidentally, a 14x increase in volume would make someone about 2.5 times the height.

On the other hand, people of the Source aren't any bigger than those from the shards, just more dense.

That's even assuming that aether-based physics maps onto our atomic understanding of physics.

Density might work in weird ways because of aether (or rather, it just works the way that characters describe it working, because that is what is necessary for the story.)

In other words, Emet-Selch accurately depcited Ryne beong sundered because there is no reason in the plot for him to be inaccurate.

[KariTheFox]

1) We can assume the third sacrifice was sapient beings even if it's not explicitly stated because the story has a broader theme of letting go of the past to secure the future, and it's stated that Hydaelyn's faction wanted the new life to inherit the star in line with the idea of 'let those who walk before lead those who walk after', so it would feel out of place if they weren't sapient.

2) The player races, collectively 'mankind', have always been meant to be Sundered Ancients.

These are mutually incompatible ideas. If 2 has been true from the start, 1 cannot be a consistent application of the theme because, again, the 'new life' didn't inherit the star. We did. And whatever the third sacrifice was has disappeared from the story.

If the theme is not being applied consistently, it cannot be used as a basis to make an inference of writer intent. We cannot use the thematic resonance of the new life succeeding the Ancients as stewards of the star to presume their sapience when they didn't.

Children, or rather future generations can be understood as "new life" in the world.

They are also our descendants, and we are the ancestors of future generations.

Future generations are new life, they descendants of those who came before. I don't see the contradiction.

The potential third sacrifice didn't vanish from the story, we grew up.

[Lurina]

Children, or rather future generations can be understood as "new life" in the world.

They are also our descendants, and we are the ancestors of future generations.

Future generations are new life, they descendants of those who came before. I don't see the contradiction.

The potential third sacrifice didn't vanish from the story, we grew up.

To reiterate, at the time of the third sacrifice, Sundered humans - the player races - did not exist because the Sundering had not yet happened, and so couldn't be sacrificed. The only form they existed in was as Unsundered Ancients.

Are you saying the Ancients were planning on sacrificing their own kids? That's completely unsubstantiated by the text. A distinction is repeatedly drawn between the 'new life' and the Ancients as beings.

[Foxowl]

I really liked reading the discussion Kari and Lurina have been having, but it does bring me back to the big aspect of the Endwalker Sundering issue that I soured on after stewing on it for eight months.

Like, I would have agreed with you back in the days of Shadowbringers, when the emphasis of the conflict was heavily on how the Ancients 'ought' to have stepped aside and let the new life thrive. (Though I can only recall one actual instance of the third sacrifice being framed as the successors to the Ancients as stewards, which is during the conversation with Hythlo in Amaurot - what else were you thinking of?) Back then, everyone kind of took it as a given that the third sacrifice was the player races. That made the story line up very nicely. The Amaurotines wanted to wipe 'us' out 12,000 years ago to bring their people back, but Hydaelyn stood in opposition to them, which led to us inheriting the world. However, Emet and the Ascians still want the same thing in the present: To kill us and save their own people and bring back their civilization as it was. Nice and clean, right?

...but in Endwalker, the framing shifted towards the player races being descendants of the Sundered Ancients instead, which was ultimately confirmed explicitly in an interview. So now everything is muddled. There's no obvious conclusion to draw about what the third sacrifice was, and despite what Hydaelyn's efforts, whatever they were didn't end up inheriting the star after all - we did. Or rather the Ancients kept it, just Sundered.

This makes the message very muddled. My guess is that the original intent in Shadowbringers was that the player races were the new life, but they decided to change that in Endwalker to fit with the narrative about the Sundering's purpose being to force humanity to understand grief and loss. It's no longer a tale of people resisting passing the torch, but a tale of people refusing to accept loss and change and having it forced upon them, then collectively overcoming far in the future. In Shadowbringers Hydaelyn fights Zodiark to save the new life from her people, while in Endwalker Hydaelyn fights Zodiark to 'save her people from themselves'.

These motives might be inconsistent, but the bigger thing for me is that while they're solid motivations for the character of Venat pre-Level 87 Endwalker MSQ, the time travel narrative somewhat invalidates them in a way that frustrates me, because basically every other part of Venat in Endwalker was (in my opinion) pretty good, and make me like her character. The Walk, too, totally great as a scene. But I really think the choice to not wipe her memory muddles all of the morals and the interesting dynamic between Hydaelyn and the Ascians-- throughout the whole story, the player is obligated to side with Hydaelyn, as our existence is dependent on her action. Alphinaud's point against Emet at the end of 5.0 are always true: no matter how disappointing or sad it is that the Ancient world no longer exists, their society/world is gone. Now as Lurina said, in Endwalker it's sort of retooled a bit so that "humanity" as a general umbrella for all the sapient life is more or less the same as the Ancients, at least in the respect that they have the same great moral issues to tackle (moving forward and accepting the inevitable pains of life to continue that progression in a way that doesn't stagnate society and lead to joylessness and self-prescribed ruin), but regardless, there are probably just more sundered people than ancients (both the ancients that were divided into 14 pieces and the new life that has arisen in the 12000 years since, ie. most of the Scions) so it's still "our" world and not the Ascians'.

Giving Venat the foreknowledge she has in the end muddles this dynamic, since it turns the pure ideological difference leading to the Sundering into what we have now, where Venat's apparent motivations to everyone--which would be consistent with her character, as she says in "A Friendship of Record:"

"What we anticipate and what comes to pass need not be the same," she had once said. "'Tis best we work towards the greatest good without foreknowledge which might cloud our judgment."

I'd like to read this as her resolving to do what she would have done in this situation regardless of her knowledge of the future, the fully Venat choice to move forward because she loves the star.

But that's not exactly great, because we know that her choice is based on a) what she would have done and also b) the fact that she knows what the source of the current Final Days issue is, and how the societal and physical change she could bring about in the worst-case scenario could fix this, as she knows from us that it has happened at least once before in our timeline. The writers also now have to do the jumping-through-hoops that is justifying Venat's inability to do anything except what she always would have done.

So if she was going to have these motives anyway, why add this extra layer that gives people the ability to turn her justifiable motives into "justifiable except not really except here's all the loopholes why she's sort of still justified in the way she would have been anyway."

I think the alternative would have been fine: she loses her memories like the rest, but still maybe retains the moral lessons learned from Elpis (or not, she still has her character traits). Now she's free to have the Sundering come from her, and not from her AND this other knowledge she doesn't tell anyone about. The Walk can literally play out in the exact same way--just with her speaking from the perspective of current Hydaelyn/Venat who knows who the Warrior of Light is and has been Etheirys' Will for 12,000 years. 12,000 years is a long time, so the writers can still have her figure out the sound is coming from somewhere in space, since she would still have the Meteion tracker. She can also still remember us before/during/after the 89 trial, through aetherial sea/memory technobabble. Suddenly Venat is more or less consistent with both Shadowbringers and her established character traits in Endwalker up until she suddenly has to become secretive and cowardly for story reasons, and the player and Scions can still venerate her as the side of the debate who paved the way for the future, without the moral murkiness of "but she withheld information."

I read a lot of posts on the forum and I don't often agree with Lauront's opinions, but I think he said it in a pretty clear way:

Her faction's main goal is to get her people to stop the third sacrifice out of the fear that restoration of their civilisation would result in their stagnation, or worse (and of course, her own direct fear is the Plenty and Meteion.) Using such a narrative to stall and buy time until she was ready to summon Hydaelyn is the most logical way of parsing the event to me. My take on it is her answer is to preserve the timeline as is required and provide her followers an adequately persuasive narrative to stall towards that end.

Turning Venat into a strict timeline-preserver instead of having her motives fully and naturally come out of her love for the star and ideals about progressing society really just sours what is an otherwise satisfying plotline--I mean it's literally out of character with who she is not one quest before.

Sorry for adding more to what is already a beaten-to-death, bloated, endless discussion about this plotline that's been going on since December, but I think this is my final opinion on it--one very clumsy, hasty writing choice at the end that makes the rest disappointing. Honestly I really hope we just avoid any more Sundering stuff in the game, in the short stories, etc. as we move on to the other super interesting parts of the game, although who knows if the 6.2 stinger is suggesting we're getting more about it. This post is also off-topic for this thread more or less, but I did see some more productive/new discussion of the same topic (from Kari, Lurina, and Lauront) that piqued my interest to write a forum post, which I haven't really done before.

As for the Tales from the Dawn, I've enjoyed all three so far even if they mostly cover events we've already seen. Doubt tomorrow's is Ancient-focused, would wager Garlemald/Thavnair/maybe Ultima Thule. I'm hoping it'll be Garlemald, which hasn't had much of a presence in 6.x apart from the role quest capstone, and I could see Dawn #4 being a Jullus story. Thavnair has been used a lot in MSQ and they might be saving UT stories for the Omicron Quests. Whatever it is, I do hope it covers an event/events we haven't already seen.

[KariTheFox]

To reiterate, at the time of the third sacrifice, Sundered humans - the player races - did not exist because the Sundering had not yet happened, and so couldn't be sacrificed. The only form they existed in was as Unsundered Ancients.

Are you saying the Ancients were planning on sacrificing their own kids? That's completely unsubstantiated by the text. A distinction is repeatedly drawn between the 'new life' and the Ancients as beings.

I'm saying that they planned on sacrificing what new life that they could cultivate, and up until that point they had treated thier creations and the life they raised as children.

As self appointed stewards of the star, any life they raise would be in some sense thier children, whether or not we are the literal biological descedants of the ancients doesn't really change that for me.

(People in these threads have stressed, many times, the kindness and parent-like care the ancients show towards thier familiars and creations.

[Absimiliard]

Any plans pertaining to the creation or usage of Zodiark came into being after all but the barest thread of the Ancient population remained. The Final Days did most of them in, and Zodiark wound up requiring a rather substantial chunk of the handful that remained just to prevent the planet's death. Another fairly large portion of Ancients willingly sacrificed themselves afterward so the primal would have the power it needed to restore the world to a life-sustaining state and subsequently seed it with new life.

Bearing the above in mind, how were the Ancients supposed to shepherd anything? The plan, as I understood it, was to give this new life the time to propagate itself. I've no doubt the Ancients would've helped as much as they could, but the only way their plan would've worked is if the lion's share of work was done by nature simply running its course.

Using life seeded by Zodiark as fodder to restore the sacrificed Ancients is rather far removed from some dude rolling up in a field and giving his own beloved creation the Old Yeller treatment.

[KageTokage]

I feel like the questions of where souls come from and precisely how/why Ancient souls differed from ordinary ones are something that could still end up being a major factor in the future, especially considering the implications of some Lifestream-related weirdness going on...which might already be manifesting to some extent with the present Pandaemonium shenanigans.

[KariTheFox]

Since we're operating in a universe where reincarnation is confirmed to be phenomenon that the ancients not only believed in, but could track and observe as souls were reincarnated into new lives, I think the distinction between literal biological descendants and other new life forms that emerged on the star.

As a kind of side point, what exactly does it mean for an ancient to have children? It doesn't seem likely that they would reproduce the traditional way, given they already have the capacity to create new ensouled life in the form of familiars,

But they must have children, since characters are the children of other characters and they yknow, understand what a child is. Probably not something we're supposed to think too hard about.

[Lurina]

As a kind of side point, what exactly does it mean for an ancient to have children? It doesn't seem likely that they would reproduce the traditional way, given they already have the capacity to create new ensouled life in the form of familiars,

No, they don't. Multiple NPCs in Elpis say that you're the first familiar with a soul they've ever seen.

[Rannie]

Hmm and what about the Ancients who were killed during the final days and before the final days(maybe not exactly killed before the final days but the ones who had died and were actually part of the underworld and lifestream when it happened).... do we know if the bird sisters were able to harvest them before zodiark was made?

On an off note this could be a viable reason as to why the Echo doesn't awake in everyone and yet they still feel sadness and such *shrugs* atleast the ones who returned to the star prior to the incident