Sundering the Nibirun

[Lurina]

I think it's important to understand that, by the developers own admission, the Sundering was part of the canon before they'd even concepted Amaurot, let alone the specifics of the Meteion and Zodiark scenario. Therefore, the way it's written must be understood as an exercise in plugging holes. They'd already written "A+[]=C", and needed to invent something to fill the gap.

The problem with this sort of approach is that you've lost Checkov's Gun before you've even started - obviously you can't have A and C suggest B when B doesn't exist yet. So the only way you can make B seem reasonable (if that's your goal) is to buffer it up with post-hoc explanations. I think this is why the Sundering is written in a way that comes across as quite neurotic, where there's a scattershot of different thematic and worldbuilding reasons why it had to happen; the dynamis manipulation stuff, the time loop stuff, the Ancient culture stuff.

I think they tried to do too much to make people accept the scenario, and ended up making it turn into a bit of a soup, having the opposite effect they wanted. It's easier to buy into one conceit delivered consistently and powerfully than several delivered inconsistently. And EW is ultimately a thematically-driven story, and if the Nibirun show that the Sundering was not thematically necessary for the Ancients as a people to be saved, what are we left with when we consider it from a perspective of pure worldbuilding? "It was necessary to kill 3 billion people to summon the crystal man to save the world, but also having the crystal man will inevitably corrupt society, but also we can't just destroy the crystal man, so the crystal man must be broken into pieces, killing another 1 billion people, to ultimately secure a happy ending (and also we can't refine this scenario because it might break causality and strand us in a doomed reality)"? It's hard to take much from that.

I gave a bit of a cynical take a few pages ago, but if anything, I'd be inclined to read the way the Nibirun are played here as a step away from the idea the Sundering was wholly necessary, as opposed to just a somewhat understandable act done in an extreme set of circumstances. I think that's probably the best move at this point.

[Brinne]

No, the Sundering was never necessary. Endwalker still makes sense if you simply re-contextualize it as the action of one person because they believed it was necessary - no more, and no less.

We really do have to accept that Venat knew the Ancient people enough to read them at least mostly correctly. Not only because the story doesn't work otherwise, but because all evidence we see suggests she was right, and that she has the exact resume to be as accurate as expected for this.

I absolutely do not think we "have to accept" this. Appeals to authority and someone's "resume" and being more "knowledgeable" to justify something an atrocity like the Sundering make me sour even more to it, frankly.

[Lyth]

I absolutely do not think we "have to accept" this.

Quite right, you don't. Was there anything else?

[FireMage]

No, the Sundering was never necessary.

It absolutely was, to both stop the cycle of sacrifice and to give mankind a chance at stopping Meteion. Full stop

[dynus]

I wonder if the Nibirun have enough aether to be sundered like we were. I haven't finished the quests yet, and maybe I'm forgetting some things, but our Ancients were a lot denser aetherically than the others, right?

If we go by the dragons size vs the size of the ancients vs. the size of everything else on Ultima Thule, I'd say they don't. That they are closer to us now (four sevenths for most peoples of Hydaelyn, 9/14ths for the WoL and G'raha) vs us unsundered.

Of course, that just asks a lot of other questions.

[Lyth]

If you've witnessed the phase transition cutscene in P8S, you'll know that Hephaistos is the part of Lahabrea that still loves Athena and wants to be reunited with her. The entire reason why he originally decided to merge souls with her in the first place was to find out if she loved him in return.