Quote Originally Posted by Lady_Silvermoon View Post
The Ancient world was not destroyed by the Final Days. The Ancient world was destroyed in a terrorist attack -- The Sundering.
They weren't called the "Not That Bad, Actually Days" and the debris and dead Ancients littering the streets of Amaurot were very real. Zodiark and Hydaelyn were summoned in a post-apocalyptic scenario. The world was already over and the Schism was the survivors arguing over how they were going to try to pick up and continue after everything that happened.

The world was so thoroughly destroyed that it took half again as many people who were initially sacrificed to Zodiark to seed the world with new life. Zodiark wasn't going to bring back the people who died in the Final Days either, only the survivors who were sacrificed to him. Everyone left went through hell and saw the magic lauded by their people turn against them and create horrors beyond comprehension.

According to EE3, in the face of that, the growing anti-Zodiark faction didn't believe they could go through that again and argued against the Convocation's plans to just continue on as if nothing happened. Venat's supporters knew about her plan for the Sundering. The Ancients were also the custodians of the planet and their entire culture was around curating life. They saw themselves as an extension of that life and gave it back to the lifestream when they were done with it. But the only path forward that was absolutely known where life continued was the path already presented to her where she sunders the planet. She didn't relish in it and acknowledged what she was doing was cruel, but that it had to happen and that if anyone had to do it, it might as well be her.


Speaking from outside the universe of the game, all of this HAD to happen because that's the only way that the world we've been playing our game in exists. None of this was written in the game's setting when the game was first released. Ascians were just "doing bad things" for their bad god. The story from around SB on when they bothered to start writing more of the background over time is a result of the writers trying to add complexity to everything after the fact and then trying to wrap it all up together with the song Answers, which while retroactively is song by Hydaelyn, came out in 1.0 before Hydaelyn as a goddess even existed.

So the writers had to come up with a reason why this would HAVE to happen and I won't pretend that what we got wasn't awkward at best and that they wrote themselves into a corner. But in the scenario presented, everyone had a reason for doing what they did. Our direct involvement could also mean that none of it could have happened unless we were there and that it was all fated to happen anyway because it couldn't have happened unless it already has already. If we didn't tell Venat about a world that she sundered but is full of people who have the capacity to handle the very specific energy that's the cause of their demise then maybe it wouldn't have happened. She could very well have gone against fate and not done that, but then we wouldn't have a game to play in.