Zodiark's Codex entry what do we think about it?

[Cleretic]

That said, it's frustrating how the text talks about Amaurot because it feels like the writers can't decide if they wanted it to be the only real culture of the Ancients (how EW and the grapes short story seems to lean) or just one of many (as ShB seems to lean). The Codex entries in particular seem to treat "Ancients" as synonymous with "Amaurotines" and the Convocation as some sort of global government in defiance of Debate and Discourse's worldbuilding, which is something I find extremely annoying - my headcanon is that Amaurot became the global government by virtue of being the last one standing, but that's a stab in the dark. So it's difficult to say what their relationship was to other nations, and whether they really were "provinces" or if Amaurot was just the Sharlayan of the time and a little conceited about itself.

I never actually read it as implying other nations. I think the main thing you're thinking of in Shadowbringers, by your mention of it, is this one?

Loquacious Amaurotine: As to the matter of what subject we shall debate today, I propose the recent calamity which has befallen our friends across the pond. What say you? The singular point of contention is, of course, whether or not Amaurot should intervene on their behalf. I believe we should. The scale of the disaster which threatens that distant metropolis is of a scale heretofore unseen, and so equally considerable resources must be committed to counteracting its effects.

Amaurotine Firebrand: I disagree. The scale concerns me less than the nature of the proposition itself. Who are we to unilaterally intervene in the affairs of those half a world away? Are we to be the saviors of one and all? Such arrogance may well lead to our own downfall.

The main thing here that suggests 'different nation' is just raw distance; it feels fairly unlikely that a city 'half a world away' could be in the same nation. However, that's not only completely valid in certain contexts, it's also been true in the game's setting; the Garlean and Allagan Empires both had pretty far-flung colonies, and while I can't imagine either having that conversation because of their worldviews, I could see them talking about those further-out colonies in a similar way. (Also, if Emet did indeed design Allag to be reminiscent of his homeland, as suggested in a couple areas, we can therefore at least assume Amaurot to be a very large nation.)

All that said, I think in the overall view of the narrative from a Doylist perspective, we can definitely recognize Amaurot as the only relevant Ancient culture/nation. It's the only one we hear about and the only one we have any clear, non-circumstantial evidence of; whether they were a one-world government or not doesn't really change any part of the story as presented to us.

[Zero-ELEC]

And with that, within Endwalker, Hydaelyn bestowed her own Unsundered Magic onto the stone, which we used in Ultima Thule not only to bring back the Scions, but to first bring back two Unsundered Ancients who then used their mighty creation magicks to make Ultima Thule a physical realm so the Scions could be brought back without unmaking it.

That's not what made Ultima Thule a "physical realm". Hope made Ultima Thule a physical realm. The Elpis blooms just showed that the realm was suffused with it.

[Lunaxia]

The real question is simply whether you unironically take Emet's beliefs that his people were 'superior' to ours at face value.

Objectively they were superior, from both a physical and intellectual standpoint. The story demonstrates this endlessly. Whether they were fundamentally morally superior is much more of a grey area, and the answer isn't so easily ascertained. But it was never about whether Emet-Selch's assertions about mortals were true or not in the first place, but how they deserved to live in in spite of those flaws - and the advantages said flaws may have even given them over the Ancients to better enable them to survive in the context of the story.

I think if you do want to artificially elevate the Amaurotines to be 'superior' to the rest of us, then you are in fact depriving them of their humanity. How could mere mortals like ourselves attempt to relate to the whims of 'the gods'?

Amaurot, Elpis and the Ancients we've seen thus far in both the MSQ and Pandaemonium manage to do this quite well, actually, because despite our differences we are also constantly shown to possess an abundance of similarities on both a personal and emotional level. It's basically one of the key driving points of the narrative from Shadowbringers onwards.

If, on the other hand, you recognize that Emet's claims are strongly influenced by his jingoism, then you're humanizing Amaurot.

"The only way to truly humanise the Ancients is to disregard accepted lore and accept my bad faith argument that the they were inherently racist." I'm sorry, but do you realise how ridiculous this sounds?

This sort of thinking opens up avenues for a wider range of story possibilities, rather than tying all stories and historical developments back to an isolationist Amaurot ruling over the 'provinces' from on high. It also opens up Azem's origin story as well, because they need not be tied down to one specific culture by birth or upbringing.

Fans of the Ancients already ask these sorts of questions, and I wasn't under the impression anyone did think Amaurot was the sole form of governance in the Ancient world. The debate on sending foreign aid to their neighbours effectively put paids to that theory, no?

Edit: The shades in Amaurot refer to this other nation as a "metropolis", so by that we can definitively infer that at least one, if not more societies similar to Amaurot did exist.

[Lyth]

I don't think that you can unironically use words like 'superior' and 'inferior' in reference to other human beings. This is one of those things that is by its nature not objective or mathematical. While you can be proud of your strengths, they don't make you intrinsically 'superior' to another human being.

I'm still of a mindset that Azem is from one of those other places. Personal headcanon is that Azem is from a place more in tune to nature and open to ideas and creativity. Basically the opposite of Amaurot. If we were to declare Amaurot the "Order" of the world, the place Azem is from is the "Chaos" of the world. A place that raises people to be themselves instead of following the overall "Order" of the society. Not to say there aren't rules there, but they're much more open to creativity, expression of the self, and more akin to Idylshire or the Azim Steppe in terms of how the society is.

I'm of a similar view. That's not to say that Azem couldn't have absorbed their share of Amaurotine values from the likes of Emet and Elidibus over time. But as a non-conformist who was censured at least twice by the Convocation (to the point that the Convocation refused to preserve the memories of Azem's post for future generations), it seems that growing up as an outsider and a misfit in Amaurotine social circles would line up very naturally with that origin story. At the very least, the less definitive constraints that are placed on Azem's story, the more freedom players have to construct their own player character's stories in relation to their progenitor's spirit.

On a related note, I'd really like to see that same clash of values between 'Order' and 'Chaos' be encapsulated in Summoning magic. It strikes me as really strange that Summoning in this story has been dismissed as an inferior substitute for Creation magic, especially when the former is easily one of the most iconic and recognizable spell casting techniques across the 35-year franchise. It really deserves better. I would love to see a FFXIV society that gets Summoning 'right' - a village of summoners who use a combination of spiritual faith and forming bonds with their summons to in order live in harmony alongside them, perhaps in the vein of FFIV's Mist or FFIX's Madain Sari. I think there are plenty of opportunities to explore what Summoning really entails if we head south to Meracydia, given what we know of their historical war with Allag. Bonus points if they trace their lineage to one of those foreign nations observed by Amaurot from 'across the pond'.

[RyuDragnier]

On a related note, I'd really like to see that same clash of values between 'Order' and 'Chaos' be encapsulated in Summoning magic. It strikes me as really strange that Summoning in this story has been dismissed as an inferior substitute for Creation magic, especially when the former is easily one of the most iconic and recognizable spell casting techniques across the 35-year franchise. It really deserves better. I would love to see a FFXIV society that gets Summoning 'right' - a village of summoners who use a combination of spiritual faith and forming bonds with their summons to in order live in harmony alongside them, perhaps in the vein of FFIV's Mist or FFIX's Madain Sari. I think there are plenty of opportunities to explore what Summoning really entails if we head south to Meracydia, given what we know of their historical war with Allag. Bonus points if they trace their lineage to one of those foreign nations observed by Amaurot from 'across the pond'.

Even more bonus points if the name of that area of Meracydia (or of that foreign nation apart from Amaurot) is the Feymarch.

[Brinne]

Emet singles out Amaurot and obviously holds a special affection for it as his home, but he doesn't idolize Amaurotines as superior from other Ancient humans. In all his dialogue, he only compares ancient mankind in totality with modern mankind in totality. He's less a jingoist nationalist - if Garlemald and Allag are good examples, he regards jingoism as an exploitable flaw with Sundered humanity more than anything - and more an extremely stubborn version of the protagonist of I Am Legend, killing what he regards as undead abominations born of the "real" human race.

Yeah, to be honest, the push towards a filter of seeing some kind of IRL racism analogue onto the situation with the Ascians and the Sundered has always felt a little bizarre to me. (It was the furthest thing from my mind when I got to Amaurot. What I immediately thought was that, 'ah, I see, this is some kind of fascinating metacommentary - something like real people versus video game characters, isn't it?') There is no actual context for racism that matches up to the Sundered versus Unsundered situation - the dramatic, objective physical differences to the point that it's confirmed they should be seen as different species altogether, and the historical context of "one 'race' being literally made of the bones of the murdered members of the other 'race'," or one race undeniably having to exist at the expense of another. If you try to apply this to any situation with racial tensions we have here on Earth, it gets real gross real fast.

I think it's better regarded as a fantasy-laced thought experiment, like your example of a flipped perspective of someone dealing with what would normally be considered 'zombie abominations'. If you really wanted to compare it to a form of prejudice in reality, ableism, as you mentioned, would probably be more fitting.

But to be blunt, the way it often keeps getting forcefully pushed - into conversations and discussions that had nothing to do with the topic, and via soft browbeating anyone who expresses potential sympathy on any level towards the Ascians as therefore sympathizing with racial supremicism or what have you - and the way it so often goes hand in hand with denigrating the Ancients themselves as a people and a culture, it comes across like it's less about actually opposing racism in principle and more about nursing a really deep-seated grudge about feeling personally insulted by Emet-Selch, especially in the context of a video game power fantasy.

For me, as a thought experiment, Shadowbringers (very gently) actually challenging the power fantasy was why it was so memorable. To ask the question, point blank, "if it isn't a given that we, the assigned protagonists, are the ones who are 'superior' by whatever measure, and who 'deserve to live' more, then what? How do we respond? What do we do?" And I absolutely loved Shadowbringers's answer for it. I don't have a problem, personally, acknowledging that there are individuals even within my own species who are better or superior than me in certain respects - athleticism, gaming skills, what have you. What many able-bodied people are able to do that I struggle with at the best of times. And sometimes, yes, even the capacity to make moral decisions, rather than self-interested ones. But that doesn't mean I don't have a right to live, just as much as anyone else.

Shadowbringers was compelling for asserting, and presenting a situation where, the only way to "win" against the question asked by Emet-Selch is to throw out the entire framework altogether. Hence why the Scions don't - can't - present any meaningful arguments against his claims of "superiority" in one realm or another - Alphinaud simply asserts that it doesn't matter in terms of being allowed to exist, and he was absolutely right.

It meant, and still means, a lot to me.

[Lunaxia]

I don't think that you can unironically use words like 'superior' and 'inferior' in reference to other human beings. This is one of those things that is by its nature not objective or mathematical. While you can be proud of your strengths, they don't make you intrinsically 'superior' to another human being.

"Superior" can be used objectively and subjectively. Emet-Selch tells us that the Ancients were superior in terms of strength, intelligence, robustness and longevity. At least two of those (strength and longevity) can be measured mathematically, but that's irrelevant here, because the story already confirmed the Ancients do indeed possess these traits anyway. So in that respect, he was objectively telling the truth.

What is subjective, however, is whether these qualities make the Ancients superior or subsequently more deserving of life as a race overall. And I don't think anyone here or within the story is claiming that, or that Emet-Selch wasn't categorically wrong for believing otherwise. But that still has no bearing on humanising Amaurot itself, or why you have to view everything Emet-Selch tells us as a lie in order to do so.

[Cleretic]

Personally, I constantly argue that Emet was wrong about intelligence, for the simple example of 'every time an Ascian died, it was because they were outsmarted by sundered people'. That's not exactly the most scientific measuring criteria, but in a story it speaks volumes more than if someone produced, like, the Etheiryan equivalent of IQ scores.

If I were being generous, Emet might be falling for a fallacy that I wish had an actual name: the belief that 'less advanced' civilizations must have less intelligent people in them. In the modern day it manifests as variants of 'people in the past were stupid' (see: 'ancient Egyptians couldn't have built the pyramids, it must've been aliens'), and of course, it's a backbone of a whole lot of racist outlooks on the world (see: 'colonialism was good because it brought 'modernity' to other countries'). It's a view usually born of a combination of not recognizing that human intelligence is built on a mountain of previous discoveries, having a selective and self-centered view of 'knowledge' in the first place, and drawing your own criteria for 'success' to put yourself on top. Basically, from Emet's perspective, the sundered people must be less intelligent, because a real intelligent society could've come up with skyscrapers, Elpis, and the cubus, and he's just ignoring or belittling the advancements they actually are making.

...and as a sick addition to that: remember that the big reason the Source has lost a bunch of information they can't easily learn from and build on is because the Ascians keep forcing their advanced civilizations to blow themselves to smithereens.

[Lunaxia]

I think the Ascians for sure frequently underestimated the resilience, resourcefulness and intelligence of the sundered. I don't think you're wrong there. It's a common trait in "mastermind" villains, and such arrogance is more often than not what leads to the downfall of such characters in the majority of stories they feature in. But I'm not inclined to think they threw that in amidst other qualities the sundering did have an effect on just to illustrate Emet-Selch being an ass, lol. I mean, the Scions are comprised of some of the brightest minds in Eorzea, and as Vyreus pointed out it took an entire group of them plus the strength of possibly the most powerful/ skilled warrior living to collectively overcome a single Ascian who had maintained a large degree of his powers, and even then it was close, even if they did triumph in the end. The only Ascian we have come close to defeating in a one-on-one battle has been remarked upon as being severely cracked and weakened from years of body-hopping resulting in a steady slide into insanity (...or an alien space rock, if you buy into that.)

Though for the record, I'm also not asserting there's a clear boundary between Ancient intelligence and sundered intelligence - I imagine there's an overlap at the extreme ends of both spectrums, nor am I suggesting that higher levels of intelligence automatically correlates with the ability to apply it effectively. It's no secret smart people can be really dumb; such intelligence isn't an adequate substitute for emotional intelligence, common sense or poor judgement, which we can often see in the real world, and I don't think the Ancients are any exception to that. Some of the quests in Elpis demonstrate this pretty well.

As for Emet-Selch, I think what pissed him off regarding the sundered isn't their inability to reach technological milestones (especially since as you say, such progress was frequently trashed by their side anyway) but the way they allow their base instincts of greed, selfishness, malice, and violence to dictate their actions and create widespread destruction and tragedy. It's basically anathema to what the Ancients believed in and how they operated, so his disdain isn't really surprising.

[Cleretic]

As for Emet-Selch, I think what pissed him off regarding the sundered isn't their inability to reach technological milestones (especially since as you say, such progress was frequently trashed by their side anyway) but the way they allow their base instincts of greed, selfishness, malice, and violence to dictate their actions and create widespread destruction and tragedy. It's basically anathema to what the Ancients believed in and how they operated, so his disdain isn't really surprising.

First of all: Again, their fault. Like, if that were truly his point, he's weakened it by intrusion. Real 'stop hitting yourself' energy there.

Second of all: Our trips into Elpis and (especially) Pandaemonium have shown that Ancients can absolutely be greedy, selfish, malicious and violent, and in fact, I would argue that every single Ascian we've met was all four of those. You could argue perhaps that Amaurot was better set up to counteract those, but I would argue otherwise and point to Pandaemonium; they were pretty ripe for a bad actor to do some real damage.

Honestly, with this point I've never seen anything resembling evidence that Ancients were actually smarter than sundered people (and the writers can write 'smarter species than humans' fairly convincingly; the dragons, the Omicron and the Ea come to mind, although they had their own problems), but I have seen ample evidence that Emet would lie to both us and ourselves to make the Ancients look better and like more of a tragic loss, and us as worse.