Did Zodiark ever do anything wrong?

[JepMZ]

I don't think the Ea experienced the Final Days. The Ea's home is designated as Ostrakon Tria in Meteion's report, and this is what she had to say about them:



The Ea had already discovered the inevitable heat death of the universe and had exterminated themselves via exsanguination of their aether before Meteion got there. She presumably got information on them via an Echo-adjacent power and her own abiltiy to tap into the emotions of others.

Of course they experienced the Final Days. How else did she destroy their souls and collect them for us to experience them at the end of the game?

[unlimitedBLACK]

Zodiark did nothing wrong, because Zodiark did not have a will of His own. He was a turbo-charged superfamiliar empowered through a TON of Ancient sacrifice to rewrite the rules of the star and agitate places of stagnant aether, since those were the places where blasphemies kept showing up.

The Ancient Convocation deciding to continue making additional sacrifices was arguably "doing good in an evil way" because the objective was to save their world, but it meant sacrificing all the new life that had sprouted up, and Venat effectively argued that what the Ancients needed to do was move forward instead of backward.

Meanwhile, consider Venat. When we get to Endwalker, the key thing we learn is that Venat did this STRICTLY because of the bootstrap paradox of the WoL going back to Elpis and telling her what happened, and she concluded that only by allowing the Ancients to be decimated by the Final Days (AND allowing the new life to flourish AND ultimately sundering the star entirely so that the new life was more capable of manipulating dynamis in order to combat Meteion) was she going to prevent Meteion from winning. She allowed all of the death and suffering that occurred as a result of that decision (on the Source through the calamities, on the shards because of the Rejoinings, throughout all time) because she knew that was the only future where Meteion could be defeated, and if she deviated from the bootstrap paradox, she MIGHT save one world, but she'd doom the original world and every possible timeway that would spiral off of it if she did so.

So Venat, too, could be argued to have been doing evil in a good way, since it would ULTIMATELY, HOPEFULLY, lead to a resolution that rejected Meteion's nihilism, but it required a ton of bloodshed in order to work. Which is a big reason why Hydaelyn uses the last of Her conscious strength to get in a final bout with the WoL; She knows that She needs to pay some kind of penance for what She's done, and getting killed by Her own champion is the best way to do it.

But at the end of the day, Zodiark didn't do anything wrong; the Ascians did a LOT of evil in the name of reactivating Zodiark, and Zodiark WOULD have been used to commit huge evils if the Ascians had succeeded, but ZODIARK wasn't the source of that evil.

[Cleretic]

Of course they experienced the Final Days. How else did she destroy their souls and collect them for us to experience them at the end of the game?

I honestly don't think the description of Tria actually strays from what we found, they technically are just 'lingering essences', so they would've been there--and reasonably, they would've eventually seen the Final Days whether they wanted to or not. In fact, the only society in Ultima Thule that we can't be confident Meteion found before turning were the Grebuloffs; every other civilization is either within the number range of the report section we heard, have an accurate description of them after the report's recited, or in the case of the Nibirun and Karellians directly mention her in dungeon notes (the Karellians might also be in the report), but the Grebuloffs have none of these.

Not that any of that matters, because they're all artificial dynamis constructs and she had twelve thousand years to make them; that's a lot of room to get clever or go back to earlier findings.

[Alenore]

Meanwhile, consider Venat. When we get to Endwalker, the key thing we learn is that Venat did this STRICTLY because of the bootstrap paradox of the WoL going back to Elpis and telling her what happened, and she concluded that only by allowing the Ancients to be decimated by the Final Days (AND allowing the new life to flourish AND ultimately sundering the star entirely so that the new life was more capable of manipulating dynamis in order to combat Meteion) was she going to prevent Meteion from winning. She allowed all of the death and suffering that occurred as a result of that decision (on the Source through the calamities, on the shards because of the Rejoinings, throughout all time) because she knew that was the only future where Meteion could be defeated, and if she deviated from the bootstrap paradox, she MIGHT save one world, but she'd doom the original world and every possible timeway that would spiral off of it if she did so.

I've always felt like it was a weak point in her reasoning.

"I know if I follow this road, I'll destroy the entirety of my civilization, introduce war, illness, death and suffering in everybodies life, that 7 entire worlds will be wiped.

If I do that, there'll be some other form of humanity that hasn't fixed the problem and face imminent extinction. It won't be for thousands of years, while Meteion wipes the universe clean of all life and gets stronger in her corner of the universe.

I really hope I'll have a solution by then..."

And then, her solution is "I know your form of life can simply be erased from existence by Meteion through Dynamis, but please go there and find a way".

As if 12000 years of Ancients studying how to fix the issue and preventing Etheirys from being ruined in the first place wouldn't have granted some results.

It would have been better for the story if we were the only ones remembering what happened, really.

[Darkstride]

I've always felt like it was a weak point in her reasoning.

"I know if I follow this road, I'll destroy the entirety of my civilization, introduce war, illness, death and suffering in everybodies life, that 7 entire worlds will be wiped.

If I do that, there'll be some other form of humanity that hasn't fixed the problem and face imminent extinction. It won't be for thousands of years, while Meteion wipes the universe clean of all life and gets stronger in her corner of the universe.

I really hope I'll have a solution by then..."

And then, her solution is "I know your form of life can simply be erased from existence by Meteion through Dynamis, but please go there and find a way".

As if 12000 years of Ancients studying how to fix the issue and preventing Etheirys from being ruined in the first place wouldn't have granted some results.

It would have been better for the story if we were the only ones remembering what happened, really.

We, the player, don't exist without the Sundering. From a gameplay standpoint, it doesn't make sense to have a plot point for Venat to solve the problem without a Sundering. Doing so would wipe us out, along with everything we've done in the game.

Regardless of the paradox, if she finds a way to stop Meteion and avoid the Sundering, then she also unmakes the future worlds that she already knows will exist, and that we come from. It's easy to say, "that's how it should be", but would we be ok with allowing a Rejoining, regardless of the lives that now live in order to set things right? I don't even know if there IS a "good" decision in this situation. I just took it as Venat accepting that what happened has already happened, even though she is in an earlier point of the timeline, and she works to ensure that *we* continue living in the world as is it is now.

[Alenore]

We, the player, don't exist without the Sundering. From a gameplay standpoint, it doesn't make sense to have a plot point for Venat to solve the problem without a Sundering. Doing so would wipe us out, along with everything we've done in the game.

Yes, that's why the story should never had given so many options to Venat to try solving the issue in a different way.

Her choice is fine if she doesn't have foreknowledge of what it entails, because she's doing the best she can and decides to side with life in the long run. It strengthens her stance on being against the sacrifices and wanting to give all life a right to self determination.

It's also acceptable if she knows the future and that it'll lead to Meteion's downfall and saving Etheirys. Even knowing what it would cost, she might think a "safe" solution is bettert han an unknown.

So we're left with her actually fulfilling all the horrible conditions to a timeloop and taking a huge gamble knowing it's currently looking, at best, very bleak.

Regardless of the paradox, if she finds a way to stop Meteion and avoid the Sundering, then she also unmakes the future worlds that she already knows will exist, and that we come from. It's easy to say, "that's how it should be", but would we be ok with allowing a Rejoining, regardless of the lives that now live in order to set things right? I don't even know if there IS a "good" decision in this situation. I just took it as Venat accepting that what happened has already happened, even though she is in an earlier point of the timeline, and she works to ensure that *we* continue living in the world as is it is now.

I'd hear this argument if Endwalker didn't follow an expansion where G'raha seemed fine with apparently dooming his timeline to save us because "that's how it should be". And nobody really raising a single concern about it.

On the contrary, the fact G'raha didn't disappear is actually a hint that timelines are not erased, which is confirmed out of universe by the corresponding Tale. I'd expect the scholar figure that Venat is to notice that.

Which means that if Venat actually decided to act on the informations we gave her, the WoL would be in the very same position with an Hydaelyn in our world to potentially grant us the location and the aether to end Meteion, but with a chance to save her civilization.

[Cleretic]

Yes, that's why the story should never had given so many options to Venat to try solving the issue in a different way.

What options?

Pre-Sundering, Venat is greatly hindered by the fact that's she's one woman, without much in the way of actionable intel herself in a society that circumstances mean she cannot be open about the problem. Telling the Convocation (at least, before it becomes a public and present problem, at which point they don't listen to reason) will lead to them unseating the one guy that can do anything at all to stem the tide when it hits; telling the masses leads them into a panic spiral when faced with a problem that we know absolutely capitalizes on a panic spiral... and also leads to the Convocation finding out and causing the first problem anyway. Venat mentions just before Elpis wraps that she does intend to look into other possibilities, but this never comes up in other places; presumably, they're all dead ends, and are never elaborated on because they don't matter to the actual story. Instead, she recruits a trusted handful of people, and credit due to those people, it's a good lineup: they include the head of Akadaemia, multiple capable warriors, a prodigy, multiple experts in their field, and several respected public figures. They don't seem to have a dynamis expert (although Mr. Akadaemia probably has some level of knowledge), but other than that I can't really think of better options. We know that from the 5.2 Anamnesis meeting, the Sundering plan is the only thing on the table at that point, but that nobody's comfortable with it; fair enough, that is an ugly trigger to pull. But this was not a decision made of blind ignorance; this was a decision made by intelligent, qualified people who could see that there was no other option.

After the Sundering, Venat's restrictions as Hydaelyn are if anything worse. She has gotten the ball rolling on the plan that we'll end up using, mostly by putting the Loporrits onto it (and remember it's not actually the plan we told her she'd use, she's not hopelessly shackled to The Time Loop), and the Twelve are doing a good job keeping the planet stable, but other than that she's off in the aetherial sea, running on a battery of aether she will never recharge for moral reasons, doing whatever the 'will of the star' actually means, and facing down thirteen justifiably mad ghost wizards. She's heavily restricted both by circumstances and morals, but she still does do what she can--and what she can is hand out the Blessing of Light, and work with an Oracle when circumstances allow, which might've only happened once. Something about these circumstances, though, are that they mean we actually don't know how many times she tried and failed to do something; the Blessing of Light is exactly something that would get lost to history if it were on the losing side... so who's to say that Hydaelyn didn't make a whole bunch of losing gambles, that nobody wrote down?


Venat was in a real bad place all the way through her story, but that doesn't mean she was narrowly focused on one goal. It did mean that the entire way through, only one plan remained standing, and it was not a pretty one. Given all of that, my question remains: what were her other options? You act like she had a wealth of them within the text itself that would've worked so well, but what were they? Or did you just imagine them?

[Zero-ELEC]

doing whatever the 'will of the star' actually means

I assume this is stuff like sealing Ultima, the High Seraph originally before Ajora released her, since that's attributed to Hydaelyn herself. Truly, if we're making stuff up that isn't in the text at all, Hydaelyn has been staving off interdimensional incursions from other beings like the High Seraph all this time.

[unlimitedBLACK]

I assume this is stuff like sealing Ultima, the High Seraph originally before Ajora released her, since that's attributed to Hydaelyn herself. Truly, if we're making stuff up that isn't in the text at all, Hydaelyn has been staving off interdimensional incursions from other beings like the High Seraph all this time.

This gets to something that's largely a different thread discussion, but I think what it comes down to is that Venat's ONLY option was "preserve the world until This Particular WoL shows up and has a meaningful chance of succeeding against Meteion." Which meant that EVERYTHING throughout the history of Hydaelyn that threatened the stability of the star was up to Venat to manage.

Remember that part in the Praetorium where Hydaelyn soaks two casts of Ultima to keep WoL from dying and says she can't soak a third? Now imagine how much power she had to dump into subduing the High Seraph and then sealing her away. It's a ton of things JUST LIKE THAT, that the WoL couldn't have possibly told her about because the WoL's knowledge of the star's history is going to be incomplete, and Venat had to be ready for ALL OF IT.

Venat's only option was "SURVIVE."

And overall, that's because the game couldn't paradox itself out of existence. The game HAD to do the time loop and force Venat into that situation because the implications of them just being able FIX ALL TIME would deflate the stakes completely.

[DeathNoodles]

The simplest way I think of this is that Zodiark is a primal. Using tempering primals enforce their will on the summoners. So by his nature as a primal no, Zodiark didn't do anything wrong other than what is his nature. What Zodiark does that is morally questionable is how he encourages the Ardor when we've seen that the demands of a primal never end for sacrifices, there's also no guarantee he can bring the Ancients back as they were. I find Hydaelyn to be morally grey as well but this is partially because the devs do not explain wtf is going on w the time travel.