Let's play a game: Save the Ancients!

[SannaR]

That can be in line with him normally being completely correct and honest in his poor opinion of his magical strength, and yet the magic-dampening forcefield in Ktiseos has brought everyone to equal level with him so he seems relatively more skilled here than usual.

But also, how are you "asking him to LB"? Or does one of the other characters say it?

It's when/if he is the one do use a 2 bar limit break. He says "Who? Me!? You can't be serious..." in the English. In Japanese for the same one he says "Oh dear, so do you seriously intend to rely on me!?". He normally doesn't limit break or chooses to go first as Emet-Selch or Venat tend to try to use it first.

[Cleretic]

It's when/if he is the one do use a 2 bar limit break. He says "Who? Me!? You can't be serious..." in the English. In Japanese for the same one he says "Oh dear, so do you seriously intend to rely on me!?". He normally doesn't limit break or chooses to go first as Emet-Selch or Venat tend to try to use it first.

He's also the only one of the Ktisis trust NPCs that's always DPS, so basically by any definition, if he's the one LBing, things are very bad. You ever been the only DPS left standing on a near-wipe, desperately trying to get as much damage on the board as possible to outrace the inevitable? That's exactly the emotion that comes through in those lines.

But honestly I feel like Lunaxia doesn't understand their own argument, and just understands that they're in one. This is too far all over the place to make any sense, all I can really gather is that they seem to think that Hermes is some cackling supervillain that masterminded the heat death of the universe and then just... I dunno, made it look like an accident? I genuinely can't fathom how someone lands at the thought that Hermes didn't do what he did by well-meaning accident, and I really don't get how that's somehow supported by Hythlodaeus' perceived low self-esteem.

[Cilia]

I think there are a few holes in your logic there.

Since you seem to be having trouble following the train of thought, let's go over things from the top.

The original question is "Is it possible to save the Ancients?" The short answer is no, because Amaurot sits on a foundation much more fragile than you think, and any disaster potent enough or social issue divisive enough threatens to send the house of cards tumbling down; and a single Ancient with enough knowledge / power and the motivation to do so can, by design or by accident. To say nothing of extraterrestrial occurrences that could easily disrupt their perfect little lives.

You can only save the Ancients if you're also able to save Amaurotine civilization, because they're near to terminally dependent on the easy and comfortable lifestyle it privileges them to. When faced with hardship and an uncertain future, their reaction was to retreat inward, rejecting change and the potential of the future for the familiarity and comfort of the past. The fatal mistake in that idea is that change is inevitable; it does not matter if they stop the Song of Oblivion, go back in time and stop Hermes from dispatching the Meteia, help his mental health, allow the Meteia the life experience necessary to be emotionally prepared for what's out there in the cosmos, etc. Change will come, whether we will it or not; the question is whether or not we have the resilience to deal with it, and clinging to the ignorant bliss of Amaurot would never allow humanity even the chance to actually develop that resilience.

So between the Ancients' capacity for destruction (intentional or otherwise), their lack of resilience thanks to their comfortable lifestyle, and the inevitability of change, you've got a house of cards trembling in the wind.

"Can we save the Ancients?" quickly morphs into "Can we save Amaurot?", and the answer to that question is a resounding no; not forever, at least. The Convocation cannot have a contingency for everything (re: Song of Oblivion), and if their easy lives are upset the Ancients retreat inward because they have no resilience. Would they be able to reach a consensus on whether or not to grant Midgardsormr refuge when he arrives? Be able to react quickly and effectively to Omega crashing down and tearing up the place looking for him? Etc etc. Cast the die enough times and you're going to get a critical fail, and then it all comes tumbling down.

If you want to be a little less ambitious and ask whether or not the Ancients could have been saved from the Song of Oblivion, the answer is actually yes; but, only if you go back in time and stop Hermes from sending the Meteia on their ill-fated sojourn across the cosmos. Get him some counseling, ideally from someone worldly (like Venat or Azem); get the Meteia the life experiences necessary to handle the despair that may await them out there (somehow - easier said than done in a world where pain and suffering are virtually nonexistent). Once the Meteia are out there, how in control of things Hermes is becomes extremely questionable, and detaining / unmaking the Meteion he kept with him on Etheirys does nothing - she's just one of dozens (if not hundreds) and stopping her will not stop her sisters (or their merged Endsinger form, for that matter).

Did I convey my ideas clearly? Are you gonna strawman me again? Only time will tell!

[Vyrerus]

The house of cards trembling in the wind

LoL, lmao even.

There's a few extreme problems with your reasoning here.

First, by your own logic, any sufficiently advanced civilization could be brought to ruin by a madman or otherworldly encounter. We can look to literally every encounter the WoL has ever had starting in Heavensward when we started to be told of primals so powerful they could end the entire star (Warring Triad, any Heavensward Primal that sups on the Warring Triad, Allag in general). Even before that, there was the Cloud of Darkness in ARR. We run into more and more as time goes on, what with the writers upping the ante and all. Literally saved from our own act of turning the Omega Weapon on by the grace that it just flipped off and burrowed down to do experiments, rather than raze the Source or interfere or interact with the Garleans/Stormblood story at all.

Then there's the two civilizations shown in the front 2/3rds of The Dead Ends. The plagued otter people and the Karellians. Most notably the Karellians were an advanced science fiction civilization completely bereft of magic or godlike powers.

Second, and more importantly, you're guilty of extreme bias towards the Ascians AND you've dehumanized them to the point that you are strawmanning them as badly, or perhaps worse than, the Venat metaphor BS scene.

Think about what The Final Days did. Think about what the Zodiark sacrifices did. As we're told, quite a lot of Ascians were killed by The Final Days. Out of the remainder, volunteers of half the remaining population offered up their lives to make Zodiark.

The times got tough, and then the best of the Ascians either fell victim to Blasphemies OR nobly gave their lives to make a savior.

In other words, the people in their populace who had resilience/nobility/stalwart hearts as part of their personality were very few in number after both of these events transpired.

Most of their elders and those closest to lives fulfilled likely gave themselves up if not killed.

Riding on the coattails of this traumatic, devastating event came Venat and her civil war. Not only were the worst members of the Ascian's society the only ones left, half of them decided to make war in a world that had been without it for time out of mind, and wars hardly help anyone recover from trauma.

No earnest efforts were made to help the Ascians bounce back. Hydaelyn was not made in good faith. She was never to be a mere binding for Zodiark.

How would they fare if prepared and told the truth? What could have their collective society come up with, if they'd had the truth from the start? Cast the die for enough players, and eventually you get critical successes, too. Do you really struggle to believe that the Azem of old, along with his mentor, along with the entire Convocation with truth in hand could not stop Meteion?

If not, why then do you believe that just the WoL and Zenos using two Ascian incantations can (I guess technically 3 if we include the creation rites for Shinryu)?

[ZavosEsperian]

The original question is "Is it possible to save the Ancients?"

This is what we will be answering in this post. A majority of the arguments you are making are not relevant to the statement at hand and I would say two or three of these arguments make up a strawman army.

The short answer is no

This is a wildly incorrect assertion based off of headcanoning and/or misrepresentation of what is presented both in the game as well as what is answered from Q&A sessions. In order to dismantle this statement, I will present you with the strongest possible argument you would be able to use and work my way to what the game actually has in it from there.

In order to declaratively say there is no way to save the Ancients, you would need to prove or have definite proof of this being the only case that occurs if the Ancients are saved. Were I to attempt to prove this, the best way to go about it would be to use statements the writers have involving questions that are tangential to this question in how they are responded to or to use information presented in the game. Were we to look at the game, the strongest case would be the Nibirun being an outcome of what the Ancients would become were they to have to continue their existence as Ancients, and not be wiped out by the Sundering. Do note within this context, it is not directly stated that this is the only outcome within both the context of the game or from Q&A sessions.

Speaking of the Q&A sessions, this would likely be the only definitive way to get an answer to this question as either a "yes" or "no". For your position to be substantiated, you would need a writer or Yoshi-P himself to outright state the Nibirun ending and/or all other possible endings other than what we did would result in a bad ending for the Ancients (note the state of the Universe is not part of the prefaced question and, were it included, it would have the same problem as a whole as the question "saving the Ancients"). The problem when it comes to substantiating your argument is the writers are not using language that is conclusive: you cannot arrive at a yes or a no for the prefaced question. The only thing you can do would be trying to justify your own opinions and/or headcanons by using other information presented, but this information is not relevant to the question at hand since there is no way of knowing for sure how the Ancients would react given a specific problem.

The best information we have involving the Q&A sessions regarding this topic is this:

So you know there were other Ancients who thought summoning Zodiark would solve everything but she saw that summoning Zodiark and using it to deflect Meteion’s “Despair Beam” and thought, “even if we were to do this and keep going as we are the rest of the Ancients will probably be unable to change as a people” when she’s looking at Hermes, or “we will always be our own undoing”. If you look at the dungeon, “The Dead Ends”, at the very end there’s a boss called Ra-la, and that’s sort of our vision for what probably would have happened to the Ancients if we just let them continue as they were.


Link to Live From the Producer LXVIII Q&A

I am emphasizing the part of the quote that is important to this topic. The statement given is the vision the writers had assuming the probable state the Ancients would end up in were they to continue to go forward. Because the statement is not definitive, you cannot assume the position of no is the only answer. You are free to come up with any headcanon reasons why no is the answer you believe in, but you cannot state it as an end all be all to the question since the writers themselves purposely left a door open where it is possible to save the Ancients.

Everything else in your statement is used to back your presumed headcanoned answer, complete with an army of strawmen. The good news when it comes to dealing with strawmen is that a single spark from a match reduces all strawmen to ashes, leaving the rest of your justifications as pointless assumptions and arguments to make yourself comfortable with the solution you came up with to the problem. You will be unable to make a stronger argument than the one I presented since there is no way to arrive at a definitive answer, so it would be best to leave the steelman that I provided to you to tower over the ashes of your strawmen.

I should remind you my view of this question largely is that there is no way to answer it in a yes or no format. You are free to headcanon as you will but you cannot use your headcanon to dismantle someone else's headcanon. Such things are pointless to get into arguments over and prove you do not understand how to work with an open-ended question such as this compared to a more definitive question. I will admit going over this thread, this statement reigns true for many people partaking in the thread and makes discussing theorycrafted answers not pleasurable for the majority of us.

My recommendation is to just sit back and let people have fun. No need to make everyone else miserable in the thread with you if you don't like what is being stated, let alone using poor arguments which would be insufficient for any serious debate since it is clear you, along with others in the thread, do not particularly understand the point of an open-ended question such as this.

[Cleretic]

My recommendation is to just sit back and let people have fun. No need to make everyone else miserable in the thread with you if you don't like what is being stated, let alone using poor arguments which would be insufficient for any serious debate since it is clear you, along with others in the thread, do not particularly understand the point of an open-ended question such as this.

I actually think responding to the thread's question of 'with access to as many levers as you need, what can you come up with to stop the Ancients from meeting their doom' with a well-reasoned 'no' that he's been making since the first page is very valid, actually. I also see your response on the first page, and even without any bias of preference Cilia's argument is a lot more compelling than yours, largely because they admit that problems run deeper. Do you really think that just confiscating the Meteia leads to a happily-ever-after? That no more leaks may spring? Hell, you don't think Hermes is just gonna try to make more? Therapy's not a snap fix even when it works, especially when you're treating the subject poorly through means like suddenly stamping out their personal project.

And do us all a favor, and maybe respond on your real account; nobody thinks that the one whose only character is a level 80 Scholar who runs an FC of characters that haven't cracked 50 is your actual one.

[Iscah]

I also don't understand what establishing Hyth's skill level has to do with whether there was hypothetically a way to save the Ancients.

[SannaR]

I also don't understand what establishing Hyth's skill level has to do with whether there was hypothetically a way to save the Ancients.

I feel it came about with talk from others about how convocation members are perceived as being strong in magics. And that Hermes must also be strong in magics. Hythlodaeus was brought up as a counter point. As even if one might not read his parts in the story or how he's seen to behave as being down on himself he had been a choice for the seat of Emet-Selch before Hades was given it.

[LilimoLimomo]

I also don't understand what establishing Hyth's skill level has to do with whether there was hypothetically a way to save the Ancients.

If you want the full context, read my posts and and replies quoting my posts; that's where this aspect of the discussion comes from.

I considered offering a TL;DR, but after a few attempts I realized that in doing so I wasn't being fair to either side of the argument, so it's probably better to just let the original text speak for itself.

[Lyth]

It is a bit hard to follow the core points of the discussion, to be fair. Let me try to summarize.

I think the main ongoing question was whether a society of hedonistic and whimsical godlings could be stably governed by a small circle of nepotistic oligarchs without everything rapidly going to pieces. The story handwaves this by saying that they were all of one peaceful (hive)mind until they weren't. When required to provide further detail in subsequent stories, such as the ones on Elpis, Amaurotine society in contrast turns out to be actually filled with charismatic individualists who routinely use their immense powers in accordance with their personal whims and beliefs. Naturally, when we get to be friends and know them better, it ends up being one self-inflicted world ending threat after another.

Under such conditions, being eloquent and persuasive will only get you so far, and sometimes the application of force (physical or institutional) will be required. Convocation members were not necessarily selected on the basis of raw power, so it seems unlikely that they could maintain stable rule under such conditions indefinitely. (We already know for a fact that they were unable to, even with their current member group, and you can actually rest your case at that.)

As an example, several people noted that the Convocation would struggle to pass their intimidation checks had they run with Hyth instead of Hades as the party face, as was originally planned. The tangential counterclaim made was that Hyth isn't less capable than Hades in raw magical power, he's just being modest. That strikes me as a bit of a stretch, but it seems to be a contentious point in here for whatever reason.

A similar back and forth occurred around Hermes as well, although it's worth remembering that this is the same future Convocation member who we witnessed get outwitted by an amybystoma and stuck on a tree within minutes of being introduced. Not the high point of Convocation gravitas, to be sure.

Either way, Amaurot was designed as a 'creation myth' to explain the backstory of the world setting. It isn't the primary setting itself. The starting premise in the writing that it was destroyed twelve thousand years ago. I could see a 'What if' scenario eventually being presented as part of an Ultimate fight (i.e. the Azem's plan route), but I wouldn't expect much more than that.