Let's play a game: Save the Ancients!

[Lunaxia]

Ah, my bad. Sanna is right about the LB, it's been a while since I did Trusts and I must have got the mechanic confused with Squadrons or Explorer mode.

welp

I understand the argument perfectly well, and funnily enough I have a feeling that you do too.

The assumption underpinning the majority of the arguments initially put forward with absolutely no bad faith or bias whatsoever makes use of that really fun, super swell and not at all concerning belief the Ancients were doomed to die anyway, so genuinely "saving" them is pointless/ impossible and handwaving their demise, weirdly justified. I challenged the broader reasoning behind the claim (i.e. someone else would have done it if not Hermes, they were incapable of defending or saving themselves, the Ancients were all inherently dangerous and possessed apocalyptic powers that were effectively a ticking timebomb, etc. etc.) as well as the fundamental premise behind this train of thought that claims mortals are any safer or less prone to wiping themselves out. This then devolved into, amongst other things, calling the overarching ability of the Convocation into question, with Hythlodaeus' potential recruitment being cited as a reason why they wouldn't have actually been sufficiently powerful enough to deal with any outside threats because he's supposedly a bit of a limp noodle in a fight.

It gets a little chaotic when multiple people respond with their own litany of reasons why the Ancients wouldn't have worked and ergo merited their total destruction, but that's inevitably how these discussions go.

And for the record, playing dumb and attempting to attack my credibility with strawman fallacies because you've run out of things to say is disappointing, even if I shouldn't be surprised. I take that as it being safe to say we're effectively done here.

whether a society of hedonistic and whimsical godlings could be stably governed by a small circle of nepotistic oligarchs.

This is genuinely hilarious.

Ah, but no, clearly there isn't any prejudice against them in these forums at all.

[Lunaxia]

Lo, the charming sounds of a nerve struck. I'd look to the scarecrows in your own fields but attempting to cast about for them in mine, good sir.

I've already made clear the subject of the Ancients' inherent "lethality" so you can hold onto that all you like, evidently you'll do so anyway. So onto the other leg of your argument: was it vitally important that the Ancients learn to cope with unpleasant emotions? Absolutely. I don't think anyone would contest that.

Are they able to do that when they're blasted into the stratosphere at the first signs of division on the singular word of a traveller from the future who needed them to die so that their people could potentially live? Uh, no, not really.

Developing emotional resilience and learning to live with grief - not easy on a personal level, let alone after a worldwide apocalyptic event that killed who knows how many and left their home in ruins - takes time, and could never hope to be achieved on a societal level in such a short timespan. Given their lack of experience and the all-consuming nature of the tragedy, they would have been, understandably, completely traumatised, and the required resilience and coping mechanisms needed to make it through that do not spontaneously combust into being over night.

What we do know, though, is that the Ancients who did suffer from grief, loss and/ or trauma such as Erich and Lahabrea did actually manage to come through it to the other side, and both they and the likes of Themis, Hyth and Emet were actually surprisingly able to tolerate and cope with the prospect of the future they knew may come to pass. Those around Hermes struggled to relate to him but were kind, empathetic and curious; we see NPCs in Elpis dealing with their own feelings regarding losing someone important to them pretty well, and all round there is more evidence the Ancients were capable of that growth than there is to the contrary.

Anger, denial, sorrow are all natural responses to what came to pass for the Ancients. But again, it's that bottom line of perfection they're never quite permitted to stray from that is also used against them as a reason to be killed that means this gets glossed over, and that all-important right to life and self-determination is denied to them in the way it never is to quite literally anyone else in the story.

Oh, wait - actually, it is! (Or rather, almost is; it couldn't actually happen, of course, because our moral immaculacy might have been called into question.) And this other example is extremely interesting, because it shows mortals rather conveniently tossing aside the mantra of acceptance and moving forward you consider to be fatally lacking in the Ancients' hope for survival into the bin and committing the very act they were crucified for: the Eighth Umbral Calamity. You know, that entire timeline where rather than devote their resources to improving the future they were in, they decided to potentially throw all of it away purely on the premise of "it sure would be great if the WoL was still around and the world went back to the way it was!"

We get rather a lot of instances where we talk the talk about all this moving on and being strong, not looking back and accepting our feelings and so on (and it's good stuff and holds true, to be fair), but we never actually have to walk the walk. And the one time mortals are given a chance to... funnily enough, we don't take it!

This is never seen as form of fallibility or "giving in to temptation", though, it's seen as noble, self-sacrificing and heroic, despite the innumerable lives who like as not did not have a say in the matter being tossed into the pile as chips to pay for the price of our resurrection and a return to the better times. But since we survive in this gambit, like with the Ancients, that means it's fine, I guess. For some reason. Never mind the poor sods who might have actually wanted to, you know, live or anything, despite enough time having passed at that point that the main cast had families and descendants and new lives of their own:

This was met with some resistance, however, as many expressed disapproval at the idea of forsaking those in the present day in order to save a world they would never live to see. Unable to deny this, Master Cid simply nodded and said:
“Even so, our sacrifice will not be for naught.”

Everyone else in that timeline: Gee, thanks, Cid.

And it goes on to describe the act as:

There are those who would strive to create a place where the sun will shine again, not for their own sake, but for those in a past that may yet be saved.

Or, perhaps, the memory of their friends that they chose not to actually let go of to the detriment of the present. Tomato, tomato and all that. In this instance, this is called "hope" and is "beautiful", though, and oddly enough their ability to actually create something of sufficient scale to time travel and possibly wipe out an entire future to rewrite the past isn't perceived as dangerous or selfish, but a feat of dedication and hard work. And they don't even have the nebulous justification of a giant space bird to contend with this time! It was all for us! Which is romantic and nice and not at all concerning or its own form of avoidance at all!

Definitely not another case of rules for thee, not for (everyone else), though, or more specious reasoning that for some reason only gets applied to the Ancients because to hell with those guys. Gotta love that ironclad narrative cohesion!

Would they be able to reach a consensus on whether or not to grant Midgardsormr refuge when he arrives?

...but again, as much as I appreciate a good ol' BG3/ DnD reference, this would not be any different for the mortals without the WoL and Hydaelyn around to punch and cast protect as needed. "They could be killed off at any time" could be applied to... any race out there. We were only spared Omega's shenanigans in the first place because it was put out of order by its landing, and rolled our own die, so to speak, by booting up the giant death machine in the first place. How easily might that have gone wrong in any other scenario, I wonder?

[Lyth]

An appeal to ignorance cuts both ways, unfortunately.

While the writers have deliberately left the subject of Amaurot open-ended (good for engagement metrics, after all), you'd have to ask yourself in what form you're hoping to see this 'solution' come to fruition. I could see a theoretical retelling of the 'Defense of Amaurot' as an Ultimate Raid featuring 'Azem's plan'. You'd naturally face off against Hydaelyn, Zodiark, and the Convocation before feeding them all to Zenos in order to take on the Endsinger and Hermes.

But if you're talking about the main story, it's worth remembering that the existence of Amaurot itself is incompatible with the primary game setting, which is why the writing places so many barriers in the way. It's also worth remembering that the individuals who were principally invested in the resurrection of Amaurot twelve thousand years later are currently in the process of fizzing and dissolving into the lifestream. The writers could do it if they wanted to, but would there be anything left of the Convocation to care? Anything is possible, sure, but you might just be waiting a very long time.

[SannaR]

And here I thought the OP was asking us players if there was a way the Ancients could be saved via what we know from what we see in game. Last time I checked those types of questions were asking for speculation.

Speaking of another subject that's been brought up. The 8UC was 200 years after the rejoining happened by the time they pulled the trigger on something they didn't know would succeed let alone what the result would be for those who remained. There was still a lot of fighting happening and the land hadn't shown signs of recovery yet from the effects of Black Rose. The plan also hadn't gotten much popularity until its scope was to try and save the WoL. Even with Midgardsormr waking up you still had Elidibus, Emet-Selch and an obeying Fandaniel to contend with. The places we do know that probably weren't affected by Black Rose being Sharlyean, Thavnir, Meracydia, and Tural. One of those places has been described more than once as a literal hell hole.

Course these things aren't really meant to be looked at so closely. As problems like these equate to wondering how exactly there's so many dark friends at the start of WoT. Whose going around recruiting them and then keeping such a network running. Even with some of the Forsaken being able to influence the world from time to time the world is one inhabited by humans for the most part. Heck there's even somehow a dark friends that knew the series chosen one had been reborn and that people were looking for them months after the "foretelling" (it was more of a this event is happening right now) had only been heard by four people.

Though probably not as egregious of a problem as say finding Jet in a container that's in a game happening prior to its invention or in one that is in a place the player is told hasn't had anyone inside of it for over 200 years.

[redheadturk]

G'raha himself theorized that that is the reason he was not simply erased, as he thought he would be once the timeline had been changed, and the one Tales of the Shadow confirmed that yes, the timeline did branch. WoL would trust G'raha enough to know that it would be possible to do it again.

[Iscah]

G'raha himself theorized that that is the reason he was not simply erased, as he thought he would be once the timeline had been changed, and the one Tales of the Shadow confirmed that yes, the timeline did branch. WoL would trust G'raha enough to know that it would be possible to do it again.

Theorised in the general usage of the word, yes, but it's merely a hypothesis with no way of being tested. The characters have no way (to our awareness) to confirm whether the other timeline still exists alongside their own, or whether it is gone forever and G'raha survived simply by being in the new timeline when it overwrote the old one.

[redheadturk]

I have to thank a friend for this, but there is yet another context clue for the protagonist that the timeline G'raha hailed from still exists: G'raha's memories of that timeline still exist. If the timeline had vanished, the aether that makes up G'raha's memories of that timeline would have poofed too. They didn't, as we'd know because we uh. . .inserted those memories into his younger body on the source?

[Cleretic]

I have to thank a friend for this, but there is yet another context clue for the protagonist that the timeline G'raha hailed from still exists: G'raha's memories of that timeline still exist. If the timeline had vanished, the aether that makes up G'raha's memories of that timeline would have poofed too. They didn't, as we'd know because we uh. . .inserted those memories into his younger body on the source?

Your friend's 'clue' makes no sense whatsoever. For that to be evidence we'd need to have evidence that that's how it works in the first place, and that evidence just doesn't exist. It especially doesn't exist to the WoL, whose knowledge of tiem travel up to that point has been learning G'raha Tia, and probably also doing Alexander; in neither case did this observably happen. Your friend seems to be assuming that it works like other franchises' time travel works, like Star Trek or Doctor Who, but with no evidence that they actually do. ...except in most cases, those franchises also build in sort of an immunity to those effects for the time travellers, including both Star Trek and Doctor Who. Which, if that's how FFXIV works, would also leave G'raha able to remember everything just fine. So even if the WoL is an avid Whovian, this wouldn't register as evidence.

...and all of this is also ignoring that this isn't actually the issue, the issue is that changing the timeline strands you. Which is a pretty crucial thing in this case: unlike G'raha, whose original timeline didn't really have anything important for him to do, the WoL has a very specific job of 'go find out what an Elpis is and then come back and tell us if that's helpful'. I don't care how much questionably-educated faith the WoL has in the fact their home timeline will still exist, that's not the problem: the problem is that if they change the timeline, they can't go back to the one that needs their help.

Frankly, I'm surprised you don't reflexively know this, because the one that said it directly to our face is the Ascian you glorify in your signature. I would've thought that you of all people would've commited his whole thing to memory, but I'll happily link it if you haven't. Incidentally, I do find that it's a pretty poetic use of language by the localizaton team: he warns us that 'we cannot reshape the past', and at first it sounds like it's cannot as in 'won't be capable of', but it soon becomes clear it's cannot as in 'you mustn't'. Which, incidentally, makes more sense given we're using the same technique G'raha used, and we know where G'raha can't go back to.

[Iscah]

I have to thank a friend for this, but there is yet another context clue for the protagonist that the timeline G'raha hailed from still exists: G'raha's memories of that timeline still exist. If the timeline had vanished, the aether that makes up G'raha's memories of that timeline would have poofed too. They didn't, as we'd know because we uh. . .inserted those memories into his younger body on the source?

I don't see how that proves anything that his continued physical existence doesn't already prove (or fail to definitively prove).

In the hypothetical scenario from the characters' perspective that the other timeline was destroyed but G'raha wasn't taken with it, the continued existence of his incorporeal memory-aether is no more significant than the continued existence of his corporeal aether. If one can survive the obliteration of its source, why shouldn't the other?

[redheadturk]

And ya know what? That is where telling them after the congruence in a way that it won't matter if it strands us comes in. Besides, if we leave behind a message in a bottle so to speak for them to find after we've gone back no harm, no foul. How can it strand us if we've already returned and the timeline is still in flux? Is there a chance our message in a bottle may not be found in time? sure, but it's better than being "hurp a derp, nothing we can do" with our fingers in our ears and our thumbs up our butts.