Let's play a game: Save the Ancients!

[Vyrerus]

Honestly, the rest of this hypothetical is purely baseless what-if that I don't think can be worked with in any way; not only do I not think the Ancients can actually reach and traverse Ultima Thule, I'm not even sure a 'primal made of dynamis' is possible, that might be akin to asking for a sword made of helium. And personally, I also don't think this solves things; I think that's essentially a Zodiark of a different shape, you can't make something like that without some major cost, and after that I think an equivalent of sacrifices and Hydaelyn of some form are inevitable.

Considering Dynamis can be used and influenced to recreate societies wholesale as shown in the Dead Ends / Omicron beast tribe quests, and considering that Hermes says that it's similar to aether, I don't think an arcane construct made from it would be impossible.

I also think you're way off kilter here, as you usually are, when it comes to the Ascian's capabilities. If Zenos with mothercrystal leftovers can mantle Shinryu and reach Ultima Thule entirely without a spaceship, then Unsundered Ascians should have little trouble managing something similar.

I think Yuella's idea about a Dynamis Primal is kind of weird, but I guess the idea would be it would achieve similar power to the Meteion hivemind, as all of their power comes from harnessing the majority universal constituent energy. It's more or less just a second kind of sentient entelechy but with a focus on positive emotion and stopping Meteion, kind of similar to how Hydaelyn was polar opposite to Zodiark and focused for the explicit purpose of Sundering Etheirys.

If they could make it, which they likely could given some time to have others study Dynamis, or by taking Hermes's knowledge of it by looking into his memories/soul with The Echo, then it'd work quite nicely.

As for your assertions before this point, you are getting away from the point of the thread in trying to justify Venat's actions within the story, where her rationale is only assumed to be correct by her, not verifiably correct, as her decisions were driven by her own fear rather than by logic. I don't think you need to bludgeon anyone into getting on board with your perception either. It doesn't serve the thread nor the discussion.

[Cleretic]

As for your assertions before this point, you are getting away from the point of the thread in trying to justify Venat's actions within the story, where her rationale is only assumed to be correct by her, not verifiably correct, as her decisions were driven by her own fear rather than by logic. I don't think you need to bludgeon anyone into getting on board with your perception either. It doesn't serve the thread nor the discussion.

On the contrary: as I said in my initial reply, I'm taking into account all the facts we have, unless there are relevant reasons for dismissal. And there is no reason to dismiss Venat's actions in hiding information. Not only does she have evidence, we were there to see the evidence! We know that Emet takes this bad and Hermes takes it worse, and those are the main problems.

If your view is 'I don't like this so I'm declaring it wrong', that's all the power to you. I haven't invented this game, so I can't tell you that's against the rules. But my view is that all evidence is accepted unless specifically proven wrong, and we know why she was right to do that. But then, I think we're playing by different victory conditions; your opening statement was to reject Endwalker, while mine was to accept it.

As to the Zenos point: Zenos isn't a reliable source of scientific intel, but to the best of my understanding, he got to Ultima Thule by tracing the path left by the Ragnarok. In essence, he was the first person to use the route that we'd later use to get back to UT for stuff like the Stigma Dreamscape and Omicron quests. He can't get there without us getting there first. You can't brute-force that, without the Ragnarok space travel is still space travel, it takes ages as seen by Midgardsormr and Omega. So in essence, the struggle isn't if the Ancients can make make a Shinryu; it's if the Ancients can make a Ragnarok. And not just that, but make it on a major time crunch, since in Yuella's hypothetical this thing is instead of Zodiark, so it's gotta do its job before the End of Days hits the planet.

Those are really bad odds, and frankly, I don't think the Ancients had it in 'em! Hermes is the only one that managed making something that can do it, and thanks to telling the Convocation, he's off the table, and since he's the only one interested in space there probably aren't ready alternatives. In the actual game it took the loporrits twelve thousand years to come up with that plan, and they still weren't sure about it; under the time crunch of the Final Days, I think the Ancients have a snowball's chance in hell.

Honestly I also think the Ancients aren't capable of traversing Ultima Thule, but I was putting that aside in this scenario because, I dunno, maybe the Feelings Beast doesn't have that same problem.

[WhiteArchmage]

So, how do we fix that?
Well, if you'll forgive the play on words, you can't do that once the bird's flown the coop: this is the explicit position Venat describes being in, the Ancients as a society just aren't well-suited to handling this information or situation. In a very real sense, the End of Days is their worst nightmare, the thing that preys on all their weaknesses. So, we have to close the coop; we have to somehow ensure Meteion never breaks bad. That actually means starting before the WoL even arrives in Elpis: the moment to halt is Hermes sending out the other Meteions. If that never happens, then none of those threats to the Ancients ever do.

Funny enough, I've had a fanfic idea running around my head about "fixing" the Final Days by giving Hermes therapy, or rather, since therapy doesn't exist in this universe, several friendly hands while not having him be the head of Elpis which was one of the tipping points of his philosophy (please don't go looking for it, my only piece out there rn is a DbD fluff piece).

It is, of course, fanfiction, but I agree the nexus event there is the creation of the Meteia while under a terrible mental health state without peer review. Of course, one also has to ignore the existence and influence of the Heart of Sabik, but then (again, purely speculative) it's certainly a way of averting the First Final Days, how Amaurotine society would deal with the myriad other catastrophes the Universe was dealing with is perhaps another problem that'd need extensive societal change, but perhaps fun to explore.

[Lyth]

How very exciting! I do enjoy games.

One of the difficulties around time travel is that it's not always straightforward to get to the specific time and place that you want to. G'raha's attempt on the First was off by a hundred years. It's also worth noting that even when Elidibus, for all his mastery of magic, attempted the feat, we were so insubstantial that we couldn't even open doors. So there are lots of potential pitfalls here in creating a completely fresh time loop. For one, perhaps you attempt to travel back in time but end up in the wrong era. Alternatively, perhaps you end up incorporeally stuck inside of Deudalaphon's broom closet, with nobody aetherically gifted enough around to recognize that you're trapped in there and spare you a snifter of their bountiful aetheric reserves. Or perhaps you do arrive at the correct time only for Alexander to show up and prune off your spin-off story idea because it's bad for the space-time continuum.

I think if you want to try to develop a solution for this, Yuella is probably on a much better track, in that you'd have to make use of the existing time loop that the authors have conveniently gifted you. You certainly could go to the Convocation and tell them everything that you know. That option is technically available even now, given that Elpis exists in a moment prior to the Final Days. They would probably be skeptical at first, but everything can be verified from memories around Elpis. Fandaniel would likely be detained and punished for his role in assaulting a senior Convocation member, and the seat of Hermes would be left open. Without Hermes' unique knowledge of extant phenomenon, the Convocation would be rendered unable to develop a solution for the Final Days and Zodiark would never be summoned. Amaurot would fall, resulting in the destruction of humanity in the new, divergent timeline.

Shall we try some more solutions? I'm up for it if you are.

[Iscah]

If we're talking in terms of the WoL personally intervening once they arrive in Elpis, I don't think we can.

The biggest thing to note is that the destruction of the Ancients is an un-erasable event that happened in our timeline. We cannot save them; the best we could possibly do is create an alternate timeline, and even then their survival is not ensured.

By my take on the rules of time travel at least, there are two possibilities:

1. We cannot change it because we don't know what will fix it: Our lack of detailed knowledge about the past ensures that whatever we do while we are there, the blank parts of history that we do not know will inescapably lead to the things we do know: the Sundering and the modern world.

2. We can change it, but at an unreasonable cost: Somehow, we blindly stumble into Elpis and change events so Meteion never gets corrupted.

At minimum, we never get the answer we need to the question of why the Final Days are happening in the present day, and so cannot save our world from destruction.

At worst, changing history means that we trap ourselves in the alternate timeline we've spawned, in which case we not only failed to discover the cause of the Final Days but can't even report back to our friends that we failed. They will either be forced to evacuate without us or they will stay there resolutely believing we will come back before it's too late; either way Etheirys as a whole is doomed when it could have been saved.

So, in short, "saving the Ancients" – in actuality, creating a second copy of the Ancients who might fare better than the first timeline – comes at the cost of giving our own world up to inescapable destruction, one way or another. (And yes, technically G'raha did that, but he was of the understanding that the 8UE world was already beyond saving – and the story should have leant harder on making that a true and unfixable fact to justify it.)


So, having said all this, how could one go about saving the Ancients anyway?

The simple answer is that it isn't done by the WoL in Elpis at all.

Rather, having learned a number of critical pieces of information from the WoL's trip to Elpis, it would now be possible – if we had a suitable time machine – for a time traveller (WoL or otherwise) to travel back with the specific goal of making things happen differently this time, while being aware that this may make it impossible for them to return to this timeline. This, again, is essentially what G'raha did.

From there on, everything is up in the air and a story could be written to resolve the would-be original Final Days very differently. But there are also many ways it could go wrong again and the Ancients end up just as doomed or worse.

Additionally, it must be emphasised that although we as players of the game are aware that the 8UE timeline continues to exist, the characters do not know this and have no way of ascertaining whether it does. To them it is entirely hypothetical whether changing the timeline would split the timeline or just overwrite it entirely, and who would be so desperate to actively create and then attempt to save an alternate timeline where things already went badly once, with a 50/50 chance of obliterating the current timeline which contains everything they have ever known and loved?

I think this is a blind spot when people say "I love the characters of the Ancients and my WoL should care more about them than the Scions who are boring". They're all just characters to us, but to the WoL it's essentially ancient history on one side (even if the people seem nice) and their actual home, town, country, world and longtime friends and acquaintances all on the line. Which would you expect a hero to pick?


TL;DR: "Saving" the Ancients requires an unreasonable gamble with the fate of the existing timeline and then still faces many threats before it could be considered the better choice. I don't believe the heroes would actively choose it – the WoL got swayed by Venat's suggestion in the moment, because all this time travel stuff is probably above them and they just want to help people wherever, but a careful consideration of the risks reveals that we are quite simply fortunate that we either couldn't change it (scenario 1) or got back on the track of the existing timeline (scenario 2) so we did make it back to our present with the information we needed, rather than potentially ending up with two timelines that were both doomed.

[Anteiron]

I want to clarify something. By saving the ancients I don't necessarily mean saving the civilization of Amarout. Sooner or later it would have fallen anyway, nothing is eternal, there would have been other crises that would have led to its fall. What I would like to only save souls, leave them whole and not in pieces. Even if Amarout fell, even if the magic of creation disappeared, the souls would still remain whole. Furthermore, we know that 75% of the inhabitants of Etheirys trapped inside Zordiak have returned to the flow of ether with their entire souls, and that in any case when they are reborn they will do so as one of the current races and not as ancients with the magic of creation. So in the future there will be many people in the source with their whole souls, but I would like to save them all.

[Iscah]

I want to clarify something. By saving the ancients I don't necessarily mean saving the civilization of Amarout. [...] What I would like to only save souls, leave them whole and not in pieces.

The distinction is irrelevant. The events that led to the fall of Amaurot and the events that led to souls being sundered are one and the same.

And the intactness of souls seems to matter very little in the long run, besides populating the shards, so I don't see the point in inventing something to enable that change and nothing else.

[Lunaxia]

Honestly, all I'm seeing in this thread are some very disingenuous takes that opt to severely underestimate the Amaurotines while simultaneously placing mortals on a pedestal they've only managed to clamber near because they have a sundered quasi-Ancient fighting all their battles for them, and then paint it as an objective truth. Suggesting a race that can create concepts out of thin air as easily as breathing, and have entire libraries and archives dedicated to aetherical blueprints of every conceivable type of invention under the sun (and that managed to come up with both an all-encompassing guardian entity like Zodiark and the tecnhology involved in the moon shuttle in a relatively short timespan) could not come up their own Ragnarok, for instance, is ridiculous. As is the suggestion they would have succumbed to outside threats without the WoL's help - our original incarnation with all of their powers intact is right there, along with a group of some of the most powerful mages to ever have existed who we were unable to defeat without divine intervention.

And then from there we start delving into the idea that if it hadn't been Hermes, some form of calamity would have come along and obliterated them at some time another because of the nature of their powers and the flaws of their society. But then that ignores two things: that the Ancients lacked any real capacity for growth or perspective, which flies against near enough every interaction we've had with them bar Athena, and that mortals themselves are not inherently at risk of the exact same possibility. If anything, they are infinitely more fragile; the Ancients' powers and their innate beliefs and morality act as a shield as well as a sword in case of such a scenario, and the only real advantage mortals have over them in Endwalker would be of absolutely no benefit outside of that highly specific situation.

The irony is, in reality, mortals as they are in Hydaelyn currently exist for two reasons: one of them is an Ancient who has made a point of trying to keep them alive, and the other is a sort-of Ancient fighting who intermittently appears to use their supernatural strength to save them from the latest threat of the day. Without those two factors, they are far more vulnerable and at risk of annihilation from evil space rocks, giant, flying death machines and psychopathic dictators than the Ancients themselves ever would have been.

By my last count it was up to like, 6 or 7. Anyway...

And the same four or five of you will inevitably show up first and hungrily anticipate their arrival. As always, I admire the dedication.

[LilimoLimomo]

And then from there we start delving into the idea that if it hadn't been Hermes, some form of calamity would have come along and obliterated them at some time another because of the nature of their powers and the flaws of their society. But then that ignores two things: that the Ancients lacked any real capacity for growth or perspective, which flies against near enough every interaction we've had with them bar Athena, and that mortals themselves are not inherently at risk of the exact same possibility.

I agree that modern day folks could still potentially destroy their societies and/or the world, but the risk is significantly lesser. When most members of your society are born with the capability to single-handedly end the world, all it takes is a single person's poor judgment or dissatisfaction to trigger a world-ending catastrophe.

Meanwhile, there's a whole lengthy scene in Stormblood showing that it takes an army of mages and more to do something as simple as break through a big metal door. It takes modern day folks orders of magnitude more effort, time, and organization to generate the kind of threats that the Ancients could with a snap of their fingers. And that's important, because the need for lengthy timelines and supply chains and communication all create additional points of failure for such threats, making it easier to detect them, react to them, and dismantle them. To achieve the same destructive means that Ancients could simply wish into existence requires the consolidation of a great deal of power now, and since very few have access to that amount of power, that reduces the number of potential sources of destruction.

So in summary, there are vastly fewer who have the potential to destroy the world, and it takes them a lot more time and effort to do it which makes it easier to intervene and prevent or prepare for such plans. Compared to the world being endable if any single person has a sufficiently bad day, the world is much safer now.

[Cleretic]

Honestly, all I'm seeing in this thread are some very disingenuous takes that opt to severely underestimate the Amaurotines while simultaneously placing mortals on a pedestal they've only managed to clamber near because they have a sundered quasi-Ancient fighting all their battles for them, and then paint it as an objective truth. Suggesting a race that can create concepts out of thin air as easily as breathing, and have entire libraries and archives dedicated to aetherical blueprints of every conceivable type of invention under the sun (and that managed to come up with both an all-encompassing guardian entity like Zodiark and the tecnhology involved in the moon shuttle in a relatively short timespan) could not come up their own Ragnarok, for instance, is ridiculous. As is the suggestion they would have succumbed to outside threats without the WoL's help - our original incarnation with all of their powers intact is right there, along with a group of some of the most powerful mages to ever have existed who we were unable to defeat without divine intervention.

I don't give a damn about Azem, because they don't actually solve this problem. They are by all appearances, much like us, a professional Thing-Puncher; you get them in front of a problem and they'll do some shenanigans to solve it, but that requires getting to the problem, which we know first-hand they can't just do by sheer force of will. We needed the help to handle the Endsinger. And incidentally, the Azem shard didn't just space out for twelve thousand years after the sundering and then suddenly come back to go deal with Eorzea's problems; by all available evidence, that soul must've been there for every other Calamity too. Reasonably, with support. And that didn't stop 'em. Allag still died, despite the work of the resistance.

...also, they... didn't 'make the technology involved in a moon shuttle', what? I'm not even 100% sure what you think you mean there. Menphina's precursor made the moon prison, is that what you mean? It was the loporrits that made the thing move, and the tech for the Ragnarok to get there, but it took them twelve thousand years to get to that point. And that point was still only 'mostly there', they were behind schedule!

But in truth, the reason that we're critical of the Ancients' abilities to solve the problems ahead of them is because that's the name of the game. If we were playing 'Save Mhach' or 'Save Allag', I'd be just as critical of them. However, I somehow doubt you'd be as defensive of them.