Dawntrail's Final Zones destroy everything the story has built.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

An extra possible plot hole to add to the pile.

What happened to Erenville's mom when we turned off Endless? Did the soul that was used returned to Aetherial Sea?

We know that when the soul returns there, it regains all memories. It can undo memory alteration since it undid Emet Selch and Hydlodaeus memory wipe. If so, the soul that was used for the Endless regained original memories, and now has implanted memories on top.

While the real soul from which memories were taken has no clue about what happened after its death whatsoever.

In other words, the Endless really did not do anything after death, did not meet relatives or dealt with unresolved issues, all this process did just dumped some fake memories on unrelated souls.

Because the souls they used have been arguably "deep cleaned" in their own factory version of the aetherial sea, there is no longer a person attached to the soul to be reasserted as the owner. If Origenics process wasn't more thorough than the aetherial sea's then people's personalities would change every five minutes as they used souls as powerups. So more than likely the people who were walking around in Living Memory returned to the aetherial sea for their current memories to be washed away in the usual process. While the 90% of them who didn't have souls to graft onto just dissipated immediately. Also, Erenville's mom should be in the aetherial sea on the shard we were on, so I have no idea why he expects to one day see her and speak to her again, even if she spent centuries trying not to be washed away by the aetherial sea just to wait for him, she's in the wrong aetherial sea...and her original soul is probably a coin somewhere in Everkeep. Not that which soul you have makes any different once they invented their own aetherial sea and have been swapping souls like hot cakes.

Honestly, the lore is extremely brutal to creatures that "don't have a soul". All of Elpis is basically the Ancients messing around creating and destroying life for fun and science, and only Hermes seems to have any sort of empathy or compassion for these creatures.

The animals in Elpis have souls. After Hermes kills the beast, we watch it's soul return to the aetherial sea. He even talks about it's soul. DT has now confirmed their are both people souls and animal souls. It seems that everything on the star has souls except for familiars and elementals. But soul or not, I don't think we should mistreat sentient beings.

[Lousis]

I wonder, how does a 'soul' get made? Is it just innate biological process?

[Lady_Silvermoon]

I wonder, how does a 'soul' get made? Is it just innate biological process?

When something fits the definition of life, breathes, grows, reproduces, dies, etc, the star grants it a soul. Either a newly minted soul or a cleansed soul from the aetherial sea. Deciding what did and didn't get a soul was the last frontier in the Ancient's ability to create life which is what Athena was working on before she died.

[Nadda]

The animals in Elpis have souls. After Hermes kills the beast, we watch it's soul return to the aetherial sea. He even talks about it's soul. DT has now confirmed their are both people souls and animal souls. It seems that everything on the star has souls except for familiars and elementals. But soul or not, I don't think we should mistreat sentient beings.

I believe the important part about the mistreatment of sentient beings is that Living Memory is in itself mistreating sentient beings on two fronts.

By keeping the memories of the deceased with residual Aether, keeps people from passing on to the Aetherial Sea as they are intended to go, so you're mistreating people's lives by having them live half lives where they can never die even if they wanted to.
Secondly much like how summoning Primals in the source absorbs the Aether of the star it negatively affects the living beings around it because that Aether that is normally recycled and equally distributed back can no longer do so.
This is why this reflection's attempt at assimilating other shards (not unlike a rejoining) is a fruitless effort, there will never be enough Aether to sustain all these people, there will be a constant strain on the living world until the whole thing collapses in on itself.

The idea of having the living die so that the dead of that shard can live on more borrowed time won't help anybody.

Now ultimately if Living Memory operated more like how the Ancients themselves would voluntarily pass on that would have been great. However it would appear as though these Endless don't have that capability. They have the Memories of the deceased but are not entirely the deceased. This probably explains why we can't taste the food in Living Memory... because it's all synthetic. To the Endless that popcorn or ice cream will taste like their favorite memory of such snacks but to the living they offer no nutritional value whatsoever.
I feel like 7.x story will continue to explore this realm's potential. I was surprised for example that we didn't make use of an alternative power source like Dynamis - but alas.

[TaleraRistain]

The Alexandrians in contrast decided to completely deny the normal process of life and death for an entire civilization by preventing souls from reaching the Lifestream and mechanically extracting memory from the soul to shove into a computer until the computer randomly decided they get to walk around Living Memory and then it stitches their memory aether to someone else's soul. It also required plundering the souls of other people against their will to perpetuate it. We could have found another power source but I personally find the entire idea utterly vile and in the meantime the residents would fade and warp the entire area like what happened to the Deadwalk.

This is a key point and I think the story isn't really confirming or denying it enough except with Cahciua's comments about it. They were separating the soul and the memories from those who died. Their souls did not go with them into Living Memory. They were repackaged into soul cells for someone else to use. Their memory only went to Living Memory. But if we refer back to what we learned in Endwalker, souls and memories are connected. Even if the original soul was used up by someone else and went to the aetherial sea, the memory did not. And it begs the question of where the true soul of the person lies. That, and the IX influence of the expansion, is why I agree with you that the were being prevented from being reborn into new lives that could make new memories. We had to free them to be able to rejoin the natural cycle of life and death, just like the characters had to destroy the Iifa Tree in IX so Gaian souls could return to the crystal and be reborn.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

I believe the important part about the mistreatment of sentient beings is that Living Memory is in itself mistreating sentient beings on two fronts.

By keeping the memories of the deceased with residual Aether, keeps people from passing on to the Aetherial Sea as they are intended to go, so you're mistreating people's lives by having them live half lives where they can never die even if they wanted to.
Secondly much like how summoning Primals in the source absorbs the Aether of the star it negatively affects the living beings around it because that Aether that is normally recycled and equally distributed back can no longer do so.
This is why this reflection's attempt at assimilating other shards (not unlike a rejoining) is a fruitless effort, there will never be enough Aether to sustain all these people, there will be a constant strain on the living world until the whole thing collapses in on itself.

The idea of having the living die so that the dead of that shard can live on more borrowed time won't help anybody.

Now ultimately if Living Memory operated more like how the Ancients themselves would voluntarily pass on that would have been great. However it would appear as though these Endless don't have that capability. They have the Memories of the deceased but are not entirely the deceased. This probably explains why we can't taste the food in Living Memory... because it's all synthetic. To the Endless that popcorn or ice cream will taste like their favorite memory of such snacks but to the living they offer no nutritional value whatsoever.
I feel like 7.x story will continue to explore this realm's potential. I was surprised for example that we didn't make use of an alternative power source like Dynamis - but alas.

Yes, I understand why Living Memory in its current form is unsustainable. However, we've been in contact with a number of immortal species whose existence does not harm the environment. And while I agree that forcing people to exist against their will is wrong, I also believe erasing people from existence against their will is also wrong. Out of the handful of people we meet there, three express the desire to be erased. The man eager to marry his fiance after centuries probably could have used a few more days. Some even have unfinished business we have to resolve so they can dissipate. Some even express hopes for the future. They were not all ready and willing to be erased. And I don't think beings should be forced out of existence because it's what's "natural." All the people there wore regulators knowing what they were and what they did, so while I agree the people who want to be set free should be set free, it's unlikely the vast majority of these people are being held against their will given they had to agree to have their memories tampered with to even end up there.

[Zordrage]

The endless are not real living beings.
They don't really age
They are nothing more then a VERY advanced "AI" with dead peoples memories.
thats it.
You are NOT talking with the real people they are long dead just a bunch of AI that use residual Aether as Power lol

The whole place is "fake"

And we are Shuting it down to be able to save the actual LIVING people in our world that are ACTUALY ALIVE.
There was NO genocide here all we did is shut down all the AI nobody actualy died...

The people in solution 9 ARE ALIVE btw thos are real living people and WE ARE taking care of them.

jesus its not that deep.

[Somnolence]

They are nothing more then a VERY advanced "AI" with dead peoples memories.

See, this does not make sense. Either souls are used for Endless and they are similar to the Solution 9 inhabitants - purified souls, imprinted with memories; or they are not souls and are full simulations.

In the latter, using soul aether as energy is pure story ass-pull, since other advanced civilizations like alagans and omicrons do not need soul aether to do the same, to run simulations. With existing FFXIV lore, soul is primary component of conscious beings, not memory. Then the entire Alexandria and Endless is just FF9, transplanted into this game without proper adaptation into existing lore.

[MarianneviBrittania]

When something fits the definition of life, breathes, grows, reproduces, dies, etc, the star grants it a soul. Either a newly minted soul or a cleansed soul from the aetherial sea. Deciding what did and didn't get a soul was the last frontier in the Ancient's ability to create life which is what Athena was working on before she died.

I wonder if that means the Lifestream is sentient......?

snip

That's not very Forge Ahead of you. In fact, I daresay Emet would be proud.

Edit: Man, there are a LOT of Emets in here. So much 'You are not alive, therefore I kill you good' flying around in here. Also lol @ the reticence towards The Big G Word. Even if you downgrade it to mass slaughter the immorality of it all hardly lessens.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

The endless are not real living beings.
They don't really age
They are nothing more then a VERY advanced "AI" with dead peoples memories.
thats it.
You are NOT talking with the real people they are long dead just a bunch of AI that use residual Aether as Power lol

The whole place is "fake"

And we are Shuting it down to be able to save the actual LIVING people in our world that are ACTUALY ALIVE.
There was NO genocide here all we did is shut down all the AI nobody actualy died...

The people in solution 9 ARE ALIVE btw thos are real living people and WE ARE taking care of them.

jesus its not that deep.

Why did I dress up like a bunny to give AIs a happy memory? We see the memory aether of these people sent to Living Memory. We see the memory aether of these people dissipate when we shut down Living Memory. If they were just AI they'd be able to run on electric, they wouldn't need human souls.

So either these are people who I should be weeping for as I shut down each area or they are programs and I shouldn't care. The games tells me I shouldn't care, through Cahciua, who I shouldn't be obeying if she's just a mindless program. But then the game shows me by every possible metric that these are feeling, thinking people. They make plans, they have dreams, they have ambitions, they have desires, they are self-aware, they can ask me to kill them. Cahciua the AI should not be able to demand I shut down the servers. That's the most poorly programmed AI in history if it can create characters bent on it's own destruction.

I wonder if that means the Lifestream is sentient......?

Zodiark was the Ancient's attempt to give the lifestream consciousness so that the star could save them. Hydaelyn was based off Zodiark's design, so it's safe to assume she was acting as the will of the star given Alpha got a soul for helping us and her familiars the Lopporits have souls when usually familiars don't get souls because they don't follow the laws of nature like eating, pooping, dying, etc.