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

[Bearskjold]

They're not even alive... They're memories given form. Nothing more.

[Singularity]

I would argue that if an entity can think for itself and form opinions and create new memories, that makes it no different from any other sapient being, regardless of whether the underlying hardware is flesh or electrope or aether.

I don't see why being "alive" in a biological sense is required for something to be considered self-aware.

[Connor]

I would argue that if an entity can think for itself and form opinions and create new memories, that makes it no different from any other sapient being, regardless of whether the underlying hardware is flesh or electrope or aether.

I don't see why being "alive" in a biological sense is required for something to be considered self-aware.

Wouldn’t this mean everytime a Scholar summons a fairy they’re literally creating a living slave? I mean, they can think for themselves, store and retain memories / knowledge, and even refuse your commands (though maybe not past level 60 because then you can eat them lol). I’m not even sure they’re capable of speech, though I do remember something in the lore about them whispering so quietly nobody can make out what they say, so maybe that’s not quite accurate. But I still don’t get the sense that they’re ‘alive’ in the standard meaning of the word. They’re an aetherial construct like Carbuncles.

As a Scholar I’m not sure how I feel with the idea that I’ve been brutally murdering an innocent creature ever 120 seconds to get more Energy Drains lol. I hope they don’t carry grudges…

But basically I feel like in a world where aether can be used to create ‘creatures’ like fairies, it’s much harder to quantify what ‘real life’ is outside of living breathing physical things. I mean, is self-awareness enough to be considered ‘alive’ when your entire existence is contingent upon another person/entity that can end it at will?

[Singularity]

Wouldn’t this mean everytime a Scholar summons a fairy they’re literally creating a living slave? I mean, they can think for themselves, store and retain memories / knowledge, and even refuse your commands (though maybe not past level 60 because then you can eat them lol). I’m not even sure they’re capable of speech, though I do remember something in the lore about them whispering so quietly nobody can make out what they say, so maybe that’s not quite accurate. But I still don’t get the sense that they’re ‘alive’ in the standard meaning of the word. They’re an aetherial construct like Carbuncles.

As a Scholar I’m not sure how I feel with the idea that I’ve been brutally murdering an innocent creature ever 120 seconds to get more Energy Drains lol. I hope they don’t carry grudges…

You're not creating a new fairy every time you summon, but summoning the same one. Accordingly, you don't kill her when you use Dissipation but reuse the aether she's using to manifest at the moment. She's even been shown to manifest on her own IIRC so I guess she's aware even when not summoned.

The player character's fairy is named Lily, and I would hope (though I guess it's not confirmed) that she's a willing partner to her scholar.

[Kaecilius]

Wouldn’t this mean everytime a Scholar summons a fairy they’re literally creating a living slave? I mean, they can think for themselves, store and retain memories / knowledge, and even refuse your commands (though maybe not past level 60 because then you can eat them lol). I’m not even sure they’re capable of speech, though I do remember something in the lore about them whispering so quietly nobody can make out what they say, so maybe that’s not quite accurate. But I still don’t get the sense that they’re ‘alive’ in the standard meaning of the word. They’re an aetherial construct like Carbuncles.

As a Scholar I’m not sure how I feel with the idea that I’ve been brutally murdering an innocent creature ever 120 seconds to get more Energy Drains lol. I hope they don’t carry grudges…

But basically I feel like in a world where aether can be used to create ‘creatures’ like fairies, it’s much harder to quantify what ‘real life’ is outside of living breathing physical things. I mean, is self-awareness enough to be considered ‘alive’ when your entire existence is contingent upon another person/entity that can end it at will?

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.

[Jojoya]

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.

Her AI avatar had no soul. The soul had long been since been used either to power LM's computer or to grant another person an additional life after accidental death.

What the MSQ didn't clarify is what happens to the cleansed souls once they're used. By being stripped of all memories then imprinted with the memories of the dead person they revive, does that soul become that second person? What if the soul is used solely as a power source for the computer - are they destroyed completely just as the souls of those who became Blasphemies were destroyed?

While the Aetherial Sea may give souls access to all memories of their previous life, I suspect those memories would still need to be imprinted on the soul in some way. Kairos seemed to overwrite memories as opposed to completely remove them. It seems to be similar to how we can delete files from a hard drive but someone with the proper knowledge can still retrieve and restore those files.

The Alexandrian process is supposed to completely remove the memories for storage in a separate container (the computer) as opposed to overwriting them. Would the Aetherial Sea still be able to retrieve and restore them considering they're no longer part of the soul?

I'm definitely not a fan of the second half of the MSQ but this whole "oh no, it's made me a murderer" complaint is silly. Nothing that was alive was killed because nothing in LM was alive except the group travelling from the Source.

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.

I disagree. While that segment of story was fairly brutal, it was emphasized to show how the Ancients were flawed and not to validate their actions.

DT is doing the same thing through a different path. The Endless are not living. There is no creature - if you noticed there was no body left behind when the terminals were powered down. They simply disappeared because they did not actually exist. They were a simulation.

But the computer that was running their simulation was intent on killing actual living beings solely for the purpose of sustaining the simulation. It had no morals, good or bad, it was simply doing what it was programmed to do.

[Hallarem]

They weren't even real, Sphene wasn't the real Sphene, so it was really hard to have anykind of emotional attachment to anything in the second half. Not to mention Wuk Lamat trying to reason with what basically surmounts to being an AI program. Every emotional pang in the end just felt unearned aside from Krile's revelation, but even part of that wasn't real.

[Kaecilius]

I disagree. While that segment of story was fairly brutal, it was emphasized to show how the Ancients were flawed and not to validate their actions.

DT is doing the same thing through a different path. The Endless are not living. There is no creature - if you noticed there was no body left behind when the terminals were powered down. They simply disappeared because they did not actually exist. They were a simulation.

But the computer that was running their simulation was intent on killing actual living beings solely for the purpose of sustaining the simulation. It had no morals, good or bad, it was simply doing what it was programmed to do.

Eh, the problem is that the simulation displayed sentience for the avatars. It's a machine intelligence, one that doesn't seem to have any overriding logic for anyone except Sphene.

If they were just silly puppets dancing on Living Memory's strings, the entire last zone attempts at emotional manipulation of the player are just wasted time. If they actually have sentience, we destroyed something unique in existence, even if it wasn't alive.

The real villain of zone 6 is the writing.

[TheMightyMollusk]

What the MSQ didn't clarify is what happens to the cleansed souls once they're used. By being stripped of all memories then imprinted with the memories of the dead person they revive, does that soul become that second person? What if the soul is used solely as a power source for the computer - are they destroyed completely just as the souls of those who became Blasphemies were destroyed?

A soul's aether can be used up like any other power source. Venat spent the last of her soul to fight us as Hydaelyn, and Zenos does it later at the end of Ultima Thule (he openly refers to it as "burning the candle of my life"). In both cases, the implication is that they're deader than dead, with not enough left to return to the aetherial sea and reincarnate. Whether that happens to the souls used up by the Endless is as yet unrevealed, but given that they need to keep taking more rather than relying on their own world's lifestream replenishing itself, it seems likely.

[MikkoAkure]

A soul's aether can be used up like any other power source. Venat spent the last of her soul to fight us as Hydaelyn, and Zenos does it later at the end of Ultima Thule (he openly refers to it as "burning the candle of my life"). In both cases, the implication is that they're deader than dead, with not enough left to return to the aetherial sea and reincarnate. Whether that happens to the souls used up by the Endless is as yet unrevealed, but given that they need to keep taking more rather than relying on their own world's lifestream replenishing itself, it seems likely.

That does make sense as to why they need to keep getting more. The Endless who were left adrift in what became the Deadwalk were said to have been cutoff from their aether supply and then became what we see there and if they had needed just the one soul I don’t think that would’ve happened. It was referred to as its own region so I’d imagine it had its own terminal like the others did.