Is this a plothole? Question about the Endless

[ElHeggunte]

But they can't be both. But the game TELLS us they are the former, but SHOWS us the latter as the process of their creation.

Why can’t it be both? Memory aether is just data—metadata for the soul, if I had to choose an analogy. The aetherial sea strips and discards memory aether from the soul too, with the occasional exception of especially strong memories sticking around when the soul is reincarnated. The Living Memory is just a bastardized version of the lifestream where it separates the soul from the memories, then it copies the memories into its database before discarding them. Afterwards it uses the blank souls as a base and superimposes the copied memories onto it to make the Endless.


That’s what the process seems like to me anyway, based on what we’ve seen and what the characters have said.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

Why can’t it be both? Memory aether is just data—metadata for the soul, if I had to choose an analogy. The aetherial sea strips and discards memory aether from the soul too, with the occasional exception of especially strong memories sticking around when the soul is reincarnated. The Living Memory is just a bastardized version of the lifestream where it separates the soul from the memories, then it copies the memories into its database before discarding them. Afterwards it uses the blank souls as a base and superimposes the copied memories onto it to make the Endless.


That’s what the process seems like to me anyway, based on what we’ve seen and what the characters have said.

Because there is no mention of the memory aether being discarded. Quite the opposite they seem to be made of memory aether as that is what seems to dissipate when they do. And there would be no reason a digital copy of you would need lifeforce to be maintained. If it was just a digital copy, then there should have been a way to store them in a VR world. If it's memory aether then we're wiping the one and only version of people out of existence, so it's weird we're told not to feel guilty about it cause they are just copies.

The reason it can't be both is because the two explanations contradict each other. As I said before, it'd be like saying "I scanned your brain" then showing a brain being removed from someone's skull. That's not the same thing. And given there are two Otises we know that's not even a requirement.

Also they aren't using blank souls as a base as souls are eternal, so you wouldn't need more. The reason Sphene needs to kill people is because lifeforce, unlike souls, can be used up. The souls are being packaged into cells and sent back to Everkeep, the Endless are running on lifeforce.

[NishaSetsuya]

Gleaners are scholars too. He states that when he's attempting to get information from a Forum member as we're listening on as frogs. I can find the scene and take a picture for you if you don't believe me. Grief doesn't make you forget how your afterlife works. And he doesn't seem sad in that moment, he seems enthused. And again, half the evidence points to him possibly being right and the other half points to him being incorrect. I'm curious why people are so quick to discard the parts suggesting he's right given it was how we justified deleting thousands of people.

"Oh no, what Cahcuia said directly multiple times was incorrect, this was actually the only version of these people and they are now gone forever. Oh well."

His domain of expertise is nature and fauna, that why he is a gleaner. All the scholar in sharlayan have a domain of expertise not every one of them is knowledgable about aetherology.

Also i feel like those past expansion been about some of the stage of grief

Shadowbringer enial and Anger
Endwalker : Bargaining and depression
Dawntrail : Testing and Acceptance
(That my how interpretation of thing in relation to their last dungeon and zone. Similar but different)

[Lady_Silvermoon]

His domain of expertise is nature and fauna, that why he is a gleaner. All the scholar in sharlayan have a domain of expertise not every one of them is knowledgable about aetherology.

Also i feel like those past expansion been about some of the stage of grief

Shadowbringer enial and Anger
Endwalker : Bargaining and depression
Dawntrail : Testing and Acceptance
(That my how interpretation of thing in relation to their last dungeon and zone. Similar but different)

Erenville was in the room when Oblivion explains what happens to the souls of people wearing regulators. We are arguing if he's too dumb to understand something explained to him when it was explained to us.

Let me put it this way, do you believe the writers intentionally had him mistaken about the location of his mother's soul in a post-credit scene of what you believe is the Testing and Acceptance expansion?

If he's supposed to be at Acceptance, which I agree given he's saying this with a big smile on his face, why are people claiming he's just in Denial?

[Striker44]

If he's supposed to be at Acceptance, which I agree given he's saying this with a big smile on his face, why are people claiming he's just in Denial?

Simple - the expansion is about "Testing and Acceptance" for us (the players behind the 4th wall). For Erenville in the game at that moment, he's just experienced the loss and is in denial.

[Gunz_Zbestest]

You can think of the endless using energy much like we use gas to power a car. The oil came from living beings, but the car and engine aren't technically living, but rather combustion from the energy keeps the car running, which isn't alive.

[Zaniel]

The reason we don't know is because the writers don't know. No one sat down with a lore encyclopedia and the scripts for the last 4 expansions and whiteboarded / flowcharted out the ramifications of any of the lore or story reveals in DT. It just flowed out of the end of a pen based on whatever beat gave the writer his or her best feels in the moment. You CAN"T analyse the lore like a scholar because it has no fundamental structure or logic.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

The reason we don't know is because the writers don't know. No one sat down with a lore encyclopedia and the scripts for the last 4 expansions and whiteboarded / flowcharted out the ramifications of any of the lore or story reveals in DT. It just flowed out of the end of a pen based on whatever beat gave the writer his or her best feels in the moment. You CAN"T analyse the lore like a scholar because it has no fundamental structure or logic.

You are probably right. I am trying to make sense of something which in a dozen other ways has been completely senseless. I'll just chuck it in the bin with why a terminal keeping thousands of people alive is so easy to deactivate a child could do it by mistake or why Wuk Lamat can talk racists into giving up their eugenics program in one afternoon, but can't convince the Queen of Happiness and Peace to give us a few days to figure out a way for her servers to run on something besides people.

[Vyrerus]

I agree with Zaniel's take.

I would also say, yes, this is a plot hole. Dawntrail has quite a few of them. It's really more like a story with a sewer, and its plot holes are there by design like manholes. We keep going into them, hoping to find the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Master Splinter. Only, there is no Green Ooze, so we just keep stepping in shit.

Some things to consider about the two Otises:

- Robo Otis may not necessarily have the entirety of original Otis's souls or memories. While he is 400 years+ old via his robot body, since he was experimented on with having his soul diced up and inserted into a robot, it may be possible that some of the real him DID make it to Living Memory, not just a copy. It's not like we delved into his entire life's story in the half a dozen or so quests we met and watched him die.

- Living Memory Otis gets struck with severe PTSD just by acting in the play. Even if he's just a copy, we should probably look at the word copy and think of it more like clone. Then we gotta think... if you were to be cloned, would it be moral for you to kill your clone just for existing?

- It's been a few weeks now, and I haven't reviewed any dialogue, but I was pretty sure there was a mention somewhere in Living Memory about how certain Endless were given simulated personas of people important to them that weren't naturally in Living Memory as real people yet. Is it not possible then, that LM-Otis is one of these simulated personas? The PTSD would indicate otherwise, but Living Memory's whole schtick is making everything feel as real as possible for The Endless.

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Only other thing talking specifically about living aether makes me think about is Valigarmandar's attacks. Even after 80 years and then even after its death, the places where it clawed and rained down attacks are burning with, "living aether." Some what surprised that we didn't go on a Valigarmandar living aether collectathon to see if it could sustain The Endless. Lmao, maybe that will be our post patch method for reactivating Living Memory (nah we probably won't).