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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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).

[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.

[Loggos]

I just flat-out think it's a plot hole. The writers' entire approach to the lore regarding souls shows that they either don't really know or don't care how the in-universe rules of souls and rebirth worked up until Dawntrail.

In my opinion the addition of life force is the biggest problem because it's the factor on which the whole regulator and endless plot hinges in the first place, while complicating or straight-up contradicting established lore and logic.

Before DT there was corporal aether, memory aether and the core of your soul. The former two are all made from normal aether and yet it was a perfectly rounded, functional explanation for world's processes of life and death.
There was no big open question that needed to be answered with the addition with life force. It was tagged onto existing lore in the most contrived way and just screwed over what used to be well-functioning world building.
Hence, life force was never needed for world-building logic, and is only required for the endless/regulator plot because you can neither recycle the corporal aether nor the memory aether of dead people for the story the DT writers try to tell.

I've ranted quite a bit about life force here because it honestly bothers me so much.

And I completely agree on the Erenville part. He shouldn't be able to meet his mother in the aetherial sea because her soul has already been cleansed and only her being's true core remains.

But who knows, maybe they'll come up with another addition to the soul lore and memories never actually disappear/dissipate in the aetherial sea. They just get cut loose from their souls but still remain one coherent floating construct. So in the aetherial sea's abundant aether/life force/whatever I don't care anymore those memories might still be given shape kind of like natural endless so no life lived is ever truly lost.
(Which would mean Erenville would meet another endless version of his mother. Something something nickel, happened twice, something something.)
And who knows, maybe the memory constructs that are all rooted in one soul remain separate entities/people in the aetherial sea or perhaps they merge into one big coherent entity/person that has the memories and knowledge of all the lives lived by that respective soul.
So basically a proper afterlife for the specific person/iteration the soul existed as during one period in its rebirth cycle. Previously it sounded like the individual "life chapters" of a soul are irrevocably lost after detaching from their soul.
I wouldn't be surprised if they went into that direction to write themselves out of their corner.

[Raven2014]

That's quite tragic in a sense, if you look into it a little more deeply. Some of those Endless were children. This implies that those Endless either died AS children or had miserable adult lives and their only happy memories were those from when they were children.

Not implied, it IS the case if you do the side quest in Zone 6. Some children turned elder right before you release them.

As for the OP's question, either it's plot hole or bad writing, neither is flattening. I mentioned before but the inconsistent in the 2nd half of the story is pretty jarring, it's like zone 5 and zone 6 had two different writers who don't even look at each other's note.

The main cause I think is while there is probably a basic rationality behind the Endless, the team kept repeatably side step that rationality for the shake of taking some cheap emotional shots. It's like you reading a story where there is not a narrative or rational reason for a kid to die, but the writers just decide to kill the kid for hardly any reason because hey, kid dying = emotional, and emotional = automatically good writing am I right? The 6th zone and the endless is reek of this amateurish mentality, that's why it has so many holes in it.

[Turtledeluxe]

Where does Origenics dispute the MSQ dialogue? It confirms memory aether is used, yes. How exactly else would they get the memories in a universe where they presumably lack the technology to do it with brain parts? The key point in MSQ as mentioned by both NPCs and Sphene at the end, is that the memory aether combined with new soul aether results in a recreation.

The final Sphene in the trial is seemingly the same one that has been with us, but even she differentiates herself as a copy made of memories.

It's convoluted admittedly but I don't think the writers left it vague that, for all intents and purposes and despite how unintuitive it may seem, we are dealing with beings who qualify as copies of the originals who are data based in form, which makes them more like an impossibly accurate projection than the same person.

As far as Erenville, i do feel like I remember reading that their souls get cleansed, which makes it interesting to speculate on what exactly happens to the memory aether. During and after the process.

Maybe if he meets her in the Aetherial Sea she just won't remember a damn thing.

[SongOfTheWind]

I refuse to believe a Sharlayan scholar simply forgot how the afterlife works in regards to his mother

I am a bit confused. Erenville is not a scholar. He is a gleaner, knows a lot about nature/animals, that jazz. How does it make him a specialist in Aetherial things? I think he is quite obviously just mistaken.