FFXIV Spoiler thread

[ippollite]

Cant we all hold hands, return to the pre-amaurot cut scene where Emet selch tells us we all suck and hes going to wipe us out, and alphi shouts back "No, U!" And then we go knock some heads!? Honestly, the last few pages have kind of veered into the weeds a bit. To be fair, it feels like this is an extended cutscene of that moment. But instead of going to fight, aphi and emet conjure in a table and chairs and proceed to argue for weeks about the various merits and demerits of their position whilst the wol sits their twiddling their axe in general impatience.

In the end its still gonna come down to the same thing: My continued existence versus your continued existence; or my cultural ideology versus your culture ideology. Theyre all at war. So it goes.

Sorry, i know im jumping in and missing the nuance, but i really think you've gotten into the weeds. I know there was an actual discussion going on a while back that led us here, but i cant for the life of me remember what it was about.

Oh! that was it! The main thread of this conversation (i think?) was whether the sundering had to have happened. And in turn if that internally made sense to the story/lore. And if it didnt, does this indicate lazy/poor/pressured writing?

[Ghost of Cow]

I said plenty. Just because you don't believe THE WRITERS OF THE STORY ISHIKAWA AND HER TEAM AND YOSHI P THE DIRECTOR doesn't mean you get to have a meltdown on the forums and proclaim yourself right, lol.

And yet you still can't show where I "don't believe them" or am wrong about something. You just keep screaming into the air.

[Cthulhu 2020]

And yet you still can't show where I "don't believe them" or am wrong about something. You just keep screaming into the air.

I think you're even confusing yourself.

Facts: Zodiark was going to demand ever more and more sacrifices to continue existing and exerting his power over etheirys. In absence of counter information, that is what is canon. The Zodiark faction was the genocide faction. Hydaelyn wasn't much better but she at least gave man kind a fighting chance. If that upsets you then sorry not sorry. If you're going to have a discussion about lore and if what one character did was right, wrong, or LITERALLY HITLER LULZ then you should at least be operating with full knowledge of the facts rather than your own fanfiction version of the story. No conversation can be had if you're not even reading the same book as the rest of us.

[Ghost of Cow]

I think you're even confusing yourself.

Facts: Zodiark was going to demand ever more and more sacrifices to continue existing and exerting his power over etheirys. In absence of counter information, that is what is canon. The Zodiark faction was the genocide faction. Hydaelyn wasn't much better but she at least gave man kind a fighting chance. If that upsets you then sorry not sorry. If you're going to have a discussion about lore and if what one character did was right, wrong, or LITERALLY HITLER LULZ then you should at least be operating with full knowledge of the facts rather than your own fanfiction version of the story. No conversation can be had if you're not even reading the same book as the rest of us.

Now go ahead and source that bolded part.

[ippollite]

Random question, but is aethyr on the original star finite or infinite? This isnt necessarily related to the argument going on, but ive had this thought in my head(cannon)... and also the first law of thermodynamics. Val, you know! My thinking is that they needed to expend aethyr to summon zodiark. That energy was transfered (and effectively lost to the star and given to the manifestation of zodiark). The second sacrifice was again a transference of aethyr to restore the elements (through his benevolent power).

And heres where it goes squirly. Because theres a possibility that the restoration of the elements is a return of aethyr to the star itself (assuming a finite resource). From this, is it possible that there would be enough aethyr available to return the loss of the 50% in the first sacrifice? If its infinite and theres an external source (like the sun) manifesting aethyr, then logically there was another way and the sundering was... impulsive? We have an answer to this in the lore? Because if we do we also have an answer to the necessity of the sundering.

If aethyr is infinite, (sorry if my spelling is triggering), then the third sacrifice would, given enough time, have restored enough aethyr to not only return the lost, but also have zodiarks aethyr shield and protection from the life ending threat of meteion. If it isnt, then its multiplication by x<1. Or in other words, turtles all the way down.

My thinking is we havent had this answered in lore yet. But im literally at the start of act 3 of endwalker (ive just finished the venat cutscene - which is amazing by the way and im totally accepting the lore as a clear logic as told in game). My feeling is it remains unanswered and we just have to take it on faith. And its fair that thats not resolved, but, (i can also appreciate) absolutely maddening.

[Cthulhu 2020]

Now go ahead and source that bolded part.

Venat literally said that Zodiark would require an ever greater and greater source of lives, demanding more and more sacrifice. I'm sorry you didn't pay attention.

[ippollite]

Venat literally said that Zodiark would require an ever greater and greater source of lives, demanding more and more sacrifice. I'm sorry you didn't pay attention.

VENAT said. Im so sorry to fence sit and act like im above it (when i love this discussion). But first, the sheer number of unreliable narrators in this game... Emet literally told us she would have a different story "as is her wont". But lets go back to hythlodaeus (our other source)... which we HAVE to assume to be a manifestation of emet's... memory? ideology? doubt?... he told much the same story, but crucially, never said anything about the third sacrifice other than it would happen. As i said earlier, we have no in-game lore (unless you correct me) to suggest its impossible. Theres literally no reason given in game (as far as i know at this moment), why aethyr cant take root and grow (on the unsundered star) through the force of an external source. Then again, maybe the star is a self perpetuation/correction machine that manifests aethyr in itself (and that seems odd/unlikely... but not necessarily impossible given its a fantasy universe bound to its own laws - which is why i need someone to tell me this is a huge stretch).

Eta: im team azem/venat. But azem/venat is the minsc of this story: you point (put it in my quest log), i punch. The wol isnt exactly a paragon of morality.

[Thoughtcrime]

You talk about debating in good faith but you descended to this level of just taking silly potshots instead of discussing anything.

Hell, I even replied to that post with my thoughts on G'raha, but nah. Why read that, just take a silly shot.

Its just sarcastic levity, I wouldn't take it to heart as I'm really not adamantly opposed to anyone's stance, I have my thoughts and feelings on the story and you have yours and I'm ok with that, i don't intend to cause upset so I apologise for that but I think the conversation lost it's way and got bogged down a while ago.

I've said before and I'll say again, when dealing with any story, particularly fiction, particularly with magic and even more particularly with time travel eventually all the arguements reach the bed rock of perspective or even just personal preference, which again is where this topic arrived a while ago. Now it's just a lot of pivoting or retreading of covered ground mixed with outright hostility and people inventing characters and scenarios that don't exist to make their point(?) which isn't interesting.

There's quite a lot of other stuff in the story I'd like to dig into and I'll be happy to either broach those topics myself when I have time or rejoin the discussion when it moves on to something that hasn't been talked about for like 20 pages already.

[Ghost of Cow]

Random question, but is aethyr on the original star finite or infinite? This isnt necessarily related to the argument going on, but ive had this thought in my head(cannon)... and also the first law of thermodynamics. Val, you know! My thinking is that they needed to expend aethyr to summon zodiark. That energy was transfered (and effectively lost to the star and given to the manifestation of zodiark). The second sacrifice was again a transference of aethyr to restore the elements (through his benevolent power).

And heres where it goes squirly. Because theres a possibility that the restoration of the elements is a return of aethyr to the star itself (assuming a finite resource). From this, is it possible that there would be enough aethyr available to return the loss of the 50% in the first sacrifice? If its infinite and theres an external source (like the sun) manifesting aethyr, then logically there was another way and the sundering was... impulsive? We have an answer to this in the lore? Because if we do we also have an answer to the necessity of the sundering.

If aethyr is infinite, (sorry if my spelling is triggering), then the third sacrifice would, given enough time, have restored enough aethyr to not only return the lost, but also have zodiarks aethyr shield and protection from the life ending threat of meteion. If it isnt, then its multiplication by x<1. Or in other words, turtles all the way down.

My thinking is we havent had this answered in lore yet. But im literally at the start of act 3 of endwalker (ive just finished the venat cutscene - which is amazing by the way and im totally accepting the lore as a clear logic as told in game). My feeling is it remains unanswered and we just have to take it on faith. And its fair that thats not resolved, but, (i can also appreciate) absolutely maddening.

I've always assumed that aether is like energy as we know it today. It's finite - and locally any system will necessarily run out of it given time - but external sources (Read: the sun) can provide a steady supply of it. Whether that's true in XIV I'm not sure. We do know that when Zodiark died, all that aether did return to the planet and had an effect. I believe it's covered in a fishing quest, of all things?

Ultimately the question is really just whether or not Zodiark - being possessed of the absurd power he was - could actually make good on the hopes of returning everyone to life, or whether it was going to be a Lakshmi situation of the bodies being returned to life with no soul. We'll never really know unless someone at Square decides to lift the veil on that mystery.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Random question, but is aethyr on the original star finite or infinite?

Depends on which era of the canon you're talking about. In the 1.0-2.0 lore, Primals were an existential threat to the world because they ate aether, and that aether never came back, so eventually the primals would eat up all aether in the world. At the end of 2.5, when you're taking aether readings in the South Shroud before discovering the body of that Crystal Brave, you find out that the aether in the world has been decreasing over time. This was before the writers decided that Hydaelyn and Zodiark were primals, so they couldn't have been the cause. I don't think we ever found out what was supposed to be responsible for the dwindling aether in that canon.




Shadowbringers retcons the nature of Primals. They're simply familiars conjured by creation magic. The Amaurotines conjured familiars all of the time and they didn't destroy the world. The heroes even summon Primals in the Eden storyline and the "black hole of aether" thing is forgotten. And Hydaelyn and Zodiark were primals and apparently weren't sucking up the world's aether, and could have existed indefinitely without the world being destroyed.

From this, is it possible that there would be enough aethyr available to return the loss of the 50% in the first sacrifice?

Endwalker ending spoilers

Spoiler: 

Last chance to turn back

Spoiler: 

Given that the WoL resurrected Emet and Hythloladeus, then yes it would appear that if Zodiark had enough aether, he could have actually resurrected the sacrificed souls (and perhaps even souls that died and returned to the lifestream, though I don't know how their memories could have been restored since Endwalker shows that memories are lost upon returning to the Lifestream).

[Ghost of Cow]

Shadowbringers retcons the nature of Primals. They're simply familiars conjured by creation magic. The Amaurotines conjured familiars all of the time and they didn't destroy the world. The heroes even summon Primals in the Eden storyline and the "black hole of aether" thing is forgotten. And Hydaelyn and Zodiark were primals and apparently weren't sucking up the world's aether, and could have existed indefinitely without the world being destroyed.

The retcons - or at least, additions to established ideas - are some of the more frustrating elements of discussing the story, indeed.

Even with regards to Venat's opposition of Zodiark, we have several wildly different reasonings depending on which patch you're looking at. We hear things ranging from needing to keep Zodiark in check because he's so powerful to ethical concerns about sacrificing life.

It's not until Endwalker that we're shown this idea of needing to sunder everyone to enact a eons-long plan to let people interact with Dynamis, grow an ubermensch out of Azem's soul, and ultimately defeat despair itself and save mankind.

Now granted, many of these things aren't mutually exclusive. Still, I always found the older reasonings to be more compelling and made the characters in question more interesting. Giving Venat that "get out of moral dilemma free" card by making her actions not just the result of a disagreement on ethics but supposedly an absolute necessity to save the world makes it all far less interesting.

[Aucald]

Shadowbringers retcons the nature of Primals. They're simply familiars conjured by creation magic. The Amaurotines conjured familiars all of the time and they didn't destroy the world. The heroes even summon Primals in the Eden storyline and the "black hole of aether" thing is forgotten. And Hydaelyn and Zodiark were primals and apparently weren't sucking up the world's aether, and could have existed indefinitely without the world being destroyed.

It's my understanding that the original Amaurot was part of Etheirys, the unsundered "prime" world that was basically an amalgamation of the current 12 or so sundered worlds we encounter in-game. As such, Etheirys may have been so rich in aether that the conjuration of simple Primals may not have even registered, basically akin to taking a teaspoon of water from the Pacific. When creation was sundered and Etheirys split into its many shard worlds this aether would've been distributed as well, meaning that the summoning of Primals on Hydaelyn could be a lot more detrimental than it would've been on Etheirys.

We also know that Zodiark, for example, his summoning required huge amounts of living sacrifices to enact - and even more so that his abilities would bring about the Golden Age of the Ascians' culture. That's a pretty catastrophic requirement above and beyond aether that might've been required to maintain (since Zodiark's existence was meant to bring more aether to their world, to circumvent the Final Days or what have you).

[Katchii]

(since Zodiark's existence was meant to bring more aether to their world, to circumvent the Final Days or what have you).

It's my understanding, based on what they say in Endwalker, that Zodiark wasn't going to add aether, but simply prevent the stagnation/clogging of the aetherial leylines.

[Aucald]

It's my understanding, based on what they say in Endwalker, that Zodiark wasn't going to add aether, but simply prevent the stagnation/clogging of the aetherial leylines.

I always thought it was basically a kind of "aether in exchange for life force" type of mechanism - whether that was the production of aether itself or unclogging the ley lines I can't really say. But basically Zodiark was an iron lung for their planet that ran on sacrifice, huge amounts of it, in a vain attempt to prolong their existences.

[Katchii]

I always thought it was basically a kind of "aether in exchange for life force" type of mechanism - whether that was the production of aether itself or unclogging the ley lines I can't really say. But basically Zodiark was an iron lung for their planet that ran on sacrifice, huge amounts of it, in a vain attempt to prolong their existences.

He was summoned initially due to a huge sacrifice, yes, for the purpose of preventing the stagnation of the ley lines. As you say, to act as an iron lung. They don't say anything about him creating aether to do that. I see it more like a series of rivers that are just clogged or backed up. You don't need to add water to get them moving again, you just need to spend time and energy removing the blockages. The people of Amaurot didn't have that much time, energy or maybe even the know-how for how to accomplish that so summoned Zodiark to do it instead.

They don't really go into WHY they needed to sacrifice themselves after that was accomplished and wanted to do other stuff, they just say that's how they're going to do it.

[Aucald]

They don't really go into WHY they needed to sacrifice themselves after that was accomplished and wanted to do other stuff, they just say that's how they're going to do it.

Based on what I've read, the initial summoning of Zodiark sort of did what they needed, but the convocation that included Elidibus and the rest wanted to restore some previous Golden Age of their culture, which required amping Zodiark up more, at the cost of even more lives. Eventually to individuals like Venat and her cohorts, the cost of this vainglory became simply too much to bear - hence the sundering and everything that came after.

[Ghost of Cow]

Based on what I've read, the initial summoning of Zodiark sort of did what they needed, but the convocation that included Elidibus and the rest wanted to restore some previous Golden Age of their culture, which required amping Zodiark up more, at the cost of even more lives. Eventually to individuals like Venat and her cohorts, the cost of this vainglory became simply too much to bear - hence the sundering and everything that came after.

Essentially, yes. That's the original story of Zodiark and the sundering that we're told. That more sacrifices were planned of "lesser" life in order to restore what was lost to the ancients.

Would it have worked? Possibly. Probably, even. But Venat's opposition wasn't based on whether it would have worked, but the ethics of the method. Nor is the claim that Zodiark would have demanded more and more sacrifice and thus needed to be sundered based on anything I've seen. Indeed, the Watcher on the moon debunks the "power hungry Zodiark" tale, and this is someone working for Hydaelyn.

[Aucald]

Essentially, yes. That's the original story of Zodiark and the sundering that we're told. That more sacrifices were planned of "lesser" life in order to restore what was lost to the ancients.

Would it have worked? Possibly. Probably, even. But Venat's opposition wasn't based on whether it would have worked, but the ethics of the method. Nor is the claim that Zodiark would have demanded more and more sacrifice and thus needed to be sundered based on anything I've seen. Indeed, the Watcher on the moon debunks the "power hungry Zodiark" tale, and this is someone working for Hydaelyn.

I can definitely understand the ethical implications of sacrificing billions of lives to try to preserve the remainder. It was my understanding that the sacrifices need to fuel Zodiark after the initial fending off of the Final Days was pretty much core to Venat/Hydaelyn's rebellion against the convocation, which led to her becoming Hydaelyn and the sundering itself?

[xmirrors]

I can definitely understand the ethical implications of sacrificing billions of lives to try to preserve the remainder. It was my understanding that the sacrifices need to fuel Zodiark after the initial fending off of the Final Days was pretty much core to Venat/Hydaelyn's rebellion against the convocation, which led to her becoming Hydaelyn and the sundering itself?

The initial summoning of Zodiark required half of the population, because of the aether required, but the world itself was a husk of what it was. So another half was sacrificed to restore it. Then, to bring back the lives that were lost in the sacrifices the plan was to sacrifice the new lives from the new world, which is what prompted the creation of Hydaelyn and eventual Sundering.

[Ghost of Cow]

I can definitely understand the ethical implications of sacrificing billions of lives to try to preserve the remainder. It was my understanding that the sacrifices need to fuel Zodiark after the initial fending off of the Final Days was pretty much core to Venat/Hydaelyn's rebellion against the convocation, which led to her becoming Hydaelyn and the sundering itself?

Right, they talked about three waves of sacrifices:

Sacrifice half the ancients to create Zodiark and stop the Final Days.
Sacrifice half of what remained of the ancients to restore the planet so that it could grow life anew.
Sacrifice that new life to restore all the ancients lost in the first two sacrifices.

The first two Venat was (presumably) fine with. She had ethical issues with the third one, though the specifics of her motivations have changed slightly over time.

Ultimately, in Endwalker we're told that the sundering wasn't even really about the sacrifice, but was rather a necessary action to save mankind. Which kind of takes all the interesting elements out of the conflict but that's a personal opinion.