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ImpAtom posted:If Black Rose, which drained the land of aether, qualified as a Light calamity then Ultima Weapon unchecked probably would as well for the same reason. Shadowbringers establishing Light as "stagnation" goes a long way for that. Emet-Selch comes up with the idea of making use of Black Rose moments after hearing about it and a handful of patches before Shadowbringers. I kind of get the feeling the Ascians were just making it up as they went along, causing problems and crises on purpose just so they have a set of options if things align properly with their work on other shards.
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Aug 2, 2021 02:43
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Ironslave posted:Emet-Selch comes up with the idea of making use of Black Rose moments after hearing about it and a handful of patches before Shadowbringers. I'm not saying Emet-Selch planning it. I'm saying "Oh, we can use this to cause an appropriate Calamity" seems entirely in their MO
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Aug 2, 2021 02:45
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Oh, I wasn't saying you were saying that, I was extrapolating further on the idea. "Oh yeah we can use that" seems to be how they operate.
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Aug 2, 2021 02:46
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I've had the idea that the source and its reflections along with the life on them could be restored to their former glory by felling both Hydaelyn and Zodiark. While that definitely won't bring back the ancients or make the world one again, it'll be returning a tremendous amount of primo grade aether/souls back into the lifestream, which can only be a net improvement for everything/everyone else. The diversity of current man would be retained but with the lifespan, power, and grace of the star's original inhabitants. It would justify the increase to level 100 in the expansion after Endwalker and also that story taking us into space to contest with the beings from unsundered planets.
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Aug 2, 2021 02:57
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Tekne posted:I've had the idea that the source and its reflections along with the life on them could be restored to their former glory by felling both Hydaelyn and Zodiark. While that definitely won't bring back the ancients or make the world one again, it'll be returning a tremendous amount of primo grade aether/souls back into the lifestream, which can only be a net improvement for everything/everyone else. The diversity of current man would be retained but with the lifespan, power, and grace of the star's original inhabitants. It would justify the increase to level 100 in the expansion after Endwalker and also that story taking us into space to contest with the beings from unsundered planets. Yeah I also picked that ending in Pillars of Exile, just so Pallegina didn't lose her job.
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Aug 2, 2021 03:02
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ZenMasterBullshit posted:Ultima kept the primals inside alive and draining aether and honestly a big Giant Ulitma (the spell) as a light based nuke that wrecks a continent could work. yea it seemed to me in retrospect Thordan was Plan A, with Laha's Ultima bullshit being 'well yea poo poo maybe we'll paint it white and give it to elf pope or something, won't hurt at least'. I think people overstate how slapdash Ascian plans are, it's a side effect of MMO writing involving each expansion having some Ascian all 'aha THIS is MY plan' and I get that but Plan Eternal Dragonsong War and Plan Ultima Nukes Everything were two very longterm plans that were working in tandem pretty well. Black Rose came up when we hosed their obvious main plans up and it had to shift to 'gently caress it fine, I wanted to do this with some style but just magic gas everyone'.
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Aug 2, 2021 03:26
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Also I know it's canon that Black Rose was a breakthrough but I really love the headcanon of it being some absolute freak's pet project in the Empire and Emet finally exhausted of plans and just sighing and going 'alright Creepy Jim, we can use your genocide gas' and some triclops clapping with delight at a lab table.
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Aug 2, 2021 03:28
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Emet-Selch choosing the right time to die to throw the Garlean Empire into turmoil doesn't seem to have served a purpose but to cause more turmoil they might be able to capitalize on in the future, and he did that before Ultima Weapon was operational. The Allagan Empire and the Dragonsong War leading to their respective Calamity and attempted Calamity were a thousand years in the making for both and relied on individual events that could have been planned but seem far more likely to have just been taken advantage of at the time--I will found a magiteknical empire and then a thousand years later we'll launch a ball containing a captive god to use as a power system and make sure they didn't calibrate their systems right to cause huge earthquakes is a bit. And aside that, at the same time the MSQ was going on Emmerololth was trying to unleash Eureka and Nabriales saw we were unprotected and decided to make off with Tupsimati. I have not gotten the idea that anything the Ascians have done has been well-planned, more that they know how to cause and capitalize on havoc. And why wouldn't they be? They're immortal entities that can bodysnatch anyone they want and view dying as an inconvenience at worst and something to make use of at best, with little to no care or concern for the wellbeing of the people whose lives they're affecting. They can afford to constantly be throwing more things at the wall and adding more plates; the more chaos or chances for chaos in the world, the easier it is to tip their scales.
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Aug 2, 2021 03:51
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sexpig by night posted:yea it seemed to me in retrospect Thordan was Plan A, with Laha's Ultima bullshit being 'well yea poo poo maybe we'll paint it white and give it to elf pope or something, won't hurt at least'. I think people overstate how slapdash Ascian plans are, it's a side effect of MMO writing involving each expansion having some Ascian all 'aha THIS is MY plan' and I get that but Plan Eternal Dragonsong War and Plan Ultima Nukes Everything were two very longterm plans that were working in tandem pretty well. Black Rose came up when we hosed their obvious main plans up and it had to shift to 'gently caress it fine, I wanted to do this with some style but just magic gas everyone'. Actually, on review it seemed like the Thordan plan was relatively new. Thordan is clearly old as poo poo, so he had plenty of time to set up a long-term plan, yet the only real movements towards Azys Lla are done during Heavensward's present-day. In fact, the only influence on the entire Dragonsong War before then that the Ascians seemed to ever have was one of them influencing Ysayle to channel Shiva (we're not sure who, but I suspect Nabriales because he seemed pretty pissed when she lost). I certainly don't think the Ascians were against the war happening, but they didn't have a plan for it until around when we saw Lahabrea and Elidibus in Thordan's throne room in the ARR patches. I think their outlook was more 'the eternal dragon war might be useful eventually if we need it' rather than being a specific plan. I don't think the Ascians even work in such a way where they have a distinct 'Plan A', they just have a million different hooks going until one gets momentum. By my count, the potential Eighth Umbral Calamity triggers that we know of them working on are Ultima Weapon, Shiva somehow, King Thordan, Alexander, Shinryu (maybe, intentions unclear), the Warriors of Darkness (also maybe, that might've just been them trying to kill us), Eureka, and Black Rose. Some of them are 'let's pick up this thing we left lying around in an earlier era', but others are more them taking advantage of a situation.
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Aug 2, 2021 04:31
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I feel like Thordan was probably the endgame of the Ascian plan during ARR (even if this is retroactive). Garlemald conquers Eorzea, Ascians appear to Thordan to be all "hey, you are now pinned between two powerful enemy states, you might want the power of a god". Ultima is also being used to take out the WoL because at this point you are a major potential threat.
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Aug 2, 2021 04:38
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you're not ascian the right questions
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Aug 2, 2021 04:47
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The warriors of darkness plan was explained to us. It was a bad plan, because they were grasping at straws, but we do know what they were up to--the idea was to so consistently re-summon and put down primals that the beast tribes start listening to the ascian whispering "well, your god sucks, but how about this other god? Just send your prayers directly into this pile of light-aspected crystals"
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Aug 2, 2021 04:50
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Lahabrea was acting on his own, he was pretty much senile by that point and Ultima was dark aligned, that was what his Praetorium speech was all about. Both Emet Selch and Elidibus mentioned how he was basically doing his own thing:quote:Lahabrea's boldness had only grown with the passing of ages─segueing inevitably into recklessness. Across many vessels and many worlds he blazed his trail, each mad leap forward leaving him that much more broken. Not satisfied with having brought about the Seventh Umbral Calamity, he labored needlessly to prolong it. Ultima would have prolonged Bahamut's dark calamity, Elidibus was the one trying to balance things so a new calamity could be set up. During the solo duty before SoS he even admits this and then blames himself since he sets up the WoL to become stronger and then kill his friends.
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Aug 2, 2021 05:09
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I feel like the main argument against Amon being Emet is how close to succeeding Xande's real plan got. The Ascian's want the Source to survive calamities to do rejoinings. They don't want the Source consumed by the Void. If Emet was involved he'd probably have sabotaged that part of Xande's plan.
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Aug 2, 2021 05:50
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A Sometimes Food posted:I feel like the main argument against Amon being Emet is how close to succeeding Xande's real plan got. The Ascian's want the Source to survive calamities to do rejoinings. They don't want the Source consumed by the Void. I mean, if a bunch of adventurers can beat the Cloud of Darkness, then it probably wouldn't have been able to destroy the Source completely. Most of the calamities were a lot more calamitous than the fall of Dalamud, and involved massive deaths across the whole planet. The invasion of the void probably would've been more along those lines.
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Aug 2, 2021 05:59
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Begemot posted:I mean, if a bunch of adventurers can beat the Cloud of Darkness, then it probably wouldn't have been able to destroy the Source completely. Most of the calamities were a lot more calamitous than the fall of Dalamud, and involved massive deaths across the whole planet. The invasion of the void probably would've been more along those lines. tbf "beating" the Cloud of Darkness was more like punching a shark in the nose and making it run away for a second since it immediately came back and almost killed everyone
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Aug 2, 2021 06:15
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We also definitely defeated Eden which was 100% capable of ending the entire world.
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Aug 2, 2021 06:17
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They want the source alive to sacrifice everyone (half of everyone?) to zodiark, but after several calamities they probably know how it works when executed properly and just devastates the source for a while. I assume it means that since you've dealt with the primes the threat posed by fandaniel is the destruction of the source as a gently caress-you-dad and presumably this will mean curtains for the remaining reflections. Since this is something the primes did not want to happen and since it's likely there are other sundered ascians (who had basically been henchpersons for the primes) out there without such a nihilistic bent, there's probably going to be some ascian help in fighting fandaniel but in the end they accept their fate (or are killed) and no further rejoinings are on the menu unless the sharlayans show up with a concrete solution to rejoin everything without a calamity. Or with calamities and they just don't care. Maybe they are like "that's an eorzea problem not a sharlayan problem" which is the degree of stupid destructive aloofness I absolutely expect.
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Aug 2, 2021 06:19
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Can't wait for it to be revealed that Sharlayan was actually set up by Emet-Selch to be the basis of his next empire after the 8th Umbral Calamity, and the core of their whole "Its fine, we're fine"mindset is they still think this is all part of his plan and they'll know when to act because he's going to come back and tell them so. 
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Aug 2, 2021 08:49
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I think having a non-interventionist country that views war as unacceptable in all situations would be a pretty bad basis for an empire.
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Aug 2, 2021 11:02
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i think it's entirely possible it was set up by hydaelyn/venat/one of her followers if any also still exist
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Aug 2, 2021 11:33
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I don't think Sharlayan can be an Emet-Selch Society(tm), simply because it goes against some core elements of how we know Emet makes a society. Obviously it's not an expansionist, supremacist empire, so there's that, but something else is that Sharlayan absolutely knows who the Ascians are, and seem to recognize them as a threat; not only are Sharlayan clearly aware of the End of Days as a concept in the Endwalker leadup, but Eureka lore says that the Students of Baldesion could recognize an individual Ascian and have no compunctions about murdering the poo poo out of her. If they were forged by the Ascians, then it was too poorly-done to be Emet's doing, he's way better at that.
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Aug 2, 2021 12:01
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yea Sharlayan may be another Ascian's project (maybe one of the 13 who didn't like how things were going and wanted to make a failsafe knowledge vault kinda thing for the world?) but it'd be very weird if it was Emet's. A non-supremacist isolationist society that fully knows Ascians are real and hang out in the shadows as puppetmasters is the exact opposite of what Emet makes to push his plans forward.
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Aug 2, 2021 14:09
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From what we saw in the two amaruot dungeons that weren't the final days I wouldn't be shocked to learn they were a lahabrea pet project
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Aug 2, 2021 16:09
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"Dude, what if there was a worm... with teeth." "Whoa, I can't stop thinking about it." *ominous bell tolls*
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Aug 2, 2021 16:16
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Bruceski posted:"Dude, what if there was a worm... with teeth." The very first beast
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Aug 2, 2021 17:34
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The sheer jankiness of the ascians plans post-bahamut make more sense when you remember that they’re used to having a few thousand years to lie low and workshop stuff, but thanks to louisoix everything is primed for a rejoining way sooner than usual and they’re kind of scrambling to put something together.
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Aug 2, 2021 17:37
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Also worth recalling that Emet, at least, is not actually a reliable participant in the Rejoining Scheme. He seems to waffle around a lot between building nations he actually finds aesthetically pleasing - early Garlemald is described as much more free and open by the crew of the Prima Vista, for example, and Allag's golden age was apparently a genuinely utopian society before they resumed their amoral expansionism under Xande 2.0 - and ones designed to collapse catastrophically. He goes back and forth because he seems to have a nasty (from the Ascian point of view) habit of empathizing and identifying with the mortals he lives among, until something inevitably trips the Zodiark Tempering and/or Existential Despair at the Problem of Evil button and he goes back onto the world-destroying path. Garlemald is useful as much because it's designed to collapse catastrophically after having fundamentally redefined the culture of all of Ilsabard and much of Othard. Going off Gabranth's example in Bozja, we could have expected an Alexandrian-style shattering of former Garlemald as legates claimed their own territories, but they'd all be "Garleanistic" societies - heavily shaped by the social principles of Garlemald, and therefore ripe for Ascian manipulation since they'll know all the social buttons to push. In some ways that setup of a bunch of feuding successor states is really more useful if you're in the chaos and upheaval game than an intact empire. Jetrauben fucked around with this message at 20:45 on Aug 2, 2021 |
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Aug 2, 2021 20:36
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Emet being the sponsor for the Prima Vista is still one of my favorite understated background details in what it says about his character and its just a nice thematic touch of him sponsoring the group that’s intent on telling a true history
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Aug 2, 2021 20:54
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Allarion posted:Emet being the sponsor for the Prima Vista is still one of my favorite understated background details in what it says about his character and its just a nice thematic touch of him sponsoring the group that’s intent on telling a true history Mind blown
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Aug 2, 2021 21:53
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Allarion posted:Emet being the sponsor for the Prima Vista is still one of my favorite understated background details in what it says about his character and its just a nice thematic touch of him sponsoring the group that’s intent on telling a true history it's also very interesting that the man who took every chance he could to call us malformed abominations that sickened him to look at also apparently was a very genuine and passionate supporter of the arts made by those abominations. I really love that as a character thing for him, it plays in to the whole 'Emet maybe, even not knowing so himself, hoped we would prove him wrong about not being able to reach the creative nature of his people' theory.
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Aug 2, 2021 22:28
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sexpig by night posted:it's also very interesting that the man who took every chance he could to call us malformed abominations that sickened him to look at also apparently was a very genuine and passionate supporter of the arts made by those abominations. I really love that as a character thing for him, it plays in to the whole 'Emet maybe, even not knowing so himself, hoped we would prove him wrong about not being able to reach the creative nature of his people' theory. I can't wholeheartedly support this theory, chiefly because, after all the ages of apparently 'judging if we're capable', Emet's language about the mortal races never changes. He's had thousands on thousands of years, and he still calls us the disgusting, malformed creatures he was calling us before the Sundering. If he was judging us, it can't have been a fair judgement, he came in with prejudices and never dropped them.
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Aug 3, 2021 00:16
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I've been helping a friend go through the MSQ recently, and I'm continually impressed with how much they remember the game's minor characters and how dedicated they are to trying to maintain the consistency of ambient dialogue. The corrupted crystals guy in Camp Drybone talks about how the Scions traveled to the First and managed to make it back (since I believe he was one of the guys who was being marshaled for his expertise pre-5.0), and Carvallain mentions that Garlean ships are fast disappearing and the Krakens are slowly shifting more and more into honest trade.
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Aug 3, 2021 00:26
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Emet-Selch wanted to be proven wrong but there's no way any living being could measure up to the memories in his head. So he hoped and dreamed of finally being able to rest while casting aside any real opportunities to re-evaluate his preconceptions. When finally a sundered being overcomes one of his meaningless and intentionally impossible tests of worthiness, his immediate response is anger which only fades when he's delivering his final words and has no choice but to entrust the world to you, because he's loving dead His desire to be told that it's okay to just, let the world exist and move on from his dead comrades was only exceeded by his refusal to allow it to happen. A very realistic and relatable tragedy, I think, though most of us don't end up doing genocides resolving our cognitive dissonance.
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Aug 3, 2021 00:50
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Yeah Emet wanted nothing more than to cast off his responsibility and just rest. He was tired. But how could he do that? How could he turn his back on the world and the people he had known? No one else was gonna be able to do it. The other two options were a senile fool and a man who had forgotten nearly every reason behind his actions.
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Aug 3, 2021 00:54
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Yeah, Emet was stuck. If he ever simply conceded the world as it was truly deserved to exist then he would be letting everyone he loved down. The simple fact that Zodiark could reconstitute the Ancients meant he was always going to be choosing between two worlds' worth to exist - especially since it's pretty clear the reason that the Ascians would have to sacrifice the present day inhabitants isn't as crude as just needing the life energy; the ancients' souls are already incarnated, in shattered form! He can't bring his people back without sacrifice because they've already been born again. I personally interpret your run through Amaurot as at least partly just trying to pass on the knowledge. He was never going to concede you'd passed the test short of killing him, because he couldn't do that and be true to his self-imposed duty to save his world.
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Aug 3, 2021 01:33
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I want to know more about the time Emet decided to just grow a big beard. What was that about? Do you think he thought about it for a bit?
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Aug 3, 2021 01:34
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HackensackBackpack posted:I want to know more about the time Emet decided to just grow a big beard. What was that about? Do you think he thought about it for a bit? You ever get too depressed to shave? Emet is always depressed.
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Aug 3, 2021 01:50
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I related a lot to Emet-Selch being tired all the time
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Aug 3, 2021 02:05
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Being too tired/depressed to shave makes a lot of sense.
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Aug 3, 2021 02:17
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