RE the apex predator... it's a huge thing in occultism to understand the 'levels' of reality and logic. Your own ego has 1 job: Make sure the host body doesn't die. Your ego is the ONLY thing in the universe that cares that much about you. Even your soul, true self, etc cares less since it's immortal, your ego is your body though, but in that, it's pretty generic and one dimensional. It just cares at 1000% for pure existence and nothing else. Therefor, you can't trust a soul in partnership with an ego to make decisions that are healthy for the ecosystem, the collective, the long term plan for the system. So of course, you need predators to cull overpopulation since the #1 rule of life is that nothing willingly offs itself due to the presence of the ego, required for higher ordered life. So who culls the predators??? Well, there's only 2 options: The king of the current tier, and the higher tier up. Higher tiers up don't like this job because it's literally punching down, can get tedious, emotionally draining, a big responsibility, etc. So an apex predator performs a critical role of culling the otherwise uncullable. Remember, in nature (and therefor Elpis') philosophy... a cremated or buried away from nature body is a wasted body. Everything that exists should be used somehow. So having an apex around to delegate the big culls to (ideally with some kind of limiting 'flaw' like poor breeding stock, crazy long lifespans and therefor often failing to come to adulthood, etc) means you, as the 'higher' being, only have to check in every once in awhile to make sure the apexes aren't just running around OP and ruining the system. So in summary... yea no shit that the people stuck in the tier with that apex wouldn't like that, lol. It's like having your boss working at the same desk as you. But in order for the larger being to keep on churning, it's necessary. The thing I love about FFXIV is that they (Yoshi-p?) absolutely NAIL the theological and occult logic PERFECTLY in a way I have legit never, ever seen fiction do outside of the Final Fantasy series. (7 was the kick-off there. Well, tbh 6 was the real start point. 4 had little glimmers. 5 is more of a good adventure at it's core like older ones.) So ofc the Elpis storyline with the apex boils down to "Ok, so, uhh I made this thing and it's WAY too good at it's job. Can you kill it off so I can try again?". That is PRECISLY how nature self-assembles! I love the Elpis section more than anything else in all of video games I've ever seen in my 35 years on this earth. I absolutely LOVE seeing the East interpret the West's esoteric history that we, in the West, are only vaguely aware of on a day to day basis. Revenge for Orientalism :) Great video! I gotta get that encyclopedia book.
I think the person in the quote is the pre sundered version of the inventor of archon loaf. Felt so strongly about it, that the idea survived to our time
On the ability to see and distinguish souls, I seem to recall from one of the short stories that this by itself is not uncommon, but it is the extent and distance over which Emet and Hyth are able to do so which sets them apart. I would liken it to most people being able to hear sounds, but only a very rare number having synesthesia. On an unrelated note about the ancients seemingly never getting sick or deteriorating, I've always wondered what's the deal with vampire guy's spectacles. And on Altima, the ancients seemed to highly value the aesthetic presentation of their creations, and I would assume that they maybe have something to do with curating the prevailing sensibilities related to that.
Oh god, Hesperos' glasses open a whole SUITE of questions, don't they? And yeah, like I said, creation magic is kinda the only way they DO express creativity in, but even then, it's deeply restrained.
I don't think I have ever seen the face to match the voice... so I am going through the same uncanny valley phase as when I first saw Larryzaur in a video instead of his character xD same here same here, idk why I expect to see an ingame character irl but tell that to my brain
Themis notes in the Pandemonium quest line that what Hephestos and Athena were doing, merging Hemi-theos and themselves in order to augment and transcend seemingly biological limitations (what little the ancients must've had) was the realm of the gods.
I have to wonder if part of the reason the whole "tempering on summoning" thing happens with primals is that by their very nature primals are warping and converting the aether around them into something they can use to do primal stuff, and they don't really care if the aether they're converting is ambient aether or aether that makes up the people around them. Especially in the case of the ancients who are sacrificing bits of their own aether in the creation process, maybe this caused some unintentional aetheric backwash during the summoning that tempered the remaining ascians (a thing that they would go on to weaponize with primals). The magnitude of the effects with tempering seems to inversely correlates with the amount of personal aether someone has at their disposal, if you have a shit ton of aether like the ancients or first brood dragons while you're definitely tempered, you seem to be able to retain a lot of your original personality and sense of self, whereas if you have little (like most sundered people on the source) you're much more likely to get overtaken. Of course modern primals seem to be designed to actively want to warp and convert as much aether around them as they possibly can which would make them especially dangerous towards sundered life. It's interesting to think about the process ascians must have went through to break down exactly how it works, like were the first primals just relying on tempering as a side effec until the acsians really nailed down how to encourage that process to happen. Did they ever even realize that they were being tempered by zodiark or did they just think that was a thing that happened to non-ancients. Considering the events that led to the void clearly they figured out the whole primal thing relatively early but I wonder if the primals back then were much less refined as weapons. Did they settle on the primal idea due to the whole "we need to cause aetheric instability" thing or was that just a thing they figured out along the way? We may never fully know but it's fun to speculate.
Emet-Selch does say he's tempered in Shadowbringers, so there's that part sorted,but yeah, there's a potential story in them figuring out how to weaponize what's otherwise a side-effect only relevant at a near-planetary scale.
Got it don't fight you with creation magic. How souls work in the lore is one of my fav little details. Nah the point of the Roman empire was to make the best Saber in Fate.
I really loved your last two videos, when I reached Amourtoh I was amazed, but the more I learned form the ancients the more I (for lack of a better term) hated their soceity, but I have been not able to found soemone who shares that criticism, the way you expose and explain everything wrong with them is amazing, that soceity was deppresing almost in every aspect and this last videos were catartic
There's red flags all through their stories, but the story itself deliberately only puts them at the forefront in Pandaemonium. Probably right to, because as much as their flaws are important, saying them too loudly would take away from their tragedy.
To further ad to FFXIV's nuanced approach to religion we have the ancients. "If the gods intended the natural world to look this way, they must have had a very cruel sense of humor." The Allagans show us people playing god metaphorically, and literally using religion as a weapon(what else do you call summoner). The ancients show that even if you approach the concept literally, it doesn't get better. This is of course wonderfully juxtaposed in EW by Thavnair, where their faith literally allowed them to do what the ancients could not, and survive the final days. It doesn't need to be literally real to matter, and if we're honest, it's probably for the better that it isn't.
I couldn't find a place to fit it in either video, but I did want to bring up that FFXIV's view on 'a loving god can't be all three of all-knowing, all-seeing and all-powerful' is that their gods are none of them, but they're DEFINITELY not loving anyway.
I haven't commented under any of ur videos since very first one but ive been following since then and that was before i really came understand my identity but it is and still super cool and motivating to see how comfortable you are being trans in your content so i really thank you alot for that and also of course always having great content
I'm happy I can be that for people! For me, it was never a choice about being open and comfortable; I can't hide who I am, so I might as well embrace it.
I'm glad you covered this. I have a feeling we're not done with the convocation and we may be seeing another member quite soon. I do wonder if what we know as the ancients were the only sentient naturally occurring species on the unsundered world or if the place across the sea that encountered the final days first were another species that ended up being wiped out during the final days or being decimated to the point that they died out over time. Edit: I wanted to add a bit of a theory I have. During the Hades fight, we see a full face mask of the ancient variety prominently (and repetitively) displayed on his model, particularly on the wings in phase 2. It is the same color and has similar concentric rings displayed on it as Hades' own mask. It is also front and center in the mask scene before the level 83 trial. I believe this belonged to Hythlodaeus. This would explain why it was the largest and most repeated mask on Hades' wings (representing his burdens/lost people). Also, right after that mask disappeared in the 83 cutscene... "Believe and walk in faith..." This indicates that the ancients had more than one type of mask. Likely a casual and professional variety (like we have loungewear and work clothes). None of the masks on Hades or in the cutscene were white masks and none of the convocation went into the Zodiark soup. What all of that was leading up to: My theory is that the concentric rings on the masks of Hades' and what I believe to be Hythlodaeus may be related to their ability to see aether/souls as we don't see that sort of adornment elsewhere.
All evidence is that the Ancients were the dominant, sentient species; the humanity of their time. The people across the sea were just more Ancients, that's why they produced the same horrifying terminus beasts as Amaurot did when it hit them. Now, are they ACTUALLY the only sentient species, or do they just declare that about themselves? That's a different question.
@@EinDose Given the way they regarded their intelligent creations as well as the "new life" that appeared after the second Zodiark sacrifice (which would likely include a number of the current races) they probably wouldn't have recognized any "other" as sentient. At least not in polite company.
![[🔴LIVE] งานประกาศรางวัล MAYA TV AWARDS 2024 : มายามหาชน](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/nwmWYXXVwBY/mqdefault.jpg)
Missed the chance to say "Say GODNIGHT..." when he said."I made a bird that scream"
"The reason bad things happen to good people is because the world was designed by UTTER WEIRDOS!" So true. Also relevant IRL, honestly.
Love your videos. Can’t wait to hear your takes from Dawntrail when you get there :-)
I'm sure that I'll have weirdass takes on parts of it, but I don't know what!
RE the apex predator... it's a huge thing in occultism to understand the 'levels' of reality and logic. Your own ego has 1 job: Make sure the host body doesn't die. Your ego is the ONLY thing in the universe that cares that much about you. Even your soul, true self, etc cares less since it's immortal, your ego is your body though, but in that, it's pretty generic and one dimensional. It just cares at 1000% for pure existence and nothing else. Therefor, you can't trust a soul in partnership with an ego to make decisions that are healthy for the ecosystem, the collective, the long term plan for the system. So of course, you need predators to cull overpopulation since the #1 rule of life is that nothing willingly offs itself due to the presence of the ego, required for higher ordered life.
So who culls the predators??? Well, there's only 2 options: The king of the current tier, and the higher tier up. Higher tiers up don't like this job because it's literally punching down, can get tedious, emotionally draining, a big responsibility, etc. So an apex predator performs a critical role of culling the otherwise uncullable. Remember, in nature (and therefor Elpis') philosophy... a cremated or buried away from nature body is a wasted body. Everything that exists should be used somehow. So having an apex around to delegate the big culls to (ideally with some kind of limiting 'flaw' like poor breeding stock, crazy long lifespans and therefor often failing to come to adulthood, etc) means you, as the 'higher' being, only have to check in every once in awhile to make sure the apexes aren't just running around OP and ruining the system.
So in summary... yea no shit that the people stuck in the tier with that apex wouldn't like that, lol. It's like having your boss working at the same desk as you. But in order for the larger being to keep on churning, it's necessary. The thing I love about FFXIV is that they (Yoshi-p?) absolutely NAIL the theological and occult logic PERFECTLY in a way I have legit never, ever seen fiction do outside of the Final Fantasy series. (7 was the kick-off there. Well, tbh 6 was the real start point. 4 had little glimmers. 5 is more of a good adventure at it's core like older ones.) So ofc the Elpis storyline with the apex boils down to "Ok, so, uhh I made this thing and it's WAY too good at it's job. Can you kill it off so I can try again?". That is PRECISLY how nature self-assembles! I love the Elpis section more than anything else in all of video games I've ever seen in my 35 years on this earth. I absolutely LOVE seeing the East interpret the West's esoteric history that we, in the West, are only vaguely aware of on a day to day basis. Revenge for Orientalism :)
Great video! I gotta get that encyclopedia book.
30:30 So what you're saying is that Ancient society would very much approve of the Archon Loaf.
No wonder they fell.
Oh god, they would.
I think the person in the quote is the pre sundered version of the inventor of archon loaf. Felt so strongly about it, that the idea survived to our time
On the ability to see and distinguish souls, I seem to recall from one of the short stories that this by itself is not uncommon, but it is the extent and distance over which Emet and Hyth are able to do so which sets them apart. I would liken it to most people being able to hear sounds, but only a very rare number having synesthesia.
On an unrelated note about the ancients seemingly never getting sick or deteriorating, I've always wondered what's the deal with vampire guy's spectacles.
And on Altima, the ancients seemed to highly value the aesthetic presentation of their creations, and I would assume that they maybe have something to do with curating the prevailing sensibilities related to that.
Oh god, Hesperos' glasses open a whole SUITE of questions, don't they?
And yeah, like I said, creation magic is kinda the only way they DO express creativity in, but even then, it's deeply restrained.
I don't think I have ever seen the face to match the voice... so I am going through the same uncanny valley phase as when I first saw Larryzaur in a video instead of his character xD same here same here, idk why I expect to see an ingame character irl but tell that to my brain
Honestly, a little surprised that can happen (I'm guessing you know me from in-game somehow), but I admit it IS funny that it did!
Themis notes in the Pandemonium quest line that what Hephestos and Athena were doing, merging Hemi-theos and themselves in order to augment and transcend seemingly biological limitations (what little the ancients must've had) was the realm of the gods.
Well, that answers that then!
Hephaistos also has a battle quote "Fools, braying before a god!" which also implies they had some concept of god before Zodiark.
I have to wonder if part of the reason the whole "tempering on summoning" thing happens with primals is that by their very nature primals are warping and converting the aether around them into something they can use to do primal stuff, and they don't really care if the aether they're converting is ambient aether or aether that makes up the people around them. Especially in the case of the ancients who are sacrificing bits of their own aether in the creation process, maybe this caused some unintentional aetheric backwash during the summoning that tempered the remaining ascians (a thing that they would go on to weaponize with primals). The magnitude of the effects with tempering seems to inversely correlates with the amount of personal aether someone has at their disposal, if you have a shit ton of aether like the ancients or first brood dragons while you're definitely tempered, you seem to be able to retain a lot of your original personality and sense of self, whereas if you have little (like most sundered people on the source) you're much more likely to get overtaken. Of course modern primals seem to be designed to actively want to warp and convert as much aether around them as they possibly can which would make them especially dangerous towards sundered life.
It's interesting to think about the process ascians must have went through to break down exactly how it works, like were the first primals just relying on tempering as a side effec until the acsians really nailed down how to encourage that process to happen. Did they ever even realize that they were being tempered by zodiark or did they just think that was a thing that happened to non-ancients. Considering the events that led to the void clearly they figured out the whole primal thing relatively early but I wonder if the primals back then were much less refined as weapons. Did they settle on the primal idea due to the whole "we need to cause aetheric instability" thing or was that just a thing they figured out along the way? We may never fully know but it's fun to speculate.
Emet-Selch does say he's tempered in Shadowbringers, so there's that part sorted,but yeah, there's a potential story in them figuring out how to weaponize what's otherwise a side-effect only relevant at a near-planetary scale.
The Unknown joke made me actually laugh out loud. Good one
There are a lot of jokes in here that are mainly for the sake of amusing myself. That's one of them.
Got it don't fight you with creation magic. How souls work in the lore is one of my fav little details. Nah the point of the Roman empire was to make the best Saber in Fate.
Den mporw allo oli mera paizei mes to kefali mou auto kai Shokin Na Se Dw!!!
I really loved your last two videos, when I reached Amourtoh I was amazed, but the more I learned form the ancients the more I (for lack of a better term) hated their soceity, but I have been not able to found soemone who shares that criticism, the way you expose and explain everything wrong with them is amazing, that soceity was deppresing almost in every aspect and this last videos were catartic
There's red flags all through their stories, but the story itself deliberately only puts them at the forefront in Pandaemonium. Probably right to, because as much as their flaws are important, saying them too loudly would take away from their tragedy.
Days without thinking about the Roman Empire: 0
I apologize for breaking the streak
To further ad to FFXIV's nuanced approach to religion we have the ancients. "If the gods intended the natural world to look this way, they must have had a very cruel sense of humor." The Allagans show us people playing god metaphorically, and literally using religion as a weapon(what else do you call summoner). The ancients show that even if you approach the concept literally, it doesn't get better.
This is of course wonderfully juxtaposed in EW by Thavnair, where their faith literally allowed them to do what the ancients could not, and survive the final days. It doesn't need to be literally real to matter, and if we're honest, it's probably for the better that it isn't.
I couldn't find a place to fit it in either video, but I did want to bring up that FFXIV's view on 'a loving god can't be all three of all-knowing, all-seeing and all-powerful' is that their gods are none of them, but they're DEFINITELY not loving anyway.
@@EinDose I'm sure it will come up in the book club at some point, if you two ever end up on a bit of content that goes into faith in xiv.
New viewer here. Came for the Ancient lore, stayed for the Jacob horse.
I thought the Perfectly Normal Cats episode gag was gonna be out of nowhere. Then I remembered what was behind me.
Hesperos also call himself a hemitheos, a semi-god. So I suppose they did have some concept of what a god is
I haven't commented under any of ur videos since very first one but ive been following since then and that was before i really came understand my identity but it is and still super cool and motivating to see how comfortable you are being trans in your content so i really thank you alot for that and also of course always having great content
I'm happy I can be that for people! For me, it was never a choice about being open and comfortable; I can't hide who I am, so I might as well embrace it.
I'm glad you covered this. I have a feeling we're not done with the convocation and we may be seeing another member quite soon.
I do wonder if what we know as the ancients were the only sentient naturally occurring species on the unsundered world or if the place across the sea that encountered the final days first were another species that ended up being wiped out during the final days or being decimated to the point that they died out over time.
Edit: I wanted to add a bit of a theory I have. During the Hades fight, we see a full face mask of the ancient variety prominently (and repetitively) displayed on his model, particularly on the wings in phase 2.
It is the same color and has similar concentric rings displayed on it as Hades' own mask. It is also front and center in the mask scene before the level 83 trial. I believe this belonged to Hythlodaeus. This would explain why it was the largest and most repeated mask on Hades' wings (representing his burdens/lost people). Also, right after that mask disappeared in the 83 cutscene... "Believe and walk in faith..."
This indicates that the ancients had more than one type of mask. Likely a casual and professional variety (like we have loungewear and work clothes). None of the masks on Hades or in the cutscene were white masks and none of the convocation went into the Zodiark soup.
What all of that was leading up to: My theory is that the concentric rings on the masks of Hades' and what I believe to be Hythlodaeus may be related to their ability to see aether/souls as we don't see that sort of adornment elsewhere.
All evidence is that the Ancients were the dominant, sentient species; the humanity of their time. The people across the sea were just more Ancients, that's why they produced the same horrifying terminus beasts as Amaurot did when it hit them.
Now, are they ACTUALLY the only sentient species, or do they just declare that about themselves? That's a different question.
@@EinDose Given the way they regarded their intelligent creations as well as the "new life" that appeared after the second Zodiark sacrifice (which would likely include a number of the current races) they probably wouldn't have recognized any "other" as sentient. At least not in polite company.
Good video!
Happy dawntrailing!
Damn. Jumpscare holymoly, dude
There's a jumpscare in this video?