I was wondering if I could get your opinion on something from the Ultima Thule part of Endwalker? The way I understand it, each of the beings the scions come across represent a reason to yearn for the sweet embrace of death, and their sacrifices are them standing defiant against it (Thancred's "survive" to Metion's "die," Estinien's "keep fighting for a future full of hope" to Al End's "we have failed, there is no use fighting because the fighting might never end," the twin's "you don't have to carry this burden alone, people love you" to Metion's "i must hide my pain to protect the people I love") but I get a little confused around Urianger/Y'shtola's sacrifices, and everything about G'raha and the Omicrons.
So I'm like 60% sure Urianger's is about knowing that the end is coming but doing what you can now to make life good, but I have no idea about Y'shtola, and I don't understand how G'raha taught the robots to dream again? Is that when what his sacrifice was about?
(I also love the fact that it was Metion that accidentally brought about the ends of these worlds with her overwhelming negative dynamis because the statistic improbably of Elpis being the only life in the universe kinda took me out of the story for a bit, but the explanation pulled me right back in with a punch to the gut.)
Anyways sorry to bother you, it just seems like you understand the nuances of Endwalker's story a lot better than I. Hope you're having a good day!
There's a long note to be said in here about how these are still just my interpretations and readings of the text; while I've played multiple times and kept the raw text for my own records (and know where to look for it elsewhere too to back myself up), sometimes another perspective will differ but be just as valid. But that's it's own post about how literary criticism and textual readings works. Cuz trust me, this gets long enough. Hopefully it makes sense, and is if nothing else a springboard into one's own ideas and understanding of these answers.
We'll start with Krile's words to her fellow Scions as they left the Baldesion Annex that last morning:
"You must triumph. What that means will differ for each of you. To make it back home, or to simply avert doom, or perhaps something else altogether... Yet whatever it is that drives you, I have faith in its power to see you through. So please─triumph. Triumph, as we who remain behind believe you will."
So much of Ultima Thule is not just the culmination of WoL's journey so far, but our companions' as well, as bit by bit they tear down Meteion's preconceptions, leading to the WoL's final truth.
----EDIT: Adding to the bottom of the post the brief reblog comment I added about 10 days later about how each of these five sacrifices (counting the Urianger & Y'shtola, and the twins, as 1 each) can also fit onto Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, none of which were really met for Meteion before, and how the Scions represent and prove each level so the WoL can finally get through to her and summon the Scions back.
Also added commentary in Urianger’s section about Hermes and things learned in the Rising 2022 short story about Meteion’s creation.----
A quick summary of the mentioned Scions, though trust me I could go on about each of these all day as well:
Thancred's determination to survive is there, yes--but also how he takes care of others. He is determined that the other Scions succeed; he even makes it so Y'shtola can see in what should be a realm impossible for her to do so. He triumphs by taking care of his family he finally understood in Shadowbringers that he has, and ensuring their continuation, fighting for them even after he's been pulled apart. Meteion sees his darkest thoughts and feelings, which he admitted to and accepted about himself, but she cannot understand how his wish for life yet remains despite that, why he keeps fighting the inevitable. He's the beginning of how the Scions will challenge Meteion's beliefs in the universe, and herself.
Estinien's triumph is in bridging the understanding of revenge and justice, hate and love; he's been demonstrating his emotional growth the entire expansion, and Hydaelyn even points it out, but that matter of fact acceptance of his past and how that lets him empathize with the dragons' grief, and call out Meteion's corruption of it, is what allows him to ensure his friends' survival and success. As a lifelong soldier, ensuring the mission succeeds is likely in his mind, but for Estinien it's really about his capacity to think of and feel for others, after so long consumed by his self-centered rage and grief--a realization Meteion has not made yet, so cannot stand against.
The twins are strongest together, yet also know how to stand on their own, to be their own persons, in a way the Meteia cannot comprehend. The collective mind is many, yet only one, and alone for it. The twins understand that bewildered, naive fear at realizing the world--the universe--is bigger, more complicated, so different from what one expected. They meet Meteion as peers, children who've grown into young adults and learned from those stumbles and failures, to face their fears, rather than give into them. Whose greatest wish is the happiness of another's future, when she cannot see beyond herself.
So where do G'raha, Urianger, and Y'shtola fit in?
Let's begin with G'raha, as I find him a bit easier. The conversation with the Omicron is where I'll start:
M-017: The Omicrons will never leave this star.M-017: They will stand by until their reserves of energy are spent. For I have no path to offer them. None.
G'raha Tia: It is not our place to pass judgment on the deeds of the Omicrons.G'raha Tia: But surely this does not have to spell the end of your people?G'raha Tia: With your power and knowledge, the possibilities are endless. Why not seek out a new purpose?
M-017: That is impossible.M-017: In the beginning, we had a higher purpose than our pursuit of power.M-017: But we lost sight of it when we so irrevocably altered our fundamental forms.M-017: When we cast aside our flesh, so too did we cast aside all that defined us. Nothing remains of who we once were.M-017: I have no aspirations. No longer can I dream. The vital spark is lost.M-017: Lost amidst circuitry and code and commands...
It's not only "we can't dream" (as in, have ambitions and goals that aren't "grow stronger through warfare"), it's the fear that in turning themselves into machines, they have lost their very souls, the "vital spark" that marks them as living, thinking, feeling beings who could imagine a life beyond this existence. They deal in concrete, in physical, in absolutes. We see this in the side quests where they struggle with things such as relationships and creativity. The ephemeral, they believe, is beyond them.
The G'raha Tia we knew in the original Crystal Tower story woke to a world 200 years past a Calamity. Everyone he knew was dead through violence and time, the civilizations he remembered had collapsed, and many despaired there was no way out, no future, and so were willing to let go of that world on the chance it could be averted. He agreed to a wild plan to send himself back in space and time to change history--and in so doing, changed himself. There was no way back, once he merged with the Tower. So he thought. No way to save the WoL from the corrupted Light except by sacrificing himself to the Rift. So he thought.
And he was proven wrong. He began to look for alternatives, because the Scions showed him compassion and friendship and their own sheer stubborn refusal to accept loss when there's a sliver of a chance of success. So for them he found a new way. And in so doing, decided to seek and find his own happiness.
G'raha figures out how to defeat the despair, but his decision is framed so differently from how he approached what he assumed was his end in Shadowbringers. Where the Exarch was quietly fatalistic and mysterious, assuming there was nothing in his future but a sacrifice he had to protect his people from the pain of, G'raha in Ultima Thule makes the WoL promise they'll go on more adventures together, making plans the whole time. He doesn't know if it'll happen, if this will work--but there's a sliver of a chance, and so he will cling to that hope as the other Scions have taught him (else Alisaie may flick him again).
A crystallized Exarch stands atop the First's Tower. But G'raha had changed himself yet again, merging his soul and memories with his younger, pre-Calamity self still in the Source's Tower. Memories of two worlds, two lives. A confusing situation for anyone. But G'raha spent the later Shadowbringers patches reconciling those two versions of himself--and we see the results through Endwalker in those moments of goofy awkwardness, and those moments when the music and his stance shifts and the Exarch comes out, as it does again with the Omicrons:
G'raha Tia: If you would humor me a moment─when we awaken each morning, how can we prove that we're the same individual who retired the night before?G'raha Tia: Through the remembrance of past events, we might say. We have our memories. Yet there are times when we forget, or recall incorrectly.G'raha Tia: What of our bodies, then? It is the same one, we might say. Yet technically speaking, as living beings, our bodies are constantly changing. It will never be as it was at an earlier point in time.G'raha Tia: Our souls are no more immutable. On our star, people are known to inherit the souls of others, yet they are decidedly different beings.G'raha Tia: For my part, I've subjected my totality to much and more. I've made my body into an extension of a tower. Blended my soul and memories with those of another self.G'raha Tia: And each time, I would ask myself: what is it that makes me, me?
M-017: Were you able to determine an answer?
G'raha Tia: No. But that doesn't mean I'm confused. It simply means I'm the same as everyone else.G'raha Tia: So I posit this: who we were need not prescribe what we now hold in our hearts.G'raha Tia: Whatever came before, what matters most is the present.G'raha Tia: For me, that is being here with my friends. Full proud of how much we've grown together.G'raha Tia: So I urge you to not give up. Heed your heart's desire, and hope that the future you long for shall be realized!
M-017: I...cannot. We cannot.M-017: We cannot understand desire, nor comprehend hope. We do not know how to create such things.
G'raha Tia: We're not unalike, you and I... I too have struggled to find the courage to express and embrace my wants.G'raha Tia: If you like, I will tell you a tale. A tale of a world on the brink. Of a people who never gave up on the future.G'raha Tia: Of a man who realized his grandest dreams, and then awakened to a grander reality.
Is G'raha talking about the 8th Umbral Source, or the First under the Flood when he speaks of "A tale of a world on the brink. Of a people who never gave up on the future"? I think both. While the characters have no way of knowing, we players know from the Tales from the Shadows that the 8th Umbral timeline did continue on--if anything, the Ironworks' success heralds a new Astral Era for them, another chance for their future, after they spent 200 years struggling for it. And the people of the First came together to help the Scions save their world, never giving in to the Light's tyranny (even if some of them had to be woken from their own indolence first).
However G'raha, as the Exarch, had given up. He hadn't known a way forward for himself, in finding one for the First and the Scions, for the WoL. Until he was made to consider the possibility.
A possibility he passes on to the Omicrons. He is a proof that Meteion had not met, could not consider. He defies the idea that changing into something else (as Meteion herself has changed) means one has lost oneself forever. That one can change again, for the better this time.
And as she does not know how to counter that hope, our Crystal Exarch creates for us a crystalline bridge to move forward.
Urianger is who we'll puzzle out next.
Our funny-talking fortune teller started as a mysterious prophet, making himself Garlemald's most wanted, and trolling Hildibrand into attempting to fly to the moon back in 1.x. Urianger ever worked behind the scenes, to the side, as a supporting figure, continuing in that role in ARR and its expansions. The trusty librarian and liaison with the Students of Baldesion and Sharlayan, the one who kept the lights on in the Waking Sands, the one who used Moenbryda's research to give us a leg up at random times.
The one who listened to the whisperings of an Ascian, and decided to take a dangerous path on his own without communication or support to learn more, bargaining Minfilia's life in the process. The one who listened to the Exarch's fatalistic plans and went along with them, lying to his dearest friends in order to save them.
These decisions tore at him, his regrets obvious both times, and both times he was forgiven, for the others understood--perhaps better than he did.
Urianger gets a lot of good moments in Endwalker, one of them on the moon, when the loporrits are trying to coerce him into their own secrets, but Urianger confides in the WoL, and for once, instead of following logic for the greater good, he follows his heart and refuses to play along, this time not only communicating with his friends, but also convincing the loporrits to look for another way.
In Ultima Thule, he draws WoL and G'raha into one last secret, as our wizard can't help himself to a bit of mischief; WoL, due to his promise to never betray their trust again, and G'raha...as payback for the Exarch's schemes. Urianger puts forth his idea on how Meteion unwittingly unleashed the end upon many worlds, mistaking their own despair for her own, as she had confused others' feelings in Elpis. And then Urianger tells us:
Urianger: Yet even if I must needs go to such lengths, I cannot well feign ignorance of the answer I have found within...Urianger: The answer to the question: in what moment might I stand strongest?
Urianger is never the first to challenge an enemy; that's for the others to do. He uses his magic to support them, to heal them. His knowledge is for their benefit. While he can fight as fiercely for his beliefs, his is a gentle soul more at home in contemplation. And he worries his will is not equal to that of his dear Moen, or of Thancred and Y'shtola, or Papalymo and Louisoix. His beloved friends who face fear head on to succeed, even at the cost to themselves.
But none of those friends have ever doubted Urianger's heart. It's why they forgave him those other times. Urianger's love is why Elidibus was unable to sway him with logic. Love was why the Exarch was able to coerce Urianger.
Urianger: That, most assuredly, is the Ascians' belief. 'Twas in the hope of opening mine eyes to said revelation that they first came unto me, imagining it sufficient to secure mine allegiance.Urianger: Nor would they have been mistaken─were my heart a temple to truth alone. But as a devoted follower of Master Louisoix's teachings, and for the love I bear him and his, I hearkened not to their words.(An Ending to Mark a New Beginning, Heavensward patches)
The times he stood alone and apart, the times he kept secrets, though it was Logical and things turned out in the end for the Greater Good, those were the hardest moments for Urianger, and they caused much grief for his dearest friends. It nearly led to Alisaie dying of a poisoned arrow, it led to the tragedies of the many Minfilias upon the First, led to the loss of their dear Antecedent, and nearly cost the WoL their life, along with G'raha's.
So when the time comes, it is in facing honestly his own failings and what he learned through them, and in support of someone he loves, that Urianger finds his answer. To shore up another, to bend his mind and emotions to solving the problem in collaboration with a fellow researcher. As a healer, as a support role, Urianger is part of the glue that holds the Scions together as a team. Where he stands strongest is in not letting a dear friend stand alone against overwhelming despair, to aid her in proving her own hypothesis, while accepting all of himself as well.
If the Ea could have turned their minds to supporting each other, instead of isolating themselves in their research, perhaps they may have been able to stand up to Meteion. If Hermes had been able to open up to anyone else, admit his own need for aid, to find the support and collaboration he needed in her creation and her mission. As it is, she doesn't understand the honesty and love Urianger is made of, to sacrifice himself in support of another, in the hope that those they leave behind will continue on.
EDIT: According to the Rising 2022 storyTales from the Dawn - A Question of Life, Hermes did get some input on Meteion’s creation from his colleagues; but only of her visual design and aesthetic, as he specifically noted that was not his forte. Her abilities, her mission, how she was to carry that out, remained his secret, and his fellows did not know of his internal struggle. That no one knew the full details of his“personal project” are made clear in the MSQ, nor did he get input on the questions she was to ask, as Emet-Selch’s response and Hermes reaction to it made obvious as well.
Y'shtola: Keep calm, and listen well.Y'shtola: Though my body will soon dissipate, there may be a way to restore it.Y'shtola: Azem's magick. So long as our souls remain, you can use it to summon us back.Y'shtola: But you mustn't, for it would mean losing our way forward. This, I only reveal so that you can promise not to invoke the magick.Y'shtola: We came here knowing what victory may cost, so press on. Press on, and do not look back.
Urianger: I shall join thee. As subterfuge is not required, thou shalt not suffer for mine absence.
Y'shtola: Urianger...
Urianger: My resolve hath never been as strong as thine. Full oft have I wavered in my decisions, and afterwards been stricken with regret.Urianger: In spite of this, I may still stand with my comrades, supporting them as they attempt the greatest of feats.Urianger: This truth, I have learned in the course of our journey.Urianger: And many though my shortcomings may be, I may also claim to excel in prophecies. My studies into which have granted me the flexibility of mind needed to bend this malleable reality.Urianger: Thus shall I hope... That thou mayest have the strength to resist, and our comrades the strength to continue.
Y'shtola: With you to urge us on, how could we possibly fail?
Which finally brings us to Y'shtola.
Our sassy cat hasn't gotten much focus, not the way the twins have over every expac alongside WoL, or Lyse in Stormblood, Thancred in Shadowbringers, Urianger in Endwalker; Shtola's overdue some story focus, in my opinion. Yet I don't know that she needs to grow or change in that focus. Some people know who they are and are happy with that, and Y'shtola strikes me as in that camp.
She also strikes me as being different than her beloved master, even while bemoaning the ways in which she's grown alike. Matoya hides herself in a cave, using familiars for various things, grousing about the state of the Forum while doing naught to change it. Grousing about people visiting and their disruptions to her solitude. She does care, in her own way, but you've got to earn it through sheer persistence with that old misanthrope.
Y'shtola, in contrast, lives in the world and seeks to make it better. She fights Merlwyb, the Forum, her fellow Scions, and anyone else who doesn't stand for decency and caring about others. She adopts the entire Night's Blessed, becoming one of their leaders, in Endwalker still using their traditions for her own and others' comfort. She nearly sacrifices herself with Flow again to save them. Even when being harsh and misunderstanding Thancred (cuz he wasn't communicating, so was she trying to make him?), she had the best of intentions, and confidence in his own heart and willpower. "Giving up (on people)" is not a phrase in Y'shtola's vocabulary. You will do better, if she has her way. And she likely will, sooner or later *looks at 5.4 and the Melee Role Quest.*
But like Matoya, Y'shtola is consumed with an overwhelming need to Know. To puzzle out the secrets of creation, to find the answer to every burning question, and there are oh so many questions! Not content with the many secrets of the Source, she is determined to find a means of traversing the Rift to visit the other reflections to plumb their secrets as well!
Yet she is all too aware of her finite time. It's an ongoing joke that Y'shtola lies about her age, claiming to still be twenty-two when she is, by pure mathematics, somewhere between Papalymo and Thancred, perhaps of an age with F'lhammin. Some of it is sheer vanity maybe--but given Y'shtola's drive for answers, and how long it will take to puzzle out even a fraction of them, perhaps it is more a bid to maintain the fire, the drive, the impatience, the time of youth.
So to meet the Ea, a people who had attained what she would consider the ultimate goal, and find their ghosts in despair, is an affront. They had defined goals. They had the time to see them through. They lost all will, due to finding an answer they didn't like. As a scientist, how galling, that that would be their response! That instead of looking beyond it to other answers, they simply stopped.
The Ea could not comprehend a reason to continue. Y'shtola can't comprehend their willingness to end. An answer is simply the start of a new question, after all.
(and I don't know about you, but when "Thunderer" kicked in for Y'shtola, I got chills and went "ohcrap!")
Y'shtola: So that's your story.Y'shtola: While I appreciate your advice, I will not heed it.Y'shtola: Convinced though you may be of this truth, it is yours and not mine. Indeed truth, I have ever believed, is in the eye of the beholder.
Coph-coodg: Are you suggesting that we have reached a faulty conclusion? That our science failed us?
Y'shtola: Hardly. As you yourself said, the subject matter is beyond my comprehension.Y'shtola: And that, I accept, is true. I do not possess the knowledge to prove or disprove your conclusion.Y'shtola: In my mortal years, I doubt I could even approach the wisdom of the Ea.Y'shtola: But of one thing am I absolutely certain: I would not be happier in ignorance.
Y'shtola: The most important lesson I've learned...is that learning isn't simply passing one's eyes over words.Y'shtola: Nay... 'Tis when understood for oneself that knowledge attains its true value.Y'shtola: This is what has sustained me. Driven me onward in joy and wonder. In anger and sorrow.Y'shtola: The universe may end, and all may be for naught. But I will live as I always have.Y'shtola: I will always seek out new knowledge. And no conclusion of yours, no matter how grim, can dampen my desire.
Y'shtola is righteous anger, a fierce fire--but also brittle, in her way. She relies so much on her drive, on her single passion, she hasn't left room for much else. This is where Urianger's malleability complements her hardness, his ability to bend supporting her rigidity.
And she is grateful for his aid. She accepts it, with no questions, no deflections, no insistence he save himself, no remorse. She does not order it, as she did Thancred in the Sil'dihn tunnel (and tried to save him anyway); Urianger comes of his own volition, and she allows it. She has stood alone often, in imitation of her master--but she is not Matoya. Y'shtola doesn't hide from people; she lets them into her heart, takes care of them, heals them, challenges them. While she doesn't need anyone to complete her, she has learned to allow others to take care of her, too. To let them heal, challenge, and love her, in a way Matoya cannot.
So she accepts a loved one's help in this terrifying moment, and together they challenge the idea that learning must end, that an answer is conclusive. That their passion for knowledge can be dimmed.
Meteion was sent to find an answer to a question. She thought she found it, and so stopped looking, giving into what she believed was inevitability. Y'shtola defies that response, asking new questions, demanding different answers. Y'shtola accepts help and support, as Meteion did not at any point in the journey. That passion undoes Meteion's naive understanding, her own fear, and a way lights for the others to move forward--to not stop seeking, asking, learning, and in so doing, triumph over despair.
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That's what I'm taking from these moments, anyway. At least in this moment. In response to others opinions and pointing out of textual moments, on another play through, on a dev interview, on life changes in a year, I might read them differently. But for now, this is what I'm taking from our Scions' sacrifices at the edge of the universe, and how they allowed their own journey over the expansions at the WoL's side to ready them for these moments, and decide, as Krile asked, what Triumph meant to them.
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EDIT: MY REBLOG ADDITION - MASLOW’S HIERARCHY & THE SCIONSAlso now thinking about how the Scions' answers could each correspond to a level in Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, letting the WoL go a step beyond them at the end once the others show Meteion how she's come to the wrong conclusion about life, as her needs were never met/actualized, leading to her (and the rest of the universe's) downfall.
Five levels of the pyramid, five sacrifices made.
1. Physiological needs - Thancred (need to provide survival for his family)2. Safety needs - Estinien (end of the war and the changes that wrought in him & Ishgard)3. Love/Belonging - Y'shtola & Urianger (what I already said above)4. Esteem - G'raha (all those changes & growing into his own hero)5. Self-Actualization (The twins pretty much embody this)
This is what happens when I'm trawling very old posts on my main blog and get hit with old psych writing references.
Anyway just chewing on this in addition to what I said before under the cut in the original post
