SPOILERS The Agony of Amaurot

[Dionysos]

Open spoilers pertaining to Shadowbringers (including 5.3 patch content) in this thread. Please avoid reading beyond the below image if you wish to remain pure!

Aeons before contemporary beings there existed a complete Star. On it lived perfect beings capable of creation by manipulating aether, their imagination being the only serious limit. They lived communal, mutually beneficial lives on a utopia planet, the capital of which was Amaurot.

And one day it all went wrong.

For some reason or another unchecked creativity began to undo the laws of their universe and the apocalypse threatened their world. To save it, the Convocation decided to summon the entity Zodiark (darkness), but that required a sacrifice of half of their souls. Then another half sacrificed themselves in order to heal the wounded world.

A rift formed between friends as some disliked the use of Zodiark, and the counter-deity of Hydaelyn (light) was summoned. The cosmic battle between the two sundered the Star, splitting it into fourteen inferior fragments: the prime world known as the Source (which contains Eorzea and other realms), and thirteen reflections of the Source (mirror worlds, including the First – the setting of Shadowbringers). All, even the Source, were incomplete parodies of what had been. Just like the planet itself, the majority of the souls of the original Star were sundered, though into many more pieces than the planets. Now the mortal inhabitants of these worlds pale in comparison to the Amaurotines, their souls fractured and incomplete.

Those few who remained of the Amaurotines with their souls intact (the Unsundered) formed the highest tier of Ascian and with their other Ascian followers sought to restore Amaurot and the original Star by the Rejoining of the worlds, at the cost of destroying contemporary, inferior lifeforms. This is the rub. The actions of the Ascians were undoubtedly villainous, from where we stand, but we can still understand and feel for their experience, once we become aware of it. They have lived for thousands of years pining for the people and place they loved, watching as 'lesser beings' with their petty concerns continue in ignorance.

As I explained in my Hades Mythology Manual article, Amaurot is a deliberate reference to Thomas More’s satire Utopia (1516) in which the capital of that fictional country is named as Amaurot. The very friendly Amaurotine called Hythlodaeus is named after Raphael Hythlodaeus, a character from this same Tudor-era satire too - a traveller who visited the country Utopia and recorded its customs. Some of Utopia's locations and landmarks, Macarenses, Polyleritae, Achora, and the river Anyder, are represented in FFXIV's Amaurot. These references to Utopia (the work which coins the term) are no accident. The original Star is the lost utopia of the FFXIV universe.

The tragedy of the destruction of Amaurot hits many players hard once they learn of it, just as it does the characters who become aware of it in one way or another. The main cast witness a simulation of the destruction of Amaurot firsthand during Emet-Selch’s guided tour of Amaurot’s end times. Many other NPCs on the First were hit with a deep, inexplicable sadness upon seeing a meteor shower summoned by Elidibus – this visual cue being enough to activate within the fractured souls of many mortals some long buried and faded memory of Amaurot’s destruction in a rain of fire.

Amaurot’s end is one of the saddest Final Fantasy stories to date for good reason.

It speaks to our souls as much as it does the characters in the game. As sentient, mortal beings we humans do sometimes have moments where we can’t quite recall the details but experience a deep sense of loss. We experience feelings of déjà vu or a memory we can’t quite recall. In our dreams we might experience emotions for reasons we do not understand, and then memories of even the dream swiftly fade upon awakening.

In the FFXIV world these phenomena are explained to be because souls were sundered following the split. Contemporary beings are all fragile and imperfect, like us. We all recognise humans are fragile, make mistakes, are emotionally imperfect and our minds don’t always work as we want them to. Our bodies sometimes fail us.

It also reflects our longing for days gone by. We all have something we loved but have lost and can never get back. It could be a time, a place, or a person. We all have our own Amaurots.

And connecting with it on that level, while defeating villains usually feels like a triumph in a Final Fantasy game, defeating both Emet-Selch and Elidibus is painfully bittersweet. Many of us understand their struggles in some form. Their final words haunt us.

There’s a reason Emet-Selch and Elidibus’ stories and final words hit so hard.

It gets worse. When we fight Elidibus for the final time he transforms himself into the ultimate symbol of hope: the original Warrior of Light (original both in the sense of it being the first warrior in FFXIV’s mythos, but also a visual reference to the character from FFI).

By defeating the Ascian Emissary in this form we are literally shattering his hopes for a restoration of Amaurot and the people he loved. Not just his hopes, but the hopes of other Amaurotines which empowered him in the first place.

To The Edge, the theme which plays during the battle is more than just a vocal rocky reworking of the already melancholy Amaurot theme. The lyrics, when you read them, are the voices of Amaurot lamenting their fate.

Spoiler: Lyrics

All our splendour bathed black in silence
Our surrender a sombre reverie

Slowly drifting down into twilight
Left to sifting through faded memories

Know our places, for worth is wordless
Evanescent, this writing on the wall

Brother stay this descent to madness
Come and save us. Catch us before we fall

Like broken angels, wingless, cast from heavens' gates
(Our slumb'ring demons awake)

We only fly when falling, falling far from grace
(Hell take us, heaven can wait)

Our lives a message in a bottle cast to sea
(Disgrace untold and unseen)

Quick to their ends, our candles burn until we're free

In monochrome melodies
Our tears are painted in red
(Bleeding to the edge)
Deep inside we're nothing more
Than scions and sinners
In the rain
Do light and darkness fade

Yes, time circles endlessly
The hands of fate trained ahead
(Pointing to the edge)
All things change, drawn to the flame
To rise from the ashes.
To begin
We first must see the end

Rock of ages, we cast the first stone
In our cages, we know not what we do

Indecision here at the crossroads
Recognition, tomorrow's come too soon

Follow blindly like lambs to slaughter
At the mercy of those who ply the sword

As our song wends dead underwater
We're forgotten for now and evermore

Without a compass wand'ring lost in lies of faith
(Faith slowly wasting away)

Only alive in fighting Death's amber embrace
(Our hearts beat loud, unafraid)

On Hands and knees we pray to gods we've never seen
(Come shadow, come follow me)

The final hour upon us, no more time to breathe

It’s brutal.

So I repeat: the story of Amaurot is one of the saddest Final Fantasy stories to date.

Now I’m off to do my duty to Emet-Selch and remember it for the rest of my life.

 

[Dionysos]

While the above post explains why the song To the Edge hits hard with those invested in FFXIV's lore, it has definitely gained a new level of meaning now after this:

Soken turned his own experience, writing the song from his hospital bed, into a vocal expression of Amaurot's suffering. Glad he's doing better.