Embracing Clarity is just going to be doubling down on Odyssial's flaws. This decision is our path forward: embrace Odyssial cherry pick or reject it all. Ulyssian lived a similar life pre-Second Breath, but there were differences that matter. Odyssial was ground down by the cruel Primordials. Ulyssian had Moon, Zhao, Mountain Hero and others to help pick him up. Fundamentally, I think that Ulyssian is too optimistic to be Odyssial.
What if Odyssial wins? Let's say he reforges Creation, will he ever be satisfied? Perfection is a pretty damn far way away for someone who is scarred, suboptimal and hypocritical. Rihaku listed his flaws; things that keep him back from perfection. How many experiments, how many rewrites of reality is it going to take before he's satisfied?
Ulyssian knows that he can stop. He can soften and can put other things ahead of his goal and allow things to simply be. He can be convinced that experimenting on reality can stop and that things are good.
You have been reading Rihaku's posts right? The souls of everyone would have been transported into the new Creation Odyssial was making.
Because he cares for everyone in it and wants them to move to his new Creation? Seriously he isn't trying to kill everyone and just wants to make their lives better.
That's the problem: he cares about everyone, not someone. If people (other than his personal friends) were replaced then he wouldn't notice or care. Mortals are numbers to be crunched to find an optimal solution: he's a calculator. That's great in some ways but is bad in a leader. Being a strict number cruncher does not make you allies.
The long term effects of Odyssial's actions would have prevented the Wracking from happen, keep in mind that he had been dead for centuries. We decided not to go for the option because we preferred others and didn't think that it would be good for Ulyssian. The Lathe of Heaven on the other hand was the culmination of an Age of work by Odyssial and an attempt to make everything better, created over millenia by the greatest-god king with perfect clarity and terrifyingly rational thought going into it's work.
Odyssial's greatest flaw was his obsession. He never backs down. Remember all the stuff that Ulyssian got up to as a mortal trying to tie with dragonbloods? Extend that over an age and set the stakes higher than ever. Of his two real flaws (obsession and asociality) this is the central product of the first.
Rihaku acknowledged that his most fatal flaw was hubris. Here he is, rewriting reality in search of perfection. Odyssial will never be able to stop and call his works complete. For someone so near perfection and yet so far, the gulf would be unbearable.
Because we have friends here and are personally attached to Luseng? Seriously we know that tapping Odyssial's memories is going to take a while and by word of Rihaku Luseng can potentially offer benefits which offset not immediately going for Lea. I don't understand why you think that a vote for Clarity means immediately running like a bat out of hell. One of the main conflicts of this choice was always going to be reconciling our emotions with our new perspective.
Did you read what Rihaku posted? Staying in Luseng only works if we went for Solar Circle Sorcery and picked up Time Dilation. We didn't. The option to stay exists only if we go against a defining and major principle and risk another limit break. Even then, it was only arguble if Time Dilation was better than seeking Lea.
This entire choice is about our path to power forwards. Embrace: become Odyssial mrk 2. Resist: take advantage of Odyssial but don't peg yourself to it. Reject Ambition: throw away Odyssial-that-was-Ulyssian.
And they are all that Odyssial wishes to save, the citizens of his new reality and the ones he wishes to protect. It's just that he takes this to a monstrous extent, please don't strawman and say that if we choose Clarity we will immediately think of mortals as dirt.
No, it's worse than thinking mortals are dirt. Odyssial doesn't care about them at all; his realm was better because of profound indifference. Mortals are almost literally extras in his mind. Odyssial isn't terrifying because he's an amoral or evil bastard but because of his utility. He's a calculator, one with power but he's cut out his heart and operates solely on 'best or least bad options'.
People have compared him to Kiritsugu and they're half right. Unless someone worms his way into his heart, they're interchangeable. Odyssial is just the great machine that grinds down mortals, dragonbloods, and Exalts and tries to leave something better behind. A machine is not interesting to play as.
Because Ulyssian cares about them holy shit why have you been going on like this choice can suddenly turn him into a heartless monster. We care about them and want to be with them for all that we recognize that it is horribly inefficient.
Compared to his defining tie of 'I must grow stronger' and major principle of 'Loves Training', not really. We'd be accumulating limit every scene; this entire decision is about whether we embrace Odyssial's path going forward or will accept suboptimal choices. We've missed out since we lack Solar Circle Sorcery.
