You’ll be safe to read this as long as you’ve finished the MSQ up through the first visit to Thavnair
So, it’s revealed that Amon became Fandaniel once he took Emet’s
offer and reclaimed the seat. This included receiving all of Fandaniel’s knowledge
and memories of his past lives. Honestly, Amon was already unhinged – what was
Emet thinking making the situation worse? A story for another time!
However, it’s also revealed that the Amon you fight and kill in Syrcus Tower is a clone. And this is
the most important element for my stories.
Being defeated in Syrcus Tower is a defining element of my
Amon’s experience. It has made him who he is. It also works extremely well for
me to claim that my Amon was not the real Amon, but rather the clone.
As for the Amon clone placed in the Tower, I suspect the
following:
-
The clone
had to fool everyone, including Xande, by acting as much like the real Amon
as possible.
-
Therefore, the clone is an excellent replica of
his maker – he seemed to have the knowledge, powers (putting the Tower in
stasis is no little feat for a clone), and personality of the original.
-
This clone appeared to be quite advanced, and to
likely have his own free will – similar to Unei and Doga. I headcanon that the
clone went as far as to hold a fragment
of the real Amon’s soul in order to function as much like his maker as
possible (we see more about soul fragments later in the MSQ).
- However, I feel this clone would be privy to only selective memories of its maker. Amon was a very distrusting individual, and I can’t see him divulging information about the greater plan or Fandaniel to this clone. Also, the idea was to test and see if Emet’s claim that Allag would fall would really come to pass. Giving the clone any of this knowledge would skew the results of the test.
In considering the above, I feel that the Amon I’ve written
in my stories, being the continuation of the Clone Amon, could remain plausible
even in light of the changes to lore. He believes he is the real Amon and has
no knowledge of the Ascian plans, or of his origins.
Through living a new life and his experiences in Eorzea,
this soul fragment has taken on its own identity. He is Amon, but he has begun
to change and develop into his own individual (which we’ve seen is possible for
a soul to do through Alpha’s story).
You could say, based on this, that everyone I’ve ever written with or interacted
with as Amon has had a hand in giving a lost soul fragment its own purpose in life.
And so, eventually Amon’s story reaches back in time to his
original unsundered form as Hermes.
I’ve made peace with
this revelation and I actually see many parallels that I can work with here. While
their basic personalities and how they handle their sorrow are quite different,
I feel that the two share curiosity, values, struggles for purpose and love for
their creations.
That being said, I don’t currently have plans to make Hermes
a big part of my Amon’s future development. I think I want Amon to know about
it eventually. But I don’t want this to change who he is in knowing it.
The ironic thing about writing Amon is that I’ve tried so
hard to keep his power level down as an RP character. The fun of writing him
was taking away his titles and powers and seeing how he lived as a regular
person – those experiences are what developed him, and not something I want to
be nullified due to a past lifetime.
There were times I worried about all the skills he was good
at – from barding to Allagan knowledge to sciences – it always felt like he was
an overpowered character that I had to take care to keep balanced.
And then he turns out to be connected to an Ascian Overlord
and a member of the Convocation in a previous lifetime. Go figure.
In this dungeon, we learned that fragments of souls can choose to remain with enough desire and will. The TT card for Amon the Undying states:
A fragment of the master technologist Amon's spirit, sunk deep within the aetherial sea. The soul was originally that of Hermes, before it was sundered by Hydaelyn and reborn countless times over the ages. Yet this lingering shard is no longer him, or even Fandaniel, but belongs wholly and utterly to Amon.
This lends to the idea that souls can have fragments that
maintain their own identity outside of who they were over lifetimes. I mean,
look at our own WoL characters. You can see that there, too.
So what’s to say a fragment of soul put into a clone couldn’t
become its own person in time? I’m going to lean on this in hope this can further
support my Amon Clone headcanon.