The Endless are a concept of people created via technology in Final Fantasy XIV, introduced in the expansion Dawntrail.
Profile
The Endless are simulacrums created from memories of the deceased through the use of machinery made from electrope within the Kingdom of Alexandria. When a person dies of old age, their soul is extracted from the body before it can return to the aetherial sea. The soul is then processed within the facility Origenics, where the soul is purified of memories. The soul is then stored to be used as soul cells for the living, while the memories are sent to what Alexandrians know as "the cloud", in reality Living Memory. Here, the memories are implemented into Living Memory's systems and used to create a simulacrum of the person, whose memory is used. The person appears very much alive, and they go on to repeatedly relive the happiest moments of their lives.
Despite their name, the Endless cannot exist indefinitely as they require a constant supply of living aether to be maintained. If this supply is cut, in time the Endless will cease to exist. Most Endless depend on terminals to maintain their physical form; while they are unable to shut them down themselves, a living person can deactivate them and erase them from existence. There are cases where Endless have continued to persist independently of the terminals, primarily due to strong, unresolved desires they were unable to fulfill in life.
History
Within the Ninth reflection of the Source, a calamity of lightning took its grip on the world. As thunderstorms started to become constant, life became a struggle. Within the kingdom of Alexandria, a peculiar black ore was discovered, capable of absorbing lightning energy: electrope. Using it the thunderstorms became a source of energy, as when electrope was imbued with arcanima, it could transform lightning aether into other elemental aspects. Due to electrope being scarce and demand for it increasing, a war that came to be known as Storm Surge erupted, which culminated in near total annihilation of the world. Thanks to the efforts of an Alexandrian group called Preservation, Alexandria survived, but the war had left its beloved queen, Sphene Alexandros XIV, presumed dead due to levin sickness. Unbeknownst to the populace, Sphene was placed in an electrope casket and into stasis for the next four centuries, as forcibly releasing her would kill her.
Preservation studied electrope and discovered how it can be used to extract souls of the deceased and separate them from their memories. By utilizing this to the soul of queen Sphene and implementing her memories into electrope machinery, Preservation brought Sphene back as an Endless; in her case, as the original Sphene was still alive, only her memories were used to create an Endless copy. A procedure using the souls of deceased Alexandrians was used for subsequent Endless. Preservation reprogrammed the Endless Sphene with an overriding directive to maintain the happiness of the Alexandrian people at any cost, whether they were living or Endless. The Endless were not exactly alive but that did not matter to Sphene: to her, all of her people were equal.
The way Alexandria maintained its society was unsustainable. The Endless required living aether to be maintained, and over time Alexandria's demand for aether began to outstrip the supply and a new source of aether was needed. Preservation became aware of other worlds thanks to the Milalla, who had arrived to the Ninth reflection from the Source, after they escaped the Fifth Umbral Calamity. A plan was created to utilize an interdimensional key (later named Ethos) the Milalla used for the travel and fuse Alexandria with the Source. Preservation hired two Milalla scientists, Robor and Alayla, to research this. When they discovered that Preservation's ultimate plan was to steal the Source's aether, they rebelled and spirited the Ethos and their infant daughter away from their hands into the Source by using an electrope gate constructed between the worlds. The other side of the gate was constructed in Tural, within the Skydeep Cenote in the forests of Yak T'el. The key was left to the hands of Gulool Ja Ja, ruler of the nation of Tuliyollal, known as the Dawnservant, while Robor and Alayla's daughter was taken by Galuf Baldesion. Without the key, Preservation's plan could not be realized and was put on hiatus.
Twenty years later in the Source's flow of time, Zoraal Ja, son of the Dawnservant Gulool Ja Ja, stole the key from his father and located the gate. By opening it, he entered Alexandria and forged a covenant with Sphene: he would provide her with the aether necessary to maintain the Endless, while in return he could use the Alexandrian technology to achieve his ambitions. The interdimensional fusion could now be realized, and Zoraal Ja and Sphene took the Everkeep and its surrounding area, except Living Memory where the Endless resided, and fused it into the Yyasulani region in Xak Tural. The turali living in Yyasulani were integrated into Alexandrian society. Zoraal Ja launched an invasion against his home and killed his father.
One particular person to become trapped within the dome of Alexandria, was a Shetona named Cahciua. At some point she died and was brought back as an Endless. She disagreed with it, as she saw the Endless living a hollow existence, and believed bringing people back to live as simulacrums was against the natural order. To this end she began to study Living Memory's systems and discovered the Endless were being maintained through a collection terminals connected to the central Meso Terminal. She sought to have these terminals shut down, but the Endless were incapable of interacting with them: only the actual living could do that. She managed to operate a machine within the Source from Living Memory and assumed leadership within a resistance group Oblivion and came into contact with her son, Erenville and his companions, the Warrior of Light, the new Dawnservant Wuk Lamat, the now grown Krile Baldesion, G'raha Tia, and Alisaie Leveilleur. First, she wanted their help in overthrowing Zoraal Ja, and after that she wanted them to come to Living Memory. After Zoraal Ja was defeated, Sphene sealed the portal above Everkeep, denying Cahciua the means to operate her machine.
Erenville, the Warrior, Wuk Lamat, Krile, and G'raha eventually entered Living Memory to stop Sphene from draining the Source of aether needed to maintain the Endless. When talking with her proved unsuccessful, they met Cahciua who asked them to erase the Endless by shutting down the terminals. The adventurers agreed but not until they learned more about them.
In Canal Town, the Warrior and G'raha learned that while the Endless were as happy as they can be, they were content to be erased if necessary. Wuk Lamat also met her nurse, Namikka, and received closure, as she encouraged her to not look back and remember the happy times they had. Wuk Lamat shut down the Hydro Terminal maintaining Canal Town and its Endless, erasing them from existence.
Next, at Yesterland, Wuk Lamat and the Warrior met Otis Velona as an Endless, simulacrum of the machine Otis they had met in Heritage Found. They helped him to hold a play about Alexandria, in which he froze, as he remembered the moment queen Sphene died. Wuk Lamat improvised and the play was a success. Afterwards, the Geo Terminal was shut down, erasing the Endless of Yesterland.
Following the route to Asyle Volcano, where the Pyro Terminal was located, the adventurers encountered Krile's birth parents, Robor and Alayla, as Endless. Showing them the earring that was wrapped within her baby wraps, Alayla recognized Krile as her daughter and ran to hug her. The reunited family struggled conversing due to twenty-year time gap, but thanks to G'raha, the ice was broken. Robor and Alayla told the adventurers their story and encouraged Krile to not look back and do what needed to be done. Like all other Endless, Robor and Alayla were content to be erased, as they did not agree to be maintained at the cost of someone else's life. When they gave Krile their final farewell, they told her her birth name: Maya. From that moment on Krile adopted her birth name as her second name. Krile personally shut down the Pyro Terminal, erasing her parents and all other Endless, after having received closure with her origins.
Finally arriving at Windspath Gardens, Cahciua requested one last moment of with her son of studying things. They discovered a peculiar creature they could not identify, whether it was seedkin, beastkin, or scalekin. The creature was familiar to the Warrior, however, as it was the same as echevores located within the faerie kingdom of Il Mheg in the First. Cahciua was stunned to learn of the First, a reflection of the Source. After a brief flight, Erenville and Cahciua bid farewell, with Cahciua being proud of the man Erenville had become. Erenville shut down the Aero Terminal, erasing his mother and other Endless, yet this final moment with her encouraged him to walk the path she herself had envisioned.
With all four terminals shut down, Sphene's ultimatum was almost ready to commence, and the adventurers had to enter Meso Terminal, as it could not be shut down like the others. Battling their way through the Terminals' security systems, they reached Sphene. Her memories had been erased, and in her place stood a machine who only desired to replenish the aether of the Endless. She removed Wuk Lamat, Krile, and G'raha to engage the Warrior directly, seeing them as the greatest threat, who in turn used the crystal of Azem to summon reinforcements. As the Warrior refused to yield, Sphene's system began to overload and she started to lose control. Wuk Lamat entered the battle and Sphene's memories were partially restored. As the Warrior delivered the final blow, Sphene reappeared, now free from her forced programming, but unable to maintain herself for long. She admitted that she was only delaying the inevitable, as in time there would have been no more aether to maintain the Endless. Leaving the fate of her people to the Warrior and Wuk Lamat, she gave the Ethos to the Warrior and was also erased. With nothing left to maintain the Endless, the remainder of them were also erased.
With all the terminals of Living Memory shut down, most of the Endless have been erased, save for those continuing to persist independently of the terminals due to unfulfilled desires, while Preservation's founder, Calyx, remained active due to his memories being stored in the Meso Terminal's core separate from the rest of Living Memory. Due to Endless Sphene's decision to give the Warrior the key, Calyx had to reveal himself in an attempt to retrieve it by force. To this end, he created another Sphene, later dubbed a simulant, to further his plans by distributing a limited number of "neo-regulators" ostensibly designed to turn people into Endless. This artificial scarcity, combined with staging murders on Alexandrians who had shunned regulators and harvesting their aether, allowed Calyx to heighten the populace's collective fears towards death.
Meanwhile, the original, living Sphene was released from stasis and taken to Oblivion's headquarters in Solution Nine and subsequently cured of her levin sickness with Alisaie's anti-tempering treatment. Having witnessed Calyx's plans in action and the untold suffering it would bring to Alexandria, the Source, and its shards, Sphene pledged her support to the Warrior and the former of the members of the Scions of the Seventh Dawn to help people in need, beginning with retraining in arcanima. After investigating the attacks and the laboratory where the Endless concept was first researched to track Calyx, he willingly revealed the location of his memory unit at the top of the Meso Terminal in Living Memory and offered a confrontation between himself and the Warrior and their allies. Returning to Living Memory, the group battled their way through the Meso Terminal's security as well as Endless created by Calyx to impede them, reaching the top of the terminal. There, Calyx activated the neo-regulators, revealing their true purpose of enthralling their wearers; with the aether he collected earlier, and the neo-regulator users' fears of death, he summoned a primal of death incarnate—Necron. The Scions, Wuk Lamat, and Sphene defeated the primal, but it arose again due to being a manifestation of death, while Calyx began to make his escape by transferring his data elsewhere. Realizing that it would continue to be empowered and revive as long as the neo-regulator users were fearful of death, Sphene used the opportunity to call out to them and ease their fears. This weakened Necron and allowed the group to slay it, while the Warrior of Light destroyed Calyx's memory unit just as the transfer was about to finish, seemingly killing him.
With Calyx's Endless scheme foiled, Oblivion discovered some weeks later that memories of the deceased were not erased as previously believed, but stored in the Meso Terminal. The Alexandrian government began a program to have memories restored to willing citizens using their regulators by reactivating Living Memory, but without creating new Endless. The Warrior, Sphene, Krile, and later Wuk Lamat journeyed with government official Gossan across Tural to make this happen; they reactivated Living Memory, allowing Alexandrians to remember and properly mourn their dead.
Meanwhile, Calyx had survived the destruction of his memory unit, and lost his composure for his failure against the Warrior of Light and their companions, while an Ascian approached him, to whom he agreed to give a report to, as well as confirming that he learned the ritual for primal summoning from them. Calyx then transferred his memories into a plush doll that was carried by the Ascian Halmarut.
Behind the scenes
The concept of Endless appears to be based on the planet of Terra in Final Fantasy IX whose denizens had invented a way to become immortal by replanting their souls to new vessels, but this also meant that their world slowly stagnated until they needed to leech energy from young planets to survive.