[spoilers About A Bunch Of Content!] Boredom-induced Lorepost: Primals, And How Likely It...

RSS News

Syndicated News Service
Hi! I recently posted a thread on where all of the game's jobs exist in the setting's lore, and I felt like doing another one. This time, on my favorite part of the game's lore and setting: primals!

As actual players, we have an EXTREMELY skewed perspective on primals, on how dangerous they are, how prevalent they are in the world, and even what kind of dangerous they are. So I thought I'd throw down everything I've gathered about all of that in one place! I'll go into individual primals later, but a couple of useful things to knock out right away:

What's the aether situation?

We know that while primals can be an enormous short-term threat, but the long-term impact of them is most often even worse: any aether they consume is just gone, taking aether out of the world every time they turn up. But we also know that not all aether they consumed is gone; the Eden raids were predicated on the fact that if a primal dies, its constituent aether disperses around the area.

So how are both of these true? While it's never stated outright, I think the answer for that lies in the Alexander storyline. Alexander was a huge concern in the 'draining aether' perspective, but it wasn't necessarily its existence that did it. It was the notion of Alexander moving; it required insane amounts of aether to move, to the point where it needed to take a break after taking a single step.

It seems that's generally how it works for all primals, it was just exaggerated with Alex: the aether they expend by performing actions is gone forever, but if you kill one, everything that's in it at that moment is dispersed. That's a big reason they have to get taken out so quickly, to reduce the amount of aether they consume over the long-term. Of course, there is another reason:

Tempering

Tempering is an eternal concern when it comes to primals, yet it very rarely presents itself as an immediate threat. 5.4 gave us a nice infodump on what tempering is, but what about how much of a threat it is? I've put together a few facts that can help us figure that out.

  1. Those who summon a primal will always be tempered, unless they have the Echo. (Although I think there's an interesting exception to this one that I'll mention later)
  2. Once summoned, all primals have an innate 'tempering aura', but in most cases that isn't actually very strong. Ramuh's a great way to see how strong that is, where the sylphs around him are tempered, but it happens over the course of days, and they are VERY close to him.
  3. However, primals can deliberately exert 'tempering power'. We see this from Ifrit, Lakshmi, and most recently Queen Gunnhildr, and have evidence of it being performed by others. It's not a commonly used skill, though.

In short, it's not an unfounded fear that someone fighting a primal would get tempered, but most of the time it's not likely. You're better off worrying that they'll kill you.

Likelihood on individual bases

There's a lotta damn primals in the game! So here's a quick rundown of how likely it is a random adventurer or civilian would have encountered one, or been tempered by one. In most cases, for the latter I'll be excluding the actual summoners, since that's usually a 'yes' as a given.

For a lot of these, it's actually very minimal; there's a constant assumption that the Warrior of Light has seven friends on call for fighting primals, and for a few of them that's all the people who'd ever see it.

Ifrit
Likelihood of encountering: Ifrit's been known to turn up so often that the Immortal Flames have a relatively sustainable unit of summoners with Ifrit-Egis. It rarely gets to appear outside of the Bowl of Embers, though; chances are the only people who'd see it are actual warriors going off to kill it.
Likelihood of tempering: Ifrit loves to temper as an opening salvo, but after that first shot in a fight, he tends not to. This means that there's a lot of people who've been tempered by him, but also a lot of people who've safely engaged him in a fight.

Titan
Likelihood of encountering: For the most part, Titan only ever gets summoned and then fought within the Navel, in the heart of kobold lands, and warriors are regularly sent to put it down. However, we famously do have the one time where it actually did march on Limsa as an offensive.
Likelihood of tempering: At no point when fought in the Navel has Titan ever tempered anyone but the summoning kobolds (which, sadly, includes Ga Bu). However, Titan was known to temper people in his assault on Limsa, which was a big part of the struggle. From this we can assume that, for whatever reason, Titan only tempers while properly on the offensive.

Garuda (thanks cronft for corrections here!)
Likelihood of encountering: Turns up often in the Howling Eye, and the shamans in Xelphatol seem to have some sort of way to channel her. There's plenty of opportunity from the Adders to take her on, but she surprisingly seems to keep to herself. In her initial summoning she was very aggressive, attacking Gridanian watch towers, but she doesn't seem to have been given the chance to do so since.
Likelihood of tempering: Garuda's never appeared to temper anybody but her summoners. She did try with the WoL, once, but it looks like that was a desperation attack that she hasn't gone for since.

Ramuh
Likelihood of encountering: Ramuh absolutely keeps to himself, as the sylphs summoned him more as a 'wise orderly ruler' than a conqueror. That said, the Adder still lead strikes against him; Ramuh understands, since he knows the toll he takes on the land.
Likelihood of tempering: As I mentioned, Ramuh has a lot of sylphs that didn't summon him still tempered, just because they stick around him for so long. However, there aren't any cases of him tempering outsiders.

Leviathan
Likelihood of encountering: Leviathan might be one of the most actively dangerous primals, thanks to his penchant for wrecking ships around Vylbrand. There's probable survivors from those wrecks, on top of the plenty of warriors the Maelstrom send to slay him.
Likelihood of tempering: We know that Leviathan does temper; his Tempered are called the Drowned, and are mostly consisting of pirates. Leviathan seems to temper them in private over promises of power. However, those who take up arms against Leviathan usually just die instead.

Shiva
Likelihood of encountering: These days, zero, obviously. However Ysayle is known to have channelled Shiva rather frequently when she was active, so there were plenty of chances to have clashed with her.
Likelihood of tempering: Zero, she never tempered. Ysayle herself was safe from tempering because of the Echo. For a while it could've been argued she perhaps tempered her cultists, but the Ishgardian Restoration storyline disproves that one.

Odin
Likelihood of encountering: Reasonably high! We all know Odin wanders the Shroud, and that all who take up his sword become him. That gives both plenty of chance to fight him, and plenty of chance for random bystanders to have seen him.
Likelihood of tempering: Only if you count 'becoming Odin through wielding Zantetsuken' as 'tempering'. Otherwise, no.

Good King Moggle Mog XII
Likelihood of encountering: A relatively commonly-summoned force in the Shroud, that the Adder send warriors to deal with every so often. Yeah, odds are good.
Likelihood of tempering: None. Hell, he might not even be tempering his summoners, it's hard to tell.

Enkidu
Likelihood of encountering: Enkidu was only around briefly, but wasn't exactly hiding his presence. He also wasn't actually identified as a primal for most of that, though.
Likelihood of tempering: Look, if Greg's fine, you're fine.

Bahamut
Chances of encountering: Well, anyone who survived Cartenau sure as hell encountered him, and even through the memory-scrambling of the Calamity, Bahamut's a universally agreed-on element there. Other than that, it's only Alphinaud, Alisae, the WoL, and the WoL's seven conveniently-nearby friends.
Chances of tempering: We know he tempered Louisoix, Nael, and somehow Midas Garlond. There's remarkably little others, though, so Bahamut apparently chose quality over quantity.

Phoenix
Chances of encountering: Outside of the aforementioned 'Alphinaud, Alisaie, WoL and the WoL's seven friends'... surprisingly, yes. Of all things the 5.4 Phoenix triple triad card confirmed that some people reported seeing Phoenix at Cartenau; however, apparently these reports were so few (and perhaps inconsistent) that they aren't part of the 'official tale'.
Chances of tempering: Probably zero.

Ravana
Chances of encountering: He's summoned and fought back relatively often, but outside of Unukalhai it's unclear who's sending people to fight him off. He was seen outside of Thok ast Thok once, and that didn't seem to be a special occurrence, but it's hard to tell.
Chances of tempering: Ravana doesn't temper outsiders. It's also very hard to tell if he even tempers his summoners, thanks to the hivemind nature of the Vath.

Bismarck
Chances of encountering: We know Bismarck was summoned at least twice; we can assume more, as there's nothing saying the Vanu Vanu would've stopped at just two tries. When active, Bismarck sails through the Sea of Clouds eating islands; you can probably see him doing that from a distance, even when he isn't getting dangerously close to populated ones (which we also know he does).
Chances of tempering: Bismarck only tempers his followers; even the Ironworks seemed safe from tempering right up close to him. He probably doesn't have much to say to anyone else, anyway.

King Thordan and the Knights of the Round
Chances of encountering: Only the Warrior of Light and their seven conveniently-nearby friends saw the King himself. However, several of the Knights were channeled in the Vault, and there were plenty of chances of credible witnesses among the clergy and Knights there.
Chances of tempering: None; taken down too quickly. Chances are if he was allowed free there would've been tempered, but he wasn't. There's also a debate to be had about if the Archbishop and his Knights Twelve were themselves tempered; they might be, or they might just be EXTREMELY self-righteous.

Alexander
Chances of encountering: He's an enormous monument, you can see him quite easily and safely in the Dravanian Hinterlands. As for the antics inside, the only witnesses were the Illuminati, the Ironworks, Roundrox, Mide (who... you know, isn't free to talk about it) and The WoL And Their Seven Friends.
Chances of tempering: None, surprisingly. You could even argue that Alexander didn't temper the Illuminati, as they all seem to have their own agendas that aren't exactly lining up with Alexander's, and we see one in Eureka no worse for wear.

The Warring Triad (Sophia, Sephirot, Zurvan)
Chances of encountering: All we know is the WoL And Their Seven Friends, plus Unukalhai, Regula, and some of Regula's regiment (and those last two died). However we've also seen Martyn, the Blue Mage job contact, use one of Sophia's spells in a cutscene; that suggests that either there are or were other ways to encounter them (perhaps the Extreme simulations), or that somewhere out in the world is another thing that casts Quasar.
Chances of tempering: In the modern day, they probably didn't have the chance to even if they did. 5.4's tempering lesson used Sephirot as a case study, though, so we can assume that at the very least, Sephirot was tempering back in their day, and it was a widespread enough threat that they weren't only researching it as 'the thing Sephirot does'. We know tempering was a big problem for the Allagan Empire, but beyond Sephirot, not exactly which ones were doing it.

Shinryu
Chances of encountering: Shinryu being summoned at Baelsar's Wall, and then fighting Omega through Gyr Abania, was a pretty spectacular show; people undeniably saw that, albeit not from close-up. Other than that, he was being actively kept sealed by the Twelfth Imperial Legion, so soldiers and scientists from that were pretty up-close. And, of course, The WoL And Their Seven Friends.
Chances of tempering: Hard to say. We can assume he didn't really get the chance to, though, since there's no evidence that the Twelfth Legion were grappling with it as a problem.

Susano
Chances of encountering: He was only summoned once, in the proximity of some of the Scions, the Red Kojin, and The WoL And Their Seven Friends. However, Susano is a known Kami in the Far East; he's probably one of the only figures where the primal hasn't managed to mar the reputation of the deity.
Chances of tempering: Even the Red Kojin didn't seem to get tempered by him.

Lakshmi
Chances of encountering: Was only summoned twice, but made those two times count. She was a known presence when summoned in Emanation, and was present for an unclear amount of time before The WoL And Their Seven Friends took her out. And then she was summoned in the Ala Mhigan palace, and was only held back by the WoL, Arenvald, and Fordola. Plenty of known witnesses in the second case; definitely chances in the first.
Chances of tempering: HIGH. Tempering was one of Lakshmi's favorite tricks (probably coming from the fact that, technically, she's a deity of peace). Anyone present for the palace summoning should consider themselves lucky if they weren't.

Tsukuyomi
Chances of encountering: She was only summoned once, but even outside of The WoL And Their Seven Friends, she had quite an audience of Domans and Imperials, most of which undeniably survived to tell the tale.
Chances of tempering: Didn't seem to want to, and she had plenty of chance to.

Ultima
Chances of encountering: Back in the Zodiac Braves' time, apparently fairly high; she's the only example of a non-primal figure that became a primal, purely out of people's strong emotions tied to her (specifically, terror). Sealed away since then, though, until the Orbonne Monastery alliance raid.
Chances of tempering: Hard to tell, but probably zero.

Eureka
Chances of encountering: Only officially witnessed by the WoL, Krile, and Ejika. So no, you probably didn't see it. However, the Avatar of Eureka was relatively active on the island during expeditions.
Chances of tempering: Only if you count being brainwashed by a Eurekan weapon; outside of Odin we don't know about a whole lot of those, so chances are fairly low but not zero.

Eureka's Weapons (Art, Owain, Raiden, Absolute Virtue, Proto-Ozma)
Chances of encountering: Likely only seen by The WoL And Their Forty-Seven Friends. However, it's unclear how canonical failed runs of the Baldesion Arsenal are, and the Students of Baldesion probably didn't get those things into the Arsenal without some problems of their own.
Chances of tempering: Probably zero, but Proto-Ozma is the big enigma here; we don't know how or if that thing tempered.

Eden's Creations
Chances of encountering: None, unless you were there on the expedition.
Chances of tempering: Zero.(Honestly this is just here for completion's sake)

Queen Gunnhildr (story still unfolding here, so this is VERY speculative)
Chances of encountering: Made one hell of an entrance in Castrum Lacus Litore's assault, but seemed to go into hiding after that.
Chances of tempering: She went straight for tempering Gunnhildr's Blades, probably out of an outlook that they were 'hers'; she went for others, but were stopped by the WoL, and she seemed generally content with her initial quarry. She might temper further, but seems to be keeping it as a tactical move rather than a pure power play like others.

Unknown primals
We know that the primals we've seen aren't the only ones. The only unknowns we actually do have accounted for, however, are the primals eaten by the Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald weapons; we know precious little about them, other than generally what they looked like and that they're from Ilsabard (Ruby's food was probably a demonic-looking figure like Ifrit, Sapphire's was probably something aquatic like Leviathan, all we know about Emerald's is that their summoners were from the mountains). Chances are Diamond will have have eaten one, too.

submitted by /u/Cleretic
[link] [comments]

Continue reading...
 
Back
Top