FFXIV story/lore thread

[Vuitton]

We have to be careful with the whole "elder" primal thing, because wasn't bahamut referred to as an elder primal even though he was summoned via the followers of Tiamat?

And Bahamut was sustained by binded dragons in prayer. I wonder who is sustaining the prayers for the warring triad? If they're not just randoms like Odin. Was that explained?

[Edelweiss]

I thought the "elder primal" designation was for primals that have maintained a material form for an extensive period of time (decades or evem centuries).

Considering the storyline has made the distinction of pointing out how the term eikon has been improperly applied to primals in general by Garlemad and post-Allag civilization, the Triad is probably a distinctly different thing. Or maybe they don't require worship to sustain themselves, as Odin apparently does not. Either way we've been given no indication. However the fact that Allag developed the means to bind primals and prevent their resummoning (in keeping them fettered and in tangible physical form) requires some mean of sustainance. So it's probably compulsory prayer/worship or just directly pumping enough aether to keep them from dispersing (if they even obey the same rules as primals do).

While we're on the subject of primals and their means of sustainance, it does seem like it's pretty much all but outright confirmed that Answers is about the plight of the Meracydian dragons, right? The talk with Tiamat did a lot to cement at least most of the song being about their suffering/being their plea for release. It'd be great to have everything addressed sooner, rather than later (or never). I'd like to see us free her from her neurolinks too.

[Nama]

Term elder primal is never really clarified in the game itself as far as I remember. Erozeans seem to throw it out there like it has some special meaning but no one really seems to know, which isn't too surprising since the exact details around what and why are Primals is mostly a mystery to them as well . To my knowledge the only time Elder Primal is defined is in a Koji Fox interview where he states it simply means that said elders have plainly been known about for longer then others and that there is no special difference between elder and regular primal.

The word Elder imply that some Primals are more important/powerful then others of they have some level of relation/organization to each other. As patches rolled out we find that the rules about Primals seemed to change every patch (if that was the intended is up to debate) . Primal's power has more to do with how they are summoned and how much Aether they get then any inherent power level. Its hard know if they even really know about each other themselves as the game imply Primals are more less made up by their believers its hard to think they have any true knowledge of their own and anything they know is imparted on them. The only clue game gives that Primals have their own knowledge beyond their followers or even exist beyond their summoned out is they are aware of the Blessing of Light and Hydealen but I have no idea if this is known information to the Beastmen tribes.

Given SE's vagueness about Primals in and out of the game I wouldn't be surprised if SE wasn't completely decided themselves. The changes to what are primals in the 2.X patches it seems like that Primals and by extension Elder Primals were originally going to be something else, Yoshi & Co. however decided to backtrack on that for some reason and Eikons are SE's way of distancing story from Primals something they stated they wanted to do for awhile. Primals have a shit ton of baggage connected to them and I didn't even get into the whole why/how Asicians are involved either. The deal with Primals is one of the last hanging threads from 1.0 (especially the 1.0 opening) and more then likely caught up in the mess of where the original story was going to go versus 2.0 direction for the story.

As for Eikons the only things we really know are
Garleans use the word incorrectly.
They predate the Allagans. Not much is known of the 3 eras predating Allag.
They are different then primals and more powerful. Different how exactly is still up in the air.
Odin is retconed as a Eikon.
The only 4 known Eikons were sealed in stone by Allagans. Not sure if that means anything special yet.
Triad are among the most powerful or even most powerful of Eikons and waking them up is bad news bears.
Thordan, Ravana and Bismarck all wanted to siphon their energy.
Warring Triad had a neurolink and we fucked it up fighting Lahabrea and whatsherface, probably why they are waking up now. When you fight them the fleshy parts of the wall are pulsing and red. After they merge the walls are grey and no longer pulse.

[Niiro]

Unfortunately the backstory about the origins and nature of primals kind of takes a lot of the wind out of them.

They're just myths brought to life by prayer and aether, ok, so they're not actually gods, they don't actually exist, and they're just temporary nuisances that have to be gotten rid of every now and then.

That's kind of boring and not very grandiose or epic, it basically means they have no real reason to exist and no true purpose or place in the world.

I feel like they're going to try and distance themselves from that archetype with the whole "eikon" thing with Odin and the Triad, beings that have actual identity and substance rather than just "prayer, aether, poof".

[Hiryo]

That's kind of boring and not very grandiose or epic, it basically means they have no real reason to exist and no true purpose or place in the world.
.

Garuda is hard to argue to this point as she appears to react knowingly when the PC is not tempered. It's hard to argue because you can say that the will of the aether simply wants to perpetuate itself by tempering humans.

Ramuh on the other hand treats us with a cutscene upon winning the HM fight. Ramuh dies and returns to his aetherbubble state. Then, he tells the player that he has judged you as a worthy champion with the task of unrooting the sin in the hearts of man. He goes further to say that hungering shadows gather and PC meekness(weakness) will only feed them. Then "if man is to be delivered from the dark it will be from thy guiding light alone. Stray from the path and thy people shall truly be lost".

To me, this is the biggest key of some sort of consciousness in at least Ramuh. If not actual sentience then at least awareness of a world outside of his own being. But again, you can interpret what he says as just awareness of man trying to take the forest away, but then that would mean Ramuh believes the player will save the forest - which i'm pretty sure is not our goal lol.

[Niiro]

I'd consider Ramuh to be the story and lore and being kind of at-odds with eachother.

Outside of specific examples where we are shown otherwise, primals are simply myths given physical form.

You could consider Bahamut an exception but the only thing special about him is that the actual Bahamut did exist at some point, but regardless we're told explicitly that the Baha we see is just a primal made in his image.

We're never told why Ramuh behaves the way he does or why other primals have (or seem to have) some kind of sentience or independent will, but the take-home point is that these primals have no real significance or place in the world outside of aether-draining nuisances. If not for the Ascians teaching beast tribes how to create and summon primals they wouldn't even exist.

[Spira]

I'm not too sure where I read this but i recall someone saying that the term Elder Primal is a perceived term, not an actual one.. and that the Elder stands for the primal having been summoned in a previous Era. So for townsfolk to say Odin is an Elder Primal, is because they think he is a primal that was summoned and has been around since before the 7th UE. This is of course never accurate because nobody (except the Ascians and whoever they taught) really knows how primals are actually summoned. You could probably think of it as a "the legends were wrong" kind of situation. People just regurgitate the same mistake over and over.

As for the Primals, it would seem that the Ascians have never told any Beast Tribes the truth of the primals, in that they are created purely from their collective imagination. Only the Meracydians were aware of this because they summoned a different Bahamut than the one who had lived before, and could tell the difference. The rest have been summoning fictional beings into existence and could never have known if they were actually real or not. That being said, it would seem like the more they believe that the primals they summon are the real deal, the more real they actually become. In other words, they are as real as you believe they are. From the interactions with Ramuh and Garuda etc, it seems as though the Primals are somehow sentient and aware of everything that goes on before and after they were willed into existence. Perhaps this is due to the memories of any and everyone who had prayed them to life?

[Kaslo]

Is there a good place to go to search quest text? Trying to do research for something.

[Hiryo]

I used garlandtools to find the quest dialogue(listed under lore) or what I typed. Unfortunately, the cutscene in the primal fight itself was missing which I got from YT.

[Kaslo]

I used garlandtools to find the quest dialogue(listed under lore) or what I typed. Unfortunately, the cutscene in the primal fight itself was missing which I got from YT.

But there isn't a way to search for any quest that mentions something in its dialogue? For instance, every quest that has dialogue that mentions Ifrit?

[gattsuru]

Phoenix remembered his original life, even though he'd been shattered, 'imbued into a primal', mind controlled, and then defeated in combat again. He might be a special case, though, since he denies being a normal primal and was an Archon to start with. Even other primals don't seem to be entirely defined by their current worshippers : the 1.0 cutscene for the Battle of Silvertear Falls showed primals released in their current form, despite none of their underlying worshippers surviving three ages.

Primals do seem to exist even without an active summoning : there's a cutscene, around the time we start trying to kill an Ascian, that states that their existence enters but remains whole within the aetheric flow of the land. This is also probably how the Allagans trapped the Primals under Silvertear Falls. Otherwise, 'trapping' primals would only make a second copy, an act that doesn't seem to even be possible.

Even if these gods are built, there's still a good bit of them that seems beyond that simply forced on them by their summoners. Tiamat and her followers expected Primal!Bahamut to resemble the original, yet his rage may well outlive many of their immortal species. Neither Titan nor Ifrit are the underlying historic beliefs of their peoples turned to 11. King Moogle Mog and Shiva embodied the desired virtues their historical counterparts were said to embody, but they also had goals of their own beyond that, for good and for evil. They're something different, built to outlast and exceed the intent of their original creators. There's... a lot of space to discuss, there.

[Shalafi]

The Primal's are manifested based on the prayers. Shiva was was summoned by Ysayle and therefore was imbued in a specific manner based on her prayers/wishes.

[Niiro]

Phoenix was just SSJ Lou, no different from Ysayle/Shiva, when we talk to Lou when he's all brainwashed we're talking to Bahamut, not Phoenix, Phoenix is just, again, a myth and symbol that he took on in primal form.

As for the primals being released in the original 1.0 CS I'm certain that it has been completely written out and forgotten, whatever story they had in mind for that (if there ever was much of one, remember those CSs take a fucking eternity to make) has been long abandoned.

[Raldo]

The scattering primals were probably the precursor to that whole "roaming primal" idea, and yeah that's not going to happen.

[Aumaan_Kujata]

Primal "souls" are clearly Singletons in the programming patterns sense. When invoked via willpower+aether, the primal factory checks to see if the soul already exists, and if so, it manifests the existing Primal soul in a new body. Otherwise, it creates a new Primal soul and manifests that. Upon being killed, the soul persists Ascian-style, for the primal factory to use again. The soul persists until the universe is rebooted, causing the Ascians to be pissed by the memory leak slowing down their reality. Thus continuity of Primal memory, allowal for things like Moggle Mog and Ysayle-Shiva, and a chance for the programmers to amuse themselves by inflicting design patterns on an innocent audience.

[Eurell]

^Canon

[Lucavi]

Brilliant.

[Dotsudoku]

I don't know if we're collectively joking, but that's almost exactly how I imagined the process working

[Raldo]

I guess that means that killing an Ascian is a buffer overrun attack

[AnnaMolly]

Hydaelyn apparently tests shit in production.