Can Humans transformed into Pirmals temper?

It's not uncommon for the summoners of a primal to be tempered during the summoning by "coming into symbiosis" (to quote one variant of Emet-Selch's dialogue) with the primal's aether and psycho-spiritual will. The will of Zodiark was simply so strong that not even the ancients could summon him without it happening (though it sounds like they only understood this in retrospect). This was also explored a bit with Ga Bu and Tiamat.

I think a summary of the mechanics would be:

• Primal summoners are often tempered by the summoning itself
• A primal might have a "leaky aura" that drags you under their influence just standing in their vicinity
• A primal can deliberately bathe you in corrupting aether (the way the aether is "cast" might vary from primal to primal)
• The "bath" of corrupting aether can leave an "aetherioactive residue" on stuff, and then that stuff can be used to temper indirectly for a time

In Endwalker, Livingway introduces a loop-hole: the summoning ritual taught by the Ascians was deliberately designed to temper the summoners regardless of how powerful the primal was, so if you remove that, and don't summon anything too, too strong, and you plan for it to be a nice primal that doesn't temper things, you can avoid the risk and power your super cool starship with them.

I think it's far more useful to look at tempering as a debilitating symptom rather than as something like a disease in its own right. A lot of similar-but-different things can cause it, but the end result is always more or less the same.

Considering how there's void corruption, sin eater corruption and levin sickness, as well as the tempering, all of which can be cured by restoring the aetherial balance of the affected person as long as it hasn't progressed too far yet, that's a good way to look at it.

Tempering is actual two afflictions in tandem. The first is the purposefully improper ritual of summoning the ascians gave to the beast tribes which causes brainwashing. Then there is the overexposure to aether from a specific element.

Sin Eater corruption is a more advanced form of tempering but also partly different. As its not just an affliction of the mind, but being immeadiately overexposued to light-aspected aether. And since the skies were always daytime because of the rampant light, it meant that a worsening of the condition would not improve for the betterment of the afflicted. Although most sin eaters presented are more simple minded, often bestial, with tesleen showing to have declining mental faculties for independent thought until becoming more violent by holminster switch. Which is either from vauthries influence or light aether itself. Not to mention how the patient zeroes, the lightwardens, seem to have little thought process beyond combat and how the lightwardens themselves are actually dangerous for most people even if slain as they can just reemerge.

Levin sickness is merely being affected by too much lightning aether but none of the traditional effects of tempering.

Void corruption, we can only presumes behaves somewhat similarly to sin eater corruption. But the main difference, aside from hunger, is that voidsent are often shown as capable of intelligent thought. Whether that is an aspect of dark aether or not in contrast to sin eaters and light aether might be conjecture.

What could possibly be theorized given this context is that even after a full aetheric transformation, such as with the voidsent or sin eaters, it might be possible to mentally rehabilitate something through the use of a porxie. As that is partly what a porxie was invented for, rehabilitation of the mind when simply affecting an overaspecting of aether in the body wasn't enough.

The difference between dark and light corruption might be the controlling effect of Vauthry, or something the Ascians induced intentionally, after learning their lesson from the mistakes they did with the 13th.
Or it could also be the very nature of the respective aether. Light is stasis, which might partially or entirely shut down certain parts of the brain, while darkness is the exact opposite and thus might push those parts into constant overdrive.

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Originally Posted by No_Nick_Needed

The difference between dark and light corruption might be the controlling effect of Vauthry, or something the Ascians induced intentionally, after learning their lesson from the mistakes they did with the 13th.
Or it could also be the very nature of the respective aether. Light is stasis, which might partially or entirely shut down certain parts of the brain, while darkness is the exact opposite and thus might push those parts into constant overdrive.

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Then there is the time difference. Voidsent have had a few millennia to relearn how to speak if aether aspect doesn't affect it. Meanwhile it's only been a 100 years for most sineaters. The only ones we've seen to have some form of speech were Tesleen, the former Titania and Vauthry as Innocence. Even the drowned are capable of speech; even if that might mostly just be "Oh, Mighty Leviathan." or some variation of that.

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Originally Posted by SannaR

Even the drowned are capable of speech; even if that might mostly just be "Oh, Mighty Leviathan." or some variation of that.

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Several of the Drowned are actually quite articulate and self-aware, if you listen to dialog around the Sahagin society quest's areas. Hell, Captain Madison in Sastasha Hard seems pretty lucid, at least as far as he goes. That's not overly surprising now that we have much more experience with and knowledge of tempering, it makes sense that they might just not be that heavily tempered, but it was kind of notable for a while.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

Several of the Drowned are actually quite articulate and self-aware, if you listen to dialog around the Sahagin society quest's areas. Hell, Captain Madison in Sastasha Hard seems pretty lucid, at least as far as he goes. That's not overly surprising now that we have much more experience with and knowledge of tempering, it makes sense that they might just not be that heavily tempered, but it was kind of notable for a while.

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It's just more that they're the only seen and interacted with tempered that has been transformed physically to some degree. As we don't see what anyone or anything that has been physically altered from other aetherical offsets look like outside of Sephirot's adds. Course he could have just conjured those, but then I do think that is what you would look like if altered physically by earthen aether as it is the example we are shown in Owen's presentation.

Not to mention Sephirot is from Meracydia, so who knows what those adds were originally, before transforming. They could have been something like Centaurs with four legs and two arms or something like that to begin with, rather than something Humanoid in shape.

So, About Primal Channeling and the Tempering process

To start off, let's quickly discuss just what Tempering actually is.

Tempering, as we understand it particularly following the events of Shadowbringers and the initial untempering of Ga Bu with the Porxie by Alisaie, is a result of a Primal essentially "overwriting" one of the Incorporeal Aethers that compose a person, overriding their mind with it's own will as revealed by Ga Bu's accounts following him being cured of the condition of his experience. The Primal suppresses the mind of the victim and essentially "copies" their own will into them, with the extent to which this is done determining just how mindless the victim becomes. In extreme cases, the victim becomes like the Drowned or the Garleans encountered in the Tower of Babil dungeon.

However these cases of Corporeal Corruption aren't because the person was Tempered. Rather, they're a side effect of the overexposure to Aether, which at high concentrations results in either Oversaturation or Overaspectation, depending on the aetheric composition of the Primal in question.

While essentially the same concept, Oversaturation and Overaspectation have slightly different causes, and their result differs, as does the third condition in this vein, which is Overpolarization. In all three cases, the condition results from overexposure to aether of some sort, with the first being due to overexposure to unaspected aether, (or at least aether which doesn't trigger the other two conditions instead.) Overaspectation resulting from overexposure to aspected aether of a given sort, and Overpolarization being a result of overexposure to a single polarity to the extreme.