CG Midlander

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Originally Posted by Warlock

Another thing i picked up . Lore states The Black Wolf conquering in Ala Migho to be stopped by a Primal and it was not Midgarsormr as he isn't a Primal... so which tribe knew how to summon back then? and if it wasn't a tribe, Who then did it?

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Good point. If I recall correctly, the progression was:
- 15 years ago: Ala Mhigo conquered. Advance halted by appearance of a primal. Garlemald consolidates occupation and digs in.
- 10 years ago: The battle for Silvertear Skies. Midgardsomr bites the dust and opens the floodgates for the domestic primals.

Just a random side thought, but do you think the Paragon's Crown could tie in in any way? It probably just refers to the definition of paragon in that you need all DoW/M 50 to get it... but it's SE, so I'd like to examine every piece of info we have. :P

Also to throw in my 2 cents, I'm pretty sure that Urianger wouldn't be considered both an Archon and a Paragon unless he pulls a Severus Snape and works for both sides.. (spoilers). Summoning primals seems to fly in the face of everything the Archons stand for, so unless he really turned to the dark side I doubt it was him. He wasn't around for the summoning of the twelve though, so we can't really rule anything out... He seems to walk the fine line of rambling prophecy that lies between good and evil.

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Originally Posted by Catapult

- 15 years ago: Ala Mhigo conquered. Advance halted by appearance of a primal. Garlemald consolidates occupation and digs in.
- 10 years ago: The battle for Silvertear Skies. Midgardsomr bites the dust and opens the floodgates for the domestic primals.

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This is something I've been hoping we'd get some clarity on by now. I'd always figured it was a given that Midgardsormr was to what this was in reference.

Now, from what I can tell, the armada that fought Midgardsormr was not part of either legion that we know. The XIVth took Ala Mhigo, but Gaius van Baelsar did this without much military power. He incited civil unrest and turned the people against their own system, taking power himself as Viceroy in the name of the Empire after it collapsed.

The children of Ala Mhigo were indoctrinated to the Garleans' cause, and 15 years later it is they who make up the majority of Nael van Darnus' VIIth.

Neither of these legions would have any use for a flagship as strong as Agrius at this time; it seems most likely to me that it was a long-range armada from Garlemald actual, who took Ala Mhigo as part of its advance before having to halt said advance to to the "unanticipated appearance of a primal" shortly after."

If you add all this up, does it not say that the original advance on Eorzea was still on in 1562 when The Battle of Silvertear Skies took place? Which means that it was halted after this date?

Was the Battle of Silvertear Skies not the last major advancement of the original campaign?

So what's up?

The only answer I can put together is that, when Midgardsormr first died, the rapid release of aether was capitalized on by the entities (primals) themselves. They're conscious beings, after all, and the Sylphs say that they live (not beyond the aether, but) amongst the aether. Is it possible that when Midgardsormr died, these entities were able to take enough of the escaping aether to temporarily form in our world, but without sufficient corporeality to interact with it on a level enough to consume more of it, thus bring required to be limited in capacity until the Paragon arrives?

If this isn't the case, I don't know what else can be said unless SE is deliberately reconning Midgardsormr's primal status.

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Originally Posted by Yenrii

Paragon unless he pulls a Severus Snape and works for both sides.. (spoilers). Summoning primals seems to fly in the face of everything the Archons stand for

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That's the part of the idea that I struggle with most. I've been doing some reading about aether and the newly released information seems to mesh with the old perfectly to indicate that we're going back to the classics. It seems that we're going back to the Final Fantasy standard that the origin of all reality is The Crystal - that it itself is the creation of all aether - and that aether is the lifeblood of all that exists through and because of it.

The moogle primal fight says this best, where we're told that Good King Moggle Mog XII must be defeated to return the power of the crystal back to the realm so that it can nourish the land. Louisoix's statements during the end directly reflect these views, showing his concern that the over-draw of aether from the land could be detrimental ... and Mor Dhona turning into a wasteland after Midgardsormr's death pops the cork is a good example of what he's afraid of.

But does that make it against the Circle of Knowing's principles? No. Summoning is a means to an end and they're perfectly okay with it. The entire point of Living on a Prayer and the End of an Era cinematic was to summon twelve at once.

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

But does that make it against the Circle of Knowing's principles? No. Summoning is a means to an end and they're perfectly okay with it. The entire point of Living on a Prayer and the End of an Era cinematic was to summon twelve at once.

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If I remember correctly, they do mention that summoning the twelve at once will hurt the planet as well, and that for this reason we would not be able to summon them at full power. I think the main goal here was, though the planet's aether flow would be disrupted, at least we would still have a planet with life on it.

What I'm most curious about is which god Urianger is the Archon for, and why he wasn't in the final cutscene. What does he DO when he disappears from our view? Surely spreading unease/distraction for the empire is not an important task when they're trying to destroy us directly...

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

The entire point of Living on a Prayer and the End of an Era cinematic was to summon twelve at once.

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But with the very careful consideration that this was a last-resort action against already cataclysmic conditions that would hopefully be mitigated by dispelling the aether absorbed by Dalamud back into the land. Papalymo makes it blatantly clear that they thought long and hard about this.

It would be silly to just summon the twelve for the sake of it. That's what the Ixal and Amal'jaa are doing.

Moose -

There has to have been at least one Primal active in Eorzea -before- Midgardsormr's demise ten years ago - active fifteen years ago, to be precise, directly after the invasion of Ala Mhigo - to have stopped the Garlean invasion and necessitated them bringing in the Agrias - the big guns, as it were, five years later after Ala Mhigo was secure and the Empire was ready to continue its assault, Primal or no.

Maybe it knew that if the Empire advanced further it'd come into conflict with Midgardsormr and the resulting conflict would be bad for Eorzea?

I don't have any guesses as to the identity and only a few as to the motivation of our mystery primal, but the lore on the webpage is really unambiguous about this and I think it's going to be an important plot point in ARR. It's been bugging the hell out of me and my LS mates since I brought it up a week-ish ago when we were having an ARR hype-fest over IRC. >_>

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

~snip~

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So you are saying that the Primal that stopped Gaius Van Baelsar from moving onto the next city to conquer wasn't summoned at all but instead it was roaming freely stuffed with the Aether released when Midgarsormr broke the Aether seal with Agrius?

This leads to two questions tho:

1. Wouldn't this make the argument that Midgarsormr breaking the seal gave instant access to the Beast Tribes of their Primal moot?
2. Which Primal's attention did the Empire catch? going by location we can't assume it as Ala Mhigo is far from any 1.0 Beast Tribe's stronghold.

EDIT: The Empire didn't know about Primals before this event... it was after Gaius accepted defeat to the Emperor Galvuz that he declared war against Primals and Gaius is told to remain at Ala Mhigo

That's exactly what makes me think that Midgardsormr was originally intended to be the identified threat and SE is backing it up a little. Garlemald did bring in the big guns... and sailed it directly to Midgardsormr. Assume it was any other primal and try to make sense of it. Doesn't matter which - even an imaginary one. What reason would they have to assume they'd need to send the Agrius to take Mor Dhona in case the move angered... Titan? or Ramuh? or Ifrit?

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Originally Posted by Warlock

EDIT: The Empire didn't know about Primals before this event... it was after Gaius accepted defeat to the Emperor Galvuz that he declared war against Primals and Gaius is told to remain at Ala Mhigo

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This is no longer true. It's been stated that the Empire faced primals on the other continents on their new official site.

EDIT: "The eastern nations were the first to feel the newborn empire's mighty fist. It was during this campaign that the emperor witnessed firsthand the destruction wrought by the primals―an experience that led to an imperial mandate for their annihilation."

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Originally Posted by Warlock

1. Wouldn't this make the argument that Midgarsormr breaking the seal gave instant access to the Beast Tribes of their Primal moot?

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It would give them access to commune with it, to worship it and receive its guidance, maybe even some sort of blessings via interdimensional medium, who knows. However, the primals don't want communication, they want Aether Snacks and corporeal form - that's what would take being fed a lot more aether.

What I'm saying is that maybe the initial burst of aether from the broken seal was able to give them a little taste of what it is they're after - and that, while I'm not propagating this as a theory, it is the only thing I can think of to justify the original intent of saying "the unexpected appearance of a primal didn't mean Midgardsormr.

Let's not forget, I could be totally wrong here. Much like how all it took was the concept of a "seal" on Mor Dhona to constrain us before, there could be a simple missing puzzle piece that we haven't been given yet. Maybe Ala Mhigo had a primal that we haven't been told about yet - maybe it was worshipped by a beast tribe we haven't seen yet. We simply don't know.

It just seems odd to me that information from the very beginning only meshes about 75% with the information we have now, barring a missing puzzle piece, unless there's a clever retcon in place that just needs a little frayed-end clipping.

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Originally Posted by Catapult

Good point. If I recall correctly, the progression was:
- 15 years ago: Ala Mhigo conquered. Advance halted by appearance of a primal. Garlemald consolidates occupation and digs in.
- 10 years ago: The battle for Silvertear Skies. Midgardsomr bites the dust and opens the floodgates for the domestic primals.

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Didn't the incident at the Citadel happen 15 years ago? since Dalamud was Bahamut and the two Garlean Lagatus seemed to know/had a good idea what Dalamud really was could they have halted their advance because of the appearance/realization surrounding Bahamut?

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Originally Posted by Alaltus

Didn't the incident at the Citadel happen 15 years ago? since Dalamud was Bahamut and the two Garlean Lagatus seemed to know/had a good idea what Dalamud really was could they have halted their advance because of the appearance/realization surrounding Bahamut?

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The Citadel happened ten years ago, around the same year as the Battle of Silvertear Skies.

All I can find about it so far is that they gathered all of the information they had from Allag, built some testing facilities to work on its technical legacy, activated a lunar transmitter, and then as soon as it was all together - boom - whole city lost.

It is strange that this happened around the same time, you're right about that. However, from what I can gather about the Bozja Citadel incident, The Emperor was pleased with the demonstration of its power, and that's what scared Cid enough to leave.