Allagan Summoners

We now know more about Allagan Summoners than we did when 2.0 was released

But I still want to know, did Summoners of eld actively defeat Primals and then summoned forth their Egi version? Or was it more institutionalized?

We know that you need to be infused with the Primals aether and that can be achieved via:
1. Being Tempered by said Primal

When brought back as a Zombie a tempered individual(s) can summon Egis

2. Being in or near the defeat of the Primal

Or *maybe* a 3rd method: Using a captured Primal to infuse a SMN with their essence

We know that SMNs were held a high position within the Allagan Empire, so it's hard for me to believe that the art of Summoning won't be institutionalized the the Allagan Empire.

I theorize that novice Summoners were at least infused with captured Primals to start them off. Think of it like some of the traditional Final Fantasy methods ... or pokemon; once you have your "starter" egi you can train to get stronger and then hopefully defeat a new summoned Primal (and get it's egi/Trance) thus gaining prestige within society.

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Y'mhitra: The Allagan Empire reached its peak during the Third Astral Era. Dissatisfied with dominion over Eorzea alone, this thriving civilization sought to expand its borders to ever more distant lands.
Y'mhitra: Eventually, the empire cast its avaricious gaze upon the southern continent of Meracydia. The peoples of these nations did not, however, take kindly to being invaded, and they summoned the primals to repel the Allagan forces.
Y'mhitra: Hard-pressed by these incarnations of elemental wrath, the leaders of the empire's military were forced to alter their tactics. They ordered the mages under their command to devise some manner of magic with which to counter the primals, and, after much experimentation, the art of summoning was born.
Y'mhitra: The magic invented by these arcane pioneers met with great success, and, within the Allagan Empire, the title of “summoner” earned the bearer an uncommon measure of awe and respect.

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The quote above, to me, suggests once perfected that the art of Summoning was issued to highly skilled mages. It makes sense that they'd atleast infuse them with a weaker Primal's essence and it'll be up to them to master the Egi. We know that the Allagan Empire did not send flesh and blood soldiers, but instead relied on Robots and artificially created life-forms. It's alot more efficient to infuse their mages with a weak captured Primal.

My guess it that Belias might have been this "starter" Primal issued simply due to all the SMN soul crystal combined had Belias

The wouldn t get tempered ofcoruse, beacuse they would become an slave of the primal xD

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Originally Posted by myahele

pokemon; once you have your "starter" egi you can train to get stronger and them hopefully defeat a new summoned Primal thus gaining prestige.

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Pokemon is exactly what came to my mind as well, lol. Though, I don't see why they wouldn't issue egis of all their currently captured primals to new Summoners once basic training was complete.

The idea of synthetically tainting a person is interesting, albeit entirely speculative. I can only really add more speculation, lol.

To recap some history, Allag faced primals with an ever-increasing frequency as the Third Astral Era collapsed, eventually turning to its mages to find a way to combat them without taking heavy losses - the result was the invention of summoning. Such was the summoners' power and ability to repel the primal threat that the title itself came with respect and awe ... until some summoners succumbed to corruption. Using their power to advance their own agendas, some summoners became tyrants, and respect turned to fear. The commonfolk turned on the mages, hunting them down until summoners vanished entirely.

Synthetic "starter deck" tainting seems an obvious military training approach, but I wonder if we can be so sure that Allagan technology had progressed that far by the time summoners vanished. Likewise, the idea that summoners were the end result of the mages' research suggests that arcanima (shaping aether into living constructs) was known to them in some form. The apparent rarity of and respect commanded by summoners sounds to me like they might have been more likely to be veterans of the primal assaults already, negating the need for a "starter deck." And, if they did need such experience, why not start with basic arcanima constructs, like we did? I almost worry for a summoner who evokes an Egi of something they've never defeated. Would they even be able to make the thing submit to their will?

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

Synthetic "starter deck" tainting seems an obvious military training approach, but I wonder if we can be so sure that Allagan technology had progressed that far by the time summoners vanished. Likewise, the idea that summoners were the end result of the mages' research suggests that arcanima (shaping aether into living constructs) was known to them in some form. The apparent rarity of and respect commanded by summoners sounds to me like they might have been more likely to be veterans of the primal assaults already, negating the need for a "starter deck." And, if they did need such experience, why not start with basic arcanima constructs, like we did? I almost worry for a summoner who evokes an Egi of something they've never defeated. Would they even be able to make the thing submit to their will?

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This has always been my theory that Egi's are Arcanimic constructs which are infused with the essence of the primal that has been absorbed by the Summoner. How ever, the very real problem is you actually have to defeat an Egi before it can be used. So to be artificially infused with a Prima's essence, of which one has never seen let alone faced, would almost certainly result in the egi killing the aspiring summoner who failed to defeat it.

The easiest part is probably systematically infusing a qualified mage with a captured Primal's aether; afterall, you only need to be near/around the area of where a primal is defeated

In 3.0 we more or less know alot of people in Carteneau and beyond are infused with Bahamut's aether

.... as for their methods of infusion, who knows?

Timeline-wise Summoners should have been around for at least as long as Meracydia's defeat up until the Calamity. Surely, at least a few generations worth. I could be wrong, but didn't the witch hunt happen after the fall of the Empire/ Earth Calamity?

I do agree that it'll be difficult to defeat the Egi of a Primal you never fought which might explain why Summoners were so rare and respected. I suspect many failed (killed) in subjugating their Egi. Afterall, in most Final Fantasies it has always been difficult to master Summoning lore-wise and I imagine it was difficult even for the Allagans

Pure speculation, but we know from Fractal Continuum that the Allagans were able to create synthetic voidsent; so perhaps they used that as a basis?

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Originally Posted by myahele

I could be wrong, but didn't the witch hunt happen after the fall of the Empire/ Earth Calamity?

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Before the Fourth Umbral Era began (at least, according to Y'mhitra)

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Originally Posted by Y'mhitra

This superstition blossomed into outright terror, and that is when the mage hunts began... By the end of the Third Astral Era, the last of the summoners had vanished from the stage of history.

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Just for the sake of stressing the concept a little, what's a way that the hypothetical Allagan summoner program could retain a captive primal if they kill it to taint soldiers? Information as of today suggests that killing it frees it to be summoned again somewhere else. Even Dalamud, the pinnacle of their technology as seen so far, had to keep Bahamut in living stasis to prevent this.

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

Just for the sake of stressing the concept a little, what's a way that the hypothetical Allagan summoner program could retain a captive primal if they kill it to taint soldiers? Information as of today suggests that killing it frees it to be summoned again somewhere else. Even Dalamud, the pinnacle of their technology as seen so far, had to keep Bahamut in living stasis to prevent this.

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Hmmm, possibly by recreating It's aetheric signiture? or perhapse taking it's "tempering" energy and filtering it into pure primal energy devoid of the primal's influence?

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

Just for the sake of stressing the concept a little, what's a way that the hypothetical Allagan summoner program could retain a captive primal if they kill it to taint soldiers? Information as of today suggests that killing it frees it to be summoned again somewhere else. Even Dalamud, the pinnacle of their technology as seen so far, had to keep Bahamut in living stasis to prevent this.

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I think you answered your own question there. Bahamut was defeated at Carteneau in a manner that met the conditions required for summoning (of a sort), but, at the same time, he was reconstructed by Dalamud's containment systems.

A similar system operating on a smaller scale, i.e. the Great Ball or Ultra Ball to Dalamud's Master Ball, could be used to enable a smaller primal to be defeated and reconstructed endlessly, essentially manufacturing the aetheric essence required for Egi summoning.

They could simply have built more facilities like Dalamud, with captured worshipers inside, and fed it with the necessary crystals to summon a primal when they needed to have a Summoner trained.