The great political blame game that is Shinryu....

I began to wonder. Would a blame game of who is responsible for Shinryu's release happen, as well as regarding current and future actions taken by the Ala Mihgan Resistance take place? Would their more ruthless deeds, and Eorzea's capitalization of them, start to be thrown in as taking part with the GCs/WOLs endorsement? iirc, one of the griffen's stand in mentioned that the members of the resistance eventually involved at Baelsar's wall were inspired by the WOL.

Unless I'm mistaken, Ilberd chose Shinryu specifically because it's a Doman deity, to spur the Garlean-Doman conflict just as the Resistance gears up. He wants the Garleans to note that non-Beast Races can summon Primals, and to make it look like Domans did it.

I don't think it will ever come back on the GC's or the WOL, because the Domans are the intended scapegoat in the first place.

That depends on what is the current status of Shinryu. We don't know anything about that. What we do know is that the Empire never did anything against the Eorzean Alliance since Varis took the throne, and we march into Ala Mhigo with the intent of liberating it from Imperial control.

I'm not sold on the idea that Ilberd deliberately selected the Primal's form beyond wishing for "something like Bahamut, but worse". So, I disagree with the speculation that he's attempting to draw Domans into the fray.

That said, his false-flag operation was pretty clearly intended to set the GCs and Garlemand at odds. Even without the summoning, it had every appearance of being an assault on Garlean territory by the Eorzean Alliance.

I'm not 100% positive that Ilberd was trying to hammer home that non-beastmen can summon Primals, but after the spectacle it's likely going to be pretty hard for Garleans to deny. I'm looking forward to seeing what their reaction will be. I somehow doubt they'll call off their campaign of terror against the Beastmen.

I'd find it hilarious, in a schadenfreud kind of way, if they expanded the scope of their holocaust to include not only Beastmen, but ANYONE who is not a purebred Garlean. "The world will not be safe until anyone capable of manipulating Aether is dead and buried." Naturally, given that the vast bulk of their armies and conquered populous are not purebred Garleans, this step of their long-term plan wouldn't be invoked until they had a firm grip on the entire world. At that point, they could begin the purges.

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Originally Posted by LineageRazor

I'm looking forward to seeing what their reaction will be. I somehow doubt they'll call off their campaign of terror against the Beastmen.

I'd find it hilarious, in a schadenfreud kind of way, if they expanded the scope of their holocaust to include not only Beastmen, but ANYONE who is not a purebred Garlean. "The world will not be safe until anyone capable of manipulating Aether is dead and buried." Naturally, given that the vast bulk of their armies and conquered populous are not purebred Garleans, this step of their long-term plan wouldn't be invoked until they had a firm grip on the entire world. At that point, they could begin the purges.

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That's kind of the difficulty of their extreme position on the matter. Without full control of everything they have no chance of succeeding and even if they do, the more desperate people become the more powerful Primals start popping up.

My take was that ilberd wanted to force the alliance and the empire into conflict so the empire would be distracted enough for an ala mihgan resistance to actually gain the upper hand. He only summoned Shinryu at the last minute as sort of a suicide bomb... the Domans who saw it said they had a legend of a similar creature called shinryu... if it fled to doma it could be just to get as far away from omega as possible to heal up and recharge...

The entire operation, from start to end, was planned by Ilberd.

He knew the Alliance would increase security on the border if the let slip he was preparing an assault. He knew the Alliance would never engage Garlemald in war as an aggressor, so he faked the Garleans out by having his soldiers wear Alliance uniforms. He knew the Resistance would pray for vengeance and destruction if they were killed during the attack, so he had Laurentius kill them to empower his nascent primal. He might have counted on us (the Warrior of Light) showing up so he could have one last crack at us, knowing we've been a thorn in the side of his plans before and would do so again if we caught wind of them. The one thing he didn't count on, I think, was Papalymo delaying his then-unknown primal.

Who does the blame for this rest on the shoulders of? Well, as in the real world... a lot of people. Laurentius for going along with Ilberd's plan. Ilberd for cooking up and executing said plan. The Masks for going along with said plan, though they didn't know they'd be primal chow. Us for inspiring the False Griffin (Gallien) to spread Ilberd's fervor and not capturing or killing the culprits back when we had the chance in Halatali. The Garleans for their needless conquest of Ala Mhigo in the first place. Ultimately, it's always the Ascians, whose literal job it is to stir up shit like this.

As for our responsibility? We can but give others their life, to do with as they wish. What they choose to do with that life is not our responsibility. ... that's how I see it, anyroad.

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Originally Posted by LineageRazor

I'd find it hilarious, in a schadenfreud kind of way, if they expanded the scope of their holocaust to include not only Beastmen, but ANYONE who is not a purebred Garlean. "The world will not be safe until anyone capable of manipulating Aether is dead and buried." Naturally, given that the vast bulk of their armies and conquered populous are not purebred Garleans, this step of their long-term plan wouldn't be invoked until they had a firm grip on the entire world. At that point, they could begin the purges.

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Well they already do go beyond just the Beastmen, anyone who doesn't fall in line with the "kill em all" approach in Eorzea is put to the sword. As well anyone with the Echo that is found out by them is also put on their kill list. So even if your WoL was able to craft 1-60 and did NOTHING else, the Garleans would still want to kill them.

As far as the "blame game" goes, Garleans will just blame Eorzea as a whole. They kinda already do, Gaius himself said and believed they were too weak and had little will thus they had to rely on the gods. While Gaius saw this as good reason to put them under his rule for their betterment, others saw the whole "summon god" thing as reason enough to just purge the damn place and be done with it. If the previous Emperor hadn't been so old by ARR we'd probably would have seen more happening with the Garleans after the defeat of the XIVth, lucky Eorzea that his ailing health helped keep the Empire in check.

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Originally Posted by dragonseth07

Unless I'm mistaken, Ilberd chose Shinryu specifically because it's a Doman deity, to spur the Garlean-Doman conflict just as the Resistance gears up. He wants the Garleans to note that non-Beast Races can summon Primals, and to make it look like Domans did it.

I don't think it will ever come back on the GC's or the WOL, because the Domans are the intended scapegoat in the first place.

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The thing is, the line about the Domans doesn't appear in the Japanese version - the Companies just start calling it "Shinryu" of their own accord. The Doman thing was likely added to the localization because of how foreign the name looks in an English context, which means that Ilberd's plan would have to differ significantly between the two versions of the game, something I doubt they'd do.

No, Okamimaru is correct - Shinryu wasn't a deliberate summoning of a Doman god, it was a weird Frankenstein of a Primal whose general appearance reminded some Domans of a dragon from their own myths and legends.

I'm pretty certain the reason why Ilberd's unthinkable plan ended up taking the form of a dragon from Doman myth is because of the source of the aether that gave birth to it in the first place - the Eyes of Nidhogg.

Of course Nidhogg's soul no longer remained within them (his spirit returned to the Lifestream when the player wrestled the Eyes from Estinien's armour at the Final Steps of Faith), leaving them just incredibly potent aether batteries.... but there was probably still some lingering traces of Nidhogg, some fragments of his memory that ultimately influenced the shape of the Primal that they were used to generate.

It also explains Shinryu's almost unheard of power and capability for destruction (only Bahamut is probably stronger), given how godlike Nidhogg was like in life, it's little wonder Shinryu is equally capable of apocalyptic levels of destruction.

Add into that the last dying lamentations of the Ala Mhigan refugees that Ilberd sacrificed, along with his own crazed death throes.... no wonder we ended up with Shinryu as a Primal (which when you think about it, really was Elidibus's plan all along, to create an enormously powerful Primal that would end up upsetting the apple cart and make the cold war between the Empire and Eorzea go hot.

The only reason the primal was a dragon was due to the Final Fantasy Omega/Shinryun reference they pushed in. Everything lorewise ingame pointed towards Rhalgar "the destroyer" being the primal even though we already had a primal in rhalgars image (Ramuh lord of levin). And the eyes being used to summan a primal doesn't mean that it has to be a dragon as seen with mega-pope and the knights twelve.

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Originally Posted by GrizzlyTank

The only reason the primal was a dragon was due to the Final Fantasy Omega/Shinryun reference they pushed in. Everything lorewise ingame pointed towards Rhalgar "the destroyer" being the primal even though we already had a primal in rhalgars image (Ramuh lord of levin). And the eyes being used to summan a primal doesn't mean that it has to be a dragon as seen with mega-pope and the knights twelve.

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This, of course, is the out-of-universe reason, but I think they did a good job justifying its form while simultaneously using it as a chance to expand the lore surrounding Primals as a whole: a Primal summoned not as an avatar of any specific deity, but instead for a broad purpose, using not dedicated and focused prayer but instead desperate and disparate dying wishes and cries. The reason it was a dragon, I'd wager, is that the most specific anything got form-wise was Ilberd (the chief summoner, remember) directly invoking the Dreadwyrm of the Calamity. I'd posit that the eyes had nothing to do with it. And as for Rhalgr: it was only the most likely candidate because of a total lack of others. Ilberd never came off as being especially devout to Rhalgr (does he even ever utter his nation's patron deity once in all his dialogue?); in addition, among those dying, only a single soldier says the name, and even then only in the English version, as that same dialog is just crying out for power to strike back at those killing him in Japanese.