Primal Belias?

In the Lv50 SMN quest appears an Egi enemy of an elder Primal known as Belias. It was shown the egi, but not the Primal... However, the Ridorana Lighthouse showed us an entity known as "Belias" (based on the FFXII creature), and it summons the same Belias-Egis from the SMN quest (but this time known as Gigas I think).

So I was wondering... Did SE said something about this? Is the Belias from Ridorana the same elder Primal related to the Egi from SMN quest? Would that mean that the other entities such as Mateus, Hashmal, Famfrit are Primals as well?

But in the "Return to Ivalice" story it is said that those entities are not Primals (nor voidsent)... So, is the Ridorana Belias an entity completely different from the unseen Primal Belias?

Sorry if it is too confuse... xp

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Originally Posted by Con_Carne

...Belias...

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o no

Let's recap.

Patch 2.00 (2013)
Belias was name-dropped as an [elder primal] from the time of the Allagan Empire (this term merely means worship of this deiform began long before our current era, such as Bahamut or Odin).

Patch 4.00 (2017)
Belias was name-dropped again; the great Allagan summoner Sari was said to have taken part in putting this primal down.

Thus

It seems unlikely that there was not an actual primal named Belias in the Allagan Empire's time. It's not only human memory that this exists in; it exists in record, in the records of a soulkin book made by Sari himself, in the historical knowledge of the Ascians, and so on. It is consistently stated - this was a primal, its name was Belias.

Patch 4.3 (2018)
Belias appears in Ridorana, (ostensibly) an auracite beast.

Thus
Rightfully confused masses, lol. Auracite beasts are not entirely unlike primals, but they are presented as distinct from them, as well. Moreover, the timelines aren't very robust, leaving us without valuable context from which to make inferences.

Ergo, possibilities:

Was the same Belias that we saw in Ridorana summoned in the time of Allag? First off, would it have been remembered as a primal if so? How did this happen? And are the zodiac stones so old? All the mentions of Belias pre-2018 were focused on Eorzea while we have no suggestions (that I recall off the top of my head) that the auracite have been transported out of Othard / Ilsabard. They could have been, but we'd need more information.

OR

Are these two Beliases separate entities sharing a single name? Auracite beasts and primals both are shades of something that doesn't necessarily exist in that form. Do they perhaps share not only a name, but an origin story? The same inspiring mythology?

Did one Belias inspire the other?


Welcome to Return to Ivalice, which began following discussions at the 2016 New Years party (three years after Belias was first name-dropped), and has introduced a slew of ACTIVE RETCON ZONES to the game.


The Egi, however, muddy the waters still. I had always assumed that - never having seen Belias for himself - Tristain just conjured the "memory and strength" of Belias shaped like a Darkness-twisted Ifrit-Egi because he had seen Ifrit. I had also assumed that using the Egi in Ridorana was just a lampshade the dev. team threw on "Yeah, we know, we know."

We'll need to give the dev. team time to get The Truth straight and present it to us.

Edit: Rewrites post....

One of things we've yet to fully understand is how the Zodiac stones pick a form/name to manifest. Does it draw ideas from the current user? Does it use ideas all the previous users have known? If it does, it might have gotten the idea of Beliaus from that. I suspect we won't fully know what the auracite/Zodiac stones are until the final raid, so it's probably best not to speculated too much on what we don't know they can do.

There's definitely some confusion overall with Belias in the game. Ridorana Belias and ARR Belias should be ... separate, I think. We know Sari is supposed to be one of the guys who fought Belias in ... Meracydia? I think it was--so he was definitely a Primal in the Third Astral Era. The "Elder Primal" designation seems to pretty much fall neatly in line with Primals from the age of Allag, so that's all fine. The Gigas from the Ridorana Belias fight are the same model as the Belias-Egi Tristan summons....whether this is a nod or something more interconnected we've yet to learn.

The Lucavi summoned from auracite, we've been told, are wholly different from Primals so by that logic the Belias[es] cannot be the same creature. I think when we enter Ridorana Ramza muses that Famfrit has appeared as a result of Ba'Gamnan running around with the Duma, right? So might it be that's when Lucavi Belias appears? During his ascent?

As for how Tristan got the requisite aether to summon a Belias-Egi, it's possible Ascian malarkey and the soulstone itself are the reasoning, I agree. I have to strongly disagree with the idea that Gougans summoned anything since isn't their inability to manipulate aether documented as one of the reasons they're candidates for Garlean predecessors? Tristan not knowing what Belias exactly was used to give a convenient excuse as to why it just looked like an Ifrit-Egi; that was the Primal HE knew of and was tainted by, so that's the one he could conjure most readily. Ridorana complicates this.

EDIT: I know this is a topic Moose has receipts on so his reply will definitely end up better! But I still think, as of now, they are separate entities, and there's been no definitive link besides the name and the Gigas/Egi model sharing... which definitely does imply some link but again, I'm not sure it's knowable thing right now.

Could it just be a simple sharing of names? I mean Halicarnassus is a succubus type enemy in Hakke Manor (Hard) yet we have another Halicarnassus in Omega Deltascape v3. Neither are anything the same as each other but somehow they have the same name and SE seemed to know that when the second one was introduced. Perhaps there is no lore related to them and it was just easier to have that particular enemy in the content for story purposes.

Then I suppose this should be modified until we get an official explanation. Right?

Halicarnassus, the O3 boss, is the embodiment of the stories told about Halicarnassus, the character. Nero even references the stories and says Halicarnassus, the O3 boss, is exactly like how she's described in the stories.

The Halicarnasus in Hauke Manor was named after the stories because the person who first saw the Voidsent was reminded of the character Halicarnassus from the stories.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Con_Carne

Then I suppose this should be modified until we get an official explanation. Right?

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It certainly should! Being a wiki it's probably easy enough? Though that wiki in particular tends to have rather dubious information about XIV's story.

The most likely answer is that the Belias encountered in the Ridorana Lighthouse is based on B'gamnan's image of him, rather than the genuine article. All of the Lucavi thus encountered in the Return to Ivalice series are made through the Duma's power; while Belias being referenced earlier does throw a bit of a loop, this is unlikely to be any different.

That does still leave the "real" Belias a mystery. The only thing we can be certain of is that, as an Elder Primal, he predates the Sixth Astral Era.

Well I recall them saying that faith of the summoner does influences the forms and personality of the primals. As such if the friendly anantas were to summon Lakshmi she would be much different by the lady of bliss we know.

As such the Belias we see in ridorana might be a reference to the real primal but different in nature or something like that

also the fact that many of belias skills are reusing names from ifrit it's suspicious

Unukalhai mentioned how auracite was used to trap primals in the Thirteenth World. If this auracite is the same technology, then presumably the Duma may have been used to combat Belias and other primals, and if it retained data that might be how they were resummoned at Rabanastre and Ridorana.

True and that makes me think, what's the heart of Sabik made of? Was it specified in some places?

The Sabik connection is one I've been thinking about for a long time. Sabik was called a "jet black holy stone" in Japanese. Looking at words that have been used repeatedly throughout the franchise, there's a chance that was referring to some type of "black auracite". Holy Stone and Auracite have a long history of being synonymous.

However, there's a grab bag of works JP uses a lot, and a grab bag of words English uses a lot - and they aren't always mutually exclusive. Phantom Beast and Summoned Beast have been Summon, Aeon, Eidolon, Esper, Primal, and so on. They mix and match.

But it's something to look out for.

There's also no guarantee that when they said "auracite" in 2013, or 2016, that they knew this was coming in 2018 and might not perfectly line up.

Was going to say that we could safely assume they didn't thought that far ahead, but thinking about it, they should've been in contact with Yasumi Matsuno for a good while before announcing it at fanfest, I wonder.....

That said the fact that Ultima essentially stored in itself the primals, kinda looks like what the child told us about the thirteenth shard and the effect of auracite. I suppose we'll know more in the final return to Ivalice story?

Am I mistaken or didn't the Stormblood questline show Summoners can summon egis of beings other than primals. Still with Heaven or High revelations we can see the Allag empire touched the east in a way, halping the pieces to fit together as well.

Egis can technically be created out of anything living the Summoner was around for the death of. However, the math/geometry involved with creating egis of most things (like people) is too complex for a person to create a egi out of them. An Allagan supercomputer powered with multiple Summoner soul stones was needed for that.

In addition, we find out in the Lvl. 63 Summoner quest that Belius was a primal during the time of the Allagan empire and that Sari and his students defeated it. I'm assuming the Ascians managed to get Tristan some of that aether so that he could have a stronger egi then you do. It also never got explained how Tristan found out about Summoning in the first place, but given the Ascians are involved, I would not be surprised if they told him a lot of other things about the art.

didn't allag conquer the whole world or something?

Won't know until we go to "The New World" (the far west).

7.0 at best!

Perhaps belias and ifrit are based off the same pre-allagan monster/primal... perhaps there was a variation in language... look at things like dragons in mythology...

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Originally Posted by Okamimaru

Perhaps belias and ifrit are based off the same pre-allagan monster/primal... perhaps there was a variation in language... look at things like dragons in mythology...

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That was a pet theory of mine for a long time but now, I'm not so sure.... (given his full appearance at Ridoronia). I'm not sure if Ifrit was ever truly an actual god worshipped by the pre-tempered Amalj'aa: certainly the Brotherhood of Ash regard the Primal Ifrit as a sham and never mention anything about a 'real Ifrit' or any kind of religious figure they themselves worship (they instead come off surprisingly as atheists interested only in furthering themselves in battle), so it's likely then that the Ascians were the ones who put the 'Ifrit is your god' idea into their heads originally.

But this is all just idle musings so please pick that theory apart. :p

The Ascians are probably not the people who put the idea of Ifrit into the Amalj'aas' heads. The lore book has him empowering the Amalj'aa as the reason behind almost everything in their society, most of which we never get to see. The Almaj'aa have a lot in common with the Xalea of the Steppes. They're both nomadic warrior peoples who are divided into tribes and herd animals across grasslands. The Amalj'aa we encounter in the game are primarily their warriors and nothing else.

As far as Ifrit's role in everything... it sounds like it could be a dramatization of something that happened all the way back in the 3rd Umbral Era. The 3rd Umbral Calamity was when the sun burned hotter (or got larger) for a period of time and it's speculated that that is when the Saigoli Desert was created. In any case, Ifrit and the Almajaa's "origin story" has Ifrit giving the Almaj'aa's ancestors the gift of reason/consciousness because they were the strongest living things that survived the world of fire the longest. There were 14 Almaj'aa that survived Ifrit's gift and they went on to found the seven different Almaj'aa tribes.

Considering why the Almaj'aa are said to have gotten Ifrit's attention in the first place, I find it very ironic that Ifrit is being summoned because the Almaj'aa think they're weak...

For what it's worth, it's suggested that the primals are called The Primals in the first place because of a long-held pre-existing belief within the beast tribes that they were created by primordial elemental gods aligned with the dominant element of the biosphere in which they thrived. For example, the Amalj'aa thrived within a fire-dominant desert, and were thus the chosen children raised by a primordial fire elemental god dubbed Ifrit, Lord of the Inferno. (Back in 1.0, one of the visiting newspaper authors even seemed to hint that the devs considered having Shiva be the goddess of the a race of giants (the gigants?) at one point.)

Like faith in the Twelve, the faith in the Primals had divine messengers known as Paragons rather than Archons, and that in times of great need these messengers would come and lead them to their patrons. In fact, it might not even be accurate to call other primals... well, "primals" - we're just overgeneralizing the word because it's what "we" (Eoreans) know.

While the Ascians surely posed as the Paragons and taught the beast tribes a summoning spell that raised twisted shades that mimicked their faith as part of a long-con that would tip the scales towards calamity, I'm relatively certain that these specific primals weren't invented by them wholesale. Rather it seems that "seeds of myth" have been floating on the winds of time and taking root in different places, growing, mutating, and evolving, for... in mortal terms ...ever.

I clearly remind Yoshida on one of the fanfests saying that we might get to see eventually incarnations of existing primals done by other cultures, which honestly I found extremely interesting