Summoner post Shadowbringers

I was thinking the other day about how the events of Shadowbringers would affect a summoner and it got me thinking.

Currently, egi's are created from attunement and exposure to a primal's aether. The summoner then internalizes that aether and then combines it with their own to create Egi's.

Trances are the channeling of primal aether in the ambient atmosphere to utilize their abilities. Lore wise this method was developed to overcome the limit of holding 3 types of a primal aether within a person.

Demi Summons seems to be an amalgamation of both the Egi and the Trance method. We can Summon Demi Bahamut by utilizing the residual aether from a Dreadwyrm Trance. For firebird and Phoenix though no explanation is given, I suspect exposure and attunement to this aether comes from the calamity, and we gain some residual phoenix aether from using Bahamut and Dreadwym respectively. This is why we can use both trance and Demi phoenix simultaneously. Though as mentioned this is more my headcanon rather than established lore fact.

which then leaves the question given that we absorbed and internalized every Lightwardens aether, post Shadowbringers in theory, should we be able to call Demi Titania, Demi innocence.

How does our merger with Ardbert affect our capacity to hold more aether? For me I suspect that demi Innocence or Demi Titania would be an amazing addition to our arsenal. (Or at some point if we ever get egi/demi Glamours - id been thrilled)

Anyway what do you all think?

Demi-Innocence and Demi-Titania are not likely. They aren't Primals, but Lightwardens which probably work differently. And the aether/light we absorbed from them already left our body I guess...?

I'm not so sure. I think while a primal is a construct of belief and aether, im not sure it is so different from a being infused and altered by aetherial balance. louisoix and phoenix are both an example of this. Louisoix became the primal Phoenix by external belief and aether affecting his corporeal being. Innocence and Titania underwent a similar transformation.

I think it comes down to what the Summoner actually summons, is it a simulacrum of the primal using the essence of the primal aether as a base? Or is the shape denoted by the Summoner seeing the primal previous and this perception giving the primal its form? I think any lightwarden would make an interesting demi for the summoner.

Even if it could he done (which I dont think since they aren't Primals) we used up the light from the warden's during the Hades fight. It's not inside the WoL anymore.

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Originally Posted by JeanneOrnitier

Even if it could he done (which I dont think since they aren't Primals) we used up the light from the warden's during the Hades fight. It's not inside the WoL anymore.

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^This. We consumed all of it generating the Axe of Light with Ardbert's help to punch a hole in Emet - it is completley expunged from the WoL's soul (both Y'shtola and Ryne outright state this after the battle). And said Axe of Light then disintergrated into nothing after Emet finally did his best 'defeat of Kadaj' in Advent Children impersonation, so the corrupted Light aether that was contained within us is now completely gone from us for good (presumedly 'obeyed the laws of nature and returned to the river of aether' like when a Primal is defeated).

Ardbert's soul merge with us did heal our soul after it was nearly torn apart by said Light aether though, so it may possibly help increase our aetheric limits. But to be really honest, I don't think you will see much if any reflection (ha!) of that in actual gameplay though.

Although I do see what you are getting at, i don't think a Sin-Eater' aether is much different from a primal. It is still a being created from living aether. With regards to using it all up while it is inferred that we did so creating the Axe of light and fighting Hades, Y'shtola's words were "His Aether... it is as it used to be... Was the darkness to your light," my interpretation of this is that the light aspected aether we used was diminished enough to return our aetherial balance to its usual state. However, if a residual ambience exists then it is possible we would be able to use this attunement to channel the residual sin eater aether combine it with our own aether to create a simulacrum of the sin eaters we fought. I think the difference between a normal primal and those that we summon is that summoning a demi and egi is the act of channeling the residual ambient aether from the environment and using it to create something that has some of the abilities but not not the will or drive of a usual primal.

From this basis i do think it is plausible that a summoner could channel the ambient sin-eater aether from the Aetherial sea and use it to create an egi or demi.

Of course, this could also not be the case.

As for what Ardbert's soul merger did, I suspect it repaired our fragmenting and cracking soul and increased the amount of aether we could hold which makes us stronger. Not sure what effect that would have though.

The big thing about Summoner is that it's probably the class that is the closest to the Ancients when it comes to Creation Magic. When you really get down to it, what we are doing when we create Egi is making something semi-sentient that is based on an aether pattern that got "stuck" in us when something died. And if the Lvl 70 SMN quest is anything to go by, it really doesn't matter what the thing that died is. What matters is how difficult the aether "math/geometry" is.

For whatever reason, primal "math" is easy enough for us to do with just our spell-book. Probably because Primals are primarily Concepts. The Demis seem to be the HDR version of Egis and so need some more computational "oomph" behind them (and so need computers to do part of the job for us). The "hard" stuff seems to be things like people, that aren't based on any specific Concept.

Given that Phoneix was the product of Ancient Creation Magic long before it became a primal, I would think the SMN job would go more in that direction. That would uncouple the SMN job from primals specifically and open up the door for SMN being able to "Create" anything so long as they have the aether control/computational power. I would love it if SMN somehow got tied to Amarot. It just seems like the perfect fit for the job as far as lore goes. Heck, it doesn't take that much headcanon to suppose that SMN got Phoenix Trance/Demi in the first place from looking through the Acadmedia Aydenar's records of failed Concepts and realizing they had all the arcane knowledge to pull Phoenix off.

If the WoL does make any Sin Eater themed egis or trances, I would think it wouldn't have anything to do with the Light that used to be in us or Sin Eaters in particular. Creation Magic isn't really limited by that stuff. All we would need is a "template" for a Sin Eater or Lightwarden concept and there you go. We've killed a bunch of Sin Eaters as it is, so we technically already have their aether pattern in us after all. But I don't think they would be any different then the Egis, Trances, or Demis we already have. They might as well just make egi-glamours for it.

I think the bigger issue would be justifying the game mechancis of the thing, rather then the lore. SMN is already overloaded with mechanics as it is. It doesn't need more. So my reason for SMN not having Sin Eater themed stuff has nothing to do with lore and everything to do with thinking SMN's current playstyle doesn't need anything really new added to it. Not more then it already does in any case.

^ Yes, very much the above. To me, one of the biggest revelations from Shadowbringers was that the Sundering was caused — whether directly or indirectly — by Creation magic and, secondly, that Creation magic was, in effect, the precursor of Summoning as we know it today.

In fact, the mechanics appear almost similar: The summoner has to be able to clearly visualise the concept in his mind, and apply arcane geometry to shape his aether into the entity he envisioned. Any stray thoughts during the conceptualisation process, and you'll end up with something different from what you were planning for. And, crucially, an entity brought to "life" through the process with insufficient aether would seek to sustain its existence by continuously absorbing more aether from the environment.

The single defining distinction between Creation and Summoning, it seems, boils down to whether you're creating something entirely new from scratch, or whether you're trying to re-create an entity from an aetheric imprint you acquired through some form of previous interaction. I would imagine that the amount of computation for actual Creation is a few orders of magnitude more challenging than "mere" summoning. But, with sufficient computing power, I think it's quite possible, in principle, for a summoner to turn into a Creation Mage.

Think of the possibilities! If the application of highly advanced Allagan computers could allow for the summoning of a high-resolution, high-fidelity egi like that of Sari, the last Allagan summoner, imagine what more could be re-created through the science of the Ancients?

(Make Summoner the poster class for an expansion please! Why does the Derplander always have to take up a discipline of war?)

Oh my god i love this thread finally something that loves smn and doesnt want its lore to die and be reworked

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Originally Posted by ObsidianFire

I think the bigger issue would be justifying the game mechancis of the thing, rather then the lore. SMN is already overloaded with mechanics as it is. It doesn't need more. So my reason for SMN not having Sin Eater themed stuff has nothing to do with lore and everything to do with thinking SMN's current playstyle doesn't need anything really new added to it. Not more then it already does in any case.

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Something that would be cool would be to introduce more Egi Glamours and maybe even Trance Glamours. That way they could introduce, for just an example, something like Demi Ultima (High Seraph, not Weapon) without actually adding more mechanics to the job. Just let us glam over Bahamut or Phoenix. Or something like Bismarck-Egi to put on top of Garuda.

Instead of mechanical changes, cosmetic ones. Let the individual player decide which Primals they want their SMN to use.

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Originally Posted by JeanneOrnitier

Something that would be cool would be to introduce more Egi Glamours and maybe even Trance Glamours. That way they could introduce, for just an example, something like Demi Ultima (High Seraph, not Weapon) without actually adding more mechanics to the job. Just let us glam over Bahamut or Phoenix. Or something like Bismarck-Egi to put on top of Garuda.

Instead of mechanical changes, cosmetic ones. Let the individual player decide which Primals they want their SMN to use.

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Although it'd be nice, I think in that case other jobs also would like skill animation customization.

Another thing to consider is that we have a direct pact with the current iteration of Titania. Perhaps there might be a way for them to allow us to temporarily call on a demi-proxy of Titania to aid our fights later down the road? After all, Feo Ul can do something similar already by providing us contact with our retainers while we're on the first, so I don't think it's too much of a stretch. Although gameplay-wise, I'm not sure how Demi-Titania would fit in along with Bahamut and Phoenix, but that's a separate discussion for a different thread I think.

Something else I've been pondering. Is all this summoner lore just ascian propaganda to cause more strife via primals?
Bismark is alive and well in the first. He does not temper people, he does not run amok trying to fight everything that flies, he isn't after more and more aether, and judging by the greenery growing on him, he isn't sucking the land dry by simply existing.
Primals as we know them on the source do. All of the primals were summoned by ascian means as all the beast tribes learned from them supposedly and we have no idea how long bqck this started. The waring triad is by far the current oldest known case.
They call Bismark a fae i stead of primal, but maybe they don't have a word for them. We haven't heard of any other primal like being on the first before eden showed up nor has there been any mention of summoners.
So i am lead to believe most of the summoner lore about aether, demis, egi, and everything else is flawed. its build off a.meams of summoning that exists solely to imbalance the aether for calamities.

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Originally Posted by Atamis

Bismark is alive and well in the first. He does not temper people, he does not run amok trying to fight everything that flies, he isn't after more and more aether, and judging by the greenery growing on him, he isn't sucking the land dry by simply existing.

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No, that's a fundamental misunderstanding. Bismarck on the First is indeed a living thing, insofar as we can consider the fae living creatures. They — Bismarck, that is — is most definitely not a primal. But, it could well be that the Bismarck we met on the First was the original inspiration for Bismarck the Primal that we fought, on the Source, moons ago.

You've confused something very important, and that is that all the primals we've encountered on the Source are "thoughts" and "ideas" given physical form through a summoning ritual. And this is where the distinction I brought up earlier, between Creation and summoning magic, is crucial. The key distinction is that Creation magic is far more challenging, involving the creation of an entirely new idea or concept from scratch, and fuelling it with an enormous amount of aether, to create something new, from nothing.

Summoning, on the other hand, works on "second-hand" ideas. The beast tribes on the Source all have existing religions; they all worship gods that were possibly inspired by historical persons or heroes from their past (including the Vanu Vanu's primordial memory of a sky whale, ie, Bismarck). So, in times of trouble and distress, the beast tribes turn to their gods for salvatation. The Ascians manipulated this fear by teaching the beast tribes about summoning, and showing them how to channel aether into their "idea" of a god who would save them from their enemies.

So, in other words, the beast tribes weren't thinking of a completely new concept — that would involve knowledge and discipline that was way beyond them (even the Ancients, with all their wisdom, could fail a Creation project, let alone lesser mortals!). Instead, they relied on their (often very skewed) vision of their god and saviour, and used the Ascian summoning ritual to turn that idea into physical reality.

The mechanism is essentially the same: Channel and shape aether around an incorporeal idea, and turning into a corporeal reality. That being the case, the end-product — ie, the summoned or "created" entity — would require phenomenal amounts of aether to take shape. The Ancients were able to fuel this process entirely through their own aether — that was how much more powerful they were, compared to sundered mortals today.

No one alive today in the sundered worlds are capable of fuelling summoning magic through their own aether alone. And that means that summoned primal will always need to absorb environmental aether to sustain itself. Once created, any "living thing" will have that fundamental instinct for self-preservation, and that is the case here for primals as well. Once summoned, they will seek to stay around, but in so doing, they will bring about environmental disasters on the Source.

That's precisely what the Ascians want. They are constantly sowing chaos in the Source, so as to create conditions for a Rejoining. They've been trying various means of doing, through the ages. Primal-summoning is merely one out of many tools they use.

We also see that the Ancients have a database of Concept schematics in Aamarot that all Ancients were able to access and use themselves. We see that Concepts were held up to some criteria before they were added to that database. So there's at least some kind of "quality control" going on with shared Concepts.

There's even one quest where we're told to go get the schematics of a Concept someone else made so that we can Create that Concept ourselves. Only our aether levels can't manage it. It's not that hard to see the parallel between us getting the Concept schematics to recreate the Concept and us getting the aether of a Primal to create an Egi. It's just that we don't have a good way of "storing" Concept schematics (yet), so when no more Primals are summoned, there's no way for Primal/Egi schematics to be passed on, and Summoning dies out. Probably the biggest hurdle Summoning has to overcome to be more viable long-term is figuring out a way to "store" the aether patterns of Egi so people no longer need to be around for Primal deaths to summon Egi in the first place...

Tomestones might be able to archive them.

If Tomestones would be able to archive primal geometries, I'd expect the Allagans would have already done so. They have way better computing power and data storage methods then we do, and yet Siri (one of the major developers of the art) was concerned that Summoning as an art form would die out without any Primals being summoned. Even the defense node that he developed towards the end of his life still needed to kill us to get a hold of our geometry...