Is it really the end? *Spoilers*

Not sure if this is a plot hole or not or if I just have my lore mixed up but...

So, we offed Zodi and Hydi, but we also know they are primals. And what happens to primals when we defeat them? They return to the aetherial sea until they are summoned again. So, what would prevent someone from gathering enough crystals to just resummon them?

I know it took a vast amount of aether, like hundreds of thousands of willing sacrifices to call forth Zodi, but that was also his point of creation, so it would of course take a lot more aether to create him out of nothing than it would to just resummon him since he already exists now, same with Hydi. But now that they exist and are most likely drifting through the astral sea, devoid of form or consciousness they would be an incredibly powerful tool for anyone with the ability to summon.

And it's not like no one knows about them. It's not like the knowledge of summoning died with the ascians. So, what would stop some Garlemald 2.0 or Xande 3.0 from using them as weapons of mass domination? Esp since without their hearts they are easily harnessed and could be used however the person acting as their heart wanted them to.

Which brings me to another thing.

What prevents anyone from taking the form of a primal, like Shiva, and then just tempering everyone? Hydi is gone and with her the blessing of light that shielded us from tempering. Even if we still have it, anyone from here on out will not, allowing anyone crazy enough to just become a god. Yes there are the amulets now, but I don't they are perfect and tempering may still be doable with a bit of study. Anything you can make you can unmake and a shield is no different.

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Originally Posted by AnimaAnimus

Not sure if this is a plot hole or not or if I just have my lore mixed up but...

So, we offed Zodi and Hydi, but we also know they are primals. And what happens to primals when we defeat them? They return to the aetherial sea until they are summoned again. So, what would prevent someone from gathering enough crystals to just resummon them?

I know it took a vast amount of aether, like hundreds of thousands of willing sacrifices to call forth Zodi, but that was also his point of creation, so it would of course take a lot more aether to create him out of nothing than it would to just resummon him since he already exists now, same with Hydi. But now that they exist and are most likely drifting through the astral sea, devoid of form or consciousness they would be an incredibly powerful tool for anyone with the ability to summon.

And it's not like no one knows about them. It's not like the knowledge of summoning died with the ascians. So, what would stop some Garlemald 2.0 or Xande 3.0 from using them as weapons of mass domination? Esp since without their hearts they are easily harnessed and could be used however the person acting as their heart wanted them to.

Which brings me to another thing.

What prevents anyone from taking the form of a primal, like Shiva, and then just tempering everyone? Hydi is gone and with her the blessing of light that shielded us from tempering. Even if we still have it, anyone from here on out will not, allowing anyone crazy enough to just become a god. Yes there are the amulets now, but I don't they are perfect and tempering may still be doable with a bit of study. Anything you can make you can unmake and a shield is no different.

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Regarding Zodiark, he can probably theoretically be resummoned, but would likely be far weaker. I hate to think how many crystals you'd need to have aether equivalent to half of the ancients population.

Regarding summonings in general, without the Ascians going around teaching people how to conduct summonings I imagine they'll probably happen less often. The knowledge still exists, but it's not super common I don't think.

Even if they are summoned though, regular folk can be outfitted with amulets to enable them to fight back. So far those amulets seem pretty perfect, but even if they're not and a workaround is found, tempering can also be undone now.

Yes, but again, we would not need as many crystals as dead ancients. They created him, not just summon him, so the aetherial requirement should be greatly reduced. And scholars for millennia have been studying the art of summoning, so the knowledge likely won't go anywhere.

But for the last point, even though we can undo tempering, if someone does summon a primal the likes of Zodi and knows how to bypass the amulets, tempering en masse may prove to be effective, even with a cure. If you have the ability to temper and the mind of a tactician, mass tempering may prove too powerful to simply just cure everyone. And if anyone comes after you, you can just temper them as well and be done since the blessing of light no longer exists after all those who now have it are gone. I never understood why the primals themselves didn't employ more mass tempering methods in the first place. The only thing I could think of would be, it would just make the story end lol.

A couple things.

First, Zodiark and later Hydaelyn were the very will of the star itself. So even if someone(s) summoned them, they would be far weaker than their original forms. Similar to how Lunar Bahamut was nowhere near as strong as the Bahamut that caused the Calamity. Zodiark existed not only because half the world's population was sacrificed to bring him forth, but because the Ancients had a profound and unending desire to save themselves from extinction. It was literally to fend off an existential threat. That's a far cry from someone or a small group of people wanting to do whatever they fancy. Zodiark was a primal manifested by an entire species' will to survive. This cannot be overstated.

That's why the primals we fought in ARR were strong but not necessarily world threats. They were regional threats.

Second, there are now two defenses against tempering. One are the dragon scales which protect you from tempering altogether. The second are the porxies, who can actually cure tempering if someone finds themselves to be afflicted.

Mass tempering would probably entail having a primal even more powerful than Hydaelyn or Zodiark. Maybe the will of the entire Universe? Because even Hydaelyn and Zodiark couldn't mass temper. It's also important to remember that they were created by the Ancients, who were far more powerful than current mortals.

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Originally Posted by AnimaAnimus

Yes, but again, we would not need as many crystals as dead ancients. They created him, not just summon him, so the aetherial requirement should be greatly reduced.

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That isn't how summoning works, at least by our current understanding. Each time a primal is summoned, it is created anew by the summoners based on their concept of the entity they are summoning.

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Originally Posted by AnimaAnimus

What prevents anyone from taking the form of a primal, like Shiva, and then just tempering everyone? Hydi is gone and with her the blessing of light that shielded us from tempering. Even if we still have it, anyone from here on out will not, allowing anyone crazy enough to just become a god. Yes there are the amulets now, but I don't they are perfect and tempering may still be doable with a bit of study. Anything you can make you can unmake and a shield is no different.

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I don't think the Traveler's Ward/Blessing of Light is gone. I didn't see anything that indicated that it was a persistent effect sustained by Hydaelyn. And even if that was the case, our specific Blessing might be different than that of others since we had to basically reconstruct it in Heavensward.

You're right that no new people will get it. Though, since it was a ward that apparently has variations (per Venat's dialogue in Elpis), we might come across others who know how to cast it or something similar enough to protect against whatever corrupting influence people are facing in the future. Or we can recover the knowledge of how to cast it or something.

There are a few points you missed.

1./ at this point resummoning Hydaelyn would be difficult as only the Sharlayans and the Scions know of her actual form, most of the population who knows of and believes in Hydaelyn think of her as the Mothercrystal.

2./ Zodiark is also not a widely known summon. The Ascians, the scions, and maybe the Sharlayans. It’s not as if he is common knowledge. Most would go to the twelve if they wanted to summon someone or something new.

3./ As previously mentioned warding scales exist now, and so long as we have those tempering is not an issue. And porxies exist in case someone does get tempered.

So the likeliness of facing Hydaelyn or Zodiark again is in my opinion minimal outside of maybe an Ultimate.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

That isn't how summoning works, at least by our current understanding. Each time a primal is summoned, it is created anew by the summoners based on their concept of the entity they are summoning.

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To add to this, summoning is creation magic but a flawed form of it that was altered by the Ascians to include the tempering..

When the Ancients summoned Zodiark they did use summoning magic just like the beast tribe did, but due to being unsunderned(sp?) They held a vastly larger supply of Aether in their bodies and could do such summonings without crystals which are just aether in a storage unit.

Now take the fact that to summoning Zodiark they sacrificed HALF of their population with the extra Aether they held and then after summoning him sacrificed another half of that half to him for halt the end of days at which point Vant an her followers summoned Crystal Mom(not spelling that name from memory lol) and sundered the entire world including the vastly more powerful Zodiark.

The introduction of the porxies (to cure tempering), warding scales (to prevent tempering), teaching the Eorzean beast tribes (and Kojin) proper creation magics to call forth their deities instead of the corrupted summoning arts taught by the Ascians (so they don't want to temper in the first place), and improving relationships with said beast tribes so they're not openly antagonistic anymore (so summons are far less frequent to never) basically tells us they are done with primals as a big antagonistic force.

Given all the souls (aether) that made up Zodiark and Hydaelyn have returned to the Lifestream, it may or may not be possible to call them forth again. It wouldn't be the original / real one though, since the only living person who's seen Zodiark is the PC and the only living people who've seen Hydaelyn are the ex- but not really ex-Scions, none of whom have any intention of doing so. Without an astronomical amount of aether (like, the Mothercrystal's worth) you'd just get a wimpy simulacrum anyway.

I kind of doubt we're not going to still be running into primals in regions we haven't explored yet like Meracydia and the New World.

The Ascians were spreading the knowledge of summoning everywhere simply so they'd have more potential fuel for calamities if needed (Which worked out very well in Bahamut's case), though Aldenard seems to have been their focal point.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

I kind of doubt we're not going to still be running into primals in regions we haven't explored yet like Meracydia and the New World.

The Ascians were spreading the knowledge of summoning everywhere simply so they'd have more potential fuel for calamities if needed (Which worked out very well in Bahamut's case), though Aldenard seems to have been their focal point.

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Idr which but some of the summoners who were trapped with the Warring Triad were from Mericidia, tho think they also called them now extinct, but that dose show that the Ascians were hitting there too with primals even back in the time of Allag

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Originally Posted by Baxcel

Idr which but some of the summoners who were trapped with the Warring Triad were from Mericidia, tho think they also called them now extinct, but that dose show that the Ascians were hitting there too with primals even back in the time of Allag

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All three of the Warring Triad were Meracydian gods, actually. As was Bahamut, because remember that the dragons were in Meracydia at the time too.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

That isn't how summoning works, at least by our current understanding. Each time a primal is summoned, it is created anew by the summoners based on their concept of the entity they are summoning.

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+1 this; I believe we see this in Titan's summoning when Ga bu's rage at the loss of his parents influences the version of Titan we fight in his storyline (Titan has spoken lines that are what Ga Bu would be screaming).

This is not to say there isn't some residual memory between summons though (we don't know about this). The only thing I can point to a short couple of lines between Garuda and Susanoo that suggests Garuda is doing what is asked of her begrudgingly. There is nothing to explain why she might feel this way.

My personal opinion is the primals will probably still exist in the storyline, even if they're not quite the same world-ending threats that they used to be. The knowledge on how to summon them is still out there, and while the issues with Eorzea and their beast tribes are settled for the moment, the game's pretty clear on the idea that people fall back into despair, cruelty, and fanaticism eventually. It is worth noting that the presence of the scales means that any Scions or future party members could join us in fighting them now, meaning they can be relegated to dungeon bosses rather than full Trials. Even if we go to the New World or Meracydia we could have primals to slay.

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Originally Posted by Cilia

The introduction of the porxies (to cure tempering), warding scales (to prevent tempering), teaching the Eorzean beast tribes (and Kojin) proper creation magics to call forth their deities instead of the corrupted summoning arts taught by the Ascians (so they don't want to temper in the first place), and improving relationships with said beast tribes so they're not openly antagonistic anymore (so summons are far less frequent to never) basically tells us they are done with primals as a big antagonistic force.

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If I recall correctly the Loporrits did the actual creating, the beast tribes provided the templates and the aether.

We've never seen any of the modern races use proper creation magic, it comes across more like a lack of ability than a lack of training. Like creation magic is to us what regular magic is to the Garleans, it doesn't matter how long you spend with Gaius teaching him to cast Cure I or Fire I or whatever, he simply cannot do it.

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Originally Posted by AnimaAnimus

Not sure if this is a plot hole or not or if I just have my lore mixed up but...

What prevents anyone from taking the form of a primal, like Shiva, and then just tempering everyone? Hydi is gone and with her the blessing of light that shielded us from tempering. Even if we still have it, anyone from here on out will not, allowing anyone crazy enough to just become a god. Yes there are the amulets now, but I don't they are perfect and tempering may still be doable with a bit of study. Anything you can make you can unmake and a shield is no different.

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I dont think shiva ever actually tempered anyone. She actually used the same kind of transformation the Ascians used, like elidibus being the OG warrior of light or Hermes with with dungeon boss form. Yasyle secretly mastered this power before the devs wrote / revealed this plot power to us. The only difference is she needed to get the power externally which limited her , as opposed to the asians who have tons of aether and creation magics.

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Originally Posted by Blindheart

I dont think shiva ever actually tempered anyone. She actually used the same kind of transformation the Ascians used, like elidibus being the OG warrior of light or Hermes with with dungeon boss form. Yasyle secretly mastered this power before the devs wrote / revealed this plot power to us. The only difference is she needed to get the power externally which limited her , as opposed to the asians who have tons of aether and creation magics.

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The script in post-ARR (and possibly still into Heavensward) definitely pointed towards her "heretics" behaving in a similar way to the tempered thralls of the other primals, which IIRC was what tipped us off to it being something particularly concerning in the first place.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

The script in post-ARR (and possibly still into Heavensward) definitely pointed towards her "heretics" behaving in a similar way to the tempered thralls of the other primals, which IIRC was what tipped us off to it being something particularly concerning in the first place.

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But the script of the Firmament confirms that even the most far-gone were apparently lucid, so apparently not.

I think they were 'just' zealots. If tempering turns people into zealots, what's the difference between a tempered one and a regular one?