Quote Originally Posted by Anonymoose View Post
Yes, it turns out that the Ascians are the paragons. Specifically, it seems that low-level ascians were dispatched to teach the beast tribes to summon primals in defense of their lands, as the Empire was soon to invade, knowing that this would antagonize the Empire further, leading to a feedback loop whereby the constant summoning would destabilize the aether of the realm and lead to the fall of the era through which they could resurrect their god.
This is an ARR revelation, although it does bear out what we saw pre-Calamity.

It's important to remember the original development team had story plans. Ones that involved further explaining primals, starting with Titan, and getting into the bigger threats. But then the game systems fell on their face, the development leadership changed, and the new producer (Yoshi-P) asked the writers to accomodate a rebuild of the game by doing something like dropping a moon on the landscape. They obliged.