The True Nature of The Echo

[Skyhound]

I thought I posted early but I guess I didn't. There is a huge misconception that tempering leaves you brainless. It doesn't, as some tempered beings seem to be left with perfectly fine mental capacities. It's possible that there are varying degrees of tempering, not unlike the Echo.(Hmm)

Also, this is a stretch on my part but I don't believe the player has their free will. It seems more like an illusion of free will to me. If the Echo can be stronger or weaker depending on the person, then it's possible that the merchant using the Echo for personal gain just has more of his free will than the Adventurer. Again, just like how some tempered individuals are less brain dead than others.

[aisthesis]

This should be obvious, but wouldn't the merchant and the Leveilleur siblings have, I don't know, actually noticed that?

If memories of the existence of the Warriors of Light can be erased by whoever it was that erased them, couldn't the memories of the embarking and travel be just as easily be implanted on the Leveilleur siblings and the merchant? I think Mjollnir's theory is actually pretty strong, and what I understood from their post is that maybe the Leveilleurs actually knew a new being was going to be beamed at some place and were there with their helpers, the merchant and his brothers to meet this new being and see them to safety. The questions, the nebulous backstory was actually to make the new being more comfortable about their existence rather than hit them with a "hey, you were just born! here's what you need to know and your weapon, go kill iffy, m'kay!"

[PArcher]

I personally think that you were "born" in that carriage...but not in the sense that you suddenly popped into existence right then and there.

Remember the Ascian Emissary's (I can't spell his name) words, saying something like "When you master the Echo, you'll want to join us?" and him suggesting that we're not so different?

What if we're aetheric beings, just using the body we inhabit to further the Mothercrystals goals? Kinda like how the Ascian warriors inhabit other people's bodies to work in this world...that in the carriage, we're "awoken" into that body?
Perhaps the twins and merchant were sent by the Mothercrystal to ensure things went as planned, to make sure you are fine? That they were traveling/escorting with the person (more of a shell when you think of it, really...) before your "awakening" and knew this would happen?

I'm trying to make sense of the scene before the carriage; you're supposed to be woken to the Echo with the Starshower scene...and yet, you hear the Crystal and bathe in her light before that...What if that scene really happened (wasn't just a dream), and that "fight" with Lahabrea resulted in you "waking up" in the carriage?

And now for a crazy thing I just thought of...what if you lost that "fight", and were thrown into the carriage because of it (perhaps "saved" by the Crystal from him by inhabiting that body)? You're a rogue Ascean maybe, defecting to the Mothercrystal, and he was trying to punish you before you could do anything? That the Crystal had a contingency for your "survival" and Her plans and this is it? And now I'm thinking of more crazy theories that don't hold water lol.

[Kyan]

I thought I posted early but I guess I didn't. There is a huge misconception that tempering leaves you brainless. It doesn't, as some tempered beings seem to be left with perfectly fine mental capacities. It's possible that there are varying degrees of tempering, not unlike the Echo.(Hmm).

If that was aimed at me with my comment about sahagain and kobolds, I just want to state that I completely agree with what you're saying and this has always been my observation too. Look at those cunning tempered Ala Mhigan spies, for example. It is also stated in the sahagain quests that drowned sailors are teaching the sahagain how to damage/infiltrate ships more easily.

I'm just observing that there is quite a different nature about the sahagain and kobolds (particularly kobolds) we are meeting through story, which to me implies that they may not be influenced by their deities as the touched sylph or tempered Amalj'aa are.

[aisthesis]

Truth be told, I do believe it is just a way the developers wrote the story to give the players freedom to come up wit their own back story, like Enkidoh proposes, but if Mjollnir's theory were to be true, it would have a lot of implication in the story. We could actually have been summoned from the aether just like King Mog, or a Primal.

[Apoptomon]

This may well have already been discussed in this thread (on this very page, even) but I want to take an opportunity to clarify some thoughts after finishing the 2.2 storyline:

Elidibus claimed that Ascians / people with his version of the 'Echo' can't be killed, only recycled (a la Lahabrea) and the Sahagin priest did transcend to an aetheric being, allowing for Ascian-style(?) bodysurfing, but being aether Leviathan used him as fuel, just as Garuda would have loved to. Then Minfilia disclosed that mankind had a similar legend of people being 'recycled' at times of crisis (Who? The Scions? All echo people? The Warriors of Light?) This then had me wondering about the PC. Do the Teleport/Return spells work similarly? Ascians can teleport too, but where their animation is more going into/out of the Void, for the Player Character is it more like transcending to an aetheric existence in the lifestream, then manifesting Summon-style(?) at a honking great crystal (Aetheryte) of your choosing?. As for the carriage scene at the start of the game... I had assumed that Hydaelyn worked similarly to tempering, but then I was thinking 'what if your character got 'bodysurfed' in order to manifest the Echo?'

That's all just wild speculation on my part, I was wondering what the learned scholars of the Lore section thought.

[Saikou]

Apoptomon, Minfilia was referring to The Archons. There is thought to be 1 Archon to represent each of the 12 Eorzean Gods, of whom Thancred, Y'shtola, Papalymo, Yda, Urianger, and Louisoix are thought to be members. The tattoos on the miqo from the CT story implies that he is also one. I've heard that others were met in 1.0, though I do not believe I got far enough or did the right quests to meet them. Am I right to have heard there was a Roegyden Archon? 2.2 makes an implication that not all Archons / Circle of Knowing members are Sharlayan, though up until that point we had been led to believe that all of them were.

[A_Magical_Unicorn_Rider]

What if…

Bahamut actually DID destroy the world and all our adventuring and such is just a kind of purgatory we're stuck in until we accept that we all died? Think about it; why is it that no one can ever remember the Heroes of Light? Why is it that people can't seem to remember a lot about before the Calamity? Sure, there's some lore here and there that they remember, but it's usually routed in vaguery. Like Amdapor. I'm sure there's lot of history there, but there's never been a lot of information given about it.

[Melinia]

Do the Teleport/Return spells work similarly? Ascians can teleport too, but where their animation is more going into/out of the Void, for the Player Character is it more like transcending to an aetheric existence in the lifestream, then manifesting Summon-style(?) at a honking great crystal (Aetheryte) of your choosing?.

Ordinary people appear to be able to use the aetherite as well. While I don't recall any NPCs actually using them in-game as of yet, the head of your local adventurers guild explicitly directs you to attune yourself to the city's crystal. And the Ul'dah version of the quest even has a guard playing a practical joke on you when you do so (claiming that there's a 1,000,000 gil fee associated with attuning to it). The actions of the NPCs in question suggest that use of the aetherites for teleporting is fully understood, and not limited to a select group of people.

[Orophin]

Am I right to have heard there was a Roegyden Archon? 2.2 makes an implication that not all Archons / Circle of Knowing members are Sharlayan, though up until that point we had been led to believe that all of them were.

Some claim the Roegadyn standing at the top of the inn in Fallgourd Floats saying "Master..." is part of the Circle, but a Roegadyn Archon was never shown in 1.0 so it's speculation at best.