Somehting I noticed with the beastmen...

[Enkidoh]

Yeah, early on in the amalj'aa beastmen quests they specifically state that pretty much the members of the Brotherhood of Ash are the sole remaining members of their race not tempered who still hold onto their traditional warrior ways, and regard Ifrit as a fraud undeserving of worship, apart from that one hiding in the cave in the Burning Wall who is connected to the BLM quest line.

As for the sylphs, the tempered ones turning purple might be connected not so much to the tempering process, but the environmental changes they're wreaking on the Sylphlands (the whole area is now coated in a spooky purple mist, and giant crystal like structures hang above spouting out fluorescent-violet smog that the untempered sylphs in Little Solace say is corrupting and destroying the forest. Little wonder the tempered sylphs have also turned this shade. Thus it's likely the change in colour is not a result of tempering, but simply the result of their warped actions on the Black Shroud in Ramuh's name.

Or at least, that's what it seems to me.

[Mishini_Dracoto]

The entire Brotherhood of Ash storyline says otherwise. Likely Tempering is done ritualisticly, like a coming of age thing

Exactly this. Also, pay attention to the world mobs in the area.

tempered Gladiator, tempered orator, etc etc are all captives from Ala mihgo that were captured by the amal'jaa and tempered. There are FATEs tha the write up says the Amal'jaa are trying to capure people and you need to rescue them from the Amal'jaa. There's also the Storyline quest when you first meet Ifrit that has his followers blindly summoning Ifrit which is when we first learn what tempering is.

[FJerome]

Not saying you're wrong, I obviously need to go back and re-watch my cut-scenes, but those mobs you note are all non-Amal'jaa?

The pattern seems to be that with most of the Beast Tribes their members themselves don't need tempering because their Primal offers them something worthwhile to them in exchange for worship. Ifrit and Garuda both offer their beast tribes the thing they prize most, with the Amal'jaa that's strength. The human species don't have the same set of needs so they've got to be forced into the worship when the Primal has nothing to offer them.

That's probably how Leviathan got his cult of humans, because he actually does have something to offer them - ask a sailor in a storm if they'd pray to a distant goddess or a god they can see and Leviathan probably wins out over Llymlaen more than Limsans care to admit.

(Otherwise basically we've been abandoning Amal'jaa teenagers to be tempered? Brotherhood, you monsters!)

[PArcher]

The pattern seems to be that with most of the Beast Tribes their members themselves don't need tempering because their Primal offers them something worthwhile to them in exchange for worship. Ifrit and Garuda both offer their beast tribes the thing they prize most, with the Amal'jaa that's strength. The human species don't have the same set of needs so they've got to be forced into the worship when the Primal has nothing to offer them.

Only problem is the majority (3/5) of Primals have pretty much tempered all of their beastmen followers...

[Enkidoh]

Not saying you're wrong, I obviously need to go back and re-watch my cut-scenes, but those mobs you note are all non-Amal'jaa?

The pattern seems to be that with most of the Beast Tribes their members themselves don't need tempering because their Primal offers them something worthwhile to them in exchange for worship. Ifrit and Garuda both offer their beast tribes the thing they prize most, with the Amal'jaa that's strength. The human species don't have the same set of needs so they've got to be forced into the worship when the Primal has nothing to offer them.

That's probably how Leviathan got his cult of humans, because he actually does have something to offer them - ask a sailor in a storm if they'd pray to a distant goddess or a god they can see and Leviathan probably wins out over Llymlaen more than Limsans care to admit.

(Otherwise basically we've been abandoning Amal'jaa teenagers to be tempered? Brotherhood, you monsters!)

Like we said, the amalj'aa npcs of the Brotherhood of Ash specifically state the 'normal' amalj'aa are tempered, and have abandoned their traditional warrior ways of life to become mindless zealots of Ifrit, whom the Brotherhood regards as nothing but a sham religion undeserving of devotion, especially given their tendency to dominate the weak, where as the Brotherhood finds strength in challenging equally worth adversaries - picking on the helpless is disgusting to them. I'll dig out my screenshots and post the excerpt of dialogue from the amalj'aa quests which states this.

[LaurelinKementari]

Like we said, the amalj'aa npcs of the Brotherhood of Ash specifically state the 'normal' amalj'aa are tempered, and have abandoned their traditional warrior ways of life to become mindless zealots of Ifrit, whom the Brotherhood regards as nothing but a sham religion undeserving of devotion, especially given their tendency to dominate the weak, where as the Brotherhood finds strength in challenging equally worth adversaries - picking on the helpless is disgusting to them. I'll dig out my screenshots and post the excerpt of dialogue from the amalj'aa quests which states this.

I have to admit that there've been a few things that confused me about the whole state of the Amalj'aa race, as well as the Brotherhood of Ash. For example, we know that the Brotherhood of Ash does not worship Ifrit and that they consider the Amalj'aa who do to be weak. But if this is the case, why then, is Zan'rak (not sure about the spelling) still holy land to them? One of the daily quests of the Brotherhood specifically deals with us killing Bronze Tortoises and Lacovie to protect the Holy Land of Zan'rak. However, Zan'rak is considered Holy Land by the Amalj'aa because they consider it scorched and cleansed by Ifrit. If the Brotherhood does not worship Ifrit, then why is Zan'rak holy ground even to them? There is little to no evidence that the Brotherhood has a different religion they adhere to, so I can't see them considering it to be holy ground because of some other deity.

If I had to make a guess, I would say Zan'rak is holy land to them because their ancestors lived there, and the Brotherhood has great respect for their ancestors, but that's all it is: a guess. Perhaps I've missed a few details somewhere, but if someone could shed some light on this, I would appreciate it.

There's also the matter of tempering. To be frank, I always found the matter of "are the beast tribes tempered yes or no" to be very confusing and not very clear. Even if the Brotherhood outright says the other Amalj'aa are tempered, I'm still left feeling not entirely convinced, mainly due to what we see in the storyline. We've seen what happens when a Primal tempers people: they become mindless and slavishly devoted to their primal. We saw this when Ifrit tempered our companions in the Bowl of Embers. But if we look to the cutscenes during the Brotherhood storyline, especially the latter ones, the Amalj'aa there showcase very un-tempered behaviour. They are capable of rational thought and acting, even letting the player and Loonh Gah go at one point, instead of dragging them to the Bowl of Embers to be tempered. This, to me, seems to argue against the Amalj'aa being tempered. There's also the matter FJerome brought up about the young Amalj'aa who we spray with water during the daily quests, who wished to join the Brotherhood. If they had been tempered, why would they wish to join a faction that outright rejects their god? That makes no sense, unless it is a form of deception, but that would seem unusually coherent and sly behaviour for a tempered person.

Perhaps there are different levels of tempering, or tempering of beastmen is different from that of the five races, but I can't recall anything in the story that hints at this. The question also raises itself as to why Ifrit would have to temper his Amalj'aa worshippers when they already worship him of their own free will?

[axemtitanium]

It's been pretty clearly shown that there are different levels of tempering (compare Loonh Gah's mother vs. tempered Immortal Flames vs. Amal'jaa priests). Also, if nothing else, the enemy mobs called Tempered Sylphs should indicate to you that at least some beastmen are tempered.

[LaurelinKementari]

It's been pretty clearly shown that there are different levels of tempering (compare Loonh Gah's mother vs. tempered Immortal Flames vs. Amal'jaa priests). Also, if nothing else, the enemy mobs called Tempered Sylphs should indicate to you that at least some beastmen are tempered.

But even that raises questions. We know the Sylphs summoned Ramuh once during the 5 years from 1.x to ARR, and he tempered some Sylphs. Yet even when Ramuh was not present, the tempered Sylphs would still try and kidnap the ones from Little Solace to temper them. But how can they temper without their primal? I feel like I missed something.

[Terrini]

Maybe they can cause tempering of individuals without a full manifestation. One at a time is easy, but a full manifestation is needs a lot of crystals... plus it sounds like while a full summoning takes a lot, if the primal is not defeated there is definitely still a presence left to the followers, and there are so many tempering groups for Ifrit, they MUST have another means or they manage a lot of summoning. Plus it is indicated that primals can be summoned WITHOUT being violent. Leviathan is the only one that seems to have a penchant for it upon being summoned, but then again there is no way to have a peaceful encounter with Leviathan on the surface, so we'd never see that.

[Danbo05]

Its for Power Ranger purposes.

Spoilers