Revelations from Final Coil [SPOILERS]

[Anonymoose]

There's a lot of text that accompanies not only the cutscene, but the Coil quest that it interrupts, that makes a lot of this much, much more clear.

Few assumptions are needed, in the end.

The truth of the scenario is that The Twelve had appeared before Louisoix, calling him into another dimension. Recall that the swords the Archons summoned to imprison Bahamut had shattered. These were different; not only that, they were made of solid crystal identical in appearance to Hydaelyn.

So first point: The Twelve are real.

I don't want to say that's inaccurate, but I feel that it may be too concrete. If the prayers of those on the battlefield and Louisoix's desire for the realm to be reborn could twist the aether in a way that he was transformed into Phoenix, there's plenty of cause to believe that the Twelve were included in these prayers as well, most saliently in the form they just saw their power represented moments ago before Bahamut broke the spell. I still currently believe that there's some truth to the Twelve, but I've yet to see anything that externalizes them completely from the effects of prayer and aether. Again, your interpretation may be correct, but I'm hesitant to commit to a concrete explanation just yet.

I think it's fairly safe to assume that The Twelve gave Louisoix their aether and essentially turned him into a demi-god.

In Living on a Prayer Louisoix carved the symbols of the twelve around Eorzea where the gods "slumber" and had people make a pilgrimage to pray to them. This filled what was left of the aetheric streams of Eorzea with their prayers, and then he used a summoning ritual to combine the stream and prayers into The Twelve, the same as one might do for a primal. His plan was to die mid-cast to prevent their full summoning and thus prevent them from rising as primals. When he summoned them, the aether took the shape of Dalamud imprisoning Bahamut and returning to the skies, as the people prayed for.

Lou explains that when Bahamut broke this spell, all of the aether summoned was essentially free-floating in the air. All of that aether, combined with the desperate hopes of those on the battlefield and his own zealous wish that the land be reborn, is what transformed him into Phoenix. He doesn't confirm or deny that the Twelve were in any way involved, and doesn't bring them into the transformation in any way. Louisoix, by the power of aether and prayer, became a primal.

Perhaps the Twelve were involved, perhaps not, but, again, I wouldn't state it as concrete just yet. Perhaps this is how Garuda was made, as well, for instance. I once theorized that the Ixal's shape was her doing and Sashtasha HM confirms that it's possible, even if it's not confirmed true or false. Perhaps, given centuries, Louisoix would take on a more and more birdlike form with each summoning, and those who summoned him, repeatedly tempered over generations and generations, would take on a beastlike appearance of their own...

In the aftermath pure blue aether rains down on Eorzea (presumably from the Twelve and Louisoix) which explains how the land was able to recover so quickly from the devastation.

Louisoix was not tempered by bahamut, he took on no draconic features like Nael did

The Bahamut being summoned by the fragments of Dalamud (using the extracted prayers of all the Meracydian dragons in stasis pods around the Final Coil) was a new Bahamut.

Louisoix relinquished the power willfully. If I'm interpreting what he said correctly, believing Bahamut destroyed, he returned the aether to the land and prepared to dissipate with it, but he underestimated Bahamut's tenacity (again) and the remnants of the primal's being dragged his essence in and cut off the aether's return to the land, dramatically warping the restoration of Eorzea and leaving Bahamut's crystallized "heart" beneath the earth, acting as his "core" despite most of him being torn asunder. Most of Bahamut's form was in pieces, but the core survived and clung to the aether, sucking up all that it could and using some of it to resurrect tempered copies of Louisoix and Nael from their fallen essences. Nael's restoration was botched a bit - the form beneath the armor was not his own, he says, and may have been someone he was thinking of at the time of his death. This form them then became draconic as an extension of Bahamut's power. Louisoix, by contrast, was warped in a different way. He instead retained features of his briefly-primal form, Phoenix, that became evident when he engaged the party in battle.

Louisoix states very clearly, however, that he was in Bahamut's thrall and that Ali's conviction is what got through to him and helped him overcome it. He also reveals that Dalamud's technology was so advanced that, even broken, the pieces tunneled and burrowed to reconnect, restore themselves, and regenerate Bahamut. The whole point was to keep Bahamut (1) healthy and (2) powerless. Seeing as the only part of him that truly survived was his "heart," the internment hulks sought it out and began to restore him from it even though the rest of his form was still in pieces and never returned to the aether because he was never truly killed. The coils were also sustaining the immortality of the enslaved Meracydian dragons that kept Bahamut summoned, forever kept alive but tortured so that they'd call out to him, thus also filling him with their rage.

We have confirmation that Bahamut is the primal of the dragons. The Meracydians summoned him to defend against the Allagan invasion as per Louisoix's very own words.

I found this interesting since it implies that the Meracydians were dragons. I'd always assumed they were people, but perhaps not. Perhaps it was both, for that matter, who knows? Remember the Scourge of Meracydia from T5? We assumed that the dragons were enslaved and used against the nation... but to scourge can also mean to punish. Perhaps the Meracydians were dragons that were enslaved as punishment for their resistance to Allag's expansion.

So, Bahamut is at least the primal of the Meracydians. This might not be true for all of dragonkind as a whole, though. The wandering races have many different gods and many great ancestors, who's to say the Dravanians worship the same entity the Meracydians did? Perhaps the Dravanians remember the Meracydians and, though perhaps they do not worship Bahamut, they will not suffer the wandering races to exist, knowing what they're capable of and how flawed they truly are. I recall a certain bearded primal having similar doubts. Perhaps we'll need to prove our races' worth to the likes of Nidhogg, by the end. I assume he's one of the Kings we'll face in 3.0; SE's been alluding to his role in the Dragonsong War and the threat of his return for quite some time.