Quote Originally Posted by lololink View Post
Not really, an Egi doesn't have the soul of the Primal, if we could just summon Primals as Egi there couldn't be two of the same egi and beastmen wouldn't be able to summon them again since they are already summoned by the player.
We don't actually have conclusive proof that a primal cannot be summoned multiple times at once... If we take the whole concept of King Moggle Mog for example, since he is just a myth made manifest through belief there had to be some point that he was simply created from nothing. There was no 'soul' in the aetherial stream to summon. To be honest we don't even know if the primals have persistent souls and memories between summonings. If Garuda were summoned by a group of Ixal, and then another group of Ixal tried to summon Garuda in a different location, unaware that others had summoned her, there is nothing in the lore so far to suggest they would be unable to do so.

The reason we can control the egis is because we only draw on a small amount of the primal's aether. It is the concentration of aether that gives the primal its personality as evidenced by the fact that garuda was noted to become more and more sadistically destructive each time she was summoned with more crystals. By summoning an egi with a far smaller amount of aether we stop their personality from becoming strong enough to escape our control. This is why we have to defeat the egi the first time we summon it, so as to learn how to dominate it and bend it to our will. The fact it turns on us that first time is proof enough that even the egis do have some degree of awareness.

There is no sudden point at which a primal switches from egi to full primal. It's more of a sliding scale. The more aether is used to summon it the more distinct an appearance it takes on and the stronger its will and personality. This is why the egis look like they're made from crystal; because they are just condensed elemental aether like aspected elemental crystals but there isn't enough of that aether to take on a complex form. A summoner would not be able to summon a full primal because a single summoner would not be able to control it; it would turn on them straight away assuming they had enough aether on hand to summon one that strong. The egi is the limit of what we can control at present because the mind of the egi is just barely weak enough for us to dominate.