The Perception of Summoners and Their Story Moving Forward

[TinyRedLeaf]

Thanks for creating this thread!

As someone who chose to play as a summoner from the get-go, and who stuck with the job through thick and thin, I've developed a very strong emotional bond with its lore, and how it relates to my character, Lyland.

Lyland's time as a summoner, as I imagine it, has long since deviated from the way it's been narrated in the main- and job-storylines.

As such, the way I've rationalised some of the very pertinent questions you raised will not be officially lore-compliant. But perhaps it may help inspire you to come up with your own role-playing answers to your queries. I'll hide the account between spoiler tags, though, as this is just my personal head-canon and so it doesn't actually belong in the lore forum (I wish we had an official roleplay subforum!).

To begin with, as you've noted, the primals are a "negative" force. Moreover, from the time Lyland defeated King Thordan, I've long pondered why the dying primal perceived the Warrior of Light as a shadowy, ominous presence.

This was when it struck me that, in the process of repeatedly "giving form" to the primal essences imprinted on his aether, Lyland may have unwittingly allowed the egi to deepen their taint on his life force. Recall that summoning is different from arcanima, in that an egi is summoned forth from the evoker's aether.

…you must focus. Visualise the aether flowing through you, a vibrant current of energy transforming into living fire. Hold this image in your mind, and the raging heat of your life force shall spawn an egi wreathed in flames!

Had Lyland not experimented with summoning, perhaps the taint on his life force would not have coalesced into the sentient beings that have to be forcibly tamed before they would accept an evoker's commands. The egi may obey him, but he can sense that they're constantly gnawing away at his consciousness, in a neverending attempt to reassert control.

Neither he nor Y'mhitra could have forseen what summoning truly entailed. Lyland was inspired by Y'mhitra's belief that resurrecting the ancient Allagan art might well give them "the power to bring this age of conflict to an end". He truly believed at the time that summoning would be a force for good.

But he later witnessed the horrors of what the Allag did with Bahamut, and experienced at first-hand the megalomania of the last Emperor, Xande. His belief in the Allag was thus shattered forever, redeemed only slightly by G'raha's sacrifice. The further horrors of Azys Lla only served to deepen his disillusionment with Allagan magic and technology.

By the time Y'mhitra related the doomed history of Allag's summoners, Lyland was already about to abandon the art. Unfortunately, although he had defeated Lahabrea in the aetherochemical facility, the Paragon's minions remained, and they remained determined as ever to provoke the beast tribes into ever more summonings.

Y'mhitra and Lyland were thus forced to tap the Dreadwyrm trance to permanently destroy the lesser Ascians. It was to be a pyhrric victory, however, because tapping Bahamut's latent aether had further worsened the primal taint on Lyland's soul. He could sense he was on the brink of falling into the madness that also claimed the ancient summoners of Allag.

The stop-gap solution came, ironically, from a return to arcanima. Thanks to Ardashir of Thavnair and Ulan of the Far East, Lyland was able to artificially create an entirely new class of arcane entity: the anima.

Housed in Lyland's newly designed relic, the anima now serves as a filter on his aether. It helps to regulate the primal taint on his life force, as he channels his aether through the relic to evoke his spells.

In the meantime, Y'mhitra has continued her research into a permanent solution to the primal crisis. There are no concrete solutions as yet but, intuitively, Lyland senses that it will require some means of pacifying the rage of the egi within him. Otherwise, the cycle of hatred and reprisal will only continue.

War is inevitable, yet it is war itself that frightens the beast tribes and spurs them into ever more primal summonings. And the more primals he slays, the more Lyland gets doused in their aether, and the harder he'll have to fight to maintain his aetherial integrity.

And that, as it stands, is Lyland's journey with summoning thus far. It's an unfinished story, and I'll have to wait and see how future developments in the official storyline influence the direction of his narrative.

The basic meta point is this, though: I would love it tremendously if the future storyline delves into the growing risks of containing so many arguably hostile egi within the evoker's aether.

It would be profound if Y'mhitra discovers that it wasn't just power that drove the ancient summoners astray, but also the primal taint of the egi themselves.

I think it would be incredible (and deliciously dark and gritty!) if the story explores the possibility of a summoner going insane with bloodlust and megalomania as he relies ever more heavily on his egi. Mortals are not meant to wield the power of gods, and there should be a price to pay that goes beyond just resisting the base temptations of sheer power.

Whelp, that's my wish for Stormblood and beyond, anyway.

[LineageRazor]

I think it would be incredible (and deliciously dark and gritty!) if the story explores the possibility of a summoner going insane with bloodlust and megalomania as he relies ever more heavily on his egi. Mortals are not meant to wield the power of gods, and there should be a price to pay that goes beyond just resisting the base temptations of sheer power.

This possibility reminds me a great deal of BLU's storyline in FFXI. Blue Mages were created using dark and ethically questionable techniques to allow them to absorb the essences of the monsters they slew, thereby gaining their powers. Eventually and seemingly inevitably, Blue Mages succumb to the fiends' essences within themselves and are twisted into horrifying monsters like Soulflayers and Flans.

Of course, player characters are an exception, and seem to be able to hold off the corruption indefinitely. This would likely be the case in this game, as well, if it is revealed that Summoners are subject to a "tainting" influence like the one you describe.

I'd feel badly for Y'mhitra if that was the case, though. So much for all her hard work!