Do the twelve even exist? [spoilers]

[Anonymoose]

It's a mystery.

The Twelve have been worshipped for so long that the truth of what they are has been hopelessly lost to ages of mythology. The seeds of faith have been scattered so far that it's likely that Azeyma and Azim started as the same entity ... and look how different they are, today.

My biggest suspicions are that they were either divine creations that went awry before the First Umbral Era, or just mis-remembered heroes from the earliest eras (even today we tend to remember Echo-blessed heroes as incarnations of the twelve just to fit this narrative).

Religion is meant to be confusing.

But this all, of course, ignores one of the greatest truths of the divine: the more power and reach an entity has, the less likely it is to give a damn about mankind and its affairs.

Occam's Razor is not on the Twelve's side, but I hold a candle for them just for the fun of it. The Elementals claimed to hear Nophica. Ququruka claimed to hear Nald'thal. The narrator claims we've captured the attention of our city's patron. (And they could all be wrong.)

[Rannie]

It's a mystery./snip

To add onto that there was the whole covenant that was supposedly between Midgard and one of the twelve but was really one with Hydalean