Do the twelve even exist? [spoilers]

[Heliantheae]

Going through the MSQ, around the fight with Laksmi, Lyse asks about our fates and the twelve. And during the DRK questline a similar question was asked. And both times I picked the "no gods, only men" answer. And both times the response was along the lines of where are they or why they would let this happen.

So I was thinking if Halone or Thaliak or whoever, ever got off their fat asses and came to help; I'd tell them to bugger off, we've got this. Might even deck them for good measure. If they even exist in the first place.

[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.)

[TinyRedLeaf]

I very much appreciate the way faith and religion are handled in this game.

To be sure, the Final Fantasy series has usually taken a sceptical — if not outright cynical — approach towards religion, which is almost always portrayed as a power-hungry organisation used by the clergy to manipulate the masses. This was especially the case in say, Final Fantasy XII,Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy Tactics.

The matters of gods, primals and eikons in this game, on the other hand, underscore the deeper reasons for why faith and religion continue to persist not just in Eorzea, but also in the real world. Our world.

All people need to believe in something. In our own, modern times, belief in abstract ideology has come to dominate much of the political dialogue on a whole range of socio-cultural issues. But, even so, religion continues to hold tremendous moral sway.

It's become a reflex action among many in the West to have a low opinion of religion — not unlike how Garleans regard gods-worshipping peoples as backward savages — but, the truth is, it's not necessarily regressive to believe in gods and the divine.

Rather, it's about understanding that it's different strokes for different people. For some people, abstract ideas are enough to motivate them. But for many others, they need something more "concrete" they can relate to on a personal level, and who can give them an affirmative direction to follow.

Without being too overly flippant, consider how masses of people become besotted with celebrity singers, actors and athletes, and unwittingly take these individuals as role models, no matter how flawed their behaviour and personal lives. You'll then better understand what I mean by the need for people to have "concrete" idols they can readily emulate.

==========

To bring this all back to the topic in question: Do the Twelve exist? Well, they haven't manifested themselves the way primals and eikons have, and yet we generally accept that primals and eikons, despite being powerful entities, are all false gods.

So, what are the Twelve? They're the embodiment of the 12 universal virtues and ideas that all Eorzeans seem to hold dear, and in common across the realm.

In that sense, then, the Twelve exist. Not as physical realities like the primals, but certainly as ideas that very much rule the lives of men and women across Eorzea.

[YianKutku]

As always, I will keep bringing up the lorebook's account of the Third Umbral Calamity, which names the "gods" as the instigators of the Calamity of Fire, presumably to "punish" the hubris of mortals waging war in their name.

Which is unusual, because apart from the First and Fifth Calamities, which we know nothing about, the Third is the only one that doesn't seem to be directly caused by the people of Hydaelyn (with the Second Calamity arguably being a consequence of human-caused environmental and climate change). We'll put aside the question of how much responsibility Hydaelyn's inhabitants bear for each Calamity, compared to the Ascians and their Ardours.

And apart from the Seventh Calamity, which I'll get to in a moment, this is the only time the "gods", in whatever form, have been said to intervene that directly in the affairs of men. So there's either the question of why the Second Astral Era was so far beyond the pale that the gods would see fit to end it while essentially ignoring most of the others, or the question of why in-universe historians attribute the Third Calamity to the gods but not any of the others.

Then we come to the Seventh Umbral Calamity, where Louisoix channels the prayers and faith of Eorzeans in an attempt to re-seal Bahamut. Here, it is unclear whether Louisoix is borrowing the power of the Twelve, or just borrowing the power of the faith in the Twelve that Eorzeans have. I think there is an implication that it is the latter, since by all accounts the ritual to bind Bahamut failed because Louisoix was too cautious to call on the Twelve's full power, and thus create Primal versions of the Twelve.

To be fair, it was only during 2.1 and King Moggle Mog's summoning that the Scions began to suspect that the Primals being summoned were not the actual gods of the beast tribes, and during Heavensward with Shiva that it was confirmed that Primals had nothing to do with the being they were summoned as. So perhaps to Louisoix, the power of the Twelve and the belief of the power of the Twelve are one and the same.

So where does that leave us? Personally, I would say it is both fairly unlikely that the Twelve exist as actual gods (as opposed to misunderstood myths), and also that their existence or otherwise is irrelevant. It is far more likely that any of the Twelve we will ever meet will be Primal versions, with as much relation to the originals as the Bismarck we fight in Heavensward has to the White god of the Vanu Vanu.

Having said all that, if the Twelve do exist and we do get to meet them, I will most likely have words with Byregot, including the words "you", "utter", and "bastard", in that order. So many 90+ percent chances to HQ craft failed...

[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

[FJerome]

So, what are the Twelve? They're the embodiment of the 12 universal virtues and ideas that all Eorzeans seem to hold dear, and in common across the realm.

In that sense, then, the Twelve exist. Not as physical realities like the primals, but certainly as ideas that very much rule the lives of men and women across Eorzea.

And then we get to Othard and there is no trace of Twelve Worship whatsoever. (Actually, given the historical parallels between Nagasaki and Kugane, I wonder if there's any Ishgardian Missionaries kicking about hoping to spread the Word of Halone.)

[Akonyl]

I very much appreciate the way faith and religion are handled in this game.

To be sure, the Final Fantasy series has usually taken a sceptical — if not outright cynical — approach towards religion, which is almost always portrayed as a power-hungry organisation used by the clergy to manipulate the masses. This was especially the case in say, Final Fantasy XII,Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy Tactics.

The matters of gods, primals and eikons in this game, on the other hand, underscore the deeper reasons for why faith and religion continue to persist not just in Eorzea, but also in the real world. Our world.

To this point though, most JRPGs even where they have the token Evil Church still have a "true" or more benign version of religion, beyond what the church has corrupted it to be for its own purposes, it's just generally in the form of less organized religion+personal spirituality. It's less cynicism about religion/gods themselves and more cynicism about organized religion, which XIV really isn't free from either, since we had an entire expansion that was about thwarting the lies of an evil church (even if their lies about the gods themselves weren't what made them evil rather than their manipulation of history).

[dynus]

To this point though, most JRPGs even where they have the token Evil Church still have a "true" or more benign version of religion, beyond what the church has corrupted it to be for its own purposes, it's just generally in the form of less organized religion+personal spirituality. It's less cynicism about religion/gods themselves and more cynicism about organized religion, which XIV really isn't free from either, since we had an entire expansion that was about thwarting the lies of an evil church (even if their lies about the gods themselves weren't what made them evil rather than their manipulation of history).

At the risk of over generalization, I think this is probably Japan's general feeling about religion. Shintoism, Japan's native religion can be a very personal one. Worship is different all over Japan. There is the State Shinto but as a whole, it's far less organized than Christianity.