I want to talk about tempering

[SynthielLyrin]

Incarnate summonings pose another little piece of weirdness: not!Zenos implies that (an Echo-less, as far as we know) summoner that brings a primal literally into themselves will be 'tempered', and yet Yotsuyu acts enough like herself in her dying hours. Then again, the other cases we've seen of this, two of them died shortly after forcefully unsummoning the primal (Thordan, Yotsuyu) and Ysayle had an Echo/Blessing of Light bonus as well (so, by how -those- work, Ysayle wouldn't have been tempered anyways)

the presence of a primal-sources signature forces the conformation of a weaker signature to it (cf. prion protein conformational changes). Personally, I subscribe more to the latter of these explanations since the Garlean Empire's experiments with creating Resonant individuals appear to work in this manner (with Krile supplying the signature and the sacrifices supplying the "strength level")

@Eisenhower I love this theory, and might as well go with this one too. I'd say that having the Echo does something -similar- to a Primal signature, in that it changes the signature enough to prevent anyone else from tempering/modifying aetheric signature again, but it lacks the whole "zealously devoted to the Primal and furthers its cause" shtick. Though I'd put the power differences between us and Arenvald more on us having another power-up on top of just the Echo, unless Hydaelyn also chose him in particular as champion and just didn't have enough MP herself to give him the strength too.

(... but then again, Ysayle. She had the exact same bonuses as we had, so who knows)

but that feels like a problem for future WoL.

l m a o yes it is and it will be. We start worrying about that again as soon as either Crystalmom speaks up on the matter, or we get our dynamic duo back from their trips into the other side with (bad) news.