I want to talk about tempering

[Keever]

Y'shtola still carries her aetherometer on her arm...


...and Thancred on his waist.

[Ilenya]

Okay, so I doublechecked, both of them had it when they teleported or whatever the skill was called. There's clearly more somewhere. Will they work with finding tempered or not? And how many do we have access to?

[TinyRedLeaf]

The aether goggles seem to be standard-issue equipment for Sharlayan Archons. Moenbryda had a pair, as did G'raha (they wore theirs around their necks). Krile has a pair, too, worn on her right arm, even though she doesn't seem to be an Archon, just a Student of Baldesion. So, I don't think they are particularly rare. As for whether they could be used to detect the tempered, no idea. No one seems to have thought to use the goggles that way, so maybe not? It could be that they only detect levels of ambient aether, but are not able to distinguish between normal and tainted aether.

[Okamimaru]

I figured it was something like a aetheric overload from a primal where the primal displaces a person's aether with its own... they worship the primal to keep it in the material world... that's what the primal wants.. they do its will because in a sense they are hosts for some of its aether... its will

[Eisenhower]

On the topic of tempering and removal of it, my understanding is as follows:

Aether in the XIV setting possess a lot of different properties, among which there is a sort of matter-energy/aether conversion and alteration as well as aether serving as the soul of living beings. This latter function hinges on the aether having a signature unique to the being it stems from - a signature I assume defines the identity/ego of the being. From the latest patch (but probably even earlier than that, my memory is just poor) we know that Sharlayan scholars consider aether to have a wave component.

From that, I suspect that tempering modulates the base aether signature of the target. This modulation is either a directed function that processes the target aether to a new form, or alternatively, 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"). Either way the new signature results in altered behaviour in the target. Since the mortal species (so far) show no inherent ability to safeguard or repair their own signatures, tempering is considered permanent.

Depending on how the aetheric signature is defined, it may be impossible to reverse the tempering effect. Although I suspect an inverse waveform (compared to original primal-derived waveform) could be used to return the signature to it's original state, it may be the case that aetheric signatures that comprise a soul aren't static in nature. The passage of time may naturally change a soul-signature in such a way that modulating in an "inverse" way have no effect, limited effect, or even cause further damage. As such, it may be necessary to generate an adapted modulating process that considers the natural changes in soul-signature aether to properly reverse tempering. But such calculations seem to be beyond the technological level of the XIV setting at the moment.

I don't think that the protection the WoL enjoys is tempering from Hydaelyn, though I recall some primals implying it being such. Rather, it may be a layer of interference that scrambles or "demotes" waveforms that originate from primals, rendering them harmless in terms of information but still being able to carry force (as shown by Arenvald was forced down but not the WoL when defending against Lakshmi). This can however be considered to be in contention with the fact that any being can only be tempered once. So it's clear that the tempering effect in itself confers some level of protection against further alteration.

Is it because we freely choose it, recognizing that her will is benevolent? Or is it because we're compelled to, because of the blessing?

Whether or not big crystal mom is lying or not, I don't find it that hard to imagine the WoL willing to defend their own world seeing how they're currently busy living in it. I can't recall it clearly, but I'm of the impression that the Ascians' plans would result it something akin to the heat death of the (XIV) universe. Besides, it really feels like WoL & Co. haven't been doing much world-scale defending as of late - not that I mind. Most of the adventures of late involve post-war cleanup in one sense or another. Sure there's an Ascian being all Silence of the Lambs over at Garlemald, but that feels like a problem for future WoL.

[Dualblade]

Ysayle is probably the biggest indicator that regardless of whether Hydaelyn's blessing counts as tempering we still have our free will because there is no way the Ascians would have been able to manipulate her into the whole Shiva deal if Hydaelyn had as much control over Ysayle as a normal primal has over their tempered. I'd also say the WoL having access to the DRK job is another one given we are using Hydaelyn's opposite element.

PLD WoL would be the most likely to be mind controllered temepered honestly.

As far as the Scion's aetherometer goes it should have already come up if it was able to tell if someone was tempered or not, more so since Y'shtola indicates that her own vision can do so. This also indicates that Y'shtola's new eyesight is better then the aetherometers but with the rather bad drawback of "My death will soon become plot relevent".

[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.

[ObsidianFire]

That theory fits in rather nicely with Summoner lore and the info the Lvl 70 job quest gave us about what happens with beings consisting of aether die on Hydaleyn. Apparently their aether dissipates out of their "body" and "gets stuck" in everything around them... including the other living beings around them. The Allagan summoners figured out that they could take the aether "stuck" in them from when they had been around the death of a eikons and make their own aether look like it outside of their bodies.

So with your theory, I'm guessing it would be that they figured out how to tell their own aether waveform apart from the other eikon waveforms "stuck" in them from when a primal was killed. And then they formulated the eikon waveform out of their own aether outside of their body (egi). Or if the waveform required too much of their own aether to safely do, they ignored the "outside of their body" part and cause their own aether to have the same wavefrom of the eikon (trance).

The kicker is that this isn't just limited to eikons. It can be done with any living thing you're personally around for the death of. It's just that the math for the aether signature (wavelength) of other non-eikon beings is so complicated, a supercomputer is needed to compute it to make an egi out of it. The aether signature (wavelength) of eikons are simpler, so a person can do the math required. Granted, you still have to be an Arcanist to do the required math...

On the subject of the Echo as a type of interference with a waveform... the Ascians all have the Echo. Given the kinds of things we see them do, I'd say they have the strongest waveform (can take over the wills of lesser beings) we've seen yet (polarization). We've also seen them intersect their souls with each other and become one being (constructive interference). I'd argue everything we see the WoL do is the opposite side of the same coin. We can't have our wills taken over (our will is stronger then everyone else's) and we slide into other people's souls on such a consistent basis, language barriers don't exist and we can see into people's pasts. We've got the potential to be able to do everything the Ascians do, we just choose not to.

Great... Now I want to go and come up with an aether equivalent of all the different wave properties I can think of (polarization, diffraction, constructive/destructive interference, absorption)...

[Brightamethyst]

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

Maybe. There are an awful lot of unknowns regarding the crystals and the blessing of light (and the echo.) Everyone else we've seen, from Ysayle to the warriors of darkness, only have one crystal each. We on the other hand have six of them (is that all of them? How many are there total?) That's probably why we're THE warrior of light instead of A warrior of light.

We also know that the echo has varying strength and not all echo wielders are the same. We assume that Ysayle was powerful, but really we're just guessing. We actually know very little about how it all works.

[Biridan]

...

Sure there's an Ascian being all Silence of the Lambs over at Garlemald, but that feels like a problem for future WoL.

Will we be dealing with this problem on Tech Island?