SHADOWBRINGERS

[Dualgunner]

That admittedly makes more sense if you, like me, believe the WoL soaks up the people's faith in them. By the time we fought Zenos again in Yanxia, we had already rallied initial support from Gyr Abania, the Confederacy, the Kojin of the Blue, and began making progress in Yanxia. By the time we fought him - both in human form and Primal form - in Ala Mhigo, we had become rulers of the Steppe, and heroes of Doma.
It's more conjecture, I agree. But there are lot of story-elements that line up too nicely for me to think it's simply circumstance. And if it were, like you mentioned elsewhere in your post, it would just be lucky bad writing.

I've toyed with the idea that the WoL is a primal, or a primal-like entity that gains power with faith. Certainly speaking, if our WoL ever dies, a good question is how long until Eorzea summons a WoL-Primal, because of how much faith they have in us lol. I would sooner believe in that than defeating a primal granting us power for a few reasons, I'll go over my biggest problem soon.

2. You're making an assumption there about how much our power increases with every defeated Primal which the story might not necessarily share.

Answering this one first because it interests me the most.

Yeah, it's a pretty big assumption on my part. I'm a very...quantitative person, the kind that found power levels in DBZ to be an interesting concept. That's why my instinct is to try to quantify how much, if at all, defeating a primal powers us up. With the info we have now, I think the simplest solution is they don't make us any stronger--in addition to defeating Lakshmi and Susano, we did also gain 10 levels and experience 5 new job quests worth of training, and I'm more given to believe that the training inferred in those quests is a large part of how we grew to match Zenos.

Assuming, though, for the sake of argument, that they do (and you'll indulge me):

How much stronger do they make us? Is it a uniform power increase, as in defeating any primal from Ifrit to Tsukuyomi gives us 100 cheerios? Is it based on the relative power of the primal we defeat, in which case would Bahamut Prime have given us 1,000 cheerios compared to Garuda who only gives 100? Is it percentage based on our current power level, in which case if I had 1,000 cheerios when I defeated Ifrit, I gained 100 cheerios, but since I had 10,000 cheerios when I defeated Susano, I got 1,000 cheerios? Is it an exponential gain?

Over the course of our adventure, we've defeated Ifrit three times, Titan four times, Garuda four times, Leviathan twice, Ramuh twice, Moogle Mog twice, Shiva twice (since EX modes in ARR aren't Minstrel's Ballads), (weakened) Odin, (weakened) Bahamut, Ravana, Bismarck, the (weakened) Warring Triad, (weakened?) Alexander, and Thordan...maybe more, I'm not actively checking. That's a lot of primals, and depending on how my question is answered, that will reflect how...odd it is to say adding just two more to our pile of Primal kills would suddenly bring us from "Unable to touch Zenos" to "Matching Zenos blow for blow" to "Trouncing Zenoshinryu".

Not to mention that the biggest foil to this theory is the blatant Worfing of the WoL regarding Zenos. We went from matching the entire Knights of the Round, surpassing them so hard that Thordan had to ask "WHAT are you?!" to getting roflstomped by Garlean Deathstroke. Post Thordan? You'd have had my attention with this. Ironically where Zenos convinced you that Primal kills and faith powered us, Zenos was what broke me of that theory.

1. Those are all optional Primals. I agree with what you're saying but at the same time...

3. the pure story iterations of those fights always have a "fight them before they reach max power" elements. You intentionally released the Warring Triads from imprisonment so you could control when you fought them, instead of having to face them when they broke free and gained full strength - that's why you even have the Extreme versions of that fight in the first place. IIRC Odin you fight just as he manifested again, before managing to drink too much from the Shroud's aether. and I remember something similar for Bahamut as well, once you find him.

This is all fair, and I cede that they were weakened versions of themselves. I suppose the interesting thing to chew on would be "Does that matter?" They're still technically composed of the same levels of aether.

That actually lines up with the trials we got in SB. Susano's summoning was a mistake, brought about by our infiltration of the vault and the Red's panic. To our knowledge, the Ascians weren't involved and there was momentary confusion about whether or not the thing was even a Primal because of where it came from. And Lakshmi was summoned in a surge of grief, seemingly unintentional. It's not coerced and planned like the other Primals we fought, so maybe they did stop inciting summonings.

It was as far back as 3.0's end we'd have to track this though: that's when Elidibus summoned WoD because he needed to apply a balance patch to Hydaelyn. Which he then went on to have us (he directed Unukalhai to us, not the WoD) defeat the Warring Triad, while all we've seen is the WoD go on to summon and defeat Ravana, and then try to repeat this with Garuda, Titan, and Ifrit. Wouldn't the Triad be a lot more Cocoa Puffs to put in Zodiark's basket, but instead he has the WoL go beat them up?

Then we have Tsukuyomi which was part of a grander scheme and a direct attempt at the WoL's life, and the rest of it aren't even Primals, they're... forgot the term but they're basically mythical beasts. SB really moved away from the old-school sort of trial bosses. Granted next expansion might double down on it, but we'll see.

I must have missed where Tsukuyomi was an assassination attempt on the WoL--in fact, the outcome of the fight surprised nobody iirc. Asahi even admitted "Tis true that a gaudy mirror and a handful of crystals make for a feeble summoning." https://youtu.be/EzUZjiM5qe4?t=950

Besides the "direct attempt" part, I completely agree here.

That I believe in. Most of our fights were always one-on-one or very limited raids with assistance. If they brought down the might of the empire? Yeah, we're goners.

I have no doubt we'd be crushed by a whole army. I actually just wanted to highlight that Elidibus as Zenos is confident he alone could take us--and kill us, at least that's my inference. Neither he, nor assumedly Solus, see us as unstoppable by any means.

The problem with that is that they're so very likely to be tempered on the way, which is why they don't go with us normally, and needed protection from WoL, Arenvald and Fordola all together in 4.1. It's not a reliable strategy.

Protection from the WoL was fine for a while. When the civilians were all evacuated, and it was just WoL, Arenvald, Raubahn, Lyse, and Fordola left, Raubahn and Lyse didn't seem the most worried about tempering; when there were dozens of innocent noncombatants nearby it was a trial though.

We already have examples of what happened if the balance was tipped too much in the favor of one or the other. It wasn't Calamities, it was the world being nigh unsalvagable - The Void is the way it is because the Ascian we killed along in ARF was too strong for that world's WoL. The First was wiped out because the WoD, then that world's WoLs, were too strong. Calamities seem to be horrible, unimaginable disasters more so than necessarily any one side becoming too strong. Look at the war of the magi and the resulting flood - it had less to do with Light or Darkness.

I recall reading somewhere on the Lore forum that things might be different for our world because we're the Source world--we're not a shard that's really only a reflection of the Source. That's why calamities happen here, to weaken the separation between the Source and the shard world when the shard is merged back into the source. That said, I cannot properly cite this, and can only put the idea out there.

o7 All good. Honestly I'm not sure how much we can really resolve here given there's so much we just don't know. All we can do is toy with what partial details we have on-hand at the moment, which like you said, can be taken this way or that.

It's definitely a fun conversation. I'm no expert on the lore though, and if anyone can correct me on things, I fully welcome it.