Revelations from the Shadowbringers E3 Trailer

[EdwinLi]

The easy story is that a pre-Sundering society worshiped a Mother Earth equivalent, a being that encompassed the planet itself. Their belief engendered a primal that believed itself to thus be the planet's will incarnate.

I always have this one question that linger in my head about what the world was like before Hydaelyn and Zodiark was formed and now we know they are Primals, the question is even bigger.

Was the world more similar to our "Earth" where magic did not exist and society depended only on Technology? What drove people to create the concept of hydaelyn, Zodiark, and the being they become once fused? Was Magic some by product of Hydaelyn and Zodiark creation or something else? Are they going to pull one of those LN/Manga/Anime plots where they reveal that this world of FF14 is actually Earth itself but so far into the future that it is unrecongizable and our soul is us the players that has taken the form of our characters because of a calamity that lead to the creation of the being that Hydaelyn and Zodiark will be if they fuse?

[Kusanagi7]

if true they are primals
we are tempered by hydaelyn ass ifrit pointed out
we are primal slayers

that sound about right?

[JeanneOrnitier]

I always have this one question that linger in my head about what the world was like before Hydaelyn and Zodiark was formed and now we know they are Primals, the question is even bigger.

Was the world more similar to our "Earth" where magic did not exist and society depended only on Technology? What drove people to create the concept of hydaelyn, Zodiark, and the being they become once fused? Was Magic some by product of Hydaelyn and Zodiark creation or something else? Are they going to pull one of those LN/Manga/Anime plots where they reveal that this world of FF14 is actually Earth itself but so far into the future that it is unrecongizable and our soul is us the players that has taken the form of our characters because of a calamity that lead to the creation of the being that Hydaelyn and Zodiark will be if they fuse?

Well I would think magic had to exist before them in order for a primal to be summoned in the first place. And aether isn't something tied to the planet, since Midgardsormr and Omega are aliens and use aether, so it's not like Hydaelyn and Zodiark would have created aether.

[Cilia]

Maybe. Though I can’t help but think the Ascians would struggle to even spell “collateral damage.”

And I can’t help but think if I was dealing with a harmful parasite, the last thing I would want to do is make it stronger and harder to kill.

In the very beginning (or, well, close to the beginning), Lahabrea commented that Hydaelyn was indeed a "parasite" responsible for "aetheric disturbances [threatening] to warp aetheric and natural law beyond all recognition," and that She needed to be "burned out if the planet is to recover."

While it's easy to forget this and/or dismiss it as bunk... if Solus speaks truth, it's been there from the very beginning, up with Ifrit's comment that he couldn't temper us because "[our] soul had already been claimed by another." (Of course, given Hydaelyn hasn't used her claim on our soul to compel us to actually do anything, it feels more like an inoculation against other primal influences.)

So. F/GO Babylonia-style rebellion against Mom incoming? And we still don't know why the Ascians serve Zodiark and consider him the "one true god," if he too is a primal like Hydaelyn...

[EdwinLi]

Well I would think magic had to exist before them in order for a primal to be summoned in the first place. And aether isn't something tied to the planet, since Midgardsormr and Omega are aliens and use aether, so it's not like Hydaelyn and Zodiark would have created aether.

but what if Aether was never part of the world and it was only brought her by something.

We know all souls return to the Aether after death for a cycle or rebirth but what if the Aether was created because something came and made it by consuming the Souls of the World (with us included) and created the Aether?

The trailer revealed the Sin Eaters are born by consuming and using the Aether of living people because it is the strongest and purest form of Aether energy. What if this is how the Aether of the world was created by a being (presumed to be what Zodiark and Hydaelyn was once was when fused) that consumed all the souls in the world.

[RenewalXVII]

I always have this one question that linger in my head about what the world was like before Hydaelyn and Zodiark was formed and now we know they are Primals, the question is even bigger.

Was the world more similar to our "Earth" where magic did not exist and society depended only on Technology? What drove people to create the concept of hydaelyn, Zodiark, and the being they become once fused? Was Magic some by product of Hydaelyn and Zodiark creation or something else? Are they going to pull one of those LN/Manga/Anime plots where they reveal that this world of FF14 is actually Earth itself but so far into the future that it is unrecongizable and our soul is us the players that has taken the form of our characters because of a calamity that lead to the creation of the being that Hydaelyn and Zodiark will be if they fuse?

Note that as far as is understood, aether is the fundamental building block of the universe, not atoms. The world is fundamentally and physically different from ours. It would require an unimaginable change to make our world into the world of FFXIV.

[RyuDragnier]

And we still don't know why the Ascians serve Zodiark and consider him the "one true god," if he too is a primal like Hydaelyn...

Maybe he's the original personality and voice of their combined form?

[Eloah]

On an unrelated note, Crystal Arm guy is a BLM trust

Where did you see this? Also is it who we think it is?

[Addicted]

The Elemental iconography is interesting. I don't really know anything about Elementals. Are they completely independent from Hydaelyn and thus could actually predate her? Maybe she's not a pure primal but rather a hybrid.
If I had to wildly speculate with my very lacking lore knowledge, I'd say Ascian society, which was a pre-split civilization, created Hydaelyn/Zodiark, maybe as a method to govern the laws of the aetherial sea and transcend death, much like what they can already do and what the Echo allows. Regardless of what it was, they had an end goal that needed a being greater than themselves. Hydaelyn however, like Alexander, didn't agree with whatever her creator's endgame was and rebelled, setting the current events in motion.

[Naria]

So existential questions about Zodiark and Hydaelyn are all well and good but on second viewing this is my favorite revelation from the E3 launch trailer.