[Spoilers] Is Hydaelyn a primal?

[Hash_Browns]

You mark spoil and you spoil in the title ...?
[Spoil] Hydaelyn
is enough

I feel the need to point out this isn't a ShB thread, and isn't even from this year.
You've been bamboozled.

The spoiler part comes from the spoilers in the OPs post about the story, not the speculation of if Hydaelyn is a primal.

[Seraphor]

You mark spoil and you spoil in the title ...?
[Spoil] Hydaelyn
is enough

It's a question, not a statement, and this topic was created OVER A YEAR AGO.

[ForteNightshade]

You mark spoil and you spoil in the title ...?
[Spoil] Hydaelyn
is enough

The OP made this thread over a year ago. I don't think they were spoiling the current trailer fifteen months before it released lol

[Fynlar]

OMG way to put the spoilers right in the topic --














Oh.

[Rowde]

Honestly I'd give either side a 50/50 chance at this point. My view right now is more that there are a lot of people in my FC and LS losing their minds over this, those who are excited and those who are devastated. People are taking the view primal == tempering. I merely wish to offer the view that that may not be the case. I've even offered up the idea that Hydaelyn might be a primal in the first as the real (non primal) Hydaelyn is completely restricted to the Source. Remember she sent Minfillia rather than going herself, maybe because she couldn't. The trailer is very ambiguous, and while that excites me with many possible angles for the story to take, others seem to have honed in on this one thing and that's it.

Could they pull a Bioshock, certainly. Do I think they will? Not so sure. If they do they might need a whole primer for those who have forgotten early story stuff or just completely skipped. Like I said earlier I give this one 50/50 to go either way.

Frankly the thing that is more interesting to me about this revelation is the idea that the sin eaters are basically executing people to steal their aether. Could it be that they are just mouths for Hydaelyn, since primals need aether and all.

I mean, they could go meta with it as to why 99% of the dialogue choices in this game lead to the exact same result regardless of which option was chosen by the player.

[Melichoir]

Well that trailer confirmed my thoughts on Hydaelyn and Zodiark back from HW. Only thing that would make sense ultimately based on what we know.

It also confirms what I was thinking bout too, not all primals are the same and come in 'tiers'.

Way I figured it was Primals that are more aspects of nature are the lowest tier (Garuda, Ifrit, Titan, etc). The way they temper is very straight forward and is by force. More advanced Primals are ones that take on a more developed persona and acquire there power through prayer (willfully given belief vs forced). This is like Shiva, Thordan, Phoenix, etc. That primal gets more powerful I guess to get more demi-godlike primals like Alexander and Bahamut - these are kind of world breaking Primals. Last step would be Hydaelyn/Zodiark, which Im guessing are Primals of Order/Chaos, Life/death, etc.

Whether were tempered or not isnt quite so straight forward - If teh echo (Blessing of Hydaleyn) is tempering, it would also mean you can remove tempering cause Middy does this to us. Im still more of the mindset that we arent tempered but are in some fashion a living primal. The blessing of Hydaelyn may just be feeding us the necessary aether to 'exist', but from a purely story aspect, it makes sense.

We show up from some 'undescript' point. We are unknown, mainly powerless, but have this 'gift'. As we adventure, our renown grows. We get stronger, our renown grows further. People begin seeing us as a savior and hero and subsequently 'pray' for our success. The cycle continues. As we grow stronger, we still need more and more aether. Perhaps the gift is providing us that Aether necessary, and were fueled on the prayers of the willing. We dont have to temper, but cant be tempered by other Primals (we assume this is the echo, but its stated at some point primals cant temper other primals more or less). Btw, this would partially explain the Echo. If all Aether is part of Hydaleyn, and and our experiences are imprinted on aether, then teh reason we can see people's past is because we can see their aether thats connected to Hydaleyn and 'read' it. Would work the same way with languages. Just a thought on who we are as WoLD.

End game could simply be Hydaleyn cannot resolve the split issue, and needs a 'third party' to act as the bridge. So she creates a primal that can behave as the bridge between light and dark and rejoin them.

[StarRosie]

I'm leaning very heavily on the "Solus is jerking our chain." side of this. The more I sit and think about this as a possibility, the more it doesn't make sense. Yes there's some stuff that points in that direction, but there's also stuff that points in the other direction. So yeah, I'm gonna wait till we have the full scene and context, cause this is coming from someone who only benefits from messing with us.

Like, big question, if the two are primals, who originally summoned them and how did they summon them? Every time I get to this question, I just can't think of a logical explanation from the standpoint of the lore.

[Akonyl]

I'm leaning very heavily on the "Solus is jerking our chain." side of this. The more I sit and think about this as a possibility, the more it doesn't make sense. Yes there's some stuff that points in that direction, but there's also stuff that points in the other direction. So yeah, I'm gonna wait till we have the full scene and context, cause this is coming from someone who only benefits from messing with us.

Like, big question, if the two are primals, who originally summoned them and how did they summon them? Every time I get to this question, I just can't think of a logical explanation from the standpoint of the lore.

There could just be another method with which the first primals came into being, that doesn't necessarily make them not primals. When it comes to things dealing with the origins of existence, either in science or religion, you'll oftentimes reach a point where the simpler rules stop applying, and you just have to accept that something existed at the start, without anything else having made it.

I don't think prayer is a necessary aspect of a primal, it's just the method through which mortals are able to force their creation, I think it could be as simple as "a primal is aether given form via any method". It's kind of like scientists nowadays who can make artificial DNA in lab settings, just because we can make DNA ourselves doesn't mean it was intelligently designed the first time it came into existence. Hydaelyn+Zodiark could have arisen out of the primordial aether from happenstance, and they'd still be primals.


I'd be willing to believe this is just Solus being a tricksy Ascian more if it wasn't used as the end stinger of the launch trailer for the game at E3, but since it was, I'm pretty willing to believe it.

[Sigiria]

I'm leaning very heavily on the "Solus is jerking our chain." side of this. The more I sit and think about this as a possibility, the more it doesn't make sense. Yes there's some stuff that points in that direction, but there's also stuff that points in the other direction. So yeah, I'm gonna wait till we have the full scene and context, cause this is coming from someone who only benefits from messing with us.

Like, big question, if the two are primals, who originally summoned them and how did they summon them? Every time I get to this question, I just can't think of a logical explanation from the standpoint of the lore.

Here's my theory.
Here's an ascian's true form:


Looking like some form of specters, Ascian lived in a desolated world and worshipped a primal that could create life in their world or needed one to create life. So they managed to find a way to use the ether of the planet to actually summon said god (which would explain why they're the one going around teaching everyone how to summon primals)

When it came done to how they should balance their new world they had a disagreement and split between two tribes and split their primal into two separate ones: Hydaelyn and Zodiark.
Ultimately the side of hydealyn won and zodiark was cast away in the moon so it wouldn't just be re-summoned by the ascians of darkness. To counter that the Ascians of darkness went around on the planet making as many tribes as possible summon primals from hydaelyn's ether to weaken her and give zodiark a chance to make a comeback.

In that scenario Hydealyn would just be the conscious manifestation of the ether of the planet, well part of it. The other being Zodiark.

Our goal would then become to find a way to get rid of the two primals, or the combination of the two if they're fused back and stopping the ascians from summoning them back. While making sure we could preserve the world(s) in its(their) current state even after detroying the primals so their war would stop messing with everyone.

That's just a personnal theory mind you.

[Daralii]

There could just be another method with which the first primals came into being, that doesn't necessarily make them not primals. When it comes to things dealing with the origins of existence, either in science or religion, you'll oftentimes reach a point where the simpler rules stop applying, and you just have to accept that something existed at the start, without anything else having made it.

I don't think prayer is a necessary aspect of a primal, it's just the method through which mortals are able to force their creation, I think it could be as simple as "a primal is aether given form via any method". It's kind of like scientists nowadays who can make artificial DNA in lab settings, just because we can make DNA ourselves doesn't mean it was intelligently designed the first time it came into existence. Hydaelyn+Zodiark could have arisen out of the primordial aether from happenstance, and they'd still be primals.


I'd be willing to believe this is just Solus being a tricksy Ascian more if it wasn't used as the end stinger of the launch trailer for the game at E3, but since it was, I'm pretty willing to believe it.

Except Solus specifically said "Through prayer and sacrifice", which I assume means the aether was acquired through blood sacrifice, like what the people of Eulmore are doing to feed the Sin Eaters.