Thinking about Elidibus

[Iscah]

At this point either the Source or at least one shard is in a roughly medieval-era age of heroism, and he possesses a guy that looks like the FFI WoL, and plays hero to both feed himself and manipulate the world.

This is your inference, not stated fact, and I think you may have it wrong.

From memory, Elidibus thinks on the idea of the Warrior of Light and remarks that they were a sundered soul. There is never any mention of him taking that form before.

It's more likely that it was an early incarnation of Azem's soul who started the legend of the Warrior of Light, and Elidibus's plan in Shadowbringers is to intercept the hero-worship still afforded to this lasting concept of heroism and salvation by taking on that form and claiming the title.

[Cleretic]

The next question is: why did Elidibus in form of Zodiark temper the other ancients? It seems that the heart of a primal has the control over them. Iceheart had the control over Shiva and it seems that Venat controls Hydaelyn.

Cheers

My guess is that Zodiark wasn't trying to. From Altima's crystal line in Etched in the Stars, the tempering started pretty much instantly on summoning. Remember that the only primal we've had a proper, full conversation with, Ramuh, was tempering the sylphs explicitly against his own will. It seems like tempering is just a natural effect of a primal's summoning and existence, regardless of intent.

This is your inference, not stated fact, and I think you may have it wrong.

From memory, Elidibus thinks on the idea of the Warrior of Light and remarks that they were a sundered soul. There is never any mention of him taking that form before.

It's more likely that it was an early incarnation of Azem's soul who started the legend of the Warrior of Light, and Elidibus's plan in Shadowbringers is to intercept the hero-worship still afforded to this lasting concept of heroism and salvation by taking on that form and claiming the title.

Uhm... no, actually. I think you're thinking of a different cutscene. I'm thinking of the Echo flashback of Elidibus in Anamnesis, before the Dream Amaurot bit. Transcribing the segment in question...

Ancient Elidibus looks at his own hands as they fade.

"It fades. Fades away into oblivion. Does the world no longer have need of me?"
"No. I am Elidibus. And I must--I will fulfill my duty."

Camera pans to FFI WoL-looking guy, facing away from camera.

"Sundered though you may be, you fought for the world's salvation. For hope. Hope..."

Elidibus reaches out the FFI WoL-guy, cuts to black.

"Ahh, it swells within me. Empowers me. Now--now I may carry out my mission."
"Why do I yearn for this? Why must I struggle so?"

That Echo flashback is hard to completely dissect for truth, because it's clear both that A: it is depicting at least two factual events, some significant time apart, and B: it is being SUPER non-literal, what with the lack of cuts and black background. But what is clear is that Elidibus definitely did possess an archetypal hero of the Sundered (post-Sundering, of course), specifically to rejuvenate himself. The mystery is when and where exactly this happened, and what may have happened beforehand in that world, but neither of those are tremendously important to figuring out the chronology of Elidibus' life. The only evidence we have suggesting anything on that is that a figure that looks like the FFI WoL appeared in the First's history, but given the same armor exists in the Crystal Tower somehow, it's hard to say that's a definite A-to-B line to draw.

Saying Azem is somehow involved actually has far less grounding.

[Iscah]

Uhm... no, actually. I think you're thinking of a different cutscene. I'm thinking of the Echo flashback of Elidibus in Anamnesis, before the Dream Amaurot bit.

No, that's exactly the scene I'm thinking of. And it is hard to interpret – so I don't think we can definitively say that Elidibus possessed the original Warrior of Light versus it being a very obscure version of him now recently hijacking that image to become "Ardbert the Warrior of Light".

As I understand it, Elidibus thought of the historical/legendary figure and concluded that the praise still targeted at him was the same concept (hope and salvation) that Elidibus needs to sustain himself.

Edit to add: I did sound more definite than I intended regarding the possibility that the legendary WoL being Azem. It's a suggestion others have made in the past, but nobody else I recall has interpreted it as Elidibus being the original WoL.

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Edit 6 June 2022: As this thread re-emerges, I look at my first sentence here and try to figure out what the heck I wrote. I think it was supposed to be "vision" not "version".

[PastelGothGuy01]

For what it's worth, I thought the same thing, lol - maybe the time had come to divert energy towards that snowball. But maybe it was just a new primal to match the calamity plan. If an answer beyond that was there to be found it went over my head, too.

Ahaha, I agree that Oda might say of this one, "Please do not think too hard about this." A video game needs a story, and we wouldn't get much of one if the Ascians said, "Hey, how about we just let him think he's won for now, and we'll time it so Hydaelyn's next champion is easy to just have hit by a chocobo carriage." I think we might be able to patch a "good enough" bandaid over it if we assume once the Warrior of Light slipped the leash Lahabrea thought he had them on, the Ascians had to kill them or outdo them but just leaving them alone they'd keep fighting until they caused a Flood.

I know this might sound a lil Farfetched but...But don't you think the new Primal they might want to make is actually "Our WoL himself"?...Get him some place and sacrifice him to make a new primal, i got this idea because of that quest with Omega weapon where omega wanted to see our potential and even imprisoned us in a ball like thing to use our power to make us or turn us into an even more stronger being?...like you know,A Primal and we would end up becoming exactly like Elidibus?...

[PastelGothGuy01]

Also hi i'm kinda new to this whole thing so i don't know how to properly commune with people here so sorry if i repeat some messages or something. ^^;

[Cleretic]

I know this might sound a lil Farfetched but...But don't you think the new Primal they might want to make is actually "Our WoL himself"?...Get him some place and sacrifice him to make a new primal, i got this idea because of that quest with Omega weapon where omega wanted to see our potential and even imprisoned us in a ball like thing to use our power to make us or turn us into an even more stronger being?...like you know,A Primal and we would end up becoming exactly like Elidibus?...

It's possible, but I'd say it's unlikely. Remember that we've got two factors involved in 'Elidibus trying to make the tribes summon a different god': Elidibus, and the tribes. And neither of them liked us much.

To Elidibus, we're a constant thorn in his side that's grown to the point of needing a specific emergency plan to kill us dead. Making his problem bigger makes the problem worse, and this is after both the WoL and a primal have already killed Ascians.

And to the tribes--specifically the tempered ones, at that point? We keep killing their gods. And people generally tend to like the gods they worship, so we are some kinda Satan to them. Gonna be real hard to convince them to worship the thing that's clashing against their god and making life even harder for them.

Now, if there were actual evidence that this is what they were shooting for, these are theoretically things that you could explain around; Elidibus might consider a primal-summoned Warrior of Light more controllable despite all evidence to the contrary, and... well, Satanists do exist, so theoretically an opposing figure to a tribe's god would gain followers. But both of those are reaches, and they're reaches toward a conclusion that not only is there no evidence for, but there will be no evidence for, because both the plan and every single participant in it is dead (except Urianger, but he was against the plan anyway). So it's kinda folly to expect that the plan may have angled for something much more elaborate, since nobody would do anything with it. If we learned that was the plan, it wouldn't matter, because nobody still alive cares about the plan.

[PastelGothGuy01]

I'm not saying Elidibus himself would want to turn us into a primal i'm talking about the people that look up to our WoL...And if that happened our WoL would end up becoming Exactly like Elidibus...A Primal to try and help save the star...And at some point "The Ascians" did want to use our WoL as their pawn for their "Neferious" plans cus they saw potential in him,that is until they made our WoL angry.

[Larirawiel]

I'm not saying Elidibus himself would want to turn us into a primal i'm talking about the people that look up to our WoL...And if that happened our WoL would end up becoming Exactly like Elidibus...A Primal to try and help save the star...And at some point "The Ascians" did want to use our WoL as their pawn for their "Neferious" plans cus they saw potential in him,that is until they made our WoL angry.

Elidibus sacrified himself to become Zodiark's heart. I doubt, that the WoL would do that. But it is theoretically possible, that we can become a primal like Shiva or Tsukuyomi or Anima. If the prayers are strong enough and there are some aether crystals ...


Cheers

[Lyth]

Elidibus became a very different person after becoming Zodiark's heart, as Emet notes in the Tales from the Shadows short stories. It slowly eroded at his personality, memories, and his very identity. Perhaps it's the consequence of merging his soul with half of the Amaurotian population, or the consequence of being merged into a hemitheos with creation magic that is immeasurably more powerful than him. Either way, I suspect that the old Elidibus would have been very much averse to tempering his friends, but the new one would probably not have the same qualms about seeing the Amaurotians 'make... the right choice.'

The bigger mystery is around Azem's magic, a signature spell to call their allies to their side. Oddly enough, the first person to use the ability in the story is G'raha, and so it likely has some as yet unidentified connection to the Crystal Tower and the Allagan/Meracydian conflict. Let's park this for now, but I have a few suspicions on this subject.

Interestingly, there's a flashback from Elidibus in 5.3's 'Faded Memories' shortly after you find Y'shtola unconcious in Anyder. The flashback shows someone's back, with them wearing the Warrior of Light armor set that you get as a drop in Labyrinth of the Ancients. The line that accompanies it is 'Sundered though you may be, you fought for the world's salvation. For hope.' Elidibus' fading hand reaches out for the person as they slowly turn, only for it to fade to black before you get a chance to actually see their face. All this happens well before Elidibus adopts his primal form. That would seem to suggest that the original Warrior of Light in question is not Elidibus, but probably someone very important to him that served as an inspiration for that concept. Now, I wonder who that could be?

Elidibus is good at figuring out how to cast spells that he's witnessed before. It's possible that he learned the technique from watching G'raha during your final showdown with Emet. But he really just says that G'raha's spell gave him the idea of summoning the spirits of heroes from other shards. It could just be that this mysterious Warrior of Light that we see in the flashback happened to use the same ability as well, and Elidibus learnt it shortly afterwards. Perhaps we'll get to see it used again in the depths of Pandaemonium.

[Lieri]

Ancient Lalafell