Echo VS Blessing Of Light

[Cleretic]

correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't it more or less been established that the echo and the blessing of light are more or less the same thing? You can't have one without the other (unless you're an ascian), because to ACTIVATE the echo you have to be exposed to a meteor shower that wakes up your previous cycle of incarnations memory of the ancient world's end of days.

I'll correct you: you're wrong. The Echo is not the Blessing of Light, and was only conflated with it because of that 'hear, feel, think'; it's an innate ability of certain souls. The Blessing Light is an actual connection with Hydaelyn, and is granted via those crystals of light you might remember the surrounding cutscenes of.

While the Echo is not the Blessing of Light, we can also surmise with reasonable confidence that the Blessing of Light does require the Echo; all of those with the Blessing that we know of have the Echo (the WoL, Ysayle, Ardbert and the other Warriors of Darkness, conceivably but unconfirmably Minfilia), but there are those with the Echo that by all appearances don't have the Blessing (the Sahagin Priest, Arenvald, Mikoto, the Resonant (who you mistakenly called the Hypertuned who are a different thing)).

I can immediately tell you off the top of my head that, yes, there was at least one Echo flashback during the 'suppressed' period; Aymeric talking to Thordan. I'm fairly sure there was more, but that one I remember because I had reason to record it, and right now I'm not super inclined to dig into every single Heavensward quest journal entry.

And on your last point: there's actually no guarantee that the Sahagin Priest even was tempered. Through the Sahagin beast tribe we learned that there actually isn't much difference between the Sahagin factions' beliefs; unlike the actual spiritual beliefs that split beast tribes like the Amal'jaa and Ananta, the Sahagin summoners are essentially just 'the sect crazy enough to escalate'.

[Rosenstrauch]

conceivably but unconfirmably Minfilia

A correction to that:

https://www.finalfantasyxiv.com/anni...?rgn=na&lng=en

Tales from the Calamity featured a short story in which Minfilia awakened to the Echo at a young age. This has never been contradicted, afaik.

[Necrotica]

To shoot my own argument in the foot:

When the Ascians do the whole fusion thing in Heavensward, they tell us they are showing us the true power of the Echo. So they have it. But they are self admittedly tempered by Zodiark.

Unless Zodiark is able to temper people even with the Echo.

AND Ifrit mentions smelling Hydaelyns blessing on us preventing him from tempering us.

Does not explain how Fordola and Zenos are immune to tempering however.

[Cleretic]

Tales from the Calamity featured a short story in which Minfilia awakened to the Echo at a young age. This has never been contradicted, afaik.

To clarify, the unconfirmed part is that Minfilia had the Blessing of Light with the crystals and everything. The fact she has the Echo is never in question (and specifically, she has the same variant the WoL has, with flashbacks), we just don't know exactly what form her favor with Hydaelyn took, if it was the same as the WoL or Ysayle has or something different.

To shoot my own argument in the foot:

Again, this is all to do with the difference between the Echo and the Blessing of Light, which has overall been consistent (which is why the MSQ suddenly not bothering to call them differently is so annoying):

• The Ascians have 'the true power of the Echo' because it is an element of having a fragmented Ancient soul (as clarified in the 5.x patches). Basically, we only have a slice of the whole pizza that the Ascians (especially the Unsundered) have.
• Zodiark is indeed able to temper through the Echo, and judging by the soul crystals in Etched in the Stars, did so immediately on summoning. The Echo isn't immunity to tempering so much as resistance beyond what anything less than Zodiark (or Hydaelyn, conceivably) could serve up.
• Ifrit does not actually smell Hydaelyn's blessing on us. His words are that he doesn't smell the influence of any other primal on us, despite his inability to temper us, which he puts down to us being of 'the godless blessed's number'--the Echo.
• The Resonance is an artificial Echo, with Fordola's specifically based on Krile's (and possibly Zenos' too, that's not stated in Stormblood and I don't know if Endwalker talks about it yet).

All of these are stated directly in the MSQ, these fortunately aren't super-secret truths hidden in random yellow quests or anything like that. Indeed, the only frustrating part is that the MSQ is right now deciding to call them both one and the same--although I should note it's not universal in Endwalker, I've found at least one sidequest that calls out the Echo.

[shadowclasper]

snip

Okay yeah, that does basically blow my theory out of the water. That is annoying then.

[shadowclasper]

snip

So. I just hit a point in Endwalker with SPOILERS below.

After you first meet venat in elpis she says she senses a traveler's protection ward of her own making on you. I think the echo doesn't naturally convey protection against primal tempering, I think it's just at the same time you hear 'hear, feel, think' you end up getting her to pass that much onto you no matter what. She might give -more- than that as well to certain people, but the warding against tempering she gives to literally everyone with the echo.

[Cleretic]

So. I just hit a point in Endwalker with SPOILERS below.

After you first meet venat in elpis she says she senses a traveler's protection ward of her own making on you. I think the echo doesn't naturally convey protection against primal tempering, I think it's just at the same time you hear 'hear, feel, think' you end up getting her to pass that much onto you no matter what. She might give -more- than that as well to certain people, but the warding against tempering she gives to literally everyone with the echo.

Yeah, this actually really annoys me, because it's the game contradicting itself. In fact, it torpedoes an entire expansion finale, and then some, by saying it.

Specifically, it mangles the Resonant. The Resonant is explicitly an artificial Echo, the best example we have of an Echo without a blessing--because we can reason that Zenos is too horrible a person to be granted it, and Misija didn't give herself enough time to earn it (Fordola having the Blessing I could buy, but isn't confirmed). And all three of them use it to protect from tempering; Zenos against Shinryu, Fordola against first Lakshmi and later other Eorzean standard primals, and Misija against Queen Gunnhildr. Indeed, Misija outright says that this is the reason she's shooting for the Resonance.

So either we ruin the Resonance by messing up the one thing all three of them have in common, or we destroy Hydaelyn's capability in judging a person's character. And I feel like we're supposed to hold that second one high.

[MirronTulaxia]

I think… this is just in the long run going to be something they’ll need to explain. It’s just too inconsistent really.

[shadowclasper]

Yeah, this actually really annoys me, because it's the game contradicting itself. In fact, it torpedoes an entire expansion finale, and then some, by saying it.

Specifically, it mangles the Resonant. The Resonant is explicitly an artificial Echo, the best example we have of an Echo without a blessing--because we can reason that Zenos is too horrible a person to be granted it, and Misija didn't give herself enough time to earn it (Fordola having the Blessing I could buy, but isn't confirmed). And all three of them use it to protect from tempering; Zenos against Shinryu, Fordola against first Lakshmi and later other Eorzean standard primals, and Misija against Queen Gunnhildr. Indeed, Misija outright says that this is the reason she's shooting for the Resonance.

So either we ruin the Resonance by messing up the one thing all three of them have in common, or we destroy Hydaelyn's capability in judging a person's character. And I feel like we're supposed to hold that second one high.

I think I have an answer even to that, but they really do need to address it.

I don't think it is entirely contradictory. I think that the whole 'push energy into us' part of the blessing of light is granted only to her champions, but everyone else is, full stop, granted the protection from primals, because the whole 'prevent your aether from being disrupted' I'm willing to bet -also- protects you from dynamis shoving your aether out of your body and morphing you into a monster, since the whole point of the warding spell is to prevent your aether from being depleted or directly manipulated by outside forces.

It doesn't matter how evil you are if that's the -actual- purpose of the anti-primal defense of the blessing of light. Because Hydaelen doesn't -care- about you as a moral human being, she's gonna assume you're not interested in the world ending regardless of your moral stance and put it on autopilot along with the vision granted to everyone who activates their echo.