the 12!!!!! omg !!!!!!

[Denishia]

I think it’s important to understand: just because one primal has a connection to one of the 12, does not necessarily dictate that all primals are linked to the 12.

Indeed, the primals could just be based on ancient creatures or particularly powerful entities (like Bismarck on the First actually being a sort of fairy creature like the people of Il Mheg). An easily confirmed example of this being the Primal Bahamut who certainly wasn’t a deity.

Rather, I speculate that the Ascians simply co-opted existing beliefs where it was suitable to corrupt into a primal (a la Garuda), or introduced something new entirely that was suitable (a la Ifrit), or just let their victims’ imagination run wild with whatever they wanted, as long as it made a primal. I wouldn’t be surprised if Leviathan was just “fish peeps saw a big serpent”, in a simliar way ancient humans had bear worship in Neolithic times.

Exactly. Having only one source for anything, but especially religious beliefs across a WIDE spectrum of not just cultures but races and one that has had thousands of years of changing cultural landscape, is not only artificial but shallow writing. To a lesser extent, pretending there was no cross-cultural exchange or contamination or combination of beliefs is also poor writing and world-building. And FFXIV points out instances of cultural adaption and exchange and mutation all the time, especially in job quests. Heck, the SB CUL questline centers around this for food.

[Gogoglovitch]

Exactly. Having only one source for anything, but especially religious beliefs across a WIDE spectrum of not just cultures but races and one that has had thousands of years of changing cultural landscape, is not only artificial but shallow writing. To a lesser extent, pretending there was no cross-cultural exchange or contamination or combination of beliefs is also poor writing and world-building. And FFXIV points out instances of cultural adaption and exchange and mutation all the time, especially in job quests.

As a personal thing, this is the main reason the Myths of the Realm Alliance Raid is so off-putting to me. Every time we've looked into the origin of a culture's gods in the game, we see that they've changed over time, often from very different roots. The god of the Amalj'aa used to be an Ancient construct for putting out volcanos. The god of the Vanu Vanu is a misremembered version of a grumpy fey whale. The goddess of the Ixal was actually a tyrannical Allagan general who abused their ancestors.

And the gods of the Spoken of Eorzea... are exactly they way they are in the myths. The same appearance, the same relations to each other, the same personalities, the same names, the same heavenly realms. Rhalgr even bears a striking resemblance to the statue of him in his main temple, which was previously thought to be based on an Archon from a previous age. The Eorzeans, alone among the cultures of the world, were exactly right about their gods, who provably exist and aren't just the creation magic-made shells the primals are.

It just strikes me as weirdly ethnocentric in a game that almost from the start has been moving away from painting the other races as foolish, savage Beast Tribes. The religion of the European-coded player characters is right and true, and everyone else just has foolish old myths that have been distorted by time. Even the sylphs, who arguably worship a variant of one of the Twelve, get it wrong -- compared to Ramuh, Rhalgr is much more muscular, has a much smaller beard, does not carry a staff, is far more physical than magic-oriented, dresses differently, has an entirely different personality, and, oh yeah, is named Rhalgr, not Ramuh.

It's possible that the remaining two tiers will twist things up in a way that will be satisfying to me, but so far I'm not seeing it as likely. I was really hoping that they were just accumulated myths from over time that had been formed into a pantheon -- maybe one was a memory of something from Allagan times, another a deification of a folk hero, a third a misremembering of some ancient powerful entity like Midgardsormr or one of his brood, and of course Azeyma a time-warped retelling of the story of Azem. That doesn't seem at all likely now. Eorzean religion is objectively correct, and even if the gods turn out to be less than cosmic entities in the end, their religion was still exactly right about them.

[Cleretic]

And the gods of the Spoken of Eorzea... are exactly they way they are in the myths. The same appearance, the same relations to each other, the same personalities, the same names, the same heavenly realms. Rhalgr even bears a striking resemblance to the statue of him in his main temple, which was previously thought to be based on an Archon from a previous age. The Eorzeans, alone among the cultures of the world, were exactly right about their gods, who provably exist and aren't just the creation magic-made shells the primals are.

I personally think that we're not gonna learn they're exactly as they appear so far, even if they're definitely not false gods. Alliance raids don't get as wild as normal raids, but they still go pretty crazy, and there's plenty of room for our expectations to be twisted and turned around. In fact, I expect it, because there's clearly framework for additional story than just 'the Twelve are real and we're throwing down'; if they don't have anything else going on then the two new characters they introduced are gonna have very little to do.

My main evidence there is that even the four gods we've already met have had symbols or tools that could only come from man; Byregot has a blacksmith's hammer, Azeyma has paper fans, Nald'thal have measurement scales and their symbol is outright mentioned to be a shell that's an ancient form of currency. This kinda knocks out a lot of the cleanest origins; they can't be of Ancient origin (since they wouldn't know a blacksmith if Gerolt smacked 'em in the face), they can't be of alien origin (since the cowry comes from ubiquitous shellfish), and they can't be of some kind of primordial origin (since a paper fan needs a creator). At least, not without some changing of shape and concept over time; even if Eorzean religion is 'objectively correct', it seems more likely that rather than them getting it right, that the deities changed form to fit the religion, at least to some degree.

[sidurgu-12]

I personally think that we're not gonna learn they're exactly as they appear so far, even if they're definitely not false gods. Alliance raids don't get as wild as normal raids, but they still go pretty crazy, and there's plenty of room for our expectations to be twisted and turned around. In fact, I expect it, because there's clearly framework for additional story than just 'the Twelve are real and we're throwing down'; if they don't have anything else going on then the two new characters they introduced are gonna have very little to do.

My main evidence there is that even the four gods we've already met have had symbols or tools that could only come from man; Byregot has a blacksmith's hammer, Azeyma has paper fans, Nald'thal have measurement scales and their symbol is outright mentioned to be a shell that's an ancient form of currency. This kinda knocks out a lot of the cleanest origins; they can't be of Ancient origin (since they wouldn't know a blacksmith if Gerolt smacked 'em in the face), they can't be of alien origin (since the cowry comes from ubiquitous shellfish), and they can't be of some kind of primordial origin (since a paper fan needs a creator). At least, not without some changing of shape and concept over time; even if Eorzean religion is 'objectively correct', it seems more likely that rather than them getting it right, that the deities changed form to fit the religion, at least to some degree.

that has a high chance of being true. though personally i think it was the religion that changed over time rather than the gods. mainly because of the differences between real and myth nald'thal.

[Iscah]

The Eorzeans, alone among the cultures of the world, were exactly right about their gods, who provably exist and aren't just the creation magic-made shells the primals are.

I think the key thing to consider here is that we haven't learned that "the Eorzean beliefs are correct", we've learned that "the Eorzean beliefs are based on ongoing sightings of living beings who exist here and now".

The other tribes' gods come from distorted memories of something long past, that can't be checked or compared against the modern belief so easily.

But Eorzea's religion is "real" because apparently the Twelve were real to begin with, and people occasionally have real visions of them exactly as they are, and that information lines up with other records and visions to create a potentially very incorrect belief based on a real thing.

I do agree it seems a bit too neat for my liking, as does Elpis (and Amaurot for that matter), but it's what we've got to work with now.