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.

[SnowVix]

So after doingg the 24 man raid and doing just 2 quest after that since im a tad behind content wise after my pc fried when they explain that the primals are basically other cultures/beast tribes interpretation of the 12 now looking at it I can see brygot as titan rhlagr as rhamu what has been seen cant bee unseen omg! im just sitting here mind blown brain dripping out my left ear lol

Nah, only a couple of them would possibly be that. The idea that "oh, these other cultures' deities are just malformed versions of our own" is both well-trodden in real life and almost never accurate in the slightest (see the Herodotus writing about the Egyptian gods as though they were just the Greek pantheon, with incredibly inaccurate equivalencies (Zeus and Amon? Osiris and Dionysus? Demoting the Scythian queen of the gods Tabiti to the Greek goddess of house and hearth Hestia?, also see what the Romans did with literally every culture they met (Odin was clearly just Norse Mercury, right?)

Really, only the Ramuh/Rhalgr connection, and Ysayle's Shiva being formed partially from Halone iconography (because even if she left the Catholic Ishgardian Halonic faith, she was still raised in and surrounded with it) make any sort of sense for that.

[SpiritTamer]

i knew about rhalgr and remah since its speculated in game but the others took a while to connect. like garuda seems to be a blend of the allagan commander and halone. though i have no idea for primals like leviathan.

I always thought the inspiration for Leviathan was that big sea serpent skeleton in Upper La Noscea (Thalaos).

[sidurgu-12]

I always thought the inspiration for Leviathan was that big sea serpent skeleton in Upper La Noscea (Thalaos).

that might be it.

[Cleretic]

I always thought the inspiration for Leviathan was that big sea serpent skeleton in Upper La Noscea (Thalaos).

That I could absolutely buy. And we know there's a lot of similar serpents of less gargantuan size like the Nepto Dragon, so it would make a lot of sense that the Sahagin would determine through gradual retellings that their god is 'that thing, but bigger'. Very totemic, you see that in a lot of cultures, particularly tribal ones.

When reading up on the myths of primals in the Encyclopedia Eorzea, though, a couple of them stood out to me.

1. Leviathan's story actually does sound weirdly like a water-themed version of Zodiark's story from the Zodiark worshippers' perspective: the land was inhospitable dry wasteland, until the gods sent Leviathan down to fill it with water; this drained Leviathan to near-death, so a bunch of the fish sacrificed themselves to give it back life, and in return Leviathan uplifted the survivors by giving them intelligence and legs. Overall that sounds exactly like how the Ascians probably would've spun the story of Zodiark to sundered people they recruited, just filtered through generations upon generations of fish people. No idea how intentional that is, since Leviathan's myth only really exists in the Encyclopedia Eorzea and Zodiark's story confirmably came quite a bit later.

2. The kobolds and the ananta have identical creation myths, it's weird. Both tribes believe their god looked on a harsh and inhospitable world, and despaired over it enough that they made their patron race out of clay to be stewards. It's not the most unique origin myth, and you see a lot of similar ones in real life (I suspect becuse a lot of civilizations figured out pottery pretty early), but it's very weird that two tribes with basically nothing else in common have the exact same story like that.

[RukoBoshi]

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.

That's also what i think. The existence of Bismarck of the first is proof that such creature could exist in all the shards, and serve as inspiration for religion.
Maybe these are creatures from Elpis that are so powerful and long-lived that they got worshipped as gods.

It would be interesting to see more creatures who inspired primals, and i hope we get that in Pandemonium.

[sidurgu-12]

That's also what i think. The existence of Bismarck of the first is proof that such creature could exist in all the shards, and serve as inspiration for religion.
Maybe these are creatures from Elpis that are so powerful and long-lived that they got worshipped as gods.

It would be interesting to see more creatures who inspired primals, and i hope we get that in Pandemonium.

honestly i wish they didn't tie so much to elpis. i dont mind certain monsters but not things like pixies.

[Denishia]

honestly i wish they didn't tie so much to elpis. i dont mind certain monsters but not things like pixies.

Same. When there's one tidy source for almost everything it feels ...twee. In a way that probably pleases a certain type of lore nerd that wants to have a definitive answer to where everything comes from, but I like it when the origins of things are messy and some are unknown and/or contradictory. Fits IRL science better.

For Elpis the whole set up feels honestly like a re sort of Extremely Meta to the point of warped parody of the SE game designers - here's the uniform-clad asset creators for all the in-game models and mobs you fight, constantly trying to think up new designs for each new dungeon and expansion zone, with the Bureau and Convocation as Management and Department Heads signing off on the art team's efforts. And one's only purpose and focus is to create some new item to please the players and when that task is completed the designer is no longer needed. An over-sized pretty Secret Dev Room.

[RukoBoshi]

It would be interesting to see more creatures who inspired primals, and i hope we get that in Pandemonium.[/QUOTE]

I agree, i was a bit disappointed by the variety of things i saw in Elpis. It got to the point that i'm wondering what creatures did exist before the ancients meddling ?
I guess regular creatures like dogs, horse or birds.

I also don't wish that every primals origins get explained, so they could have stories that aren't related to Elpis, and keep the mysticism about them.
But i'm convinced that creatures such as Bismarck are concepts from Elpis, by the nature of having that place suddenly be unattended by the ancients post sundering.

Many concepts that may have been really strong, resistant and long lived, even more so than most creature allowed to exist, were released from there.

It would stand to reason that creatures like these inspired gods and myths.

[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.