Major Spoilers for all Expansions - Some general things I didn't understand

[Cilia]

Um... good news? This one is actually a GATHERING tribe. Activities for miner, botanist, or fisher. No crafting required. Thats the lopporits.

I don't do gathering either. It's kind of a feedback loop with crafting.

...can I get a citation for... any of that? At all? Because I've never heard any of that, and in fact it's refuted by what I thought were clearly stated facts about what our Echo is (which is... well, not that; we've never used it for that) and what the crystal is doing (it's got a spell within it that's doing the summoning thing).

I don't recall it being an Echo ability, but to my memory it's what the Azem magick does. Azem's magick allows us to summon "allies" from across time and space, with "allies" not necessarily being limited to people we've already met. That's why it lets us summon random people instead of adventurer allies we've specifically already met - it can be directed to summon specific people (as in Ultima Thule) but will otherwise summon anyone willing and able to help us when invoked.