What lore do you ignore?

[Cleretic]

[EW spoilers]

We are tearing scales off of Vrtra in order to make charms to protect people against tempering, meanwhile in Garlemald it turns out there's a metal that's so common even poor people can afford radios made out of it and it just blocks tempering? And we never even think of trying to use it? It feels like they needed a way to handwave some Garleans being untempered and never thought of it after that.

The Garleans being untempered was basically a freak accident born of a very specific set of circumstances, it was far more than just 'a common metal', and most likely only worked because the primal they were dealing with was specifically Varis. The warding scales are a lot more versatile and generally useful in practice. And of course then there's what both elements actually represent beyond the literal, which I think is worth remembering--the radios work because it reflects that Garlemald's national identity is at the same time grossly linked to and ultimately independent of Ascian manipulation, while the Thavnairians use Vrtra's scales to show in a very physical way that Vrtra will suffer for his people, it's basically an instant way to show that Vrtra's not the bad guy that the setup of his reveal might suggest he is.

And yes, obviously it works the way it does because they wanted untempered Garleans in Garlemald, but I don't think seeing the reason they wrote in a thing should invalidate the thing. In fact, I feel like people would be even madder if Garlemald included literally no untempered Garleans.

[Emitans]

The Garleans being untempered was basically a freak accident born of a very specific set of circumstances, it was far more than just 'a common metal', and most likely only worked because the primal they were dealing with was specifically Varis. The warding scales are a lot more versatile and generally useful in practice. And of course then there's what both elements actually represent beyond the literal, which I think is worth remembering--the radios work because it reflects that Garlemald's national identity is at the same time grossly linked to and ultimately independent of Ascian manipulation, while the Thavnairians use Vrtra's scales to show in a very physical way that Vrtra will suffer for his people, it's basically an instant way to show that Vrtra's not the bad guy that the setup of his reveal might suggest he is.

And yes, obviously it works the way it does because they wanted untempered Garleans in Garlemald, but I don't think seeing the reason they wrote in a thing should invalidate the thing. In fact, I feel like people would be even madder if Garlemald included literally no untempered Garleans.

Ok, this is an interesting way of looking at it I never considered before.