Tempering, control and those that may seek it

[Morningstar1337]

I'm been fascinated by the effects of tempering. A Primal tempers/shocks/drowns/etc. someone and they become an extension of the Primal's will, losing their individuality and maybe even their sentience with subsequent temperings, until they become like drones in a Hive Mind of sorts.

And in most hive minds there is always the queen. One who commands the subjects for they are otherwise dormant without her, their free will stripped, their individuality diminished and in the worst cases their sentience destroyed. In this case the Hive Queens are the Primals themselves (Making Garuda and Shiva more literal cases) And maybe Mog.

But I think that a new villain would want the ability to temper others. Do you think that anyone would want to research tempering to gain the ability?

[Kerberon]

Probably part of why they wanted to research the echo. No sense making a weapon that can be used against you.

[Kicha]

I think that its very much a probability that someone will. I mean, the Allagans to a certain extent did their own via the neurolinks on the dragons as we see inside the Binding Coil. If a future villain were ever to go after tempering, I think that they would do so via Allagan technology. Its possible that the neurolink technology was based on the primals and their tempering ability, or even the Ascians and their ability to possess and control an individual.

The only thing that makes me think that perhaps tempering is less of a mind control thing and more of a forced state of mind is what happens when we kill a primal. You would think that by killing the source of the tempering, the person affected would be released, yet even though we defeat the primals, the tempered remain tempered.
It does seem, however, that tempering doesn't necessarily need a primal to do it. Take Leviathan for example. We see his drowned minions roaming around, yet we don't see Leviathan actually summoned until 2.2 storyline. How did those people then become drowned? Are Sahagin shamans able to do it themselves? Or are the drowned remnants from the last time Leviathan was summoned pre-2.0 story?

[Enkidoh]

The Empire wanted to research the Echo simply because they discovered it renders a person immune to tempering - in 1.0 originally the Empire had the complete opposite opinion of Echo users - they regarded them as virtually the same as beastmen (due to the Echo's ability to speak all languages, including beastmen ones), and thus, a monster to be destroyed.

Only after seeing the player demonstrate the Echo's shielding ability from Primal corruption (and slaying Primals accordingly) did Gaius and the Empire change tack, and then became hellbent on finding out it's secrets, ironic given the fact even Minfilia knows comparatively little about the Echo and how it protects a person from Primal influence.

[Morningstar1337]

Snip

You're right about one thing, killing the queen usually destroys the hive, but note that the primals cannot be killed. they return to the aether after defeat abut are not themselves killed. This is the likely reason why tempering is impossible to cure. In this case the Hive Queen still lives, so her drones are still drones

As for the next paragraph. Suppose that the primlas can be summoned secretly as in with out anyone else knowing. They would summon a weaker version of the Primals (not as weak as the Egis, they are strong enough to temper) a few victims at a time. They would try to make the Primal stronger if there are more than a few people (such as the Ifrit boss with at least 8-12 people not counting the Echofied PCs being sacrificed). Related is the possibility that tempering does not consume enough aether to be noticed by the Scions or Grand Companies.

[Rennah]

We have it pretty much outright confirmed that tempered beast tribe members can temper without summoning the primals themselves. The sylphs are terrified of being taken away by the tempered sylphs because they feared they would "turn them into touched ones", but we know that the tempered sylphs had not summoned Ramuh and were not threatening to do so. Sahagin (or rather, their drowned servants) regularly kidnap, as well, presumably also to temper; the entire main Limsan storyline deals with this, and is what leads you to Sastasha.

[Kicha]

I was under the impression in the main storyline that Ramuh had already been summoned, but he wasn't seen as a threat, which was why the Scions didn't deal with him at that moment.

[Rennah]

Ramuh had been summoned at some point in the past, which was what tempered the sylphs, but we have every indication that he's no longer there. We were sent to look into the sylphs to ensure they weren't about to bring him back, and once that was determined, that was why they were left alone. With Ramuh running loose in the Shroud, I don't think anyone would have been so comfortable turning a blind eye (that, and we can go full into the heart of the Sylphlands; I'm pretty sure we would have seen some indication of him there, as a "guardian deity" to the sylphs he probably wouldn't be so comfortable letting us walk in and start killing them).

[Kerberon]

Fairly sure I remember Ramuh being there in the Believe in your slyph quest where you have to /lookout into the slyphlands.