The Relic Weapons and justifying why the Jobmasters have them

[Lucke]

I interpret the Curtana story in that you actually do find the real, legit Curtana. However over the years it degraded to such a point that it's garbage now and unusable. You take the Curtana to Gerolt who says it's beyond repair, but instead of repairing it, you transfer the....."essence" into that base weapon he wants you to get him.

All the trials you do is a way to repair/reawaken the essence and acclimate it to the base weapon which slowly takes it over and reverting it's form. I haven't done the other relics except Omnilex so I dunno if that story matches others.

The base weapons all have a piece of the relics of old and thus inherit their legacies. This IS Final Fantasy, stuff doesn't need to make sense.

[TinyRedLeaf]

The base weapons all have a piece of the relics of old and thus inherit their legacies.

Yup, it's essentially the same as well for the summoner's relic, the Veil of Wiyu. The original was recovered from deep within the Sylphlands, close to where its owner, Wiyu, was said to have died while fighting Odin the Dark Divinity. And just like Curtana, the original Veil was in a terrible condition, and its essence had to be transferred to a new host.

The concept of "essence transfer" isn't too hard to work around — I like to think of it as a more advanced form of materia conversion and melding. Just that, in this case, we're not working with aether-filled materia, but the raw materials of the relic itself.

And like what I said above about the "Echo" as an overarching theme in FFXIV's story, the whole business about our relic weapons really boils down to a restoration of the old to renew the present, and refresh hopes for the future. In other words, our signature weapons are literally echoes of the past.