Lore: Soul Stones

[finiteHP]

Consider this: The way we use "jobs" in the Seventh Astral Era is through a mix of class kills and a handful of job skills acquired from the stones. I doubt that an Allagan summoner of yore mixes modern arcanima with his or her magic, for example.

This doesn't go against anything you've said, but it occurred to me last night; what if the Scholars of Nym and the modern Arcanist are using the Allagan summoning magic of yore?

[TinyRedLeaf]

This doesn't go against anything you've said, but it occurred to me last night; what if the Scholars of Nym and the modern Arcanist are using the Allagan summoning magic of yore?

There is not enough information to say for sure either way, so any explanation I offer would be speculation at best.

It's entirely possible that arcanima could have descended from Nymian magic but, based on what we know, they seem to have originated independently from different parts of the world. Arcanima, we know for certain, originated from the "South Sea" islands, and I've always liked to imagine that the magic was born from the mathematics needed for ocean navigation. Nymian magic, on the other hand, appears to be native to Vylbrand, and seems to come from a mix of healing arts and martial tactics, and refined by years of combat during the War of the Magi.

There are functional similarities between the two arts, but similarity doesn't necessarily mean a direct link. In the real world, for example, it's very remarkable humans in different parts of the world independently invented the different families of languages we now speak today. Some languages are closely related. Others are not. The differences arise from not just the vocabulary, but also from the syntax, that is, the mechanics of each language.

And in the case of arcanima and Nymian magic, the mechanics of their summoning do, in fact, differ. A close reading of the available lore suggests that arcanists summon their carbuncles by releasing and manipulating the aether of gemstones. Crucially, each arcanist has a unique carbuncle. That's very different from the scholar's fairy, as revealed in the Las Vegas Fan Fest interview with Koji Fox:

MCKF: Fairies again, while they fall under the taxonomy of elementals, they are actually beings that were created. They did not exist before. The Scholar would take the energies and elements from around them and would basically create these beings that were made of the elements.

A: Those are bound to the soul crystal then and passed from one person to the next where carbuncle is more one per person. Very cool.

So, ultimately, I don't think arcanima descended from scholar magic. Rather, I think arcanima came about from its own roots. However, there is the possibility that it adapted a part of Nymian magic — the art of summoning, for example — but expressed it differently, with arcane geometry instead of pure willpower.

As for Allagan summoning, it becomes more a question of scale. Like the Nymians, the Allagans also shaped and manipulated aether through sheer force of will. But unlike the Nymians, the Allagans were dealing with something far grander: the very essences of primals. And we know further that summoning predated the golden age of the Allag: when the Allagans attempted to invade Meracydia, they were confronted by the primals summoned by the Meracydians. So again, based on geographical reasons, I don't think Allagan summoning is the same Nymian summoning, especially when you consider their drastically different purposes (maim versus mending).

But then again, who knows? They do share enough similarities to be possibily related, and it would be really cool if we knew more.

=============

Lol.

I just thought of an easier way to explain my theories, but it does assume some knowledge of Jurassic Park, either the movie or the original book.

Recall that when the scientists of Jurassic Park extracted dinosaur DNA from prehistoric insects trapped in amber, they found gaps in the genetic sequences that prevented them from re-creating the ancient animals. So, what did they do? They filled the gaps with frog DNA and, voila, dinosaurs roamed the land once more.

Except that those dinosaurs weren't the same kind of beasts any more. It turned out that the frog DNA also contained information that allowed spontaneous sex change, allowing the newly created dinosaurs — which were supposed to be all of one gender — to breed again. Chaos ensued.

So, what I'm suggesting is that there are very likely gaps of information in the job soul stones that we fill with knowledge taken from modern disciplines.

And in the process, we've inadvertently created a new breed of monsters to terrorise Eorzea.