Do the Primals Know Each Other?

[Anonymoose]

I got that impression from the FF wiki, but I'm not sure their source:

As good as the FF Wiki is, when it comes to the little details of XIV lore, they tend to fill in the holes with assumptions and theories from these forums (which, as good as those are, are mostly unconfirmed), but then not mark them as such. And that's not me putting them down, especially because that elder primal thing is probably my own damn fault, lol.

That quest line actually makes me question if an elder primal is anything but a primal from a bygone era.

Fortunately, we have a new definition of Elder Primal, and the source is as official as it gets.

Snipped from [Full Interview]

Fusionx: What is the difference between a Primal and an Elder Primal?

Koji Fox: Basically it’s all a matter of length of worship. With primals, it’s all about how you have someone worshiping you and you become that primal and they believe in you and you get your power from that. For the Ixal or the Amalj’aa, it’s the belief that makes the aether combine to summon forth these primals—so when you look at Ifrit, and Titan, and the one’s we’re calling primals, they’re considered very young. They’ve been believing in them for a long time, but looked at in a span of all the eras it’s not that much time.<...>

Anwyll: Originally, we thought it might be more complicated than that, <...> but it’s just has to do with the length of time?

Koji Fox: Basic length of time.

(The more often I quote this one, the better I feel about how much time we spend polishing possible interview questions to best serve the in-depth Lore community as a whole, lol.)

The most basic question, what exactly are [primals]?

Their exact nature remains unknown, but on the whole they're the result of aether reacting to prayer. There could be slightly more than that, they could be no more than that.

My question is, is the Ifrit of 1.0 even the same Ifrit of 2.0? Do we really know?

We do not. The only hint we'd have as to Ifrit's long-term memory is the example above, which is mired by being part of the same story told by different versions of the game.

Good King Moogle Mog, Shiva and Enkidu are the obvious outliers.

Correct. Well, I'd throw out Enkidu. At best, the Hildibrand storyline hugely exaggerates the lore for comedic effect, stretching reality too far to be implicitly trusted. At worst, it's one-way canon (everything that's happened in Eorzea is true to Hildy, nothing that happens in Hildy is canon to Eorzea). The fact that Gilgamesh got lonely next to a box of crystals and they reacted to him desperately wanting his friend back is probably more joke than not-joke.

But with the other primals, we've seen enough to have questions, but not enough to rule anything out.

If there's no more to it than aether and prayer, even the outliers can be explained away. Moggle and Bahamut end up having a lot in common as re-creations of a great ancestor (granted we don't know if Moggle even existed). Shiva ends up being the essence of the land shaped by specific prayers and fused to an Echo user's soul. Phoenix ends up being the result of people praying Louisoix would save them just as Louisoix is thinking about Eorzea's rebirth from the ashes. The original five primals end up being supremely OP elementals.

If there's more to it than that, then we get to start asking some pretty heavy questions. Is a soul part of it? Are we recalling the memories of past entities from the lifestream? Were they all deiformed, as was Louisoix? Or do all of those things happen and being primarily aether and prayer is what connects them? Your post alone asks a hearty chunk of these questions.

Was he controlling an older Primal? Or did he actually create a new Primal? The latter bears resemblance to Iceheart's transformation into Shiva.

It's never been stated so specifically as to confirm it beyond the shadow of a doubt, but the game says Louisoix became a primal whereas Ysayle hosted one. It talks of Phoenix as if it were born and talks of Shiva as if she were conjured.

Whatever the case, I'm sure Ravana, Bismarck, and the Allag ruins will give us a little more to work with.

At least I hope they doesn't just stir the pot without any further developments on what's actually in the pot.

WHAT'S IN THE POT!?

[Allyrion]

As good as the FF Wiki is, when it comes to the little details of XIV lore, they tend to fill in the holes with assumptions and theories from these forums (which, as good as those are, are mostly unconfirmed), but then not mark them as such. And that's not me putting them down, especially because that elder primal thing is probably my own damn fault, lol.

So I just quoted you your own theory. Nice! Hahah, thanks for the clarification though.

On the rest of your post,
I hope too that we get some better understanding, even if some things shake up the foundation a little.

More on point, I'm not sure how to conceive of the Primals as 'characters'.
Since it feels like they're portrayed as this one character(Ifrit is Ifrit), while there's these subplots that question what it means to be or become a Primal.
It's weird to struggle with such a basic conception of this very important group that you interact with.

I guess the same could be said of the Ascians, but we can say that Lahabrea is the same Lahabrea after he died and came back.
And though we don't know how they came to be, their existence doesn't seem tied to something so whimsical as wishes.

[finiteHP]

At best, the Hildibrand storyline hugely exaggerates the lore for comedic effect, stretching reality too far to be implicitly trusted. At worst, it's one-way canon (everything that's happened in Eorzea is true to Hildy, nothing that happens in Hildy is canon to Eorzea).

The answer to this might depend on how canon seasonal events are. I wish I had screenshots of it, but in last year's Starlight Celebration Godbert reacted differently to my character that has done the Hildy quests than to the one that hadn't. So in this instance at least Hildy is canon to another set of quests.