Primal confusion - spoilers

[dragoelete]

Not to throw another wrench into this...but where do the Twelve fit in? They are worshipped, but not made manifest(except an attempt by lousioux, but that didn't quite last...). Is it that their worship do not typically involve the siphoning of aether/crystals as a ritual?

the 12 are still there but they are in the aether stream as while they are worshiped they have never been summoned. and lousioux didn't try to "summon" them he was "channeling" there power to try to reseal bahamut but upon noticing that he was getting to close to summoning them he forcefully stopped thus why bahamut was able to escape. at which point all the prayers of the people ended up being absorbed into him thus forcefully changing him into pheonix.

[Akiza]

The Twelve are primals. At the end of 1.0 people are told to pray to the 12 to save Eorzea, then the mega aether staff is used to manifest those prayers in order to trap Bahamut but it fails. Prayer + Aether = Primal.

The result of this is Luisiox (spell check please) then using those same prayers for the realm to be reborn after the devastation it went through and the remaining aether from the failed summoning of the 12 in order to turn into Phoenix (the symbol for rebirth) to defeat Bahamut.

The Twelve summoned by Luisiox are Primals since they are just an ideal representation of what we think they are. The only person who can summon the real Twelve are the Goddess Hydaelyn since she created them or someone that went through Hydaelyn to summon them.

[Anonymoose]

Not to throw another wrench into this...but where do the Twelve fit in?

Depends on who the Twelve really are. There are a lot of myths and theories out there, but how much do we really know? Some hints suggest that they're just myths of the Archons that have grown too big for their own shoes over the millennia. Other myths suggest that they were the original, deific inhabitants of Eorzea and left during the First Umbral Era, closing out the Age of the Gods. The symbols of the Twelve even showed up on Allagan runestones, but I assume they didn't think of that symbol representing Menphina: The Goddess of the Twin Moons considering they built one of said moons themselves.

I still hold out a little hope that they're real and perhaps a class of deity we've yet to really articulate. It would be lonely with just Hydaelyn, but ... of all the gods of all the cultures of all the eras, what are the chances all of our city-states just happened to be the ones who were right? Oh, man, what if they were just Eikons? Like, real Eikons...

They are worshipped, but not made manifest (except an attempt by lousioux, but that didn't quite last...). Is it that their worship do not typically involve the siphoning of aether/crystals as a ritual?

More or less. You can worship without conjuring a manifestation. Louisoix's ritual actually was a legitimate summoning (Tupsimati + Prayers infused into the land at stones encircling Mor Dhona), but he planned to harness their strength to return Dalamud to the heavens and then kill himself at 90% of the casting timer so they couldn't manifest physically in our world - most people just don't know that part because Bahamut interrupted the cast at 60% and we saw the results of those events. No matter how the the Battle of Cartenau played out, however, Louisoix wasn't coming home; something that only came out in the short stories posted for ARR's one year anniversary.

[Waffilicious]

maybe the eikons are the ff6 kind, living beings that come from the other realm and live here.

[Cilia]

Ehhh... I don't know yet. The only thing we can say for certain, based on Odin, is that eikons don't require prayer or active worshipers to exist.

Doubtless there are countless forgotten primals who may or may no longer exist in the Lifestream, but eikons don't need someone to observe their existence. That seems to be the key difference.

[dragoelete]

Ehhh... I don't know yet. The only thing we can say for certain, based on Odin, is that eikons don't require prayer or active worshipers to exist.

Doubtless there are countless forgotten primals who may or may no longer exist in the Lifestream, but eikons don't need someone to observe their existence. That seems to be the key difference.

we also dont know if they absorb aether at the same level as primals (which absorb something like 3 times more aether than they probably should...)

[Mimilu]

I have a question to add: Why do some of the Primals not look like their followers?
I mean, Bismarck and Leviathan make sense because it follows their origin stories and mythos but Garuda looks more like a Hyur then an Ixal, Ravana is way more humanoid then the Gnath, and so on.
Also, how was Phoenix given form? Wasn't Louisoix enough of a hero and icon at that point to just be an eikon?

Also also, I'm gonna call it and say that we're going to have to fight a primal Warrior of Light knock off some desperate group of people are going to try and summon. ;D

[Cilia]

I have a question to add: Why do some of the Primals not look like their followers?

Also, how was Phoenix given form? Wasn't Louisoix enough of a hero and icon at that point to just be an eikon?

Primals look like whatever their summoner(s) want them to. Shiva the primal, for instance, looks nothing like the real Saint Shiva; she just looks like what Ysayle imagined she would. Works the same for every primal.

Still unclear on Phoenix. I think it was the aether from the botched Twelve summoning, mixing with the prayers for deliverance and rebirth, which were all focused on Louisoix that transformed him into Phoenix. Where the image comes from I haven't the foggiest idea...

[Zohar_Lahar]

I'm thinking that if the Warring Triad and Dark Divinity are "eikons" as Unukalhai has suggested, then perhaps the Twelve and the elementals are eikons as well.

[dragoelete]

Primals look like whatever their summoner(s) want them to. Shiva the primal, for instance, looks nothing like the real Saint Shiva; she just looks like what Ysayle imagined she would. Works the same for every primal.

Still unclear on Phoenix. I think it was the aether from the botched Twelve summoning, mixing with the prayers for deliverance and rebirth, which were all focused on Louisoix that transformed him into Phoenix. Where the image comes from I haven't the foggiest idea...

on the shiva matter i think it was actually a combination of the fact that she imgained her that way and the fact she was using ice aligned aether crystals.