Thread: The Dark Divinity 3.0

Originally Posted by Velox

The Triad is actually stored within the Centrifugal Crystal Engine right besides the Aetheryte at Helix. You can actually walk into it, but all that's there now is a maintenance module that keeps spouting something about a core breech.

Whats your source? Because in the cut scenes they make it pretty clear that the Knights went into the ship looking for the Warring Triad stored inside.

Originally Posted by Shirobi

There is no difference. The devs have made this clear. An "Eikon" is just the word used by the allag for the extremely powerful primals. You might call a souped up street racer a dragster, but its still a car. Just a very fast car.

That's pretty much how I took it when I read it too, but some people seem to be expressing the opinion that the Eikons are somehow fundamentally different from the other Primals. Personally, I don't think the Allagans or Garleans would distinguish one from the other, except, maybe, on a scale of how annoying they are to deal with.

The dev's made it clear that the Garlean's adopted the word "Eikon," so we can assume they were using the whole, "when in Rome" attitude. Especially because the Dev's stated that they used it as a derogatory term. This, also, would likely be an adopted attitude towards all Primals that they inherited from Allagans. After all, I think it's pretty clear that the Allagan's did not worship any Primals, nor did they fear or respect them. We're talking about a race of people who created weapons with the singular purpose of decimating Primals (ultima and omega weapons), managed to capture and seal Bahamut, and went so far as to continually summon him so they could siphon off his power uing a legion of suspended animation torture victims.

in the end, I think your metaphor for it is an accurate interpretation and is somewhat proved by the notion of Extreme Primals. The lore is that each Primal's incarnation can be stronger or weaker depending on the method of summoning and the amount of supplies used; yet, no one refers to Titan as an Eikon when he hits the steroids. It's not like they graduate out of one level of godship into another. It's just that some Primals, like Bahamut, are more threatening or difficult to handle. (I don't think we can include Odin in this list, as, at the time of the Allagans, he would have still been just a man).

That being said, there are some deities that I would say do not fall into the "Primal" definition, but they're the really big ones like Zodiark or Hydelyn (Sp?).

Originally Posted by Shirobi

Whats your source? Because in the cut scenes they make it pretty clear that the Knights went into the ship looking for the Warring Triad stored inside.

Then I might be right about that big chained door after all... Still haven't gotten the coordinates. Kinda forgot. I'll post them next time I log in.

Originally Posted by Volsung

Interesting idea. If the sword is what is providing the worship.

Wouldn't matter if the sword was created. If it was sentient, and had a strong desire for a strong master (or maybe it's original owner/maker) it could use a person's aether to summon.

If it were the original owner/maker than it definitely wouldn't summon Odin all the time, since it was pretty much confirmed he wasn't the original owner. However, it is an interesting idea that the sword is providing the worship.

If the sword is sentient (like a zodiac weapon) than, in theory, it should be possible for the sword to provide the worship (which would make for an interesting set of Trials for a new Zodiac quest line, now that I think on it. if all of the original weapons summoned their original owners for you to fight. How cool would that be?). Odin would still be the Primal, since he's being summoned using a mortal medium. It would point at the sword being an object, rather than a primal itself, though. I'm friendly to this idea, personally.. only, it would mean that if Zantetsuken is ever destroyed, Odin would cease to exist as a Primal entirely... which would kinda suck (though I'm sure the realm would be thankful).

The only problem (if you can call it that) with the sentient sword idea is that, despite the Dark Divinity quest heavily implying that the sword is the source of Odin's continued revivals, it has never, not once, shown any sign of sentience. In both the Trial and the FATE, Odin does all the talking. The sword appears to be just a sword. That doesn't mean it's not sentient, mind you. Our Zodiac weapons supposedly achieved consciousness, but they never spoke to us either... much to my disappointment.

Originally Posted by Shirobi

There is no difference. The devs have made this clear. An "Eikon" is just the word used by the allag for the extremely powerful primals. You might call a souped up street racer a dragster, but its still a car. Just a very fast car.

All the Devs said is that the Allag called powerful Primals Eikons. That doesn't mean that all Eikons are Primals. Unukalhai says it's a word the Allag used to refer to godlike beings. I think it's as simple as that. All godlike beings can be referred to as Eikons. Primals are specifically entities brought into being and sustained with prayer and aether. Unukalhai heavily implies that Odin and the Warring Triad are not Primals.

Ferraris and Jeeps are both cars, but Jeep isn't just another word for Ferrari.

Originally Posted by Februs

The dev's made it clear that the Garlean's adopted the word "Eikon," so we can assume they were using the whole, "when in Rome" attitude. Especially because the Dev's stated that they used it as a derogatory term. This, also, would likely be an adopted attitude towards all Primals that they inherited from Allagans.

They definitely did make it clear regarding how Garlean uses the word, and also made it clear that the word was the "a term used long ago by the Allagans to describe the powerful summons."

On the other hand, we should be careful with fully attributing characteristics of the Allagan empire based on the "Allagan wanna-be" Garlean Empire, and by extension the full original nature of the term eikon and the beings to which it refers.

For Eorzea in the present time, and the Garlean Empire trying to take over, Primal and Eikon respectively currently refer almost exclusively to an entity created by the coalescence of aether in the presence of a sufficient amount of aether as a result of the worship/belief/will of a specific group that is almost exclusively the practice of the "beast tribes" of Eorzea (Shiva being the first major known exception - Louisoux/Phoenix is much less known to characters/NPCs in the game world, and it was really her that first began to change our understanding of how primals worked in the first place - followed by King Thordan), and such a process requires sufficient amounts of both requirements listed above and resummoning by that same process or continued sustenance through feeding of aether (usually in the form of crystals, concentrated as it is).

When Eorzean's and Garleans speak of primals, that's what they are talking about.

When Unukalhai mentions the eikon threat, that's what our character immediately assumes he's talking about - which he then corrects us on his intended meaning, and that he's using it as the Allagans apparently did...

Which, at this point, leads me to one of two conclusions:

1) The summoned beings called eikons by the Allagan empire all fall into a general category of "beings created by a coalescence of aether" that is likewise occupied by the primals we know and have faced, and so they are fundamentally the same, but details of their summoning, continued existence, dissipation, etc. are different and can deviate from what we currently have seen (still making them summoned beings, but not fully equivalent to primals, as in you wouldn't be able to exchange the name of one for the other and be totally accurate)...

Or

2) When Unukalhai corrects us, his intent was to point out that he's not talking about the primals we've already faced, sans Odin, but other ones that exist that were faced and imprisoned by the Allagan empire, but are otherwise identical in how they work when compared to the primals you have met.

Which does kind of bring me back to my first point - if we knew that we could rely on how the Garlean Empire has taken the information and used it to be an accurate representation of the Allagan Empire used it, then we could almost certainly see the second conclusion as being correct...but we already know that there is much that the Garlean Empire doesn't understand when it comes to the Allagan Empire, and so while they are taking on the "when in Rome" attitude we can't, with certainty, say that their attitudes and beliefs represent what the Allagan Empire likewise believed...at least so far as fully defining and understanding a specific word is concerned.

Originally Posted by Februs

They aren't referred to as Eikons because those who used the term originally are no where to be found and the Garleans are from another country.

Which would be the case if the second conclusion I mentioned turns out to be the intended meaning from Unukalhai, or a meaning similar to it.


I also don't think there's that much evidence pointing to it being a cultural/geographical/language distinction - some, but not much. We have the modern use of it via the Garlean empire, and the Lore panel comment that describes it only as the name Allag used for the powerful summons without further clarification on those summons (so we don't have evidence for or against it including entities that share a fundamental basis yet differ in ways not seen yet that are removed enough from the exact process that involve Eorzean primals for them to be considered different than primals, at least not from the lore panel), and that's about it.

That Allag almost certainly didn't worship any gods and some of them actually sought godhood isn't actually terribly relevant to the Garleans using the word eikon in the exact same fashion. At most, with Garlean being the copy cat, it suggests they are at least partially correct, and that leaves room for the issue of eikons to go either way, for now.

And again, there's the apparent distinction being made by Unukalhai (the more I consider his sentence, the less I think it likely he's just referring to primals we have yet to meet):

"Ah, but I speak not of the primals, with which you are exceedingly well acquainted. It may interest you to know that the term “eikon” and the beings to which it refers precede the Garlean Empire by eras. You see, it is the name by which the Allagans called godlike beings, the Dark Divinity Odin among them."

If the difference between primal and eikon were a cultural/geographical/language distinction, why would he specifically call out that he's speaking "not of the primals" but rather something else, treating them as separate beings in those comments?

As a side note - that one part of the answer from the lore panel has certainly muddied the waters, as it seems to almost contradict what Unukalhai said.