Thordan's 12 Knights are not Primals

[myahele]

Well I thought I'd share the recent news and confirmation that the 12 Knights are not Primals.

Though there are 13 enemies to face off against in The Singularity Reactor, only Thordan is a primal while his 12 knights are simply "blessed" by him.

http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/pr/blog/001318.html

Unsurprisingly, Enkidu is also a Primal

[Nalien]

Oh good, someone posted this, now then;

When did we fight Alexander?

Seriously, when did that happen? How can they possibly count Alexander in the list of fought Primals... OK, I wouldn't even call that thing Alexander, it's Alexanderp until it can have the self respect to actually finish one push up, but still; When the hell did we fight it?

If Thordans knights aren't Primals, but people blessed by Thordan (the Primal), then everything we fight in Alexanderp isn't a Primal, but something blessed by Alexanderp, no? Not even that, because the Goblins are just Goblins... To hell with them, the answer is 14.

[Belhi]

Well techinically we cant be sure how much of what we actually fought was an extension of Alexanders actual body.

I find the Heaven's Ward thing pretty interesting. Having a Primal that possesses multiple individuals at once is something we haven't seen before. I can only assume that its Thordan that acted as the primal's true host and the Heaven's Ward acted as proxies to its power.

[CyrilLucifer]

So essentially the Heaven's Ward are the elemental ponies to the mortal Nightmare.

Interesting.

[Anonymoose]

Ohoho, Bayohne and Yoshi-P are playing hardball now, eh?

Here's hoping that means they also know whether Thordan was granted the Echo (a la the Sahagin Elder) to do become a primal and whether or not it was Elidibus' doing (as his side of this "project primal" thing he and Lahabrea were up to for 5 patches). <Teleports off to Twitter to try his luck>

Not surprised about Enkidu, though. Just because it's a comedic representation of a primal doesn't technically mean that it's not a primal at all.
It's like saying Hildibrand's dapper zombies, because they don't behave like zombies, aren't really zombies.

[Kaiser-Ace]

I considered The Heaven's Ward to be PART of Thorden's Primal form since, despite him being "God King Thorden", We were basically facing the Knights of the Round summon. Which had Arthur and his Twelve Knights in the summon.

So, to me, it's one primal comprised of 13 mortals. Alexander on the other hand, I'm not even sure it's alive let alone a primal. Just because something is summoned and uses aether to sustain it doesn't make it a primal. Other wise Carbuncles would be one too.

I will say that it is a thought form sustained by aether though and, with 3.0's revelation, that really is all it takes to be classified as one.

[LineageRazor]

Here's hoping that means they also know whether Thordan was granted the Echo (a la the Sahagin Elder) to do become a primal and whether or not it was Elidibus' doing (as his side of this "project primal" thing he and Lahabrea were up to for 5 patches). <Teleports off to Twitter to try his luck>

Ysayle's Echo is implied to be the reason why she was able to become Shiva and yet stay in control of herself and maintain her identity. Thordan, on the other hand, seemed to undergo a pretty radical change in goals and personality after his transformation (unless those goals and personality were always there, and he simply stopped hiding them). That implies to me that Primal Thordan is an example of what happens to someone who becomes a Primal WITHOUT the Echo to protect them. They essentially Temper themselves and become lost in the identity of the Primal they summoned.

[Nalien]

Well techinically we cant be sure how much of what we actually fought was an extension of Alexanders actual body.

I guess one could argue we battled Alexanderp indirectly, and have yet to finish the job... IDK, the question seems wrong to me, how many Primals have we encountered seems better, since we've encountered Alexanderp for certain. I wouldn't say we've battled him, rather battled inside him. Meanwhile, while we've seen statues, we've not actually encountered the Warring Triad at all. Unless you want to count the Singularity Reactor as an extension of them, but then surely that means we've battled them in the same way we've battled Alexanderp?

Even shutting down the core in Gordias, which one could argue was a direct assault on Alexanderp, was not done by us, it was done by Scar-McGee. We battled through Alexanderp, to let Mide battle Alexanderp, but we haven't actually battled him ourselves... Everything we battled was no different than running through The Vault IMO... The Vault was us battling Thordans minions, likewise Gordias was us battling Alexanderps minions.

Heck, if we take the lore on the Enigma Codex into account, it's fairly reasonable to argue that Alexanderp hasn't even been summoned properly yet... Would we count it as a battle with Ifrit, if the Amalj'aa only managed to summon his arm? I don't think so...

Ysayle's Echo is implied to be the reason why she was able to become Shiva and yet stay in control of herself and maintain her identity. Thordan, on the other hand, seemed to undergo a pretty radical change in goals and personality after his transformation (unless those goals and personality were always there, and he simply stopped hiding them). That implies to me that Primal Thordan is an example of what happens to someone who becomes a Primal WITHOUT the Echo to protect them. They essentially Temper themselves and become lost in the identity of the Primal they summoned.

Not sure I agree... He very much seemed to just drop the act when he summoned Thordan, I don't think he was Tempered, he seemed to retain far to much of his own identity for that. The fact that the Heavensward were already Thordan-enhanced before we event met them also implies he should have been Tempered all along. Then there is his actual fight, which did not feel like a Primal, it felt like an old man playing at being a Primal. A fair part of his attacks instead came from Nidhoggs Eye, even... Then after you survive Ultimate End? He starts flailing about hopelessly, very much like I'd expect Thordan VII to, not Thordan... Were he Tempered I do not think he would have fallen into a blind panic like that.

As for Ysayle/Shiva, one could argue that despite the Echo (or because of it?), she was effectively Tempered. She actually thought she was Saint Shiva reborn. Thordan VII seemed to very much know what he was doing, and when we defeated him he seemed very much himself, meanwhile Ysayle took a long time to realize she wasn't actually Shiva...

[whiskeybravo]

I wouldn't have counted the 12 knights, Enkidu, or Alexander since we haven't actually battled Alexander proper. We didn't claim we beat Bahamut when we downed Twintania fighting on his hand, therefore we can't say we've fought alex when all we've battled is machines and goblins in his "hand", or "arm" or etc.

[Kaiser-Ace]

As for Ysayle/Shiva, one could argue that despite the Echo (or because of it?), she was effectively Tempered. She actually thought she was Saint Shiva reborn. Thordan VII seemed to very much know what he was doing, and when we defeated him he seemed very much himself, meanwhile Ysayle took a long time to realize she wasn't actually Shiva...

That was actually Ysayle's personal delusion after having an echo vision of Hrasvelgr from Saint Shiva's point of view. Hraesvelgr himself calls her out on that.