Quote Originally Posted by Theodric View Post
Well, realistically Ilberd doesn't have a shred of hope rallying a bunch of rag-tag Ala Mhigans to his side and then throwing them at his homeland to reclaim it. That would require Garlemald to be portrayed in a highly incompetent manner.
One way around that - Ala Mhigo could only have a token force present within it, with most of Garlemald's military having been pulled out/re-assigned until a solution to the primal problem presents itself. We don't know much about the current Garlean military presence in Eorzea, do we? Two of its leaders have been lost, now. I could see Varys (or even the previous Emperor) cutting his losses and leaving only a skeleton force behind. It could very easily have been anywhere from 1 to 5 years since that happened, too, so get a complacent enough regiment and tenacious or sneaky enough refugees...

In fact, the more I think about it, the more I like the idea. Let's say Ilberd breaks in and takes the token force stationed there unawares, installing himself as ruler. This gives Garlemald reason to start committing troops to Eorzea again, causing both a reason to work together as well as political strife about doing so. We could then work towards taking the city back from Ilberd over the course of the expansion while conflict with Garlemald bubbles and builds as that goal comes closer to becoming a reality; by the end, our alliance of convenience would be at an end (a la the Allies at the end of WWII), but we'd have then spent enough time working alongside Garleans so as to muddy the waters of upcoming war with them.

Of course, that all works with the Primal idea too, but I kind of like the idea of street-level combat. Plus, it means Primals can take a backseat finally, since Ilberd taking the city with a Primal would almost certainly mean that we'd be contending with that Primal would then be a major focus of the story. And although that would give the narrative cause to bring Omega back in, no Primal means Garlemald would be more likely to get into the thick of it from the outset. We need, at this point, something that forces us to work with them or at least bring them back into the main thrust of the narrative, and right now any anti-Primal means that we have don't require or involve them at all (and if they had something, they'd almost certainly act autonomously, without bothering to consult with Eorzea).