I want to talk about tempering

[Biridan]

We are introduced to tempering early on when we first fight Ifrit. We see those brass blades basically start worshiping It fit as if in a zombified state.

After the fight you talk with Thancred in the walking sands and, as an aside, he just casually mentions that we have to put those that were tempered to death. My immediate thought was that isn't what the good guys do. He explained why and we really have no choice but to accept it.

Tempering is constantly brought up as a problem and most recently we are actively fighting off tempering bubbles with the echo. I any help but think where the story would go if Lyse got tempered. Would we just casually off her and say it's sad and must be done or would we move heavan and earth to save her.

Which leads me to my question. Out of everything that happens in this game both mystical and spiritual. Why is tempering so irreversible? Why can't this be cured apart from because the writers says so?

[MistakeNot]

We do not know much about the actual mechanics about tempering, so there really isn't enough information available to answer your question - unless there is something in the Lorebook.
We do not even know for sure that tempering actually is irreversible, only that people in the game believe it is.

What we do know is that nobody in-game knows how to cure it, and we can safely assume they have spent a lot of time studying this.


Thancred is not nearly as casual about the executions as he may appear. He knows full well it is a terrible thing to do, which is why he prefers we hear it from him rather than from some random person.

[Ilenya]

Considering as far as we are aware just being tempered empowers the primals due to the worship (I wonder if some primals find tempering to be cheating?), unless we actively have a test to fix the tempering, I can't imagine we'd let anyone, regardless on how close they are, stick around if they've been tempered.

Actually, I wonder what happens if you do the artificial Echo Fordola has on someone who is tempered...

[TinyRedLeaf]

To ask why tempering is incurable is like asking why there isn't a cure for cancer.

It's not impossible, but neither is it going to be easy. Tempering, like a malignant tumour, changes an individual's mind/aether to such a severe extent that no one yet knows of a way to reverse its effects.

Case in point: A very significant exception has already been made, where one tempered individual was spared from summary execution, thanks in no small part to Alisaie's intervention. Even so, all parties involved are no closer to rehabilitating the individual, although there are signs that he hasn't lost all traces of his original mind.

It's worth reiterating that two things are needed to sustain a primal: Aether and worship. A primal is essentially an idea brought to life by intense belief. That remains the fundamental reason for executing the tempered: Keeping them alive only means it'll be easier to revive a defeated primal. It's too big a risk to take, in most cases.

[Alma_karma]

In the amalj'aa beast tribe quest there are mentions of tempering. It causes (and spoiler) the mother to believe her baby is still a baby, aka shes lulling a rock because its been at least 15-20 years im guessing based on the daughters age and telling it that they will serve their primal.
It seems tempering works differently for some.

[Cilia]

What would happen in the story if a major character (i.e. Lyse) was tempered is unknown and unknowable; anything on the subject is idle speculation.

Tempering is, as I infer, the warping of the original being's soul into something favorable to the primal. As primals desire worshipers to maintain their aetherial existence and (in most cases) have them summoned to the material plane, that they would twist it into slavish devotion is unsurprising. (Side note: Ifrit is somewhat unique in just how obsessively devoted his tempered followers are - his "domain," so to speak, is domination, after all.) Without the ability to mess with souls, it's unlikely tempering can be undone.

That said - there is one instance of tempering being undone, Nael at the end of the Second Coil, so it's not impossible. There were unique circumstances surrounding Nael, though, so... who knows?

[ObsidianFire]

The "simplest" definition of tempering is that a eikon makes another being more like itself via exposing it to it's aether and that that process is different for every eikon. Leviathan's Drowned are very different from Rahmu's Touched which are different from Lakshmi's Dreamers. In addition, the motives the eikon has when tempering beings is different as well to the point there are some eions that never temper anyone at all as far as I can tell. What is true across the board though is that the tempered being's desires become like the desires of the eikon that tempered it. And the level of tempering can run the gamut from being barley noticeable (Nael, for years) to mostly annoying (Rahmu's Touched) to full-on body transformation (extreme versions of Levianthan's Drowned).

Ironically, the only being we've seen "fix" tempering is Bhamut, himself an eikon. And in addition, he's the only eikon we've seen temper another eikon (Phoenix). The thing is, when he "fixes" Nael's tempering, it's like Bahamut is removing his own aether from Nael. It's only once that aether is gone that Nael goes back to "normal" again. So maybe tempering is when enough aether of an eikon "gets stuck" inside someone's soul and overwhelms their own aether. Since that person will now go on worshiping the eikonl it's an acceptable expenditure of aether for most eikons. As for separating aether out of something that's currently alive... yeah... good luck with that...

Incidentally, that explanation of tempering can explain why souls with the Echo can't be tempered. Everything we've seen about the Echo demonstrates our soul's "boundaries" don't contain our soul as well as they should (our soul "leaks" and we get Echo flashbacks as a result). So it could be that foreign aether can't "get suck" in souls with the Echo since and "Echo-soul" makes for a very bad "aether-container".

[Anonymoose]

To speak out-of-world for a moment...

Tempering is what it is because it's what the writers needed at the time. When one knows nothing about primals but rumors, tempering reinforces the narrative boundaries they desired. It gives primals mysterious, god-like powers and creates a threat that explains (in part) why they are so feared and why so few are willing to fight them.

Moreover, what better fits a story about souls that that you might somehow lose your own? And combined with Ascian possession and Imperial espionage, tempering means you really can't trust anyone you don't know. Doubt! Intrigue! Sabotage!

Having come this far, even the writers still seem to be unsure if they want to make it curable, or how. If the solution is too easy, the primals are subjected to even further threat decay. If it's it too difficult, it'll be obvious that it's just a years-later loophole to buy drama with a coupon.

Back to in-world...

Killing the tempered is often like killing someone who's been bitten by a zombie; it comes down to one casualty of action vs. multiple casualties of inaction. It's a trolley problem. If we find the cure one day, great! But until then there's not great precedent for a case-by-case basis.

Even in Stormblood, when we left the Qalyana to the Vira, it was clear that it was just too gray for us to deal with at the moment. The Qalyana weren't "our people", the Vira knew little of the circumstances, we had more pressing matters. Slaughtering them wholesale would just make us Garlemald Lite, so we just gave the Vira crash course (Try to bring them around but don't hold your breath. Oh, and keep them away from crystals.) and bailed, but look how much good the benefit of doubt did us in the end.

And, ethics-wise, some Eorzeans even believe that death is preferable to tempering, because it removes some of your you-ness to make you more receptive to "The Blessing" or "The Teachings". (Note: The word "Blessing" is thrown around a lot and doesn't always mean the same thing. Some primals call tempering a blessing, primals can have blessings separate from tempering.)

However...

I often think back to lines from the first primal set. Ifrit says that the soul can be host to only one blessing. Garuda can't fathom that she can't claim someone who has not been claimed ("the Godless Blessed" the Paragons call them).

This is why tempering is so mysterious. Is it additive or subtractive? If it burns you away until nothing is left, not even your original frame in some cases, what hope is there of restoration? If it's merely something sitting in the seat of your soul, how does one unseat it?

Even Nael's case does not inspire much hope, as [A] Bahamut reconstructed Nael's aether into a new existence himself, down to a new spear for "him" to wield, and [B] they played a little loose with the rules to make that scenario work in the first place. Even the mechanics of Phoenix are left partially to speculation.

The Echo is something I typically see as "jailbreaking". Hydaelyn likes rigid boundaries around souls (Lahabrea freaks out about you putting him back inside the "walls" from which Zodiark freed him when you separate him and Igeyorhm, for example), but lets yours become stronger and more fluid, "resounding" with others to divine their intentions and read their memories. Things that would typically cause others to lose themselves to the Lifestream (such as physical death, becoming enmeshed with others, etc.) can be transcended by those with the Echo, albeit sometimes in ways that we might see as abominations.

So is our individuality merely too strong to be burned away by so feeble a force with the Light at our back? Who knows.

Potential cures for tempering depend on what it actually is. Infection can perhaps be excised, taint can perhaps be purified, if some part of you is still your "original aetherial waveform signature", perhaps you can correct "foreign signatures" somehow.

But perhaps, once your ring that bell, there's no unringing it.

If I were an aetherophysicist, I'd try using the Scions aetherometer readings and the tech we just pulled out of the Resonatorium. If you can read a tempered person's soul signature and amplify it, subtracting the primal's signature, perhaps you can strengthen the original waveform enough to purge the tainted bits. However, you then have other problems.

[1] What if their original signature is "corrupted"? How much "data" is lost probably depends on how many times they've been tempered and how strong, but even a little "data loss" brings all sorts of NieR: Automata-esque philosophy into it. If you are any less than you, are you you? Even if you had a perfect back-up of you a week ago, is that you? Or are you-you dead and now there's a passable facsimile that everyone is pretending is you? (Frankly, I'd never use a "disassemble you and reassemble you elsewhere" teleporter for this reason.)

[2] How much do we have to amplify it? Is this going to create home-made Echo users, even if not ones Resonating someone else's Crystal-given Echo? Or is the Echo a unique signature and we're just making them "More Human than Human"? Can that have unanticipated outcomes?

[3] What potential doors to abuse does this open?

[Remedi]

I don't understand how the story team could show us some very interesting plot points regarding tempering ( bahamut tempering phoenix, zenos and the resonance) and important characters not realizing what it meant.
What zenos said about tempering beignj essentially a battle of will was practically explained by phoenix's situation, both the twins were there and had no EUREKA (not that zone) moment.
Coming to SB, it seems to me now that garleans are much further than eorzeans on the echo science, beign able at least to replicate the effects on ppl, probably moose is right we could assume that with that research we can isolate the tempering factor and remove it, but it annoys me that the scions have made no questions about the implications of those researches, they were terrifying for sure considering what they required, but when you consider what was achieved it was pretty gamechanging, because yif perfected you can essentially create an immunity to tempering

[Jandor]

Tempering is constantly brought up as a problem and most recently we are actively fighting off tempering bubbles with the echo. I any help but think where the story would go if Lyse got tempered. Would we just casually off her and say it's sad and must be done or would we move heavan and earth to save her.

No need to kill her, we don't really kill the tempered anymore. Instead we invite them to conferences so they can (big shock) attempt to summon their primal and convert everyone .