How many Warrior of Light exist in story?

[BillyKaplan]

It's not necessary to have the Echo to face a Primal. What is a necessity a strong will and mind. Speaking of Zurvan, you'd recall that several of the troops present fell to his influence, but others did not. Strong willed individuals such as this likely composed the Company of Heroes, who I doubt all had the Echo.
That is because there are two forms of Tempering that we saw. One is like with Zurvan - unintentional. The second, as we see with Garuda and Ifrit, is very much something the Primal actively performs. So long as this second is not done, people even without the Echo or the Blessings can fight a Primal without falling under their influence. Those are likely most of your companions.
Then there's also examples like what happened when the Mothercrystal protected us from Ultima - she protected our allies as well. While to a lesser degree, I believe our party members receive protection from Hydaelyn by virtue of association with us.

[Anonymoose]

It's not necessary to have the Echo to face a Primal. What is a necessity a strong will and mind.

To clarify: the weak-willed fall to primal influence faster; we've yet to see anyone who can hold out indefinitely (without the Echo). Recall the Sahagin quest where Maelstrom soldiers were tied up on grounds tainted by Leviathan's energies (where I assume he'd tempered people in the past). By the time you get there, some have been enthralled, some have not - but all would have been had you not arrived.

Speaking of Zurvan, you'd recall that several of the troops present fell to his influence, but others did not.

This, this would likely still be a time thing - being too close to the primal's energies for too long. Krile and Unukalhai both say that the Imperial soldiers have no means of resisting Zurvan's will for long, and when you arrive, they marvel that even half-asleep his aura is corrupting some of the legionnaires.

Strong willed individuals such as this likely composed the Company of Heroes, who I doubt all had the Echo.

I don't recall having confirmation that any of the ones we know had the Echo, really. (Though, if 1.0 had continued on its trajectory, we would have allied with them.) The Company of Heroes went into battle knowing each one might be their last, knowing they might have to be killed by their own men. Tempering was so inevitable that it was sometimes worked into their strategies: the first wave would run in and many would be tempered, the second wave would fight those corrupted from the first wave, and the third wave would attack the primal with those who were able before it could temper more people.

Those are likely most of your companions. <...> I believe our party members receive protection from Hydaelyn by virtue of association with us.

Based on how often the game uses terms like "Echo-blessed" and "Godless Blessed", etc. to refer to our party, I think it's implied that we met them through the Scions of the Seventh Dawn, which has many Echo-blessed warriors in its ranks due to Minfilia's side of the operation. If it was as simple as the Mothercrystal actively shielding people in the moment, there'd be no reason not to bring, say, Thancred or Y'shtola, right?

[BillyKaplan]

there'd be no reason not to bring, say, Thancred or Y'shtola, right?

Other than the fact that the game seems to acknowledge you bring allies along for the sole reason that this is an MMORPG and most content you are forced to run in groups. If you truly acknowledge that other individuals were present, the story falls apart as so many others are rubbed of credit they rightly deserve as they fought alongside you. IIRC, Thordan doesn't look up at you and your comrades and marvels at your collective strength, you alone are present for him to fear.

As for the rest of what I said, yes, tempering would've been inevitable, but there're more than enough examples present to show that just because someone faced off against a Primal does not necessarily mean they have the Echo. That would sadly tie in with canonically yes acknowledging your nameless teammates - they're "acceptable losses", compared to any named NPC.

[Anonymoose]

If you truly acknowledge that other individuals were present, the story falls apart as so many others are rubbed of credit they rightly deserve as they fought alongside you. IIRC, Thordan doesn't look up at you and your comrades and marvels at your collective strength, you alone are present for him to fear.

Only if you acknowledge some quests referring to your allies to mean that your allies are present for every quest, no? Neither the Duty Finder nor the quest journal claim that the Singularity Reactor was attended by any more than you (not even when the Minstrel embellishes it.) While it's true that due to game mechanics you travel with friends into every instance, is there something inconsistent with the black and white line between alone and not alone being to accept what the game tells you? Contrast the Singularity Reactor to something like the Steps of Faith, where it specifies your allies.

[Alleo]

Interestingly we can even see our allies in steps of faith . After the fight we see them in a cutscene, its the people we collected earlier by asking around. I found this to be quite a interesting cutscene and its also the only one that truly shows that we had other people with us there. I am still of the believe that we slay primals alone and that also most of the story dungeons are done alone too otherwise it really does not make sense quite a lot of time. But that can probably be discussed endlessly so I am stopping my little off topic here.

[Cilia]

Interestingly we can even see our allies in steps of faith . After the fight we see them in a cutscene, its the people we collected earlier by asking around. I found this to be quite a interesting cutscene and its also the only one that truly shows that we had other people with us there. I am still of the believe that we slay primals alone and that also most of the story dungeons are done alone too otherwise it really does not make sense quite a lot of time. But that can probably be discussed endlessly so I am stopping my little off topic here.

Those characters were winners of a contest in which players who won would have their character appear in-game. The same is true of the Miqo'te woman Thancred is chatting up on the balcony during "The Parting Glass."

[Enkidoh]

Interestingly we can even see our allies in steps of faith . After the fight we see them in a cutscene, its the people we collected earlier by asking around. I found this to be quite a interesting cutscene and its also the only one that truly shows that we had other people with us there. I am still of the believe that we slay primals alone and that also most of the story dungeons are done alone too otherwise it really does not make sense quite a lot of time. But that can probably be discussed endlessly so I am stopping my little off topic here

That's not completely correct in that instance is not the only case of your party appearing in a duty cutscene, in the Praetorium your party appears with you in the cutscenes as well, such as when you first jump off the Enterprise, and the scenes with Gaius and Nero, all the way to the bottom against the Ultima Weapon, your party members are standing around behind you (and some even have little gestures they make to each other!). But given the tendency for players to skip these cutscenes, it's little wonder that is missed (and hence wouldn't occur usually when viewing those same cutscenes later in the Unending Journey).

Either way the storyline specifically mentioned just prior to that quest that you were told to "lead an elite adventurer unit into the Praetorium to destroy the Ultima Weapon" (paraphrased), which makes sense, given it was a military operation taking place under the auspices of the Alliance, you weren't just trudging through some random ancient ruin there.

As far as Primals go though, some Primal fights specifically mention that your player is the only one there (such as Ifrit NM, because your character was naturally captured by the amalj'aa due to Ungust's plotting and was dragged there to be tempered, and Ravana HM, where again the player is sent to be tempered, although this time they're accompanied by Ysayle and willingly let themselves be captured).

Other Primal fights though it's less clear though, with some seeming to favour a "find a group of your most trusted companions and then take down the Primal" approach, Leviathan especially.

[Okamimaru]

The description for the minion of light says that whenever a calamity is eminent warriors of light appear to unite the realm and vanish afterwards... so there's that..

[Alleo]

@Enkidoh: Well those dungeons were quite a long time ago so maybe I forgot them but are they even still there if you watch the cutscenes in the book? Because I kinda meant that these were the first ones that were shown at the end of a instance and still were there if you watched them in the book. If they are still there in the book than I truly forgot about them.

I always found it kinda strange that somehow they say that you lead a group of people into Praetorium, yet you are shown to be the only one alive at the end and also the only one that got out of the fire. At the same time everyone is only worried about you. Makes us look really bad if we truly had people with us till the end. (Interestingly quite a few bosses talked in Germany like we were alone, while it was more than one person in the English version) My headcanon is more like: We charged into the place with adventurers on our side but right were we start the dungeon ingame the other adventurers go their own ways and we do the rest alone. At least that wont make me feel like a bad person.

Well primals are really strange too because (and I agree with you) they even say with ifrit that we should use the lake to escape and gather more people, yet this does not make any sense at all from a story point because why did we not get help from the city state ourself, and how big is the chance to go out there, find other adventurers with the echo that are willing to fight with us and get back there without anyone noticing. IMO lots of primals dont make sense if you try to see it with an group since most of the time we are traveling alone and if there are other people with us that can withstand the tempering why are we in the spotlight? (I do say that Leviathan is one of those that could have others with us)

So this kinda goes hand in hand that we are probably the only WoL in this world, since otherwise we should have gotten way more help and we should have heard from them like we heard from the WoD after they started to slay primals. (Kinda wanted to not go too off topic x))

@Okamimaru: Well one could say that maybe in the past there was more than one WoL at the time of a calamity but Hydaelyn loosing the war more and more kinda made that not so possible anymore. Thats why she protected us against Ultima even though it would weaken her greatly, simply because we are probably the last hope of her.

[TinyRedLeaf]

...those dungeons were quite a long time ago so maybe I forgot them but are they even still there if you watch the cutscenes in the book?

I am 99 per cent confident that the cutscenes you see in the Neverending Tale are different from those you watch at the end of every dungeon you complete for the first time. By default, all the replayed cutscenes assume that your character is on his or her own. They would not record who you played with at the time.

That's simply because the variables that put other characters in the cutscenes are undefined in whichever logfiles the videos refer to.

(As a matter of fact, if you were to replay the cutscene of the time you receive the invitation to visit the Waking Sands, the replayed cutscene will always involve Thancred by default, no matter which city-state you start from. That was quite disconcerting, considering that my character Lyland was actually invited by Y'shtola during my actual playthrough.)

I feel that all the discussions and arguments on whether the WoL is alone, or part of a team, stem from a failure in imagination.

There's absolutely nothing to prevent you, the player, from re-imagining relevant scenes in any way you like, if world-building and role-playing are what you're interested in (which I assume to be the case, or we wouldn't be here browsing the lore sub-forum).

And there's absolutely nothing to stop the imaginative player from using the canonical cutscenes as the launchpads for his or her own re-telling of the story.

As someone who has played his fair share of tabletop role-playing games, I can readily attest to the fact that most players expect their Dungeon Masters to adapt official campaign modules to suit each play group's own take on the official story. That's part of the fun of role-playing games: We expect the unexpected. Nothing is set in stone, and every playthrough is potentially a brand new experience.

We are absolutely at liberty to hand-wave away anything that doesn't fit our understanding of the story. The only caveat is that there's no compulsion on other campaign teams to follow the same interpretation.

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Anyway, the TL;DR version of this post is simply that we shouldn't be too anal about what in-game cutscenes show. What matters is how you rationalise your in-game experience. As I said in my earlier post, if you happen to be lucky enough to play this game with a static group of real-life friends, there's really nothing to stop you from imagining you and your friends as the Warriors of Light in this story.

It just happens that, from a design point of view, the game cannot assume that every player has friends (many of us are No-Life Kings in real life ). The only thing the game can be certain about is that one person is definitely playing at any given instance, and that's why the single-player perspective is taken by default.

For everything else, the players can wing it as they see fit.