Primal Indoctrination and Beast Tribe Colors

[Yuriane]

MSQ seems to clearly imply King Thordan wasnt summoned untill Azys Lla

I'm not sure that's ever implied. I always thought the implication was they've known how to do it since before the Vault, and the reason they went to Azys Lla was to like eat the Triad or something like Thordan did with Lahabrea and the other Ascian who honestly I can't remember the name of. He was clearly both capable of it and knowledgeable of how to do it on the fly so I get the feeling he had done it before. Although I do think Ascalon was first manifested at Azys Lla, although how significant that is I don't know.

[Lazaruz]

Snip

Good point, although I do wonder how much of the archbishop's knowledge is a hint at having done it before, since we do know for a fact he was contacted by the Ascians, so its deffinetely a fair assumption they told him how to do it (For all we know the plan was infact for him to become God King Thordan and absorb the Warring Triad so he becomes a unstoppable primal. They just didnt expect the archbishop to turn on them. But one could assume they actually taught him to become a avatar, instead of just regularly summoning a primal). Having summoned on the fly however felt plausible if one assumes they "practiced" on the Heavens' Ward members first.

But idunno, maybe I'm not thinking far enough. Lord knows I'm probably forgetting a ton regarding the primal lore.
Still feels kinda "off" though to me that the knights the Heavens' Ward turn into are connected to Thordan, but you're right, the only thing we know for sure is that Ascalon likely only manifested for the first time in the Singularity Reactor

[ObsidianFire]

Ascalon is the sword of the original King Thordan. In it is Nidhogg's other eye (not the one the Azure Dragoon has). Even since the original King Thordan died, the eye has been soaking up all the aether the Ishgaurdian's worship has been producing. It's essentially acting like an aether battery for the King Thordan Primal the way crystals do for the other primals we've seen. In the Azys Lla cutscenes, we see Bishop Thordan take the sword out of King Thordan's coffin and absorb all that aether to turn himself and the Heavensward into the King Thordan Primal. And then he wants to absorb all the aether of the Ascians and the Warring Triad...

It's never very clear what is going on with the King Thordan Primal and the KotR. Even with the lore book, there's a lot of contradictions as to what came first and if the Heaven s ward are tempered or not. Given that Bishop Thordan has always had access to Ascalon and therefore Nighogg's eye, I would say that he certainly has enough worship generated aether to mess with the Heavensward. Fully transforming into the King Thordan Primal would give the game away though, and he's smart enough to wait until he's got both the Ascians and Warring Triad on hand.

[Enkidoh]

Ascalon is the sword of the original King Thordan. In it is Nidhogg's other eye (not the one the Azure Dragoon has). Even since the original King Thordan died, the eye has been soaking up all the aether the Ishgaurdian's worship has been producing. It's essentially acting like an aether battery for the King Thordan Primal the way crystals do for the other primals we've seen. In the Azys Lla cutscenes, we see Bishop Thordan take the sword out of King Thordan's coffin and absorb all that aether to turn himself and the Heavensward into the King Thordan Primal. And then he wants to absorb all the aether of the Ascians and the Warring Triad...

It's never very clear what is going on with the King Thordan Primal and the KotR. Even with the lore book, there's a lot of contradictions as to what came first and if the Heaven s ward are tempered or not. Given that Bishop Thordan has always had access to Ascalon and therefore Nighogg's eye, I would say that he certainly has enough worship generated aether to mess with the Heavensward. Fully transforming into the King Thordan Primal would give the game away though, and he's smart enough to wait until he's got both the Ascians and Warring Triad on hand.

That wasn't the body of King Thordan the I in that coffin the Heavensward brought to the Singularity Reactor though, that was actually the body of his son Prince Haldrath, the first Azure DRG, who the second Eye of Nidhogg was fused to (and which prevented his body from decaying, it was still intact even after a thousand years) - the silver Drachen Mail the corpse is clad in is the giveaway, the player earlier saw Haldrath wearing that exact same armour earlier in an Echo scene.

The real Ascalon is presumably long since lost - the giant blade Thordan the VIIth wields as Knights of the Round was just part of the Primal summoning, drawing on the aether from the Eye of Nidhogg and formed from the Archbishop's own memories of Thodan the 1st and the legends that surrounded him.

[koichi88]

I figure the individual knights appearing during the vault is the result of an incomplete summoning running off their own aether. Since we never see more than one at a time its possible they are each summoning Knights of the Round and taking on the aspect of their corresponding knight, leaving out the rest. Only when the eye is brought out do they have enough aether to do the entire summoning.

[Cybylt]

I figure the individual knights appearing during the vault is the result of an incomplete summoning running off their own aether. Since we never see more than one at a time its possible they are each summoning Knights of the Round and taking on the aspect of their corresponding knight, leaving out the rest. Only when the eye is brought out do they have enough aether to do the entire summoning.

According to Koji's trivia game they're a singular entity and the knights are "blessed" to receive those forms by King Thordan. By that, Thordan must have been a primal first. We just didn't see him ourselves til later.