I want to talk about tempering

[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?