I want to talk about tempering

[Iscah]

I vaguely recall it being one of the reasons Ramuh didn't want to stick around any longer than he felt he had to, I'm not in a position to check at the moment though. Will trawl the dialogues next time I'm at my PC.

I'm not going from quotes either, but I know the running concern with primals is that their mere prescence drains the land of aether, so it's possible that is Ramuh's concern rather than a direct danger of tempering.


Also I disagree with quite how negatively you're interpreting the Qalyana, specifically how inherently unreasonable they are. We've defeated Lakshmi, and her followers are - not necessarily safe to deal with, but an uncertainty. Perhaps they can be allowed to participate, but we know that we have to watch them carefully the entire time and not actually trust them. They could have been genuine and participated in the meeting, and I think it made more sense that they were let in with precautions than turned away - which could make the hypothetically-genuine Qalyana feel rejected and resentful, and lead them to decide to find a way to sabotage and force-temper us....

[Anonymoose]

Ahhhh rapid fire round aaaaaaahhhhhhhh

I wonder though, do you think that it's possible that Ga Bu actually has the echo and subdued Titan to his will due to sheer despair?

Until we meet one beastman ever with the Echo, it feels like a leap.

Tempering seems to be a deliberate act - it's not just caused by being near a primal

All of the above. We've heard tale of the potential threat of incidental tempering before, but rarely to we see it first-hand with game mechanics. However, they've all been seen at one time or another. Targeted by the primal for deliberate tempering (Ifrit), hanging out too long in their corrupting aura (Zurvan), hanging out too long in an area they've corrupted even after they're gone (Maelstrom soldiers).

Also worth pointing out - the terminology of "tempering" is a curious one, because it's used as a generic term but really should belong to the fire-themed Ifrit - and indeed it is used that way in some contexts. (eg. after the Odin trial at Urth's Fount, O-App-Pesi specifically mentions "Ifrit's tempered", "Leviathan's drowned" and "Odin's sundered", although gives no term to cover all of them.) Perhaps it's simply because that's the first primal we came across, and the concept has stuck.

I think "Ifrit set the tone." is a decent assumption, though the JP client almost exclusively uses tempado, anyway.

These primals consume crystals and aether. Is that what is weakening Hydaelin?

It's what drains life from the land and throws the aetherial balance into chaos and indirectly weakens Her, yes. Though her intervention on behalf of the Warrior(s) of Light and seven straight calamities have done a lot more damage.

I hope the writers have a reason why the summoning ritual isn't really required anymore, and that it's not just because it makes it easier to whip new primals up for cool fights.

I entertain a theory that how imbalanced the aether is (on a global scale) plays into how readily you can manifest mortal desire. When the aether is in balance, perhaps only the will of the Crystal(s) is powerful enough to manifest volition, but as chaos foments, it gets easier. The Ascians had to seek out special aether-gathering "Keys" to get the first wave of primals summoned even with massive crystal stores and elaborate rituals executed to perfection. Now primals just show up by accident.

Unless I remember wrongly, there's a difference between primals and eikons, and it's not just a mistake in etymology by the Garleans.

Unukalhai's journal suggests that primals and eikons are different like Chevy and Ford pickups are different. The same? No. All that different? Also no. They're all what I call "deiforms", essentially over-powered elemental entities (aetherial coalescences) which usually, if not universally, can be traced somehow back to the summoning rituals taught by the Ascians.

Eikon is mainly just another way to say "icon" - false god. The primals are a specific sub-set of deiforms rooted in the elements, going back to the beast tribes' belief that they were the primordial creators of the world. By this very strict definition, even Shiva is more of a "warring god" (toshin), but she's still called a banshin (barbarian god), as are many others. Like "tempering", "primal" seems to have just stuck. Maybe if we met Susano first, we'd call them all "kami", even though Susano is a deiform mockery of belief in kami.

[i.e.] 5,000 years ago, the Allagan Empire called the toshin (warring gods) "eikons". (There were more than three, the Warring Triad were just the most powerful.) 5,000 years later, the beliefs that lead to summoning of deiforms are slightly different. There's a different zeitgeist in how the deiforms are summoned, how they behave and function, how they die, and how they're seen by their summoners. We called them "primals". The Garleans, having dug up an old word, just kept on using "eikon" despite the changes. As far as Unukalhai's journal suggests, that's all that's really different. I mean, he calls Sephirot a primal.

[Jandor]

Until we meet one beastman ever with the Echo, it feels like a leap.

Didn't that Sahagin priest have the echo?

[Anonymoose]

Didn't that Sahagin priest have the echo?

Technically, though "unnaturally" by way of a third party (Elidibus).
We've never seen Hydaelyn choose a beast tribe member is what I mean. (...yet...?)

Would it be impossible for our li'l Kobold buddy to have been granted the Echo and that this is the key to interpreting all of his scenes and how we should color our analysis going forward and they just didn't call any attention to that? "Impossible" is very rarely a safe word to use in this game.

However, concluding based on Titan's behavior that...

• Ga Bu controlled him by sheer force of will
• by way of the Echo
• by a third party for reasons unexplored or Hydaelyn for the first time ever
• with no additional narrative breadcrumbs
• and thus everyone must necessarily be wrong in assuming that Ga Bu is tempered at all

... is a rather tall house of cards with (as far as I know) no further supporting context or foreshadowing. Occam's Razor doesn't always lead directly to the truth, but consider the length of the leash to stray this far without (as far as I've noticed) prodding to do so. Thus, "It feels like a leap."

That said, I do think it's likely that Ga Bu's state of mind (combined with the summoning preparations already in motion and Ga Bu's parents having been prepared as ritual foci) did directly impact the manifestation of Titan, and I don't think it's yet 100% certain that Ga Bu is tempered rather than traumatized.

Strangely, Koji Fox specifically came out and noted that the Lamia in Sastasha (Hard) are NOT transformed women, but escaped Allagan constructs. It was all discussed in this thread. Lore aficionados, including Anonymoose, found it all a bit hard to swallow, though.

No～o～ooo, the Lamia Wars. I'd forgotten. "They're actually over-tempered wenches." pretty much had to be besieged and starved out of its castle.