Primal Belias?

[Con_Carne]

In the Lv50 SMN quest appears an Egi enemy of an elder Primal known as Belias. It was shown the egi, but not the Primal... However, the Ridorana Lighthouse showed us an entity known as "Belias" (based on the FFXII creature), and it summons the same Belias-Egis from the SMN quest (but this time known as Gigas I think).

So I was wondering... Did SE said something about this? Is the Belias from Ridorana the same elder Primal related to the Egi from SMN quest? Would that mean that the other entities such as Mateus, Hashmal, Famfrit are Primals as well?

But in the "Return to Ivalice" story it is said that those entities are not Primals (nor voidsent)... So, is the Ridorana Belias an entity completely different from the unseen Primal Belias?

Sorry if it is too confuse... xp

[Anonymoose]

...Belias...

o no

Let's recap.

Patch 2.00 (2013)
Belias was name-dropped as an [elder primal] from the time of the Allagan Empire (this term merely means worship of this deiform began long before our current era, such as Bahamut or Odin).

Patch 4.00 (2017)
Belias was name-dropped again; the great Allagan summoner Sari was said to have taken part in putting this primal down.

Thus

It seems unlikely that there was not an actual primal named Belias in the Allagan Empire's time. It's not only human memory that this exists in; it exists in record, in the records of a soulkin book made by Sari himself, in the historical knowledge of the Ascians, and so on. It is consistently stated - this was a primal, its name was Belias.

Patch 4.3 (2018)
Belias appears in Ridorana, (ostensibly) an auracite beast.

Thus
Rightfully confused masses, lol. Auracite beasts are not entirely unlike primals, but they are presented as distinct from them, as well. Moreover, the timelines aren't very robust, leaving us without valuable context from which to make inferences.

Ergo, possibilities:

Was the same Belias that we saw in Ridorana summoned in the time of Allag? First off, would it have been remembered as a primal if so? How did this happen? And are the zodiac stones so old? All the mentions of Belias pre-2018 were focused on Eorzea while we have no suggestions (that I recall off the top of my head) that the auracite have been transported out of Othard / Ilsabard. They could have been, but we'd need more information.

OR

Are these two Beliases separate entities sharing a single name? Auracite beasts and primals both are shades of something that doesn't necessarily exist in that form. Do they perhaps share not only a name, but an origin story? The same inspiring mythology?

Did one Belias inspire the other?


Welcome to Return to Ivalice, which began following discussions at the 2016 New Years party (three years after Belias was first name-dropped), and has introduced a slew of ACTIVE RETCON ZONES to the game.


The Egi, however, muddy the waters still. I had always assumed that - never having seen Belias for himself - Tristain just conjured the "memory and strength" of Belias shaped like a Darkness-twisted Ifrit-Egi because he had seen Ifrit. I had also assumed that using the Egi in Ridorana was just a lampshade the dev. team threw on "Yeah, we know, we know."

We'll need to give the dev. team time to get The Truth straight and present it to us.

[ObsidianFire]

Edit: Rewrites post....

One of things we've yet to fully understand is how the Zodiac stones pick a form/name to manifest. Does it draw ideas from the current user? Does it use ideas all the previous users have known? If it does, it might have gotten the idea of Beliaus from that. I suspect we won't fully know what the auracite/Zodiac stones are until the final raid, so it's probably best not to speculated too much on what we don't know they can do.

[Rocl]

There's definitely some confusion overall with Belias in the game. Ridorana Belias and ARR Belias should be ... separate, I think. We know Sari is supposed to be one of the guys who fought Belias in ... Meracydia? I think it was--so he was definitely a Primal in the Third Astral Era. The "Elder Primal" designation seems to pretty much fall neatly in line with Primals from the age of Allag, so that's all fine. The Gigas from the Ridorana Belias fight are the same model as the Belias-Egi Tristan summons....whether this is a nod or something more interconnected we've yet to learn.

The Lucavi summoned from auracite, we've been told, are wholly different from Primals so by that logic the Belias[es] cannot be the same creature. I think when we enter Ridorana Ramza muses that Famfrit has appeared as a result of Ba'Gamnan running around with the Duma, right? So might it be that's when Lucavi Belias appears? During his ascent?

As for how Tristan got the requisite aether to summon a Belias-Egi, it's possible Ascian malarkey and the soulstone itself are the reasoning, I agree. I have to strongly disagree with the idea that Gougans summoned anything since isn't their inability to manipulate aether documented as one of the reasons they're candidates for Garlean predecessors? Tristan not knowing what Belias exactly was used to give a convenient excuse as to why it just looked like an Ifrit-Egi; that was the Primal HE knew of and was tainted by, so that's the one he could conjure most readily. Ridorana complicates this.

EDIT: I know this is a topic Moose has receipts on so his reply will definitely end up better! But I still think, as of now, they are separate entities, and there's been no definitive link besides the name and the Gigas/Egi model sharing... which definitely does imply some link but again, I'm not sure it's knowable thing right now.

[Kurando]

Could it just be a simple sharing of names? I mean Halicarnassus is a succubus type enemy in Hakke Manor (Hard) yet we have another Halicarnassus in Omega Deltascape v3. Neither are anything the same as each other but somehow they have the same name and SE seemed to know that when the second one was introduced. Perhaps there is no lore related to them and it was just easier to have that particular enemy in the content for story purposes.

[Con_Carne]

Then I suppose this should be modified until we get an official explanation. Right?

[ObsidianFire]

Halicarnassus, the O3 boss, is the embodiment of the stories told about Halicarnassus, the character. Nero even references the stories and says Halicarnassus, the O3 boss, is exactly like how she's described in the stories.

The Halicarnasus in Hauke Manor was named after the stories because the person who first saw the Voidsent was reminded of the character Halicarnassus from the stories.

[Rocl]

Then I suppose this should be modified until we get an official explanation. Right?

It certainly should! Being a wiki it's probably easy enough? Though that wiki in particular tends to have rather dubious information about XIV's story.

[Cilia]

The most likely answer is that the Belias encountered in the Ridorana Lighthouse is based on B'gamnan's image of him, rather than the genuine article. All of the Lucavi thus encountered in the Return to Ivalice series are made through the Duma's power; while Belias being referenced earlier does throw a bit of a loop, this is unlikely to be any different.

That does still leave the "real" Belias a mystery. The only thing we can be certain of is that, as an Elder Primal, he predates the Sixth Astral Era.

[Remedi]

Well I recall them saying that faith of the summoner does influences the forms and personality of the primals. As such if the friendly anantas were to summon Lakshmi she would be much different by the lady of bliss we know.

As such the Belias we see in ridorana might be a reference to the real primal but different in nature or something like that

also the fact that many of belias skills are reusing names from ifrit it's suspicious