The Burn

[dwarf]

I am researching the Burn. If you find more information, could you let me know? I will add more description.
If you have your own definition of the Burn, could you share with us?
Thank you!

The Burn

The Burn is a location in Hydelin and a dungeon in the upcoming patch 4.4. On the world map, it is located southwest from Azim Steppe. The Burn is depicted as a crator and a giant worm is present. This location turned into a permanently burned out area because of the overuse of aether. Currently, it is completely covered with white ashes. A large amount of aether must be consumed in order to summon primals.

Reference
Producer Live Letters 45
Encyclopedia Eorzea
World Map

[Iscah]

There's some previous lore set up in the Azim Steppe - copy-pasted from the 4.4 predictions (and previously the 4.3 discussion) thread:


The cave-dwelling Uyagir in the Nhaama desert (cave entrance at X:8.8, Y:29.6) seem to claim their ancestors were responsible for what happened.

Baavgai explains:
We live here to make amends for our sins. In the past, having grown drunk off its own greed, our tribe embarked on a mission to subjugate all that it possibly could.
In response to our insatiable greed, the gods punished the Uyagir by unleashing giant, oliphant-like beetles upon our lands.
The beetles left absolute devastation in their wake. Rivers dried up, crops wilted and cavernous holes were dug in the southern deserts.
Our ancestors, faced with the result of their avarice, swore to repent for their mistakes. They chose to live in the caves bored by the giant insects and abandon all greed.

It's a little ambiguous whether they are currently living in the bored caves though, or if they moved out into different caves later. But the world map does have a drawing of a giant worm (beetle larva) in the Burn, so that part seems to add up.


They also have cave murals that, according to one of the other tribesmen, "tell stories of our ancestors' greed":

(I only took the one screenshot and forgot to check the other cave walls to see if they had different images. This one doesn't seem particularly useful in the end.)

All on the right seem to be hunters and horses, directly behind the scaffolding are mammoths (?) and at the top is a warrior with a sword riding possibly-a-yol.

I'm not certain but I think this might be the same mural in the cave where you fight the yol at the end of Bardam's Mettle. Whether that would mean anything or if they just recycled the design.


---

I'm getting a lot of mileage out of this text. I should probably re-investigate those murals, unless you're going to.

[Cilia]

The Burn is only speculated, not confirmed, to be the result of repeated primal summons in the area. Solus saw it when he marched on Othard, concluded it must be the result of summons (somehow - there's no documented instance of the Garleans facing eikons beforehand), and declared an essential war on religion. However without a firsthand account of this happening, it remains unclear whether or not the Burn is the result of eikon summons, a natural phenomenon, or the result of something other than eikons.

Though it's unrelated to the Burn itself, this is likely what the First Shard looked like before Minfilia began to intervene, as well as the surface of the moon. This lends credence to my hypothesis that the moon is Zodiark's aether-desiccated corporeal body.

[Anonymoose]

I'd like a little stronger of a connection between the Nhaama desert and the Burn before we conclude they're related, but it's a theory.

It actually kinda blew my mind to go back and realize that "Othard is where Solus first saw the destructive power of the primals." didn't necessarily mean that he actually saw actual primals actually destroying things. It never sat right with me that the Echo sounded just after Silvertear Skies and just before the first Eorzean appearance of the primals if they'd been on Othard prior. Why didn't the Echo sound then? Wasn't the era already collapsing? Doesn't the aether necessarily have to be imbalanced on a massive scale for primals to exist (according to Minfilia)? This might be a retcon ... but it's certainly one way to make things smoother, if it's the case.

Also, I agree about Zodiark and the moon. If the living, growing physical world has Hydaelyn "transdimensionally inside of it", and She "expelled" Zodiark, it makes sense to assume that the moon is a dead body with Him transdimensionally inside of it, but since it's not a way to "the sea" (aetherial realm) but to a rift-prison of some kind, the moon is "dead'. Though Hydaelyn claims that the division itself predates Life ("as we know it"), which may itself be part of Her defense.

Recall the hints in the Chrysalis. An aetherial rift (pocket dimension) whereby the only things that exist are quasi-formed Dark-aspected crystal structures each Ascian's "place" around Zodiark, and a door symbolizing that exists outside of the world we know - you have to get there through another way.

[Cilia]

What necessitates "the sounding of the Echo" is unknown. It is known it was sounded after Silvertear; however, primals were still summoned prior to the event. It was just a rare event thanks to both Midgardsormr's seal on the lake and the Eorzeans keeping the beast tribes' crystal stocks low through trade. Garlemald's attack nixed both of those, leading to the proliferation of summons.

Furthermore since Garlemald just happened on the Burn when it marched on Othard... we don't know how old it actually is. It could predate the Sixth Astral Era.

[Kurando]

I'm curious but from my understanding The Burn is literally void of all Aether, hence it looking so dead, so how in any way would this effect a player's natural Aether (for using spells etc)? I would of expected it to have some effect to degree in normal Eorzeans like Alphinaud at least, though perhaps the WoL has the Echoes blessing.

[Anonymoose]

however, primals were still summoned prior to the event. It was just a rare event thanks to both Midgardsormr's seal on the lake

But do we know anything specific about this idea? Summoned how prior? Thousands of years? Definitely. But what about the Sixth Astral Era? Do have know for sure of any prior summonings? Louisoix specifically said that 1562 was the "world-changing" event of the first Eorzean primal summoning, and if I recall right the first sighting of Ifrit wasn't until 1564 at that.

If we rule out Othardian primals as a mistaken assumption, we're left with... perhaps the "mysterious primal" that interrupted the post-Ala Mhigo advance, if that wasn't itself referring to Leviathan, Titan, and Garuda in '62. What else?

[Cilia]

But do we know anything specific about this idea? Summoned how prior? Thousands of years? Definitely. But what about the Sixth Astral Era? Do have know for sure of any prior summonings? Louisoix specifically said that 1562 was the "world-changing" event of the first Eorzean primal summoning, and if I recall right the first sighting of Ifrit wasn't until 1564 at that.

If we rule out Othardian primals as a mistaken assumption, we're left with... perhaps the "mysterious primal" that interrupted the post-Ala Mhigo advance, if that wasn't itself referring to Leviathan, Titan, and Garuda in '62. What else?

Well... I don't have an encyclopedia, so you have access to more information than I do. That said if civilizations are more or less "reset" with each Umbral Calamity, then the new ones that arise following those events wouldn't have much knowledge about primals. For that knowledge to come about, logically people would have to have encountered them before Silvertear. As it pertains to this thread, though we don't have documentation of their first encounter Solus would logically have had to encounter a primal before or during the conquest of Othard to blame the Burn's aether-starved state on it.

I can't answer specifics; again, I don't have access to that much information, though from what I gather it might not even exist. Logically speaking though, for the civilizations of the Sixth Astral Era to know of and fear primals as they do they'd have to get knowledge of them from somewhere. One could say Sharlayan told everyone, but they remain isolationist outside of a few mavericks. One could argue that the Eorzeans did not encounter primals until after Silvertear, but that doesn't answer how the Garleans learned about them prior to or during their march on Othard.

Long story short... an exact date can't be pinned down with the information available to me, but logically speaking primals would have to have been encountered at least by the Garleans, sometime before or during the conquest of Othard, for the Burn to be blamed on them.

[Anonymoose]

That said if civilizations are more or less "reset" with each Umbral Calamity, then the new ones that arise following those events wouldn't have much knowledge about primals. For that knowledge to come about, logically people would have to have encountered them before Silvertear.

Logically speaking though, for the civilizations of the Sixth Astral Era to know of and fear primals as they do they'd have to get knowledge of them from somewhere.

The Garleans have been stumbling across Allagan knowledge for a long time - long enough to know to bring the "lunar transmitter" to House Darnus long before the Bozja Citadel incident, and in that incident they decried the loss of a great amount of knowledge left by Allag (consolidated there to help Midas with his restorations). If the Garleans learned the word eikon from Allag, they must have learned what eikon meant, yes?

Perhaps the Garleans knew only abstractly of these entities and the effects they have on the land until Solus saw the Burn.

[Cilia]

The Garleans have been stumbling across Allagan knowledge for a long time - long enough to know to bring the "lunar transmitter" to House Darnus long before the Bozja Citadel incident, and in that incident they decried the loss of a great amount of knowledge left by Allag (consolidated there to help Midas with his restorations). If the Garleans learned the word eikon from Allag, they must have learned what eikon meant, yes?

Perhaps the Garleans knew only abstractly of these entities and the effects they have on the land until Solus saw the Burn.

Flows logically. I also forgot that the summoning rituals were taught to the beast tribes by the Ascians only after Silvertear, though as it's possible to summon without their ritual it could simply be assurance that primals summoned from then on would have behavioral patterns that align more closely with their goals. Easier summoning conditions would provide a golden opportunity they'd never pass up as well (assuming it wasn't of their own making).

That... still leaves Mysterious Primal X, summoned during the conquest of Ala Mhigo, unaccounted for though... I think. Ala Mhigo was conquered before Silvertear, that much is certain, and a primal was reportedly summoned in the region as a consequence.