The Burn

[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.

[MicahZerrshia]

I am just sad that a new possible zone will be reduced to a simple dungeon just like Xelphatol was.

It would be incredibly exciting if they surprised us with a new zone mid-expac. Yes it seemed fairly plain in the area we were in already, but that was just small part of the burn so who knows what the rest is like.

[Iscah]

The lorebook "history of the Sixth Astral Era" section (p.38) just says that "not long after Midgardsormr's demise [...] Eorzea's beast tribes started summoning their own gods - the 'primals' - into the corporeal realm".

The chronology (p.53) doesn't mention any primals prior to Titan, Leviathan and Garuda in 1562. (Small possibility: Nidhogg awoke for a period in 1557 - as referenced in the ARR dragoon quests - which could be mistakenly reported as primal activity. How much do the Garleans know about dragons?)

The Garlean history section (p.177) says that the campain to capture Doma lasted from 1528-1552, and at some point in this period Solus "first laid eyes upon the ruin wrought by primals - an entire land utterly drained of life."

[Cilia]

This is probably a big misunderstanding - and mistake - on my part.

When first playing 2.0, I was a SMN/SCH (solo/party), and during the SMN intro quest I inferred this...

According to the records we recovered, the summoners of old would perform these rites in a land in which the naturally dominant element matched the aspect of the avatar they wished to call forth. Only in such a place might one sufficiently shift one's aetheric balance in the desired direction.
The element of fire is especially strong here in the Sagolii Desert─I can think of no land more fitting in which to summon an incarnation of the Lord of the Inferno.

... to mean that, due to the proximity to the Amalj'aa dwelling (Zahar'ak), the Sagolii Desert itself was a product of repeated Ifrit summons through the ages. Combined with the knowledge that prior to Silvertear the beast tribes traded their crystals with the Eorzean city-states instead of hoarding them for summoning rituals, that led me to the conclusion that primals were possible to summon beforehand... it just wasn't common, due to both Midgardsormr's seal and the crystal stocks being kept low through trade. The truth is that the latter was seemingly absolute, though, and the latter was unimportant to the state of things.

(60% of the time, I'm right every time.)

Anyway, enough of people overindulging my ignorance. With that information, inferences can be made!

1. The Garleans are not known to have encountered a primal during their conquest prior to Eorzea. Solus saw the Burn, concluded that it must have been the result of eikons (presumably based on information gleaned from Allag), and declared their already-underway conquest of the world justified to stop primals.
2. Primals were not known to have been summoned during the Sixth Astral Era prior to the Battle of Silvertear Skies, aside from a possible instance during the consolidation of Imperial power in Gyr Abania.

This means that the Burn is not the result of primal activity and/or that it is older than the Sixth Astral Era.

If nobody saw the Burn come into existence, that means nobody can say for certain that it's the result of primal activity. If it wasn't possible to summon primals during the Sixth Astral Era prior to Silvertear, the Burn would have to predate that if it was created by primals as it was discovered by the Garleans before that event.

... since, for some reason, it was possible to summon in previous Astral Eras (the Third, at least, since that's when the Warring Triad, Odin, and Bahamut were summoned). For every answer, three questions.

[ObsidianFire]

The Burn is still a huge unknown. The fact that there's still structures there seems to hint that whatever happened closer to "now" then further from "now". Given that the Empire is around 80 years old... I can buy Solus watching it get destroyed and then for some reason thinking it was due to a primal. Also... It's close enough to Othard for me to wonder how much "influence" Silvertear has on the aether. We've never gotten any confirmation that Silvertear influences all aether everywhere or just Eorzeas...

So... personal theory (headcanon) time... We know eikons were summoned in the 3rd Astral Era when the Crystal Tower was up, etc. Presumably, whatever blockage was on Silvertear Lake wasn't there at the time. Then the 4th Umbral Calamity causes an earthquake right at Silvertear Lake. The Crystal Tower and the entire Allagan Capital is sunk in a day. I'm wondering if the added mass of all that was what caused the blockage on the aether in Silvertear. In all the eras after that, we never hear of any eikons getting summoned. Then Midgardsomr breaks out of the lake and dislodges the blockage...

IDK, I find it more plausible that people tried to summon eikons in the wake of the Allagan Era falling and failing, rather then them just never summoning eikons again and never finding out about it...

[Cilia]

... I should stop trying to draw absolute conclusions from faulty reasoning and sparse information, and get back to doing what I do best: struggling my way up Heaven-on-High by myself in a vain attempt to get the dodo mount solo.

The only thing we can say for certain about the Burn is that it's an aether-drained wasteland which, as one would expect from such a region, appears to be a white sand / ash-covered desert. There's not enough information to draw any sort of conclusion as to its origin (the Garleans believe it was created by primal summons, but this is not verified), and too many hypotheticals and contradictions remain to work toward a satisfactory conclusion.

[dwarf]

Solus Zos Galvus will be a key character in Burn. His name was mentioned twice in Producer Letter Lives. One is when he was introduced in the main scenario and the second was when they introduced the Burn dungeon. He is the first emperor of the Garlean empire.

The Square Enix official website introduced Solus Zos Galvus as
“Garlean forces conquered all the lands of the north and hammered them into a single entity. Galvus then instituted an imperial regime to govern their new territories, conferring upon himself the title of "Emperor."
The eastern nations were the first to feel the newborn empire's mighty fist. It was during this campaign that the emperor witnessed firsthand the destruction wrought by the primals—an experience that led to an imperial mandate for their annihilation.” (Square Enix)

Reference
Solus Zos Galvus
The World of Final Fantasy 14 (Square Enix Official Website Final Fantasy 14)

Producer Live Letters 45

[Cilia]

Saying Solus "conquered" the Burn is a bit inaccurate if nothing lives there... but I digress.

The problem with his assessment is that it's an assumption, not a proven truth. If there's anything to be learned from my bumbling here, it's that operating on assumptions and faulty logic can lead to cascading inaccuracies. While it is readily apparent the Burn is an aether-starved wasteland, nobody has an eyewitness account of primals being responsible for it, and for all the warnings we've been given about them the worst we've seen any primal do to the environment is Bismarck eating a few islands in the Sea of Clouds.

While it is plausible for primals to have been responsible for the Burn, how probable it is remains unclear; it could be the result of something else or otherwise a natural phenomenon of some sort. While primals are the most likely culprit, there remain other possibilities that shouldn't be discarded just yet. Personally, I hope those other possibilities are closer to the truth than the obvious, and not just because I'll be beside myself if the Imperials' attempt at global conquest is running on an incorrect assumption. (It's mostly because I like mysteries and being left guessing, though not quite to Kingdom Hearts' level of everything coming out of left field. Given this game's track record, though...)

Also, I'm only here because I got knocked down Heaven-on-High like a wrecking ball.

[Rufalus]

I just assume, like basically all problems throughout history, that there is big ascian involvement. They made solus believe what they wanted him to believe about the burn, fan the flames of war yada yada, lots of pointless bloodshed now that they taught people how to summon and encouraged the Garleans to war against nations who know how to summon. Now gaius eyes wide open and going rogue, tired of being played for a fool by ascians he is now hunting them. He knows now all the innocents his legion slaughtered was a fools' errand. There's more to the burn than solus knew.

[ObsidianFire]

I think it's still an assumption that Solus made an assumption about what happened to the Burn in the first place. The language used to describe him finding the Burn is vague enough that I can't tell if he just found the Burn as is, or saw the Burn being created. And if he did see the Burn being created, then there's still the question of if what he saw was a primal or not. There's just no way to tell.

Yes, it's right up the Ascian's alley to get Solus to think the Burn is what happens when eikons are summoned for long enough. It's also right up Elidibus' alley to lie by omission instead of outright lying (he never lies to the WoD, he just doesn't tell them about the other option they could take). The Burn could very well what happens when eikons are summoned too much. It could be something that sometimes happens when eikons are summoned, but only under special circumstances. It could also have nothing to do with eikons at all.

What the Burn does remind me of is what little is mentioned of Meracydia. There was lots of eikons being summoned and re-summoned during the Allagan invasion of it and by the end of the war, most of Meracydia was a wasteland. In fact, parts of Meracydia are still uninhabitable because of that invasion. There's not a lot of ways I could see an area still naturally being that way after 5,000 years, but if most of Meracydia was devoid of aether at one point... that's a lot easier to swallow. I kinda wonder if Solus read Allagan records of what state Meracydia was in after so many repeated summonings and war and then recognized that the Burn had all the same characteristics.