Is Byakko a Primal?

[Shadow_Sama]

So I was thinking out loud as I was gazing at my Duty Finder and wondered to myself, "Hey... is Byakko a Primal?" I pretty much surmised that the Four Lords are not primals on the basis of the following:

* As members of Scion of the Seventh Dawn, we decide to aid the lords instead of slay them

* The Four Lords aren't summoned forth by Crystals and therefore don't consume Aether

* The Four Lords aren't trying to enthrall anyone or are called forth by any ritual item or beast tribe

So is Byakko a Primal? Or not?

[Cilia]

No. Byakko (and the other Lords) are what are known as Auspices, animals who live for a millennium and gain special powers in so doing. Their origin is tied into Eastern real-world mythology someone else can probably explain better than I. They are nothing like primals at all.

[TinyRedLeaf]

The lore around FFXIV's Auspices borrows from Shinto mythology in real life. According to Shinto folklore, the kami reside in all things, both the animate and the inanimate. The longer they live, the more spiritual energy they acquire, and the more powerful they become. Long-lived animal spirits become sentient and are capable of sorcery. Some, like fox spirits, would have multiple tails, with the nine-tail fox being the most powerful of their kind. Inanimate spirits, on the other hand, particularly those of tools, become tsukumogami instead.

The other thing to know about the kami is that they have two aspects: the gentle (nigi-mitama) and the assertive (ara-mitama). The normal state of a kami of the ocean would, for example, be gentle — the waves are calm, and the fishing is good. But, if the kami lapses into its aggressive aspect, then the waves become a storm, and natural disasters follow. So, coastal folk perform rituals to placate the kami, and maintain its mood, as it were, in the gentle state.

So, it's from there that we come to the Auspices of FFXIV. It's never quite explained how certain animals in Othard live longer than others. But we can infer, and indeed we're told by Genbu, that such animals like himself and Byakko, possess a power that's not unlike the Echo. These animals came to meet Tenzen, who was also an Echo-user, and he eventually bequeathed them a crystal that further enhanced their powers, and turned them into Auspices.

But, as Auspices (and in effect, kami), these creatures now had to carefully manage their dual aspects and keep them in balance, or they'd fall into their aggressive state. The Byakko we fought was in his full-blown assertive state, driven mad by the ara-mitama.

So, that's more or less how the Auspices function, but their very existence opens up a lot of questions about how primal-like entities may arise in realms outside of Eorzea.

For example, what was Susanoo, exactly? He was a primal but, unlike Eorzean primals, he was powered by the aether that had accumulated in the relics collected by the kojin. And knowing what we know about tsukumogami (it was no coincidence, certainly, that the kojin puppet from the beast-tribe quests was called Tsukumo), is it possible then, that the kojin relics have the latent capability of become kami on their own? And if they do become kami, would they be Auspices as well? I ask this, because of the possible links to Zantetsuken, which by some accounts, was originally the sword of an auri warrior that somehow made its way to Eorzea, where it eventually created Odin. If Zantetsuken was indeed a Far Eastern blade, then there's a possibility, I think, that it was an ancient tool that eventually gained sentience.

The other thing worth mulling over are two aspects of the Auspices, the nigi-mitama and the ara-mitama. They're very much the analogue of the astral and umbral polarities of aether that Eorzeans are much more familiar with (to be sure, I think it was actually the other way round, in that it was the real-life idea of the mitama that inspired the fictional lore around astral and umbral elements). It's very interesting that the same lore principles take different shape when they're transposed onto realms other than Eorzea, and it makes me wonder what shape they'll take if we somehow get to visit the New World one day, that mysterious continent far to the west of Eorzea.

[ObsidianFire]

When it comes to Susano, he isn't just thought to be a great kami. He's revered as the God of the Sea. Funnily enough, the Kojin who gives you water-breathing is praying to a kami of the sea and asking that kami to give you a blessing. Given that the kojin live for centuries, I can buy that what started out as a kami stopped being one a long time ago. There's a very good possibility that Susano, the primal, could have been summoned earlier if all three of his sacred vessels had been reunited earlier.

He's similar to Tuskuyomi where the kami both resides in a vessel, but is considered a god(dess) of something else by other people. I could see primal versions of the Auspices being summoned if anyone actually knew they existed and worshiped them as gods... Kinda like how the Knights of the Round/Thordan primal was the primal version of people who really existed at one point.

Actually... The way the Ishgardians held the original Thordan and his Knights in high regard is very similar to how Domans, Hingans and Kojin hold the kami in high regard. And given that both can lead to eikons being summoned... huh...

[Anonymoose]

In trying to figure out the true identity of Susano, don't forget that primals aren't actually the thing whose summoning was first attempted, just their shade. Garuda is not the Empress of Birds, Primordial Goddess of Wind who helped bring the world into being and raised the Ixal to sentience. That Garuda (probably) doesn't even exist; rather a grim summoning spell taught by immortal wraiths pulled the aetherial LEGOs of a dead Allagan general's soul out of the Lifestream and rebuilt them into a mockery of that concept.

If we had to kill Susano because he was a primal, then in all likelihood that wasn't Susano, i.e. the "real" Susano could be anything - or nothing.

That said, primal entities mocking kami-possessed objects seem plausible, even if their creation is a bit murky. What's the flashpoint of worshiping an object and filling it with spiritual "faith" aether suddenly becoming a permanent catalyst - a host essence that can trigger its own summoning?

[ManuelBravo]

Susano is a type of Ancient God sealed in treasure. They talked about if for a while, same as a primal that was activated by desire do to the storage of crystals in the vault. Kind of how the curse mirror worked with Lady Tsukuyomi transformation. Ring a bell? Crystal crates...mirror...Instead of prayer for an actual entity they seemed to Easter Myth. Gods based on folk lore of the past.

[ObsidianFire]

Well, the whole thing with eikons is that it depends on faith to be summoned in the first place. Whether or not that faith is in something "real" or not doesn't seem to matter. It's just... there's a lot of faith in the kami as a whole in the Far East. We're probably lucky there are so many kami for people to have faith in or summoning might be more of a problem. It seems that the less different things/ideas there are to have faith in, the easier it is to summon something.

So far, the only kami that have been summoned as eikons are also the ones associated with being God of X. Where X is something everyone has faith in. I highly doubt the kami in small objects only known about by a few people could be summoned. At least, not without a lot of aether around. The Kami of the Moon or Ocean though? The Gods associated with those phenomenon/ideas are always very powerful in most religions. There is probably lots of prayer and faith in those ideas from all over the Far East. The question is... what other kami out there would inspire that much universal respect?

[LineageRazor]

That's an interesting thought... Why, of all forms, was Yotsuyu's Primal form specifically Tsukuyomi, the God(ess) of the Moon (and the Night)? Certainly, it's not at all inappropriate a choice (the night is associated with darkness, of which Yotsuyu has plenty in her soul, and she spent part of her life as a "lady of the night"), but maybe she picked that form (or the form picked itself?) due to the fact that there was a lot of ready-made faith in the region to sustain it? It'd be interesting to know if Yotsuyu's desire was "Make me a Primal" or if it was "Make me Tsukuyomi". She might have been directly instructed to pick an existent and popular Kami when performing the ritual. Even if it was Asahi who taught her what to do, Asahi was tutored by an Ascian.

On the topic of Primal instruction, though, it's interesting to note that Susano's summoning apparently had NO ASCIAN INVOLVEMENT WHATSOEVER. Unless he'd already been summoned (according to Ascian instructions) ages ago, and was just chilling in the three artifacts up until now. If there really was no Ascian involvement, is Susano actually the same kind of being as other Primals? Something similar that popped existence by chance when conditions were favorable? Or something else entirely? We certainly dealt with him with all the urgency we would a Primal - but perhaps it was not necessary (not that Susano objected - in fact, he clearly had the time of his life). The only other summon so haphazard and Ascian-free was Gilgamesh's summoning of Enkidu, and that particular example is dubious in its canonicity.

[Anonymoose]

Zelidibus pointed out that Yotsuyu had a bit of knowledge and loose faith in the kami in general, but otherwise wasn't zealous enough to summon a primal; thus the reliance on side-jacking into the faith focused on a Kojin relic.

That said, the visual manifestation seems much of her own making, similar to how Ysayle's Shiva was still influenced by her mental image of Halone to a degree. That she so identified with the moon - withdrawn, distant, cold, beautiful; hanging uncaring above all below trapped in the night - likely helped her tap into the idea and power of Tsukuyomi, but the primal itself primarily looks merely like a warped and exaggerated Yotsuyu, down to having two faces (one "eclipsed by darkness") and a massive pipe.

Note also the giant ears of the moon rabbit, lol. Not sure the Kojin kami would have those.

[ObsidianFire]

Yeah, the Ascians probably weren't behind Susano's summoning. It feels way too random for that. The way Koji has talked about it, it was something nobody planned for and happened by chance. The event that set off the Susano summoning was getting all three artifacts in proximity to one another. Which leads me to believe Susano could have been summoned earlier if the artifacts hadn't been split up... And he's also one of the few primals we've seen who hasn't tempered anyone by accident or on purpose.