About Arevald SPOILERS

[MistakeNot]

Then if real Shiva wasn't all icy death magic in real life... What was Ysayle's primal transformation based off?

Her own dreams and ideas of what Shiva might have been like.
As for where her powers come from - the same as for all other primals and primal-like beings - belief and a hefty supply of concentrated aether.

[ObsidianFire]

Ysalye was cut off from the rest of Eorzea in a lot of ways. Aside from just being in Ishgard, she got trapped in Dravania after the Calamity when Corethas' weather became snow all the time. It was during the five year time skip between 1.0 and 2.0 that she had visions for the first time and ran into Vidofnir and Hrasevelgr. So she's pretty much in the backwater of backwaters.

All primals are based on their summoner's beliefs about whatever it is that they are summoning. Many of the primals come off differently then what the myths told about them say they are like for that reason. In Lore Book I, it's speculated that Shiva is based not just on the historic Shiva but also on the Heretics' take on Halone. The idea is that the Heretics have conflated their view of Halone with Shiva and have combined their two personalities and spheres of influences somewhat. To say that most primals are based of the images people have in their heads about whatever they are summoning isn't that far off of what happens. We can see this with Tuskiyomi (Yotsuyu summons her as female, when most stories say Tuskiyomi is male), and Bismark and Lakshmi. In the latter two cases, the people who worship those god/desses say the primal can't be the real god/dess because it's nothing like the one they actually do worship. And they view it as a false version of their true god.

As far as we know, Shiva was a normal woman who fell in love with a dragon (and vice versa) and when she found out her death would cause the dragon to be lonely, she told the dragon to go ahead and eat her so that her soul could always be with the dragon's soul. Hrasevelgr pretty much tells Ysayle that her view of Shiva isn't based on reality, but on Ysayle's ideas about Shiva instead. This causes Ysayle to question what she is doing since Ysayle seems to really have thought that she was an incarnation of Shiva.

[Eloah]

We seem to always learn new things about Primals, but the one constant seems to be, a belief given corporeal form.

[Iscah]

Never pass up an opportunity to talk to the NPCs just standing around your quest hubs!

(Waking Sands, Rising Stones, Forgotten Knight, House Fortemps, etc.)

And standing around outside quest hubs too! Any time you have major characters in the area, you should talk to them. Always speak to the quest-objective person last! And it can be worthwhile detouring to speak to important characters elsewhere if they might have something to say about the current story events.

Yeah! You never know when you'll find Moenbryda drinking Thancred under the table or see a woman agonizing about her sister's desire to be sandwiched between a pair of Roegadyn brothers...or spot Noraxia disguised as a highlander with green face paint so the others can stop screaming when they see her...or discover a male Miqo'te who hangs out with Arenvald who happens to be interested in a male Hyur conjurer...or notice the Nutkin of Modesty hanging out with Thancred in the Rising Stones...

I never saw the nutkin! When was that?

And actually Noraxia's Hyuran disguise is a male Midlander! Though I didn't realise it until my third time through, when I'd happened to be looking at character designs just before and realised she he that one was using a male-only hairstyle. Sylph gender is canonically weird and isn't really male/female, but both times we've seen sylphs disguised as Hyurans (the other being Silbexio from the beast tribe finale) they've been the opposite of what their pronouns indicate.


I've also been trying to keep note of the other minor adventurers we see around at a few points, because they do seem to be reoccurring - eg. that Hyuran conjurer was one of the adventurers we recruited from Revenant's Toll to help defend the Steps of Faith. And from that same 'recruitment' quest, there was a female Roegadyn mage in a Darklight robe who has reappeared at the Rising Stones post-HW named Bluomwyda; she seems to be friends with Aergmhus.

Looking at my notes it's also reminded me of one of the best encounters, right near the end of post-ARR: Thancred being confronted by all his old girlfriends at once!

[Kalise]

Her own dreams and ideas of what Shiva might have been like.

It still seems odd to me though.

Given that she literally experienced Hraesvelgr's past and would know that Shiva was just a regular woman who simply wanted the D(ragon).

I suppose, her mind was kind of warped, since she apparently took on feelings of love for Hraesvelgr (Since when she talks to him later she refers to him as "My love" as if she really was Shiva). But still, seems like a bit of a stretch to go from regular woman to sexy ice queen after knowing Hrae's past so knowing about Shiva and likely knowing about Ratatoskr's death for her eyes to gain power (Suggesting again, that Shiva was just a regular woman)

Unless she just personally wanted power and thus decided to try and obtain it and did so by claiming Shiva was a sexy ice queen despite knowing otherwise (Which wouldn't really explain her own belief being able to power the primal abilities, nor the fact that when isolated from the people she was deceiving that she still maintained that she was the incarnation of Shiva herself)

[Guiballad]

It still seems odd to me though.

Given that she literally experienced Hraesvelgr's past and would know that Shiva was just a regular woman who simply wanted the D(ragon).

I suppose, her mind was kind of warped, since she apparently took on feelings of love for Hraesvelgr (Since when she talks to him later she refers to him as "My love" as if she really was Shiva). But still, seems like a bit of a stretch to go from regular woman to sexy ice queen after knowing Hrae's past so knowing about Shiva and likely knowing about Ratatoskr's death for her eyes to gain power (Suggesting again, that Shiva was just a regular woman)

Unless she just personally wanted power and thus decided to try and obtain it and did so by claiming Shiva was a sexy ice queen despite knowing otherwise (Which wouldn't really explain her own belief being able to power the primal abilities, nor the fact that when isolated from the people she was deceiving that she still maintained that she was the incarnation of Shiva herself)

But i think there's a point you're missing here love.

By the time of Ysayle Shiva had long been canonized as a saint. Even when Ysayle transforms into "her" she calls specifically upon the power of "Saint Shiva". Now while i'm not entirely sure about the traditions of saints in Ishgardian culture i'm just gonna assume it works kinda close to the catholic notion of what a saint is (since the ishgardian church is basically Catholicism for dragon-hating elves).

In a very condensed definition a saint is somebody who performed miracles in their lifetime and so is believed to become a entity very close to God after their death. In a sense this would also mean a saint becomes much more "powerful" after they die. While mortal Shiva was apparently nothing special in the powers department Saint Shiva was a legendary figure even among the ishgardian priests. Even if Ysayle felt some of her feeling and saw some of her memories (i'm 99% sure Hraesvelgr says she only saw broken memories or something) that would only serve to strengthen her faith in Shiva's saintly figure.

And as Primals are faith and belief given physical form the form she assumes is not of the mortal Shiva but that of Saint Shiva, patron of the heretics. Also be mindful that a Primal based on a specific figure is at best a very distorted reflection of the original subject and at worse something completly different. Tiamat was Bahamut's lover but even she could not conjure a faithful version of him as a Primal.

[AmemeAmeklin]

Any primal summoning comes out warped in some way. See: Thordan and the knights twelve, who appeared as 20 foot tall knights in crazy armor similar in scale to the statues in the city, even though our Echo showed them to be perfectly normal Elezen men.

Interestingly, anything summoned by the WoL is a faithful recreation (See: DRK 30-50, 60-70 quests), virtually indistinguishable from life beyond the fact that they simply should not be there (because they're dead).

Ysayle had lost her entire community in the Calamity and wandered until she found the Tailfeather hunters and the dragons. Her survivor's guilt may have led her to trying to escape being herself in favor of being a reincarnation of Shiva. In that way, she deluded herself.

[Naria]

As far as Shiva being a primal of ice, if you listen to the lyrics of Oblivion it is very clear Ysayle was freezing to death when she had her echo vision of Shiva from Hraesvelgr and experiences fragmented memories of Shiva and then miraculously survives. It isn't strange when she summons her version of Shiva as a primal that Ysayle associates her with ice, or ice with power. Oblivion and certain points in the story where Ysayle speaks as if she thinks she is Shiva reborn and not just a primal host makes me agree that Ysayle unconsciously cast away her own identity in favor of "Shiva" as a way to forget how helpless she was in the Calamity, or of everything and one she lost. This is part of why she goes near-catatonic when Hraesvelgr tells her the truth about Shiva and the war.

[Eloah]

As far as Shiva being a primal of ice, if you listen to the lyrics of Oblivion it is very clear Ysayle was freezing to death when she had her echo vision of Shiva from Hraesvelgr and experiences fragmented memories of Shiva and then miraculously survives. It isn't strange when she summons her version of Shiva as a primal that Ysayle associates her with ice, or ice with power. Oblivion and certain points in the story where Ysayle speaks as if she thinks she is Shiva reborn and not just a primal host makes me agree that Ysayle unconsciously cast away her own identity in favor of "Shiva" as a way to forget how helpless she was in the Calamity, or of everything and one she lost. This is part of why she goes near-catatonic when Hraesvelgr tells her the truth about Shiva and the war.

This is true. The visions she received made her believe she was Shiva reborn. And, while we don't know if reincarnation exist on Hydaelyn, Hraesvalgr makes sure to tell her that she is not "his" Shiva. That's why the Primal Shiva is an amalgamation of Saint Shiva, Halone, and Ysayle herself. Also, the thing about Saint Shiva is that her following is one that follows historical references similar to the real world, though in reverse most likely. Only in recent generations has she become known as the Pateon Saint of the Heretics. Prior to that she was considered a Saint as the woman who brought peace to man and the dragons.

[AmemeAmeklin]

I never saw the nutkin! When was that?

And actually Noraxia's Hyuran disguise is a male Midlander! Though I didn't realise it until my third time through, when I'd happened to be looking at character designs just before and realised she he that one was using a male-only hairstyle. Sylph gender is canonically weird and isn't really male/female, but both times we've seen sylphs disguised as Hyurans (the other being Silbexio from the beast tribe finale) they've been the opposite of what their pronouns indicate.

...

Looking at my notes it's also reminded me of one of the best encounters, right near the end of post-ARR: Thancred being confronted by all his old girlfriends at once!

I have screenshots of both so I'd have to go dig up the one of Noraxia to see. I remember staring at it for a while and thinking it was sort of androgynous anyway.

The nutkin was some time in Heavensward and it's super tiny so I'm not surprised you missed it. In fact I almost didn't notice myself, except through some happy accident where I happened to go AFK in the Rising Stones and my idle cam kicked in. I wandered back in time to see it focused on a nutkin and promptly looked for it. It was just behind Thancred as he was hanging out near the exit. This is after you locate him in the wilderness of the forelands and he manages to reach Mor Dhona.

Thancred surrounded by women while Yda laughed hysterically in the corner and Papalymo tutted disapprovingly was pretty great. I remember the lead up to that scene took quite a few quests, too. Thancred had Yda meet one of them to get some sort of special material but the woman got super mad when she saw Yda, much to Yda's confusion...there's more to it but I can't remember.

I think another favorite of mine is Yda and Hoary Boulder getting into a squatting contest.