ShB story did not go the way I thought it would. (Spoilers)

[Liam_Harper]

To be fair we don't really know. Primals do temper people, we've seen that. How that works with Primals on the scale of Hydaelyn/Zodiark or whether the free will we think we have is even free will is completely unknown.

There's a lot unanswered with Emet too. He's very likely telling the truth but he isn't telling us the whole story. He claims his race was "perfect", yet the cataclysm that endangered his world didn't just materialize out of thin air. Something caused it. Their race was messing around a lot with creation. Also why did some of his people feel that threatened by Zodiark? We already know Zodiark required sacrifices to maintain "peace". Emet very likely didn't give us the whole picture. Perhaps, being tempered by Zodiark, he couldn't give us the whole picture in the same way a beast tribe tempered by their primal would never question it.

I imagine there will be many more surprises to come, we've only started the expansion.

[Yshnal]

Keep in mind that Hydaelen and Zodiark are not our typical primals. The rules we know for tempering and such may differ with these two. It could be that they temper just by exposure to them, or a passive tempering. It may be something that just happens. At the same time, being tempered by either also appears to leave one's own free will intact. Hydaelen and Zodiark operate on a different rule set due to them being on a completely different level of power.

Yeah, that's why I also said that maybe it's not even in Hydaelyn's nature to temper anyone, or that her tempering is not like what we know. She was summoned with a specific purpose, and I doubt that whoever summoned her was naive enough to not see the dangers of tempering. Especially a member of the Council well aware of what Zodiark was and what could do.

As I mentioned, we have plenty of proof of us being able to act independently of her. "Tempered" or not, there doesn't seem to be any negative consequences from our relationship with her. In fact, as Midgardsormr said several times, it has always been the other way around. There's no other primal sacrificing its own existence in that way. Well, actually, there's another one, and it's the kojin one that I also mentioned, which is actually quite benign. And for all we know Hydaelyn follows the same patterns as that one, personality-wise.

I've completed the MSQ's on two different characters. It was never implied that Hydaelyn was 'good' and Zodiark 'evil'. Furthermore she has lied by falsely claiming that Zodiark was responsible for shattering reality when it was, in fact, a consequence of her own actions. Her motives are largely unknown for us and the attempts to paint her as being virtuous stem from bias sources as well as speculation pushed as fact on behalf of various players.

She is also directly responsible for Minfilia's situation and falsely presenting herself as a deity when she is not one. In general she's been fairly incompetent at best, malicious at worst.

When she said that Zodiark was the cause of the Sundering, was that really a lie? Because it was actually Zodiark's existence what caused the Sundering, as I'm sure that at that point it was the only way to defeat him. There's no way that Hydaelyn was as powerful as him to defeat him one-on-one, not after he had consumed 3/4 of the Amaurotine population (which was was was left of the world at that point, so there was nothing else that powerful to feed her). Did she Sunder the star? Yes. Was she the reason for it? No.

In regards to the deity part, even the Ascians themselves call Zodiark a god. I might be wrong here, but I don't remember her ever calling herself a god. However, for all we know Hydaelyn could just be using that word like the Garleans call primals 'eikons' (like the Allag did before them). About her being incompetent, and this is also related to Minfilia's fate, remember that she is in a VERY weakened state right now. She was already weakened when she was lending us her power and protection, and doing that weakened her even more. That's why she needed to send the Oracle of Light to the First to help, because she couldn't do it herself at that point anymore. And that's not something that she has told us, but what Midgardsormr and the Ascians said. If anything it's shows that despite risking her existence she's still doing what she's able to do, when she's able to do it; but keep in mind that at this very moment she might be using her remaining strenght just to keep Zodiark imprisoned.

The final sacrifice they envisioned was to bring back those who gave their lives to summon him and repair the world. It's all well and good noting what it'd take to restore Zodiark and their world, but the Sundering is what made such actions necessary...

Unless I misunderstood you, no, that's not what happened. Even before the Sundering happened, the plan was to use any new life that came to existence as a sacrifice to bring back the volunteers. The Sundering itself had nothing to with that, in fact that might have been the last straw that actually made those against the Zodiark plan summon Hydaelyn.

[Satarn]

Well if WoL is tempered then I guess Emet-Selch is a complete idiot for hoping he could've convinced us to switch to his cause, as being tempered would render WoL completely unable to do so.

Considering that Emet has so far proven to be rather intelligent, we're probably not tempered.

[MrThinker]

To be fair we don't really know. Primals do temper people, we've seen that. How that works with Primals on the scale of Hydaelyn/Zodiark or whether the free will we think we have is even free will is completely unknown.

There's a lot unanswered with Emet too. He's very likely telling the truth but he isn't telling us the whole story. He claims his race was "perfect", yet the cataclysm that endangered his world didn't just materialize out of thin air. Something caused it. Their race was messing around a lot with creation. Also why did some of his people feel that threatened by Zodiark? We already know Zodiark required sacrifices to maintain "peace". Emet very likely didn't give us the whole picture. Perhaps, being tempered by Zodiark, he couldn't give us the whole picture in the same way a beast tribe tempered by their primal would never question it.

I imagine there will be many more surprises to come, we've only started the expansion.

They didn't feel threatened. They felt that sacrificing the life newly born that their bretheren sacrificed themselves to restore would be going against the point of their sacrifice. Also we can't be truly sure that Zodiark could actually bring those souls back. As I understand it, the souls of the Ancients surrendering themselves to Zodiark is like Lahabrea being absorbed by Thordan, the form of their souls would most likely have been ripped apart. Also remember that the Qalyana Ananta queen tried to get Lakshmi to resurrect her daughter, but what was brought back was simply just a husk with "life". I think the whole point of that story thread was to reinforce that it is impossible to bring back the truly gone.