Echo and Blessing of light, post endwalker retcon

[Remedi]

I wouldn't really use Zenos's spiel on how it works, considering what he was saying was the mother of all assumptions

[Theozilla]

I wouldn't really use Zenos's spiel on how it works, considering what he was saying was the mother of all assumptions

Doylistically I am pretty sure narratively we’re meant to take it at face value, since it’s framed as one of the big lore reveals of the climax of Stormblood, and especially since Zenos effectively demonstrates his hypothesis by dominating and controlling Shinryu immediately thereafter (and Misija later does so with Save the Queen).

And as stated before there’s nothing to indicate that the artificial-Echo creation process would have also copied the Blessing of the Light magicks of Venat.
And when the Blessing of the Light was being suppressed by Midgardsormr, the WoL still had tempering protection.
All that is pretty indicative that *both* the Echo and Blessing of Light provide tempering protection, but in a different manner/different nature.

[Rosenstrauch]

I think the biggest hang up I have over this is the one I had from the very beginning. We've had sections of the story where we were without the Blessing of Light, and yet still made the effort to fight primals. There are sections of the story where we're called on to fight primals due to possessing the Echo, and characters who also possess the Echo are called in to help us. We've had moments where characters are kidnapped in order to weaponize their Echo through the Resonance chambers. This pattern of relying on the Echo for its anti-primal powers continued all the way up to the very end of Shadowbringers.

Then, without so much as an "actually, that was wrong", it's the Blessing of Light and always has been, and nobody has ever believed otherwise. And there's a clear and obvious divide on this: As of 5.55, the Echo was your protection. As of 6.0, it's always been the Blessing of Light.

I don't think anyone is outright complaining about this change—if anything, distinctly separating the Echo and the Blessing of Light instead of letting their qualities hazily overlap was a good thing. But the contradiction is obvious and warrants being pointed out. If this was something that was supposed to be revealed over the course of Shadowbringers, then perhaps the writers dropped the ball on its implementation.

[RyuDragnier]

I don't see a contradiction. They're akin to Galvanize and Catalyze. Echo being Galvanize, easily applied, a shield that can protect against so much corruption. Blessing of Light is Catalyze, and is a much stronger shield than Galvanize. They can stack, so the Blessing of Light being protection against aetherial corruption is not changing that the echo does it too. If anything, it means somebody with the Blessing of Light would be able to essentially take control of a primal like Bahamut or Alexander without their will being taken over, while somebody with just the echo would be likely to be taken over by the elder primal.

[Brightamethyst]

That would explain Krile, and could explain Misija, Zenos, and Fordola if we decided to stretch it, but I don't remember seeing Arenvald and the others with any crystals. Mikoto, Unukulhai, and Arenvald all are present at summonings and immune to thralldom.

That was my biggest issue and question too. Swapping temper protection from the Echo to the Blessing doesn't affect the WoL, but it sure as hell messes things up for people like Arenvald, Fordola, Mikoto, etc.

[Denishia]

I don't see a contradiction. They're akin to Galvanize and Catalyze. Echo being Galvanize, easily applied, a shield that can protect against so much corruption. Blessing of Light is Catalyze, and is a much stronger shield than Galvanize. They can stack, so the Blessing of Light being protection against aetherial corruption is not changing that the echo does it too. If anything, it means somebody with the Blessing of Light would be able to essentially take control of a primal like Bahamut or Alexander without their will being taken over, while somebody with just the echo would be likely to be taken over by the elder primal.

I got the same vibe as well. Tempering, as the 5.4-5 patches clarifying, is the overloading of aspected aether, and it's harder to be overwhelmed if the competing aetherial amounts aren't extreme and, through Timat, implied to have a second element in a 'debuff' pull of worship. Worshiping a primal is thus placing oneself in that relationship where the mind-control danger of Tempering is but a natural exaggeration of the summoner/worshipper's own zealotry. The Ascians added a hook to primal summoning to add in that brainwashing/mind-control element - or at least made this drawback stronger and gave the 'control any summoners and create worshippers to sustain and grown' as part of the core programming of all primals even if the summoners weren't intending that as part of their mental image of their primal god's motivations. Tiamat summoning Bahamut had less a pull on those two 'debuffs' that create the Tempering we're familiar with. But Primal Tempering is a two-fold problem in most modern cases. We learn that the Blessing of Light is focused mostly as an aether shield (which makes sense considering its use as the shield that saved us from the point-blank Ultima Spell in the Praetorium) and that the WoL innately has a dense and vast personal aether that grants us a strong constitution against primals and gives us the pool to learn the various jobs, teleport around the map, and prove the aether powerups to our friends in various solo duties. Now we now the Echo also protects against primals (though while canon hasn't thought us otherwise, it has not 100% ruled out the chance that a primal might have enough aether to overwhelm the Echo buff) for others like Arenvald, Ysyale, Fordola, etc... I wouldn't be surprised if lore later clears up that the Echo, as part of the more mental/understanding the souls of others, is a shield that is focused on combating the mind control debuff and the Blessing is that second stronger shield against the overwhelming weight of foreign aether (which is the 'Tempering' danger of Zodiark, the tug that the Lopporits mentioned) that our regular giant aetherpool point bar can't soak.

[Makeda]

My big question that's been in my head is 'what now?'

Hydaelyn is no more - will the Blessing of Light and the Echo eventually fade away? Or are we more than just her #1 Tempered-but-not-exactly super-agent; given that we're Azem reborn - technically we're an Ascian of sorts - will it just evolve to not need our Primal in the wings fueling it.

[Theozilla]

I got the same vibe as well. Tempering, as the 5.4-5 patches clarifying, is the overloading of aspected aether, and it's harder to be overwhelmed if the competing aetherial amounts aren't extreme and, through Timat, implied to have a second element in a 'debuff' pull of worship. Worshiping a primal is thus placing oneself in that relationship where the mind-control danger of Tempering is but a natural exaggeration of the summoner/worshipper's own zealotry. The Ascians added a hook to primal summoning to add in that brainwashing/mind-control element - or at least made this drawback stronger and gave the 'control any summoners and create worshippers to sustain and grown' as part of the core programming of all primals even if the summoners weren't intending that as part of their mental image of their primal god's motivations. Tiamat summoning Bahamut had less a pull on those two 'debuffs' that create the Tempering we're familiar with. But Primal Tempering is a two-fold problem in most modern cases. We learn that the Blessing of Light is focused mostly as an aether shield (which makes sense considering its use as the shield that saved us from the point-blank Ultima Spell in the Praetorium) and that the WoL innately has a dense and vast personal aether that grants us a strong constitution against primals and gives us the pool to learn the various jobs, teleport around the map, and prove the aether powerups to our friends in various solo duties. Now we now the Echo also protects against primals (though while canon hasn't thought us otherwise, it has not 100% ruled out the chance that a primal might have enough aether to overwhelm the Echo buff) for others like Arenvald, Ysyale, Fordola, etc... I wouldn't be surprised if lore later clears up that the Echo, as part of the more mental/understanding the souls of others, is a shield that is focused on combating the mind control debuff and the Blessing is that second stronger shield against the overwhelming weight of foreign aether (which is the 'Tempering' danger of Zodiark, the tug that the Lopporits mentioned) that our regular giant aetherpool point bar can't soak.

Ysayle and Arenvald also had the Blessing of Light, remember Elidibus and Urianger discussed in 5.2, that whenever the Echo is naturally awoken in individuals (who aren’t Ascians), Hydaelyn automatically granted them the Blessing Light. Furthermore, Ysayle also had her own Crystal of Light (like Ardbert and co.) powering up her Blessing even further (and could also use it as an energy source for becoming Shiva).

My big question that's been in my head is 'what now?'

Hydaelyn is no more - will the Blessing of Light and the Echo eventually fade away? Or are we more than just her #1 Tempered-but-not-exactly super-agent; given that we're Azem reborn - technically we're an Ascian of sorts - will it just evolve to not need our Primal in the wings fueling it.

The WoL isn’t and never has been tempered though. And remember the Blessing of Light (or at least what it’s prototype was) existed even before Venat became Hydaelyn, it’s not based on a Primal power but Venat’s own original magick.

Presumably the Blessing of Light doesn’t cease to exist just because Hydaelyn died (as it appears to be a magick that once cast isn’t dependent on its caster to maintain its existence/function, for example like the Tonberry curse/disease from the Scholar quests).
However, since Hydaelyn is dead, presumably no more new Blessings of Light will be granted to individuals in the future, so in that sense it will “fade” once the last person with the Blessing of Light has passed away.

Also remember that the Echo isn’t created by Hydaelyn, it’s a inherent part of souls reawakening to their Ancient souls’ power. So people probably can and will still be born and/naturally awaken to it (though they might be less frequent since Hydaelyn won’t be creating visions of comets/meteors when she needs a bunch of people awakened to the Echo).

[Necrotica]

I wonder if they were trying to avoid the problem of the Echo having no good reason to be able to protect us from being tempered by Zodiark since the Ancients were tempered by him. Throughout the game they say the Echo protects you from tempering. The echo is the remnant of the natural power we had before being sundered. But the ones that summoned Zodiark were tempered despite having the full blown version.

The plot calls for us to fight Zodiark. Well crap how do we stop them from being tempered? Well...uh...IT WAS THE BLESSING OF LIGHT ALL ALONG!

[Theozilla]

I wonder if they were trying to avoid the problem of the Echo having no good reason to be able to protect us from being tempered by Zodiark since the Ancients were tempered by him. Throughout the game they say the Echo protects you from tempering. The echo is the remnant of the natural power we had before being sundered. But the ones that summoned Zodiark were tempered despite having the full blown version.

The plot calls for us to fight Zodiark. Well crap how do we stop them from being tempered? Well...uh...IT WAS THE BLESSING OF LIGHT ALL ALONG!

Yeah, once ShadowBringers stated that Zodiark was able to temper the Ascians/Ancients, that implicitly made the Echo’s tempering protection no longer the absolute immunity we once thought it was (though I’d argue Stormblood had somewhat set the seeds by having Zenos propose that the Echo’s interaction with Primals was less an immunity but more a clash of wills, and thus the “power to dominate”)

It’s kinda wonky, but making it so that both the Echo and Blessing of Light provide tempering protection/immunity, but the latter is more comprehensive/better at the immunity/protection, is an acceptable solution/compromise to me.