What lore do you ignore?

[Mortex]

I wish I could ignore elpis. It’s one of the better areas in endwalker but by all that is holy does it destroy the journey the WoL has. I hate time paradox/loops so much and even more if they are written bad as hell. I assume the WoL told venat, hades and hyda about his entire journey and future and what roles they play in the entire grand scheme of things (also what we tell is vague of purpose. Like did we tell the entire information about allagan empire or what did we tell?). The entire personal journey and decisions we made as a character just became so obsolete it’s insane. The choices and decisions we made as character were already written down by us to venat, so she can make it happen (I don’t think venat is “evil” for sundering but it just feels like the entire sundering process was starting by us telling venat about the future). Like she effectively let lose mass murders on the source and shards that have no memory expect “make amoraut great again” and go over millions of bodies before we get to that part in the loop.

[Emitans]

[EW spoilers]

We are tearing scales off of Vrtra in order to make charms to protect people against tempering, meanwhile in Garlemald it turns out there's a metal that's so common even poor people can afford radios made out of it and it just blocks tempering? And we never even think of trying to use it? It feels like they needed a way to handwave some Garleans being untempered and never thought of it after that.

[Cleretic]

[EW spoilers]

We are tearing scales off of Vrtra in order to make charms to protect people against tempering, meanwhile in Garlemald it turns out there's a metal that's so common even poor people can afford radios made out of it and it just blocks tempering? And we never even think of trying to use it? It feels like they needed a way to handwave some Garleans being untempered and never thought of it after that.

The Garleans being untempered was basically a freak accident born of a very specific set of circumstances, it was far more than just 'a common metal', and most likely only worked because the primal they were dealing with was specifically Varis. The warding scales are a lot more versatile and generally useful in practice. And of course then there's what both elements actually represent beyond the literal, which I think is worth remembering--the radios work because it reflects that Garlemald's national identity is at the same time grossly linked to and ultimately independent of Ascian manipulation, while the Thavnairians use Vrtra's scales to show in a very physical way that Vrtra will suffer for his people, it's basically an instant way to show that Vrtra's not the bad guy that the setup of his reveal might suggest he is.

And yes, obviously it works the way it does because they wanted untempered Garleans in Garlemald, but I don't think seeing the reason they wrote in a thing should invalidate the thing. In fact, I feel like people would be even madder if Garlemald included literally no untempered Garleans.

[Emitans]

The Garleans being untempered was basically a freak accident born of a very specific set of circumstances, it was far more than just 'a common metal', and most likely only worked because the primal they were dealing with was specifically Varis. The warding scales are a lot more versatile and generally useful in practice. And of course then there's what both elements actually represent beyond the literal, which I think is worth remembering--the radios work because it reflects that Garlemald's national identity is at the same time grossly linked to and ultimately independent of Ascian manipulation, while the Thavnairians use Vrtra's scales to show in a very physical way that Vrtra will suffer for his people, it's basically an instant way to show that Vrtra's not the bad guy that the setup of his reveal might suggest he is.

And yes, obviously it works the way it does because they wanted untempered Garleans in Garlemald, but I don't think seeing the reason they wrote in a thing should invalidate the thing. In fact, I feel like people would be even madder if Garlemald included literally no untempered Garleans.

Ok, this is an interesting way of looking at it I never considered before.

[Iscah]

We are tearing scales off of Vrtra in order to make charms to protect people against tempering, meanwhile in Garlemald it turns out there's a metal that's so common even poor people can afford radios made out of it and it just blocks tempering? And we never even think of trying to use it? It feels like they needed a way to handwave some Garleans being untempered and never thought of it after that.

We only discovered the freak properties of the radios after the warding scales had been made.

[Emitans]

We only discovered the freak properties of the radios after the warding scales had been made.

My memory isn't great but I think we continued to use Vrtra to make them even after learning about the radios.

[Rosenstrauch]

I might be wrong or mistaken, but isn't the material used in the Garlean Radios that provides their anti-tempering powers Giantsgall? And isn't that same material used in the process of converting Vrtra's scales into protective talismans?

I would need to comb through the text to figure out if that's actually the case.

[WhiteArchmage]

My memory isn't great but I think we continued to use Vrtra to make them even after learning about the radios.

I'd have to check but I don't remember us making new warding scales afterwards. We altered existing ones for heading into the Thirteenth, though, so if you have an idea of where we made other scales, it'd help a lot with narrowing it down!

[Iscah]

I might be wrong or mistaken, but isn't the material used in the Garlean Radios that provides their anti-tempering powers Giantsgall? And isn't that same material used in the process of converting Vrtra's scales into protective talismans?

I would need to comb through the text to figure out if that's actually the case.

Yes, I do remember that being implied. IIRC it's that the ore is from Corvos which is close to (and I think elsewhere stated to be geographically similar to) Thavnair.

So if it is giantsgall or similar, it's possible that the radios have a small amount of power to protect from a single burst of tempering, but it's the dragon scales that give it lasting energy to protect you in a danger zone, or something like that.

[Emitans]

I'd have to check but I don't remember us making new warding scales afterwards. We altered existing ones for heading into the Thirteenth, though, so if you have an idea of where we made other scales, it'd help a lot with narrowing it down!

That's probably it. My memory isn't the best, especially when it comes to small details like that.