Faith, Dynamis, Aether, Summoning

[Eisi]

Hey!

So we know that Dynamis is a space-bound energy that reacts to emotion and that it runs counter to aether. The more aether there is, the less Dynamis there will be in any given location and vice versa.

We know that summoning requires aether and faith. Faith is probably an emotion I assume.

I'm thinking about the final battle versus the endsinger, where in the moment of desperation the scions pray for us and that prayer manifests our salvation due to probably the effects of dynamis.

Now importantly this is a reenactment of what happened at the end of 1.0 where prayers where done in similar fashion to save Eorzea, except we know that rather than summoning the Twelve to intervene, instead Louisoix became the locus of an unwitting summoning ritual, transforming himself into the symbol of rebirth Phoenix.

So what the hell, was there Dynamis in effect here or is Aether also reacting to emotions or should we seperate prayer into

a) HOPE, an emotion which influenced the dynamis at the end of endwalker and

b) FAITH, which is decidedly then not an emotion and what influences Aether?

If faith is not an emotion, are we supposed to assume that faith is highest when emotions like hope and desperation are also strongest aka during concentrated efforts of prayer? That's convoluted to me, isn't then faith an emotion all the same at the end of the day?

Or does summoning not actually require faith at all, just prayer, even if you don't believe in it? So the summoning ritual is just aether-manipulation like we do as a summoner which just always coincides with prayer in all other cases?

That doesn't make any sense however because Dalamud clearly worked off off the faith of the dragons that kept Bahamut alive, not on any rituals the had to perform, I mean they were kept in stasis. Or is like the mental aetherflow that your thoughts coalesce into the ritual? Shouldn't summonings then happen all the time accidentally?

Can anybody explain to me what is going on? Let's adress the elephant in the room, is summoning actually using dynamis AND aether?

[MikkoAkure]

The way I understand it, is that Lahabrea went around teaching a limited version of Ancient creation magic with a specific tempering thing built into it to keep the cycle going.

When it comes to summoning "faith" is not being used as emotional fuel, but instead as a clear image of the being to be summoned. All of the summoned beings are gods or at the very least ideals (as in Shiva's case). The people summoning them are Sundered and so have very limited power in creation magic compared to the Ancients and need outside help. But together with a power source (crystals) and a common, strong faith they all have together in a single shared idea of a being, they can perform creation magic. When a clear image is not formed, like with Ga Bu's summoning of Titan, the summoning goes wrong and Titan's personality was warped by Ga Bu's state when he summoned him.

So summoning, at least to me, is purely aetheric and has nothing to do with dynamis at all.

[SannaR]

I would like to think Hope and Faith are emotions of a sort. However this is a touchy subject as there are many who just don't want to talk about Dynamis at all and would rather hide it under the rug. Pretending it doesn't exist just because something the game sort of hinted at at various times only got a name at the 11th hour. Their bias against anything related to Dynamis is so palatable that you can taste the bitterness while watching their videos. Or when you read their posts. No, Cleretic I'm not talking about you.

I think there had been a discussion about what summoning and other things are made up of and I am on the side of a lot of things are probably a mishmash of both.

[Eisi]

The way I understand it, is that Lahabrea went around teaching a limited version of Ancient creation magic with a specific tempering thing built into it to keep the cycle going.

When it comes to summoning "faith" is not being used as emotional fuel, but instead as a clear image of the being to be summoned. All of the summoned beings are gods or at the very least ideals (as in Shiva's case). The people summoning them are Sundered and so have very limited power in creation magic compared to the Ancients and need outside help. But together with a power source (crystals) and a common, strong faith they all have together in a single shared idea of a being, they can perform creation magic. When a clear image is not formed, like with Ga Bu's summoning of Titan, the summoning goes wrong and Titan's personality was warped by Ga Bu's state when he summoned him.

So summoning, at least to me, is purely aetheric and has nothing to do with dynamis at all.

That makes a lot of sense to me! Except I wouldn't call Ga Bu's summoning "gone wrong" and I also disagree with the clear image thing. All summons are warped, Bahamut the Eikon is described by Tiamat as a twisted abomination or something (based on the original artwork of the high dragons Bahamut the living being definitely did not even look like the eikon but more like his siblings and those dragons deffo had a very clear mental image of what their king looked like). I assume there's inherently something volatile about the summoning process it's basically a children's first attempt at creation magic.

Phoenix and Anima were summoned entirely unconsciously, with Phoenix it's especially egregious, because the people actually prayed to the twelve, yet what emerged wasn't a twisted version of those gods or whatever, but instead an entirely different entity, one not to protect, but to rebirth, as if the people had actually lost the belief in protecting the realm and instead channeled their faith into the next best thing, you know a chance for those who would walk after.

[Eisi]

I would like to think Hope and Faith are emotions of a sort. However this is a touchy subject as there are many who just don't want to talk about Dynamis at all and would rather hide it under the rug. Pretending it doesn't exist just because something the game sort of hinted at at various times only got a name at the 11th hour. Their bias against anything related to Dynamis is so palatable that you can taste the bitterness while watching their videos. Or when you read their posts. No, Cleretic I'm not talking about you.

I think there had been a discussion about what summoning and other things are made up of and I am on the side of a lot of things are probably a mishmash of both.

To be honest I am confused because of the Endsinger fight and I may have extrapolated too much from that. I personally understand that Dynamis isn't well liked, because I just don't understand it at all. I couldn't write a story with dynamis in mind, because I just don't understand how it works, when it works and when not, the rules it's based on.

Regarding summoning, maybe it is so faith based in almost all cases because creation magic works on a kind of law of attraction basis? So you imagining things so strongly that you believe them entirely is what makes them possible? So creation magic is basically faith as well?

[KageTokage]

The answer for the time being is "who knows" because the connection between faith and dynamis is strictly speculative still and the only concrete facts about it are the fundamentals of it being influenced by emotion and negated by higher levels of aether.

Maybe they'll go somewhere further with it eventually...or maybe not.

[MikkoAkure]

That makes a lot of sense to me! Except I wouldn't call Ga Bu's summoning "gone wrong" and I also disagree with the clear image thing. All summons are warped, Bahamut the Eikon is described by Tiamat as a twisted abomination or something (based on the original artwork of the high dragons Bahamut the living being definitely did not even look like the eikon but more like his siblings and those dragons deffo had a very clear mental image of what their king looked like). I assume there's inherently something volatile about the summoning process it's basically a children's first attempt at creation magic.

I'd say Ga Bu's summoning was wrong. While HW and EW showed us that Lahabrea's versions of the primals differed from their source, Ga Bu's version of Titan even attacked Kobolds and spoke like Ga Bu and not Lahabrea's version of Titan.

The primals being warped is probably partly "children's first attempt at creation magic" and partly by Lahabrea's design since they're ultimately there to serve his goals in the long term. Tiamat says that the Ascians took advantage of her grief to make a monster that ended up just being a part of their plans since the Ascians gave the Allagans the method to trap primal Bahamut as well. The Lahabrea-less versions of the primals seemed much more normal and less about conquest and aether, though we didn't get much time with them to talk about it.

Phoenix and Anima were summoned entirely unconsciously, with Phoenix it's especially egregious, because the people actually prayed to the twelve, yet what emerged wasn't a twisted version of those gods or whatever, but instead an entirely different entity, one not to protect, but to rebirth, as if the people had actually lost the belief in protecting the realm and instead channeled their faith into the next best thing, you know a chance for those who would walk after.

Phoenix, Shinryu, and Anima fit in the "ideals" category. They're the manifestation of focused ideas in combination with great amounts of aether. EE says that Phoenix specifically was "the collective subconscious of Eorzea's people and the prayers for our dying star's survival". It also says that idea fits in the current understanding of the "metaphysical logic of primal summoning". Phoenix went wrong because Louisoix got tempered by Bahamut.

But I wonder if all of this has to do with Lahabrea's original creations back before he was an Ascian. We know that there's old patterns for "Ifrita" and "Phoinix" that came from his labs. Since he's the one who goes around teaching the people how to summon, it could be that they're utilizing tweaked versions of his original creation templates that are saved somewhere in the memory of the star. It could be that the unconscious versions too are formed when strong, focused thought matches up with a concept somehow saved. That could also explain the 1.0 intro with the flying primals when Midgardsormr goes boom. He may have sealed summoning for a time but released when he died. I think it was mentioned that summoning didn't kick back up again until after that.


But back to dynamis, while it could have an effect, G'raha Tia says that because the power of dynamis is curbed on our star it took thousands of years for hopes and prayers to influence the images and personalities of the Twelve. While they're not primals, I'd imagine that the same problem of dynamis' power being weakened would mean it barely affects the actual primals too and they've only been around for 10-15 years at most and wouldn't have a chance to be warped by it.

[Eisi]

Wait so Lahabrea invented the primals? Did he manipulate the tribal cultures around the world to make them believe in concepts he previously had created? Is the fact that you can summon them that which makes the belief? Do you need to refer to an Ascian concept in order to be able to summon at all? So Shiva was also created as a concept by the ancients and then later a real person based on the concept emerged by coincidence? And Bahamut was also actually created as a concept before the dragons landed on Hydaelyn? And the concept just happened to coincide with the dragon?

I didn't know there were what I imagine to be sort of ancient blueprints for the gods, I thought those cults and religions had developed organically and the Ascians merely provided them the means to summon, not the entire blueprint of a primal. If a concept is required, how does Ga Bu's version of Titan even exist? Is the concept wonky and Lahabrea made sure that the other kobolds would summon the "correct" version of Titan somehow?

[MikkoAkure]

Wait so Lahabrea invented the primals? Did he manipulate the tribal cultures around the world to make them believe in concepts he previously had created? Is the fact that you can summon them that which makes the belief? Do you need to refer to an Ascian concept in order to be able to summon at all? So Shiva was also created as a concept by the ancients and then later a real person based on the concept emerged by coincidence? And Bahamut was also actually created as a concept before the dragons landed on Hydaelyn? And the concept just happened to coincide with the dragon?

I think it’s more that they were influenced by Lahabrea when he was teaching them summoning, to direct their faith of their gods or past historical people during the summoning process in a way that lines up either with part of a pre-existing concept or something else of his design. I don't think he had anything to do with the growth of their religions but crazier things have happened.

It doesn’t always go his way. Remember Ramuh? He actively refused to participate in Lahabrea’s larger game and even gave us a Crystal of Light.

Koji had this to say on the subject:

But remember how we once talked about how there could be multiple Ifrits? You’re just assembling pieces from the aether and forming them into something. There are parts of that being and parts of just regular energy in that core. It’s not all of their pieces. It’s some of the memories and then you’re filling out the rest. It’s kind of like when they find some tyrannosaurus bones and have to recreate the rest with plaster copies. It’s not the actual being. And then it dies off, and a little piece of it, while it’s existing in that form, goes back to the Lifestream.

When you’re talking about the Lifestream, there’s all this weirdness. And then it seems like every patch there’s a new way to summon a primal…but that’s not my fault! We have to keep thinking of new ways because they want special situations. But the essence is that, yeah, you’re pulling a piece of that person and filling in the rest of the energy that is formed based on what the summoner is thinking at that time.

I hope someone else can find the Ifrit thing he mentioned because I can’t find it right now, but from what I think I remember, Koji mentioned that in an example where Amalj’aa are summoning Ifrit based on a certain existing thing of it in the lifestream and it can end up different from people in the New World summoning a different version of Ifrit off the same template because of their own ideas warping the finished product.

[Cleretic]

Their bias against anything related to Dynamis is so palatable that you can taste the bitterness while watching their videos. Or when you read their posts. No, Cleretic I'm not talking about you.

Wait what? I'm very confused, I don't know how I connect here.

I think the community has a tendency to over-connect things to dynamis and try to explain everything with it, regardless of actual logic or evidence. To an extent, not really anyone's fault--dynamis is deliberately written to be very vague, and it exists in close conceptual proximity to other things that were a little loose and vague, or did have explanations that were kinda hard to find. But other times I think it's just people desperately wanting the cool new thing to connect to absolutely everything, when it just... doesn't.

Primals are, I think, actually that last one. We got an exact explanation of what faith does in that equation--MikkoAkure pretty much nailed it, it forms the 'blueprint' of what's summoned rather than any of the energy. It was explained in that scene outside the Ragnarok with Livingway; it substitutes the exacting, specific requirements of creation magic with the more loose but no less fervent requirements of faith. When you think about the actual nature of primals, it makes sense why that works better; primals more often need to be a group summoning, and while it's hard to get an entire group on the same page regarding something like 'where the liver is', it's very easy to get a group of believers in a collective faith on the same page of 'our god is an awesome god'. Also remember that primals don't need to pass a crucial requirement of lifeform-creation magic as we know it: fitting into the ecosystem. It doesn't matter if Ramuh's biology doesn't make any sense, because nobody needs Ramuh to live as a normal life form.


While not related to this thread, my personal bugbear with dynamis is people insisting every single LB is and always has been dynamis. Sure, some of them might be; that one against Lahabrea in the new 2.0 ending, that tank LB3 against the Endsinger (although everything in that fight was dynamis-fuelled, so it's not special). But there's multiple that can't be; the Seat of Sacrifice boss' LBs, the Ktisis duty support. Almost all our LB3s already have explanations, most of them excluding dynamis, although they're only in the Encyclopedia Eorzea and to my knowledge haven't been written down anywhere else, official or not. But despite all this, 'LBs are dynamis' keeps getting pushed just because it seems cool. In fact I think it genuinely stifles discussion on what dynamis actually is doing; I think Manawall's description sounds exactly like it's dynamis-fuelled, but that gets ignored because saying that Meteor is dynamis is way more exciting, even if its description says it's not.