What difference did the Twelve tangibly make?

[Eisi]

Heyho,

So the Twelve were an Eorzea exclusive thing right? I wonder about this because Hydaelyn allegedly wanted to take people's desire to worship gods seriously and so gave them the gods to worship, but only in Eorzea? And they get prayers but can't actively help people so really what difference did they make? And how did the other countries on Hydaelyn suffer from not having a Twelves equivalent, like what did they miss out on?

Cause to me it seems like the Twelve should have just been a normal religion with no tangible gods and it would have been fine. Was Myths of the Realm literally only written to adress the fact that the Twelve were never summoned as Primals?

[KenZentra]

I think Myths of the Realm really took away the unknown from the game, at least in the terms of Eorzea itself. Im sure there is stuff here and there, but for the most part it seems like Eorzea is finished content. I don't really know what they could dive into that hasnt already happened before, or that they don't just make up after the fact with no connections previously.

[Zero-ELEC]

Well, no, the Twelve aren't an Eorzea exclusive thing. The Twelve are arcane creations made of members of Venat's group (it's unclear if they're actually slivers of souls or just based on their souls), whose purpose was to ensure the world continued without breaking down, presumably because of the sundering. Hydaelyn didn't create them to "take people's desire to worship gods seriously" at all, I don't know where you got that.

Also the Twelve were summoned as primals, during the first Battle of Cartenau, even if only partially. Similarly, there was an Ascian plot to make Ala Mighans summon Rhalgr. Anything can be summoned as a primal.

Regardless, I agree that them being "actual" gods really adds little to the setting.

[Cleretic]

I don't think the Twelve were ever intended, from the in-universe perspective, to be gods, and acting like they were is going to lead you down a false path. Our actual window into the intention of Hydaelyn is that they more more supposed to be stewards than gods: they were made to make sure the world didn't melt back in a time where it was very much in need of help. It's just that being that sort of visible, assumed-positive influence got them worshipped as gods, and over time that had an effect. While they're not primals, I think the best comparison is probably Bismarck: mortals ascribed deific attributes to a thing that they saw. They're only worshipped in Eorzea because that's their base of operations, that's where they've been seen but that doesn't mean the Far East is left high and dry--in fact, there is scant evidence they know of the Twelve, they just don't care that much, because they have their own extant phenomena to build their belief systems around.

So they're not intended to be gods, but their actual intention is over now: they watched over the world until they were confident we could do it ourselves. If they vanished back in the First Astral Era, we'd have been screwed, but now they can take their leave.

I'm honestly happy with how the Twleve stuff turned out, but it did take until the finale for me to be okay with it. Boiling the Myths of the Realm storyline down into functional 'things it needed to do', I think the requirements looked something like this:

• Come up with an excuse to fight the Twelve (because the game's a people-pleaser at its heart, and the devs knew we'd want to fight them)
• Do the former in a way that makes it more than just empty fanservice (so it can't be 'someone summoned primals, go punch 'em')
• ...but also doesn't elevate them too far beyond the known elements they're adjacent to.

That last one is pretty important, because the message the game's been trying to carry is that the most important part of a religion is what people get out of it; that the fact that it's real to you is more important than the fact it's real at all. That effort starts to ring hollow if one of those religions is objectively right, though; 'Ul'dah recognizes the Amal'jaa's right to believe in their lame, fake religion, just as much as we're allowed to believe in Nald'thal, who is factually real and looks exactly the way we depict them' doesn't really work.

The way they did it, essentially coming at the Bismarck style of primal from a different direction, actually solves that; there's not a meaningful difference between Ramuh and Rhalgr, and so one is no less real than the other. There's even sort of an element of Thordan in them, in recognizing the problems in deifying a real thing... specifically, that those real things were kinda trapped in the narrative people built around them.


EDIT: If anything, my actual complaint is that the fights sucked. Myths of the Realm was a 'fight these cool bosses' excuse plot, and that's fine (I love Omega, which is very blatantly an excuse plot for cool bosses), but it needs those bosses to be able to hold up their end of the bargain, to really pull off that spectacle. And that just doesn't work if the bosses are so weak that we can out-DPS their entire combat script before the weekly restrictions are even lifted.

[Eisi]

Hydaelyn didn't create them to "take people's desire to worship gods seriously" at all, I don't know where you got that.

Huh, didn't the game state that? Maybe localization differences again, gonna have to find a quote.

I don't think the Twelve were ever intended, from the in-universe perspective, to be gods, and acting like they were is going to lead you down a false path. Our actual window into the intention of Hydaelyn is that they more more supposed to be stewards than gods: they were made to make sure the world didn't melt back in a time where it was very much in need of help. It's just that being that sort of visible, assumed-positive influence got them worshipped as gods, and over time that had an effect.

Well that would change everything, so they didn't create the epitaph as a precaution first but as a reaction to happening to be worshipped?

Or maybe Hydaelyn knew people would worship them and took that seriously and I misremember it as her intending for them to be worshipped.

But what does being a steward to the star mean? Providing aetheric stability? And they had to be gods to be able to work together and consciously react to problems unlike a machine? Did they stop being useful after like the first Astral era?

[Cleretic]

Well that would change everything, so they didn't create the epitaph as a precaution first but as a reaction to happening to be worshipped?

Or maybe Hydaelyn knew people would worship them and took that seriously and I misremember it as her intending for them to be worshipped.

But what does being a steward to the star mean? Providing aetheric stability? And they had to be gods to be able to work together and consciously react to problems unlike a machine? Did they stop being useful after like the first Astral era?

The epigraph definitely looked to me like it was made by them after they started realizing people were worshipping them.

And as for 'what does being a steward to the star mean'... well, for one, that's how the Ancients described their role, but that's more just a metaphorical thing. Their roles were most likely just the things the epigraph said they were; to make sure all these both abstract and natural phenomena kept working in the ways they were supposed to, in a state where things were uncertain and difficult--having them around for setting things right after the Calamities probably helped too, and might explain why the visions of the Twelve coincided with them. Hell if I know how they did that, I don't know what sort of levers a creature of great power even has for governing mountains, but it's not really out of the question given the content and inspirations the game already shows.

[Iscah]

Also the Twelve were summoned as primals, during the first Battle of Cartenau, even if only partially.

My understanding, though it may only be from how other players have interpreted and explained it, is that Louisoix quite deliberately did not try to summon "the Twelve", knowing it would have only produced primals in the form of the gods, but instead summoned "the power of the Twelve" which was still essentially a primal but a non-sentient one that could be formed into Bahamut's prison.

[JepMZ]

We know summoning is just creation Magicks. The summonings create new primals entrapping a dead unfortunate soul to permanently be that primal that can thus repeatedly be summoned again and again by the same worshippers. Seperate primals are created if prayed by completely different groups or beliefs. The "Twelve" summoned in Cartenau are new primals created on the spot, that somehow designed to not thrall anybody and were summoned again once more right before Stormblood. They are unrelated to the real Twelve, just as Ramuh is unrelated to the Twelve despite being created from Rhagr's image.

[Wix]

I think Myths of the Realm really took away the unknown from the game,

I felt unsatisfied with the development as well. I thought, given time, I'd come to like the ending more, but mostly it's just left me feeling kind of bitter? I liked it, story-wise, but not as a world-building development.

at least in the terms of Eorzea itself. Im sure there is stuff here and there, but for the most part it seems like Eorzea is finished content. I don't really know what they could dive into that hasnt already happened before, or that they don't just make up after the fact with no connections previously.

There's unfinished stuff with Duskwights and Gelmorra, but... they've been pretty deliberately moving away from them since ARR. They even killed off-and-replaced or retconned some story-prominent Duskwight characters into Wildwoods (Estinien being the most prominent example).

My tinfoil hat belief is that it's because they don't know what to write for Gridania and struggle to write the Elementals without making them come across as villains, so everything Shroud-related is just in eternal limbo. Incidentally, Moon Cats similarly get 'trapped' by this.

[MikkoAkure]

There's unfinished stuff with Duskwights and Gelmorra, but... they've been pretty deliberately moving away from them since ARR. They even killed off-and-replaced or retconned some story-prominent Duskwight characters into Wildwoods (Estinien being the most prominent example).

My tinfoil hat belief is that it's because they don't know what to write for Gridania and struggle to write the Elementals without making them come across as villains, so everything Shroud-related is just in eternal limbo. Incidentally, Moon Cats similarly get 'trapped' by this.

Ishgardian Elezen who use Duskwight models aren’t Duskwights. Duskwights and Wildwoods only exist in Gridania but they never made separate Ishgardian Elezen models so they share.

Duskwights and Moon Keepers are fairly prominent in Gridania storylines but not as much elsewhere because they only exist in The Black Shroud. It would be difficult to make a story about either of them that does not involve that specific location since they only exist there and nowhere else.

That said, I think the Duskwights should’ve been featured more prominently in the Palace of the Dead and we should’ve received more lore bits on them there. And they could’ve thrown a Moon Keeper village at us on the other side of the wall in SB. But now we’re going to other continents, it’s going to be more difficult if not impossible to showcase them.