How powerful are the Elementals post-Calamity?

[RedLolly]

The Elementals were very violent during the end of Patch 1.23b. I remember being in La Noscea and hanging out in one area that was littered with aggressive high level Elementals. There were RMT players (they were not bots as they had coordinated play and were typing in coded numbers) and a regular player hung out with me as we watched the Elementals slaughter the RMT players. It was interesting to watch.

I remember that!

It was the GM's having fun. Those Elementals were Lvl 99 and being spawned by GM's specifically to harass that set of RMT. I can't recall if they used the Elementals for lore flavor or not.

But, speaking of, what about 1.0's entire Grid story being about expelling the Green Wrath off of us and Yda and Papalymo? Is that still cannon? (Was that Yda? I always that it was *real* Yda in 1.0 content and the switch happened post calamity since I can't possibly imagine Lyse using the term Psychopomp correctly but Archon Yda might and Yda KNEW Fordola and died protecting her in the short stories.)

[Shistar]

The Elementals were very violent during the end of Patch 1.23b. I remember being in La Noscea and hanging out in one area that was littered with aggressive high level Elementals. There were RMT players (they were not bots as they had coordinated play and were typing in coded numbers) and a regular player hung out with me as we watched the Elementals slaughter the RMT players. It was interesting to watch.

This sounds like so much fun LOL

[RedLolly]

I was under the impression "Kami" were also basically elementals in everything but name, with Geomancy serving the same purpose as Conjury.

[Anonymoose]

With regard to the kami angle, I'd point to two pretty strong citations that it was intended.

The first is that the 1.0 Japanese language uses 1:1 Shinto terms to refer to elemental-associated stuff. Concepts like [purity as consistency with natural order], [purification of impurity as a communal responsibility], [pacification of spirits], [impurity as the source of spiritual wrath], etc. were all present. Gridania was Shinto through a lens but then Hingashi came along and did it without the lens in a different way.

The second is that the developer panel just before 1.x launch described Gridania as "inspired by an ancient Japanese polis".

Incidentally this is a big reason Gridanian culture gets misunderstood. If you can take it for granted that the elementals are real, that impurity is impurity regardless of "fault" and that it is the community's responsibility to purify it, that the presence of impurity causes the elementals to enter a wrathful state regardless of what they would otherwise "want", and that elemental wrath causes the forest to become agitated and violent and brings disaster, then it makes a lot of sense why Gridania is wary of outsiders, doesn't trust them to protect the community, is afraid of the calamity they might recklessly bring on the community, etc.

[Cleretic]

Incidentally this is a big reason Gridanian culture gets misunderstood. If you can take it for granted that the elementals are real, that impurity is impurity regardless of "fault" and that it is the community's responsibility to purify it, that the presence of impurity causes the elementals to enter a wrathful state regardless of what they would otherwise "want", and that elemental wrath causes the forest to become agitated and violent and brings disaster, then it makes a lot of sense why Gridania is wary of outsiders, doesn't trust them to protect the community, is afraid of the calamity they might recklessly bring on the community, etc.

Because of this, you actually find that a widespread hatred of the Elementals is basically exclusively an English-language-audience thing; the Japanese audience doesn't really treat them with the level of antaognism you sometimes see in English, I think because they're just culturally much closer to the root inspiration.

I suspect there's also an element of American exceptionalism and hyperindividualism, too; that some amount of people instinctively hated the concept of something they don't have power over telling them that they can't do the thing they might want to do. But that's a very different level of discussion!

[Pimsan20]

It would be nice to learn more about the Elementals and how they came to existence.

[RedLolly]

I mean, it could be no more complicated than "this animal is super old and super strong" being a thing everywhere, with Auspices being conflated with wisdom in their region and Tural Vidraal being conflated with strength and wild nature in theirs, while other regions don't attach local legend on the same scale to them. Eorzean faith leaned way more into the Twelve than the local legends.

But, along with Elementals, Eorzea has Moogles and a large concentration of living and active Dragons, all insanely long lived and sentient creatures that pervade both myth and reality. So, the Eorzean equivalent to beast that could become Auspice/Vidraal just remain the beasts that are FATE bosses or hunt marks.

The Church of the First Light was also *massive* in a way nothing on the source is. The idea of a few magical species on the scale of the Fae coming up makes a bit more sense if we consider most of the First's pre-flood population were actively believing in such creatures for many generations.

[Cleretic]

I mean, it could be no more complicated than "this animal is super old and super strong" being a thing everywhere, with Auspices being conflated with wisdom in their region and Tural Vidraal being conflated with strength and wild nature in theirs, while other regions don't attach local legend on the same scale to them. Eorzean faith leaned way more into the Twelve than the local legends.

Yeah, this is genuinely my thought on this: animals becoming super powerful with age is a global thing, with certain cultures applying different personal meanings to it, but Eorzea just generally didn't notice or document it themselves. Being the epicenter of a few Calamities might've compounded things, too; to become a full-on Auspice an animal needs to live for a thousand years, and the Ascians generally didn't give Eorzean life the free time for that.

[Lunair]

I would concede that it leads to a chicken and egg question in regards to whether the Auspices and Tural Vidraal came before or after the belief, but combined with the previously mentioned quote, I would argue we have a clear enough answer on which came first. Belief came first, and then the actual Auspices and Tural Vidraal. The form the Belief takes is secondary to whether the belief is about a deity or not. But I do agree that we've gotten off topic at this point.

That said, my original point, which was intended to be that the Elementals may at least in part gain some of their power and properties from the beliefs relating to them in the region, remains valid. it's hard to say to what extent that might be, but it remains a valid point regardless.