How powerful are the Elementals post-Calamity?

[Pimsan20]

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

[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!

[Zero-ELEC]

On the other hand, it's also possible that, like Kami, Auspices, and Tural Vidraal, they're a result of the collective faith of the region's peoples giving life and form to beings that we know as Elementals, making them little more than naturally-occuring minor primals. Either way, they're definately still not to be trifled with, they're just MUCH more reserved right now since a huge swath of the forest (Again, the entire Western Shroud) has been annihalated by the Calamity and has yet to heal.

There's no indication that auspices and tural vidraal are the result of collective faith. Many an auspice is completely hidden from the world, while tural vidraal are generally not part of any belief system, barring the societies that have captured them in totems, which are few and far between. They are very much unlike, say, the kami, for which there is ample evidence of that they are there because of faith, or [SPOILERS FOR PATCH 7.35]

the fae folk of the First which have straight up said to have probably been willed into existence by the centuries of belief by the Church of the First Light

, or the Twelve as they present themselves in the Omphalos. There's nothing so far indicating that auspices and tural vidraal aren't just animals that live long enough to become super powerful.

[Cleretic]

There's no indication that auspices and tural vidraal are the result of collective faith. Many an auspice is completely hidden from the world, while tural vidraal are generally not part of any belief system, barring the societies that have captured them in totems, which are few and far between. They are very much unlike, say, the kami, for which there is ample evidence of that they are there because of faith, or [SPOILERS FOR PATCH 7.35]

the fae folk of the First which have straight up said to have probably been willed into existence by the centuries of belief by the Church of the First Light

, or the Twelve as they present themselves in the Omphalos. There's nothing so far indicating that auspices and tural vidraal aren't just animals that live long enough to become super powerful.

The thing you spoiled does theoretically give a way that this could be true, but it's crucially not in the way that we often see people say that Auspices and Tural Vidraal are primal-like. All evidence we have about both of them suggests that the same phenomena happens in both places simply because an animal that lives long enough eventually collates insane amounts of aether; there is no collective faith involved, except that some (not all) Auspices do seem to have become objects of faith.

As for the way this square peg could fit in the round hole...

It's plausible that the Auspices and Tural Vidraal may have started being a phenomena simply because those around them believed that could happen; like the pixies potentially springing to existence because the Church of the First Light thought they already did, they might be the result of a collective faith creating a part of the ecosystem that wasn't there before. It'd actually answer an unresolved question I've had: why there aren't Auspices in Eorzea. By this logic, they simply never eventuated in Eorzea because there wasn't that collective belief that they existed.

...But that theory itself just opens a different hole: if this is ultimately a phenomena born of collective belief, then how did effectively the exact same thing develop on two separate continents with, to our knowledge, no interaction?

[RedLolly]

[HB...But that theory itself just opens a different hole: if this is ultimately a phenomena born of collective belief, then how did effectively the exact same thing develop on two separate continents with, to our knowledge, no interaction?[/HB]

I don't think it's that strange.

I would point to the real life phenomena of how it seems like every other culture in human history seems to have a version of a dragon in their mythos and folklore. The best theory I've heard behind this is that people were finding dinosaur bones, but even that is a theory. Tural Vidraal and Auspices being so similar but also wildly different can be a similar idea as how east Asian dragons have many similarities but are so different from dragon myths of Europe, but other differences and similarities from the myths of the Americas that Tural is based upon.

[Lunair]

The thing you spoiled does theoretically give a way that this could be true, but it's crucially not in the way that we often see people say that Auspices and Tural Vidraal are primal-like. All evidence we have about both of them suggests that the same phenomena happens in both places simply because an animal that lives long enough eventually collates insane amounts of aether; there is no collective faith involved, except that some (not all) Auspices do seem to have become objects of faith.

As for the way this square peg could fit in the round hole...

It's plausible that the Auspices and Tural Vidraal may have started being a phenomena simply because those around them believed that could happen; like the pixies potentially springing to existence because the Church of the First Light thought they already did, they might be the result of a collective faith creating a part of the ecosystem that wasn't there before. It'd actually answer an unresolved question I've had: why there aren't Auspices in Eorzea. By this logic, they simply never eventuated in Eorzea because there wasn't that collective belief that they existed.

...But that theory itself just opens a different hole: if this is ultimately a phenomena born of collective belief, then how did effectively the exact same thing develop on two separate continents with, to our knowledge, no interaction?

Actually, we do have evidence to support the idea that auspices are a result of collective faith. that evidence being a dev flat out telling us that it's because of the collective faith in the area causing them to come into existence.

2018 Fan Fest GE Interview w/ Koji Fox:GE: From the development angle, until now, everything was always presented as so mysterious. What are the Twelve? Who knows. What are the Elementals? Who knows. (pauses) Do we know what the Elementals are, yet?

Koji: Who knows?

GE: …So we have all of this for years and years, Eorzea’s this big mystery. Then we go over to Othard. One moon in Othard and it’s like, ‘Here’s the auspices and the kami and it’s all real!’ What?

Koji: That’s what they believe! It’s all about the belief systems over there. I think they wanted to do that—to make it that it’s so ingrained in that society that they’ve made it real by believing it to be so. And…it is! (laughing) Because we have auspices all over the place!

Both Kami and Auspices are specifically mentioned explicitely to be a result of collective faith in this statement, and the parallels between Auspices and Tural Vidraal is brought up in the MSQ itself, essentially confirming that they're essentially just seperate cases of the same phenomenon. This is consistent with literally every other example we have of "naturally occuring primals"

[Cleretic]

I don't think it's that strange.

I would point to the real life phenomena of how it seems like every other culture in human history seems to have a version of a dragon in their mythos and folklore. The best theory I've heard behind this is that people were finding dinosaur bones, but even that is a theory. Tural Vidraal and Auspices being so similar but also wildly different can be a similar idea as how east Asian dragons have many similarities but are so different from dragon myths of Europe, but other differences and similarities from the myths of the Americas that Tural is based upon.

But even that raises a question.

If we're dealing with almost inevitable convergent development of ideas that then itself became reality, then in that case, why did it only develop on two continents? Why didn't Eorzea seed the same thing?

It's just not a particularly good explanation for this in terms of 'questions raised vs. questions answered'.

Both Kami and Auspices are specifically mentioned explicitely to be a result of collective faith in this statement, and the parallels between Auspices and Tural Vidraal is brought up in the MSQ itself, essentially confirming that they're essentially just seperate cases of the same phenomenon. This is consistent with literally every other example we have of "naturally occuring primals"

Except that, again, neither continent actually believes in the Auspices/Tural Vidraal as deities in the way we understand it. Some Auspices are incidentally worshipped more as an after-the-fact thing (specifically the Four Lords, probably because of the whole Tenzen story), but there's others that are completely unknown, and the Tural Vidraal don't even have that; they're treated as a natural threat, like an apex predator.

There's no aspect of faith in either Auspices or Tural Vidraals, except in the sense that we have faith in something like gravity; it's an observed fact, a Thing That Happens. The Pilgrim's Traverse has put forward a way that itself could be influenced by belief, but that's not even a proven fact about the subject that idea came up about. Applying it to the Auspices and Tural Vidraal is just supposition on top of supposition; it can't be treated as agreed-on supplemental evidence.

That quote is literally too vague to make anything out of, especially given it was part of an unscripted interview from seven years ago. It should not be treated as gospel above what the game itself says.