CG Midlander

[Anonymoose]

Btw what are your thoughts about the mysterious Primal that stopped Gaius?

I've gotta chalk this one up to unanswered at this point. As I said before, it really looks to me like (in September 2010) the "unanticipated" primal-in-question was meant at the time to refer to the nameless dragon now known to be Midgardsormr. The fact that it was a primal that caused the Empire to remain passive was stated as a matter of fact, and we know that the Empire sure wasn't passive when they flew an armada to Silvertear Lake.

Now (in November 2012), we have new information. This dragon was Midgardsormr, who was not a primal; the empire had met real primals before this on other continents; and SE sticks to their story about a primal stopping the advance. This means that either they're changing it up, or that we were left to draw false conclusions in the past. I can't stress this enough: in 2010, the dragon was nameless and could have been anything. In 2012 we know he's not a primal - but did Square Enix know that back then? We don't know.

This can now be approached from two directions. If we approach from the real-world front, it looks like a retcon. It's not a blatant Lara Croftian in-your-face retcon, but a behind the scenes one that simply ripples through information we already had. The information given in September 2010 just linked too damn well to the opening cutscene to not be what they were referring to. However, this doesn't affect the situation if we approach it from a game-world front. Nothing was ever explicitly stated, there's no direct contradiction because we were only left to make inferences before. From the lore front, Midgardsormr is not a primal, and a primal halted this advance at Ala Mhigo. This is all we know and all we can infer.

Can we guess? ... Eeehhhhh, kinda.

We can whip out our map of Eorzea and write off Leviathan and Titan on the other side of the continent, can probably write off Shiva since the snowy areas are also to the West, can probably write off Ifrit since he's further south than even Silvertear Lake, maybe write off Garuda because it looks like they sailed around Gridania and Coerthas on their way to Silvertear... that leaves Ramuh, basically. Ala Mhigo is north-east of Gridania, which means that if they kept on their march, they'd have bumped into the sylph village first... which they do.

However, we see that the sylphs don't summon Ramuh in these years! BOOM! HEADSHOT!!!1! on that theory.

It's up to SE to make this one work. We don't have anywhere near enough info to say who it was if it wasn't Midgardsormr.

[Warlock]

I've gotta chalk this one up to unanswered at this point. As I said before, it really looks to me like (in September 2010) the "unanticipated" primal-in-question was meant at the time to refer to the nameless dragon now known to be Midgardsormr. The fact that it was a primal that caused the Empire to remain passive was stated as a matter of fact, and we know that the Empire sure wasn't passive when they flew an armada to Silvertear Lake.

Now (in November 2012), we have new information. This dragon was Midgardsormr, who was not a primal; the empire had met real primals before this on other continents; and SE sticks to their story about a primal stopping the advance. This means that either they're changing it up, or that we were left to draw false conclusions in the past. I can't stress this enough: in 2010, the dragon was nameless and could have been anything. In 2012 we know he's not a primal - but did Square Enix know that back then? We don't know.

This can now be approached from two directions. If we approach from the real-world front, it looks like a retcon. It's not a blatant Lara Croftian in-your-face retcon, but a behind the scenes one that simply ripples through information we already had. The information given in September 2010 just linked too damn well to the opening cutscene to not be what they were referring to. However, this doesn't affect the situation if we approach it from a game-world front. Nothing was ever explicitly stated, there's no direct contradiction because we were only left to make inferences before. From the lore front, Midgardsormr is not a primal, and a primal halted this advance at Ala Mhigo. This is all we know and all we can infer.

Can we guess? ... Eeehhhhh, kinda.

We can whip out our map of Eorzea and write off Leviathan and Titan on the other side of the continent, can probably write off Shiva since the snowy areas are also to the West, can probably write off Ifrit since he's further south than even Silvertear Lake, maybe write off Garuda because it looks like they sailed around Gridania and Coerthas on their way to Silvertear... that leaves Ramuh, basically. Ala Mhigo is north-east of Gridania, which means that if they kept on their march, they'd have bumped into the sylph village first... which they do.

However, we see that the sylphs don't summon Ramuh in these years! BOOM! HEADSHOT!!!1! on that theory.

It's up to SE to make this one work. We don't have anywhere near enough info to say who it was if it wasn't Midgardsormr.

I guess is time to summon Fernehalwes from the Void!! to spill the beans unless the identity of the Mysterious Primal is important to remain unknown till ARR

[Alaltus]

However, we see that the sylphs don't summon Ramuh in these years! BOOM! HEADSHOT!!!1! on that theory.

It's up to SE to make this one work. We don't have anywhere near enough info to say who it was if it wasn't Midgardsormr.

Did the Slyphs ever say that they had never summoned their Primal? could be that they made the decision to never summon their Primal after they had summoned him previously. Could be interesting if actually the Ala Mhigan's themselves summoned a Primal to oppose the empire sure would have bought them more time considering the empire halted its advance for 5 years. But yeah its too early to be sure of anything.

[Anonymoose]

Did the Slyphs ever say that they had never summoned their Primal? Could be that they made the decision to never summon their Primal after they had summoned him previously.

Yeah, you're right there. They only ever say that you never should, and that they darken hearts, and that they won't do it. It's never explicitly stated that they never, ever have. They could have gained this knowledge 10 years ago, summoning him then.

I just can't get over that if this was the case, why did SE not add some hints about the Sylphs previous summoning to the bucket-full of hints that the Empire bumped into something? Until Midgardsormr was stated as not-a-primal, it was the most likely inference we would have made, otherwise.

This one is up to SE to clean up - I got nothin'