CG Midlander

[Anonymoose]

If only we'd let poor Atomos do his job and suck up all the aether before B'hom got here. That'll learn us!

I was under the impression that Atomos boned us BIG TIME by sucking up all that aether. The way I interpreted it, Midgardsormr's fall threw Mor Dhona's aetheric network into chaos to begin with, turning it into a crystal wasteland and making certain aether centers unstable and likely to rip into the void (the Darkhold's utter fabric-of-reality collapse, for one example). Then Darnus comes along and steals a metric ton of crystals, has us kill the primals, etc. and sends all that to Bahamut. This rapid shift in the network tore the void open and Atomos came through, sucking up so much of what aether was left and drawing in so many other voidsent that we were unable to use any for ourselves to manifest The Twelve, causing Louisoix's ritual to fail.

That's how I took it, anyway.

Anyway, so what makes you think that Bahamut wasn't manifest? Strongest argument against is that his tribe would have just re-summoned him, unless you're proposing that Dalamud somehow captured an unsummoned primal essence... That would just be SILLY!

To start with, we know that in the very same year that the Garleans took Silvertear, they attempted to awaken Bahamut with another lunar transmitter, resulting in a red moon and some catastrophe (presumably a freaking gigaflare) wiping out their town. Keep in mind what's going on at that time - Bahamut was far away and with the help of a lunar transmitter, was able to destroy a town.

If he was manifest the entire time, why was he not just launching flares every time he felt particularly jaunty? Was he manifest, but overhwelmingly physically weak? That's certainly one possibility, but the assumption you call silly is actually my first impression, LOL.

The Allag had some pretty weird technology; who's to say they couldn't trap a primal's voidsent essence and send it far away from aether sources? That's what I took Dalamud to be in the first place.

Aether and primals always have the same relationship - they need to use it to maintain manifestation. Every single time we talk to Lou, he tells us the danger of summoning ANY god, be it primal, moogle king, or Twelve themselves, is the drain of the crystal's life-force that our planet needs. The longer they're manifest, the more we're blowing through, the less the planet has, the more we're screwed. That's why he wants us to defeat them ASAP. Funny enough, he states this most clearly towards the Moogle.

Therefore, if it's true that the longer they're manifest, the more aether they need - and we send Bahamut far away from aether - does it not make sense that he would eventually dissipate? If this dissipation would give him the freedom to return somewhere else, would we not need to trap that essence somehow? Perhaps by some kind of ... MAGIC (long-lost technology)?

That was my impression anyway. We'll figure out what it is soon enough; ARR has a questline for this very topic.

One of the biggest things that will settle this is "Who knew Bahamut was Bahamut?" and "Who was in charge of the Citadel incident?" The answers to those alone could change the meaning behind the entire thing.