More primals than elements?

[Taelyn]

I definitely think each Beast Tribe will be able to summon a primal as we've seen even Good beast tribes (moogles) summon primals.

As per Yoshida in the live letter...

From a lore-perspective, Good King Moggle Mog XII is not a primal and is introduced as a sort of fairy tale which became real due to the effects of the Seventh Umbral Era. Due to this, we have to have a proper story for his appearance in ARR, and we will be implementing this via a scenario in patch 2.1.

[zaviermhigo]

I wondered after this too. I think that Eorzea will be a realm very soon that will literally have more Primals than Elements. We have two named Elder Primals, Bahamut and Odin. Then there is Fenrir, where does he fit in?

(this is my conjecture, so you can choose not to believe it)
I'd say Siren, is most likely the primal of the Mamool Ja, since Yoshi-P hinted they could have a summon later.

Just in my opinion, I'd say Fenrir, and Nidhogg are more like Midgardsomr, are not primals, but deities.

We know Eorzea will have: Ifrit, Garuda, Titan, Shiva, Leviathan, Ramuh. Bahamut and Odin don't really count as far as the elemental associations go because they are elder primals.

We could add in Alexander, Valefor, Anima, Quetzalcoatl, Ixion , maybe bring in Brynhildr and Hecatoncheir from XIII, love the lore they came from, didn't really like XIII summons though.

The mere fact that Othard has/had primals gets me pretty excited.

[Catapult]

I'd say Siren, is most likely the primal of the Mamool Ja, since Yoshi-P hinted they could have a summon later.

OMG Siren Confirmed!
/running joke

[StarDrake]

Honestly, this is one I don't think requires too much thought - there are more Primals than elements because, in a series-meta sense, there've been more genjuu than elements for a very long time.

The only title to have more or less exactly one summoned monster per element was FF3 - that had Chocobo (for wind), Shiva, Ifrit, Titan, Ramuh, Odin, Leviathan, and Bahamut. (An interesting note is that, as of ARR, every single one of those summons has been introduced as a Primal sans Chocobo, who is instead a species :V and has been replaced in the line-up with Garuda, who has become an "iconic" summon for the online FFs specifically.) Even here, Leviathan and Shiva sort-of share an element and then FF4 ballooned out the list substantially - not even counting the item-drop summons, Sylph, Mist Dragon and Asura were all added to the list. 5 added even more, including icons like Carbuncle, Phoenix and Golem.

In 6 it got completely crazy-go-nuts; there was a summon for each element up to and including "elements" like poison or healing (the latter of which had multiple summons), there were multiple tri-elemental summons, multiple "ultimate-element" summons, of which Bahamut wasn't even the strongest... et cetera. At this point, if they continue to crib summons from games past as Primals, we're going to end up with a lot of repeated elements, simply because it's already an established tradition for there to be a number of such repeats.

From an in-universe perspective, though, it's very possible Moose's theory is correct - or that each continent has its own distinct summons for each element. They do seem to be local rather than global "deities", after all - but then we know so little of Othard or Ilsabard that it's a bit hard to say either way.

But yeah, I wouldn't think too hard on it simply because there've been a lot of summons with crossed elements for a very long time, franchise-wise, and there's going to be crosses here if they want to use more of the classic, remembered ones.

[RumiP]

I think it would be cool to have more than there are elements and some vying for control of the elements, maybe even working together.

Not quite as thought out as the rest of you, but it would make for more game content and maybe some interesting stories about primal interactions in lore.

[Ichi]

HMMM love this discussion.

Clearly there must be more Primals than elements as there already are explicitly with the implication of Bahamut.

So What I'm getting so far is:

the possibility of Repeat elemental Primals, Polarity Primers (dark/light)
non-elemental or multi-elemental Primals.

To add my own thoughts, I would say that it was never implied that a Primal absolutely 'has' to have some elemental alignment. Though I think an alignment of some kind is implied simply by their nature as deities representing aspects of the world.

I think someone like Bahamut is not an elemental Primal but a Dragon Primal (this is an alignment with a kind of beast not an element). At the same time I also feel Bahamut is Non-elemental.

Odin is tricky to pin down, But I would lean towards Polarity (dark primal) Who knows maybe even a human-kind Primal (elezen, lala, roeg, hyur, miq

[jomoru]

We have 9 explicitly

Ifrit
Leviathan
Titan
Garuda
Ramuh
Shiva
Bahamut
Odin
Behemoth

[Tigerhawk]

I'd say they'll be more then one primal per element one for diversity and two for more content. Now if were going into speculation for other races and their primals.

Tonberry - Quetzalcoatl / Anima / Scarmiglione
Goblins - Doomtrain (because why the heck not lol) / Golem
Mamolja - Valefore? / Phoenix?

[NoloeTazier]

Not all Beastmen have to summon a Primal but I think the odds are likely it will happen. The Paragons need Eorzea to be in more dysfunction now that the Warriors of Light are returning. Hydaelyn's champions are back on the scene and they haven't done enough in the past 5 years to ensure the City-State downfalls, which probably coincides with the downfall of the Crystals. The Beastmen have needed to be taught how to summon a Primal by the Paragons, but I wonder how the Moogles learned. Moogles are smart enough and isolated enough that they would have fled the Paragons and know them evil.

I still theorize that Fenrir will show up as Menphina's Hound and be an Elder Primal. The Lambs of Dalamud are still active and are obsessed with the Dalamud image (see the ball they created in Tam-Tara). Clearly Bahamut's emergence hasn't stopped them from their goal and obsession with the Twin Moon. And I don't think that all Primals or Elder Primals need to be associated with an element.

[Orophin]

Keep in mind, there are a pair of each of The Twelve associated with the six elements. It's not outlandish to think it could be possible that there's more than one Primal associated with an element.

The Paragons need Eorzea to be in more dysfunction now that the Warriors of Light are returning.

Speaking of Paragons, I'm pretty sure Ascians were referred by the same title by Y'shtola in the LL story I've played through so far.

What is even stranger by this is that apparently the Paragons taught the beast tribes how to summon the Primals, yet in one of the original story quests of 1.0 you saw the Ixal and Amal'jaa head for the hills when they sensed the presence of an Ascian.

Chalk it up to an incomplete storyline maybe? It seems to be the accepted story going forward anyway was that that took place during the 7th Umbral Era and everything prior to the original main storyline (Silvertear Falls, etc.)

Sorry for going off on a tangent.