Anonymoose I need your help!

[Sleverin]

I was having a discussion with a friend last night about some lore-related stuff and I was wondering where I could look up some information on this.

The primals and where they come from was the topic. I was led to believe that the primals (or the ability to summon them) was brought about by the Agrius crashing into the Silvertear and releasing a seal or something along those lines that the primals were locked behind and the location was the Crystal Tower? I remember seeing the primals (I believe) in the opening cut scene for 1.0, but I could be wrong on all this. Do you know of any lore related things about this where we can get some information on this topic? This isn't some life or death Kirk vs. Picard discussion, but we're really interested in what has happened and the origin of some of the primals.

[Catapult]

/dons his almost-a-moose hat

This is one of those things we're still trying to suss out, so the fact you're talking about it as a point of confusion is not surprising.

What we know is that the explosion of the agrius released the seal on Silvertear's aether and this either:
- Made it possible to summon primals; OR
- Made it easier to summon primals.

I'm inclined to think the latter, though it is not really clear which is true. Primals exist on other continents and have also appeared in Eorzea before, though whether this was outright impossible before the battle of silvertear skies or not (and by consequence, when it was made not possible) is up for debate.

Questions we do not have an answer to:
- Why was there a seal on Silvertear's Aether?
- Why was Midgardsormr prepared to protect the area at the expense of his own life? (there are mythological reasons, but myth is often greatly warped from fact)
- What is the proper significance of the Crystal Tower?
- What primals existed on the continent of Othard and how were they themselves summoned?

If you have ideas, by all means share them. We will often find ourselves off-the-mark, but that only helps the process of elimination.

[Anonymoose]

As far as what's up with Silvertear, Catapult's got it. Silvertear has long been renowned in legend as a place of significance; the aether of the realm flows in what is akin to streams underground, and Silvertear Lake is the center of a massive convergence of these streams, if not the center of the global network. Did the oldest of the Twelve actually create Midgardsormr? We now know that the Allag had the power to control dragons; it might even be safe to call it enslavement ... perhaps the Twelve were just powerful Allag figures and the myths are closer to reality than we think...

But back to what primals are. When the aether of the realm is in balance, the flow is smooth and diffuse. Whatever essence is at the core of a primal's existence is also diffuse among this stream. However, when the aether of the realm falls out of balance, it allows these essences to become a focus on which loose aether concentrates, forming the physical bodies of these entities. What the essence of a primal is is also, again, up for debate, as far as I know.

We can safely assume, I think, that the break of the seal happening around the time that the beast tribes were taught to summon primals is no coincidence. We know the Ascians assumed the role of the beast tribe equivalent of angels, "Paragons," to teach them to summon; they probably had a hand in Silvertear, as well.

Primals are like a symptom of the aetheric imbalance and often act as a positive feedback loop that makes it worse. But when did it begin? Once upon a time, I might have said at the breaking of the seal on Silvertear Lake... but we now know that the Garleans encountered primals during their campaign against Othard. Was a seal broken there, as well? Is this part of the larger Ascian plot? I have lots of ideas, but nothing concrete... and what elder primals are is even more mysterious.

Anyroad, yes, there was a seal. Before it was broken, the beast tribes were ignorant of how to summon and/or the realm's aether was in balance, anyway. What we don't really know for sure is how much imbalance counts. The Mothercrystal is referred to by the same name as the planet, so we assume this phenomenon is global. It's possible that you can imbalance the aether of a realm and primals can thus be summoned there, but at the same time not mess up the global system so badly that an umbral era will result. If an umbral era is global as opposed to being in one realm, maybe you need to throw off a lot of realms to really get the process going. I'm sure answers are coming...