Anonymoose I need your help!

[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...