Crouching Primal, Hidden Shiva

[Havoc Snow]

It's been a while since I posted anything here, but I wanted to converse amongst people who are head deep into the lore like me and my friends to get some feedback on a theory we have currently about what role Shiva will play in the story and what sort of implications that might have on the lore.

 

In the new trailer we get our first glimpse at Shiva, however for whatever reason they cut off the top of her head like we weren't going to know who it was. The big thing here is that despite it obviously being Shiva, she is not in Primal form but in Elezen form instead. This has some major implications of its own. Why is Shiva disguised as an Elezen?

 

So essentially my theory is this, Shiva has taken the form of an Elezen woman in order to infiltrate Ishgard and has since positioned herself next to the Archbishop in order to manipulate/temper him and control the politics of Ishgard and further fan the flames of war. I believe that the Dragons are not actually as bad as we believe (not the sentient ones at least) and that perhaps their real intent is to battle Shiva, not Ishgard or the rest of Eorzea. Shiva has been around all this time, hiding in plain sight essentially and the reason no one has seen her yet is because Ishgard is her beast tribe, in essence.

 

Now this begs the question however, how would Shiva get so close to the Archbishop, or even into Ishgard, even disguised as an Elezen woman? Well with a mix of tempering and deception of course! Ishgardians are the biggest religious fanatics in the setting, they worship Halone almost as fervently as the beast tribes worship their Primals, which would make even more sense if Shiva had convinced them she was Halone!

 

Think about it for a moment, in lore Halone is depicted as a woman wielding a great shield and sword. Her aspect is Ice. Shiva is the Ice Primal seen in recent footage wielding a sword and shield. There is further evidence to support this theory if we consider that during the main scenario the refugees at Little Ala Mhigo attempt (and may have succeeded) to summon Rhalgr with the help of the Ascians. For all we know this would have summoned another Primal who would have just claimed to be Rhalgr, which is likely the case of Shiva.

 

In addition, while we are currently lead to believe Dragons (and Dravania in general) are bad and evil, remember that the Guardian of Silver Tears Lake was an enormous Dragon worshipped as a God, and when Garlemald originally attempted to invade Eorzea it was the Dragons who fought and died to protect it.

[Sounsyy]

I like the implications and I think it's an interesting theory, but I don't think it's right.

 

I'm assuming the elezen woman you're referring to is the one who appears @7:26 of the new Defenders of Eorzea Patch Trailer? While she puts off a sinister aura, I don't think its "obvious" at all of who she really is. She could just as easily be a new character in the 2.3 additions to the MSQ to whom we have not yet been introduced.

 

This is the image of Shiva that has been provided to us by SE:

 

 

 

 

 

Admittedly, similar color scheme, but still nothing that screams this is Shiva and can only be Shiva - to me, at least? Besides Yoshi-P saying at E3 that Shiva would not appear in game until 2.4, I think there are a few additional holes in the theory.

 

Firstly, the war between Ishgard and the dragons has been going on for about 700 years, since Ishgard's founding. I don't see what Shiva would gain from adding fuel to an already 700 year war? The war started because Nidhogg, King of Dragons killed Thordan and his son speared Nidhogg in the eye. They haven't seen eye to eye since. Buh-dum-psshh! If the dragons really were fighting Ishgard because of Shiva, this would mean 1) Shiva was the goddess Halone that appeared to the early Ishgardians 700 years ago, and 2) Shiva has been present and summoned in Eorzea for nearly that long? Which would kill the planet.

 

Secondly, if Shiva really wanted to temper the Ishgardian Archbishop and all the King's Men so to speak, she wouldn't have to do it in disguise. She'd just show up in her true form and temper them and force them to worship her. On this tangent, in order to be summoned in the first place, she would need a whole slew of devout nutjobs worshipping her, not Halone. I imagine if one were to stack a bunch of Ice Crystals together and pray to Halone, Shiva would not be the one to jump out of the birthday cake.

 

Thirdly, if Shiva were actually hiding out in Ishgard, the Scions and their fancy aetherio-detecting goggle thingies would be able to pick it up, like they were able to detect Titan being summoned in the heart of an active volcano.

 

Lastly, I wanted to drop this link wherein Fernehalwes drops some lore bombs on 1.0. The pertinent one to this discussion is:

 

6. Do the dragons of Dravania worship a primal? And if so, who? Is it Nidhogg? Midgardsormr? Someone else?

 

Yoshi-p dropped a few bombs last week revealing that both Midgardsormr and Nidhogg were not primals, but dragon ‘kings.’ However, he also revealed that the dragons are a beast tribe...and that beast tribes have their own gods (primals)... So...

 

Ishgardians, as brusque and zealous as they can be, are not beastmen. As such they do not worship Primals because they do not believe they were created by the Primals like the beastmen do.

 

If the dragons are a beast tribe, by process of elimination the only Primal left over from The Six Primals (Bahamut and Odin are Elder Primals, they aren't worshipped.) is Shiva and therefor most likely belongs to the Dragons of Dravania.

[Havoc Snow]

the refugees at Little Ala Mhigo attempt (and may have succeeded) to summon Rhalgr with the help of the Ascians.

Going to quote myself to add emphasis to this one point, if a group of maybe 10 people can potentially summon Rhalgr, I don't see why I small group of zealots in Ishgard couldn't summon "Halone." The Ascians were even attempting to help the Ala Mhigans to summon their God, though for all we know they could have ended up summoning another Primal that just convinced them it was Rhalgr.

 

Same thing could be happening in Ishgard, they attempted to summon Halone, got Shiva instead though no one was the wiser and she just convinced them all she was Halone. The resemblances between Shiva and Halone are relatively uncanny, even the fact that Halone is supposed to be based off the Hindu Goddess Parvati which is the female aspect of the Hindu God Shiva.

[Sounsyy]

the refugees at Little Ala Mhigo attempt (and may have succeeded) to summon Rhalgr with the help of the Ascians.

 

According to the MSQ "Big Trouble in Little Ala Mhigo" the misguided children do not succeed in anything but making fools of themselves.

 

It seems that Wilred and his friends have been plotting to summon Rhalgr. To this end, they seek to infiltrate an Amalj'aa stronghold and steal the beastmen's cache of crystals. Intercept Wilred and his conspirators to the east of Little Ala Mhigo before the unthinkable comes to pass.

 

Wilred's plan has come to naught, as have his hopes of reclaiming his homeland. Return to little Ala Mhigo and speak with Gundobald.

 

Wilred reveals that it was the masked stranger who first prompted him and his friends to entertain the notion of summoning Rhalgr. But what did Lahabrea - if indeed it was he - hope to accomplish by putting great power in the hands of the unworthy?

-Journal Text "Big Trouble in Little Ala Mhigo"

 

So again, to summon a Primal you need a very large stash of the properly aspected crystals and a whoooooooole lot of fervent prayer. Once the Primal has actually been summoned, it drains massive amounts of aether from the planet to maintain its form in this plane of existence. This massive aether death is what the Ascians are after, because not all of the dead aether can be recycled back into the planet and some of it slips into the Void and feeds Zodiark.

 

Based on the "entertain the notion" quote, I doubt this particular Ascian believed that 4 kids could actually summon the Great Rhalgr. He merely told them how to do it. If they succeeded, great! More aether for Zodiark. If they failed, they ticked off the Amalj'aa and the beastmen would destroy Little Ala Mhigo and yay more aether lost into the Void. Win/Win!

 

 

Also given the fact that the Primals are just lesser gods, summoning a real god like Rhalgr or Halone would be much more difficult. I'm not sure if you finished the 1.0 storyline, but the last quest "Living on a Prayer" was all about trying to awaken The Twelve. Even with massive stores of crystals, the fervent prayers of hundreds of adventurers, Echo blessed Scions, and civilian pilgrims to the Shrines of the Twelve, we were unsuccessful at actually awakening any of the Twelve at the end of the era. If we couldn't do it then, in our most dire hour with all of the right ingredients, I seriously doubt a band of rogue zealots could summon Halone on a whim.

 

Even if Shiva was summoned by the Ishgardians, my previous plot holes still stand. She would be soaking up massive amounts of aether and killing the planet. She would be easily detected by the Scions the moment she entered this plane. And without fervent prayers to her as the Primal Shiva, she would whither within this world.

 

I can't really buy the whole "someone meant to summon Halone but accidentally popped out a Shiva instead." If fervent prayers to the desired god are needed, I don't think its plausible that Shiva ninja'd all up on Halone's prayers while hanging out in the Void. This would also assume that the visions of Halone that both Thordan and Haldrath received 700 years ago were both of Shiva and not of Halone. Considering the parallels between The Holy See of Ishgard and of Catholicism, I'm willing to bet there's some stained glass windows depicting Halone somewhere, possibly dating back 700 years. Remember the first recorded instances of Primals entering Eorzea during the Sixth Astral Era was in 1562.

[Havoc Snow]

Who is to say that the Twelve even exist? When Louisoix attempts to summon the power of the twelve at the end of 1.0 to defeat/recapture Bahamut the only thing we see is a powerful spell with fancy symbols that are ultimately very easily brushed aside by a Primal, which you've essentially just said are fundamentally lesser (and presumably weaker) than the Twelve. Considering the Twelve have never spoken to us, or anyone that we have actually spoken to, and their presence in the world is almost entirely non-existent, and the fact that they basically described summoning them into the world would be almost identical to summoning very big Primals, it could be speculated then that the Twelve are actually just the Primals, perhaps the real Primals. In other words, Shiva could very well be the real Halone, or perhaps an aspect of her. There are other parallels you can draw here too but I won't go into that, my strongest evidence is still that Halone is based on the real world Shiva.

[Sounsyy]

Despite having no first hand accounts of the Twelve, all of the lore we do have about them suggests benevolence towards the races of men since the first Age of Man. Versus Primals who despise men and other beastmen, and protect only their own devotees.

 

If Shiva is Halone, that means Shiva helped the Ishgardians defeat Nidhogg 700 years ago. Why would she help defeat the King of her own beast tribe? And then come back 700 years later to sabotage the Ishgardians by tempering their Archbishop? Doesn't really make sense.

 

If Shiva is Halone, that would also make Garuda Llymlaen.

 

Llymlaen safely guided the Galadeon through a terrible storm to the southern coast of Vylbrand where Limsa Lominsa still exists today. Garuda would sooner see the ship torn apart by wind and waves than rescue landwalkers.

 

Titan is Nophica, the Matron? The diety devoted to the preservation of the Twelveswood and its inhabitants. A nurturer and gardener and Mother Nature figure. Compare to Titan whose subjects tear through the soil and create machines which burn and pollute.

 

Louisoux calls upon the power of Thaliak to remove us from time, saving many lives from Bahamut. Leviathan summons a great tidal wave that wipes out the Lominsan Armada and ends countless lives.

 

...I'm not really seeing it.

 

 

But this is all getting away from the theory that the elezen woman we saw in the Defenders of Eorzea Trailer for literally 2 seconds is somehow Shiva. Regardless of whether or not Shiva is Halone or whatever, it still does not explain 1) how she was summoned without anyone noticing, 2) how she is persisting in this world without crystals and constant prayer, 3) why is she disguised as an elezen, or 4) why was she summoned in the first place? The war has been going on 700 years and the Dravanians never needed to summon a Primal before. Nothing has changed.

 

However, if the ending to the Patch 2.3 trailer is a teaser of our (Scions/GCs) soon to be involvement in Ishgardian affairs, that would be something that tips the scale of the war in Ishgardian favor. With the Hero of Eorzea and the Primal Slayer on Ishgard's side during 2.3, the dragons may feel threatened enough to finally summon their Primal Shiva in time for Patch 2.4.

 

 

 

Anyways, those are just my thoughts on this. Anyone else want to weigh in so it's not just a back and forth?

[Havoc Snow]

Final Fantasy has always used dual natured deities pretty heavily in the past. The first and more obvious example being Yevon from FFX. Even the whole Hydaelyn and Zodiark thing screams dual nature to some degree, where the Twelve could be associated to her and the Primals are their darker counterparts tied to Zodiark. While it may be more difficult to draw connections from the other Primals to a member of the Twelve, the similarities between Halone and Shiva are impossible to ignore. In the past Yoshida stated he wants to add a playable Draconic race to the game, which makes me think that if not whatever Yugiri is, then perhaps some day we'll see more humanoid denizens of Dravania appear. While this isn't proof of my theory, it does add strength to the idea that we'll likely come to a peaceful solution someday with Dravania instead of just wiping them out.

[Sounsyy]

Haha okay, if we're going to have a rational, lore-based discussion about this we can't keep bringing in real world or even previous FF title parallels into XIV. They aren't applicable.

 

 

Think about it for a moment, in lore Halone is depicted as a woman wielding a great shield and sword. Her aspect is Ice. Shiva is the Ice Primal seen in recent footage wielding a sword and shield.

 

In lore, Halone is not depicted with a sword at all. Her symbol is three spears and she is depicted as a relentless warrioress armed with a bronze greatshield.

 

"Halone, mover of glaciers and goddess of war, is the guardian diety of Ishgard. She commands the element of ice and is associated with the first moon of the Eorzean calendar. Halone is the daughter of Rhalgr, and a bitter rival of Nophica. She is most often depicted as a relentless warrioress armed with a bronze greatshield. Her symbol is the three spears."

-Halone, Character Creation

 

 

The resemblances between Shiva and Halone are relatively uncanny, even the fact that Halone is supposed to be based off the Hindu Goddess Parvati which is the female aspect of the Hindu God Shiva.

 

I'm not sure what resemblances you're referring to? We have not a single image of Halone yet. We only know she's a warrioress with a shield. The only artistic rendition of one of the Twelve we have is of Nophica. Seen here:

 

 

 

 

 

As for Parvati, she is a form of Shakti, the Wife of Shiva - not his female aspect. Parvati is considered the benevolent goddess of love and devotion. She is also the goddess of power, giving strength to all other gods. Her power is also superior to that of Shiva's. But she is not a warrioress.

 

 

Final Fantasy has always used dual natured deities pretty heavily in the past. The first and more obvious example being Yevon from FFX. Even the whole Hydaelyn and Zodiark thing screams dual nature to some degree, where the Twelve could be associated to her and the Primals are their darker counterparts tied to Zodiark.

 

I wouldn't call Yevon dual-natured. He's malevolent. He doesn't do anything good for humanity. People just pray to him because they're misguided. Also in FFX, the Aeons like Shiva were just people, and they actually helped defeat the god that tricked them into becoming idols.

 

As for Zodiark, Him and the Ascians are based (nearly) entirely off of FFXII. Zodiark was the 12th Lucavi(Esper) that was sealed away in Ivalice by the Twelve Zodiac Braves after the Great Catastrophe. It is believed that Zodiark was one of the 12 Scions of Light (Gee, that phrase sounds familiar...) but was locked away with the 12 Scions of Darkness because Zodiark was too powerful and the Occurians feared him.

 

Some of the other 11 Scions of Light (Lahabrea, Pashtarot, Igeyorhm, and Nabriales) appear in FFXIV as named Ascian characters. Elidibus (the white Ascian) also was a character in XII's lore who first broke the seal binding the imprisoned Zodiark. Clear parallels, but with the key difference that they were the good guys in XII and are now trying to destroy the world in XIV. So again, you cannot use other games' lore to shape XIV lore.

 

 

...the Twelve could be associated to her and the Primals are their darker counterparts tied to Zodiark.

 

We may not know how Zodiark ties in to Hydaelyn's history yet, but the lore does give us "theories' as to where the Primals come from.

 

Hydaelyn created the world and the Twelve. Well.... at least Hydaelyn created six or seven of the Twelve, who then all hook up and have babies and a very confusing family tree. They inhabited Eorzea alone and all got along great together. They created the Mooglekin to serve them. Until, according to Moogle Lore, one of the Twelve spills Another's cup of wine. Party foul! But instead of screaming "Opa!" the Twelve began to fight among themselves.

Source: The Raven: Moogle Myth Made Manifest

 

Follow this up with a story from 1.0.

At some point the Twelve stopped being peaceful and began warring with each other. They created life to wage their wars. Since then, six eras of umbral and astral have occurred. The astral eras see man flourish and and prosper, whereas umbral eras see man falter and doubt.

-Dusty Tomes - @Arrzaneth Ossuary 1.0

 

This all takes place during the Time of Twelve. Before Man arrives in Eorzea. So the Twelve created the Primals to fight their war, who in turn create the Beastmen. Which explains why the Primals hate other Primals with a passion. Then during the Age of Man, nomadic tribes of Elezen, Roegadyn, and Lalafell migrate to Eorzea. The legend goes that the Twelve looked mercifully upon the resilience of these primitive settlers and saw fit to ensure their welfare on their harsh and primal land.

 

The lore gets a little hazy after this but somewhere between the first tribes arriving in Eorzea and the First Umbral Calamity, the Twelve leave Eorzea or go into slumber or something. I theorize that the Primals took advantage of this and tried to subjugate Man out of jealousy and ended up bringing on the first Umbral Era where everyone is at war with one another.

 

But enough of that, moving on.

 

While it may be more difficult to draw connections from the other Primals to a member of the Twelve, the similarities between Halone and Shiva are impossible to ignore.

 

Again, the only two things Halone and Shiva have in common is the fact they are both deities of Ice and both use a shield. Personally, I think these two similarities are very easy to ignore. Considering you can't draw any correlation from any of the other 5 Primals to any of the other 11 of the Twelve, I don't see how you conclude that because Shiva and Halone both use a shield that somehow all Primals are actually the Twelve? That is a huuuuuuuuuuge leap with no lore to back it.

 

 

While this isn't proof of my theory, it does add strength to the idea that we'll likely come to a peaceful solution someday with Dravania instead of just wiping them out.

 

I said we would likely fight them (like we have been doing already in the MSQ), I never said anything about wiping them out. We are at war with the other beast tribes too. None of them are close to extinction. As much as we'd like to wipe the sylphs out after their terrible Beast Tribe quests.

 

To be fair, we were actually at peace with almost all of the beast tribes (Dravanians being the exception) until 1562 when the Garleans invaded Eorzea. It was after that threat of extermination we began tossing beastmen out of our cities so that we could claim we had no affiliation to lesser races. It's little wonder the beast tribes and their Primals hate us.

[Sounsyy]

If you're really into Hidden Primal Conspiracy Theories though, you should check this one out. I didn't come up with this, my friend Sunny did. All credit goes to him. I was busy oogling over all the cool stuff while his attention was focused on a particular part of the Defenders of Eorzea Trailer.

 

So near the end, we get a nice view of what we believe to be Zodiark:

 

 

 

 

 

He recognized it as looking similar to Zodiark from FFXII. (Which I talked about in my last post.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

However, he felt like he had seen that image of Zodiark somewhere before. Somewhere in XIV. But he couldn't place it, so he started rewatching cutscenes.

 

Sure enough...

 

 

 

 

[Medipack]

Actually instead of the mystery Elezen woman being Shiva in disguise, I have a thought that she might have somehow ascended into a Primal, not unlike the fayth from FFX. An earlier scene in the storyline had a Sahagin priest doing that exact thing.

 

The fact that the Primals all have a resemblance to their respective beast races can't be a coincidence.

[Kage]

Forgive me if this was touched upon already,  and especially because I never got to play some of the recent titles because of console limitation...

 

But aren't similar symbols scattered about the Ascians as well? I believe some of the Scions may have one but I remember that there is a certain possessed one's mask that is related or -is- one of them.

[Sounsyy]

All of the Scions of the Seventh Dawn bear the same symbol as Y'shtola on their left shoulder. With the notable exception of Minfilia.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But aren't similar symbols scattered about the Ascians as well?

 

As for the symbol that appears before the Ascians faces, I believe you're referring to this one:

 

 

 

 

 

This symbol ALSO has ties to XII. However, the symbol belongs to that of the Scion of Darkness, Mateus, the Corrupt. And has no correlation to Zodiark.

 

[LiadansWhisper]

Who is to say that the Twelve even exist? When Louisoix attempts to summon the power of the twelve at the end of 1.0 to defeat/recapture Bahamut the only thing we see is a powerful spell with fancy symbols that are ultimately very easily brushed aside by a Primal, which you've essentially just said are fundamentally lesser (and presumably weaker) than the Twelve. Considering the Twelve have never spoken to us, or anyone that we have actually spoken to, and their presence in the world is almost entirely non-existent, and the fact that they basically described summoning them into the world would be almost identical to summoning very big Primals, it could be speculated then that the Twelve are actually just the Primals, perhaps the real Primals. In other words, Shiva could very well be the real Halone, or perhaps an aspect of her. There are other parallels you can draw here too but I won't go into that, my strongest evidence is still that Halone is based on the real world Shiva.

 

The spell didn't fail because of Bahamut.  My understanding is that the spell failed because had it succeeded, it would have essentially broken the world because of the amount of Aether that was being drawn from the lifestream. That spell is also a major part of why Eorzea is still so fundamentally damaged right now, because it was a massive amount of aether that went boom when the Twelve were invoked.

[Lahni]

Yep, according to this post:

 

http://gamerescape.com/2013/08/21/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-white-raven/

 

Knowing that the simultaneous summoning of twelve deities would grievously, perhaps mortally, wound Hydaelyn, Louisoix had mercifully held back, summoning only their strength, and it had laid to ruin his last resort.

 

Fernehalwes approved~