The primals are manifestations of elemental aether given physical form by the "summoning" rites performed by the beastmen who worship them as gods. In addition to being creatures of great destructive power, the primals are dangerous because they distort the natural flow of aether in the world: not only are vast quantities of aether required to summon them, but once given form the primals will go on to instinctively seek out and gorge themselves on as much aether as they can find. Furthermore, the primals can use a process known as "tempering" to brainwash innocent people into their lifelong subjects, whose worship in turn increases the power of the primal. They have a weakness, however: people with the Echo, like the Warrior of Light, are immune to tempering and can stand up to the primals, thus slaying them is the player's main job throughout the story.

For the Beast Tribes who worship the primals, see the Beast Tribes page.

As the story has advanced beyond the point of hiding plot twists, there are unmarked spoilers below, you have been warned.

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Primals in General

Back for the Finale: All of the primals worshipped by beast tribes that you've met in your journey up to that point are summoned to power the Ragnarok in the climax of Endwalker. Even better, because they were summoned via Loporitts creation magic instead of Ascian summoning they all appear in their truest forms as their worshipers believe.
Brainwashing: They can do this to mortals through a process called tempering, which binds the mortals to their will, making them fanatically loyal until somehow released from their service, usually by death. They can even indirectly temper other primals by tempering their mortal hosts or worshippers. This makes a primal exceedingly dangerous even without being a Physical God, and is why The Immune is a hot commodity among the Grand Companies.
- Different primals employ this to varying degrees: Ifrit tempers everyone he comes into contact with, Ramuh will only temper people if they specifically ask him to (though the very act of his summoning had him unintentionally tempering his followers), Odin will only temper one individual to make them his new host when he is defeated, and so on. Many primals are not seen tempering anybody at all.
- Notably, anyone possessing the Echo is immune to tempering. While Ifrit speculates that this means the Warrior "already belongs to another" (namely, Hydaelyn,) in fact this immunity comes from a traveler's warding spell, common during Ancient times but unheard of in modern day, that protects a person's aether from corruption. Since Hydaelyn would immediately cast this spell upon a person as they awakened to the Echo, it was widely believed in-universe that the Echo itself provided the immunity.
- It's suggested that the effectiveness and degree of tempering can be influenced by how the target views the primal. For example, in Shadowbringers it's theorized that the reason Tiamat's exposure to the primal only resulted in a very mild tempering is because she viewed Bahamut as her equal, unlike the Kobolds viewing Titan as their god.
Came Back Wrong: Played With. As revealed in Heavensward, primals are nothing but an image created by the prayers of those that summon them, and typically exaggerates their personality and worst traits to the extreme. Even when the individual knew the original. However, not every primal summoned turns out to be world-destroying maniacs. A few, such as Ramuh, are not evil. And Enkidu's only purpose seemed to hang out with her old friend Gilgamesh.
- Endwalker reveals this was intentional on the Ascian's part. By default, their creation magicks - the basis for summoning magic - did not cause tempering. The version the Ascians taught the beast tribes was purposely flawed so as to cause the aetheric imbalance necessary for tempering, as a means to utilise primals for Calamities. When summoned at the end of Endwalker to power the Ragnarok, the loporits use proper creation magic, making the primals appear as intended; benevolent and benign instead of insane and capable of tempering.
Creation Myth: Each of the primals are featured in their own creation myth for themselves or their beastmen followers as recorded in the Encyclopedia Eorzea.
Death of Personality: Shadowbringers later clarifies that this is effectively what the primal's Tempering is. The primal infuses a person's soul with elemental Aether connected to the primal, causing it to erode the person's soul and being (either gradually or right away). This process removes their memories and will, which is why it is impossible to save the person once they're tempered; their inability to remember who they are means they lack the willpower to stand against the primal's power. Part of Alisaie and G'raha Tia's attempt to fix this is by using G'raha Tia's own Merger of Souls process to revive the memories within a tempered person.
Elemental Embodiment: Many primals are elemental embodiments of whatever element was used in their summoning, eg. a primal summoned using fire crystals or in an area rich in fire aether would in turn be fire-aspected. Six of the first primals the Scions encountered correspond with one of the six elements, the order being Ifrit, Titan, Garuda, Leviathan, Ramuh, and Shiva. When the Scions later seek to return the elements to the barren Empty, they do so by summoning new versions of these original six elemental embodiments and slaying them to disperse their aether and return that element to the Empty.
Even Evil Has Loved Ones: They genuinely, truly love their followers and even the tempered are assured clothing, shelter, and adequate food and drink, with no indication that they're mistreated at all by the beastmen they're in thrall to. Even Garuda goes out of her way to protect the Ixal that summoned her and calls them "her children" with sincere care in her tone. This is one of their only sympathetic traits. The only primal to actually avert this in regards to their own worshipers is Alexander, and that was mainly since he realized his worshipers were dangerously insane.
Evil Knock Off: What they typically act as to the individual they were based on.
Flowery Elizabethan English: Most of the primals speak this way, though Garuda averts the trope by speaking normally (for the setting anyways, when she appears in FFXV as part of a crossover event her speach instantly is oudated) and Alexander zig-zags it by fluidly alternating between this and Robo Speak.
Forced Transformation: The most extreme forms of tempering result in this, with the victims being subjected to so much of the primal's aether that they turn into monsters. While cures for tempering would later be discovered, those subjected to this are too far gone for any cure.
God Needs Prayer Badly: The primals are empowered by the zealous worship their followers give them and can in fact only be called to the physical plane by a combination of ritualistic prayer and crystals.
- Heavensward showed that summoning a primal is a bit more flexible than that. Any convenient source of aetheric energy is good for summoning a primal (such as, oh let's say, the Eyes of Nidhogg) - it needn't only be in crystal form. Additionally, the devotion of followers doesn't need to be directly focused towards the creation of the primal. For example, Ilberd summoned Shinryu from the fervor of the Ala Mighan resistance towards defeating the Garlean Empire. While Sephirot and Susano were summoned by faith being concentrated towards artifacts or sites of religious significance. This means that primals could theoretically be summoned from any kind of focused cause of devotion and hope. In addition some primals can find a way to sustain themselves without active prayer for example Odin leaches aether from the area and its host while concealing its true identity to prevent its destruction, and Shinryu's summoning ritual was backed by Human Sacrifice to eliminate the need for active prayer.
Godzilla Threshold: The summoning of a primal is about the only thing that can drive the Eorzean Alliance and Garlean Empire to work together, as they both recognize the bigger threat.
Harder Than Hard: The "Extreme" battles, which seem to be specifically designed to be frustrating.
Leitmotif: One Blood, which usually plays when the Beast Tribes begin their summoning rituals.
Magic Eater: The primals gorge on the aether that sustains the world. If left alone for too long, they will leave nothing but a barren wasteland in their wake. Aside from the more immediate physical and Brainwashing threats they pose, this is considered their most dangerous trait, as sustained primal summoning will eventually bleed the world dry.
Nigh-Invulnerability: No matter how many times a primal is slain, they can always return as long as they have worshippers and crystals.
One-Hit Kill: The mechanics and forgiveness of them vary from fight to fight, but make no mistake, if you fail to do that one mechanic right it will kill your entire party and there's not a damn thing you can do about it.
Physical God: What most of the primals are. They can be struck and injured, but it takes a lot of power to actually slay one and they can warp the environment around them to their benefit.
Puzzle Boss: Almost all of them have some kind of mechanic you must overcome in order to survive their ultimate attacks, or risk starting from the beginning.
The Power of Hate: It is noted that all primals sealed away using Allagan methods become more and more powerful as their anger grows due to being sealed and often used as a power source. They in turn are kept powered by their tempered followers who are kept in a form of stasis that leaves them just conscious enough to feel endless pain and suffering at their horrifying situation, leading them to forever calling out to their trapped deity to save them.
Reality Warper: The mere presence of a sufficiently empowered primal is often enough to affect the local landscape or weather to some degree around them, but more powerful ones can create alternate planes of existence or a Pocket Dimension for their battles to take place in temporarily. This tends to happen as the fight moves closer to the final phase, typically during or after they use their Signature Move.
Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: Justified, not only are most of the primals named after figures of real world mythology (Alexander, Bismarck and Thordan notwithstanding), they are In-Universe mythological figures of the mythologies of the group that summons them.
Superboss: Most primals can be fought again in optional Extreme Trials or Savage Raids, which are much harder than the original battles with them.
Symbiotic Possession: It is possible for mortals to summon primals into their own being, gaining the ability to transform into the primal on a whim while maintaining their own will, although they are still reliant on the same aetheric and faith-based fuels. Known examples of this are Ysayle (and later Ryne) becoming Shiva, Louisoix becoming Phoenix, Thordan VII and the Heavens' Ward becoming the Knights of the Round, and Yotsuyu becoming Tsukuyomi. It is also possible for the possession to be not so symbiotic, such how Odin tempers mortals to act as his hosts, or even the reverse, with Zenos forcibly possessing Shinryu, and willing hosts can lose control back to the primal as seen with Ryne and Shiva.
Tulpa: Hraesvelgr reveals that all primals are not summoned, but created by the imagination and willpower of those who "summon" them. If they happen to be based on a previously existing person, they are basically an Evil Knockoff to them. This is taken to another angle in 3.4 where the Kobolds were in the middle of summoning Titan, only for a Kobold child to summon him by complete accident through his emotional anguish since he saw his parents' dead bodies. This causes Titan's mind to take on the child's emotions, reducing Titan to a dangerous sobbing primal that's on a rampage.
Your Mind Makes It Real: To an extent this is how primals are designed. When summoned, primals are based off the ideas and views of whatever the summoner imagines them to be, causing it to reflect the summoners wishes. This is why most Beast Tribes worship them as Gods; they are summoned in the image of their God and so almost always reflect the creation myth each one has. This also means that Tempering can have different effects on each user when summoned, as while most primals Temper the summoners due to reflect the image they were summoned in, some, like Bahamut to Tiamat, cannot fully control the summoner due to the views held by the summoner; Tiamat for example was only half Tempered because she saw Bahamut as her equal, meaning it could not fully control her.This is why the primals summoned in the Eden raid are vastly different from their original forms, as the Warrior of Light has not fought them in a while, so their memory causes them to confuse them for other beings.
Villain Decay: While there are still some primals that lean more powerful and are major threats, by the time of Shadowbringers the Warrior of Light has become so inured to defeating primals that they boast about eating primals for breakfast. The average primal just isn't the threat it used to be, especially once cures and wards for tempering start getting discovered, allowing people without The Gift to safely engage them.
- This is even more apparent in Endwalker - the threat level of Primals has fallen to the point that what few Primals are introduced in the expansion aren't even worthy of being Trials - the Magus Sisters and Anima are not just fought as dungeon bosses, but also in the first two dungeons of the story.
Villain Song: Each primal fought as a trial has one. Nost are sung from the prospective of the the primal themselves. Ifrit, Phoenix, the Knights of the Round, Bismarck, and Susano are the only primals without lyrics in their songs, opting for Ominous Latin Chanting for the former three and a One-Woman Wail for Bismarck, while Susano is the first purely instrumental theme, to match with his fight being a party (from his perspective) as much as anything.

Primals introduced in A Realm Reborn:

Ifrit

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/d11b87df736c9b93d5a7c2d1b0724891.jpg

Lord of the Inferno

"Thy soul shall burn for eternity!"

Lord of the Inferno and the first primal players face, Ifrit is the primal of the tribal Amalj'aa lizardmen. Of the primals, Ifrit is the one to most often resort to tempering mortals as fits his sphere of Domination, making doing battle with him something the Ul'dahns dread due the heartbreak of having to kill hundreds of their own friends-turned-foes.

Battle Theme Music: "Primal Judgment", an orchestra piece that emphasizes the daunting power of the Lord of the Inferno, complete with Ominous Latin Chanting.
Big Red Devil: When taken out of the dim lighting of the Bowl of Embers (like during Minfilia's aether explanation), Ifrit is shown to have bright red plating on his body, fitting in nicely with his long horns and burning demonic visage.
Brainwashing: While all primals are capable of this, Ifrit uses it more frequently than most other primals encountered. Combined with him being one of the first primals encountered, this led to the term for being enthralled by Ifrit, "tempered", being adopted as a catch all term for any and all primal brainwashing, instead of terms tailored to each primal like "drowned" or "sundered".
Creation Myth: The creation myth of the Amalj'aa holds that, in the beginning, there was only Ifrit. The world he spawned was filled with beasts bereft of reason or intellect, each fighting an endless, mindless battle for survival. But there was one race of great lizards whose ferocity so pleased the Lord of the Inferno that he bequeathed unto them flickering motes shared from his own primordial flame. This sacred fire took purchase in the lizards' souls, burning away frailty and weakness, and from the ashes of their transformation stepped the first warriors of the Amalj'aa. Seven males and seven females there were, and from their joining were born seven tribes. It is told that the tribes ranged far and wide, and ruled all that walked or crawled upon the land.
Doppelgänger Attack: Crimson Cyclone. Ifrit will jump up and appear somewhere along the edge of the arena, before charging forward quickly in a straight line. In HM, he creates up to three of himself, where in EX it's always four Ifrits.
Fake Difficulty: Pretty much every player that fought Ifrit in 1.0 will tell you that the hardest part of his fight was dealing with the lag and animation lock. Both are gone in ARR, though a laggy connection can still make Ifrit much harder than he's intended to be.
Flat Character: Compared to the other primals, a least. While they all have fairly fleshed-out personalities, he doesn't get much more than "wants to burn or enslave everything."
Harder Than Hard: Ifrit (Extreme) was one of the hardest fights in 1.0.
Hellfire: As is his signature.
Horned Humanoid: Ifrit has a pair of forward-curving horns.
Kneel Before Zod: His primary modus operandi is to force everyone to do this, making him one of the less sympathetic primals.
Kill It with Fire: One of his quests in 1.0 was even titled "It Kills With Fire".
One-Hit Kill: What's that? You didn't destroy the giant flaming nail thing he summoned fast enough? Have fun getting one-shot by Hellfire. Oh and hard mode he summons four of them, and on Extreme mode, thirteen (and they now damage you when destroyed!). Until players were on average massively overgeared for Hard Mode, a limit break was mandatory to finish off the nails, and even with players highly overgeared now, a Limit Break is still basically mandatory during the later waves of nails in Extreme.
Playing with Fire: As usual per the series, Ifrit embodies fire.
Signature Move: Hellfire. Ifrit floats in the air surrounded by three orbs of flame before a massive wave of fire expands all around him.
Turns Red: After losing about 25% of his HP in the max-level version of the fight. This signals the beginning of his more complex skill rotations.
Warmup Boss: Well, he IS all about fire. Though the normal version of his fight introduces players to the more complicated mechanics and phases of the primals, he's not too hard, and even a group of first timers shouldn't have much trouble beating him once they figure out the fight's single wipe mechanic.
Worthy Opponent: He will commend your strength if you manage to survive Hellfire.

Titan

Lord of Crags

"Tremble before the might of the earth!"

Lord of Crags and the second primal players fight in the story. Titan's love for his followers, the Kobolds, is equal only to his hatred of the sons of man that kill, mistreat, and drive his children from the land, breaking a treaty the Lominsans had formed with the Kobolds in the past.

A Father to His Men: The kobolds look up to him as a father-figure rather than just a lord-and-master and he feels likewise about them, which stands in contrast to Ifrit and his Amalj'aa servants.
A Lighter Shade of Black: When it comes to the primal threat and the Beastmen tribes' Forever War with the city-states, Ifrit served as a Starter Villain who, alongside his Amalj'aa worshippers, served to as a framing device for what the primals are and why they and their worshippers have to be stopped. Titan, by contrast, serves to turn the Beastmen/city-state feud into a more grey and ambiguous conflict, like Ramuh and the sylphs before him, as he and his Kobolds have legitimate grievances with Limsa Lominsa and it's only because of this that he even gets summoned in the first place.
Battle Theme Music: A five part battle theme, ending in his Villain Song "Under the Weight".
Berserker Tears: 3.4 has Titan summoned when a Kobold child is in complete despair finding out that his parents were slain by his leader and wants his parents to wake up. The child's emotions are the catalyst to the summoning and those emotions are passed down to Titan. In the ensuing fight against him, Titan fights no differently than before, but all of his speech is replaced with the child Kobold's despair over his parents, making Titan look and sound incredibly creepy as he rages on in pure anguish.
Boss Arena Urgency: Each time Titan uses Geocrush, the outermost parts of the arena will crumble away, leaving players with less and less room to dodge his attacks.
Came Back Wrong: In 3.4, the Kobold child Ga Bu goes into despair when he discovers his parents sacrificed by the Patriarch. His powerful emotions unintentionally trigger a summoning of Titan, who has been imprinted by this anger and sadness until all he can do is lash out at everything around him, his own followers included.
Creation Myth: In the beginning, the world was a place of relentless hostility. Cold. Hard. Unforgiving. The Great Father Titan gazed upon this inhospitable land, and saw that it was in need of custodians. Thus did he mold the ground beneath him, breathing life into soil and clay, and created the race of Kobolds. But the newborn creatures were not resilient like the rock or the stone, and they could not dwell alongside the savage beasts that stalked the surface. Seeing his children's frailty, the Lord of Crags sent magma to flow through the holy mount of O'Ghomoro, the molten rivers leaving behind rich veins of ore. Thence did he teach the Kobolds the ways of mining and the secrets of smelting, and newly girt with armor and weapons of metal, the beastmen did force the beasts to flee. Greatly satisfied by the success of his guardians, Titan returned to his bed in the mountain's crater. Ere he sank beneath its boiling crust, he left the Kobolds with a promise: when his children needed him most, the smoky breath of O'Ghomoro would herald his return.
Determinator: Even shattering his heart won't stop him from fighting.
"To the last, I grapple with thee!"
Didn't Need Those Anyway!: It says something about how much he wants you dead when he can keep fighting without his heart.
Earthy Barefoot Character: As you'd expect, he doesn't wear any shoes.
Evil Virtues: Genuinely loves his worshippers, and unlike Ifrit and Garuda, not particularly keen on tempering unbelievers.
Fake Difficulty: Landslide and Weight of the Land used to (and still sometimes do) be similarly lagged like Ifrit's abilities were in 1.0. Particularly bad given that Landslide is usually a One-Hit Kill due to its knockback effect easily knocking the player out of the platform, making them fall to their deaths, outside the healers' reach. This video shows a perfect example of it.
Gentle Giant: Though you never really see it in the story Titan is in fact very gentle and compassionate to his worshippers. His enemies on the other hand...
Humans Are the Real Monsters: He expresses this belief, "humans" in this case meaning all of the Standard Fantasy Races. Considering that the kobolds were perfectly willing to live in peace with the people of Limsa Lominsa, and it was the latter that betrayed their agreement, it's hard to say that he doesn't have a point. He also has a sore spot about them turning to farming instead of piracy, which is also understandable, given who he is.
Knight Templar Parent: He cares very deeply for his beastmen children, and woe befalls any and all who attempt to harm them.
O.O.C. Is Serious Business: When summoned in 3.4, the first thing he does is attack his own beloved kobold followers, a big red flag that something is seriously wrong.
One-Hit Kill: He became of the most infamous bosses of FFXIV for his multiple deadly attacks:
- So you didn't destroy Titan's heart fast enough? Enjoy getting lit up by Earthen Fury.
- Landslide is effectively this. If you don't get out of the AOE fast enough, you're going sailing off the course and taking a dirt nap.
Our Giants Are Bigger: Much as always, Titan is a giant, earthy-looking character, but he doesn't quite resemble his simple rock-monster appearance from Final Fantasy XI ; if not for the visible cracks on his belly, you could believe he was a regular dark-skinned guy (albeit several storeys tall) with some rock-like limbs.
Ring Out: While many trial bosses feature this mechanic, none are as notorious for it as Titan, and it is his main method of wiping the party out quickly. Once the rocky barriers surrounding the battlefield are destroyed, it's very possible to suffer knockback from Titan's attacks and get shoved off the platform so that you fall to your death. To make matters worse, Titan will reduce the available floor space of the arena at least twice during the fight on normal mode, or three (or more) times on higher difficulties. Mercilessly lampshaded when discussing Titan during the Eden raids.
Warrior of Light: (dialogue option) The landslides... The landslides...
Rock Monster: He's a giant monster made of rock, go figure.
Shockwave Stomp: “Tumult” has Titan repeatedly stomp the ground, producing shockwaves that damage the whole party.
Signature Move: Earthen Fury. Titan's anger summons a Pillar of Light to engulf the battlefield.
Soundtrack Dissonance: Though Under the Weight is extremely fitting for a fight against the embodiment of the Earth's fury, many first time players will end up hearing the intense screaming vocals playing over the sight of their character's dead body laying at the bottom of the pit far away from the fight. Averted after patch 3.4 when the camera would move back to the arena so players who are knocked out could still watch the fight.
Sumo Wrestling: Titan is built like a sumo wrestler, uses sumo-based animations for some of his abilities, and even focuses on inflicting Ring Out to defeat his opponents.
Token Good Teammate: Of the Primals met in the story of A Realm Reborn aside from Ramuh, he is neither Ax-Crazy nor The Corrupter - he just is pissed that the spoken races have mistreated his people (the Kobolds) and he wants revenge. It's even implied that his tempering isn't done with any real malicious intent.
Top-Heavy Guy/Stout Strength: He has a squat, sumo wrestler-like build, albeit with more emphasis on his upper body.
Villain Song: "Under the Weight", the music for the last phase of Titan's battle is a very hateful rock tune with the lyrics sung from Titan's perspective, with his Kobold followers constantly chanting "Bow down overdweller!!" between his lyrics. They occasionally cap the chant with shouts of "TITAN!", "UNDER THE WEIGHT!", and "IN HELL I WAIT!". And yes, it is Awesome Music that you'd be head banging to, if it wasn't for the fact that you're busy trying to avoid getting killed by Titan.
Volcanic Veins: When Titan's Heart is exposed, the earthy cracks in his skin glow yellow.

Garuda

Lady of the Vortex

"Surrender yourselves unto me... I would feast upon your aether. None shall stand against the wind!"

Lady of the Vortex and perhaps the most bloodthirsty primal, befitting her sphere of destruction. Garuda plots from a piece of land eternally surrounded in a tornado called the Howling Eye. Her followers are the Ixal birdmen, who are the only ones she cares for and, in turn, revere her. She is the last of the primals the players fight in the main story.

A God Am I: She likes to fancy herself as "the only god". She intends to kill all of the other beast tribes to rob the other primals of their faith to ensure that title.
Ax-Crazy: When players meet her, they've dealt with three primals. Ifrit wanted everyone to bow to his will, Titan wanted to protect the kobolds, and Ramuh didn't even want to be bothered. Garuda? She wants to kill everything that isn't an Ixal and eat all the aether she can. Why? Because she's Garuda.
Back for the Finale: In Endwalker, she is resummoned as fuel from the mother-crystal to power-up the Ragnarok. Out of all the primals, only Susano and she get a speaking role. She is initially quite sour about her predicament, but ultimately embraces the air and her role.
Battle Theme Music: "Fallen Angel" starts with an Ominous Pipe Organ accompanied by a One-Woman Wail. Once Garuda whispers, "now fall", the song becomes a blend of rock and symphony music.
Blow You Away: Her attacks are wind-based.
Cleavage Window: Her feathers cup her body in such a way as to resemble a bodysuit and a subsequently her "breasts".
Climax Boss: Of A Realm Reborn. As the last Trial before the final battles, her defeat kicks off the home stretch of the plot, as the story shifts from defeating primals to taking the fight to the Garlean Empire and reuniting the Scions.
Creation Myth: Legend has it that the birdmen of the Ixal once lived on a floating continent known as Ayatlan, where they protected the further reaches of the heavens as Garuda's divine soldiers. A time came, however, when the evil that saturated the land below began to reach upwards and infect the skies above. Thence did Garuda order her minions to descend and cleanse the ground of this vile influence, bidding them to remain there as guardians that the heavens may never again be thus threatened.
Deity of Human Origin: The historical Garuda was an Allagan general who led the Ixal's ancestors, the Allagan chimeric Iksalion, to battle as part of Allag's air force. After the fall of Allag, Garuda's story fell into myth and legend, with the Ixal reimagining her as their goddess who set them from Ayatlan (in reality Azys Lla) to defend the heavens from the corruption below.
Diminishing Villain Threat: The first time you go after her, much is made about her being the deadliest and most powerful primal, and if you count the side-story in Coerthas has the longest arc devoted to her downfall. But in the endgame hard mode she's the second primal you fight (and rather easy to boot), her power having been eclipsed by Titan, and by the time you unlock extreme modes she's the first primal you go after and considered to be easier than Titan EX by a country mile. When encountered again in Xelphatol, only a sliver of her essence is summoned to aid Tozol Huatotl in brief attacks when her summoning is interrupted.
The Dreaded: Garuda is regarded as one of the most "savage and terrible of all known primals", to use Papalymo's words, and is confident enough in her abilities to try and absorb Ifrit and Titan at the same time.
Eviler than Thou: She sees herself as superior to the other primals and forces her Amalj'aa and kobold prisoners to summon Ifrit and Titan so she can defeat them and devour their aether. At that point, Gaius van Baelsar arrives on the scene and unleashes the Ultima Weapon on all three of them, absorbing each and every one of them.
Fluffy Fashion Feathers: Her feathers are shaped to resemble clothing, with the feathers on her torso resembling a bodysuit while the ones on her legs resemble spiked or leather-strapped boots.
Glass Cannon: Despite the difficulty spike from Ifrit's hard mode to her's, gear has advanced to the point that her hard mode almost irrelevant. This has also made it very clear that her health pool is less than Ifrit's and severely less than Titan's. A well-geared group in 2.5 can kill Garuda hard mode in about two to three minutes. That same group will take approximately twice as long to kill Titan hard mode.
Harping on About Harpies: In addition to being the Patron God of the birdlike Ixal, Garuda herself resemblesa modern depiction of a harpy: a feathered woman with birdlike-wings and talons.
Knockback: After activating "Eye of the Storm", she will attempt to knockback players into the slowly shrinking storm wall to deal massive damage to anyone caught inside it.
Laughing Mad: Nearly every single sentence out of her mouth either begins or ends with an insane cackle.
Leotard of Power: More like a Fur Bikini made of Fluffy Fashion Feathers.
Magic Eater: Implied in her dialogue. Whereas Ifrit is primarily interested in making tempered worshippers, and Titan is angry at the adventurers and Limsa Lominsa for killing his Kobold followers, Garuda primary focus is to absorb as much aether as possible so that she can become a supreme goddess. It even went so far as planning to snatch the lunar transmitter from Garlean control so that she could absorb a massive amount of energy from Dalamud in 1.0—effectively, Garuda tried to absorb Bahamut.
Mercury's Wings: Two smaller wings grow from Garuda's head.
Oh, Crap!: Once the Ultima Weapon shows up and absorbs Ifrit and Titan, completely derailing her own plan to do the same, the look on her face when Ultima turns to her is one of absolute terror.
Omnicidal Maniac: Her very first cutscene back in 1.0 was her mercilessly attacking a Gridania village, using a tornado, even breaking the neck/spine of one such villager/guard. She gleefully kills anything that isn't A) an Ixal, or B) herself.
Ring Out: Not as severe as with Titan, but she can surround the outer area of the battlefield in a blue light, which damages and violently pushes players toward the center of the field if they stand in it.
Sequence Breaking: Before a patch that fixed this issue, it was possible to beat Garuda before she used Aerial Blast, thus avoiding her strongest move as well as the hardest parts of the fight.
Signature Move: Aerial Blast. Garuda calls out a sudden gale-force wind that quickly decimates solid stone.
Thong of Shielding: the feathers around her waist and crotch greatly resemble a thong that hides any "naughty" bits.
Wake-Up Call Boss:
- During ARR's launch, Garuda had more mechanics than any boss faced at the time you fought her in the story and there was a good chance she'd rip your party to shreds at least once if you were doing it with people unfamiliar with the fight. Calling her the beginning of the end of the story wouldn't be exaggerating.
- This repeated once you reached the endgame. "Hard" Ifrit was, frankly, a fight anyone in job-quest blues and a random weapon could complete, so long as you can managed to not stand in things and limit break the nails. Hard Garuda doubled the mechanics of an already difficult battle and sipped on rookie players as a light apéritif. Though in later patches, thanks to light farming for the Nexus upgrade and players vastly outgearing the fight in general, the average Garuda run lasts about three minutes.
Winged Humanoid: Garuda has six wings total. Four wings on her back, and two growing out of her head.

Good King Moggle Mog XII^note

Good King Moggle Mog XII ^noteKind and Noble Lord

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/moggle_mog.jpg

The Good King and his Mogglesguard

"Hearken unto me, brave Mogglesguard! These villains shall threaten you no more!"

Moggle Mog XII^noteMay his Pom glow ever bright is a character from moogle folklore who threw a rope down to Hydaelyn for his subjects to escape the twelve when the gods began to fight amongst themselves, sacrificing himself to stay behind. The Moghome Moogles also make references to "the Good King" as well though their folklore on him remains mostly unknown. It's believed that the presence of Good King Moggle Mog XII^note in Eorzea is a manifestation of the moogles' belief in a case of Your Mind Makes It Real which later ends up being the case with every primal. Unfortunately, Good King Moggle Mog XII^notemay he one day summon Pom Meteor turns out to be less of a good king and more of a tyrant, corrupting the Mogglesguard and declaring his intention to purge the Twelveswood of every sentient being. (Or at least, the summoned version is; the real king was probably an okay guy.)

Beware the Silly Ones: Silly and oddly awesome at the same time? Yes. Very dangerous and perfectly able to mop the floor with you? Oh yes. This is exemplified by that fact that the moogles paint Good King Moggle Mog XII^note as a fierce warrior and a force that only someone like the Warrior of Light could hope to defeat.
Came Back Wrong: He's not the good king moogle history paints him as. The Scions theorize this is actually intentional since it was the Ascians that taught the Mogglesguard the summoning ritual. This serves as Foreshadowing to the reveal that all primals are this trope.
Cast From Hitpoints: In the Extreme version of the fight, Good King Moggle Mog XII^notemay his health ever regenerate can revive his Mogglesguard to full health at the cost of his own. This is the only way to damage him, as the king is invulnerable so long as his Mogglesguard are alive.
Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Many new players go into Thornmarch (Extreme) thinking it's the same fight as Thornmarch (Hard) with a couple of extra gimmicks, but in truth, the Extreme fight is completely different. This punctuated in the opening cutscene for Extreme where Moggle Mog is already present, unlike in Hard where the Mogglesguard summon him mid-fight.
Expy: On a meta level, Good King Moggle Mog XII^note became mechanically similar to King Thordan after Thornmarch (Hard) was reworked in a post-Endwalker patch. After the Mogglesguard is defeated and he is summoned, the Mogglesguard leave the field and only come in to perform specific attacks when summoned with "Good King's Decree" similar to King Thordan's "Knights of the Round" cast.
Fallen Hero: As noted above, the moogles remember him as a benign and selfless ruler, and there's nothing to indicate he wasn't one. That said, by the time the player meets him something obviously went horribly wrong, because he sure isn't so benign now. Let it be said: it's a moogle who comes to you pleading to stop him in A Realm Reborn, because the moogles have learned their lesson from the first time he was summoned and don't want a reprise. The whole time, the moogle continues calling him "Good King Moggle Mog XII"^notemay his hero status endure unto forever, even while explaining why you definitely have to stop him, and concludes that while he's still a great guy, he's better off staying gone.
Heroic Sacrifice: In his backstory, he sacrificed himself to get all of mooglekind to Eorzea. However, he didn't stay gone. Even the moogles who want him gone still acknowledge the King's sacrifice; it's just better for everyone if Good King Moggle Mog XII^note doesn't come back.
Joke Item: The items dropped by Good King Moggle Mog XII^noteMay His Weapons Be Forever Glamoured all have moogles on them, and all make a traditional moogle cry when the player attacks with them. They're not completely useless, since they're made for a level 50 player. But by the time you fight the king, even decent weapons made for level 50 characters will outclass these items.
Killer Rabbit: He is a moogle after all. A gigantic moogle with all the magical firepower of a primal, yes, but still a moogle - that is, a very cute big ball of fur. Doesn't make him any less dangerous than any other primal.
Kiting: Out of the seven Mogglesguards, only two of them follow Enmity rules, and can be controlled and "held" by the party's tanks. The other five completely ignore enmity.
Limit Break: Memento Moogle. It's a tricky attack that he pulls out when he appears in the Hard mode of his fight. In the Extreme version, it's a Total Party Kill if it's allowed to go off.
Large and in Charge: Good King Moggle Mog XII^note towers over the Mogglesguard, who are themselves at least twice the size of regular moogles.
Meaningful Name: His name references the fact that it has been twelve games since Moogles were first introduced to the series.
Mirror Match: All of the members of his Mogglesguard have Jobs similar to those available to the players. No matter what your party composition looks like, somebody will be fighting a version of their own Job with a big fluffy pom-pom on top.
Poisonous Person: Pukna Pako will cast "Pom Bog", breathing a poisonous mist that leaves a corrosive puddle on the floor. Anyone who steps into it will take damage over time.
Power Copying: In Thornmarch (Hard), Good King Moggle Mog XII^note gains the abilities of his underlings as they fall.
Puzzle Boss: Thornmarch (Hard) is pretty straightforward — kill all of the moogle minions as fast as you can, then kill the king once he shows up. In the Extreme version, Good King Moggle Mog XII^note can't be damaged normally. Instead, he will revive his downed minions and heal all of them to full health when he does, draining his own health to do so. But after doing enough of these revivals, the king will cause a Total Party Kill, so you have to make each revive count.
Rain of Arrows: Kupqu Kogi will use "Mograin of Death", a moogle version of the "Rain of Death" used by bards that generates AOE attacks by cascading arrows onto the battlefield.
Ridiculously Cute Critter: You get an achievement called "Most Adorable Death Ever" for defeating him.
Running Gag: The moogles always refer to Good King Moggle Mog XII^note with an additional praise after they say his name. This even extends to the moogles who are hoping that the Warrior of Light takes him down.
Short Title: Long, Elaborate Subtitle: Whenever the moogles talk about him, they always start with his Short title, Good King, and end with an elaborate subtitle like, "Long may he reign with fluffly aplomb". This is true even when the moogles who come to get your help with the king say that he needs to be put down.
Small Role, Big Impact: While Good King Moggle Mog XII's reign^note was short-lived, he is the first example of primal being created in the image of a folkloric hero rather than a god. This leads to the unsettling realization that a primal could be summoned in the image of anyone with enough belief and aether. These fears would come to fruition when Lady Iceheart, a leader of the Ishgardian heretics, summons the image of Saint Shiva into herself to become the primal Shiva.
Staff of Authority: Crowned with a gold chocobo, it also serves as a Magic Staff.
White Mage: Owing to the moogles' close connection with the Twelveswood, Good King Moggle Mog XII^notemay his pom be ever full of magic will cast a variety of conjurer and white magic spells at the party, ranging from Mog Stone IV to Mog Holy.
Wolfpack Boss: He has the seven Mogglesguard moogles jump in before he himself appears. And once he does, the guards jump with him for his boss fight.
Villain Song: "Good King Moggle Mog XII"^note, a demented sounding remix of the Moogle theme originating from Final Fantasy V. Once he's summoned, the Mogglesguard begin singing about how awesome he is, before going into short lines about themselves.

Leviathan

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/levi.jpg

Lord of the Whorl

"You challenge me with trickery? Fools! Your mortal contrivances cannot quell the raging sea!"

Lord of the Whorl and the primal of the Sahagins, Leviathan seeks to sink the isle of Vylbrand to wipe out the humanity that has defied him, and to ensure a stable spawning ground for his people. Like Ifrit, Leviathan is one of the primals prone to tempering but is the only primal to have thralls of untempered human worshippers; pirates known as the Serpent Reavers who refused to settle down and become farmers or privateers, continuing their piracy with the aid of the Sahagin. Tempered Reavers are known as the Drowned and are implied to be granted underwater breathing, but become an Empty Shell in the process. Leviathan is regarded as the most terrible primal aside from Garuda due to the fact that he's nigh-invincible so long as he's in the open ocean.

Attack Reflector: His head reflects ranged attacks, while his tail reflects magic attacks.
Battle Theme Music: Which like most of the primals, change with each phase of the fight. The fight begins with "Wreck to the Seaman", a traditional Japanese taiko drums, chimes, and flute instrumental piece. However, after Leviathan performs his signature Tidal Wave attack, it switches to "Through the Maelstrom", a guitar and steel percussive rock theme, with his Sahagin followers providing the lyrics in the form of a prayer to the Lord of the Whorl. The latter lyrics give warning to the Sahagin's enemies and victims that the sudden calming of the seas is merely the silence before their deity's fury is unleashed.
Combat Pragmatist: A firm practitioner of this. Leviathan simply capsizes and drowns/eats anyone that comes to fight him since he only fights in the open sea and his enemies are guaranteed to come after him in boats. Defeating him in the past took luring him into an inlet where he couldn't harness his full might, and fighting him now requires the use of a corrupted crystal to dampen his spells.
Cognizant Limbs: His head and tail are separate targets; both share the same HP pool, but the head reflects ranged attacks while the tail reflects magic.
Creation Myth: In the tales passed down from clutchfather to spawnling, it is told that all was once a parched wasteland devoid of ocean or sea. The gods saw how the star's denizens did thirst, and thus entreated Leviathan to cover the world with water. The Lord of the Whorl answered, laboring to bring forth mighty floods, but even as the hollows of the land filled up with seas, so were the last drops of his essence drained away. When they beheld their dying savior, the newly invigorated ocean-dwellers despaired at his fate, and at the cost of their own lives sought to stem his ebbing vitality. His strength thus restored, Leviathan, mourning the sea creatures that had perished in his name, bestowed a divine boon upon those that remained. Certain of the fish underwent a transformation, gaining arms and legs and the gift of higher reason. Leviathan named these chosen few "Sahagin" and warned that the blessing of limbs carried with it a price: ever after must they return to the land to lay their eggs. Then did the deity unleash upon an island a crashing tidal wave, scouring away the unclean soil and preparing for his children their sacred spawning grounds. Though Leviathan soon vanished into the murky depths, the Sahagin have ever since shown their gratitude with yearly offerings of sacrifice.
Foreshadowing: When he gets summoned, the first thing Leviathan does is absorbing the soul of the Sahagin priest that was bodyjacking his minions with his Echo abilities, permanently killing him. This is the same method Thordan's primal form in Heavensward does towards Lahabrea, which kills the Ascian off for good.
Home Field Advantage: Leviathan's absolute control of the open sea renders him virtually impossible to defeat on his home turf, as he can simply drown anyone who stands against him. The only way the heroes even a chance of winning is by using an aetherial dampener to limit his powers. Even still, he remains a major threat, and he makes attempts to sap the dampener of its powers in turn during the battle.
I'm a Humanitarian: He's not above devouring those who stand against him.
Kraken and Leviathan: He is a Leviathan at least.
Making a Splash: He manipulates water much as he always has throughout the series, though with far more nuance than mere tidal waves this time.
One-Hit Kill: If you don't kill certain adds fast enough the elemental converter won't be strong enough to protect you from Leviathan's Tidal Wave attack.
Ring Out: Similar to Titan, but only in the Extreme Mode of his fight and far more manageable. The railings surrounding the boat are removed and it's very possible to get knocked into the water and drown from a few of Leviathan's attacks.
Sea Monster: Of the giant sea serpent variety.
Shared Life-Meter: Leviathan consists of fighting his head and his tail. The DPS have to attack a certain one depending on if they're ranged or melee fighters. Attacking one drains the same health pool regardless.
Signature Move: Tidal Wave. Leviathan floods the very air with water and swims around his prey, before crushing them under the tide.
Superpower Lottery: Among the primals encountered in the A Realm Reborn main story, Leviathan is by far the most difficult to defeat. His Veil of the Whorl spell is a powerful Attack Reflector that repels any long-ranged bombardment, forcing others to fight him on the open seas where he has a severe Home Field Advantage. The combination of his enormous size and command over the waves allow him to capsize nearly any vessel that tries to battle him in close quarters. The only way the heroes can defeat him is by stringing two warships filled with corrupted crystals together and arming the vessel with an elemental converter to dampen Leviathan's powers.
Tail Slap: Since the tail counts as its own enemy, this naturally comprises its main form of attack.
You Have Failed Me: Sastasha Hard mode reveals that Leviathan didn't take the Serpent Reavers' failure very well. Their punishment was being overexposed to his aether until they mutated into fish men abominations.

Ramuh

Voiced by: Kazuhiko Kishino (JP), Bob Johnson (EN), Benoît Allemane (FR), Tito Schmitz (DE)

Lord of Levin

"Thou art brave, Bringer of Light. Yet bravery alone shall not convince me of thy worth!"

Lord of Levin (lightning) and the primal of the kind yet alien Sylph tribe. Ramuh stands as a paragon of the primals as he doesn't actively seek conquest and even when summoned is described as being calm and pragmatic. He was called by the Sylph during the first Garlean invasion and hasn't been summoned since, and does not want to be unless the forest and his people are put in danger.

A Father to His Men: Similarly to Titan, Ramuh does not seek to expand his domain so much as protect his worshippers who love him as a father figure. He'd much rather return to raw aether to prevent himself from draining the sylph's lands dry, but he'll wield his Judgment Bolt to strike down any who threaten the sylphs should there be no other recourse.
Badass Long Robe: As a primal, Ramuh's fighting skills are not in question, nor is the long dark violet wizard robe he's adorned in.
Battle Theme Music: "Thunder Rolls". Reflecting his kinder nature, Ramuh's song is a soft-spoken chant about how he's testing you to see if humanity still has enough good left in it to be spared. The very last chorus is spoken louder and the lyrics imply that you pass.
Bolt of Divine Retribution: His most used form of attacking.
Cool Old Guy: This rather than Evil Old Folks because, as has already been said, he's not like other primals.
Creation Myth: Sylph tales speak of men as greedy, thoughtless creatures who brought destruction to the forest with axe and torch. Unable to flee from the bite of steal or the lick of flame, the root-bound trees had no recourse but to beseech the gods for succor. It was Ramuh, a deity of man, who heard their agonized pleas, and thence sent his levinbolts to strike budding fruits from ancient branches. Born of lightning and bless with secrets, the sylphs awoke from charred husks to serve as the forest's protectors.
Dark Is Not Evil: This is made apparent in the main storyline when the people of Gridania hear that Ifrit and Titan were already summoned and come to fear that Ramuh will be next. The Sylphs assure everyone that Ramuh is not evil and only wishes to protect his territory, and even give you his crystal so you don't have to fight him. Despite being a primal, Ramuh is described as being fair, serene, and kind. He's only ever been summoned once when the Sylph were facing the possibility of genocide at the hands of the Garleans and is otherwise content to stay as loose aether. Even his sphere is rather noble (reconciliation), as opposed to others like Ifrit's sphere of domination or Garuda's sphere of destruction. The player's eventual encounter with him in 2.3 proves his temperament to be just that. He fights the player not for defying him, but as a challenge to prove to him that there's some good to be found in mankind.
Death Seeker: Sort of. In 2.3, Ramuh challenges you directly because of his knowledge of your victories over the other primals. He asks that you prove yourself as a Warrior of Light because he realizes his very presence drains life from the world and wants to return to raw aether, as the situation he was summoned under wasn't nearly as dire as the Garlean invasion.
Expy: Since learning of the true nature of primals, Eorzean scholars in Encyclopedia Eorzea speculate that Ramuh is the Sylphs' interpretation of Rhalgr the Destroyer, one of the Twelve worshiped by the Eorzean spoken—an interpretation that would later be confirmed by Rhalgr himself.
Graceful Loser: Ramuh is quite satisfied with the results of his battle with the player and entrusts Eorzea's future to them.
High Collar of Doom: The edges of his color raise up noticeably, with a third smaller point at the back of his head.
Humans Are the Real Monsters: His attitude in 2.3. He feels that all humans, Garlean or Eorzean, only cause strife and destruction which is why his Sylphs called upon him. He fights the player to prove if there's some good in their kind.
Magic Staff: Ramuh always has his staff on hand. Oddly enough, the weapon his Extreme fight drops that best resembles his staff is a Conjurer's staff, though given both he and the Conjurer class are native to the Twelveswood and Gridana, this actually makes some sense.
Power Floats: Ramuh never touches the ground.
Reasonable Authority Figure: Compared to the rest of the primals, Ramuh is definitely one of these. A fight with him is inevitable, yes, but not for the same reasons as the other primals.
Red Baron: Apart from "the Lord of Levin", Urianger in an optional dialogue will tell you Ramuh's guise as an elderly sage created a myth of the "old man of the woods". The Sylphic language also refers to him as the "Lord of Light".
Reluctant Monster: As any that summon him are tempered despite the fact that he does not intentionally do so, Ramuh prefers not to be summoned unless there is a clear and present danger to the Black Shroud.
Shock and Awe: As usual per the series, Ramuh's element is thunder.
Signature Move: Judgment Bolt. Ramuh casts his judgment and calls down enough lightning to blind the field.
Stationary Boss: Ramuh never moves from the center of his arena, opting to attack from any range with bolts of lightning.
Stealth Pun: The jazzy and lively Pulse remix of his battle theme, "Thunder Rolls", is jarringly dissonant with the original context. However, it makes sense once you realize that it's been remixed into an electro swing] song.
Token Good Teammate: Among the mono-elemental primals. Being much more civil and with his fight being a test of the Warrior's worthiness. And the only reason he even tempered the Sylphs is because they asked him to.
Wizard Beard: The beard fits a sagely character like Ramuh.

Shiva

Voiced by: Maaya Uchida (JP), Siobhan Hewlett (EN), Laurence Crouzet (FR), Sonja Firker (DE)

Lady of Frost

"Embrace the serenity... Renounce the hatreds that consume you... And scatter them like dust in the wind..."

Lady of Frost. Originally, she was a historical figure from Ishgard's scripture who was the "Patron Saint" of the heretics who sided with the dragons in the never ending Ishgardian-Dravanian war. It is said she committed the ultimate sin and slept with a dragon. While there is no doubt she was a real person, much information on her history is missing or covered up.

An Ice Person: As usual, Shiva is the primal of ice, granting her very powerful ice-based powers, such as her Signature Move, Diamond Dust, freezing everyone in place.
An Ice Suit: Her suit is revealing quite a lot of skin, and all of the weapons she summons are made of ice.
Badass Finger Snap: She freezes the party frozen solid during Diamond Dust this way, followed by a heel click which shatters the ice.
Battle Theme Music:
- Two actually. "Footsteps in the Snow" and "Oblivion". The first is an orchestral piece with a wailing choir. After she uses Diamond Dust, the latter kicks in (or heel clicks in) to a rock anthem. And from what can be gained from the lyrics, appears to be sung from the perspective of Iceheart, about how she's grown tired of the Ishgardian - Heretic war, and everyone she knows fearing death. And that she's willing to give up her life and become a dealer of death herself to end the conflict by becoming Shiva. It ends with her talking about how she's still in control after summoning the power of a primal to her self, and that she's ready to walk the path she's chosen, regardless of consequences, even if it leads to her own oblivion.
- The versions of her faced in Shadowbringers has "Return to Oblivion". The lyrics paint Shiva and Ryne's combination as a Grand Theft Me, as Shiva implores Ryne to "turn the light on" and "let her in" to unleash another Flood of Light". All the while, Ryne is speaking of "her song in my ears" and how, even if her soul longs for oblivion, she'll try and do things the way she wants them to one last time before that happens.
Came Back Wrong: Played with. The Shiva of legend was simply an Elezen, the primal Shiva however is an ice elemental lady. Hraesvelgr would later confirm that the primal Shiva is nothing more than a reflection of what Ysayle believed Shiva was and nothing more. That said, as mentioned below, Shiva is not evil by nature.
Composite Character: Scholars of Eorzea believe that since all Ishgardians are taught of and worship the ice aspected Halone, elements of the goddess were subconsciously imprinted onto the primal Shiva by the harriers who summoned her with Ysayle.
Cool Crown: Her hair gives this illusion, spiked like a crown made of icicles.
Dark Is Not Evil: Similar to Ramuh in that Shiva is not evil by nature. The legends of her center around her struggle for peace between her people and dragons. However, because she's a primal, her being summoned would still mean terrible things for everyone.
'80s Hair: Business in the front and party at the back!
Fusion Dance:
- In A Realm Reborn, Ysayle/Iceheart fuses with Shiva to force the Warrior of Light to fight her. Or so she thinks. In reality, it was more like summoning a facsimile of Shiva based on what she wanted. Bringing this up to Hrasedvelgr has him just barely stopping himself from crushing Ysayle right there.
- In the Eden raids of Shadowbringers, Ryne tries the same thing as Iceheart, and gets the same result. Ryne's consciousness is consumed by Shiva, necessitating the Warrior of Light to wailing on Ryne until Shiva backs off and leaves Ryne alone.
- Shiva herself pulls this off in the Savage version of her raid in Shadowbringers, where she fuses with Hraesvelgr to combine their power together.
Heroic Sacrifice: How the real Shiva died. Specifically, owing to the Mayfly–December Romance between her and Hraesvelgr, she requested that he devour her so their souls would be forever intertwined. This love and sacrifice shamed both Elezen and Dravanian, leading to centuries of peace.
I Got You Covered: When fighting against Amon the Undying in Endwalker, a memory of Shiva will appear and conjure icicles to protect the players from his One-Hit Kill attack. Even in death, she continues to aid the heroes in their time of need.
Interspecies Romance: Her main claim to infamy was being both willing and able to have sex with dragons; it falls here instead of Bestiality Is Depraved because dragons have at least equal intellect to the spoken races. It is eventually revealed that the dragon she consorted with was Hraesvelgr, who loved her in kind. Though given that she was a normal Elezen and he was an elder Wyrm, the odds of them actually consummating is logistically impossible, so that part was most likely the Ishgardians demonizing her.
Leotard of Power: To go with her '80s Hair.
Mayfly–December Romance: She was in love with the dragon Hraesvelgr, despite him going to live for far longer than she ever would.
Pimped-Out Cape: She has a silken cape draped over the back of her Leotard of Power. It always seems to curl upward and flutters even when she's not moving, as though her very presence generates icy winds that keep it aloft.
Pointy Ears: Which makes sense, as Shiva was once an Elezen woman.
Spiky Hair: Part of her hair is in fact frozen into long spines jutting up from her scalp.
Real-Time Weapon Change: When fighting Shiva, she will alternate between the use of a sword and shield of ice which buff her defenses and make her HP regenerate quicker, and a frost brand (a type of staff) that will amplify her damage dealt.
Signature Move: Diamond Dust. Shiva glides around her target leaving a trail of glittering ice behind her. With a snap of her fingers, her victim is frozen solid. Stomping her heel shatters the ice for the coup de gras.
Spontaneous Weapon Creation: Creates a sword, staff, and bow from ice in this way, altering her attack patterns and capabilities based on which one she is currently using.
Worf Had the Flu: When Ysayle calls upon Shiva to battle Ravana, she is soundly trounced, attributing it to a lack of crystals to match the rival primal.

Odin

The Dark Divinity

"Mine obsidian blade shalt split atwain the threads of thy future... Whilst its crimson fuller shalt channel the lifeblood of thy past!"

Shrouded in Myth, the Dark Divinity Odin was a primal warrior sealed away by an Allagan hero several centuries ago for reasons lost to history. With Midgardsormr's death, Odin broke free of his seal and now wanders the Twelveswood on his nightmarish steed Sleipnir, seeking worthy warriors to clash blades with.

A God Am I: Odin puts a fun spin on this trope as the battle with him rages on.
Odin: "Here I stand—a god amongst men. Yet here I remain—a mere man amongst gods."
Battle Theme Music: The Corpse Hall
Black Knight: The reason Odin is called the Dark Divinity.
Casting a Shadow: All of his magical attacks are dark magic.
Cool Sword: Zantetsuken as usual has a slick new design.
Cool Horse: Sleipnir, of course.
Grand Theft Me: Odin's way of staying alive despite having no active worshipers summoning him involves this, as his indestructible sword contains his essence and it tempers only a single person to wield it.
Gratuitous Japanese: The wind-up minion version of him points out why he has a sword with a Far Eastern name.
Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: Although Odin wears his helm in promotional material and in the Trial version of his fight, a change was made in the Fate version of the Odin fight to remove the helm so that the players can see who Odin is now possessing.
Invincible Villain: Due to his Grand Theft Me nature, with Zantetsuken constantly taking new hosts, no one has yet found a way to truly vanquish Odin in spite of his many defeats. Zantetsuken itself appears to be indestructible despite many attempts to destroy it, and even when sealed away it inevitably succeeds in tempering somebody to steal it so he can manifest again. He is the only primal to remain at large, and seemingly has for his entire existence, with no end in sight. Krile mentions outright that she was worried about running into Odin during the Myths of the Realm storyline, meaning that even four expansions and 8 real life years later Odin is still out there somewhere.
One-Hit Kill: Near the end of all FATE battles with Odin, around 10% health remaining, he will start charging Zantetsuken at a slow but steady pace, with a range encompassing the entire FATE area. Unlike other attacks where it would be most prudent to get out of the way, however, this is your cue to attack him with everything you've got, because if you fail, he'll slice you and everyone else there for maximum damage, taunt you, and leave.
Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Due to his nature, he can appear as a Lalafell. Odin, of course, remains powerful and threatening at any size.
Signature Move: Zantetsuken and Shin-Zantetsuken. Zantetsuken, if it finishes casting, rushes a Diagonal Cut across the screen, killing anyone involved in active combat with Odin. Shin-Zantetsuken, used in his trial, is the same but much more theatrical; the screen is blocked by a red mist that solidifies while a black seal with the Japanese character for Zantetsuken appears and spins. Once the seal stops spinning, it glows red as Odin cuts the entire screen and the symbol diagonally, killing everyone.
Sinister Scimitar: Zantetsuken is once again a curved blade.
Mounted Combat: Odin is always seen riding Slephnir, never off.
Rearing Horse: Best seen in the Answers video.
Sizeshifter: Slephnir is as aetherical as Odin himself. This lets Slephnir control his corporeal form and adjust his size to accommodate a rider of any race.
Worthy Opponent:
- Considers the players to be as such, if the quote above didn't tip you off.
- This is also the myth behind him carrying a sword named Zantetsuken; an Auri swordsman from the Far East was the first to chip his armour, and though Odin emerged victorious nevertheless, he took up the Au Ra's blade thereafter.
Was Once a Man: According to Word of God, the original Odin was a hero who came from the North to Urth's Fount to help the people there fight off the Allagan Empire. When Odin wielded the Zantetsuken, he succumbed to its powers and became a primal.
Weapon Wields You: Zantetsuken contains the essence of Odin himself, when defeated the sword will Sunder Odin's killer and then absorb aether from the environment. When it is fully charged, it will then call the one who killed Odin to itself and turn them into Odin's new host.

Bahamut

The Dreadwyrm

One of the most powerful known primals when the adventurer began their journey, Bahamut is an ancient dragon elder primal sealed away in the artificial moon Dalamud by the Allagan Empire in days long past. He manipulated Nael van Darnus into bringing down the moon so that the dragon god could break free of his duress and have his vengeance by nearly eradicating the planet. The player characters and Louisoix attempt to re-seal him in a new Dalamud by gathering the entire Twelve together, but Bahamut doesn't have any of it and breaks free just as the new seal is complete, and lashes out with a massive Teraflare, resulting in what would later be called the Calamity. The only reason Eorzea continues to exist is because Louisoix sends the heroes to the future, and a blinding light takes Bahamut away in the middle of his rampage afterwards.

The elder primal is later found to have been re-sealed in the Binding Coil of Bahamut, three series of dungeons that act to keep Bahamut held fast. The player goes through the three Coils, fighting Nael deus Darnus again in the second and finding Louisoix again in the third, who has become the primal Phoenix and serves Bahamut. The party defeats Louisoix and brings him back to his senses, and the Archon aids the party in proceeding onto Bahamut himself, whom they fight in his true aetherial form in the aether realm as Bahamut Prime.

Adaptational Villainy: Compared to some of his other incarnations, this version of Bahamut seems to be an absolute bastard. He routinely tempers people, including Louisoix, is happy to use mortals as pawns to further his plans, is just as happy to abandon his pawns when they're no longer of use, will retain a bit of them for use even after death, and has no problem with killing every living thing in the Eorzean realm. Even the Bahamuts in IX and XI had external reasons for being antagonists. To be fair, though, if you were trapped inside a moon for some several thousand years, you'd be a little bit pissed off too. Heavensward reveals that this was deliberate on the part of the Ascians, and the original Bahamut was presumably much nicer.
And I Must Scream: Bahamut's imprisonment in Dalamund was particularly nasty. His restraints served two purposes; to trap and hold Bahamut, and to feed him, sustaining him with aether and a substitute for prayer. To paraphrase the summary, Bahamut was trapped as a living core never allowed to die, or to truly live, simply to be.
Back from the Dead: The original Bahamut was killed by the Allagan Empire. Tiamat used a form of dark magic to resurrect him as a primal. The Ascians were the ones who taught her said magic.
Breath Weapon: A white-blue flame that hits in a cone in front of him.
Brother–Sister Incest: Before he was resurrected as a primal, Bahamut's mate was Tiamat, his sister and another dragon of the First Brood. Considering the Bizarre Alien Biology and culture of Dragons in general, it didn't seem to be considered taboo at all.
Came Back Wrong: When Tiamat tried to bring Bahamut back to life, she wound up bringing back what was essentially a cruel and twisted mockery of her brother instead of the real thing.
Enigmatic Empowering Entity: For Nael.
Evil Is Bigger: Bahamut is by far the largest primal in the story. Dalamud, an artifical moon, is barely large enough to contain him. This is especially noticeable when compared to the living great wyrms who, while the size of a double-decker bus, are still tiny next to him.
From a Single Cell: Bahamut's corporeal form was destroyed beyond most organic lifeforms' chances of survival by Louisoux's actions. Being a primal, however, that wasn't enough; Due to the other draconic prisoners kept within the Coils to sustain him, his remains - consisting of his head and a couple claws at this point - are beginning to mend themselves.
Giant Flyer: For his fully manifested form anyway, a full party of eight adventurers wouldn't even be considered a dime in the palm of his hand. The battle against Twintania in the first Binding Coil literally takes place on Bahamut's hand.
Giant Foot of Stomping: Bahamut Prime has massive feet, and uses them to step on his target for his tankbuster move "Flatten".
Golden Super Mode: Bahamut Prime turns gold as he “unleashes his inner rage” in the final phase of The Unending Coil of Bahamut. He also gains a buff called "Lohs Daih", where it is stated that Bahamut's insanity went through the roof. Considering how it doesn't take long for his enrage timer to run out, it's a surprisingly apt description.
Harder Than Hard: Patch 4.15 added The Unending Coil of Bahamut, designed to be the hardest challenge in the game at that point even compared to the Extreme and Savage fights. 4.2 limited the item level cap to retain its intended difficulty as player gear got better.
Leitmotif: It seems to be "Answers" itself. The song is first used in End of an Era, Bahamut's first appearance, a remix is used for the Binding Coil soundtrack, and the original song is used for the Bahamut Prime boss battle.
Our Dragons Are Different: Bahamut is bipedal, with a tremendous wingspan and relatively small arms.
Macross Missile Massacre: Bahamut's Megaflare spell is cast as several hundred lasers which he can direct.
The Man Behind the Man: Was this to Nael van Darnus. 5.2 reveals he was this to Midas nan Garlond as well, having tempered the man to deliberately cause the Bozja Incident that everyone else had believed to be a horrific accident.
Mass Empowering Event: Bahamut's rampage infused every living soul in Eorzea with a small bit of his aether. A trained Summoner is able to access his power to perform the Dreadwyrm Trance even if they haven't personally faced the primal because of this.
Mickey Mousing: In the final phase of the battle with Bahamut Prime, when the crescendo of Answers plays, Bahamut's attacks are in roughly in time with the music, like using his Ahk Morne blitz during the "Hear. Feel. Think." Chorus, and a Gigaflare during the part of the song where the singer pleads "Tell us why, given life, we are meant to die, helpless in our cries!" This helps make it clear that Answers is every bit about the tragedy of Bahamut and Merycidia as it is Eorzea and man.
Mook Maker: Has several "[X] of Meracydia" abilities that spawn a varying amount of specialized dragons. One is even vital to surviving his ultimate attack.
Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: As per Louisoix's summoning, the summoning of the Twelve would have simply sealed up Bahamut in a massive aether coccoon, which, all things considered, would have simply passed the buck to a later generation. However, in his rage, Bahamut destroyed the enchantment and scattered the aether that made up both it and the primal Twelve onto the battlefield below. Louisoix then took on the immense amount of aether as well as the fervent hope of Eorzea and became the primal Phoenix, who dealt Bahamut a mortal blow.
Non-Elemental: But of course has the appearance of fire.
No Ontological Inertia: Subverted. The Flames of Truth cutscene show that Louisoux managed to defeat him before he could finish forming Teraflare during the Battle of Carteneau... but Teraflare itself didn't dissapear, instead it exploded and still caused devastation throughout the realm, just not the absolute cataclysm that would have happened if it managed to fully be cast.
Powered by a Forsaken Child: Bahamut hasn't dissolved back into aether because his draconic followers are kept in a state of torment to sustain his corporeal form]].
Promoted to Playable: Played with, Heavensward allows Summoners at level 58 to channel his power through Dreadwyrm trace or when using Deathflare. In Stormblood once you reach level 70 you’ll be able to summon Bahamut himself to bring ruin upon your enemies.
Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: Arabian mythology. Par for the course as both a primal and the member of the First Brood. The use of Arabic names instead of Norse (besides being iconic) distinguishes him and Tiamat from the leaders of the Dravanian Horde.
Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Bahamut's undying rage after being sealed inside of Dalamud for thousands of years is so unquenchable that, when he finally breaks free, he spends every waking moment causing mass destruction on everything that lives, and will doing whatever he has to to cling to life just to carry it out. It's so palpable that not only does he decimate a second sealing attempt, but even when his physical form is obliterated by Louisoix's final attack, he still survives by feeding on the aether he left behind and then enthralls him out of pure spite. Even as he's being reconstructed in the Binding Coil, his inert top half can still fire full-on Megaflares from its crystal heart, which is exactly what happens when the Warrior of Light reaches him.
Sealed Evil in a Can: Was sealed within Dalamud. Then it broke out. Then he was somehow put in a new can in the form of the Binding Coil of Bahamut, made dormant, and began to revert back to aether...but he's starting to awaken again.
Signature Move:
- Teraflare. Charging a Sphere of Destruction with himself in its core, Bahamut roars and detonates the sphere in a fiery explosion.
- Akh Morn is an incredibly damaging Breath Weapon attack that creates a massive pillar of light on impact. Its name in Dragonspeak means "Fated Death" or "Mortal Coil", alluding to the fact that you will probably be shuffled off your mortal coil if the tanks don't stack up and use defensive skills. In the Unending Coils of Bahamut, he ups the ante to "Morn Afah" (Die Eternally), which requires the entire team to tank it to survive. If that doesn't kill you, he'll begin cycling through Morn Afah, Akh Morn, and Exaflare until you drop dead or hit enrage.
Superboss: A stronger version of him is fought as part of the Unending Coil of Bahamut Ultimate raid, with Twintania and Nael acting as his support.
Tragic Monster: As you learn in the Final Coil; Bahamut was the primal of Meracydian dragons, a culture separate from Dravania. Ancient Allag, in their ever-increasing lust for power launched a Curb-Stomp Battle against Meracydia and forced them to summon Bahamut to save them, which was exactly what the Allagans wanted. They trapped Bahamut in the Binding Coils inside Dalamud, along with thousands of dragons, and put them in jars to keep them alive but in constant agony so their cries for help sustain Bahamut's form. Several thousand years of imprisonment, torture, and the inability to save his people despite their constant screams drove Bahamut so irreversibly insane that when Dalamud fell he was little more than a mindless beast out to make the entire world suffer as he had. Even Alisaie admits that, on some level, justice is really more on Bahamut's side. Heavensward also reveals that the original Bahamut was the brother of Tiamat and the two of them had loved and cared for each other until the Allagan Empire killed him. Bahamut's death caused Tiamat, in a moment of weakness, to consort with the Ascians on how to bring Bahamut back. What Tiamat summoned was the primal version of her brother instead of the real thing and to make matters worse, the Ascians taught the Allagan Empire how to capture Bahamut, which would sow the seeds for the Calamity that Eorzea would endure many generations later.
The Unfought: Of course, fighting him when we first see him would have been suicide, considering you are the size of an ant compared to him. But this is completely averted as of the Final Coil of Bahamut, where players finally get a proper boss fight with Bahamut Prime, where he’s a much more fightable size.
Total Party Kill:
- His strongest attack, Teraflare, will kill the entire party if they don't stand in the neurolink rings dropped by the Storm of Meracydia add before the three-second mark on the countdown during the actual battle. Even with that protection, some parties may also need a tank limit break to comfortably survive. He also has his enrage timer, but see Unstoppable Rage for that.
- Bahamut will start with this in The Unending Coil of Bahamut if the party doesn't deploy a tank limit break when he arrives in a mini-Dalamud. Furthermore, when Bahamut casts Teraflare, the neurolink rings will disappear, the party is paralyzed and the limit break gauge are reset, preventing you from surviving it. Phoenix resurrected your party immediately after this, if your party successfully defeated Nael and Twintania before Aethertrail Attunement gauge reaches 100.
Unstoppable Rage: Like any good MMO boss, as Bahamut Prime he has a 14-minute enrage timer. When the battle hits that mark, he starts spamming Gigaflare until the party is dead. This enrage timer is even shorter in The Unending Coil of Bahamut during the final phase, lasting for approximately 3 minutes. After the sixth Morn Afah is cast, Bahamut Prime would keep spamming it for lethal damage to everyone it hits until the party is dead, leading to a DPS race to shave off the last 10% of Bahamut Prime's HP before it wipes everyone out.
Walking Wasteland: As the largest primal to take corporeal form, Bahamut's existence alone would have sucked Eorzea dry of aether had Louisoix not stopped him. Even then, Bahamut's sheer power meant that his rampage irrevocably changed the geography and climate patterns of Eorzea, plunging Ishgard into an ice age and carving entire canyons into the landscape.
Worf Had the Flu: Justified, as the Coils of Bahamut as a set piece has his regenerating corpse on display, and the entire point is to prevent him from potentially resurrecting to end the realm. By the time you come face-to-face with Bahamut Prime, it's a fraction of the size as more of an internalized avatar and even his Teraflare is much more manageable; had he resurrected, there would've been no stopping him. For an idea of the scale, one of Bahamut's hands is the size of an entire battle arena's worth, able to fit a full party and large dragons alike, making his natural state the largest being in the game.

Belias

A being introduced in the Summoner job storyline, summoned by Tristan, though an auracite spawned pseudo-primal version does appear in the Return to Ivalice raid series.

Dark Is Evil: While Belias has only shown up in egi form so far, that egi appears as a twisted, dark-purple-and-black version of the Ifrit egi.
Playing with Fire
Mythology Gag: In the Ivalice games, he was effectively a stand in for Ifrit. His Egi form resembles a massive version of the Ifrit-Egi and the pseudo-primal version of him uses Iftit's Hellfire mechanic.
Sorting Algorithm of Evil: Is called an "elder primal" by the Ascian who gives Tristan the knowledge to summon it, and the egi of it is vastly more powerful than an Ifrit-Egi. Additionally, Belias is slated to appear as one of the bosses in the Ridorana Lighthouse for the Return to Ivalice ark, fighting alongside his own Egis to confirm it is, or is at least based on, the same Belias. Though the Espers/Lucavi appearing in the Ivalice Raid are neither primal nor voidsent, their nature as corrupted manifestations of one's desires make then similar to primals.

Phoenix

Primal of Rebirth

A radiant firebird that some claim to have seen visions of during the Calamity.

Once the Warrior of Light and Alisaie travel to the 3rd internment hull of the Binding Coils, they find Louisoux and discover that he invoked apotheosis and became the primal Phoenix, using the aether and prayers of the people of Eorzea in a desperate attack to stop the Calamity. As Phoenix, he defeated Bahamut and prevented the Calamity, but wound up becoming his Dragon up until the Warrior of Light defeats him.

For more information on Louisoix, see his entry in the Scions of the Seventh Dawn page.

Abstract Apotheosis: Of Eorzea's hope. Originally, Louisoix was only going to seal Bahamut; when that failed, the overwhelming amount of aether left over from the spell combined with the fervent, desperate please from the entire realm, and Louisoix took them all into himself to ascend into the primal concept that would best embody these hopes: the phoenix.
But Now I Must Go: Once the truth behind Cartenau and Phoenix is revealed, Louisoix is adamant that the public remains forever unaware of the existence of the primal, on the basis that if the various peoples of Eorzea knew that such an entity existed, they would summon him all over again, with all that this entails since he is an extremely powerful primal. Since this is the exact opposite of Louisoix's principles, and he doesn't want to become an object of worship besides, he chooses to fade away peacefully with only his grandchildren and the Warrior of Light privy to his sacrifice.
The Cavalry: In The Unending Coil of Bahamut, Phoenix will revive the entire party after the party is wiped out by Bahamut's Teraflare. It also grants Phoenix's Blessing, which doubles the damage dealt by the entire party. Maintaining this buff is necessary throughout the fight to meet the DPS check in the final phase, since the golden Bahamut has a very short enrage timer for its health.
Freak Lab Accident: The short story "Through His Eyes" implies that Phoenix may have been the very first primal, created by accident by the ancients. The magical lifeforms created previously by the ancients were soulless, but when they sought to create an immortal, fiery bird with potent healing powers, a drifting soul merged with it, granting the newly born lifeform a soul of its own. The inadvertently sentient bird was born terrified and full of rage, and was deemed a threat to both itself and others, forcing Emet-Selch to euthanize it, but its implied that the lessons learned from its creation went into the summoning process for Zodiark and Hydaelyn. A prototype of this original phoenix (dubbed "Phoinix") was sealed within Pandaemonium, which the Warrior of Light fights as the third raid boss in Endwalker.
Playing with Fire: As with most Phoenix depictions, its attacks are primarily of the fire element.
The Phoenix: Duh.
Promoted to Playable: Not directly, but much like Bahamut before him, Shadowbringers allows the Summoner to summon Demi-Phoenix after summoning Demi-Bahamut as early as level 72, though Demi-Phoenix doesn't manifest its full power until its summoner reached Level 80. Likewise, The Rising 10th anniversary event makes Phoenix an obtainable mount, but it transforms the player into Phoenix rather than having the player riding it like other mounts.
The Reveal: The "Answers" opening movie shows the Battle of Cartenau up until Louisoix whisks away the Warriors of Light, instants before the light of Bahamut's Teraflare seemingly consumes the world... then cuts away to the Grand Companies of Eorzea riding across a vast, healthy plain with blue skies, and the Warriors are safely deposited in a forest somewhere in the realm. It is left ambiguous how Eorzea, or even the star itself, survived the Calamity and managed to rebuild so well in the five years since. The cutscene "Flames of Truth" reveals that it was Louisoix becoming Phoenix, scattering Teraflare from a world-killing bomb to hundreds of much-lower potency missiles, and using not just his own primal aether but aether from Bahamut to rejuvenate the land afterwards, that made the miracle possible.
Small Role, Big Impact: As a primal, Phoenix only appears for one instance of the Final Coil of Bahamut. In terms of story impact however, it is the reason for the title "A Realm Reborn".
Turns Red: Literally, in its boss fight. It starts out the battle blue-flamed and turns red as in enters the final phase. In all of its appearances since it has been red.

Enkidu

Enkidu...?

"Nay, no mere friend, but rather the primal Enkidu!"

"Is that my cue... old friend?"

A green, vaguely gargoyle like primal accidentally summoned by Gilgamesh's wish to be reunited with his companion.

Affectionate Nickname: Refers to Gilgamesh as "old friend".
Bait-and-Switch Boss: She's disposed of within the first half of the rematch with Gilgamesh, and not very hard to take down either. According to the Encyclopedia Eorzea this is the result of Enkidu being based on a companion rather than a god, savior, or hero king. So while other primals were summoned with the intention of being all powerful, Gilgamesh's summoning was the desire to be reunited with a friend, whose limitations he was very familiar with. This naturally impacted the strength of being he summoned.
Blow You Away: Capable of creating tornadoes.
Dark Is Not Evil: Despite being a primal, Enkidu is actually quite friendly and unlike all of the other primals, acts more like a companion/servant to Gilgamesh rather than a god. Gilgamesh does note that this Enkidu does seem a bit more battle ready than he has remembered.
Gender Flip: Enkidu, a being based on a man from the Mesopotamian poem and usually portrayed as a man, is referred to as female here.
Knight of Cerebus: Though the last part of the Hildibrand chain was darker in general, Enkidu brings another disturbing revelation regarding the primals as a whole: if the desire is strong enough, it's possible for a single person to wish a primal into being. The Sultansworn with you when you learn this is absolutely horrified at this prospect.
Power Copying: Like Gilgamesh, Enkidu utilizes Blue Magic. Blue Mages can even learn Missile and White Wind from her.
Shoot the Medic First: Whenever Gilgamesh's HP drops too low, Enkidu will cast White Wind on him. Due to how the spell works, taking Gilgamesh out first is nearly impossible.
Winged Humanoid: Has a bipedal body at the least.

The Twelve

Primal versions of the twelve patron deities of most of the spoken races summoned by Louisoix as a final resort during the Calamity and powered by Eorzea's desperate desire for salvation.

See their page here for their individual tropes.

Ambiguous Situation: Prior to Endwalker, it was unknown if Louisoix had called upon the power of the true gods during the Battle of Carteneau, or if he merely summoned primal copies fueled by desperate prayers for salvation and the enormous aether reserves in the Tupsimati. As of Endwalker, it was finally confirmed to be the later.
Big Good: Though they may not be the real deal, these primals were essential in minimizing the destruction and casualties caused by Bahamut.

Primals introduced in Heavensward:

Ravana

Lord of the Hive

"Rejoice in the glory of combat!"

Lord of the Hive. Ravana, fourfold master of the blade, is the God and General of the Gnath, taking the form of a gigantic four-armed insectoid-humanoid. Always territorial, the Gnath were one day emboldened when they successfully slayed a wounded dragon who had crashed into their colony. Believing this a sign that they could overcome the Dravanians, the Gnath used the Ascian teachings to summon Ravana to lead their expansion to claim the dragons' land as their new territory. Since the conflict prevents the Warrior of Light from continuing their mission, they and Iceheart challenge Ravana himself to combat to cease the attack on the dragons.

Battle Theme Music: A two-stage theme. The first stage, The Hand That Gives the Rose, is a mix between a chant from his followers and a waltz played by a solo violin. Phase two has Unbending Steel, a mix between an opera and a war chant, speaking of Ravana's unceasing love for battle and conquest.
BFS: Several.
Big Creepy-Crawlies: Ravana like his subjects is a gigantic insectoid creature, closely resembling a beetle.
Blood Knight: Just look at his quote. If that doesn't drive the point home, there's the lyrics to his theme "Unbending Steel". To say he loves to fight would almost be an understatement.
Dark Is Not Evil: A proud warrior and conqueror covered in black, and perhaps one of the most honorable primals after Ramuh. Ravana does not actively hate or oppose the other races besides the Gnath's ongoing conquest against the dragons. In fact, he even offers to aid the Ishgardians in their war against the Dravanian Horde when he initially mistakes the Warrior of Light's intentions for meeting him. Once defeated, he faces his loss with grace and upholds his vow to cease his conquest.
Doppelgänger Attack: Similar to Ifrit.
Dual Wielding: He alternates between quad-wielding a set of tulwars and dual-wielding a pair of enormous greatswords at regular intervals.
Graceful Loser: He seems to take his defeat well in comparison to other primals who give a This Cannot Be! when defeated. Ysayle acknowledges that there is a sense of honor beneath his savagery.
Ravana: Thus doth the sacred rite of combat proclaim the victor... I lay my blades at thy feet, child of man...
Hidden Depths: Make no mistake, the primal loves battle, yet knowingly or otherwise he gives a unique perspective on the Dragonsong War as a total outsider - if a bloodthirsty one - through his Battle Theme Music. He's clearly realized that the Dragonsong War was being fought for so long both sides have forgotten the true reason to keep on fighting.
And the war still wageth on!
The storm still rageth on!
The bold blindly march on!
Their lives lost in a song!
I Gave My Word: He keeps his promise to the Warrior of Light to end his conquest when defeated, and continues to hold this promise when he's re-summoned for extreme mode, choosing to wait for your rematch and see if you continue to be powerful enough to stop him.
Large Ham: Tends to ENUNCIATE with EMPHASIS in his introductory cutscene before Thok Ast Thok.
Limit Break: Bloody Fuller, where he tosses the party into the air and slashes at them wildly. The attack is preceded with butterfly adds that summon extra swords if not killed in time, and each sword decreases your defense as well as doing damage; too many swords and the party gets mowed down.
Multi-Armed and Dangerous: He has four arms, all the better to wield his many BFSes.
No-Sell: He shrugs off everything that Shiva throws at him during their brief duel. She comes at him with a sword, and he blocks it before counterattacking. She tries to freeze him twice, and both times he breaks free effortlessly. She shoots icicles at him, and he slices them out of the air before they can touch him.
Ravana: Be thou god or maid, thou art nothing to me!
Original Generation: Ravana is the first primal to not be based on a summoned creature from previous games in the series, and is a newcomer to the franchise as a whole. The only other appearance a creature named "Ravana" has ever made in anything vaguely FF-related is in Vagrant Story, and that was as a non-plot-critical enemy with a completely different design.
Red Baron: Master of the Sacred Blades, Wrath of the Colony, Lord of the Hive.
Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: He's named after the main villain of the Ramayana, a Hindu epic poem. Much like his mythological namesake, who could not be beaten by gods or demons but was slain by the mortal hero Rama, Ravana easily defeats his fellow primal Shiva only to be defeated in-turn by the mortal Warrior of Light.
Ring Out: If tanked too close to the wall in phase one, plus when phase two begins, segments of the arena's wall start breaking off bit by bit until they're completely gone, making it possible for some of Ravana's attacks that possess knockback to send players over.
Samurai: Although Ravana is a big bug, he has multiple samurai-esque flairs in his design. One of the key pieces of concept art for him is even styled like an ukiyo-e woodblock painting◊. This also comes across a little oddly, as despite the samurai-esque stylings of his combat and visual appearance, he otherwise is rather faithful to his real-world Indian & Sri Lankan roots, complete with all his attack names being in Hindi. His swords are also of a more middle-eastern style, being rather talwar-esque.
Signature Move: Chandrahas. Ravana will cast Bloody Fuller to suspend fighters in midair and draw his great swords. Joining them at the hilt, Ravana spins his blades around to lay waste to his surroundings.
So Last Season: Shiva was a powerful opponent within the context of A Realm Reborn, considered the single greatest threat at the time for the heretic's attack on Ishgard. Ravana, being the first real primal fight of Heavensward, delivers a Curbstomp Battle with no real effort, and while Ysayle attributes it to a lack of crystals, Ravana himself considers it their sheer skill gap. Considering his status on a meta level as an increase in difficulty for the expansion and the game's increasing challenge altogether, it also highlights that player is going to need to really up their skill to keep up with the content.
Something about a Rose: Ravana's boss theme mentions a rose several times as a shorthand for the beauty and violence of combat, as well, two of his attacks are named Rose of Conquest and Rose of Hatred.
Stance System: Ravana will regularly change his battle stance in combat.
- Katanas Are Just Better: His default stance, holding the four swords He is seen with. Blue in color.
- BFS: The attack stance, where Ravana trades His four katana for two great swords. Ravana does more damage in this stance and has access to His powerful Slaughter techniques. Red in color.
- Bare-Fisted Monk: A defensive stance where Ravana fights unarmed. He is capable of powerful shockwave attacks that can potentially blow players off stage. Green in color.
Villain Song: Unbending Steel. It's sung in the Mongolian throat-singing style and is all about how much Ravana loves war and massacre.
Worthy Opponent: Comes to see the Warrior of Light as this after being defeated. After he's been revived for his Extreme mode, it's noted he hasn't begun his conquest again, but is waiting patiently for his rematch.

Bismarck

Lord of the Mists

Lord of the Mists. Worshiped by the Vanu Vanu, Bismarck the White swims through the Sea of Clouds as a great feathered whale. Bismarck's recent summoning by the Vundu tribe of Vanu Vanu caused the Beast Tribe to become ever more hostile to the Ishgardians outposted on the isle. Though the Vundu revere their god, the peaceful Zundu curse the beast for His regular consumption of the islands that make up the Sea.

Attack Its Weak Point: Breaking off a couple of Bismarck's spines reveals Bismarck's weak point, which shares the health bar with him. The catch is that Bismarck himself can't be targeted and the weak point can only be hit when he's chained to the island.
Battle Theme Music: Both of Bismarck's theme are lyricless songs, the first a techno arrangment of beeps and boops, the second phase, however, is a very soothing One-Woman Wail fitting for the stormcloud Bismarck has summoned for the second phase.
Beef Gate: Bismarck's entire boss fight is one big DPS check. If you don't clear out his Vanu flunkies fast enough, he'll keep spawning more and more until you're overwhelmed. If you don't clear out the Sanuwa flunkies fast enough, Bismarck will oneshot you. If you can't defeat Bismarck himself fast enough, he'll destroy the island and immediately end the duty in failure.
Big Eater: He is shown eating islands in the Sea of Clouds. It's revealed this is how he regains his strength when he is wounded, as the islands themselves are suspended by aetheric crystals.
Blow You Away: Bismarck and his Vundu followers willfrequently use wind-based knockback attacks to try and throw you and your allies off the stage. Bismarck will also whip up twisters to send players flying up into the air.
Came Back Wrong: Similar to Good King Moggle Mog XII. Bismarck, according to Vanu Vanu legend, was a kind and loving ruler who guided the Vanu Vanu to the Sea of Clouds and made it their new home. The Bismarck that players encounter doesn't fit the one told in the legend.
Creation Myth: Bismarck is the center figure in the creation myth of the Sea of Clouds. Bismarck was born a whale, pure white unlike His black brethren. They were so jealous of Bismarck's beauty that they killed Him. The gods took pity on Bismarck and raised Him to the heavens reborn. Homesick for the ocean He was born in, Bismarck opened His mouth and spewed forth the mists and islands that would become the Sea of Clouds, and raised the Vanu Vanu to live with Him in His paradise.
Flunky Boss: You barely fight Bismarck directly. He will cast spells on your party from a distance while you deal with adds.
Flying Seafood Special: An enormous feathered whale with fins more like wings.
Gold and White Are Divine: Bismarck's body is primarily white with various gold highlights, and as a primal is worshiped by a beast tribe.
Home Field Advantage: Similarly to Leviathan, Bismarck's sheer size and manueverability in the air renders it virtually impossible to defeat him on his own terms. The heroes have to reel him in with two Dragonkillers by using the island they're standing on as bait while also packing a shield generator to prevent Bismarck from utterly destroying the island.
Limit Break: Breach Blast, which he charges up while you're dealing with the Sanuwa adds. Fail to defeat them in time and he oneshots the party. It also does additional damage if the party isn't crowded together in the centre of the island.
Magic Eater: Cid estimates that the amount of aether required to sustain Bismark would be roughly 4 times the amount that Leviathan needed.
Making a Splash: Bismarck can summon water elementals as well as a water-aspected Sanuwa to attack players. In addition, he seizes control over the surrounding cloud cover to turn blue skies into a fierce thunderstorm completely with a raging downpour.
More Teeth than the Osmond Family: He is much more ferocious looking compared to his other previous incarnations in the series.
Mythology Gag: To Sin from Final Fantasy X. Like with Sin, Bismarck can only be attacked directly by drawing him closer to you and both battles take place high in the sky. They also both share the whale motif, not to mention featuring in a storyline involving a thousand-year-old conflict perpetuated by a Corrupt Church.
Non-Standard Game Over: The battle takes place on a small floating island which has its own health bar; if the island goes, so does the party. Many have compared this fight to the Jhen/Dah'ren Mohran battles from Monster Hunter which use a similar mechanic.
Real After All: Bismark is based on a real creature in the world. Shadowbringers reveals the Bismarck of myth still lives on in the First, and surprisingly, is part of a species belonging to the Fae races. The top half of his body has become an island overflowing with flora.
Red Baron: Apart from Lord of the Mists, the Vanu also call their god "the White". All of the equipment related to Bismarck also replace his title of Lord of the Mists with Lord of the Expanse.
Shock and Awe: During the final phase of the fight, Bismark summons a storm, and has lightning bolts strike the floating island where the players are, dealing damage to the party.
Silent Antagonist: Compared to the other primals, Bismarck never speaks and it is unknown if He can even speak at all.
Signature Move: Breach Blast. Bismarck opens his mouth and spews rushing water onto his opponents.
Swallowed Whole: If the party suffers the Non-Standard Game Over listed above, this is their fate at Bismarck's hands.
Time-Limit Boss: Twofold, not including the quest timer. You must defeat Bismarck before he deplete's the island's HP, and you must also defeat his Sanuwa flunkies before they disappear. Fail either and you lose.
Weather Manipulation: Thunderstorms, powerful gusts and heavy rain at the very least.

Knights of the Round

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/kotr.jpg

King Thordan and his Knights Twelve

"No matter. If you believe your cause just, I call upon you to defend it with your life!"

The revived Thordan I and the Knights Twelve, manifested by Thordan VII and the Heavens' Ward. Through the combined power of Nidhogg's eye, the Warring Triad's combined aether, and a millennia of fervent worship from the theocracy of Ishgard, Thordan and the Knights end up becoming the most powerful primal to date, seeking to convert all, man or dragon, into their vision of pure order and peace.

Absurdly Sharp Blade: In his primal form, Ser Grinnaux is able to slice through the fabric of space itself, tearing open portals to the void to damage you if you get too close during your battle with him at the Vault.
The Artifact: In the Extreme difficulty, Adelphel and Janlenoux switch between their own version of the Paladin's Sword Oath and Shield Oath. As both were eventually removed from the game, along with DPS Stances for Tanks in general, they're one of the last remnants of the game that show they existed.
Bash Brothers: Ser Adelphel and Ser Janlenoux are brothers in arms, and can even share their Sword Oath and Shield Oath buffs with one another.
Boss Subtitles: The intro cutscene for The Dragonsong's Reprise collectively labels them "The Heavens' Ward: King Thordan & His Knights Twelve".
Calling Your Attacks: Thordan calls Ultimate End, but only in the Japanese audio.
Clipped-Wing Angel: As intimidating as Dragon-king Thordan is narratively and visually, mechanically he is far less of a problem than anything else in Dragonsong's Reprise. His casted attacks are heavily telegraphed and slow, many of them are avoidable, and the ones that aren't are spaced out of enough to give healers lots of breathing room. He's actually one of the easiest bosses in an Ultimate Raid; the real challenge is reaching him.
Combination Attack: Ultimate End. Incidentally, there is a combination attack within that combination attack that is especially devastating on the tank.
Cool Sword: Wields a sword created from Nidhogg's eye and Haldrath's corpse.
Cutlass Between the Teeth: When King Thordan absorbs the eyes of Nidhogg and Hraesvelgr to become Dragon-King Thordan, he grows a tail with a mouth at the end. This tail holds a third sword, letting him make three attacks at once.
Damage-Increasing Debuff: Thordan's Heavenly Heel tankbuster applies a Slashing Resistance Down debuff in The Dragonsong's Reprise. He follows this with multiple Sword Beams that will turn the afflicted tank into mincemeat if they get hit, necessitating a tank-swap. As Dragon-king Thordan, his basic auto-attacks apply stacks of Dark Resistance Down to the main tank, Light Resistance Down to the off-tank, and both to his third target.
Dark Is Evil: Thordan I wears a black suit of armor.
Deader than Dead: The fate of the Knights ends in this in Endwalker's Caster Role questline. Due to a failed attempt to bring back Thordan and his knights, their lingering aether all ended up in an Elezen man calling himself Vaindreau. Vaindreau becomes the Blasphemy Profane Fafnir, and is cut down by Aymeric, Artoirel, and the WOL, permanently erasing the Knights out of existence.
Elemental Powers: Most of the Knights demonstrate some elemental magicks.
- An Ice Person: Ser Haumeric.
- Dishing Out Dirt: Ser Guerrique and the King's "Ancient Quaga".
- Light 'em Up: Ser Adelphel and Ser Janlenoux.
- Playing with Fire: Ser Charibert.
- Shock and Awe: Ser Hermenost and the King's "Lightning Storm".
- Star Power: Ser Noudenet and the King's "Meteorain".
Final Boss: Of Heavensward's main story.
Final-Exam Boss: The Knights of the Round battle recycles many mechanics from not just Heavensward, but also other fights like Shiva, Xande, and Ifrit.
Flunky Boss: Those tempered by King Thordan are, in a twisted sense, "knighted" into his round table. Along with granting them great power, Thordan can summon several of the Knights at will, unleashing multiple different mechanics at the same time. In the alernate timeline seen in Dragonsong's Reprise, Thordan is even capable of knighting dragons and summoning them all the same, adding dragon mechanics last seen in the Unending Coils of Bahamut to his arsenal.
Foreshadowing: A cutscene mid-way through Heavensward shows Archbishop Thordan VII and the 12 members of the Heaven's Ward sitting at a round table.
Godhood Seeker: Thordan VII seeks to become a God-King by becoming a primal of Thordan I.
Historical Hero Upgrade: Ishgard's version of how the Dragonsong war started depicts him and his knights as righteous heroes trying to stop the evil Nidhogg. The truth is that they were the villains of the situation, killing Ratatoskr for the sake of having the power of a dragon's eye and leading Nidhogg to become a hate-fueled monster.
Kick The Son Of A Bitch: Thordan VII's first action upon becoming a primal is to end Lahabrea's life permanently, by consuming his very soul to empower himself.
I Surrender, Suckers: In The Dragonsong's Reprise alternate timeline, he pleads with the party to spare his life at a certain health percentage. If they do so, he threatens that their compassion will be the end of them. Come the ending of the second-to-last phase, he comes back after Nidhogg and Hraesvelgr are vanquished and absorbs their eyes, turning into the final boss of the encounter.
Knockback: Ser Grinnaux's "Faith Unmoving", a blue blast of energy that throws everyone a fair distance away from him.
Large and in Charge: Thordan I is taller than the Knights Twelve. According to the dev blogs this reflects the fact that Thordan is the only one of the thirteen who's actually a primal while the Knights of the Round are simply blessed by him.
Light Is Not Good: Clad in gleaming silver armor, wields a holy sword and light magic, wishes to rule the world as an eternal god-king.
Limit Break: Ultimate End, which charges while you're dealing with his knights; if he maxes it out, it's a One-Hit Kill to your party. If you manage to stop it in time, you'll survive the attack and Thordan will be left with a permanent Damage Down debuff to signify how the move had weakened him.
One-Winged Angel: In Dragonsong's Reprise, after Hraesvelgr and Nidhogg are killed, King Thordan steals their eyes and grows in power to become Dragon-King Thordan. As Dragon-King, his armor has become organic and scaled, with a long tail growing to a fanged mouth letting him hold three swords at once.
Named Weapon:
- King Thordan's sword is named Ascalon, after the dragon-slaying weapon of Saint George.
- Every one of the Knights has a named signature weapon:
  - The three lance users- Vellguine, Ignasse, and Paulecrain- wield The Destroyer's Stead, Hordebane, and Winter respectively.
  - The three axe users - Grinnaux, Gerrique, and Hermenost- wield Stampede, Bloody Anne, and Greycloud respectively.
  - The two sword and shield users - Adelphel and Janlenoux- wield Radiance and Ultimum respectively.
  - The one Greatsword wielder, Zephirin - wields Shattered Heart.
  - The two Conjurers- Noudenet and Haumeric - wield Imagination and Worm of the Dell respectively.
  - The one Thaumaturge, Charibert, wields Widowbreaker.
One-Hit Kill: One he hits his enrage timer, Dragon-king Thordan will start using Morn Afah's Edge to kill the party three players at a time.
Order Versus Chaos: Seeks to create and rule the world via absolute order and remove chaos.
Overly Long Fighting Animation: Played with. Rather than forcing you to sit back and watch Ultimate End, the portion of the attack that is a direct shout out to VII's summon animation is instead an endurance round against the Heavens' Ward that's roughly three times longer than the original animation.
Physical God: More so than other primals, Thordan is closer to a god than a simple primal. Not only is he powered by one of Nidhogg's eyes (that had also taken Lahabrea's Aether), but he is empowered by the faith of Ishgard itself, having set himself up as the center of religion through the Dragonsong War. As a result, from a story angle, Thordan and the Knights of the Round are among the most powerful beings the Warrior of Light has ever faced.
Purple Is Powerful: In the Minstrel's Ballad: Thordan's Reign, after casting Ultimate End, Thordan empowers himself further causing his body to glow purple to continue the fight.
Red Eyes, Take Warning: Thordan I has glowing red eyes.
Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: Thordan's sword, Ascalon, is named after the sword of Saint George, a Christian saint famous for a legend in which he slayed a dragon. Fitting for a religious man who has devoted himself to the extermination of dragons.
Signature Move: Ultimate End. At least half the fight is the party trying to defend themselves from this attack before Thordan finishes it with a Limit Break.
Sheathe Your Sword: The Violation of Common Sense mechanic for Dragonsong's Reprise is to not kill Thordan when he begs for mercy in the Alternate Timeline. Sparing him results in him later stealing the eyes of Nidhogg and Hraesvelgr to become Dragon-king Thordan — but if the players still kill him and then defeat Nidhogg as they did earlier in the fight, they'll find that one his eyes is invulnerable, leading to Nidhogg reviving and wiping the raid.
Speak Ill of the Dead: The Japanese text for Thordan Extreme has Ser Zephirin openly mock Haurchefaunt's memory, and even in the English version he still makes a single scathing comment about him. Given that he's the one who's a DPS race, it was probably intentional to make you want to beat him down as much as possible.
Spell Blade: Dragon-king Thordan can imbue his swords with the powers of Nidhogg and Hraesvelgr, letting him duplicate their abilities by stabbing the floor. This results in attacks like Akh Morn's Edge and Gigaflare's Edge.
Superboss: Collectively they serve as the opponents for most of the Dragonsong's Reprise Ultimate raid. Adelphel, Grinnaux, and Charibert are fought at the start, followed by an enhanced version of the original Thordan fight. In the alternate timeline, the first fight is a completely different take on their original fight, and the final fight is against Thordan with the power of both Nidhogg and Hraesvelgr's eyes.
Token Evil Teammate: While the knights of the Heavens' Ward may all be complicit in Thordan's scheme to suppress the truth of the Dragonsong War and support him in becoming a god-king even if it drains the land dry of aether, Ser Charibert and Ser Grinnaux are the most vile by far. Charibert is a sadist who gleefully abuses his position as First Inquisitor to hunt down anyone he deems a threat to the status quo, even murdering Ser Vaindreau, a fellow knight of the Heavens' Ward, for discovering Thordan's machinations with Lahabrea and trying to confront the archbishop about it. Meanwhile, Ser Grinnaux is a brute who sneers at the lowborn and accuses Alphinaud and Tataru of heresy simply for asking questions.
Token Good Teammate: While still willing to follow Thordan to the end, Ser Haumeric earnestly believes he is righteous, and detests sadists like Ser Charibert.
True Companions: Supplementary material revealed that several of them are close friends with intertwining backstories, and many of the others are bound by bonds of brotherhood and mutual respect. Averted only by Haumeric and Charibert; the former holds the latter in contempt for his sadistic personality. In the game, the group is of one mind and they lay down their lives for Thordan's sake.
13 Is Unlucky: Twelve knights and their king equals thirteen primals. Trouble for both the Warrior of Light and all of Eorzea.
Villainous Breakdown: Thordan's reaction upon seeing that you've survived Ultimate End is pretty much this, followed by a whole lot of wild flailing instead of the composed swordsmanship he had been demonstrating earlier, at which point the rest of the fight becomes a formality.
- Averted in The Minstrel's Ballad: Thordan's Reign. The Knights use Ultimate End significantly earlier and after your party survives it, they are far from done with you.
- Played with in Dragonsong's Reprise. He desperately flails around with his blade once more, but said flailing unleashes cone-shaped blast waves that hit incredibly hard. And after a few of them, he just blasts the entire party with aether, which is a Total Party Kill.
Visionary Villain: Thordan seeks to unite the world under his rule and bring eternal peace. Of course, his method is to rule it as a tyrannical "God-King" whose existence drains the land of aether.
Weapon Specialization: All of the knights are armed.
- BFS: King Thordan and Ser Zephirin.
- Cool Sword/Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Ser Adelphel and Ser Janlenaux.
- Magic Staff: Ser Charibert, Ser Haumeric, and Ser Noudenet.

Alexander

The Creator

"I am Alexander... the Creator. You... who would prove yourself worthy of your utopia... will be judged."

The primal of the Goblin Illuminati, Alexander is a seemingly immobile fortress sealed within a powerful magic barrier while he slowly gathers the massive amount of aether required to move his gargantuan form. Players enter into his body for Heavensward's answer to the Binding Coil. As the raid goes on, the Scions learn not only that Alexander is powerful enough to rival Bahamut at full power, but that his very existence puts a catastrophic drain on the aether of both the region he was spawned and the planet itself. And that's not even getting onto his other abilities.

A.I. Breaker: Something not discovered by players until three years after the final Alexander raid tier was that Alexander's Communion attack has a glaring flaw. Normally this attack tethers to a fleeing player and leaves a trail of glowing puddles that deal damage over time. However, if the tethered players go as far away from the source of the attack as possible (as in all the way to the other edge of the arena), the tethers will break before even one Communion fires, completely removing the fight's biggest hazard.
Artifact of Doom: Though Alexander's body can be controlled via the Enigma Codex, he is still a living god-like being. Anyone who pushes their luck a bit too much with him will either be killed or consumed by the primal. Quickthinx was aware of this, which is why he originally kidnapped Roundrox to use the Codex, rather than doing it himself at first.
Battleship Raid: Considering the fact that Alexander is a living fortress, it would be impractical to fight an iron building head-on. The party is therefore forced to enter it and destroy Alexander from within. Each part of the raid is a section of Alexander itself showing firsthand just how massive he is.
Battle Theme Music: Four in total (6 counting the ones specific to certain guardians). The first, Locus, is a techno rave sounding song, the lyrics from who is presumably a goblin talking about getting Alexander up and running. The final segment boss's theme, Metal, is a much more hateful industrial rock song from the Illuminati leader chanting death threats towards the party which some in-game dialogue suggests is based on a traditional Goblin war chant. Finally Alexander Prime has two more, starting with an instrumental remix of Metal and Locus for the first phase. Finally, there's Rise for the final form, an industrial rock piece with rapid fire vocals from the Goblins celebrating that Alexander is now fully operational and are prepared to rise up above the other races as the dominant species, inviting their chosen followers to rise up with them as Alexander annihilates the Uplanders.
Big Fancy Castle: As per tradition, Alexander's takes the shape of a large castle, this time sitting in a lake dwarfing the forest around it.
Boss Subtitles: The Epic of Alexander ultimate raid gives it the subtitle "Iron Colossus".
Combining Mecha:
- Brute Justice, consisting of five sub-bosses combining into one robot.
- In the last stage of The Epic of Alexander, Alexander Prime absorbs Brute Justice and combines with Cruise Chaser to become Perfect Alexander.
Creation Myth: Zig-Zagged. Unlike every other primal up to Heavensward, Alexander isn't based on any faith, companions (Bahamut, Enkidu), or hero kings (Mog, Thordan, Bahamut again). Instead he is the physical manifestation of Quickthinx Allthought's visions of a "perfect" world and the means to achieve it. However, after the Raid series is complete, a Sharlayan journal which Y'shtola gifts to Backrix details the origin of the Au Ra tribe who initially tried to summon him and reveals that Alexander was responsible for the creation of their civilization by reincarnating Mide and her loved one as children in the past.
Cutting the Knot: Quite appropriate given its namesake, Alexander made numerous calculations to find the perfect future but all predictions result in failure. It made a realization that preserving the future means to destroy itself as it is aware that its own existence is the cause of said bad futures.
Foreshadowing:
- Before facing Alexander Prime, the Warrior of Light, along with Cid, Biggs and Wedge, gets trapped in a Time Stands Still bubble, sitting ducks for a Wave Motion Gun of doom, only to be unexpectedly freed and able to escape the laser. It turns out that the Warrior of Light freed themselves during the battle. This Stable Time Loop along with what Alexander says to start this phase is the first hint of Alexander's true motives.
  Alexander: My faithful, to the past with you, to free these ones from the prison of time.
- That he wants to cease his own existence due to him being detrimental to both Hydaelyn and his wishes of utopia puts the "Sins/Burdens of the Father/Son" names in a different light.
- The description for Soul of the Creator includes the line "Who will be judged worthy of inheriting the future, and who will be cast aside as a forgotten afterthought to history?" referring to the struggle between the Warrior of Light and Quickthinx Allthoughts. During the battle Alexander states "You who would inherit the future... You have proven yourself... worthy!" when the Warrior survives Divine Judgment. This might be a subtle hint of Alexander killing Quickthinx afterwards.
- Alexander is uniquely unable to get a read on the Warrior of Light's future, leading him to believe the Warrior is essential to the perfect future he is otherwise unable to create. This may be because the Warrior leaves the Source for an alternate dimension during Shadowbringers, and by their actions there directly changes the future of the Source, even averting their own death had things gone forward as originally ordained. They also repeatedly travel back in time in Endwalker. To Alexander's viewpoint, the Warrior's future would likely seem particularly muddled by these temporal shenanigans.
From Nobody to Nightmare: The Goblin Illuminati used to be silly Filler Villains having an honest-to-goodness war about cheese with the benevolent goblins. This turns on its head frighteningly fast when they become the focus of Heavensward's raid tier by summoning Alexander. Not to mention illuminating the darker implications of aforementioned Cheese War.
Gone Horribly Wrong: The initial attempt to summon him 3 years prior ended with all but one of the summoners killed or consumed by the primal.
- Unlike every other primal, Alexander isn't based on a group's faith, god, saint, companion or hero-king. He's instead the physical manifestation of Quickthinx's vision of a perfect future and the means to achieve it. So when Alexander ends up trying to achieve an actual perfect world rather than Quickthinx's twisted version of one the primal kills the goblin to preserve such a future.
Good Wings, Evil Wings: His final form sprouts angelic wings, foreshadowing his true colors.
Heroic Sacrifice: Alexander views all possible timelines and determines that even if he were to go back in time and change history for the better, such as fighting off Bahamut to stop the Calamity, his own existence would eventually create a worse ruin for Eorzea. Judging himself to be an immeasurable threat, Alexander locks himself outside time and space once free from Quickthinx's influence, choosing to cease his own existence in order to help create a perfect world.
Humongous Mecha: By summoning Alexander's essence into sunken Sharlayan ruins, Alexander moves and operates like a giant machine.
- It is revealed by Mide that Alexander is the ruin, and was originally a project to allow scholars, scientists, and other knowledge seekers to safely travel the world, documenting history and collecting knowledge as well as spreading it, in the safety of a moving fortress. However, the project was abandoned. The Illuminati goblins moved into the region, and found the ruins of the project. It's also revealed that Alexander is not a "true" primal, but rather a "technical" primal, much like Good King Moggle Mog and Enkidu. Rather than praying to a god of any sort, the goblins instead prayed/wished for the idea to work in a similar fashion to summoning a primal to make the machinery work. However, Alexander Prime appears to exist as a primal in its own right, using the fortress as a vessel.
Interface Spoiler: Since players have to share the same area regardless of their progression in the story Square had to place objects where Alexander would eventually occupy. As a result, the geography of the Dravanian Hinterlands spoils not just that there will be at least 3 segments of the Alexander raids, but also where he will move to as several rock formations are the exact shape of Alexander's arms and "head".
It Can Think: Alexander is not just a machine meant to be used by anyone who finds it, but a fully conscious being who honestly wants what's best for Eorzea; even if what's best is his own demise.
Leitmotif: Locus serves as the boss music of the first raid boss and its melody and lyrics are often remixed into boss themes for other raid bosses. Ultimately its orchestral remix serves as the boss theme for the first phase of Alexander's battle.
Light 'em Up: Alexander Prime attacks with divine, holy-elemental abilities such as Divine Judgment, Sacrament, Communion, and Mega Holy.
Light Is Not Good: A massive steel god with an angelic motif, various religious themed attacks, and helping the goblin Illuminati reshape the world to their twisted view. Ultimately subverted. See Spanner in the Works below.
Limit Break: After an initial round with the party, Alexander Prime with disappear and summon familiars to attack. As they do, Alexander's main body will rise from the abyss and cast its judgment in ten seconds.
Living Structure Monster: He is a god in the shape of a castle. Alexander Prime explicitly refers to the fortress as his body.
Magic Eater: Probably one of the worst among the primals. He is so large and complex that it is estimated the Dravanian Hinterlands (where he spawned) will be barren and lifeless, drained of all aether, in a matter of moons.
- To make matters worse, that's the estimate if he just simply stays in place as he currently is. The mere act of summoning him, and his first movement of raising his right arm up and slamming it down onto the shore, drained such a significant amount of aether that it's mentioned that the aetheric balance in the region is dangerously low and can't deal with another incident like that. A second major movement like that will drain it barren.
- And topping it off, thanks to an artifact in its heart, Alexander rapidly drains aether, not just from the Hinterlands, but from Hydaelyn itself.
Misblamed: Late in Stormblood's story, Matoya comments that the main reason she didn't bother investigating the thinning of the the planet's aether was that she simply assumed the effects she was seeing were simply the lingering effects of Alexander's summoning.
Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: Most of his attacks are named after concepts from Christianity (Communion, Sacrament, Divine Judgment, etc.). The two stages of him are also referencing King Midas and his father King Gordias; the latter supposedly created the Gordias Knot which allegedly states that whoever loosens will conquer the known world. This is where Alexander the Great comes in who realized it didn't matter how it was loosened as long as it's no longer held together so he cuts it with his sword.
Mecha: A majority of Alexander's bosses are variants of the Mecha genre, with only 3 bosses in the entire Alexander raid not being related to machinery or mechs. Notably they also cover different genres of mecha from: The Oppressor being a giant Walking Tank, to Cruise Chaser being a Transforming Mecha, and Brute Justice covering both the Combining Mecha and the Sentai trope.
Mind Screw: The entire storyline surrounding Alexander is a colossal one involving multiple characters going through time loops. The Warrior of Light, Hide, Quickthinx, and everyone else are all part of an ongoing looping gambit devised by Alexander specifically to lock him in a time loop so he doesn't harm Eorzea with his massive aether-draining cores. The climax of the raid storyline involves fighting Alexander inside Alexander to convince Alexander that you're worthy and thus save yourself from being vaporized by a different version of Alexander. Alexander also ends up being at least partially responsible for creating himself through the implications of a Doman myth that he sent Hide and her lover back in time to found the very tribe that would summon Alexander.]
Mythology Gag: Alexander Prime's final form sprouts the massive angelic wings from his Final Fantasy IX incarnation.
No Place for Me There: Alexander has seen every possibility, but all lead to him starting a Calamity one way or another. As a result he sees himself as a threat to the realm and sets up the events of the raid to ensure his own demise, knowing that he himself cannot live in a perfect world.
The Omniscient: Because Alexander has the ability to time travel, the Illuminati use the primal as a way to read the future to undo any damage the Warrior of Light caused. Alexander himself is also this after it's revealed that he was able to see every single possible outcome when he tried to create a perfect world, but it always ended with him causing a calamity because of his nature as a primal. Ergo, the only solution was to remove himself from time and space. While Alexander can see different timelines and know what can happen, he cannot read the Warrior of Light's future and is unsure what said future is in store for them. Regardless of not being able to see their future, he believes in the Warrior of Light and their ability to bring a good future to all.
Reality Warper: Alexander's ability to manipulate the flow of time gives him, in theory, the ability to reshape the world in any way he desires. Quickthinx's Illuminati utopia and the aversion of Dalamud's fall were but two different worlds that could've been created by manipulating key events. Thankfully, in the end, Alexander determined that the current course of events, imperfect though they may be, is for the best, and to that end, manipulated events so that his own interference in the world was minimized.
Signature Move: Two.
- Temporal Stasis, which causes time to freeze briefly as Alexander repositions himself and prepares a more devastating attack on the frozen heroes.
- Divine Judgment, in which Alexander's main body rises from the abyss and begins a 10 second countdown before firing devastating beams of holy light from its eyes.
Spanner in the Works: Quickthinx's cat Shanoa was actually created and sent by Alexander himself to help stop the Illuminati's mad plans of conquest.
Sophisticated as Hell: Alexander Prime alternates between talking like a machine and talking like a godlike being... sometimes in the same sentence.
Alexander Prime: (While summoning Alexander) Commencing spacetime interference... O fortress that is mine own body, heed my call!
Stable Time Loop: Alexander engineered three.
- The first turned out to be it summoning itself, along with being the origin of both Shanoa and the book Quickthinx got his knowledge from. Roundrox used the Enigma Codex to send Alexander back in time, taking herself, the party, Present!Mide and the Illuminati with the machine. The Illuminati goblins shot Past!Mide's fellow researchers. During the shooting, the cat Backrix named "Schrodinger" knocked into him and caused both herself and Backrix's journal to fall off the robot.
- The second occurs after the group defeats the Cruise Chaser. Quickthinx puts them into an area of paused time and was about to kill them before they even knew what was happening. Alexander sends 4 adds to lure the Warriors' future counterparts to intervene, ensuring their own survival and that of Cid, Biggs, and Wedge.
- After Alexander has safely removed himself from time and space, he sends Mide and her lover back in time to be reborn as children, forming the society which created him in the first place so that the events could be carried out and resolved as he had seen. As Backrix summarizes it, Alexander was created by their society, yet their society was in turn created by Alexander.
Superboss: He's the main focus of The Epic of Alexander Ultimate raid, ultimately fusing with Brute Justice and Cruise Chaser to become Perfect Alexander.
Things Man Was Not Meant to Know: Originally a hilarious excuse for the Goblin Illuminati's cheese war, it takes on a much darker connotation when Alexander is summoned. An offhand line from Mide reveals the cheese recipe came from the Enigma Codex, a vast collection of all the things the ancient Scholars of Sharlayan learned and studied (which just happened to include culinary arts); it was through this that they learned of the Alexander Project, and after some Ascian meddling brought the primal Alexander into being. The Illuminati are also not keen on letting a single scrap of information from the Codex slip out, hence the cheese war.
Temporal Paradox: Should the party fail to destroy the adds in the past during the fight against Alexander Prime, it kills your past self and causes a paradox by instantly killing the entire party. Alexander isn't trying to cause the paradox, but sends your party members in the past to help prevent the paradox in order create a stable time loop.
Theme Naming: His attacks are mostly derived from Christian concepts while his summoned minions all reference Alexander the Great (The General's Wings/Might, Arrhidaeus).
Time Master: The end of the Midas quest chain reveals that time was frozen while the Warrior of Light and his party were inside the primal. When Cid reads the primal's aether readings, he sees the aether going in reverse and back into the primal itself. The group quickly speculates that the Illuminati are using the Codex and Alexander's power of time manipulation to not only undo any damages that the Warrior of Light had done, but they also gained the ability to see into the future so they can perfectly read their every move. Should the final core be activated, Alexander can travel through space and time and devastate anything it comes across. In his fight, Alexander frequently stops time, locking the party in place.
Time Stands Still: Alexander Prime does this to your party by stopping time for everything but itself. This also works to the player's benefit since any buffs that were in place will have their duration frozen in time while its effects still apply.
Token Good Teammate: Both for the Illuminati and among the primals in general. Alexander's primary wish truly is to create a perfect world for people to live in and once he deemed himself a disastrous threat to such a world, he actively worked toward setting up his own downfall at the hands of the Warrior of Light. Even Ramuh didn't go that far.
Total Party Kill: Two. First there's Divine Judgment, which is guaranteed to wipe the party if his summoned minion's aren't killed off before he begins the countdown. Even then, the attack is so powerful that the party will require a tank limit break to survive the blast. When he reaches his enrage, Alexander fires a second Divine Judgment, this time with absolutely no chance of survival, even with the limit break. The second is Cast Judgment, in which he creates a time paradox which kills the party in the past. Players must disrupt the temporal stasis in order to prevent this from happening.
Walking Wasteland: Because of his Magic Eater status, Alexander's every movement will surely bleed the land dry and leave a barren wasteland faster than any other primal. This is actually beneficial to the Illuminati. They plan to rule over the Heaven inside of Alexander while anyone who refuses to submit will be left with the Hell outside.
Wave-Motion Gun: Sacrament, which is a Wave Motion Gun that fires in four directions, hitting those unlucky enough to get hit by it with both decreased defense and lower damage. It's also the most common attack he uses when stopping time.

Faust

A recurring mini-boss who continually upgrades itself and ambushes the party in each segment of Alexander.

Bait-and-Switch Boss: In Alexander: Breath of the Creator, the party is initially ambushed by Faust-Z at the beginning. Said battle is significantly easier than his prior appearances and can be cleared with little trouble. However, halfway through the fight with the Refurbisher which immediately follows, Faust reappears as Full Metal Faust, providing a much bigger challenge than Z.
Beef Gate: Faust is fought before the first boss of each section of Alexander to ensure the party is strong enough to handle the actual boss.
I'm Melting!: Killed off for good when its final form is knocked offline and melted in molten steel.
One-Hit Kill: In his final form while fighting the Refurbisher, if he is allowed to touch the square with the lava while he is still alive, it results in an instant party wipe, which turns him into a hard DPS check.
Wake-Up Call Boss: The first obstacle encountered in each Alexander segment, Faust serves as a timed DPS rush in all of his appearances, which usually sets the expected pace for the rest of the endgame raid segment. Unprepared or ill equipped teams will be ripped to shreds if they aren't fast enough.

The Manipulator

The guardian of Alexander's Gordian core. As its name implies, it is the primary creator and controller of the Panzer, Straf, and Sturm Dolls encountered throughout the Gordian segment.

Drone Deployer: Creates and deploys the mechanical Dolls which guard Alexander's interior. Its destruction causes the production of them to end.
Robot Master: It controls all the mechanical "doll" minions it creates. Destroying the Manipulator prevents the dolls from functioning as they no longer receive orders (save a small handful directly controlled by Quickthinx).
Serial Escalation: Its destruction is what motivates the Illuminati to create Brute Justice.

Brute Justice

The guardian of Alexander's Midan core. Comprised of 5 smaller mechanical guardians fused into one.

Bait-and-Switch Boss: Upon arriving in his room, the Warrior shows visible confusion that the guardian of the Midan core is a smaller robot like the ones they fought in the Cuff rather than a robot akin to the enormous Manipulator. Then halfway through the fight, the five robots combine into Brute Justice proper, upon which they get a lot more dangerous.
Battle Theme Music: Metal - Brute Justice Mode! A jazzy techno arrange of Metal and Locus that wouldn't sound out of place in a sentai show, with the Metal taking precedence and Locus pounding in the background, accentuating itself whenever the boss uses its stronger attacks.
Beam Spam: Apocalyptic Ray, several small lasers rapid-fired in a large cone in front of Brute Justice.
Combining Mecha: Brute Justice is comprised of five other Goblin robots; Onslaughter, Blaster, Vortexer, Swindler, and Brawler.In The Epic of Alexander (Ultimate), Alexander Prime absorbs Brute Justice to form the arms and legs of Perfect Alexander.
Comeback Mechanic: In Rival Wings, Brute Justice can only be piloted by a team whose tower was destroyed, giving them an edge in pressing an offensive or defending their core to potentially turn the tide.
Doppelgänger Attack: Blaster can create white copies of itself which rush in a straight line attack.
Diving Kick: Justice Kick/J-Kick, which Brute Justice lands with the impact of a meteor.
Dual Boss: Is fought alongside Cruise Chaser in The Epic of Alexander, following Living Liquid and the Limit Cut intermission.
Elemental Powers: Vortexer is able to manipulate Wind, Ice, Water, and Magma when fighting.
Goomba Stomp: Super Jump, where Brute Justice targets a specific party member to leap onto from a distance.
Macross Missile Massacre: Brute Justice has several missiles atop its head, which it can rain down on the battlefield freely.
Mickey Mousing: Less drastic than Bahamut Prime, but still there, this is especially clear because the attack where he splits into the individual mechs and runs through their mechanics will only start when the chorus does.
Mighty Glacier: In the Rival Wings Player Versus Player mode, Brute Justice is by far the most powerful of the playable warmachina. It has more health than Cruise Chaser, can deal colossal damage to players, warmachina, and structures alike, and can dish out enormous Herd Hitting Attacks to roast groups of unprepared enemies. Its main downside is that it's only slightly faster than the Oppressors, meaning that it takes a while to get anywhere and can be outmanuevered by skilled players or enemy Cruise Chasers.
Odd Name Out: Faust aside, Brute Justice is the only robot boss in the Alexander raids to not end with -er or -or, though all five of its component robots do.
Playing with Fire: Brute Justice has a built in flamethrower that sprays in a cone AOE.
Power Gives You Wings: In the Savage version of the fight, Brute Justice will enter its own Super Mode, glowing brightly and sprouting large mechanical wings.
Power Glows: In the Savage version of the fights, all of the Brute Justice robots will glow neon bright when using even more power than before.
Rocket Punch: Double Rocket Punch, which both Tanks need to share to minimize the damage.
Shout-Out:
- The Brute Justice fight is one giant Shout-Out to Toku style entertainment. The music sounds like something from an older Sentai series, the Brute Justice is a giant Combining Mecha with various attacks themed to the genre, and even its death fits the theme as it slowly collapses to the ground before exploding.
- The English names for the robots are a Shout-Out to Transformers, specifically the Combaticon combiner team. Each robot's name is the name of one of the Combaticons plus an "-er", the name Brute Justice evokes the Combaticons' combined form of Bruticus, and each one fits the same position as their namesake when combined. (For example, both Onslaught and Onslaughter form the torso and "head" of Bruticus and Brute Justice.)
This Is a Drill: Brawler has a drill attack that does more damage the closer its target is to Brawler.
Tactical Superweapon Unit: Of the three Humongous Mecha units available for use in the Player Versus Player mode Rival Wings, Brute Justice stands head and shoulders above the rest. Its Rocket Punch can heavily damage structures or stun players to open them to being demolished by its Wave-Motion Gun. It also possesses a flamethrower to melt waves of mammets and players unfortunate enough not to get out of the way in time. This power means that unlike the more specialized Cruise Chaser and Oppressor, Brute Justice can only be used by a team that has lost a tower, making it purely a comeback tool.
Tornado Move: After Wormhole Formation in The Epic of Alexander, Brute Justice performs an attack called J Wave, a fiery tornado raid-wide that progressively gets stronger every three seconds. If it reaches thirteen damage up buffs, it causes a wipe.
Unflinching Walk: After defeating the boss, the party turns its back to Brute Justice after he collapses to look at the camera just before the boss explodes, performing their usual cheer before ending with a collective Badass Arm-Fold. Subverted in the Savage mode, where the party is too winded to look away and pose,
Wave-Motion Gun: Brawler has two, depending on how many cannons it uses. A single blast is meant for one Tank, while two must be shared by the entire party to negate damage. Onslaughter has the blue Mega Beam, which becomes even larger when used by Brute Justice. Using it in the Rival Wings mode is a One-Hit Kill against most jobs. This attack's unrivaled damage output and long range are mainly balanced by its lengthy wind-up time and comparatively narrow hitbox.

Cruise Chaser

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ffxiv_ark.png

Designation: Blassty

The guardian of Alexander's main core. A transforming airship.

Battle Theme Music: Exponential Entropy.
Blow You Away: Propellor Wind, which causes confusion like the 9 equivalent if the party doesn't take shelter.
Combining Mecha: In The Epic of Alexander (Ultimate), Alexander Prime absorbs Cruise Chaser to form the head of Perfect Alexander.
Crippling Overspecialization: In Rival Wings, Cruise Chaser is the fastest of the playable Humongous Mecha and can deal colossal damage to players and other warmachina. But its weapons deal pitiful damage to structures and mammets, making them suitable bodyguards for the other warmachina but useless when it comes to making a push themselves.
Dual Boss: Is fought alongside Brute Justice in The Epic of Alexander, following Living Liquid and the Limit Cut intermission.
Expy: Is very blatantly based on the Final Fantasy IX summon Ark in every way except name. Even his attack visuals resemble those from the Ark summon.
HP to One: Photon causes the entire party's HP to drop to 1% of their total HP. Performs a variation in The Epic of Alexander where it targets both tanks and is followed by Brute Justice's Double Rocket Punch.
Limit Break: Eternal Darkness.
Mythology Gag: The phase involving the Lapis Lazuli is also another reference to Final Fantasy IX where the Lapis items from that game powered up Ark's attack and it applies in the fight against him here as well.
Shout-Out: Aside from the obvious Ark parallels, Cruise Chaser's name is a reference to a 1986 SquareSoft game called Cruise Chaser Blassty. It even states that its designation is "Blassty" at the beginning of the fight. This is fitting as the original summon from IX was created as a shout out to that title.
Signature Move: Eternal Darkness. After destroying the platform and having it reforge, Cruise Chaser charges with Lapis Lazuli to release a wave of burning red energy.
Transforming Mecha: Cruise Chaser can turn from a humanoid robot into a high speed airship.

The Warring Triad

Warring Triad

Ancient primals or "Eikons" (a term the Allagan empire used for any powerful supernatural beings) who wreaked untold destruction on the Empire before finally being subdued by Omega. The Triad are locked away on Azys Lla, where they have remained dormant for over five thousand years.

Battle Theme Music: All their battles begin with "Battle to the Death", a remix of Final Fantasy VI's alternate boss theme (the one which was shared with the Triad and the Ultima/Atma Weapon).
Divine Conflict: The Triad fought against each other in addition to the Allagans.
Freudian Trio: Strongly implied:
- When released, Sephirot is only concerned with exacting devastating revenge on the "northerners" who imprisoned him, so he best fits the Id.
- Sophia, however, seeks to bring equilibrium to the chaotic world around her, equating her with the Ego.
- Zurvan's motivation is to continue his campaign of conquest, and he makes it abundantly clear that he is above the other gods and their morality, making him a shoo-in for the Superego.
Sealed Evil in a Can: The three are some of the first primals the Allagans sealed after being taught how by the Ascians. Due to Knights of the Round attempting to drain their power, the three are beginning to awaken.
Mythology Gag: Their names originated from when Nomura originally designed the Warring Triad back in Final Fantasy 6. Though they never showed up in the games, he had titled them Sephirot (Fiend), Zurvan (Demon), and Sophia (Goddess)
Power Limiter: Each fight begins with them managing to break their seals; however millienia of slumber and being sealed has made them weaker. Notably Allagan technology has virtual duplicates which fight at full strength; and are extremely difficult compared to their real counterparts.
Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: The Warring Triad are all named after gods or representations of gods from ancient mythology.
- Sephirot is named after the Sefirot of the Kabbalah, a Jewish school of thought that seeks to explain the relationship between the infinite and all-powerful God and the finite and limited universe he created. Just as the Sefirot explains powers beyond human intellect, Sephirot is the apothesosis of his summoner's most divine tree.
- Sophia is named after the final emanation of God in Gnosticism and the creator of the demiurge which in turn created the world and mankind.
- Zurvan is named after the creator god of Zurvanism, a transcendental Zoroastrian god Above Goodand Evil. The Zurvan of Meracydia is similarly in different to notions of morality, seeking only to bring glory everlasting to his followers and ruin upon his enemies.

Sephirot

The Fiend

"I am the end and the beginning! By my touch shall your wretched lives be blessed!"

The first of the Warring Triad which the Warrior of Light battles. He was the guardian deity of a treelike race in Mercydia whom summoned him to repel the Allagan Empire's conquest of the region.

Battle Theme Music: Fiend, an industrial rock piece which consists of Sephirot himself is singing about his might and the duality of nature while demanding you say his name.
Blow You Away: After growing to a massive size, Sephirot's gains an attack called Malkuth, in which his breath alone is strong enough to blow the party away and summon a wind elemental known as the Storm of Words.
Character Catchphrase: "I am the end and the beginning!" Which is not only in the above quote, but as part of his battle music even.
David Versus Goliath: Sephirot is so enormous that his physioal attacks will send you hurtling across the arena, making it easy for him to force a Ring Out if you aren't careful. Him breathing on the party is enough to send it flying backward, while his "Pillar of Severity" attack is a guaranteed kill where he sweeps the entire arena with his arm to send everyone flying off unless you can jump over it by using the accompanying Storm of Severity.
Dishing Out Dirt: Can create pillars of rock and minions of stone.
Green Thumb: Sephirot's power comes from his connection to nature. Trees litter the battlefield and grass grows under his power.
Light 'em Up: His ultimate attack, Ein Soph Ohr, or "Limitless Light".
Light Is Not Good: He has powers relating to light and nature, but is a terrifying demon that would cause a massive catastrophe if left uncontained.
Make My Monster Grow: In the second half of the fight, Sephirot grows into a towering giant. According to Unukalhai's journal, his signature ability is the power to make any living thing (himself included) grow to gigantic proportions. The journal suggests that he grew even bigger back when he was first summoned to attack Allag. Allagan researchers would later study this ability and distill it into an aetherochemical formula capable of growing people to smaller, but still gigantic proportions. This explains the size of soldiers like Phlegethon as well as Emperor Xande.
Multi-Armed and Dangerous: He has six arms and is a hulking, demonic god whose goal is to wreak vengeance upon the enemies of his summoners.
Mythology Gag: After the first stage of his fight when he falls from the platform, his giant hand coming back up onto the platform heavily resembles the same action done by the final boss of Final Fantasy X, Braska's Final Aeon.
- His backstory very closely resembles that of Exdeath, the primary antagonist of Final Fantasy V (a tree given life and immeasurable magical power through some form of strong emotions filling it (the hatred and desire for vengeance from executed criminals in Exdeath's case, and the prayers and desperation in Sephirot's case). In a sense, Sephirot can be viewed as a Good Counterpart to Exdeath.
- While most of his abilities in battle are new to Final Fantasy XIV, he still retains his two Signature Attacks from Final Fantasy VI: Fiendish Rage (and the Targeting that telegraphs it), and Force Field.
- The achievement for defeating Sephirot in Extreme mode is called "Veni, Veni, Venias," which are lyrics from "One-Winged Angel", Sephiroth's theme from Final Fantasy VII.
Red Eyes, Take Warning: Pure red, and they glow when he picks up the pace.
Ring Out:
- In the second phase of the fight, you can fall to your death into some... green liquid. Sephirot's Pillar of Mercy punches will push you all around to try and throw you off. He will also occasionally try to sweep the party away with his enormous arms. The only way to avoid this is to use the whirlwind left behind by a dead Storm Of Words to be propelled into the air.
- For a mercy, Sephirot was the last fight wherein death by being thrown out of the ring was permanent. In all subsequent battles where you can die by ring-out, the victims' bodies reappear in the battlefield, allowing them to be resurrected. As of 6.1 this has now been standardized across all Ring Out fights, including Sephirot.
Signature Move: Ein Soph Ohr. After falling off the platform into the pit below, Sephirot emerges again, many times his initial size. Plants grow upon the battlefield, just before a massive pillar of light rocks the arena and rips apart the top layer of the battlefield.
This Cannot Be!: Upon defeat, he says this as he fades away.
Sephirot: I am the incarnation of life! I cannot perish...cannot wither...
Villain Song: "Fiend", an industrial rock piece full of oppositions, contradictions and paradoxes in its lyrics, to emphasize Sephirot's Yin-Yang Bomb powers. To the same effect, about half of the lyrics are quiet, almost whispered, while the other half are screamed. It happens to sound rather similar to the Powerman 5000 song "When Worlds Collide" (to the point that the band called it a ripoff).
When Trees Attack: Once, Sephirot was the very first sacred tree. The prayer for salvation and worship turned it into the Eikon he is now.
Winged Humanoid: Has relatively small and vestigial wings growing out of his back.
What Are You: After growing massive and unleashing a devastating attack on the party, he is quite surprised to see the Warrior of Light and their companions survive.
Sephirot: You have dimmed my boundless light. What power of death do you mortals wield...?
Yin-Yang Bomb: He seems to wield the power of life and death at once. In one of his attacks, he creates two different orbs beneath his hands. As they erupt, they cover half the field in explosive plant overgrowth, and the other in dark energy.

Sophia

The Goddess

"I would know the weight of your souls."

The second of the Warring Triad which the Warrior of Light battles. Said to grace her many worshipers with graceful equilibrium, she now stirs from her imprisonment to bring equal ruin to Eorzea in retribution.

Battle Theme Music: "Equilibrium" sings of a girl who kills her abusive mother at Sophia's urging before Sophia also urges her to kill herself to bring balance for what she did.
Black-and-White Insanity: Sophia believes that there must be balance between what is good and evil, to the point where she will do good if there is too much evil and will do evil if there is too much good. For instance, in her theme song, as noted above, when one of her worshipers cries out to her for help, she tells the worshiper to kill her abusive mother to bring balance. However, after doing so, she tells the worshiper to kill herself as she is now unbalanced by the murder of her mother, despite said murder being Sophia's idea.
Blow You Away: A short-range AOE version of Aero II.
Curse: Her Cloudy Heavens spell afflicts the entire party with a curse that will transform each party member into a zombie when they die, and will kill them automatically after 60 seconds.
Even in death, there is no release.
Enemy Mine: She intended to release Zurvan, whom she fought bloody battles against, from his restraints to combat their common enemy in Allag.
Fantastic Racism: Averted in that her scale motif represents how all races are perfectly equal in her eyes, and then subverted in the implication that they found equality in slavery to her.
Fish out of Temporal Water: Her servants are unaware of how much time has passed since their imprisonment and mistake the Scions for soldiers of ancient Allag.
Gold and White Are Divine: She mainly features this color scheme, fitting for the Triad titled "The Goddess."
Light Is Not Good: Much of her appearance and power are light-themed, yet she is an aether-draining Eikon who only seeks vengeance. Even in the past she ruled over Meracydian societies with "gilded chains of harmony" - peace by means of slavery.
Me's a Crowd: Savage difficulty introduces "Aion Telos" enemies, which are clones of Sophia that will Alpha Strike with her own AOEs.
Mythology Gag: A signature motif of Sophia's power are a pair of scales, not unlike Exodus of Final Fantasy XII.
- In battle, as in Final Fantasy VI, her repertoire includes lightning spells, the Colony Drop spell Quasar, and the zombification curse Cloudy Heaven.
Prophecies Rhyme All the Time: The First Demiurge leaves the Scions with a prophecy just before taking his leave, detailing Sophia's goal.
"With scales in hands, the Goddess shall arise
and righteously cast off Her cursed pall.
That She with wrathful wyrmking at Her side,
might judge and thence bring balance unto all."
Ring Out: The main danger in her boss fight. After using her signature attack and dropping her giant scales on the arena, the platform loses its protective railing, and Sophia will regularly tip the scales to throw the party one direction or another attempting to drop players to their doom. Extreme mode augments this with many, many Aero III casts to eject people from the arena if they are hit in a bad position. Mercifully unlike other examples in the game however, players don't remain out of the fight permanently after falling and can be revived.
Shock and Awe: The cone AOE Thunder II and the large circular AOE Thunder III.
Signature Move: Scales of Wisdom. Sophia draws her scales out of the floor, and transforms the battlefield itself into a giant pair of scales. She tips the scales twice, to measure the weight of the party's souls, and then fills the arena with blinding light, killing everyone whose weight tipped the scales too far.
- And of course her Cloudy Heavens attack returns from Final Fantasy 6, having more or less the same effect is had in its original appearance. If it isn't cleansed in time, the entire party will be zombified and will be unable to position themselves to survive Scales of Wisdom.
Stripperiffic: She wears little more than a strip of cloth around her bosom and waist.
Trojan Prisoner: Before Sophia was captured, she devised a plan between her followers and rebels within the Allagan Empire. If Sophia and her followers were captured and imprisoned, the Rebels left an intentional weakness in her confinement to be exploited later. When freed within the very heart of the Empire, Sophia would have freed Bahamut and brought judgment down on everyone's heads. The plan failed however because those same rebels were discovered early by the Empire and executed, though the flaw in Sophia's prison remained undiscovered.
Villain Song: "Equilibrium", a song that tells the tale of how a daughter suffering tragedy prays to Sophia for guidance and the message her Goddess sends her.
Villain Team-Up: She intended to release Bahamut from Dalamud so that they may rain down judgement on the land together.
- It's later revealed that she intended to do the same with Zurvan as well.
Wave-Motion Gun: The floating head familiar Sophia calls the "Daughter" can attack separately from Sophia to fire three large lasers across the field.
White Hair, Black Heart: Sophia's white hair doesn't detract from her self-serving nature.
Wolfpack Boss: Sophia is joined in battle by three of her servants who were imprisoned along with her. They appear as an Elezen gladiator, a Hyur conjuror, and a Roegadyn lancer, but with onyx black skin and shining golden hair.
You Don't Look Like You: While her design remains mostly the same in comparison to her original look from Final Fantasy VI, her skin is completely metallic looking and she seems to be lacking actual eyes. Her original design had her with normal human skin tones and eyes.

Zurvan

The Demon

"Bow to mine infallible judgment!"

The god of a race of centaurs from ancient Mercydia. Nicknamed The Demon for his grim visage and for the inevitability of his victory over all other gods in the eyes of his worshipers.

Badass Boast: Delivers one as he cuts his restraints apart and emerges in his full glory.
"Mine age of slumber is at an end. A thousand thousand suns may set, but the insult of my imprisonment hath been etched upon mine eternal memory. I am come to mete out justice. To bestow the blessings of victory unending. I am Zurvan. He who standeth above all other gods. He who shall bring slaughter and ruin!"
Boss Arena Urgency: His attacks will break away parts of the floor until the party is left with a small fragment to stand on. Anyone who isn't fast enough may fall to their doom with the floor.
Divine Conflict: Aside from his conflicts with Sephirot and Sofia, Zurvan's role in his worshipers' pantheon was to punish wicked or unjust deities.
The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: Zurvan's assault on the party during Ahura Mazda ends when he shatters the icicle they're trapped, the actual attack that deals the majority of the damage is him attacking your monitor/television and cutting the screen in half with a Diagonal Cut.
I Am Not Left-Handed: Unlike Sephirot and Sofia, this battle begins with Zurvan still in his restraints.
An Ice Person: Zurvan can freeze the air around him and spew massive spikes of clear ice all around him.
Multiple Head Case: Zurvan has a face growing from his lower body, just underneath his humanoid top half's waistline.
Mythology Gag: In battle, he can use many of the attacks he had in Final Fantasy VI, including Metal Cutter, Flare Star, Wave Cannon, Southern Cross, and what was his Signature Move from that game: Tyrfing.
Our Centaurs Are Different: Zurvan appears to be an almost reptilian centaur with functioning hands as his forelegs. His followers are also a race of centaurs.
Playing with Fire Zurvan's rage allows him to sear everything.
Power Glows: After using Ahura Mazda, Zurvan's entire body glows bright red.
Red Baron: The Demon.
Rhymes on a Dime: Occasionally Zurvan will give a short rhyme, though it isn't as consistant as other trope examples.
Signature Move: Ahura Mazda. Zurvan soars beyond the boundaries of the battlefield. He uses the power of ice to freeze the battleground, and everyone upon it, into a sheet of ice in the shape of a snowflake. After a few moments, Zurvan returns, and shatters the ice with a swipe of his halberd.
- Tyrfing also returns from Zurvan's prior appearances.
Suddenly Voiced: After using Purge, Zurvan will suddenly have voice acting as opposed to just text speech like his first phase.
Top God: In his worshipers' eyes, Zurvan stands above all other gods.
Winged Humanoid: Once free, Zuran sprouts a total of four wings to keep himself aloft.

Primals introduced in Stormblood:

Susano

The Lord of the Revel

"How our hearts sing in the chaos! Wild and pure and forever free!"

Unlike other Beastmen, the Kojin don't worship a single god, but the thousands upon thousands of gods known as the kami, who inhabit all things great and small. Some Kami however, favor more exquisite and priceless treasures as their vessels, which the Kojin of Red and Blue keep in their vault for safekeeping. When the three greatest of the Kojin's treasures are united, a sword, a mirror, and a jewel, the kami rejoice and take physical form as Susano, one of the highest gods known as the amatsukami, to enjoy the revelry.

Anti-Villain: He's nothing but joyful and polite to the Warrior of Light, seeing their battle of wills as a celebration of sorts. He has no real grudge against them aside from defending the Red Kojin who worship him from an apparent invasion, even commending the Warrior for their valor and might.
Battle in the Rain: A rainstorm breaks out when Susano takes physical form, so naturally the entire battle is fought in the rain. The storm intensifies once Susano enters his third and final phase.
Battle Theme Music: Susano's theme is a three-part instrumental. The first part, "Revelation", is lively and festive, reflecting how Susano sees the fight as celebration. The second part, "Riot", is slow and ominous, emphasizing the dread of his ultimate attack. The third phase combines the two into "At Both Ends", making a fast-paced tune stressing that Susano must be stopped.
BFS: His sword, Ame-no-Murakumo. At first it starts off relatively small in proportion to its wielder, but when Susano enlarges himself, the sword grows to the size of an office building. After Susano shrinks down to his normal size, Ame-no-Murakumo becomes a One-Handed Zweihänder.
Big Fun: As large as he is, Susano's a very fun-loving individual befitting his title as the Lord of the Revel. His whole battle is in his mind a game to rejoice and his tone is always jovial and full of laughter.
Blade Lock: An interesting case where it's essentially a Blade Lock of eight people against one, giant sword. During the second phase of his battle Susano will try to bring down a giant blade upon the platform onto the party. To avoid being wiped out, one of the tanks (ideally, see below) must perform a quick time event to hold the sword back while everyone else wails on it.
- Amusingly, anyone can block the sword, leading to a Bard blocking with a harp-bow, a mage blocking with a staff, or a Scholar or Summoner with a book.
Combat Compliment: If the party survives Susano's ultimate attack, Susano will salute your resiliancy.
Didn't See That Coming: Susano's summoning was completely by accident. The original plan was to distract the Red Kojin by stirring up trouble in their treasure vault, and the treasure the Scions brought with them was something of a good luck charm entrusted by the Blue Kojin. Scions, Red Kojin and Blue Kojin alike are flabbergasted when simply bringing the three sacred treasures into the same room (one of which was the Scions' charm) was enough to summon Susano on the spot.
Alisaie: That...that was not part of the plan! A Kojin primal was most definitely not part of the plan!
Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Susano alternates Water- and Lightning-based attacks. Getting hit by a Water attack reduces your Lightning resistance for the follow-up.
Elemental Shape Shifter: Susano can turn himself into water. Using the surrounding water of the Vault, he briefly becomes a giant version of himself composed of water to swing his now giant sword before changing back.
Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: No one, not the Red or Blue Kojin, and certainly not the Scions, expect him to show up and there's no foreshadowing to his sudden appearance.
God of Thunder: Susano is one of the highest kami worshipped in the Far East, commanding the wind, waves, earth, and lightning to do his bidding. He can summon thunderclouds to rain lightning bolts and create whirlpools to damage multiple foes. The rain follows him upon his summoning, stops in mid-air when he creates his giant water avatar, and comes pouring down in the final phase of his fight.
Graceful Loser: He isn't mad at all when you defeat him. He even thanks you for the battle since he found the whole thing to be a blast.
Impossible Hourglass Figure: Due to being composed of treasures primarily clustered around his chest, shoulders, and legs, he has the appearance of a Top-Heavy Guy with a nearly nonexistent waist.
Limit Break: "Ame-no-Murakumo". Susano creates a giant copy of himself from water and brings his colossal sword down on the battlefield with enough force to leave a permanent crack in the floor. Towering waves erupt from the point of impact, and the entire screen turns white as dozens of lightning bolts strike the surrounding pool.
Making a Splash: Several of his attacks involve the manipulation of water, such as "Rasen Kaikyo", generating a whirlpool under the feet of every party member to damage them if they don't get out of the way
Susano: The seas part for we alone!
Many Spirits Inside of One: Susano is comprised of at least three Kami joined together into a single form. Susano always refers to himself as "we".
Named Weapon: Susano's unique sword Ame-no-Murakumo, one of the Kojin's most sacred treasures.
Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Susano comes into being because the Warrior of Light brings the last of the three most sacred treasures into the Kojin vault, making Susano's Kami whole again.
One-Hit Kill:
- Anyone standing directly under his sword when he finishes casting "Ame-no-Murakumo" will die once the blade descends. If the Murakumo isn't successfully deflected twice beforehand, it destroys the whole arena for a Total Party Kill.
- "Ama-no-Iwato" encases an adventurer in rock before creating two identical boulders to act as a Shell Game. Should the party fail to free their compantion in time, Susano will cast "The Sealed Gate", killing the victim instantly.
The Pollyanna: As The Lord of the Revel, he finds just about anything to be a wonderous reminder of how splendid life can be, and tries his best to encourage the same in others. Even when he's beaten, he shows nothing but happiness that his opponent has something to celebrate. This even extends to other primals, as he gives Garuda a pep talk to help ease her into the idea of giving her aether to power the Ragnarok.
Punch-Clock Villain: Similar to Ramuh, Susano bears no ill-will to the Scions, and even finds their diversion funny. He only fights for the Kojin's side because he recognizes them as his loyal followers. He doesn't even temper anyone! Turns out there's a reason for this: As revealed in Endwalker, almost all of the other primals were intentionally summoned using the Ascian summoning rituals, which instill in their creations the desire to assimilate others into their faith. Susano's summoning was done completely by accident through a singular, one in a million circumstance occuring, so his personality was not altered in such fashion, leaving him a largely benevolent, if extremely boistrous and rowdy, deity.
Red Baron: "The Lord of the Revel".
Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: Susano is clearly named and themed after Susanoo-no-Mikoto, the Japanese Shinto god of the storm. His attacks are also based on the Kojins' three sacred treasures, which in turn are named after the three Imperial Regalia of Japan.
Shell Game: One of his attacks will trap a random player within a stone shell, summon two more shells, and then shuffle them around. The party needs to destroy the correct shell before it implodes, killing the trapped player.
Shock and Awe: He can summon storm clouds that will shoot lightning bolts in the party's direction, and his Ukehi spell rains unavoidable lightning down on the entire battlefield.
Token Good Teammate: Of most of the other primals due to his summoning coming from a freak coincidence beckoning him rather than the intentionally flawed Ascian method that creates equally flawed Primals. Unlike them, Susano doesn't do anything evil - his idea of a party just happens to be a battle.
Top God: Susano is one of the three highest gods in the Far Eastern religion, next to the dawn goddess Amaterasu and the Lord of the Moon, Tsukuyomi.
Wrecked Weapon: To survive his "Ame-no-Murakumo" phase, one party member (preferably a tank) must hold back his BFS while the rest of the party attacks the sword to shatter it, after which Susano will make another one and bring it down again. This too must be shattered before he brings down one more sword swing that cleaves the stage in half.

Lakshmi

The Lady of Bliss

"Ressst your weary sssouls in my bosom. Partake of my life and my love... I shall free you from your hate!"

The primal of the Ananta who resembles a beautiful woman with a serpentine body concealed beneath her elegant blue dress. Rather than fight against the Empire, the Qalyana faction of the Ananta swore fealty and kept to their own. When the Alliance and Resistance pushed the attack, the Empire demanded a hostage of the Qalyana to ensure they weren't backstabbed. At the worst time, one Imperial cut down the hostage. In her despair for losing her daughter, the Qalyana broodmother called on her faith and brought Sri Lakshmi into existence.

Due to the tragedy with which Lakshmi was first summoned from, she's a primal that's as prone to tempering mortals as Ifrit and Leviathan. Her thralls are called "The Dreamers", and subject themselves to a willing Lotus-Eater Machine to hide from the pain the world made them suffer except when enacting Lakshmi's will.

Adaptational Badass: All of her prior incarnations were strictly support or healing based summons. In Stormblood she's a boss with offensive capabilities.
All or Nothing: A lot of her attacks work with this mindset. Either they will completely cripple, if not outright kill, their intended targets, or they will do nothing. The most extreme case is her limit break as it's instant death for anyone who didn't get a Vril to protect themselves from the attack while those who have Vril activated will be fully healed by the attack.
Anti-Villain: As mentioned under Evil Cannot Comprehend Good, she genuinely does not understand why people would accept living with pain in their lives and wants to temper mortals to ease their suffering. Unfortunately, tempering people against their will isn't exactly something most can live with, and her attitude towards those who disagree pushes her into villainy.
Battle Aura: After surviving Alluring Embrace, Lakshmi will burst with a dark blue aura called Chanchala.
Came Back Wrong: To the Ananta, Lakshmi is a kind and benevolent goddess whose coming promises good harvest, halcyon days, and succor in times of crisis. The primal Lakshmi still wants to bring succor to others, but only by enthralling others into her followers so they can live in a Lotus-Eater Machine while doing her bidding. She also doesn't take kindly to those who reject her "gift" and tries to kill them.
Depending on the Writer: In-universe. While the Qalyana who summoned Lakshmi see her as the epitome of beauty and power, the stories of the Vira tribe represent her as the embodiment of the freedom to live as one chooses. Alphinaud laments that a Lakshmi summoned on the basis of the Vira's stories would likely be more amenable to negotiation, as was the case with the Sylphs and Ramuh.
Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Lakshmi can't understand why people would choose freedom of will and all the ugliness of reality over surrendering to her blissful dream. She seems genuinely hurt by it at times, but usually declares that those who won't embrace her gift will simply die.
Flower Motifs: She’s heavily associated with lotus blossoms, from the design on the floor of her arena, to the lotus ornaments floating on either side of her, to the aesthetic of some of her attacks and even the markers which hover over her targets’ heads during those attacks.
For Want Of A Nail: As it turns out, interpretations of Lakshmi differ among different tribes of Ananta. The warrior tribe Vira see Lakshmi as a symbol of freedom whereas the jeweler tribe Qalyana see her as a symbol of transient beauty. Had the Qalyana shared their sisters' views of Sri Lakshmi, conflict with the primal might have been avoided.
Healing Shiv: Alluring Embrace will heal players protected by Vril.
Holy Halo: She has a large gold ornament resembling a mix of a halo and a sunburst floating behind her, and it glows with a nimbus of light during some of her attacks.
Holy Hand Grenade: Many of her attacks are light-based and reference concepts like grace, beauty, and hymns and mantras.
Impossibly Cool Clothes/Pimped-Out Dress: In keeping with her Hindu motif, Lakshmi wears a blue sari with a lot of very elaborate gold trimming, and enough yards of fabric to conceal her serpentine lower body. And that’s not getting into all the jewelry and gold that she also wears.
Light Is Not Good: Lakshmi is dressed in blues and golds with many powers revolving around light. Despite her mythology as a giving person, the Lady of Bliss demands servitude of those she would enthrall in her dream just as most other primals would.
Literal Genie: When an Ananta loses her child to the empire, she begs for her child to be brought back to life. Lakshmi gave her exactly what she wished for, and nothing more, which means the child came back without their soul. Lakshmi explains that the child's soul was long gone already.
Lotus-Eater Machine: Apparently the primary form of the "bliss" Lakshmi offers to others, a form of tempering in which her victims are given a beautiful dream to drown out reality.
Mythology Gag: She's this to Bhunivelze as deities who can't understand why beings like the Warrior of Light/Lightning refuse to live in a dreamlike world in the WoL's case or become the goddess of death in Lightning's case.
One-Hit Kill: Lakshmi doesn't mess around. Most of her attacks are an all-or-nothing "you are unfazed/you die" dichotomy.
Overly Long Fighting Animation: Her Alluring Embrace Signature Move takes almost twenty seconds to complete from start to finish, and is so cinematic that it actually changes the game’s aspect ratio to widescreen for the duration.
Post-Final Boss: The rematch with her is this for the Ala Mhigo side of Stormblood, tying up the final immediate threat to the newly liberated city-state while settling the matter of Fordola's fate while at the same time being only a minor obstacle compared to the heavily significant impact the Brutus siblings have on Doma afterwards.
Power Floats: She constantly levitates above the ground.
Puzzle Boss: Her whole fight revolves around having collected "Vril" to fend off her Limit Break and various Chanchala-boosted attacks, one Vril per attack. Not activating a Vril at the right time or failing to collect one leaves you at the mercy of some very awful debuffs, assuming you don't just die instantly. During your rematch with her at the Ala Mhigan peace conference, you have to fight her while shielding your allies from her attempts to temper them.
Signature Move: Alluring Embrace. Lakshmi, having created a towering projection of herself, exhales a cloud of mist that compels the entire party to dance mindlessly. Then she slowly embraces the party, gathering their energy within her arms, forming a ball of light that explodes like a supernova as she brings it to her chest.
Sssnake Talk:
- Like her Ananta worshippersss, Lakshmi ssstretchesss out the letter Sss while talking.
  ”Ressst your weary sssouls within my bosom.”
  “Sssurrender to blisss…”
- Oddly enough, while the Ananta still have a verbal tic in Japanese, Lakshmi does not and speaks much like Sophia does.
Super-Persistent Predator: In a disturbing sense: when the Qalyana tribe Trojan horses their way into summoning her at a crowded peace conference, Lakshmi's immediate and persistent priority is to try and temper everyone present. It's up to you and Arenvald to stop her. Then later, when it's you two and Fordola, as well as Lyse and Raubahn (who are still prone to tempering), she goes out her way to try and turn the two until she realizes that you'd sooner die than let her.
Turns Red: Well, blue. Her Chanchala Battle Aura increases the damage and detrimental status effects of her spellcasts.
Villain Song: "Beauty's Wicked Wiles", sung by the Ananta enthralled by Sri Lakshmi's dream who entice the adventurers to give in to the bliss of the dream.

Shinryu

The Draconic God of Vengeance

"An ending to mark a new beginning..."

A primal whose summoning ritual was shown towards the end of Heavensward. The primal was spawned when Illberd secretly had his own followers slaughtered during the assault of Baelsar's Wall, causing them to desperately pray to Rhalgr for salvation, then committed suicide after channeling the aether in Nidhogg's eyes to complete the ritual.

Though hinted at being a primal version of Rhalgr, when it broke free it was revealed to be a new Dreadwyrm even more destructive than Bahamut. Dubbed Shinryu by the Domans after a figure from their mythology, the new Dreadwyrm engaged Omega over Baelsar's Wall, causing massive destruction in their clash before they mutually shot each other down somewhere in Ala Mhigo.

All Your Powers Combined: Has access to the powers and abilities of almost every other primal encountered before him. Including Ifrit, Titan, Garuda, Leviathan, Ramuh, Shiva, Bahamut, and the Knights of the Round.
Almighty Idiot: Shinryu is by far one of the most powerful Primals to ever be brought into existence, but there's nothing to suggest it has any deeper intelligence besides "destroy everything that moves", save a single attempt to temper the Warrior of Light and Zenos which fails due to the former's Blessing of Light and the latter's Resonance. It's even briefly mused on that the reason Zenos was able to overpower its mind and possess it so easily was because there wasn't much "mind" to begin with, just raw hatred and destructive instinct.
Attack Its Weak Point: Shinryu’s tail becomes vulnerable for a few seconds whenever he does his Tail Slap attack, and successfully “killing” it will deal a massive amount of damage to the primal.
Battle Theme Music: Scale and Steel which plays for his fight against Omega and later reused for the first phase of his fight against the Warrior of Light. The Worm's Tail for the second phase of the fight.
Back for the Finale: Zenos-as-Shinryu arrives without warning for the finale of Endwalker, this time to aid the Warrior of Light against the Endsinger.
Beam-O-War: With Omega. It ends with both of them being knocked out.
Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: Ironically not the Cthulhu in question: that honor goes to Omega, who manages to ensnare Shinryu before they blasted off to Ala Mhigo, essentially leaving it giftwrapped for Zenos to capture and subsequently control. Granted he did effectively serve this role towards Omega in return by having the machine deactivated until the end of Stormblood's story.
Boss Arena Urgency: In his final phase, Shinryu will smash the floor with his tail at regular intervals. The middle segment is invincible, but the outer segments of the floor can only take two hits from his tail before shattering, leaving the party with less room to evade Shinryu’s attacks as the fight goes on.
- The Extreme mode fight ups the difficulty by not only making the center tile destructible, but by making the entire platform collapse should it be destroyed.
Cognizant Limbs: Shinryu’s wings can fire off their own attacks and spells independently of the main body. They can't be targeted, so there's no way to stop them.
Conflict Killer: Following Ilberd's False Flag Operation on Baelsar's Wall that summoned the primal, the threat of an all-out assault from the wall on the Eorzean Alliance after the Garleans recovered wasn't so much a question of "if" rather than "when," which loomed over the Alliance like a raincloud because the Wall stationed an absolutely massive Garlean force. This quickly turns on its head when Shinryu breaks free, after which its ensuing battle with Omega ravages the Wall so badly that by the time it's over, the Alliance can simply march in and clean up what's left.
Colossus Climb: The final phase of Shinryu's Extreme fight involves first using his tail as a bridge and later requires the party to climb up to the beast's back to avoid being killed.
Desperation Attack: Not from the primal itself, but the very threat of it on the Gridanian border makes the Alliance desperate enough to resort to activating Omega to combat it.
Evil Knock Off: Of Midgardsormr. While initially believed to be a unique creation, and named after a figure from Doman mythology, after watching the Warrior of Light fight Omega's reconstruction of Midgardsormr in his prime, Cid notes that Shinryu and this version of Midgardsormr were eerily similar. Omega itself seems to share this sentiment, as it explains that Alphascape Midgardsormr is "not the faded specter that you know, or a mortal-conjured simulacrum," and the connection is further made with Alphascape Midgardsormr's use of Protostar, Shinryu's signature attack. It's possible that, seeking to inflict an even larger Calamity than what had been wrought by Bahamut, Ilberd's final thoughts strayed to the only dragon greater than the Dreadwyrm.
Final Boss: Of Stormblood's main story.
Final Boss, New Dimension: Shinryu transitions to its second phase by breaking the arena the party is standing on, dragging them impossibly high to an ethereal dimension with mountains made of what looks like crystals. Taken further in the Minstrel's Ballad, which starts in this dimension only to ascend even further into the upper atmosphere.
Human Sacrifice: As Papalymo observes, the many deaths during the battle at Baelsar's Wall was the last step in triggering the primal's summoning ritual. Illberd set up the summoning this way so that it could retain its form without the need for active worship.
Ironic Echo: When Zenos takes over Shinryu with the Resonance, he repeats Illberd's "An ending to mark a new beginning..." line which was originally referring to Illberd's hopes that the dragon would either get the alliance active or that it would kill the Garleans (including Zenos) by itself.
Irony: Illberd summoned him to fight against the empire with all of his hate. Zenos, who is a high ranking commander with the empire, captured the primal, fuses with him, and takes control from within to fight for the empire when he goes to fight the Warrior of Light.
Limit Break: In addition to the obligatory DPS check to avoid a One-Hit Kill attack that all primals share, Shinryu also has a unique mechanic, meaning that throughout the fight Shinryu's attacks will build up Corrupted Aether. When the gauge is full Shinryu will unleash one of several powerful attacks that each require a different strategy to mitigate, including the infamous Tidal Wave.
Made of Evil: Because of the unique summoning methods employed in its creation, Shinryu has no real consciousness to speak of and exists as a creature of pure rage and violence.
Making a Splash: Creates a tidal wave to flood Baelsar's Wall while fighting Omega. Also opens its boss battle with the attack.
Mythology Gag: His first attack used against Omega is Tidal Wave, much like all of his boss appearances in the franchise where he opens he opens the fight by casting Tidal Wave. He does the same when the Warrior of Light confronts him in Stormblood.
- Yoshida has gone on record stating that Shinryu coming out of nowhere in both Heavensward and Stormblood was because Shinryu pops out of a chest with no warning in Final Fantasy V and that always took him by surprise and caused him to get a game over. This same gag carries over to its surprise appearance in the finale of Endwalker.
- With Zenos controlling it, Shinryu is a creature that thrives on endless conflict to strengthen himself, much like the traditional version that ruled World B in Dissidia.
Nicknaming the Enemy: Its name came from the Domans whispering the name of a dragon from their own mythology who supposedly greatly resembles the primal. The Alliance and the Garleans both decided the name was fitting and stuck with it.
Pint-Sized Powerhouse: While not exactly small, Shinryu is significantly smaller than the moon-sized Bahamut, and his raw destructive power completely and totally eclipses his predecessor's.
Reincarnation: Of Nidhogg, arguably. Shinryu was summoned with the dying prayers of Ilberd's men and the immense amounts of aether still contained within Nidhogg's eyes. This resulted in a draconic primal and nightmarish engine of hatred, destruction, and revenge just like Nidhogg himself. At the very least Estinien sees him as one final phantom of Nidhogg and hunts down its landing site after the battle with Omega while the Warrior of Light and the Scions of the Seventh Dawn are in Doma.
Ring Out: In addition to the Boss Arena Urgency above, Shinryu uses a few direct methods to ring out the opponent throughout the fight. Of note is its infamous Tidal Wave attack, which if a party member isn't standing on the edge of the arena where it starts up they will fall off the arena. In addition during the second phase of the fight it will occasionally fly across the arena, knocking whoever it hits far back.
Sealed Evil in a Can: Before the primal can take physical shape, Papalymo seals its essence with the same spell Louisoix attempted to use on Bahamut. It eventually breaks free from Papalymo's spell, only to get caught in a stasis trap by Omega, where it remains until freed by Zenos.
Serial Escalation: Was capable of matching Omega in terms of power. To put this in perspective, Omega was able to defeat and capture Bahamut and all 3 of the Warring Triad eikons at full power. Shinryu was able to defeat Omega (albeit via a Double Knockout). Lore wise, it is the strongest entity the heroes had ever faced until that point, and the only reason the world avoided another Bahamut-level Calamity is because of Omega sealing it away long enough for the heroes to defeat it in their first encounter with it. Shinryu is so powerful that it could travel across the universe and force its way into Ultima Thule, and its arrival was enough to give even the Endsinger pause and cause to fall back.
Shock and Awe: Can control storms and summon lightning bolts.
Signature Move: Protostar, a Wave-Motion Gun Breath Weapon of destructive green energy.
The Speechless: Played With. Shinryu itself never actually talks, due to being a mindless beast of destruction. While during the final fight with it at the end of Stormblood the text boxes label the dialogue as 'Shinryu', it's actually Zenos talking through it. When Zenos reassumes Shinryu's form at the climax of Endwalker, he does speak with a deeper-sounding version of his voice, and the text boxes label the dialogue as "Zenos viator Galvus".

Tsukuyomi

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/maxresdefault_737.jpg

The Lady of the Moon

"I shall plunge all I despise into darkness! And within that black abyss, even your light shall flicker and fail."

A primal that appears in the middle of 4.3's story, Tsukuyomi comes into play when Yotsuyu uses the Kojin's mirror given to her by Asahi, alongside the supply of crystals he had snuck into Castrum Fluminis. With the return of Yotsuyu's memories, she declares her intention to bring Doma under her heel once more, and transforms into the primal.

Battle Theme Music: Her fight begins with "Nightbloom", an ominous orchestral arrangement of the themes of Kugane and Ala Mhigo to underscore how she is the Climax Boss of the Stormblood story. In the second phase, "Lunacy", a mournful piano reprise of the themes of Yanxia and Doma, plays, underscoring the suffering Yotsuyu has endured throughout her life, to which she now turns to give her strength. Finally, upon entering the last phase, the music changes to "Wayward Daughter", a sorrowful hard rock song with Japanese lyrics highlighting how Yotsuyu has hit her absolute nadir, in addition to English lyrics, inspired by Asahi's machinations, coaxing her to despair.
Big Damn Heroes: She does this to herself in an interesting way during phase 2. When the specter of Zenos prepares to strike her down to further feed her malice, she subconsciously summons a specter of Gosetsu to leap in and protect her from the blow.
Combat Hand Fan: She carries a fan with her and striking you with it is her basic attack. She can also send out more fans to attack in a large circles with her Dancing Fan attack.
Duality Motif: Half of her body is colored black while the other is white representing the moon phases.
Dual Wielding: In her final phase, Tsukuyomi draws a black sword and a white sword to savagely attack with.
Evil Is Hammy: Yotsuyu's speech just prior to her transformation into a primal is rife with theatrics as she prepares to plunge Doma into eternal night.
Yotsuyu: This land shall know no dawn! I will spew forth darkness and drown ALL in eternal night. And HIGH above you I shall shine uncaring, cold and distant as the MOON!
Fashionable Asymmetry: While her right side has the look of a traditional kimono, her left resembles the spider lily.
Final Boss: Like Nidhogg before her Tsukuyomi is fought at the climax of 4.3 with her defeat bringing Stormblood's story to a close and beginning the build up into Shadowbringers.
Flower Motif: She has a spider lily motif, an autumn flower symbolically linked to death, lost memories and abandonment, all of which reflect Yotsuyu's experiences and trauma throughout her life. The magical explosion of her Nightbloom attack even resemble the petals of a spider lily.
Gender Flip: It's conspicuously noted in Tsukuyomi's Triple Triad card that most depictions of the kami are male, meaning that the primal Tsukuyomi is closer to how Yotsuyu would imagine herself as a goddess.
Little Bit Beastly: She has rabbit-like ears to call to the image of the Moon Rabbit.
Lunacy: She is the god of the moon after all, so she incorporates lunar themes into her attacks. During her fight, she creates two zones that inflict either Moonlit or Moonshadowed. Players must be careful not to stand in one zone for too long, or else they'll be afflicted with incurable Doom if they accumulate 5 stacks of the debuff. It's even worse in Extreme version, since the zones will be fashioned after multiple moon phases including a new moon, which means all players will suffer unavoidable Moonshadow debuffs which is potentially lethal to those who weren't in Moonlit debuff beforehand.
Multi-Melee Master: She pulls out many different weapons depending on the phase of the fight, starting with a fan and pipe, a spear, a gun and dual swords.
The Night That Never Ends: Her goal is to plunge Doma in an eternal night so that they can suffer in darkness without cease.
Occult Blue Eyes: Yotsuyu’s normally golden eyes turn blue when she becomes Tsukuyomi, and they visibly glow during her transformation as shown in the picture above.
Power Dyes Your Hair: Tsukuyomi has hair that is black on one half of her head and white on the other. After she is defeated and reverts to Yotsuyu, her hair becomes completely white until the last of Tsukuyomi's power leaves her and her hair reverts to black.
Power Floats: Tsukuyomi spends the entire fight floating to emphasize her otherworldly power. The only time she falls to the ground is when her power runs out to trigger her phase change and when she's finally defeated.
The Power of Hate: During her second phase, she summons specters of the people that showed contempt towards her (her foster parents, the people of Doma, Garlean soldiers, Asahi, and Zenos), and urges them to attack her to increase her suffering. They must all be cut down before her suffering can reach the maximum, or her Signature Move will kill everyone in the party instantly.
Power Incontinence: She briefly reverts back to Yotsuyu after trying to use her Signature Move without ample preparation. The basis of her second phase is summoning specters to recharge herself via The Power of Hate.
Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: She gets two. One when you initially pull her...
"Oh... It's going to be a long night."
- And one after you survive her Nightbloom attack and it transitions to the final phase.
"In darkness blooms the spider lily..."
- Before casting Supreme Selonomancy.
"Suffused with night, I shall prevail!"
Primal Stance: In her last phase, instead of floating upright in her refined manner, Tsukuyomi hunches over while brandishing two swords to hack away at her enemies viciously.
Signature Move: Nightbloom. Gathering all of the suffering she has accumulated, Tsukuyomi unleashes it in a massive explosion of darkness shaped like a blooming spider lily.
Super Smoke: Tsukuyomi has an attack where she creates two clouds of pipe smoke which if allowed to make contact with one another will deal a large burst of damage.
Transformation Trinket: One of the keys to her summoning is a hand mirror revealed to be a Kojin artifact which acts as a focus for the summoning as the Three Sacred Treasures did for Susano.
Tulpa:
- A more pragmatic version unlike the rest of the examples in the game; rather than Tsukuyomi be a worshiped entity brought to life by crystals, Yotsuyu instead seems to have envisioned what she would be like as the God of the Moon. The result is basically Yotsuyu undergoing Clothes Make the Superman and Power Dyes Your Hair, and her personality is completely unchanged.
- During her second phase, she conjures phantoms of all the people who have tormented her throughout her life to channel The Power of Hate into her Nightbloom attack. She starts with the Domans, her parents, the imperials, Asahi, before finishing with Zenos. But before Zenos can fill her hatred completely, she subconsciously summons an image of Gosetsu to save her, buying the party time to strike down the image of Zenos and neuter Nightbloom's power.
Two-Faced: The left half of Tsukuyomi’s body is chalk white while her right half is jet black, in keeping with her lunar theme and her Duality Motif. The Extreme version of her trial has her eventually switch between full white and full black, which determines where her attacks will land.
Villain Song: "Wayward Daughter", hauntingly beautiful song sung in Japanese about Yotsuyu's pain and desire.
Yin-Yang Bomb: She uses both light and darkness in her attacks representing the full moon and new moon.

Eureka

Heart of the Forbidden Land

An extremely dangerous primal bound within the Forbidden Land of Eureka. Able to create anything out of aether, sapping the life of Hydaelyn to do so.

Almighty Idiot: Galuf's notes on Eureka talk about it as if it were an extremely powerful artifact rather than a living thing, and it can apparently only create things when commanded by its master. It is also unable to do anything without an avatar to act through, and it is unable to tell when someone is only pretending to be tempered, both of which are exploited by Ejika.
Anthropomorphic Personification: The weapons Eureka has created are capable of generating a separate form with which to carry themselves: The twin spears Orlasrach and Munderg carried by Art and Owain; Shin-Zantetsuken wielded by Raiden; and the Lance of Virtue wielded by Absolute Virtue.
Greater-Scope Villain: It's implied to be the creator of Odin's Zantetsuken.
No Self-Buffs: Eureka is capable of creating anything, but is almost completely incapable of directly benefitting from its own abilities. The best thing Eureka can use its power for is create an avatar to act through and temper mortals.
Sinister Geometry: Eureka itself is nothing more than a rather large, ornate cube. This means it can't move on its own and is forced to act through avatars it creates.
Story-Breaker Power: It can create literally anything from aether. Galuf theorizes that if given the command, Eureka could potentially create an entirely new Mothercrystal, which would use up so much of Hydaelyn's aether as to cause a Calamity.
- It also managed to pull the entire Isle of Val out of the Lifestream on its own, though this used up almost all of its power.
The Unfought: Eureka itself is never fought directly. Ejika teleports into the lifestream and drags Eureka with him, which ends the primal's threat.

Primals introduced in Shadowbringers:

The Eldest Primals

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/hydaelyn&zodiark.jpg

Wills of the Star

Shadowbringers reveals that the original primal was Zodiark, who was summoned by the Ancients of Amaurot to halt the cataclysmic event that was destroying their world and restore it to a livable state. A faction of the Ancients took issue with the methods Zodiark employed, and summoned Hydaelyn, his equal and opposite, to restrain him. The conflict between these primals would sunder the world, creating the Source and its thirteen Shards.

See the Ascians page for more information on Zodiark. Hydaelyn now has her own page.

Ascians' Primal

Warrior of Light

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/maxresdefault_22_09.jpg

Heart of Zodiark

"I am salvation given form... Mankind's first hero... and his final hope! For victory, I render up my all!"

(Not you.)

With the revelation of Elidibus' true nature - that after becoming Zodiark's heart, he decided to separate himself from the god, and transformed his own nature into a primal to help the rest of the Convocation - the mysterious plan that he was weaving after Emet-Selch's defeat falls into place: to gradually gather faith from Norvrandt's people in their hero "Ardbert", innocently supplying Elidibus with more power. After he gains control of the Crystal Tower to control the light, he mixes it with the faith he accumulated, as well as the Spectral Warriors of Light summoned from the other Shards, taking the form of the Warrior of Light from early mythology for the decisive battle with the modern Warrior of Light.

All Your Powers Combined: Imbued with the spirits of heroes across all Shards, Elidibus can use enhanced techniques from all disciplines of war and magic.
Ambiguous Syntax: Most of his lines are dripping with this, as noted in Becoming the Mask below, its hard to tell if he's just faking it to spur the Spectral Warriors, or if he truly believes himself to be a "righteous" Warrior of Light battling against the "evil" Warrior of Darkness.
Warrior of Light: For my people, for our world, I will strike you down!
Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better: Elidibus attempts to murder the Warrior by taking in the powers of Warriors of Light from across time and space. As a result, the Warrior of Light primal possesses enhanced versions of skills that the Warrior possesses, such as the ability to summon four Demi-Bahamuts at once, the ability to Quintuplecast magic, and utilize a Level 4 Limit Break!^note
Badass Back: After banishing the Warriors to the Void, he turns his back on the arena before turning again when he notices Emet-Selch's shade appearing to save the Warriors.
Warrior of Light: So it ends. In unceremonious silence.
Battle Theme Music: "To The Edge", a much more intense remix of Neath Dark Waters, the theme of Amaurot mixed with "Shadowbringers", Hades's first theme and the main theme song of the expansion. The song itself can be seen as either both Elidibus and the Ascians' endless battle against Hydaelyn and their desire to reclaim their Star despite The Fog of Ages and Slowly Slipping Into Evil, or Azem/The Warrior's wish to stop the Ascians' Tragic Dream from coming to fruition. There is more evidence that this is the latter, as the song stops once the Warriors are banished, and restarts when Emet-Selch arrives to bring them back.
Becoming the Mask: While his Boss Banter really plays up the role of the righteous hero he's emulating, it's unclear whether he's doing it to spur on the Warriors of Light from other dimensions he's summoning, or because he sincerely believes it due to the fact his primal nature is empowered by the desires and prayers of those he's gaining his power from. Considering what Elidibus' character arc is during patch 5.3, it would not be surprising if he has come to believe himself a genuine embodiment of the Warriors of Light.
Blinded by the Light: In Extreme, the Warrior of Light can cast "Absolute Flash", which causes a bright flash of light to erupt from one party member, forcing the team to look away from that party member or suffer a damage down debuff.
Boss Subtitles: Warrior of Light, Elidibus. This is also the first time the boss's actual name is used as a subtitle, rather than the reverse, a subtle note to Elidibus's Loss of Identity.
Breath Weapon: The Spectral Egis summoned by the Spectral Summoner will blast the party with Flare Breath.
Casting a Shadow: "Terror Unleashed", an enhanced form of the Dark Knight's "Unleash" that reduces the party's HP to One and inflicts them with Living Dead, meaning everyone has to be brought back to full health within ten seconds or die.
Combat Pragmatist:
- He doesn't give the player a chance to engage him or gather allies, attacking with a huge blade of light just seconds after forming; Emet-Selch leaving some magic behind in Azem's memory crystal is what saves them.
- Partway through his fight he also shows he isn't against trying to just simply banish the party to the Rift forever rather than fight them. Once again, Azem's memory crystal saves them by summoning Emet-Selch himself to rescue the Warriors.
Combination Attack: Like Palom and Porom from a much earlier Final Fantasy, a Spectral Black and White Mage Lalafell pair team up to use Twincast and call down meteors on the party.
Confusion Fu:
- "Coruscant Saber" can either be an AOE around him or a donut AOE that hits everywhere BUT inside his hitbox. The only well to tell is to observe the glowing effects of his sword. If there are especially bright tendrils running up and down the sword, it's the donut and a sign to move in close. Otherwise, get away. The Extreme version ups the ante with "Imbued Coruscance", by allowing him to imbue his attack with two out of four elements all with different effects. Stone requires players to spread out to avoid overlapping AOEs, light requires players to stack up to share damage, fire requires all players to stop moving lest they take heavy damage, and ice forces players to stay moving lest they get frozen to the spot.
- "Quintuplecast" allows the Warrior of Light to cast five spells in rapid succession in any order as telegraphed by markers appearing above the players' heads. The players then have to respond to all five spells in the order shown.
Death from Above: "Elddragon Dive" is a supercharged version of the Dragoon’s "Dragonfire Dive" skill. He jumps high into the air and comes crashing down, blasting the whole party with a fiery shockwave.
Dishing Out Dirt: His Extreme version casts "Absolute Stone III", which is a conal AoE that targets each individual party member, forcing the party to spread out to safety.
Enemy Summoner: Hijacking the Crystal Exarch's tower, he uses the same summoning rituals in his fight to summon Spectral Warriors. In battle, he'll summon Spectral Warriors for his add phase by using "Specter of Light."
Final Boss: Like Nidhogg and Tsukuyomi before him he's fought in the third major patch of his expansion and his defeat and the immediate aftermath marks the end of Shadowbringer's story, giving way to build up for Endwalker.
Fusion Dance: How Elidibus becomes the Warrior of Light. Summoning more Spectral Warriors and asking them to join with him to defeat the Warrior of Darkness, he merges with about 14 of them and takes the form of the original Warrior of Light.
God Needs Prayers Badly: As a primal himself, Elidibus gains power from the fervent belief of other Warriors of Light from across the Rift.
Guns Akimbo: "Radiant Desperado", an upgraded form of the Ranged DPS's level two Limit Break. The Warrior of Light creates two crossbows to attack twice. The party needs to split into two groups to share the damage (and resistance debuff).
Hero Antagonist: The Warriors of Light that Elidibus summons from other worlds to aid him in his battle against THE Warrior of Light/Darkness. They are just fragments of actual people, and as such believe they have been summoned to stop a great evil, not realizing who their opponent is.
Holy Hand Grenade In Extreme, "Absolute Holy III", a powerful burst of holy magic that has to be split among the whole party to survive.
Hope Bringer: The Warrior of Light primal is powered by the hopes and prayers of the Warriors of Light across time and space as well as the people who depend on and believe in them. This is why Elidibus went around as Ardbert while encouraging others to become Warriors of Light, creating a well of hope for him to draw upon.
An Ice Person: His "Absolute Blizzard III" spell will freeze any player that isn't moving when the spell goes off.
Knight in Shining Armor: He certainly looks the part, but it's still Elidibus.
Large Ham: While Elidibus is (usually) calm and collected, he goes absolutely ham while he's transformed into the Warrior Of Light, shouting out badass declarations like there's no tomorrow.
Light Is Not Good: While he is channeling the powers of Light, it is still Elidibus underneath, who seeks to end you and all current life for the sake of restoring Zodiark.
Limit Break: He can use Limit Break attacks, including variants of Braver and Desperado that can target two players at once, and a variant of Meteor that can target four players. Furthermore, as the battle against him moves into its second phase, he also gains a level 4 Limit Break that is a guaranteed Total Party Kill unless a tank uses a level 3 limit break to mitigate the damage.
Making a Splash: The Spectral Ninja conjures a tidal wave to sweep the party away.
Meteor-Summoning Attack: He'll cast a Meteor Limit Break partway through the fight, summoning four meteors that must be spread out to the corners of the arena, lest the proximity damage kill the entire party.
Mirror Boss: Many of his abilities mimic (or at least draw inspiration from) the playable classes' skills. He also gets his own Limit Break gauge.
My Rules Are Not Your Rules: Like the player’s party, he has a Limit gauge. Unlike you, he can instantly fill the gauge to any level he wants and fire off multiple DPS Limit Breaks back to back. Also, his gauge has four bars — and yes, he fills them all at once.
Mystical White Hair: The Warrior of Light primal has long, flowing white hair and is charged with the hope and prayers for Warriors of Light across the First.
Mythology Gag:
- His appearance emulates the iconic Warrior of Light from the first game of the series; more accurately, the Adaptational Badass version from Dissidia. Not only does he look just like the Dissidia design (save for the horns of his helmet being pointed forward, like his Knight form), but several of his attacks (Coruscant Saber, The Bitter End, Ascendance, Crossover) are named after attacks the Warrior of Light has in the Dissidia games, and some of his attacks and animations are similar as well.
- The specters he summons partway through the fight superficially make up the composition of the party from Final Fantasy IV, with even a Dark Knight that looks almost identical to Cecil (aside from being a Miqo'te).
No-Sell: As long as he has one limit bar filled, any DPS Limit Breaks are responded to by him using Hollowed Ground to become invincible.
Oxymoronic Being: Elidibus is a being made up of the purest darkness, and yet his chosen primal form is a being of light.
Playing with Fire: His "Absolute Fire III" spell. It inflicts Pyretic, making players take damage if they do anything at all.
Puzzle Boss: The third phase of the Extreme version of the fight turns into one of these. Periodically, he'll call forth Warriors of Light to aid him, but while he always calls one of the same three (White Mage and Black Mage, Ninja, or Dark Knight), each summon has different mechanics that must be performed or run the risk of a Total Party Kill. The group will be required to adjust based on who he summons, and unlike other fights, there is no set pattern to what he calls for aid.
Ring Out: The Warrior can summon a phantom Ninja to cast an enormous display of Suiton in an attempt to knock the party into the instant-death zone at the edges of the arena.
Signature Move: Ultimate Crossover. The Warrior of Light joins his power with seven Spectres of Light to execute a level 4 Limit Break that combines Blade Spam with Beam Spam, creating a magical circle. It will annihilate the player’s party unless a level 3 Tank Limit Break is used to mitigate it.
Spell Blade: He can imbue his sword with the spells "Absolute Blizzard III" or "Absolute Fire III", forcing the party to deal with the mechanics of those spells even as they dodge his slashes. In the Extreme version of the fight, he adds "Absolute Stone III" and "Absolute Holy" to the mix as well, and will combo them with the already existing elements, forcing players to keep track of which combination he has.
Spin Attack: "Coruscant Saber" is a spinning slash that will strike either the Warrior of Light's immediate vicinity, or the entire battlefield except for his immediate vicinity.
Summon Magic: He can summon a red version of Bahamut Prime to attack the party. His Spectral Summoner minion likewise summons four red Demi-Bahamuts.
This Cannot Be!: Elidibus' response to Emet-Selch's shade appearing just before it snaps the player and party back to the battlefield.
Elidibus: You... It cannot be!
Total Party Kill: He has two attacks that will wipe the party unless successfully countered:
- Absolute Teleport, which captures the entire party and flings them into the Void. This prompts an Active Time Maneuver that requires players to mash a button to keep their "Will of Defiance" meter from depleting for fifteen seconds. If even one player fails this segment, it'll wipe the party.
- Ultimate Crossover, a level-4 Limit Break attack. The only way to survive this attack is for a tank to cast a level-3 Limit Break to reduce the damage.
Weaponized Teleportation: "Absolute Teleport" banishes the party to the Aetherial Rift, where they must button mash for 15 seconds or die.
What Are You: Said, not in rage or terror, but genuine wonder and curiosity just before the fight starts, having seen the Warrior of Darkness use "a summoning spell of eld" that was not of Hydaelyn's making. It almost gets him to back down, until his desire to destroy anyone in his way reasserts itself.
Why Won't You Die?: It's more subdued than most examples, but once the party survives "Ultimate Crossover", he's amazed they're still alive and it begins to dawn on him that he might lose.
You still stand. Very well...
Yin-Yang Bomb: It can use both Paladin-like abilities of Light, along as using Light in various ways, and displays the powers of Darkness of the Dark Knight.

Eden Primals

While trying to restore life on the First, The Warrior of Light, Ryne, Thancred, and Urianger take control of the first Sin Eater, Eden, and by using it and the power of primal summoning from the Warrior's memories, seek to slay the newly summoned primals to have their elemental ether seep into The Empty.

However, because the Warrior's memories are so foggy from slaying the primals, they end up being different than they usually appear. They serve as bosses in the Eden's raid series.

In General

Adaptational Attractiveness: Most of them look much more conventionally attractive and humanoid than the originals, with the exceptions of Leviathan (because there's no way to pretty up a gigantic sea serpent) and Shiva (because she was already a beautiful, scantily-clad woman). This is likely due to the Warrior of Light's Standard Fantasy Races perspective, whereas previous primals in the series were summoned by non-humanoid races and shaped by centuries of worship.
Ascended Meme: During the Eden's Gate raid series, it quickly became a joke that the Warrior of Light had either a poor memory or even brain damage due to the fact that as part of the storyline, they summon primals from their memory, yet the summoned primals look very little like the source material (Leviathan having two heads, Titan having machinery on his back that lets him turn into an ATV, etc). At the end of the second tier - Eden's Verse - the Warrior can comment that they never quite got the hang of primal summoning down, and Gaia responds that Thancred and Urianger seemed confused by what was summoned, asking the Warrior if they have memory problems.
Boss Remix: As if to fit the theme of the primals summoned by the Warrior of Light being jumbled with their other experiences, their boss themes are heavily remixed to include heavier rock and electronic elements than the originals, making it hard to make out the lyrics of the song. It's as if the Warrior struggles to remember how the originals looked like.
Boss Subtitles: Every boss has the subtitle "Heritor of [x]".
But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Hilariously, outside of traumatic signature skills, the Warrior of Light's attempts at summoning their own primals come out distinctly different from the ones fought on the Source due to poor recollection of them and pulling in traits of similarly aspected enemies.
Composite Character: Part of the reason why the Eden primals look so different from their Source version is that Eden takes elements from other beings from the Warrior's mind.
- Leviathan takes cues from Shinryu, his Tidal Wave being the most notable example, as well as Midgardsormr. In addition, his multiple heads is reminiscent of the auspice Seiryu, plus the fact that, in his actual primal battle, Leviathan would attack the Whorleater barge with his head from one side, and his tail from the other, forcing the party to split up as each of them was vulnerable to either physical attacks or magic.
- Titan takes cues from goblins thanks to the Warrior confusing them for Kobolds, which creates his Adaptive Armor.
- Ramuh takes cues from Ixion, Zurvan, and Nidhogg (and possibly minor boss Poqhiraj), his wings and staff being notable examples.
- Garuda and Ifrit take this to a logical extreme, though not as you'd expect from the previous Eden summonings. Compared to the other attempts, Eden Garuda and Ifrit are actually fairly decent adaptations of their Source version, just considerably more humanoid. However, two thirds of the way through the fight, they fuse into a new primal. Thancred suggests that perhaps while making them, the Warrior of Light had flashbacks to the moment Ultima Weapon absorbed their Source versions.
- Shiva's ice form takes cues from Tsukuyomi due to her swords, her light form takes cues from Hydaelyn and Omega-F because the latter creates leg spikes, and her dragon form takes cues from Hraesvelgr.
Not as You Know Them: The Warrior's poor recollection of the primals they fought, along with Eden taking aspects of similar beings, causes the Eden primals to appear very different than in the Source. It's important to keep in mind that ANY stray thoughts or mental associations can cause the summonings to vary wildly.

Eden Leviathan

Heritor of the Whorl

"Rise, oceans! Swallow this forsaken land!"

The first primal summoned by the Warrior, in order to restore the water element to The Empty. However, his appearance is drastically different, with two heads being the most notable. He is fought in "Eden's Gate: Inundation," as the third boss of the Eden raid series.

Battle Theme Music: "Blinding Indigo", a remix of "Through the Maelstrom".
Boss Arena Urgency: Eden Leviathan’s “Undersea Quake” attack destroys half the floor, leaving the party with much less room to dodge “Temporary Current” or spread out for “Tsunami”. Fortunately, Ryne will restore the missing sections of the floor after a minute or two.
Boss Subtitles: He has the subtitle "Heritor of the Whorl."
Composite Character: When the Warrior of Light does his own summoning of Leviathan during the Eden raid, Urianger comments that their version ended up being an amalgamation of Leviathan and other water-aspected creatures they fought. This results in the new Leviathan having two heads and Shinryu's version of Tidal Wave among other changes.
Flying Seafood Special: You fight Leviathan in an undersea gorge that is completely exposed to the air thanks to the Flood of Light. He has no trouble "swimming" through the air despite the absence of water.
Knockback: Eden Leviathan’s “Tsunami” attack marks two players with “Surging Tsunami”, delayed shockwaves that push all other players away from them. Since the arena has no walls, this can easily lead to a Ring Out. It also has Shinryu’s version of “Tidal Wave”, which knocks the whole party away from one side of the arena.
Multiple Head Case: Since the Source version would attack simultaneously with its head and tail, the version summoned by the Warrior of Light during the Eden raid has two heads.
Theme Naming: All of Eden Leviathan's attacks are named after kinds of currents.
Throat Light: The backs of Eden Leviathan's mouths glow bright blue whenever he’s charging up one of its deadlier attacks.

Eden Titan

Heritor of Crags

"From the heart of the mountain, I rise."

The second primal summoned by the Warrior, in order to restore the earth element to The Empty. However, his appearance is drastically different, with him being more slimmed-down and possessing armor that changes into a pair of gauntlets or an ATV. He is fought in "Eden's Gate: Sepulture," as the fourth boss of the Eden raid series, and the Final Boss of Eden's Gate.

Adaptational Attractiveness: Resembles a professional bodybuilder made out of rock rather than a boulder on (tiny, stubby) legs.
Adaptive Armor: Eden Titan's fight in Eden’s Gate has him wear a suit of mechanical armor. That armor can detach from Titan and transform into either a giant ATV for him to ride, or a pair of gauntlets that let him create powerful shockwaves by punching the ground.
Battle Theme Music: "Landslide", a remix of "Under the Weight". The primals version of "Under the Weight" plays during the final phase of Savage mode.
Boss Subtitles: He has the subtitle "Heritor of Crags".
Climax Boss: He serves as the Final Boss of the tirst tier of the Eden raid series, but only because Ryne gets tired afterwards and needs to rest, and by then, only water and earth are restored to The Empty.
Cool Car: During the Eden raids, Titan is shown be able to morph into an ATV.
Didn't Need Those Anyway!: Before Eden Titan becomes Titan Maximum, he sheds the armor to fuse with the mountain range, though its downplayed, as during the last phase of the fight, he summons the armor to continue fighting the Warriors.
Dishing Out Dirt: It's Titan, naturally.
Make My Monster Grow: During the fight against him in Savage, he suddenly strips himself of all of his Adaptive Armor, jumps of the platform, and then fuses himself with the nearby mountain ranges to become Titan Maximum.
Mythology Gag: The positioning of his "armor" segments calls to mind Hecatoncheir from Final Fantasy XIII, who had sets of arms in roughly the same positions.
Ring Out: Eden Titan is even worse than his Source counterpart in this regard. "Massive Landslide", "Fault Zone", and "Geocrush" all generate tremendous amounts of knockback that will send players flying off the edge of the arena unless they’re standing close enough to Titan when he uses them, or in a safe spot directly in front of him for "Massive Landslide’s" case.
Powered Armor: Titan begins the fight with a suit of mechanized armor. He can transform this armor into a pair of gauntlets that he uses to slam every row on the arena except for the one in front of him or an ATV that he'll use to try and run the party off the stage.
Shockwave Stomp: Eden Titan’s “Seismic Wave” is a single stomp that produces a shockwave powerful enough to kill any player not hiding behind a boulder. His versions of “Landslide” and “Geocrush” produce shockwaves by jumping to spots on the battlefield.
Signature Move: Eden Titan’s version of Earthen Fury inflicts Damage Over Time.
Underwear of Power: He has a stone version complete with a loincloth as well.
Waxing Lyrical: Several of his lines in battle are taken from the lyrics of "Under The Weight"; the original Titan's battle theme.

Eden Ramuh

Heritor of Levin

"Thou wouldst forge this world anew? I, Ramuh, shall test thy worth."

The third primal summoned by the Warrior, in order to restore the lightning element to The Empty. However, his appearance is even more drastically different than before, having been mixed with Ixion and given a pair of wings. He is fought in "Eden's Verse: Fulmination," and serves as the fifth boss of the Eden raid series.

Adaptational Attractiveness: He's a handsome, shirtless Silver Fox centaur rather than a wizened old man in unflattering robes, and his beard is neatly trimmed rather than making up 90% of his body-mass.
Battle Theme Music: "Twice Stricken", a remix of "Thunder Rolls".
Boss Subtitles: He has the subtitle "Heritor of Levin."
Cool Horse: Defeating Savage Eden Shiva allows the chance for the winning party to roll on a Ramuh Crystal which lets a player summon him as a mount.
Damage Reduction: Many of Ramuh’s attacks leave behind orbs of electricity. Players need to pick up these orbs to gain stacks of Surge Protection, which will reduce the damage taken from Ramuh’s next attack.
Expy: This Ramuh seems to be based on Rhalgr the Destroyer, even moreso than the original Ramuh who was theorized to be based on the Sylphs' interpretation of Rhalgr. In Eorzean myth, Ixion was Rhalgr's steed, and Rhalgr's associated element is lightning, and now we have the lightning-deity Ramuh "riding" Ixion thanks to his centauroid form.
Enemy Summoner: Can create electric duplicates of either Ixion or of himself to dash at the player.
Knockback: The Will of Ramuh clone that Ramuh summons will push people toward the sides of the arena when it charges down the central lane. Similarly, the Will of Ixion clones will push anyone who didn’t get out of their way in the direction that they’re charging. As the arena has no walls, both of these can lead to a Ring Out. In the Savage version of the fight, the player has to use this knock-back to destroy the copies of his staff that spawn.
Mix-and-Match Man: Eden Ramuh is a zebra-striped centaur, meaning that he's at least partially based on Ixion as well. In addition, he also has feathery red-and-black wings and wields a red-and-black spear-staff with a suspiciously eye-shaped orb embedded in it, suggesting that he's also based on Nidhogg and Zurvan.
- Sharp-eyed fans have also pointed out his wings are red and that Zurvan's wings were not despite red being his main color. They instead appear to come from Poqhiraj, the second boss of Sohr Khai, who is a red pegasus with similar lightning powers (being a winged centaur like being however defineitly still comes from Zurvan). Like how Urianger notes Eden Leviathan has elements of various water-based beasts, Poqhiraj despite being so minor, being part of of Ramuh isn't a huge stretch due to how similar it is to the other componants.
One-Hit Kill: Several of his attacks outright kill the player if they lack the Surge Protection buff from the balls of thunder found around the arena. The Savage mode of the fight makes this a juggling act; the player needs to get one to survive, but if they get too many, the add that spawns will target them and not the tank.
Our Centaurs Are Different: This version of Ramuh looks like a fusion of Ramuh and Ixion with the latter's waist joined at the latters withers.
Shock and Awe: This may come as a shock, but yes, Eden Ramuh attacks exclusively with lightning magic.
Stance System: A variation; when Ramuh calls his duplicates, the nature of how they act changes depending on if Ramuh strengthens himself beforehand. If he doesn't, the duplicates are more straightforward to avoid, but if he strengthens himself, it becomes stronger and requires more focus.
There's No Kill like Overkill: Failing to dodge Judgment Bolt will get you hit for 9,999,999 damage. For context, even the best equipped tanks will only have about 45,000 HP at this level.

Eden Garuda and Eden Ifrit / Raktapaksa

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ffxivedenifirtandedengaruda.png

Heritors of Fury

Ifrit: These mortals are not so easily bested...
Garuda: No more games. We face them together!

The fourth and fifth primals summoned by the Warrior, with the help of Ryne and Gaia working together to restore both fire and wind to the Empty. Ifrit possesses a more humanoid body and a Garuda has more wings than before. They also fuse together to become Raktapaksa in an effort to defeat you. They fought in "Eden's Verse: Furor," and serves as the sixth boss of the Eden raid series.

Adaptational Attractiveness: Ifrit still has a monstrous face, but is otherwise a lean, well-built humanoid rather than a hideous reptilian horror. Garuda, meanwhile, has a conventionally attractive human face without her original form's huge, beaky nose.
Battle Theme Music: "Primal Angel", a dual remix of "Primal Judgment" and "Fallen Angel" with a bit of 8-bit music in it as well.
Bishōnen Line: Eden Ifrit looks a lot more humanoid than his previous appearance.
Blow You Away: It’s Garuda. Of course she attacks with wind magic.
Boss Subtitles: They have the shared subtitle "Heritors of Fury".
Dash Attack: "Hands of Hell" and "Instant Incineration" will both have Eden Ifrit lunge across the room to punch his current target(s). Anyone in his path will take damage as well.
Dual Boss: Both Eden Garuda and Eden Ifrit together in their third phase, followed by them fusing into Raktapaksa.
Draw Aggro: Eden Ifrit and Eden Garuda lead off their third phase by casting Hated of the Embers and Hated of the Vortex respectively, forcing each half the party to only target one of them until the phase ends and the two fuse together.
Elemental Punch: Several of Ifrit’s attacks involve rushing up to his target and delivering a fiery punch.
Flaming Sword: Raktapaksa’s strongest attack, "Conflag Strike", has them whip out a sword, charge it up with wind and fire aether, and then swing it in an arc that blasts three-quarters of the arena with flames.
Fusion Dance: Eden Garuda and Eden Ifrit fuse to become Raktapaksa. Eden Ifrit is the dominant personality following the merge and their combined form mostly resembles him.
Playing with Fire: Ifrit’s attacks are fire-based, as always.
Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: Raktapaksa is one of the mythological Garuda’s many titles, meaning “red-winged”.
Sequential Boss: First you fight Eden Garuda by herself. Once her health gets low, she tags out and Eden Ifrit takes her place. Once his health gets low, Garuda jumps back in and the party fights both of them at once for a bit. Then they fuse into Raktapaksa, starting the final phase of the fight.
Winged Humanoid: Eden Garuda has eight wings, not counting the ones on her head. When she fuses with Ifrit to become Raktapaksa, the resulting primal has a single pair of wings.

Eden Shiva

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/87074249_10157890229685871_6278450559854837760_o.png

Heritor of Frost

"Fools...you would stoke the fires of conflict?"

The sixth and last of the primals summoned by the Warrior, in order to restore ice to the Empty, and channeled through Ryne herself in an effort to better recreate Shiva's memory much like Ysayle before her, hoping to persuade Eden to follow through by example. Unfortunately, due to inexperience and ice's connection to light, she loses control of herself and becomes a Knight Templar obsessed with ushering another Flood of Light, prompting the Warrior of Light to quell a rampaging Eden Shiva. She is fought in "Eden's Verse: Refulgence," and serves as the eight boss of the Eden raid series, and the Final Boss of Eden's Verse.

Apocalypse How: Implications of her intent aside, twice in the fight does she attempt to directly-invoke the Flood of Light as an attack: the first time, by charging crystals with aether sprites that the party has to stop, and the second time directly with her own overflowing light held (temporarily) at bay by Gaia. In both cases, if the party fails the sequence, the Flood is unleashed anew, wiping the party and dooming the First.
Attack Reflector: Shiva can summon mirrors to reflect her own attacks back at the party from different angles.
Battle Theme Music: "Return to Oblivion", a lyrical remix of "Footsteps in the Snow" that draws elements from "Oblivion" and is sung from Ryne's perspective as she's overwhelmed by Eden Shiva's will and desire.
Bait-and-Switch Boss: Due to the Warrior of Light's familiarity with Ysayle, the Shiva re-imagining is the most accurate of them all. Unfortunately, Ryne's connection to the light and immediate lack of control over Shiva will cause her to shift forms between Shiva and her preconception of Hydaelyn. Exemplified by her summoning animation, which is a one to one recreation of Ysayle's version, only for Ryne to lose control the moment the transformation finishes, howling in rage instead of dramatically spinning and posing.
Blinded by the Light: When she uses Redress to change to her Light outfit, she uses an attack called Shining Armor. You have to look away when she changes, or she'll stun you and leave you unable to dodge her sweeping kick attack.
Boss Subtitles: She has the subtitle "Heritor of Frost."
Changing Clothes Is a Free Action: Redress, which changes Shiva's form between Ice, Light and (Savage-only) Dragon. Each outfit switch has a different attack tied to it - when switching to Ice she freezes the floor, for Light you have to look away to avoid a stun, and for Dragon a rapid-fire laser will blast the spot where the players were standing.
Climax Boss: She serves as the Final Boss of the Tier 2 Eden series, and while all of the elements have been restored, there's still one more tier left.
Didn't Think This Through: Ryne overestimated not only her own willpower vis-a-vis a primal's influence, but also what could happen if she lost control considering her own influence over Light. The end result is a deranged Ice-Light deity with full intent on re-triggering the Flood and wiping the First out for good.
The End of the World as We Know It: Fail to stop her, and she'll usher in a second Flood of Light, spelling doom for Norvrandt and its inhabitants.
Feather Boa Constrictor: Her Dragon form has Hraesvelgr wrapping around her body reminiscent of how people use snakes as a fashion accessory.
From Bad to Worse: While there was no danger of Ryne being tempered by the primal she summoned into herself, that doesn't mean she can control it. And then she uses Redress, which is where the real danger of the boss fight shows as she turns into what is essentially a bootleg Hydaelyn. The fights ends with her nearly causing a new Flood of Light.
Fusion Dance: Savage difficulty only. For a given definition of "fusion", Shiva will summon a tulpa of Hraesvelgr and wear him as one of her Redress outfits, granting her many of the attacks used by dragons in the game previously.
Harmless Freezing: Much like the original Shiva, Ryne summons her by encasing herself in ice before shattering it to unveil her primal form. The final phase of the fight also features Shiva freezing the Warrior in ice, rendering them incapable of stopping the oncoming Flood until Gaia leaps into the fray to shatter the ice with her hammer. While disoriented for a short while, the Warrior gets back up unharmed.
An Ice Person: Natch, it's Shiva after all.
Knight Templar: She fully believes that the Light will bring about "a world a peace," and reprimands the heroes for using darkness, having a serious Black-and-White Insanity when it comes to the two elements.
Knockback: "Heavenly Strike" pushes the party away from Shiva. There are no walls to stop players from falling off the platform when she does this.
Light 'em Up: Due to its static nature, ice is the element most closely aligned to umbral aether. Combined with Ryne and Eden's close link to the light, this results in Shiva routinely shifting forms between an ice lady and a light lady. It goes so far that Ryne-Shiva has the power to manually cause a new Flood of Light, and attempts to do so no less than twice over the course of the battle.
Mirrors Reflect Everything: Shiva's main mechanic other than Redress is to periodically summon mirrors of ice around the arena, which copy and repeat the next attack Shiva uses. The size and color of the mirror determines when the reflected attack goes off.
Naked in Mink: Well, dragon, but her dragon form in the Savage difficulty only has Hraesvelgr covering up her body, where she routinely shifts between an ice lady, a light lady, and a dragon lady.
Navel-Deep Neckline: The dress Shiva wears in her light form has a plunging neckline that goes past the navel.
Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Eden Shiva believes that the Light will bring about a world of peace, and reprimands the Warrior for "stoking the fires of conflict" and wishes to triumph over the darkness. Of course, having spent an entire arc on the First and seeing firsthand the horrors of the Flood of Light, it's safe to say that it is best to take her words with a grain of salt.
One-Handed Zweihänder: She can dual-wield massive curved swords in her Ice form, which are as long as she is tall (and she is already very tall.)
Plot-Relevant Age-Up: It only lasts for the battle, but the transformation gives Ryne an adult body. And thank Hydaelyn for that, because even with Lens Flare Censor (literally) and Changing Clothes Is a Free Action in full effect, Redress is exactly what it sounds like.
Power Dyes Your Hair: The transformation into Eden Shiva dyes Ryne's hair white in Ice form, or blonde in Light form.
Shapeshifter Weapon: Shiva can morph her hands or feet into blades of ice, depending on which form she’s in.
Signature Move:
- In the first phase, Shattered World. In her Hydaelyn-inspired Light form, Shiva strikes the ground with a two-legged kick and raises her arms; an attack inspired by the ancient murals of the Sundering. The attack divides the party into two groups, forcing them to contend with aether sprites attempting to merge back into the Light and unleash a new Flood.
- In the second phase of Normal mode, Endless Ice Age. With Shiva encased in a prison of ice, the overflowing light begins to pour out of her, threatening to unleash a new Flood all on its own, and freeze the party to death, should they fail to shatter the ice before Gaia's spell expires.
Stance System: Shiva regularly switches between her default Ice form and a Light form based on Hydaelyn, with each having a completely different set of attacks and mechanics. Savage gives her a third form based on Hraesvelgr.
With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Unfortunately, Ryne was playing with much greater forces than Ysayle; her certainty that she can control the massive amount of ice aether falls flat the second she transforms. Her Echo prevents her from being tempered, but to actually steer the overclocked primal she created is beyond her.

Eden Cloud of Darkness

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/cloudofdarkness.jpg

Abyssal Abhorrence

"We shall engulf everything in our shadow..."

Fearing that the elements dispersed by the previous primal summonings are still too heavily aligned toward Light, Ryne and Gaia pitch the idea of summoning a primal aligned to Darkness. However, lacking knowledge on the only known primal of Darkness, Zodiark, the Warrior of Light instead summons a primal version of a powerful voidsent - the Cloud of Darkness.

Adaptational Attractiveness: The 'real' Cloud of Darkness the Warrior of Light fought at the Crystal Tower wasn't outright ugly, but she was a snarling, gorgon-like head and pair of arms emerging from, well, a cloud of darkness. This one is the beautiful, regal, and scantily-clad Cute Monster Girl from the Dissidia subfranchise.
Beam Spam: Retains the original's use of various Particle Beam attacks.
Boss Subtitles: "Abyssal Abhorrence".
Floorboard Failure: One of the main gimmicks of the fight. When she is using her second arena, the floor will give out if a player remains on one for too long (roughly six seconds), which will lead to their death. The player has to periodically move around the tiles to avoid causing this issue.
Green Thumb: Their Obscure Woods ability surrounds the platform with fleshy-looking plant matter similar to the kind seen in the Void Ark, as well as creating thorny bulbs on the platform itself. This is likely due to Darkness's influence on life and growth.
Cloud of Darkness: By the power of Darkness, we call forth life, boundless and irrepressible. With balance comes life, insatiable and all-consuming.
Mythology Gag: The Cloud of Darkness's new form is based on her appearance in Dissidia Final Fantasy. As before, most of their Particle Beam variants come from that game.
Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Relatively speaking. The Eden Cloud of Darkness is a fraction of the original's size, though still larger than the Warrior of Light, and is just as powerful.
Royal "We": The Cloud refers to itself with plural pronouns.

The Fatebreaker

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/rcvn3eyq05isr3t8rj4ogw4nqo.jpg

Dread Hope

A chimeric entity based on Ryne's greatest hopes and fears. It takes the form of a fusion of Thancred, Ran'jit, and Innocence.

Battle Theme Music: The Legendary Beast, a remix of the same theme used for the Griever boss battle in Final Fantasy VIII, as the Fatebreaker is an expy of it.
Blinded by the Light: "Prismatic Deception" fills the arena with bright light, rendering the Fatebreaker and his clones invisible while they charge up a lethal Blasting Zone attack.
Damage Over Time: The lightning-elemental version of Bound of Faith inflicts an irremovable Electrocution debuff, making his target take constant damage until it wears off. His Burnished Glory AoE in Savage mode inflicts a heavy bleed Damage Over Time effect as well.
Declaration of Protection: He begins the battle shouting "I'm the only one fit to protect her," mirroring both Thancred's and Ran'jit's conflicting desires to protect Ryne.
Elemental Powers: His dragon familiar can enhance his gunblade with Fire, Lightning, or Light, each of which will alter the effects of his Burnt Strike and Bound of Faith attacks. In Savage, this applies to his Elemental Break attack as well.
Expy: Of Griever. Much like Griever, the Fatebreaker is a summoned beast created by extracting memories of some of the strongest people in Ryne's thoughts. Fittingly, the boss uses a remix of Griever's battle theme: The Legendary Beast.
Familiar: Like Ran'jit, he has a small dragon as a companion, which he can wear as a scarf. The dragon will enhance his gunblade attacks and occasionally detach to attack the party directly.
Graceful Loser: It accepts defeat willingly when bested, echoing Thancred's desire for Ryne's happiness.
Meaningful Name: "Fatebreaker" as a title could apply to both Thancred and Ran'jit. Ran'jit sought to break the newest Oracle's fate of dying in war with the sin eaters by locking her away in the dungeons and withdrawing from the war entirely. Thancred was the one to help bring the cycle of Oracles to an end entirely.
Mix-and-Match Man: He has features that blend together several people from Ryne's past. His general build, face, and weapon are based on Thancred. Parts of his lower body, as well as the dragon he fights alongside, are based on Ran'jit. He also has golden wings and a halo, based either on Sin Eaters in general, or Innocence in particular.
Mix-and-Match Weapon: He wields an enormous gunblade, to mirror Thancred's.
One-Hit Kill: Blasting Zone inflicts enough damage to kill any player with a single hit. It's made all the more dangerous by the fact that it covers roughly half the battlefield and that the Fatebreaker is invisible while charging up the attack.
Spin Attack: Burnt Strike is a vertical spinning slash which hits everything in a straight line extending from one end of the arena to the other.
Tulpa: The Fatebreaker is, in essence, a primal, forcibly summoned from Ryne's mind. Much like the other Eden Primals, his form is warped by her perception and the way each memory connects with another. The arena is even the gaol in Eulmore, where she first met Thancred.
Why Am I Ticking?: Both his Powder Mark tankbuster and the Light-elemental version of Bound of Faith apply a debuff to his target which will create an explosion centered on said target when the debuff expires. The Light-elemental Bound of Faith can extend to other players if they are caught in it.

Queen Gunnhildr

The Lady of Blades

^{Click here} to see her as she appears in her boss fight

The will of Queen Gunnhildr shall not be denied. All who oppose Bozja must fall.

The Lady of Blades. The historical Queen Gunnhildr is said to have transformed herself into a primal to protect her realm from the Fourth Umbral Calamity. However, the truth proves much more complicated than that. She is summoned in the present day by forces loyal to Noah van Gabranth and the IVth Legion, making her a major antagonist in the Save the Queen: Blades of Gunnhildr quests.

She serves as the final boss of the Delubrum Reginae duty.

All Your Powers Combined: She can summon automaton guards, the same kinds players fought earlier in the dungeon, and command them to use their most powerful techniques against the players.
Anti-Villain: The Queen Gunnhildr primal has nothing but love for her nation and continues to try and protect it long after her mortal death even after being assassinated by her own bodyguards. But Misjia specifically twists her memories to turn her against the Bozjan Resistance. When Misjia attempts a Taking You with Me, Gunnhildr's spirit convinces Misjia to stand down, and she later wills Save the Queen toward Misjia's cell to have them sacrifice themselves to save Bozja from the wrath of the rampaging Diablo Armament.
Awful Truth: Legend says that Queen Gunnhildr stabbed herself with her sword to become a god and save her people from the Fourth Umbral Calamity. The truth is that she was too scared to, so her bodyguards, Gunnhildr's Blades, overthrew her and instated a puppet ruler who would do it for them. Then, when they realized the primal they had made was both lucid (as she had the Echo; compare to Ysayle with Shiva) and not only too powerful to control but benevolent to the population they wished to exploit, they killed her too.
Battle Theme Music: The Queen Awakens, a forboding and harsh techno remix of "Blood on the Wind", the battle theme of the Bozjan Southern Front and Zadnor. The female vocals are accompanied by a haunting choir as well as the mechanical clanking of the clockwork soldiers under Gunnhildr's command.
Bodyguard Betrayal: The historical Gunnhildr who became the primal was put to death by her guardian Blades for not only being too powerful and lucid to control, but even more worryingly, being a benevolent god-queen who could threaten the status quo of their heavily stratified and exploitative caste system. She originally took it with grace, but Misija reveals how they ruined her name, which corrupts her memories and makes her vengeful instead.
Boss Subtitles: "Vengeful Eikon: The Queen".
Cool Crown: She wears an ornate golden crown stylized to look like a pair of horns.
Cool Sword: Her memories are housed inside Save the Queen, a masterwork of a blade forged from Ultima's auracyte, which allows Misjia to enter them by coercing Mikoto and the Warrior to use the Echo to interact with the original Queen Gunnhildr.
Dead Hat Shot: Downplayed. After Misija and Gunnhildr ram the Diablo Armament, Gunnhildr's sword crashes to the floor. Misija herself is found barely alive and dying, requesting the Warrior that she be put out of her misery (The Warrior doesn't do it as she dies before they can Mercy Kill her, or Bajsaljen does the deed for you).
Disc-One Final Boss: Her defeat is not the end of the storyline involving her, as Gabranth and his forces are still active.
Everyone Has Standards: Even after having her memories twisted and her name besmirched, Gunnhildr still loves her nation and will do anything to protect it. When Misjia attempts to destroy all of Bozja as part of a Taking You with Me after the Warrior defeats her, Gunnhildr's spirit appears and convinces Misjia to stand down. Then Gunnhildr's will causes Save the Queen to teleport to Misjia and have her arrive in time to destroy the Diablo Armament, saving the Resistance in the finale of the Save the Queen storyline.
Famous Ancestor: Misjia is the descendant of the Queen Gunnhildr who became a primal to save Bozja from the Fourth Umbral Calamity. Gunnhildr's assassination and the subsequent coverup combined with Bozja's already horribly exploitative oligarchy convinces Misjia to become The Mole and later lay waste to the Bozjan Resistance by summoning Gunnhildr via Save the Queen.
Geas: "Queen's Edict" compels all players to march a certain number of spaces across the battlefield. If a player fails to march far enough in time, they'll be struck with a magical sword for massive damage. If they march too far, they will be afflicted with Doom and drop dead three seconds later.
Glowing Eyes of Doom: Her eyes glow bright teal and gain Hellish Pupils whenever she's about to temper someone.
God-Emperor: She's remembered as the queen of Bozja who became a god to defend her country from the Fourth Umbral Calamity that leveled Allag. In truth, the real queen was too scared to go through with stabbing herself with Save the Queen, resulting in her guards deposing her and replacing her with a servant girl Puppet King.
Hellish Pupils: Her pupils are glowing catlike slits.
Holy Hand Grenade: She has several attacks with names like "Empyrean Iniquity", "Heaven's Wrath" and "Gods Save the Queen", all of which involve blasting the party with holy power.
Humanoid Abomination: Gunnhildr stands out from most primals as she manifests as a seemingly regular Roegadyn woman, where even other humanoid primals are very obviously inhuman. This doesn't make her any less dangerous.
Improbable Weapon User: Her throne's basic auto-attack consists of whacking people with its trumpet.
Legacy Character: Gunnhildr was a name given to all queens of ancient Bozja, and the one who became this primal was the last.
Mythology Gag: Her "Northswain's Glow" and "Heaven's Wrath" attacks take their respective names from Ashe's level 1 and 2 Quickenings in Final Fantasy XII.
Red Baron: The Lady of Blades.
Ring Out: Her arena is surrounded by an energy field which instantly kills players on contact, and she has an attack which pushes players a great distance via Knockback. Do the math.
Shock and Awe: In the Savage version she can summon orbs of Ball Lightning which send out damaging pulses of electricity.
Spectral Weapon Copy: She can create aetherial copies of Save the Queen and control them telekinetically. She can temper people by stabbing them with these blades.
Summon Magic: She frequently summons invincible magitek automatons to launch attacks on her behalf.
Super Wheelchair: She spends the final boss fight of Delubrum Reginae seated in a single-wheeled throne which is also a Steampunk-esque Magitek robot. The throne does most of the attacking, while the Queen occasionally throws out magic spells or summons clockwork automatons for support. It also disappears after her defeat.
Taking You with Me: Despite being beaten, Misija tries to cast one last giant burst of magic before being stopped by the original Queen Gunnhildr, who convinces her to stop fighting.

Lunar Primals

Beginning with the finale of 5.4, a new threat has emerged - the threat of the "Telophoroi," helmed by Zenos and the rogue Ascian Fandaniel. Among their servants was a mighty primal in the likeness of Bahamut - dubbed "Lunar Bahamut" by Fandaniel. Since then, the origin of this beast has become known- the towers which popped up around Eorzea have become prisons for individuals tempered to venerate Garlemald, and then bound to summon primals in the likeness of their own gods to serve this new threat.

As of the end of Death Before Dawn Part I, two such primals, Bahamut and Ifrit, have been shown on screen - albeit one in flashback - but reports have arrived of others coming out of the towers, with two more being fought in 5.55 - Ravana and Odin.

Ambiguous Situation: The process for creating a Lunar primal involves Anima tempering the primal's usual followers and then getting them to summon it, resulting in the summoned primal being tempered itself. How did Odin, a primal without active followers to summon him, become a Lunar primal?
Beast of the Apocalypse: Their general vibe combined with Lunar Bahamut's Boss Subtitles paint them as Fandaniel's attempt to mimic the Terminus beings that spawned during the Final Days of Amaurot.
- That Lunar Bahamut takes the form of a dragon with several spiraling horns adorning his head and body specifically calls to mind the dragon from the Book of Revelation.
Boss Subtitles: Telotherium ^noteroughly "Beast of the End" for Lunar Bahamut.
Gameplay and Story Integration: The inability to temper means that these foes can be confronted (relatively) safely by the other Scions - a factor that allows for the Trust system to be used.
Final Boss: They serve as this for Patch 5.55, and for Shadowbringers.
Powered by a Forsaken Child: Each Lunar primal seems to be summoned by captive worshipers. For Lunar Bahamut, this is even more literal - Fandaniel somehow recovered some of the tempered Meracydian dragons, Bahamut's literal descendants, which were used to keep him alive in Dalamud and prevent his resummoning.
Mythology Gag:
- Their appearance and nature is suggestive of the Dark Aeons fought during Final Fantasy X. Ifrit is mostly just recolored to purple, but Lunar Bahamut's appearance adds several flourishes that make him more closely resemble the version from the earlier game.
- Their name is a reference to the Lunar Eidolons fought at the end of the Lunar Trials added to the GBA and PSP versions of Final Fantasy IV. Lunar Bahamut's color scheme here—dark body, blue underbelly and lavender wing membranes—is the same as his counterpart from that game.
Necessary Drawback: While the full nature as to why is still being studied by the Alliance, its noted that Lunar primals lack the critical factor that makes an ordinary primal so dangerous: they cannot temper people. This means little when they hide within the broadcast range of the Telophoroi's towers which can temper (turning victims loyal to Garlemald, or more specifically, Varis' primal form, Anima), but makes all the difference in a regular battlefield where the Scions and the Alliance can bust out their full military might without fear of being brainwashed.
Odd Name Out: Daivadipa and the Magus Sisters encountered in Endwalker are also Lunar primals, but do not get the appellation, possibly because they did not have a non-Lunar version they needed to be distinguished from.
Palette Swap: While Lunar Bahamut at least gets a unique model, the other Lunar primals are just purple palette swaps of the original primal.
Purple Is Powerful: All of the Lunar primals have distinct violet coloration to them.
Sequential Boss: Along with tempered forces, the primals are fought in different groups in the climax of 5.55. Thancred, Y'shtola and Urianger fight Lunar Odin. Alisaie and G'raha Tia fight Lunar Ravana. Alphinaud, Estinien and the Warrior of Light fight Lunar Ifrit.
Technicolor Fire: Lunar Bahamut's Perigean Breath attack is a torrent of purple fire.
Worf Had the Flu: Lunar Bahamut took quite the beating from Tiamat and Estinien before the Warrior of Light faces him.

Primals introduced in Endwalker:

The Magus Sisters

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/magus_sisters_render_from_final_fantasy_xiv.png

The Harbingers Elect^note

A trio of humanoid primals. Twisted apparitions based off of the worshipped deities of the Arkasodara, they are summoned by the Tower of Zot to defend it from the Warrior of Light.

Adaptation Name Change: Their localized names in most Final Fantasy games are Cindy, Sandy, and Mindy. But due to the India-inspired Fantasy Counterpart Culture of Thavnair, they are called Cinduruva, Sanduruva, and Minduruva in Final Fantasy XIV.
Big, Thin, Short Trio: Much like their portrayal in IV and X, Cinduruva is the eldest Big sister, Sanduruva is the middle Thin sister, and Minduruva is the youngest Short sister.
Black Mage: Minduruva is the Black Mage among the sisters, wielding powerful elemental attacks that fill the screen.
Blinded by Rage: Sanduruva's "Manusya Berserk" spell compels all affected party members to run up to her and use their auto-attacks on her. This conveniently brings them in range of her follow-up attack, a point-blank AOE.
Brainwashed and Crazy: Like all primals summoned by Fandaniel's towers, the Magus Sisters are compelled to defend the Tower of Zot from external threats.
Sanduruva: We hear it! We heed it! The call to defend the tower!
Came Back Wrong: They are revered as the benevolent sister goddesses of wealth, wisdom, and crafts by the Matanga, but Fandaniel's manipulations have turned them into nothing but brainwashed killing machines guarding the Tower of Zot.
Combat Medic: Cinduruva functions as this when fought atop the Tower of Zot with her sisters, reviving them each time their health hits zero. As such, the fight will drag on forever unless you take her out first.
Combination Attack: They can pool their powers to cast spectacular "Delta" versions of Fire III, Blizzard III, and Thunder III.
Damage Over Time: Minduruva's "Manusya Bio" spell inflicts a Poison DoT on the tank, while her "Dhrupad" ability inflicts a fire-, ice-, or lightning-based DoT to everyone but the tank. The Poison can be cleansed, while the elemental DoTs cannot.
Delayed Explosion: Minduruva can transmute her spells into orbs instead of casting them right away. These orbs will then drift to a targeted point on the battlefield before detonating and releasing their effects.
Doppelgänger Spin: Sanduruva can create illusory duplicates of herself. These duplicates conceal magical spheres that will drive the players berserk. The real Sanduruva is the one that doesn’t dance or pose.
Dual Boss: All three of them must be fought at once at the top of the Tower.
Dual Wielding: Minduruva dual wields daggers in battle, but fights more like a Black Mage.
Gameplay and Story Integration: When fought alongside Cinduruva, Sanduruva and Minduruva noticeably have much less HP than Cinduruva, since your party fought and wounded them beforehand. Targeting them first is completely discouraged, however, as Cinduruva will just revive and heal them again unless she is taken down first.
Interface Screw: Sanduruva's doppelganger attack also messes with the enmity list. Locking it to prevent the party from selecting a target through it, as well as displaying the boss and her clones with full health and full aggro just so you can't Spot the Thread via Damage Over Time effects or because of your party role.
Light Is Not Good: Cinduruva uses spells that are similar to the White Mage's Glare and Assize spells, both abilities being affiliated with light and are quite strong.
Mythology Gag:
- The animal masks are a new, Thavnairian flourish, but the rest of their design is directly taken from Yoshitaka Amano's concept art of them. Likewise, some of their spells use the same sound effects from Final Fantasy IV and their precast effect uses the same blue/white cubes graphics.
- The final battle against all three sees them utilize the same strategy they made use of in Final Fantasy IV...namely, the Delta Attack: Cinduruva applies Reflect to herself while Minduruva and Sanduruva cast spells at her, which bounce back to the party with far more dangerous AoEs. Cinduruva also must be taken down first due to her ability to revive and heal her sisters, much like in IV.
Poisonous Person: Minduruva can use "Manusya Bio" to poison the party tank, and "Manusya Bio III" to blast a huge chunk of the arena with toxic sludge.
Recurring Boss: Minduruva and Sanduruva are fought individually as the mid-bosses of the Tower of Zot, and flee upon being defeated before returning to fight together with Cinduruva as the end boss of the dungeon.
Recurring Element: The Magus Sisters are a trio of powerful mages found throughout the Final Fantasy mythos. They're also available as summons in numerous games and are indeed summoned as primals to defend the Tower of Zot, much like they did in Final Fantasy IV.
Shoot the Medic First: In the final battle, the players must invoke this trope. Cinduruva needs to be the party's priority target, because if she's allowed to persist, she'll just heal and revive the other two. Once Cinduruva goes down, Sanduruva and Minduruva will go down very quickly.
Sibling Team: They're sister goddesses who each preside over an aspect of commerce and prosperity. They also have deadly teamwork and will fight you all together to try and defend the Tower of Zot.
Signature Move: Delta Attack. All three sisters combine their magic into a chaotic, magical barrage.
Sinister Scythe: Cinduruva wields a sickle which she uses like a magic wand.
Time Master: Sanduruva can use "Manusya Stop" to immobilize party members with temporal displacement, leaving them unable to dodge her follow-up attacks.
White Mage: Cinduruva is the White Mage among the sisters, using supportive spells like Reflect, and being capable of raising and healing her sisters.

Daivadipa

One of the Mrga, dieties with the bodies of beasts but heads of men, worshipped by the people of Thavnair. Daivadipa's mythological role was to discern between good and evil. But a primal summoned in his image emerged from the Tower of Zot to terrorize the Thavnairian coastline, with the people of Radz-at-Han offering a reward to any who can slay him.

Optional Boss: Daivadipa is not required to defeat, as he only spawns as part of a rare World FATE at the end of the Devout Pilgrims FATE chain. But triumphing over him offers his beads, which can be traded in at Radz-at-Han for various prizes such as the Thavnairian Barding for your chocobo or the Gaja Suit.
Playing with Fire: He attacks primarily with fireballs, sending out waves of fire from either side of him, having the fireballs streak along the arena, or explode in set patterns.

Anima

Eikon of Eikons

The source of Fandaniel's aether-absorbing towers, Anima is the corrupted primal of Emperor Varis, having been summoned by the Imperials' fervent wish for him to come back and save them from the chaos of the Garlean Civil War.

Bait-and-Switch Boss: A meta example: much of the promotional material pre-Endwalker prominently showed Anima off, leading the fanbase to believe it was the first Trial boss of the expansion. The belief was not without merit, as on top of being an iconic summon from Final Fantasy X, the developers made a habit of showing off the first Trial of an expansion before the release (such as Titania for Shadowbringers) and Anima was listed under 'New Trials' in early Endwalker promotional material. Instead, surprising the playerbase, Anima is actually a dungeon boss.
Body Horror: Not only does he look as horrifying as she was back in X, it gets even worse when you learn that he was created from Varis's corpse. Which was mutilated and dismembered to spread Anima's influence throughout the world.
Boss Subtitles: "Eikon of Eikons".
Brainwashing: An interesting case among primals. Throughout the 5.X series, the Telophoroi's towers are known for Tempering those who approach into loyalty to Garlemald. In reality, each tower's core contains a dismembered piece of Emperor Varis' corpse; because Anima is the primal "resurrection" of Varis, each tower is an extension of Anima itself, Tempering loyalty to Varis. Zenos brags the orders Anima whispers over the radio or in dreams to its Tempered are being puppeteered by him and Fandaniel.
Dark Is Evil: Between being the primal form of Emperor Varis, being summoned in the Tower of Babel, being corrupted by Fandaniel, and wielding dark magic, this version of Anima is bad news.
Eldritch Abomination: Being that it's a carbon copy of the version from Final Fantasy X, this is a given. Anima, both here and there, looks like a corrupted, withered version of the Christian faith's Virgin Mary.
Gender Flip: Anima in X was female, being created from Seymour's mother, but in XIV, Anima is male, having been created from Varis.
No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Anima's ultimate attack, Oblivion, is a copy of its iteration in Final Fantasy X, in which its bottom half proceeds to Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs with darkness-imbued punches. If the party doesn't pass a DPS check, this attack is fatal.
Pillar of Light: Boundless Pain is a pulsating column of energy which continuously damages anyone standing in it. The pillar sucks the party into it when it first appears and rapidly expands to cover most of the floor, leaving the party with little room to maneuver.
Reality Warper: Midway through the fight with it, Anima shifts reality into "Anima's World," where you and the party face off against Anima's bottom portion.
Signature Move: Oblivion. Anima tears at the fabric of reality itself to make the party do battle against its bottom half, and after a certain amount of time the bottom half breaks its chains and pummels the party with Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs, culminating in an explosion and a return to the regular plane of existence. If its "Chaos" meter reaches 100, this is a One-Hit Kill on the party.
Soul Eating: For its Boundless Pain attack, Anima gorges itself on the souls of the Tower's captives to fuel a pulsating Pillar of Light.
Stationary Boss: Anima does not move from its spot on the arena's north wall at any point during its boss fight.
Unrealistic Black Hole: Its "Mega Graviton" attack creates four black holes, each of which tethers to a party member. These black holes will pull the tethered player in and zap them with bolts of darkness unless the player moves far enough away before this happens.

Asura

False Manusya

"Tremble before the might of the Manusya!"

A primal summoned by Vanhudi in the image of the war goddess of the Manusya to battle against the Warrior of Light in the Hildibrand questline.

Adaptational Wimp: Asura originally appeared in Final Fantasy IV, as the Queen of the Eidolons. Here, she's a primal summoned by one man for the sake of making money. Also, she was a Puzzle Boss in IV, where the player had to figure out how to stop Asura from healing herself. No such mechanic exists in the XIV version of Asura.
Climax Boss: Of the Endwalker Hildibrand quests, as she is the last obstacle stopping the heroes from capturing Vanhudi. While dangerous, Asura is dispatched by the Warrior of Light as with so many primals before her, leaving Vanhudi fleeing for the hills until PuPu's friend shoots his airship out of the sky.
The Friend No One Likes: According to one Thavnarian, Asura is the Goddess of War, which clashes poorly with the other, more peaceful gods and goddesses. Notably, she is so unpopular with the locals that Vanhudi has no choice but to mass-clone himself to supply her with the requisite amounts of prayer, given his ardent belief in treating life and amassing wealth as battles to be won.
Multi-Armed and Dangerous: She has multiple arms, each of which are holding a large sword in them.
No-Nonsense Nemesis: While Hildibrand's antagonists are usually treated with some level of humor, Asura is portrayed as a genuine threat with no humor to speak of. When Hildibrand gears up to fight Asura, Godbert says that the Mandervilles must all retreat, because they would be more of a hindrance than a help when fighting against a primal; after all, they don't have the Echo and could be tempered.
Self-Duplication: She's capable of creating a large clone of herself which sits outside of the arena. This clone will duplicate an attack that Asura uses, just over a much larger area. Her "Ephemerality" attack also has her produce multiple phantom images of herself that will all drop an AOE where they stand.
Spam Attack: Her "Six-bladed Khadga" and "Bladescatter" attacks have her attacking with her six swords repeatedly, using half-room cleaves and line AOEs respectively, forcing players to repeatedly adjust and dodge.
Teleport Spam: Once you get used to her "Iconography" attacks, she will attempt to fake you out by having her giant battle avatar teleport shortly before the attack goes off, changing its effective area and giving you precious few seconds to locate her and dodge accordingly.
War God: She's a war goddess among the Manusya, making her unpopular among the generally peaceful commonfolk of Thavnair. On the other hand, her most ardent follower Vanhudi equates his amassing of wealth with righteous battle.

Characters / Final Fantasy XIV - Primals

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