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Avatar Classifications[]
I wanted to start a discussion on what should or shouldn't be considered an Avatar, and how they should be classified.
First off, what exactly is an Avatar? The current page says that an Avatar is "a fragment of a lesser god" that can be summoned after a Summoner forms a pact with it. This is a little confusing to me. It seems to imply that the beings sleeping within the crystals are Avatars, that they are fragments of the gods, and that they are what is summoned. My understanding has always been that the beings inside the crystals are the actual sleeping gods themselves, and that the beings you summon are fragments of their power. I can't say for sure off the top of my head, but I don't believe the actual sleeping gods are ever referred to as Avatars. They call themselves the true gods, and other NPCs call them the sleeping gods. Since an avatar (non-FFXI) is the incarnation of a god, it makes sense to me that Avatar refers to the summoned image, not the actual being.
The Terrestrial Avatars seem to contradict this, though. It's my understanding that they are actually referred to as Terrestrial Avatars in the game. This seems to imply that Avatar refers to the actual beings, rather than the summoned image. I can't recall the text offhand though, so I can't say anything definitively on this. There is a big difference though in that the sleeping gods are actual gods who were involved in the creation of Vana'diel, while the Terrestrial Avatars are merely creations of the mother crystals. Are the Terrestrial Avatars simply incarnations of the mother crystals' power?
The next thing is spirits. Among the player base, they are generally considered to be summons, but not Avatars. From a storyline perspective, this makes some sense. Only the various gods of Vana'diel or their summoned images are ever referred to as Avatars in cutscenes, dialogue, etc. It's not definitive though, since spirits never appear in any cutscene I've ever seen. To the best of my knowledge, we really don't know what they are in terms of Vana'diel mythology.
From a game mechanics standpoint, the fact that spirits behave very differently than the other summoned creatures and have different mechanics also seperates them. However, I think it's very important to note that all equipment that specifically states it affects Avatars also affects Spirits. E.g., all equipment that lowers "Avatar Perpetuation Cost" decreases the perpetuation cost for spirits, not just the other summoned creatures. Furthermore, the SMN relic pants (Summoner's Spats) has the effect "Shortens casting time for elemental avatars". This effect lowers the time between spell casts for spirits. In other words, the game explicitly labels the spirits as "elemental avatars".
My interpretation of all this is that spirits are indeed Avatars. They aren't commonly referred to as such, and they should definitely be distinguised from the others in some way, but they are Avatars nevertheless. Since there's obviously some disagreement on that point, I thought it should be discussed here.
The other thing that ties into this is the name for the sleeping gods as a group. The earlier version of this page that I edited classified the 8 avatars tied to the elements and constellations as Elemental Avatars. I changed that to Celestial Avatars because that's the only term I've ever seen applied to the group with any degree of consistency across several major FFXI sites. (FFXIclopedia, Alla, KI, BG, etc.) I see it's now changed back to Elemental Avatars. Since there is in-game text that explicitly calls the spirits "elemental avatars", I don't think it's appropriate to use that name for the sleeping gods as well.
--Teratron 23:25, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
Phoenix[]
Since Phoenix doesn't have a model in game, should Phoenix's picture be of Tenzen's sword when it has the fire aura, since Phoenix is in the sword at the time? | |||
User:Spira/Talktime=07:32, April 18, 2011 (UTC)
a quick browse of a few of the likely categories for the sword reveals nothing. I know we have a render of Tenzen on the Wiki, but not so certain about his sword specifically. | |||
User:Spira/Talktime=08:35, April 18, 2011 (UTC)