#iirc the implication is Omega did encounter Kefka/Exdeath but it's unclear to me if the shards exist in the same space as Etherys or idk

[hoenniswheretheheartis]

Going back to Arcanists for a moment, it's well established that while they do exist, there are very few Arcanists who specialise in combat. Customs officials will use it in self defence and I think there's the odd pirate who can wield a tome, but folks like the WoL are exceedingly rare, especially outside of Lominsan influence...

(I did find it fascinating that Alphy until Endwalker was effectively a Faerie-less Scholar with his special carbuncles, since Nymian magic is it's own kettle of fish to unpack)

...until come 5.3 and we reach The Hero's Gauntlet! The Spectral Ink Magi are clearly using Arcanima, especially as they're distinct from other classes of Spectral Magi! Just as posited with the Nu Mou, could it be that arcanima has been discovered and grown in it's own way on other shards? (Were any of the heroes even drawn from the Source??)

Then again, as shown by the Spectral Necromancer there are WoLs who may not believe themselves suited to the role but still try to answer the call nonetheless, and that may as well be the motivations behind the Spectral Ink Magi we meet here. Still fun to know there really are other tome-users out there~

Archon Thesis: Arcanima As The Sundered Version Of Ancient Creation Magicks

or "I Have Many Thoughts About Arcanima Always"

Archon Thesis: Arcanima As The Sundered Version Of Ancient Creation Magicks

1) Arcanima

Out of all the magic schools we’ve been introduced to so far, and maybe excepting somanoutics – we still don’t really know how it works in-depth, but this was the latest added job, meaning there hasn’t been much time to develop it yet – arcanima has to be the most mysterious.

Despite it being a starter class, we don’t get that much information about its history or its inner workings; what’s more, we never seem to meet any arcanist out there. All the magic users we meet – or fight: including the imperial squadrons that boast “signifier” (thaumaturges) and “medicus” (conjurer) units – are either conjurers or thaumaturges. You can hire arcanists in your adventurer squadron – not sure how canon said squadron is supposed to be anyway, and the twins are initially arcanists (Améliance saying, at some point, that arcanima was considered the main, and easiest, field of study at the Studium, which she herself pursued in her youth), as well as Urianger (who is briefly shown using arcanist abilities in the Warring Triad questline). But aside from that – not even mentioning that the twins and Urianger got new jobs the second they got a crumb of character development – all we have in terms of arcanist characters (barring the arcanist’s guild members) as far as I can tell, are the unnamed Revenant’s Toll Miqo'te who keeps losing track of her Carbuncle, and the errant Carbuncle of Idyllshire (maybe belonging to her as well……..?). Another arcanist we meet is Celie, the Sharlayan assassin from the astrologian quests, but that only serves to settle arcanima as a Sharlayan discipline.

We don’t meet any other astrologians, red mages, sages… or any of the limited magic jobs outside of the relevant questlines, which is easily explained by the fact all of these arts are either pretty rare or basically extinct. However, arcanists shouldn’t, in theory, be that rare, considering the amount of conjurers and thaumaturges we meet (and fight), who, often, have no ties to, respectively, Gridania and Ul’dah. Even the Ananta (who are a secluded people) are shown using a form of black magic, and geomancy (as shown in the astrologian quests) is a form of conjury.

So: WHERE are all the arcanists?

Let’s summarize what we know about arcanima as a discipline so far:

Its practitioners use “arcane geometries” to cast spells, which are inscribed in grimoires;

According to the alchemist questline, an arcanist must imbue those patterns with their own aether, thus “activating” them, hence the need for robust aetherial conductivity properties for the ink used to write said arcane geometries;

According to the initial arcanist quests, these geometries are a way to conceptualize essential aspects of reality: i.e the ideal form of the Idea Of Fire;

Consequently, it is not enough to merely channel aether into those patterns: to become an efficient arcanist, one must really “assimilate” those patterns – you can see that the casting animations involve tracing runes in the air, for example;

One of the main aspects of the class is to have a clear idea of what one is aiming for: the clearer the idea & understanding of a pattern, the more powerful the spell will be. This requires intense focus and abstract thinking (in a way that other, elemental-aspected magic schools don’t require);

Carbuncles. What are they? According to Thubyrgeim, Carbuncle is a primordial arcane entity that arcanists have an “affinity” for. They work more or less like the Porxies (actually, I’d argue that the only other arcanists we meet are the Nu Mou). An arcanist’s Carbuncle is made of a portion of their own aether – considering they use their own aether to power their spells – and acts as an amplifier and focus/channel for their spells.

Carbuncles have no soul of their own, and whether they have a personality remains unclear (it would seem that a disobedient Carbuncle is evidence of a lack of focus from their arcanist, cf. Tataru’s experience).

Arcanima is actually radically different from the other schools of magic: white, black, and red magic tap directly into elemental magic to power their spells. While they use different methods to gain & use the necessary aether (white and black mages both tap into ambient/environmental aether, except that white mages only borrow environmental aether with the Elementals’ blessing, while red mages rely on their own aether and aether-enhancing weapons and techniques), the goal is the same: channel raw elemental-aspected power.

Arcanists, on the other hand, do not use elemental power, but the concept of an element. Thus, they recreate the element and its effects out of its raw, primal formula.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that all of the arcanima spells are named after gemstones (“carbuncle” is an archaic word for a bright red gemstone): an arcanist manifests elemental properties the same way we are able to grow gemstones in a lab, using advanced formulas and recreating their chemical structures and components. In comparison, black and white magic would involve extracting actual gemstones from the earth, which takes its toll on the environment – the War of Magi caused the Sixth Umbral Calamity, after all.

With that in mind, I think we can begin to understand the lack of arcanists we encounter: it’s an incredibly difficult art to use in a combat setting, as it demands extremely high levels of concentration. Just like languages that have a very simple syntax tend to have a complex and difficult vocabulary (and vice-versa: complexity in one area is balanced with simplicity in another area), arcanima “pays” for its low cost in aether with heightened complexity, making it more difficult to use in combat, and possibly less powerful than its elemental counterparts (depending on the caster’s talent). It is, after all, abstraction (painstakingly) given form, which works great in theory but less so in combat (especially when it comes to quick reaction times). This would explain why we encounter few adventurers or professional fighters who are arcanists, and why the Warrior of Light is considered an outlier among their fellow arcanists from the guild and is tasked with all the fighting (K’lyhia compensates her lack of fighting capabilities with enhanced strategic skills).

Furthermore, it would explain why Eorzean arcanists are customs officers: it doesn’t involve combat, as it is more of an administrative work. In the same vein, we know Sharlayan is extremely advanced when it comes to arcanima, which makes complete sense: they completely reject the mere idea of fighting, love abstract concepts and research, and are keenly aware of their impact on the environment (the city-state has been founded as a result of the Sixth Umbral Calamity and we can see in Labyrinthos that they keep strict records of the environmental consequences of their actions).

2) The Theory

So far, we have established that arcanima is:

a highly abstract, high-concept discipline;

tied to the caster’s ability to visualize concept and summon them into thin air out of their own aether;

reliant on complex patterns, runes, and symbols;

tied to “primordial entities” (Carbuncle, for example), which work as the observable manifestation of essential laws of reality & aetherial structures.

All of these traits are shared by the Ancients’ creation magicks. We know that Erichtonios taught Elidibus the Aetherial Shackles spell during the Pandaemonium raids, and this spell involves an elaborate pattern, which is reminiscent of the geometric patterns that arcanists (and summoners) use. Similarly, the spell that allowed the Exarch to summon (!) the Scions to the First relied on elaborate patterns, reminiscent of both the spells used by the Ancients and by current arcanists. It’s interesting to note that aspected magic schools do not use these kinds of patterns.

I would argue, then, that arcanima, as we know it now, is the sundered world’s version of the Ancients’ creation magicks; putting the two next to each other really highlights how much weaker and difficult to wield it is now, which can help us see just how much mankind changed since the Sundering (also, lending some credibility to Emet-Selch’s claims: currently, mankind has a much thinner aetherial pool, as shown in the differences between the original creation magicks and the arcanima discipline we know today). Their shared taste for administrative work is another common point: the Unsundered world, as we know, had a very strict bureaucracy system, as does Sharlayan to this day, and Eorzean arcanists work as administrative personnel.

3) Summoning

Now the question is: how does summoning find a place in all this? I would argue that, in fact, summoning is the missing link between creation magicks and arcanima, or at least a direct bridge between them, and that it is the main reason it is much more powerful than arcanima itself, and thus more suitable for the Warrior of Light.

We know that summoning was an Allagan art, borne of their efforts to conquer Meracydia. Allagan scholars and magi were tasked to find a way to bypass and/or defeat the eikons summoned by the Meracydians (eikons that would become the Warring Triad). They eventually found a way to “hack” said eikons and use their power for themselves.

Now the interesting part is that every eikon (or primal) embodies an idea, a concept, or an element; the ones summoners use are very literally elements made form. We now know that primal tempering works by disrupting an individual’s aetherial balance, making it a smaller scale version of an Umbral calamity: Ga Bu’s soul was overcome with earth-aspected aether after his exposure to Titan, while Halric’s was overcome with light-aspected aether after his exposure to a sin eater. Therefore, calling upon the (very powerful deity) embodying an element would be both easier and more efficient than calling upon the mere aetherial formula of said element, all the while keeping the abstract, high-concept part of arcanima and avoiding tapping into the actual element in itself.

However, as is the case with everything, these advantages are counterbalanced by a greater difficulty: the fact that being able to channel these entities hinges on a mage’s previous exposure to the eikon in question – since one must have “bathed in its aether”, i.e having slain it – without being tempered. Therefore, only people gifted with the Blessing of Light (or having any kind of strategy to avoid tempering) can hope to become summoners.

Now, for the really interesting part: primal summoning was invariably taught by the Ascians, and it was established that it’s a warped (or corrupted) form of creation magicks; and what makes the primals’ continued existence unsustainable is their unquenchable need for crystals, i.e solid aether. Which makes sense considering that the Ascians, as the last of the Unsundered, use creation magicks that are completely unsuitable for a sundered world. In the aether-rich Unsundered world, those concepts were sustainable; in the current state of the world, however, they need far more aether than the land can give, simply to maintain their existence. Summoners avoid this problem by summoning weakened versions of the eikons themselves (the egis), which are also incapable of tempering others.

Summoning, therefore, constitutes a bridge – or link – between the Ancients’ creation magicks and our current arcanima discipline. This has been further established, or at least suggested, thanks to the Pandaemonium raids. Proto-Carbuncle was the obvious “blueprint” (original idea) for our current Carbuncle, though we can assume that another, less aggressive and deadly concept was produced after the “failure” that was the Proto-Carbuncle we faced. In a similar fashion, Lahabrea’s Phoinix creation was the obvious original model for our Phoenix. His fight even involves a spell called “Aionopyr”, a Greek word that literally translates to “Fountain of Fire”, as seen in the summoner rotation (not to mention the “Brand of Purgatory” spell, also part of the Phoenix part of the summoner rotation).

The evolution from arcanist to summoner thus constitutes a link to the initial power from which both schools of magic stem: creation magicks, as it existed in the Unsundered world.