What is a primordial ?

[Elric Galad]

Kiths are humanoids.

Wilders are sentient animal with a vaguely kith-like anatomy but too far away from kiths to be considered as such.

Beats are... well... animals.

Vessels are souls within a body that isn't linked to that soul (or not anymore).

Spirits are disembodied soul (or group of souls).

But what exactly are primordials ? It seems to be the only creature type that has no clear definition. 

 

At some points, they seemed to be plants, fungus, blobs (basically all non-animal complexe lifeform) and related creatures (delemgans...). Then imps were introduced and qualified as primordials with the rest of the group. In PoE1 (not sure about deadfire), kraken was a primordial too.

I wonder if the scenarists have a clear definition. Maybe not. Maybe this explains these weird qualifications as primordials...

[Boeroer]

Primordial means that it's pretty old stuff. Not a recent development in evolution - but has been around for a long time. Not necessarily the individuum but the species I mean. Ancient/archaic/primeval and so on. Check out the term "primordial soup" and then look at an Ooze.

Don't ask me why Dragons are beasts then... hehe.

I guess the designers just wanted to have a (kind of) equal number of creatures in every group so the distribution seems to be a bit random sometimes.

 

Edited September 10, 2019 by Boeroer

[uuuhhii]

most looks like basic simple and primal living things

not sure why kraken are count as primordial

most primordial are plant or fungus based

so molluscoid are also simple enough to be primordial?

[Elric Galad]

2 minutes ago, uuuhhii said:

so molluscoid are also simple enough to be primordial?

But not spiders ?

Kraken is akin to cephalopods which are among the smartest animals.

So I suppose it is more about being 'ancient' than being 'simple'.

It is a bit disturbing because apart kraken and imps, primordials as a group could have made more sense. Not that annoying, but other categories had strong logic (especially the reason why undead and constructs are grouped within vessels), so I would have expected something as consistent for primordials.

[Boeroer]

I think those are just artificial categories for game rules (see Weapon Focus in PoE - also often struggled to make sense besides for game mechanics). If they also make sense in lore: cool.

[Ophiuchus]

Figured it was the D&D equivalent to "abominations": the weird motley of enemies that doesn't fit into other categories.