The twins were touring the realm to get a feel for what was going on. They just happened to fall asleep on every carriage and boat ride.
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i think there were 3 wols and two of them got shanked in pearl alley
Since I started in Ul'dah I like imagining the Gridania questline was handled by Edda's party and the Limsa one by Dolorous Bear's (RIP).
There's no canon explanation and probably never will be, but someone else in the adventurer's guild handling them is the easiest answer.
The correct answer to your question is "it depends upon which metaverse you end up in". Only the History Monks, with their abilities to look through the Trousers of Time, could give you the full explanation, which you will not hear correctly anyway.
ARR establishes quite early that there are other adventurers out there having other stories. Of course, as Edda's party in Tam-Tara and Dolorous Bear's party in Copperbell demonstrate, that doesn't mean they're happy stories.
My headcanon is that the other cities' stories were taken care of by those other dungeon parties, which is how they all got the leads to get those dungeon quests in the first place.
I guess it's been a while since you played those earlier quests. The early duties had you in them, sure, but you were, at best, a distraction for the small fry, all in all irrelevant in the event (strangely, they scions act as if you were useful, even though you're barely able to hit the enemy at the time while doing pitiful damage when you do hit). Whoever was there doing most of the work could have easily dispatched the small fry, and the boss was beaten almost entirely by them anyway.
Like, it takes a minute or two to beat the gargoyle alone while the Ascian just stand there, then Thancred shows up and takes 10% of its health with a single fast blade. Then it's over quickly with or without you (altough at least you can do a little more at this point). Then again, the Ascian seems to imply they showed up to kill the WoL since they figured out you have a crystal of light and "the source of your strenght is revealed" or whatever it was, so i suppose they wouldn't reveal themselves even if their mooks bit the dust.
At that point, the player is also a fledgling adventurer barely arrived in town, while the Archons are experienced fighters. The main reason they take an interest in you early on is because of the Echo. You don't grow into the god-slaying nigh-unstoppable Warrior of Light for a long time after that.