-
It's interesting that they've been telling us how much we can make them look like Succubi/ demonic yet they never mention anything about dragons. This might be intentional, or not. We'll find out in a few weeks, hopefully once Yugiri unmasks herself.
It's possible that Au Ra's simply have an affinity for darkness and/or the void. So far we have the Dark Divinity connected to the Au Ras, Dark Knight mascot as an Au Ra. Heck, even they said that Heavensward will be darker.
We've seen with Sastasha HM that if you infuse people enough aspected aether that they'll eventually mutate into and take aspect of said aether. Ex: water = aquatic feature. In the case of au ras perhaps their ancestors lived in a place that was dark-aspected which slowly gave rise to what we see now.
-
The Horns are similar, but the tails are completely different. Succubi's tails are more leathery where the Au Ra are hardened scales.There's also the matter that every Succubi aside from Hali has Elezen ears on top of their horns. This is of course ignoring the MASSIVE height differences, lack of clawed hands (Or even slightly elongated fingernails).
It's fun to speculate, but the audience of FFXIV has a tendency to hang too much on Yoshida's words when they're not intended the way they're interpreted. I'll default to 'wait and see' mode on this.
-
-
It's still a better speculation than the "Auri are Shiva's children!" speculation and, again, makes more sense as to why Yugiri would hide her face/appearance (if her face was mostly human in appearance + horns, then she could just be assumed a Padjal -if she hid her tail- or some sort of beastman).
-
Hiding her thick tail may not have been an option for her, being a ninja and all. Yugiri would need to be about to move freely, and Au Ra may depend on their tales for balance, like Miqo'te.