The Raimdelle Codex Alces

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Moose, share your notes!
They're all incoherent jumbles of shorthand.
Share the ones that aren't!
There are no ones that aren't!

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Once upon a time, I tried to crack the Raimdelle Codex using XIVMODELS. Not the entire thing mind you, but a simple, easy to understand chart that could be used to understand the bestiary as a whole (while I slooowly chugged away on the big-picture over at the wiki). Then, XIVMODELS stopped being a thing, like what, two weeks later (Patch 2.2)? I gave up and promised I'd keep working on it, and that I'd come back when I managed to get somewhere.

It took a long time and many trips through Square Enix's databases, fansite databases, chats with people who are still trying to get a modelviwer together, and more, but let's forget the nitty-gritty ambigiously-legitty details. I'm getting back on track! However, because I've had to make a lot of judgment calls, I've given it a subtitle to differentiate it from versions such as the one at the Stillglade Fane or the one behind Oda-san's false bookshelf.

THE RAIMDELLE CODEX ALCES

Great Oschon's Raven, is that the same spreadsheet he was using in 2013?
No. Yes. Shut up.

Dear sweet merciful Twelve, would you fine loremongers like to help? We've got a new structure and we've got a new checklist, but we're still missing a few species. And a few names are surely not accurate. And I've probably made some mistakes. And new additions will come in every patch. But I think that it's well within our grasp, at last. And we have this beautiful lore forum to discuss it! (Huge thanks to Rocl, the first beta tester and professional tell-me-what-I-buggered-up technician.)

Let's finish what Raimdelle started.
(Also, I totally did end up cracking the Coblyns, again.)

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I think Ghrah are some kind of weird elementals.

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Originally Posted by Zohar_Lahar

I think Ghrah are some kind of weird elementals.

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Given that all we know of them comes from Pharos HM, they very well could be. In XI, ghrah cores did reflect an elemental aspect, a trait that is most likely obscured in Pharos Sirius since everything relating to elements (Slimes, Flans, Sprites) has been over-aspected (corrupted). For the ghrah, this is even right there in their name, Corruption. My first guess was that they were a creation of the Kobold, as Pharos seems to be home to a lot of experimental Kobold technology - mech suits, behemoth golems, new breeds of bomb. Given that Ghrah have cores and Kobolds are adept at making golems, I labeled them tentatively as soulkin. We should be on the lookout for more hints, though. Was there anything interesting in the names of their attacks? I keep forgetting to look at those.

Mandragora: You have included all the minions but not the halloween pumpkin one. I are helping, yes? ;)

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Originally Posted by Kyan

I are helping, yes? ;)

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Yes!

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Originally Posted by Kyan

Mandragora: You have included all the minions but not the halloween pumpkin one.

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You raise an interesting point, actually. The Mandragoras (of Hildibrand fame) all have minion counterparts, while the Pumpkin Butler stands alone as only a minion. This bestiary is built around actual, combatable mobs, but the minions are clearly living mandragoras (as the FATE combatants were), and the Pumpkin Butler seems none the less so. It stands to reason, then, that the vegetable-head family should be taken all or nothing, Pumpkin included.

What then to do? Remove them all? Or add Pumpkin despite there not being a combatable exemplar? 'Tis what I did for the Direwolf, afterall.

What the hells. I'll allow it. (Until such a time as that I remove them all or SE adds other vegetable-headed enemies.)

Pumpkin Butler added.

(NOTE: Many basic animals, critter minions, mounts, and holiday variants will not probably not be added, but this one has good precedent.)

Why not add them, though? Are the animal and plant minions not flora and fauna of Eorzea as well? Do they not deserve to be included in a complete bestiary?

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Originally Posted by WyrahFhurrst

Are the animal and plant minions not flora and fauna of Eorzea as well? Do they not deserve to be included in a complete bestiary?

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Yes and no. When you focus on the things SE has made clear borders for, it's much more concrete. If you start trying to accommodate every danner sage and hunting hawk that comes along, though, it all starts to slip through your fingers as you scramble to collect scant mentions and compare them by language. Some are crazy inspecific, some have nothing but a name and the icons are shared, and some aren't even the same objects in different languages. It's better to just assume that The Raimdelle Codex in Eorzea might have all of these things, but the out-of-world bestiary based on it isn't as good on the arguably irrelevant stuff because the out-of-world people working on it can't reasonably dedicate the resources to make it that good.

The minions (what you're actually asking about specifically) haunt a frustrating middle ground. They have models, they have background, but they also don't appear in the world or add much beyond flavor (and even that is fluid). Take the Owlet, for example. It was originally planned to drop in Gubal, so it was an owl that hadn't been made into Skatane yet. It was changed to drop in Fractal, so now it's part of the source DNA of the Mirrorknight. Either way, all you get out of it is that owls exist in Eorzea, and it didn't seem to be of much value to muck up the cloudkin list with things like [Cloudkin / Owl / Owlet] [Cloudkin / Hawk / Hunting Hawk] just yet.

Though, now that a huge amount of the work is out of the way (and updating for 3.2 has been relatively easy)... maybe there could be a list of "other" simple mobs and plants? But it'd always be incomplete and not be guaranteed to match by language...

To be fair: I forgot that they were in the Hildebrand quest as fightable monsters, so I would have accepted no.

Certain minions are also present in cutscenes or field variants, such as the black coeurl kitten in Alexander Midas, or the quest chain involving the wolf pup and coeurl kitten.

If the bestiary is to focus on fightable fauna and flora, I think you should stick to your guns to avoid that grey area.

The latest GE interview explained what 'Prime' means, the disposition of poroggo, the Ishgardian Soulkin/Voidsent Conundrum, and the mystery of the single silver pugil. So, that's a lot of progress!

Have we ever heard one way or the other about the gnat vilekin/voidsent confusion, though? Ark Ked makes it seem even muddier than ever.

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Originally Posted by sciencebot

Have we ever heard one way or the other about the gnat vilekin/voidsent confusion, though? Ark Ked makes it seem even muddier than ever.

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It's funny you mention gnats, because I removed them from even the "This isn't very important." question list so I didn't have too many bestiary inquiries, lol. (I didn't want to have too many personal project questions at the cost of things people were actually interested in.) And yet I've made barely any progress on the gnats, shy of being a few yalms short of just accepting that they're voidsent now, or at least that Eorzeans are quick to incorrectly (but officially) deem that they are.

As you say, the Ark Ked continues to muddy the waters. Of course, not every monster in the Ark is voidsent. There's cloudkin that flew into the open hull (vulture, zu, griffin), ditto vilekin (wamoura) and what I think are wavekin skyfish (cetus, hybodus) and the elemental hydrosprites that came in with them.

As far as voidsent, We see the blackguards, hellhounds, and gargoyles come out of coffins, and the puddings come from voidgates summoned by Cuchulainn. Likewise, Echidna's Triad card calls her a voidsent in service to Scathach, which I suppose extends to her cobras (which technically make Allag's cobras synthetic voidsent or chimeric scalekin that just so happen to look exactly like void cobras? I don't know.)

Irminsul (the tree) seems like legitimate void-growth of some kind; it even uses "pulse of the void". The "Pagan" enemies (vine, shrub, knot) are extensions of Irminsul.

However, the morbols, I'd hazard, are just... morbols. Have we ever heard anything that'd put us in doubt as to the Morbol's nature? I mean, sure, perhaps an Allag-modified seedkin, but it's always been a seedkin, right? How did they get there? I don't know. Seeds hitching a ride on the wamoura? That just leaves Sawtooth, which seems directly related to Irminsul, and ...

Ark Ked

Now, gnats are explicitly called Voidsent in only one place, that I can find (FATE: Stopping the Spread). However, they're implied to be voidsent in many other places: You've got the bloodlappers that appear for the Demon Wall (both times), and the Void Jumper, which appears in two leves and one quest.

The quest, The Hidden Chapter, is actually one of those things that's easy to dismiss as a "Haw haw, dumb Eorzean!" bit of deliberate misinformation, as the other "voidsent" in this quest are bats as slugs (aka probably not voidsent). The leves, though, The Burning Reason and Throw the Book at Him both feature the same set of mobs - a gnat, a bomb, and a pudding - allegedly all voidsent. I'm going to have to personally do those leves and see if the gnats are blatantly called forth or might have just wandered into the area.

I still find it weird. 1.0 called them vilekin at every turn... (Protecting the Pilgrims, Netting the Gnats)

What changed?

I'd also love to know why there are Diresaurs in Turn 13...