The lamia

OK so a small question the lamias are considered a beast tribe I know in ff11 they are what are there origins bc in void Ark we see echidna but we do see them in azysla as genetic creatures. So what is there story am am guessing that in sastasha we find the merrows correct

It's likely that beings like Echidna are actually voidsent, while Lamia / Nagas are "artificial voidsent" created by the Allagans (this is supported by museum displays in the Fractal Continuum for the Naga). The ones in Satasha (Hard) are also probably Allagan creations--escaped from nearby Dalamud debris-- the classification of them as "Drowned" being a case of mistaken identity due to general ignorance of Eorzeans.

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Originally Posted by Rocl

It's likely that beings like Echidna are actually voidsent, while Lamia / Nagas are "artificial voidsent" created by the Allagans (this is supported by museum displays in the Fractal Continuum for the Naga). The ones in Satasha (Hard) are also probably Allagan creations--escaped from nearby Dalamud debris-- the classification of them as "Drowned" being a case of mistaken identity due to general ignorance of Eorzeans.

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And what were doing those Lamias there on Sastasha?
A place full of pirates that got a double dozis of tempered?

Thats the only thing I still i cant understand, also tose lamias said "dont look at me".

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Originally Posted by Frederick22

And what were doing those Lamias there on Sastasha?
A place full of pirates that got a douple dozis of tempered?

Thats the only thing I still i cant understand, also tose lamias said "dont like at me".

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It's entirely possible that they were Allagan Creations as Rocl said, and then they were Drowned (Leviathan's version of Tempering). The devs said as much in a previous thread if I remember correctly.

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Originally Posted by Rocl

The [naga] in Satasha (Hard) are also probably Allagan creations--escaped from nearby Dalamud debris-- the classification of them as "Drowned" being a case of mistaken identity due to general ignorance of Eorzeans.

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While the naga / lamia in general are considered Voidsent... ah, no. The Drowned Wenches and Drowned Courtesans in Sastasha HM are heavily implied, though not outright stated, to be normal women that were overexposed to Leviathan's aether and mutated like everyone else in Sastasha HM. Remember that Captain Madison used to be a normal Hyur, and then in HM he looks like god-damn Davy Jones?

Yeah...

They just share a model / skeleton. That's all.

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Originally Posted by WyrahFhurrst

It's entirely possible that they were Allagan Creations as Rocl said, and then they were Drowned (Leviathan's version of Tempering). The devs said as much in a previous thread if I remember correctly.

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they never said that they were allagans creations that got tempered. When did we hear about an allagan creation that got tempered by a primal? xD

I think it's really a case of them sharing the same assets/models just like the bloodhounds in VA vs. Fenrir and Thors in WoD vs Mamool Jaas.

In my opinion, the Drown Wenches are mutated kidnapped females.

However, Lamias as a whole are probably Alagan creation as we've seen many evidence that being the case. In fact, I think there's a FATE in Asyz lla saying that Lamias (at least the breed we fight) was crossed with another beast from a different area which made it very violent

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Originally Posted by myahele

I think it's really a case of them sharing the same assets/models just like the bloodhounds in VA vs. Fenrir and Thors in WoD vs Mamool Jaas.

In my opinion, the Drown Wenches are mutated kidnapped females.

However, Lamias as a whole are probably Alagan creation as we've seen many evidence that being the case

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wait, are those kidnapped females? didnt we free them on our first time on sastasha?

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Originally Posted by Frederick22

wait, are those kidnapped females? didn't we free them on our first time on sastasha?

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Probably not all of them since there were only a handful of drowned wenches vs the rest. Especially since the original Sastasha had so many optional nooks and crannys that many players skipped saving the those kidnapped.

Then again, they could just be the female crew members of Cpt. Morgan?

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Originally Posted by myahele

Probably not all of them since there were only a handful of drowned wenches vs the rest. Especially since the original Sastasha had so many optional nooks and crannys that many players skipped saving the those kidnapped.

Then again, they could just be the female crew members of Cpt. Morgan?

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We need to asume that the players went to all places of the dungeon, not skiping a single place.
Thats what I thought all this time, female crew members.

<throws a smokebomb into the thread, leaves a note on the table, vanishes before anyone notices>

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Originally Posted by Anwyll (Anonymoose)

The Second Coil of Bahamut seems to imply that the Lamia were Allagan chimeric bioweaponry. Sastasha HM, however, seems to imply that are “over-drowned” pirate wenches. What are Lamia, and can this give insight into the background of other enemies, as well?

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Originally Posted by Koji Fox (Fernehalwes)

This one goes back to deliberate misinformation. It’s in both versions, in English a bit more so. In many games, NPCs tell you exactly what’s going on in the world. They just know everything about the lore and everything is true. In the real world, people don’t always have the answers, even though they talk like they know what they’re talking about.

We wanted Eorzea to have that feel, as well. There are lots of different theories, but not everyone has the right answers. People sometimes assume things that are relative to their own lives; if a Lominsan sees these Lamia with their scimitars and they think pirate, what else could it be, for them? They don’t know about Allagan technology.

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[SOURCE]

Also don't forget that the FATEs around Aleport, the Sahagin daily beast quests (and for that matter, the Duty Finder description for Sastasha NM) all pretty much show that the Sahagin and their Serpent Reaver thralls are constantly kidnapping people from nearby villages - although post Sastasha NM that mostly seems to be hapless Maelstrom recruits who are overpowered by the beastmen, who is to say civilians are not also continuing to be shanghaied from surrounding villages by the Sahagin for use as Leviathan's slaves?

Or maybe I'm just overthinking this. :p

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

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That's the one I was talking about! Thanks, Moose!

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Originally Posted by Cilia

While the naga / lamia in general are considered Voidsent... ah, no. The Drowned Wenches and Drowned Courtesans in Sastasha HM are heavily implied, though not outright stated, to be normal women that were overexposed to Leviathan's aether and mutated like everyone else in Sastasha HM. Remember that Captain Madison used to be a normal Hyur, and then in HM he looks like god-damn Davy Jones?

Yeah...

They just share a model / skeleton. That's all.

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Ah, but my entire response was based off an interview with the team behind the Lore! (As Moose backed me up so graciously.)

You're right, Ceana theorizes overexposure to aether and repeated tempering has caused the people of Satasha (Hard) to mutate. It's important to note Ceana only sees Madison's corpse, though I doubt her theory would change much had she seen a lamia. However, that leaves us at a loss to explain Allagan Lamia; and I'm not about to so quietly buy "they just reused the model lol" when Koji-Fox has stated that the quest specifically draws on deliberate misinformation. I had a fun theory that the Lamiae were created by Allagans by overaspected a person's aether (since that seems exactly like the kind of crazy experiment they'd do) before the E3 interview, but when a reputable/primary source gives us information it'd be rude to ignore it.

Who knows what horrors the bio-engineered naga/lamia were subjected to under Allag rule to cause them to cry out "Don't look at me!"; who knows what drove them from the only home they'd known for the last 5000 years (Dalamud) to Satasha. The obvious answer is to get slain by the Warrior of Light, naturally. An Allagan chimera tempered by a Primal is an interesting thought, but if such a thing were possible (and who's to say it isn't) then the idea of stocking Dalamud with chimeras as a security force was a really poorly thought out plan (and who's to say it wasn't).

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Originally Posted by WyrahFhurrst

That's the one I was talking about! Thanks, Moose!

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What moose said ( dev team ), doesnt answer your original comment. We still dont know the origin of those lamias on sastasha, Specially beacuse they could talk and they were know us "drowned courtesan"
There is no way an allagan lamia end up there and got tempered by leviathan. The only logical thing, as someone say before me, is that allagans created lamias by mutating someone with an over expose to corrupt aether. Something similar of what happened in sastasha HM

Question: Do we have any hard confirmed precedence of this so called "deliberate misinformation"?

I can see that maybe NPCs don't necessarily know what they talk about in their dialogue. But how can we know Byblos, Batraal, Diabolos, Anchag, Halicarnassus, Raskovnik Ferdiad, Frumious Koheel Ja, 8th Order Patriarch Ge Bu or the everliving Bibliotaph by name and title? How do we even know it's the 8th order of Kobolds? How do we know Lady Amandine is Lady Amandine and not some random, exactly identical looking maidservant? We've never exactly been introduced to any of them and I doubt the Warrior of Light is just randomly making these up as s/he goes.

Not only do we constantly get information we cannot possibly have, I can't find a single case where the information we got from the mob names turned out to be false. Heck, the first time we stroll through Azys Lla we apparently guess every creature name right from the get-go. And not just we - Mirror Knights are called Mirror Knights in Thanalan. In the fractal continuum, it is then confirmed they are in fact called Mirror Knights. What a coincidence! Especially when most Eorzeans would probably have called them something like "MechaOwlBear".

That said, it is my belief it's simply a case of re-used models.

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Originally Posted by Zojha

Question: Do we have any hard confirmed precedence of this so called "deliberate misinformation"?

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My favorite go-to example is the Deepvoid Deathmouse - a very large dormouse that is very unlikely anything more than a very large dormouse. The THM quests have something similar, where the brothers seek out small voidgates in a cave and assume that everything there from bats to slugs are all voidsent - something that currently seems less likely than not. My other favorite example is the Lamia, but that one's probably disqualified from this debate, eh?

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Originally Posted by Zojha

But how can we know Byblos, Batraal, Diabolos, Anchag, Halicarnassus, Raskovnik Ferdiad, Frumious Koheel Ja, 8th Order Patriarch Ge Bu or the everliving Bibliotaph by name and title? How do we even know it's the 8th order of Kobolds?

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If it's black-or-white, all-or-nothing, the game mechanics themselves crumble, no? They can't all be assumptions and artificially-organic information.

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Originally Posted by Zojha

How do we know Lady Amandine is Lady Amandine and not some random, exactly identical looking maidservant?

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That's a good example, because it might not be Lady Amandine. Succubi (voidsent) manifest in the corporeal world by forcing their essences into the corpses of dead women. They snack on aether and manifest corporeally using it. Remember how the succubus zapped the Wood Wailers to summon demons? Were those demons still Wood Wailers, or did their essences come through the void and manifest using the dead Wailers? "Lady Amandine" could be the true woman, warped by her consorting with Darkness... or perhaps she was a desperate human who fell prey to a ruse, died, and now has a succubus waltzing around in her skin.

The succubus in the THM story, incidentally, possessed a lalafell, but only manifested after slaying several women to materialize with. There's lots of information to gather and compare and try to find the truth before someone spills the beans. Even with the misinformation, you can find the truth out there somewhere. Questions like the one above only make it into interviews when compile & compare doesn't concretely cancel out or boil down.

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Originally Posted by Dark Devices - The End

Sensing defeat, Milburh the Malicious sacrifices her carnal form to the void where a succubus claims it for her own. Strike down the cultist and drive the voidsent from her corpse.

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Originally Posted by Frederick22

We still dont know the origin of those lamias on sastasha,

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My money is on the idea that the Lamia were in the Bioweapons Storage of the internment hulk that crashed into La Noscea. We barely even went inside of that ship in the Binding Coil - we skimmed the surface and passed through the engine. That's it. And yet we know that, like the other hulks, it probably housed bioweapons and enslaved dragons because cobras and dreadknights and Twintania (oh, my). A hulk crashed into the Burning Wall, and out poured a bunch of Mirror Knights. Why's it so weird that Lamia would come out of another? And we know that they can malfunction and form basic social groups and try to obtain autonomy - that's exactly what a FATE is Azys Lla is all about. Perhaps the Lamia in Sastasha HM just broke out of the hulk and found a nice cave to settle down in.

Madison's crew is probably a different story, of course. Madison himself blames the change on Leviathan tempering them over and over. But look at what they warped into - sea creatures. Like, the same ones in the cave. Madison is taking on the qualities of a kraken, while his crew are becoming like aurelia. Assuming the Lamia were once people ... what sea creatures are they turning into?

And why would two world lore creators (one of them being the team leader) focus an interview answer on something that led further from the truth? I'm not saying they always give the whole truth - those two like to throw gas on the fire and stir the boiling pot - but they do like us loremongers. The answer seemed to pretty clearly imply that Lominsans saw artificial voidsent bioweapons wielding scimitars and (knowing jack about such technology) thought, "Well that's a pirate," and then they saw pirates that'd been severely messed up by something (they themselves blame Leviathan), and decided, "Well, must have been the same thing. Drowned pirate ... wenches! IT ALL MAKES SENSE!"

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

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I didnt say I didnt agree with what you said, it was beacuse the dev team answer its well hahahaha, for me at least was kind on confusing how they answer, unless I didnt undestand that correctly.

But well what the hells weredoing lamias on the sastasha caves? and also why ( assuming this creatures can talk ) they were woried about they look?

if they were allagan they were, but hahaha there was a lot of small details that proven the orther thing.

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Originally Posted by Frederick22

So are you impling that Madison and his crew didnt get extra tempered by levhiatan?

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For now, I'm actually mostly inclined to believe Leviathan is at fault for the fish-pirates. Sure, the door's open for the idea to be wrong; Eorzeans aren't really known for getting the story straight on the first try... but the "we didn't get much information" door swings both ways, and the dialogue after the quest is a lot of exposition to not be at least partly true. The idea of being tempered so hard that your body is twisted into something else (perhaps something nearby or related to the element in question) hasn't really come up anywhere else, has it? Might as well take everyone at their word until we have anything else to go on. Imho, their explanation just doesn't explain the Lamia given what we know now (prior to that interview, even I once suggested that perhaps the Allag were harnessing primals to warp people, not Leviathan of course, since he wasn't around back then... etc. etc. etc.).

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Originally Posted by Ceana

Friends─this man's unnatural form can be attributed, I believe, to the excess absorption of water-aspected aether. A living being can only absorb a certain quantity of aether before suffering adverse effects. To be altered so drastically requires a fatal dose, yet our subject here lived long enough to be struck down. A most peculiar case indeed...

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Originally Posted by Reyner

I have heard that a primal creates thralls by showering mortals with its own aether. Could this be an extension of that process?

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Originally Posted by Ceana

If being exposed once to a primal's aether is enough to corrupt the mind, 'tis plausible that repeated exposure corrupts the flesh.

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

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Agreed. Ceana could have been right, or we could find out that there's some crazy parasite that makes a person into an Illithid-like monster. If over-tempering was a thing, then wouldn't we see it happen to other Tempered people? Certainly other Primals would figure out eventually by now, and not just Leviathan?

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

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So is possible that the lamias we see on azys la or the biding coils, are a result of experimentation of over expose of a primal's aether on living beings?

Shoulda did this in the first place...

http://i.imgur.com/aHDWU67.gif

Could it be possible that in order to create a Lamia the allagan just did the same thing that the Sahagain did to the drowned Pirates? Basically exposing creatures to too much of a Primals Aether? Perhaps the Allagans Creation of the Lamia and the Lamia found in Sastasha are the same.

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Originally Posted by Rocl

Who knows what horrors the bio-engineered naga/lamia were subjected to under Allag rule to cause them to cry out "Don't look at me!"; who knows what drove them from the only home they'd known for the last 5000 years (Dalamud) to Satasha. The obvious answer is to get slain by the Warrior of Light, naturally.

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Food for thought: a monster known to have a gaze attack (Petrifaction) tells you not to look at it.

My theory is
Bio-engenering isn't "create from nothing", i think most of the "allagan chimera" was clones from already existing creatures genetic modified to be docile, so they get some Lamias from limsa used them as base to make guards for the Dalamund.
Same thing whit the Ixials.

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Originally Posted by Vejjiegirl

Could it be possible that in order to create a Lamia the allagan just did the same thing that the Sahagain did to the drowned Pirates?

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Originally Posted by Frederick22

So is possible that the lamias we see on azys la or the biding coils, are a result of experimentation of over expose of a primal's aether on living beings?

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I won't say it's impossible, but in my humble opinion, it really doesn't fit with any of the information we've gotten since Sastasha HM. Here's the list of "compare and contrast" information I've been going on - let me know if I missed anything or if there's another way to group and interpret the information.

Evidence
"Lamia in Sastasha were Allagan escapees, not primal-warped modern-day courtesans."

• Interview implies that the names were deliberate misinformation based on the fact that Lominsans didn't know about Allagan technology
• Allag only had Lamia, not other entities you'd expect from a hypothetical water-aspected primal-warping, such as jellyfish people or kraken people
• Lamia on Azys Lla live on Beta Quadrant, the sector where bioweapons are
• Lamia on Azys Lla have names related to artificial reproduction, such as Cybid (Cytoplastic Hybrid) and Thelytoke (female parthenogenesis)
• Like the Lamia in Sastasha, the Lamia on Azys Lla choose to spend their time in a cave.
• Echidna appears to be Lamia (sword, petrifcation, and all) and is also a confirmed voidsent.
• The Allagan Naga are artificial voidsent that seem to be ahriman residing in decapitated lamia (hence the snake-like name, I assume). For a while, I was nervous about extending the naga to the lamia as artificial voidsent, but Echidna makes me feel a little better about the idea. Lamia could still just be Allagan chimeras and not voidsent, of course... but... Echidna...
• Snakes such as Echidna's - Dexter (right hand) & Sinister (left hand) - are artificially reproduced by Allag as well.

Evidence:
"Lamia in Sastasha were primal-warped modern people, and Allag did the same thing coincidentally."

• Sastasha HM
• Allag knew what primals were
• Lamia on Azys Lla are not far from "Mutagensis", which implies stable, directed mutation, which is what hypothetical water-aspected primal-warping would technically be. Though, not even getting that far confirms that the Lamia in Sastasha HM were Leviathan's doing. They could have been hypothetical water-aspect primal-warped Allagans that escaped from the internment hulk etc. etc. ad nauseam.

Of course, these lists aren't cut and dry. There could be weird overlap inclusive or exclusive of certain ideas, but ... of all the information we currently have, my bet is on the Sastasha lamia being Allagan, and there are hints that they, like the naga, are of the voidsent line of Allag tech.

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Originally Posted by Rocl

Who knows what horrors the bio-engineered naga/lamia were subjected to under Allag rule to cause them to cry out "Don't look at me!"; who knows what drove them from the only home they'd known for the last 5000 years (Dalamud) to Satasha. ... An Allagan chimera tempered by a Primal is an interesting thought, but if such a thing were possible (and who's to say it isn't) then the idea of stocking Dalamud with chimeras as a security force was a really poorly thought out plan (and who's to say it wasn't).

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Lamia want people to look at them; it helps with the Petrifaction. That's not to say Allagan lamiae weren't treated horribly by their creators (who wasn't), but the simplest solution is usually the correct one, and the one here is that the lamia in Sastasha HM are just normal women warped by Leviathan's aether who consider themselves ugly now and don't want you to look at them.

I mean, sure, it's possible the lamia in Sastaha HM are Allagan bioweapons who somehow survived the Dalamud impact and later made their way to the seagrot... but that raises more questions than it answers, such as:

• Why weren't there any lamia in Sastasha Normal? (It's been 5+ years since the Dalamud impact; if they were gonna take up residence somewhere, they'd have done it by now.)
• Why are Capt. Madison and his crew leaving them alone?
• Why do they get healed by Brine (water-aspected aether)?
• Why do they not want you to look at them, when looking at lamiae is extremely beneficial to them?

... etc etc.

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

Madison is taking on the qualities of a kraken, while his crew are becoming like aurelia. Assuming the Lamia were once people ... what sea creatures are they turning into?

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Sea serpents. They're half-sea serpent.

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

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I never said I dont believe you sir, on the contrary. I really think you are correct about that lamias are sintetic voidsents, created by the allagans.

My only doubt about the lamias on sastasha HM, is that they scream at us "dont look at me". Why they would care about their aspect if they are allagan creations?

Thats why I have this doubts

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Originally Posted by Cilia

Why weren't there any lamia in Sastasha Normal?

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A few ideas off the top of my head: Sastasha NM took place while the Garleans were still in control of Castrum Occidens, a base whose purpose was to secure, open, and explore the La Noscean hulk. More wild mobs got into the hulk than bioweapons got out of it. Also, do you recall at which point the Garleans hit an impasse with their exploration? The bottlenecked cave where ADS had set up shop? I assume that ADS did not take kindly to bioweapons attempting to run free. By the time Sastasha HM rolls around, the Imperials have been driven off and the La Noscean hulk has been disabled. Anything not out containment probably died when life-support went down, and everything that was out of containment was able to find freedom unhindered. Perhaps a slither of escaped lamia gained self-awareness and made a break for freedom like their Azys Lla bretheren, taking up a not-enslaved-bioweapon existence in the nearby cave system. Perhaps they had no reason to leave until the hulk's support systems went offline.

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Originally Posted by Cilia

Why do they get healed by Brine (water-aspected aether)?

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Lamia do have an association with water in the franchise.
In FFXI, the Lamia were a beast tribe that were also thought to have origins in chimeric meddling. A subset of the Lamia, the Merrow, had very strong associations with water and were seen as akin to mermaids. Both of these were also known to raise undead (to the point that their army was known as the Undead Swarm), strengthening their connections to what FFXIV would associate with the void.

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Originally Posted by Cilia

Why are Capt. Madison and his crew leaving them alone?

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Captain Morgan doesn't know any more about Allag tech than the average Lominsan. (Probably less.)
Why wouldn't he assume that they were like his crew was?

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Originally Posted by Frederick22

I never said I dont believe you sir, on the contraty.

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Nah, I'm just covering all my bases and explaining why I see one given set of ideas as most likely, given what we now as of now.
Even I'm not 100% sure I'm right, lol.

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Originally Posted by Frederick22

they scream at us "dont look at me". Why they would care about their aspect if they are allagan creations?

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Originally Posted by Cilia

Why do they not want you to look at them, when looking at lamiae is extremely beneficial to them?

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I'm no lamia psychologist, but if they were enslaved weapons for their entire lives, became self-aware, and fled to live in a cave... maybe they didn't want to hurt people, anymore, until this group of adventurers came storming in and put them well under their "kill everything in our path" umbrella. The lamia also say, "There's no going back..." and (something that would be much better for the argument that they were tempered), "One of us! One of us!" (a reference to the 1932 film Freaks parodied by South Park, the Big Bang Theory, the Simpsons, and more). Interestingly, "Don't look at me! Don't look at meee!" was also on the Simpsons.

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

I'm no lamia psychologist, but if they were enslaved weapons for their entire lives, became self-aware, and fled to live in a cave... maybe they didn't want to hurt people, anymore, until this group of adventurers came storming in and put them well under their "kill everything in our path" umbrella. The lamia also say, "There's no going back..." and (something that would be much better for the argument that they were tempered), "One of us! One of us!" (a reference to the 1932 film Freaks parodied by South Park, the Big Bang Theory, the Simpsons, and more). Interestingly, "Don't look at me! Don't look at meee!" was also on the Simpsons

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Thats the point!
Why they care about their aspect on the first place? That means they consider theirselfs ugly, but why?

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Originally Posted by Frederick22

Why they care about their aspect on the first place? That means they consider theirselfs ugly, but why?

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This is pure, complete, utter conjecture ... but (assuming they were Allag creations) put yourself in their shoes. Imagine that you were grown in a lab based on chimerical splicing between various organisms, some of them possibly not even of this world, and then you're enslaved and weaponized. Some of Allag's methods of "breaking" their engineered animals for battle were brutal and they were hunted down by machina if they got out of line. As a weapon of Allag, your most potent attack is a gaze which makes all who look upon you turn to stone. If suddenly you had freedom... wouldn't the idea of being looked upon still haunt you? Still remind you of what your "purpose" was? The Lamia in Sastasha don't even try to use a petrification effect, do they? (I forget.)

If I had to psychoanalyze a lamia based on one piece of balloon text, that's my only idea so far, lol.

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

A few ideas off the top of my head: Sastasha NM took place while the Garleans were still in control of Castrum Occidens, a base whose purpose was to secure, open, and explore the La Noscean hulk. More wild mobs got into the hulk than bioweapons got out of it. Also, do you recall at which point the Garleans hit an impasse with their exploration? The bottlenecked cave where ADS had set up shop? I assume that ADS did not take kindly to bioweapons attempting to run free. By the time Sastasha HM rolls around, the Imperials have been driven off and the La Noscean hulk has been disabled. Anything not out containment probably died when life-support went down, and everything that was out of containment was able to find freedom unhindered. Perhaps a slither of escaped lamia gained self-awareness and made a break for freedom like their Azys Lla bretheren, taking up a not-enslaved-bioweapon existence in the nearby cave system. Perhaps they had no reason to leave until the hulk's support systems went offline.

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All reasonable possibilities, but at the same time, the only apparent exit from the Coil was through Castrum Occidens... which is still held by the Rogue XIVth, Wineport is on the way so the Yellowjackets should have noticed them, etc etc. Unless the ADS guarded slab wasn't the only exit from the Coil... but that would invalidate the hypothesis.

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

Lamia do have an association with water in the franchise.
In FFXI, the Lamia were a beast tribe that were also thought to have origins in chimeric meddling. A subset of the Lamia, the Merrow, had very strong associations with water and were seen as akin to mermaids. Both of these were also known to raise undead (to the point that their army was known as the Undead Swarm), strengthening their connections to what FFXIV would associate with the void.

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While I'm not dismissive of the franchise's legacy... we have yet to see evidence of merrow in XIV. Until we do, I don't think it's particularly wise to bring them up. (I'm quite the stickler for staying with what we know, not what we can draw from the franchise's history.)

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

Captain Morgan doesn't know any more about Allag tech than the average Lominsan. (Probably less.)
Why wouldn't he assume that they were like his crew was?

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Let's see if I can't do this right... *puts on darksteel foil hat*

Being massively suffused with water-aspected aether, Capt. Madison and crew are probably a lot more sensitive to aether than most people, akin to how Davy Jones in Pirates is portrayed as being "closer to the sea." As such, they're probably pretty well-suited to telling when someone or something is different from them - and lamia, being (sometimes artificial) voidsent, are distinctly not the same as people mutated from overexposure to Leviathan's aether.

Pretty sure they'd notice some voidsent all up in their crib, artificial or otherwise. Maybe they kept them around as sort of guard dogs, but... ehh.

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

I'm no lamia psychologist, but if they were enslaved weapons for their entire lives, became self-aware, and fled to live in a cave... maybe they didn't want to hurt people, anymore, until this group of adventurers came storming in and put them well under their "kill everything in our path" umbrella. The lamia also say, "There's no going back..." and (something that would be much better for the argument that they were tempered), "One of us! One of us!" (a reference to the 1932 film Freaks parodied by South Park, the Big Bang Theory, the Simpsons, and more). Interestingly, "Don't look at me! Don't look at meee!" was also on the Simpsons.

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Not a lamia psychologist either (though I do have an Associate's...), but anyone who's studied just a little bit of psychology knows that it's a combination of nature and nurture. Allagan lamia, being genetically engineered demons for military purposes, probably do not have that kind of... gentleness in their psyche. Even assuming they weren't self-aware before, giving them self-awareness would probably not change much. Basically, it's highly unlikely there's anything in their psyche hinting at kindness and gentleness (they're freakin' demons), and such things were never nurtured in them either. I'd have to be a miracle for something like that to happen.

It's also important to remember they are hostile to us. Being super lazy, most players wouldn't bother killing them if it could be avoided (esp. when Sastasha HM was current - there's no reason to, since you get no XP and it just slows you down).

Lots of shout-outs in general here. We all know that.

We're really dismissing Koji-Fox and Oda-san for Walt Disney?

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Originally Posted by Rocl

We're really dismissing Koji-Fox and Oda-san for Walt Disney?

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I'm not dismissing anyone, just observing, considering, and reasoning for myself. (This often gets me casted as the "bad guy" in debates like this, but I don't mind...)

I mean, it's possible the Drowned Wenches and Drowned Courtesans are Allagan bioweapons who survived the Dalamud impact and took up residence in Sastasha... but I personally consider it highly unlikely. For all I know they were jes' trollin'.

Sastasha HM is full of shout-outs to Pirates anyway. In the English version, at least.

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Originally Posted by Cilia

For all I know they were jes' trollin'.

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We now have a better phrasing for that:"For all I know, they were just spreading deliberate misinformation".

An interview conducted entirely in English can't be canon due to the poor localization choices made previously by the team.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrow I already knew what a merrow was. It's the Irish term for mermaid. Those drowned wenches in Sastasha HM were once human, but due to Leviathan's aether, they mutated into mermaids. Their character model just looks like lamia, but they are supposed to be mermaids. You are forgetting that in FFXI, there were both lamia and merrow monsters to fight. They looked similar, but were different. I don't think that the merrow in Sastasha HM have anything to do with the Allag. They were once human but mutated.

EDIT: Merman are said to be ugly while the females are supposed to be beautiful, as the merman were to be more fish-like in appearance with green hair and green skin. I did a research paper in Art History class on mermaids in contemporary art.

I hope the lamiae, reptoids, or even Allagan nodes in Azys Lla have Beast-Tribe quests added in a later 3.X version update. It would be quite interesting to see.

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

The idea of being tempered so hard that your body is twisted into something else (perhaps something nearby or related to the element in question) hasn't really come up anywhere else, has it?

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It's SORT OF come up, albiet by counterexample. Loon Gah's mother in the Ash Tribe questline was also overtempered - but the result was not the twisting of her body, but burning out her mind...

Although, to be fair, this might be a different matter. Loon Gah's mother was, if I recall correctly, subject to repeated temperings, not a single massive supertempering.

There is a FATE in Azsys Lla called "Late Escape" were it talks about Self aware Lamiae trying to escape the place ...