Allag

Do we know what they look like? Were they all 15 foot tall humanoids like Xande or was he just enhanced through augmentation? I'm assuming Allag was a civilization (Allagan Empire) and thus not a race unto itself? Therefore were they comprised of the Eorzean races, or were they all Hyur-like? Or were they their own proto-race similar to how the Zilart were to the playable races in FFXI?

The Allagans like Xande, Phlegethon, Scylla, etc. are a result of Amon's tinkering. Unei and Doga were direct clones of Allagan royalty so they're probably a good representation ... i.e. the Allagans probably looked like every other culture, to begin with.

I think it's also a safe assumption that if the thematic breadcrumb that mortal, wandering races are Hydaelyn's children is going to persist, we can assume at least the five races and some beastmen existed prior to Allag. Racial distribution throughout the Empire? Unknown. Miqo'te were pushed east, if I recall, so there's that.

Whether the Garleans did is one I look forward to learning. Aetheral sterility and third-eyes seem like ... deliberate genetic modifications, in a way.

Didn't the Allagans have red eyes? The Miqo NPC in the Crystal Tower story has red eyes. But I can't remember if he's an Allag who was/is in suspended animation, or like a tale-keeper and not actually an Allagan at all.

The red eyes were a sign of Allagan royalty. The Miqo'te had one red eye initially due to being some distant descendant of some surviving Allagan royalty who lived through the earthquake that destroyed their empire. His second red eye was granted by the clones, if I recall correctly, so that he could properly work the Crystal Tower's mechanisms or some such.

The red eye is a sign of having the Allagan Royal Genes. That NPC has it because one of the survivors of Allag purposely genetically modified his ancestor to have it. And from the sound of it, it was because she trusted him. If how Doga and Unei give him a second Allagan Royal Eye is any indication, Allagan genetic modifications have very little to do with mechanically messing around with genomes and everything to with magic techniques...

We see another Allagan (kinda) in the Lvl 60-70 SMN quests. And he looks like a normal Hyur.

The problem I have with the Garlean traits (aetheral sterility and third-eye) being Allagan in origin is that everything the Allagans did seems to assume everything has aether it can manipulate. I have a very hard time seeing them make a race that can't use aether given that most of their genetic projects produce beings that can use aether. I also think we'd have discovered something about the proto-Garleans in Azyz Lla by now if that was the case. Instead the proto-Garleans are all the way over in Othard...

On the other hand, if you assume the Garleans are really just huyr with some genetic variations thrown in haphazardly, they're in a similar situation to the Ixal. The Ixal's genome is very unstable and things like flight capabilities didn't last long in the genome. Kinda like how the Aetheral sterility and the third-eye don't show up in half-Garleans. If the Garleans weren't so committed to "racial purity", they probably could have lost both the aetheral sterility and the third eye a long time ago.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ObsidianFire

The problem I have with the Garlean traits <...> being Allagan in origin is that everything the Allagans did seems to assume everything has aether it can manipulate. I have a very hard time seeing them make a race that can't use aether given that most of their genetic projects produce beings that can use aether.

---

What if the key to controlling a certain population who relied on aetherial manipulation was to deprive them of the resource?

A magically-adept rebellious nation?
A known population of summers?
A slave caste?

I played Final Fantasy XI, so when I see the tropes assigned to the Allagans and Garleans respectively, part of me wonders, "What if there's a little bit of the Zilart / Kuluu thing going on here?" just like certain tropes between Hydaelyn and Zodiark make me wonder if any Promathia mechanics are in play, lol.

Why not just use neurolinks in that case? or clones? We've seen plenty of each before. Genetic modification on a population-wide scale seems like a really complicated way of dealing with that type of problem compared to how Allag has dealt with it before. IDK... If the Allagans are comfortable leaving dragons access to aether manipulation so long as they scramble their brains, why take it away from a population, give them something to make up for it and then just leave everything else the same. Said genetic manipulation can't even be passed down outside the population either...

If Allag was to be the start of the Garleans, I'd almost expect it to be the result of the Allagan version of Malus. That is, the one scientist who everyone thinks is crazy and yet is experiment works. And then whoever is in charge of cleaning up after it didn't quite get everyone...

True, but look at what they did to a leader of a rebellion. Phlegethon was captureed made to be that tall, brainwashed and then forced to guard the labrynth. They also seem to be fine with death of test subjects. Xande went as far as make a pact with the Cloud of Darkness. To me even a advanced culture as they were they should have known playing around with a being like that is tricky at best and deadly at worst.

I have to wonder if Gilgamesh is Allagan. He looks a bit like Xande to me. Modified to be immortal, perhaps?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ObsidianFire

Why not just use neurolinks in that case? or clones? We've seen plenty of each before.

---

Allag had a pretty long history - it's more than reasonable to speculate that not all of these technologies existed at the same times. The proto-Garleans may have been engineered before cloning was perfected (or even genetic engineering - it could have simply been breeding for specific traits), for instance. As for neurolinks, have we seen them work on anything but dragons? There could be something about dragons that makes neurolinks viable that does not apply to any other race.

Engineered by the Allag or not, I have to admit that I've long been curious as to whether Garleans qualify as a separate "race", or whether they're a third subset of Hyur.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SannaR

True, but look at what they did to a leader of a rebellion. Phlegethon was captureed made to be that tall, brainwashed and then forced to guard the labrynth. They also seem to be fine with death of test subjects. Xande went as far as make a pact with the Cloud of Darkness. To me even a advanced culture as they were they should have known playing around with a being like that is tricky at best and deadly at worst.

---

In the case of Xande and the Cloud, I think it's pretty much implied that Xande (who was a clone of the original at the time he made the pact) was not the most sane of individuals. He was an imperfect copy of the original (not that Amon would ever admit any flaw); he came back wrong, as it were. In short, don't take Xande's poor decisions as an indication of the attitudes of the populace as a whole. Judging by the archives in Azys Lla, it certainly seemed to be the case that Mad Science was the order of the day - but that, too, was likely encouraged by our not-too-sane Xande.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LineageRazor

Engineered by the Allag or not, I have to admit that I've long been curious as to whether Garleans qualify as a separate "race", or whether they're a third subset of Hyur.

---

I've figured that they're a separate race halfway between Hyur and Elezen.

Also I don't really want to see another race turn out to be an Allagan experiment.

Xande definetly wasn't sane. The Summoner job was invented because he told his mages/scientists that if they didn't come up with some way to combat primals (and keep them from coming back), he'd start killing one of them a day. Such pressure led to them inventing the magic behind the Summoner job as well as technology like neurolinks. So at least some of the mages/scientists were probably more concerned with "were the results they were getting keeping Xande happy" rather then "was this ethical".

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Iscah

I have to wonder if Gilgamesh is Allagan. He looks a bit like Xande to me. Modified to be immortal, perhaps?

---

Unlikely. Gilgamesh is a dimensional traveler and (probably) isn't from Hydaelyn at all.

Gilgamesh, like Omega are 2 beings that transcend game canon and appear in almost every FF game and maintain their original continuity. Gilgamesh was originally from the world of FFV, fell into a rift, and then appears from the rift in FF8,9,11,12,13,14, and then retroactively as a special boss in FF1,4 and probably a few others I'm forgetting.

It makes me wonder what would've happened had Amon not tried cloning their first emperor.

If I recall correctly the empire was in strife due to not having a strong leader. To the point where it sounded like they were on the brink of collapse.

Don't forget they were fairly advanced before finding omega which was like giving their scientist a few cups of espresso.

Omega was found long before Amon though. In fact, we don't know when it was originally found. Just that it was fairly early in the 3rd Astral Era and that the Allagans were already far more advanced then the current tech level in Eorzea is before they found it. Omega wasn't woken up until Xande's Clone ran into the primals in Meracydia.

What ended up happening to Allagan society that with all the automation, it turned into a hyper-consumer culture. There wasn't a lot of innovation going on anymore and Amon saw the society had become stagnant. He wanted to put an end to that, so he resurrected the Allagan leader who had caused the most advancement to Allagan society previously.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ObsidianFire

Xande definetly wasn't sane. The Summoner job was invented because he told his mages/scientists that if they didn't come up with some way to combat primals (and keep them from coming back), he'd start killing one of them a day. Such pressure led to them inventing the magic behind the Summoner job as well as technology like neurolinks. So at least some of the mages/scientists were probably more concerned with "were the results they were getting keeping Xande happy" rather then "was this ethical".

---

Ruthless does not necessarily equate to insane. Threat of execution is a very strong motivator, and as we can see, it got results. I don't consider the origin-of-summoning story to be a strong indicator of his insanity. Plenty of rulers are willing to "do what must be done" in order to safeguard their protectorate. Whether those things ACTUALLY "needed to be done" can be debated at length, but even at worst, they point to poor judgment, not insanity.

Placing less value on the individual lives of his subjects compared to the well-being of his kingdom as a whole is not nice, but it's not an unexpected trait to find in a successful ruler. Blatantly self-destructive stuff like his pact with the Cloud of Darkness are where it becomes clear that he wasn't firing on all cylinders!