Creations of the Ancients in plain sight on the Source [ShB Minor Spoilers]

I have been wondering how much of our world is actually creations of the Ancients that are in plain sight but we never realized or recognized them.

When I was flying in Diadem and was looking at the large central crystal called "Crown Jewel", I noticed that it looked like a massive flower with little leafs on its stem. Then I remembered a quote from one of the Ancient manifestations that Emit created for us.

The Bureau Attendant said:

Picture a bouquet of fresh, fragrant flowers all the colors of a rainbow. Now picture those selfsame flowers formed of delicate crystal, impossibly fragile and radiating hues beyond the visual spectrum. Everyday our people push the boundaries of imagination to conceive new and striking designs like these.

Near perfect description of the Diadem, don't you think?

What do you think are the legacies of the Ancients and where are they found?

Spoilers of course...

Y'shtola already mentioned though in the Tempest that any Ancient remnants on the Source would have long since been obliterated by the constant cycles of Calamities occurring which never happen on Shards (until a Shard is destroyed when it's Rejoined anyway), which is why the ruins of Amaurot still survived intact on the First, so alas the likelihood of finding equivelant Amaurot ruins on the Source.. is almost nil I'm sorry to say.

And you only have to look at Eorzea, where virtually nothing from even the First and Second Astral Eras is known to exist, and even early Sixth Astral Era ruins are few and far between (even the mighty Allagan Empire, the greatest and most technologically advanced civillization the Source has ever seen.... mostly ended up forgotten, before the Seventh Calamity it's name was known only from a ruined cobblestone road in Thanalan and mysterious runestones etched with symbols of The Twelve, and even post Calamity, Allagan remnants that are discovered like the Crystal Tower and Azys Lla are reacted with in genuine surprise.

It is possible that a lot of the fauna/monsters seen in the Source and Shards were once Ancient creations, or at least descended from them (such as griffins), but I don't think that really goes all the way to actual landscapes also being Ancient creations. Crystalline structures seen in the environment seem to be more natural, created simply as a result of aether flowing and colascing (this is why Mor Dhona is almost completely crystallized - successive events there that resulted in massive releases of aether over the past 20 or so years have basically polluted the land with so much aether that has cooled and crystallized, (the Battle of Silvertear Skies, the Calamity). This is also seen in other places around Eorzea where pieces of Dalamud landed after Bahamut blew it to pieces - all that aether released immediately crystallized into weird spiralling and jagged spires, most clearly seen in Eastern Thanalan at the Burning Wall, but also in Eastern La Noscea in Ageless Wyse.

Given the floating islands in the Sea of Clouds like the Diadem float due to overaspected/corrupted wind elemental crystals, the central crystal of the Diadem probably had a similar origin.

The structures of the Amaurotines were impossibly durable, so it is likely they still exist somewhere on the Source, but just buried deep beneath the earth or at the bottom of the ocean or in some other extremely inaccessible location. Even after 10,000 years, the structures on the First showed not even the slightest blemish or crack, they were just half-buried and covered with debris and overgrowth. The only damage they ever sustained was from the Final Days catastrophe. While I don't think any of the visible areas we've seen so far on the Source are from that time, I suspect we will be seeing something in the future as we delve further into the true history of the planet.

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Originally Posted by Espritduo

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This. They most likely still exist on the source, even if only in small quantities - but if they're all miles underground, how would anybody even know?

IIRC there was an Amaurotine who was picturing a white lion while using creation magic, when an eagle flew past and distracted him. He liked the result, and it was probably a "True Griffin" that was made,
so at least one creation is still surviving today.

It's possible something did survive the many calamities the Source has seen, though like others have said they're likely buried deep where no one is likely to find them. I'd really love to explore more of these ruins, but it looks like we're likely only going to be able to do that on the Source unless somebody starts digging at the bottom of the sea :p

I do really love their architecture though, and this is totally a side comment, but I'd love if we the WoL could bring some of those designs back to Eorzea for some more housing ideas... Eh? Eh?!

But yeah. Whatever may have survived of their actual buildings or cities is likely either buried, or so changed that we wouldn't even recognize it for what it is. What we can see is in the form of griffins and slimes (pretty sure one of the Amaurotines made slimes and asked us to test them out?), and other creatures that are really Amaurotine creations that just became a part of nature at some point.

Given that on the First, a place that hasn't been ravaged by numerous calamities, the Amaurotine ruins are at the bottom of the ocean. It stands to reason that any such ruins on the Source would be equally, if not more, deeply buried.

That said, it could be an interesting thought that places with unnaturally high levels of unstable aether, i.e. Eureka and Diadem, might be remnants of an Ancient design. Given that the Ancients had deep pools of aether at their command which allowed the use of creation magic, add to that some projects were mentioned to require several people to help create, indicating an incredulous amount of aether required (With the perspective that Emet-Selch recreated the entirety of Amaurot and its inhabitants alone, albeit they're only shades of their former selves. Mostly. But they still have rudementary creation abilities)

So, it's possible that these places used to be something or somewhere that housed an Ancient creation, but has since been broken down by time and the numerous calamities. Leaving them as land masses with completely janked aether.

It could also be a reason for the many strange creatures roaming Eureka, they could have been possible creations that have managed to survive since the time of the Ancients (Much like how we see Griffins now with reference to an Ancient having made them by accident)

I think some Amaurotian structures might still remain, although the multiple calamities did destroy most of them and the few that remain won't be in as good condition as the ones we see in Ondo settlement.

That said, people have pointed out that Agelyss Wise might might have been an Amaurotian structure. At the very least it might have predated the Allagan Empire

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The ruins of an archaic road, Agelyss Wise's age is so great that some scholars hypothesize that it was already old in the days of ancient Allag

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There's still plenty of planet left to cover, so it's not impossible. Very, very improbable, due to a huge expanse of time and multiple Calamities, but not impossible. Maybe we'll see more hints of it with the Weapons story, since the Soft Tacos Supreme Heart of Sabik utilized by the Ultima Weapon predated Allag (according to Lahabrea, it contains mysteries that "even the vaunted scholars of ancient Allag failed to scratch").

I could be mistaken, but I though Emet created the Amaurot we encounter in The Tempest as a sort of memorial for himself/to show others. I was under the understanding that it was not the original and was more of a way for the story to show how ridiculously OP Emet is/was.

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Originally Posted by kaynide

I could be mistaken, but I though Emet created the Amaurot we encounter in The Tempest as a sort of memorial for himself/to show others. I was under the understanding that it was not the original and was more of a way for the story to show how ridiculously OP Emet is/was.

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The Amaurot we see was a creation of Emet's yes, but there are actual genuine Amaurotine ruins in the Tempest too. Anamnesis Anyder, I believe, is actually an Amaurotine construction, not something Emet made. The town our fish man friends (can't remember the name...) are living in is also constructed of Amaurotine materials - fragments of a ruin long buried under the ocean.

So pieces of the actual original are there as well.

The clean part in the latter half of the zone is Emet-Selch's projection. There are other parts throughout the Tempest, such as the Ondo settlement, where the original structures are still there, half-buried in sand and coral, but still intact. Y'shtola comments on the difference.

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Originally Posted by kaynide

I could be mistaken, but I though Emet created the Amaurot we encounter in The Tempest as a sort of memorial for himself/to show others. I was under the understanding that it was not the original and was more of a way for the story to show how ridiculously OP Emet is/was.

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The city we visited in the end of Main 5.0 story was the recreated memorial, yes (and should fade with time passing after Emet's death). But we encountered real ruins as well, including those shown by Ondo tribe and Anamnesis Anyder MSQ dungeon from last patch, and they are in quite a good state for such an old relic.