Thancred's inability to interact with aether and Garleans

After his little Y'Shtola sponsored jaunt through the lifestream Thancred came back to the living world without the ability to manipulate aether.
The Garleans are also incapable of manipulating aether.

Is there a connection? Might the Garleans have been some kind of experiment, whether by the Ascians, or some other faction, that intentionally dragged people through the lifestream?
And if so, do you think the goal of this experiment was to create something stronger and it backfired, or that their condition was the goal of the experiment to begin with?
But why would someone want to create such a group of people incapable of using aether? Maybe to create a slave caste, that is less capable or rising up against magic using masters?

I long assumed that - given the Garleans were introduced has having a unique physiology (third eye) and a unique limitation (near-total inability to manipulate aether) - the cause would explored much earlier than this (even if the reasoning was explicitly stated as, "fluke of nature, don't worry about it").

Given the fact that it only even manifests among "pure blooded" Garleans, the only theory I ever had before giving up on needing one at all was, "Allag did it", lol. Some kind of artificial control on a mage-heavy population.

Maybe they held off exploring it until the Garlean expansion and then, whoops, we skipped that one and went straight to Endwalker.

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

Given the fact that it only even manifests among "pure blooded" Garleans

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One thing that throws the wrench into that assumption is Severa, who has a third eye even if it’s a dun one despite Arenvald having told us it doesn’t happen and Alma and Ramza not having one either. But we don’t know how it affects her and she’s a side-story side character so who knows if we’ll even see her again.

Honestly, taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture Garleans are 1.0 lore and I’m not sure how much of it was compatible with ARR lore. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s an incongruity that the writers couldn’t come up with a satisfactory background to and just left it unexplained. Which I wouldn’t mind considering elementals went from being a mysterious supernatural force to “an Ancient did it”.

It'd be funny if it turned out the 'Garleans can't manipulate aether' turned out to just be extremely effective propaganda to prevent spellcraft practices.

"Y'Shtola sponsored jaunt through the lifestream" lmfao.

Assuming that the connection of the people of Goug to Garleans is true, do we have any indication wether the Gougians were incapable of wielding aether like the Garleans?

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Originally Posted by Zero-ELEC

Assuming that the connection of the people of Goug to Garleans is true, do we have any indication wether the Gougians were incapable of wielding aether like the Garleans?

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Goug?
/10chars

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Originally Posted by Zero-ELEC

Assuming that the connection of the people of Goug to Garleans is true, do we have any indication wether the Gougians were incapable of wielding aether like the Garleans?

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Yes, Jenomis for sure and I believe some of the others mention that the people of Goug lacked the ability to manipulate aether like the modern Garleans and were just as inclined towards machinery.

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Originally Posted by LibitIncarne

Goug?
/10chars

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The city in the lighthouse of the 2nd Ivalice Alliance raid. Home of one of the 7 tribes that eventually became the Garleans.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

One thing that throws the wrench into that assumption is Severa

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I side-eye at it and then I can hear Oda-san in my head; "Don't think too hard about it... don't think too hard about it..."

Very few things have zero exceptions in FFXIV. Even "Garleans can't manipulate aether" got scaled back to "it is very rare to find a Garlean who can", lol.

But I too am interested in how Severa will end up fitting into the picture.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

One thing that throws the wrench into that assumption is Severa, who has a third eye even if it’s a dun one despite Arenvald having told us it doesn’t happen and Alma and Ramza not having one either. But we don’t know how it affects her and she’s a side-story side character so who knows if we’ll even see her again.

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See, I think it's very simple: Severa is a Garlean at least in this perspective, Arenvald is a Highlander. Severa got a bunch of Garlean genes and so ended up more or less with their phenotype; Arenvald didn't. It might be that it's a more recessive gene, which would lead to more of an association with 'pure-blooded' Garleans... or, maybe the Garleans being racial purists is factoring in here and they're bigging that part up.

We've also got the factor of Cocobusi in the Thaumaturges' Guild questline, who was deficient in aetheric capacity; it's not that he can't manipulate it, it's that he can't manipulate it much. This seems to be a congenital thing, just a freak incident of birth, as he's the only one of his family who can't do it.


Following that logical train rather than one of deliberate genetic manipulation, I'd put forward the theory that aetheric manipulation is controlled by a certain part of the body; maybe a specific organ, maybe a gland, maybe a system like the circulatory system that has a lot of moving parts. (it may not even be a physical part of the body, magic could get weird like that.) If that were true, then if that part of the body were underdeveloped, it would lead to a situation like Cocobusi. If that part of the body were damaged, it would lead to a situation like Thancred. And if that part of the body was altogether absent from birth, it would lead to a situation like the Garleans.

Or we're looking at three different root causes of the same outward symptom and they're not actually related in the underlying, like how approximately seven million different problems could all cause you to start coughing.

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

Very few things have zero exceptions in FFXIV. Even "Garleans can't manipulate aether" got scaled back to "it is very rare to find a Garlean who can", lol.

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I always took that often-quoted line from the first encyclopedia “the arcane arts have eluded all but a few” to mean that their lack of ability to manipulate aether meant that only a rare few could even understand magic. At least some of them have to figure out how magic works in order to get magitek to work.

Or it means exactly as you said and we’ve just never come across any Garlean mages. At this point though I feel like if there were any then they would be significant enough to have popped up already in text if not in person.

I won’t stop being disappointed that the devs threw us a half-Garlean with a black third eye that went against everything we were ever told, didn’t even bring it up for a second in discussion in-game or out, and then the character vanished from the narrative, never to be seen or heard from again.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

Snip.

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I really like this idea. Ascendence of a Bookworm has very good world building and lore and they explain away their magic in a similar way in that it’s genetic because magic is produced by an organ that calcifies into a stone upon dying. I highly recommend the light novel to anyone who likes reading and well-crafted lore.


Speaking of Garleans, I wonder if it will ever be explained why some of them are tall and lanky like Elezen and others are much shorter like Midlander Hyur. The body shapes differences as presented are way too extreme. I wonder if the seven predecessor tribes also had differences (I know the actual reason is likely lazy devs than anything meaningful).

Greeetings fellow Bookworm fan. ^^

Maybe the modern Garleans aren't descendants of just a single race. If the pre-Garleans society was made up of multiple races, like we see in all the major cities, it's entirely possible, that what happened to them - be it intentional or enviromental - would happen to all the people living there. So the tall Garleans might be descendants of Elezen, while the shorter ones stem from Hyur, but they were all united by their condition and culture. And this unity in culture might have encouraged interbreeding, which might have resulted in the tipped ears of the Elezen disappearing.
Granted, the only half Elezen/Hyur we've seen, Hilda, went the exact opposite way, keeping the Elezen ears, but having a Hyur-like statue, but with her being a single case, she might be the anomaly for all we know.

I feel that if there are Garlean mages they're either kept isolated and hidden from public view or they all get killed the instant they're found to be able to use magic. Look at how the refugees at that camp treated us and the twins or that old woman we talked to inside the station when we went about getting permission to use the teleportor at the top of Babil.

Though if they were Allagan bio engendered entities then they could be akin to the Ixali who used to have big enough feathers that could allow them the ability to fly.

I'm not confident to say that what happened with Thancred is the same thing as what is happening with the Garleans. As Y'shtola was non corporeal for a lengthier amount of time and is still able to manipulate aether.

Then there is the guy from the fishing studium quests who at the start of the quest line wasn't able to atune to an aetherite due to suffering a huge amount of aether sickness. Only to find that for some reason some hannish alchemists had been working on a gene therapy-esque potion to fix that kind of problem.

There are several reasons why Y'Shtola and Thancred would have been affected differently. Y'Shtola was the one who cast the spell, she is a mage and she's a Miqote, while Thancred either passively received the spell or was swept along by it, is not a mage and is a Hyur.
Also Thancred came out of the lifestream by himself, while Y'Shtola needed to be pulled out.
We can't really rule out that her blindness might stem from either the casting, or from being pulled out by the White Mages. Come to think of it, the second time she used that spell in Shadowbringers, she came back without further damage. This might be because she had already lost her eyes, so there was nothing left to damage, or maybe Emet was so much better than Kan E Senna and her compatriots, that he managed to get her out without damage, where the Seed Seer was less successful.

There's of course always the possibility of randomness, or maybe there being different zones within the lifestream, with their respective different effects on the living.
Or the damage the pair suffered might not even have been from the lifestream itself, but from some vengeful entities within it, who attacked them. In the Aitiascope we saw that it's entirely possible for evil beings to stay coherent for some time and attack the living, should they come in range.

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Originally Posted by SannaR

Look at how the refugees at that camp treated us and the twins or that old woman we talked to inside the station when we went about getting permission to use the teleportor at the top of Babil.

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It’s stuff like this that makes me think that there are no exceptions and that all Garleans cannot do magic. The game repeatedly doubles-down on this and we’ve yet to see a single exception to the rule despite how significant that would be and instead get stuff like the whole effort to create the Resonance that comes with manipulating Aether as a side-bonus and a whole job that revolves around having a work-around to not being able to manipulate aether.

The Garlean civilians were indeed scared of magic users because they don’t understand it but I don’t think it’s a taboo. During the republic days, they hired Roegadyn mercenary mages to help them conquer Northern Ilsabard. They used what mages were available to them, and they were from another race. If there were Garlean pure-bloods who could manipulate aether to the level of being a mage I don’t think they’d hide them at all. They practically worship the Allagans who were an empire that was first built of persecuted mages.

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Originally Posted by No_Nick_Needed

Also Thancred came out of the lifestream by himself, while Y'Shtola needed to be pulled out.
We can't really rule out that her blindness might stem from either the casting, or from being pulled out by the White Mages. Come to think of it, the second time she used that spell in Shadowbringers, she came back without further damage. This might be because she had already lost her eyes, so there was nothing left to damage, or maybe Emet was so much better than Kan E Senna and her compatriots, that he managed to get her out without damage, where the Seed Seer was less successful.

There's of course always the possibility of randomness, or maybe there being different zones within the lifestream, with their respective different effects on the living.
Or the damage the pair suffered might not even have been from the lifestream itself, but from some vengeful entities within it, who attacked them. In the Aitiascope we saw that it's entirely possible for evil beings to stay coherent for some time and attack the living, should they come in range.

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Gladiator and rogue techniques both use aether of some kind though. That and we know Thancred can manipulate aether still; just that he's limited to his own aether. As I'm fairly confident that what he did in his fight against Ran'jit was use his own aether. Which we know from the conjure quests is a bad thing to do for long periods of time as it would be equivalent to slowly draining yourself of your own blood. I'm not sure if either of them were in a corporeal form while in the sea so I doubt they fought. Remember Flow is teleportation magics and you practically atomize yourself while keeping yourself from dissolving while in the sea. At least on the short term.

It's just that Flow is more like jumping into a riptide and hoping that you get spat out right away and still intact. Versus how most other regular teleportation works where it's more akin to driving on the free way and using an exit ramp. Thancred got sucked in willingly and shoved out in a small amount of time. Y'shtola on the other hand on the 1st time probably spent a few days if not longer inside the sea in an atomized state. She probably came close to what happened to those soldiers who got their destination blown up while in transit via teleportation.

And yes a man who has soul sight and whose very job it was to keep the sea in balance would have had an easier time pulling out a soul than needing to use aetherial entities that have a hard time distinguishing the aetherial signature of a person from that of anything else made up of aether. Y'shtola on the 2nd Flow use spent barely any time in the sea. That's probably why she didn't gain another handicap.