Quote Originally Posted by Tehmon View Post
What I don't get is that why such a powerful race of creation magic experts would need to unmake creations to create their garments. That... seems kind of unnecessary.
IIRC, the idea was that you still can’t make something from nothing and they needed their aether. The butterflies just happened to be plentiful and close by. Y’shtola likewise has you gather materials for the Nixies. I’m sure as powerful beings, the Ancients could have used ambient aether just to make some clothes but then we would lose the narrative point for that scene to have happened.

This is still a story and just like the law of conservation of energy, there is the law of the conservation of detail and you don’t generally have stuff happen in a story unless it serves a narrative purpose.