Where do the Ascian black masks come from?

[YianKutku]

2. Black masks are evil-er than white masks and when they were created there was no idea at all about a civilization of white masked people and they gave the Ancients white masks because of aesthetic reasons to stand out against their black robes, especially since our first view of them are the simplistic-looking ghosts made up of an empty robe and mask in ShB.

Quite possible, although I was thinking that once we got to Elpis in Endwalker, we'd at least see some black-masked Ancients, and handwave the lack of them in Amaurot as Emet-Selch not quite remembering correctly. Especially if the black masks are intended to represent servitors or some such lower caste (humanoid familiars?), and so Emet-Selch didn't include them in his version of Amaurot because unconscious bias meant he simply didn't think about them. This would easily provide an explanation for the aesthetic reasoning for only white masks in Amaurot.

But no, there were no black masks in Elpis or Pandemonium.

I did find it a touch odd that the black masks were mentioned in 5.3 as being part of Elidibus' scheme to build faith in the Warriors of Light, as they had long since fell into obscurity at that point, with the bulk of their appearances being in ARR and only showing up again in the HW SMN quests.

And technically in late Stormblood, when we meet "Shadowhunter" and see that he has a collection of black Ascian masks (and the two red masks of Altima and Deudalaphon). So the black masks are still around the Source as of Stormblood, and apparently easily dealt with offscreen.

The interesting thing is after Heavensward, we never see any black-masked Ascians, but everyone else apparently does. Possibly this implies that the black-masked Ascians are deliberately trying to avoid us, while their existence and tendency to cause chaos has been widely publicized, thus random adventurers and enforcement agencies know that These People Are Not Your Friend, and deal with them accordingly.

I mean, the black-maskers are basically cultists; the fact that the story they were fed is technically true is kinda secondary to the fact. They're the Lambs of Dalamud with a nicer robe cut. I agree that the reason the Big Boy Ascians gave them black masks instead of white probably is a sort of instatement of inferiority; we know that they think sundered people are lesser, so why would they give them a dress code that implies they aren't?

The black-masked Ascians do have the ability to warp in and out via that shadow portal thing. Now, Zenos can do the same after he got his body back from Elidibus, so maybe this isn't actually that difficult and it's just us who have no idea how to do it. Still, that implies the black-masked Ascians are given at least some instruction in Ascian techniques, which (as of the first lorebook) is supposedly part of the Echo.