Mysterious monsters without much explanation?

[RyuDragnier]

The Savage raid strongly implies that Ifrita and Ifrit were basically the same, but we do have to remember that the context of Pandaemonium Savage is 'present-day scientific paper drawing connections between Ancient times and modern day and taking some dramatic liberties', so take that with a grain of salt. But regardless of what Ifrita actually looked like, the intention of her addition was pretty clear: to declare that Ifrit was an Ancient construct that the Amal'jaans misinterpreted as a creator deity, and not a figure that the Amal'jaan society devised of their own accord or derived from their own experiences like the Ixal (although even the Ixal don't really consider Garuda their creator, which it turns out they were right not to). And I don't like that.

There is always some aspect of fact in myth. Things get exaggerated, misremembered, and become fantastical in nature. But there's always a part of the myth that's true. If we look in the past of the game, there are 2 possible times in the past where it's possible for it to be true.

First possibility, Ancient Allag and Zurvan. As in his description, "records describe the "Demon" striding into battle girded head to foot in armor formed of unshifting flame." During that time frame Allag used reptoids, creations made from multiple scalekin specimens and spliced together. They were kept under control via a metal box in their head that shocked them to have them follow commands. One could feel they were "beasts bereft of reason or intellect, each fighting an endless, mindless battle for survival."

Imagine if you will if Zurvan proceeded to fry those metal boxes without harming those reptoids, and then unspliced them with his intense aetherical power. It would be akin to having been cleansed by a sacred fire, as the creation myth states. This would make said myth rather truthful in a fashion, they were cleansed by a sacred flame, they were saved by a "god of flames".

However, that doesn't take into account the Calamity of Earth causing widespread destruction, or how they'd survive it.

The 2nd possibility, is that all of this happened during the 3rd Calamity, the calamity of fire, which razed the planet, burned crops, bringing famine and turning forests into deserts. At such a time there would indeed be people fighting for survival without a single thought. A being could have arose then to uplift the Amal'jaa and would have brought them the glory where "the tribes ranged far and wide, and ruled all that walked or crawled upon the land".

Downside of this possibility is that we have 0 way of knowing if that even happened because Allag is the furthest back we know in terms of world history, outside of the small area that was Ivalice (which was likely during the time before said 3rd Calamity).

[YianKutku]

There is always some aspect of fact in myth. Things get exaggerated, misremembered, and become fantastical in nature. But there's always a part of the myth that's true.

To be fair, at some point the "true" part of the myth is so far removed from the myth that the myth ceases to be a useful guideline on what that truth allegedly is. For example, the level 50 FSH quest, where "giant sea serpent" was actually "just a big fish".

Still, I personally like your second idea of the Calamity of Fire being the source of the Amalj'aa belief in a fiery deity. The Calamity of Fire was not really "raging wildfires", but more "dry heat", according to the lorebook, but I assume that dry heat would lead to wildfires anyway due to, well, dry heat. The dryness would not be as damaging to the Amalj'aa as other races, given the Amalj'aa being less reliant on water, but the lack of food would definitely be an issue. Having a saviour figure emerge from that Calamity using fire-based rhetoric would certainly help the myth of Ifrit.