What are "The Elementals" of the Black Shroud?

[Cleretic]

I hate performing thread necromancy, and double-posting on top of it, but this thread is literally the very first Google result when I try to look for corroborating evidence (and none of the others are very useful) and I really need some verification on this one.

It's not just a 'similar' model, they are literally elementals, with a sidequest in Elpis actually finally revealing what they really are and why they're so difficult to communicate with:

the elementals were actually familiars created by the Ancients to regulate aether in the environment, but, for some reason that wasn't adequetly explained there, they were designed not to communicate normally but to communicate via information carried on the aether, which made them obtuse even to their creators (presumedly this was done to allow them to communicate across vast distances).

The quest specifically dealt with one of those elementals being given a task that due to encountering a situation it was not 'programmed' for, it ended up stuck in a feedback loop that the player had to try and resolve (bascially, it was sent to fetch someone but the person it was meant to speak to was asleep, and it wasn't programmed to deal with that - simply poking the person in emote woke them and the elemental was able to continue in it's task). Because of this, it's entirelly probable that the Final Days and the Sundering... "broke" them and made them take their directive of "protect the environment and regulate it's aether" far too zealously.

The Elpis sidequest in question is called "Woken By the Familiar" incidentally for those wanting more information.

So... can anyone actually find a quest or NPC that says the Elementals were designed as aetheric regulators by the Ancients? Because Woken by the Familiar doesn't. (And I checked another NPC that's hanging around other Elemental models, he doesn't either.)

I wouldn't be asking this if it didn't sound legit, that seems like exactly something that might've been said somewhere, otherwise I'd just dismiss this out of hand. But if this is actually true I'd REALLY like some evidence, because that factors in pretty heavily to a video I'm working on.

[Dikatis]

I wouldn't be asking this if it didn't sound legit, that seems like exactly something that might've been said somewhere, otherwise I'd just dismiss this out of hand. But if this is actually true I'd REALLY like some evidence, because that factors in pretty heavily to a video I'm working on.

I THINK I know what you're talking about.

When Hermes is giving us a tour of Elpis, he introduces us to the pneuma, which take the form of the lightning sprites seen throughout the setting. According to Hermes, they help maintain the controlled climate of Elpis and keep it aloft, not unlike the crystals in the Sea of Clouds and in Aglaia.

But these pneuma use the sprite models, which many people confuse for the elementals. As stated in Eorzea Encyclopedia #1, they're wholly separate and non-sentient and are NOT kin to the elementals.

Woken by the Familiar does use the elemental model and Pophyrion describes them as messengers capable of communicating through beaming information-laden aether into the thoguhts of otherss, not unlike how the elementals commune with the Seedseers via emotions and feelings. This means that at some point between the events of Elpis and the present, the elemental-prototype evolved into becoming the force of nature it is today.