What difference did the Twelve tangibly make?

[MikkoAkure]

There's unfinished stuff with Duskwights and Gelmorra, but... they've been pretty deliberately moving away from them since ARR. They even killed off-and-replaced or retconned some story-prominent Duskwight characters into Wildwoods (Estinien being the most prominent example).

My tinfoil hat belief is that it's because they don't know what to write for Gridania and struggle to write the Elementals without making them come across as villains, so everything Shroud-related is just in eternal limbo. Incidentally, Moon Cats similarly get 'trapped' by this.

Ishgardian Elezen who use Duskwight models aren’t Duskwights. Duskwights and Wildwoods only exist in Gridania but they never made separate Ishgardian Elezen models so they share.

Duskwights and Moon Keepers are fairly prominent in Gridania storylines but not as much elsewhere because they only exist in The Black Shroud. It would be difficult to make a story about either of them that does not involve that specific location since they only exist there and nowhere else.

That said, I think the Duskwights should’ve been featured more prominently in the Palace of the Dead and we should’ve received more lore bits on them there. And they could’ve thrown a Moon Keeper village at us on the other side of the wall in SB. But now we’re going to other continents, it’s going to be more difficult if not impossible to showcase them.

[Wix]

Ishgardian Elezen who use Duskwight models aren’t Duskwights. Duskwights and Wildwoods only exist in Gridania but they never made separate Ishgardian Elezen models so they share.

The whole Ishgardian thing is sloppy, and people will never agree on it, so I won't directly address it, but I'll point out that there's at least one Duskwight-model Elezen in the Shroud who was also retconned to be a Wildwood (Mother Miounne).

Duskwights and Moon Keepers are fairly prominent in Gridania storylines

They're really not. You probably remember the Lancer questline, and the two Duskwight NPCs in Gridania ("Damnable Duskwights!" and the airship ticket guy), but go do the rest of their quests and you'll see they're not prominent at all. In fact, they're pretty rare flat out in ARR onwards. There's a handful who are nameless and will briefly show up for a one liner in a delivery quest, but beyond that, it's basically two Duskwights per zone, tops, usually one, sometimes none, outside of the South Shroud and Sharlayan.
I'm not even joking. Finding the token Duskwight in each city is like playing Where's Waldo.

they only exist in The Black Shroud

In theory, but not in practice. In fact, the most prominent Duskwight family in the game actually had a seat on the Syndicate, and were located in Ul'dah, but SE made a point of killing them off going into ARR, though the son survived. He gets a brief cameo in post-ShB questing and a holiday quest you can no longer access, which makes him the only Duskwight in the entire game with a voice line. You can still pick up vague references to the family whenever alchemical things come up in Ul'dah, or their abandoned mansion in Thanalan that a Lalafell gang moved into, but that's about it.
Ironically, outside of certain parts of the South Shroud, the place you'll see Duskwights most prominently is among Garlean forces and Sharlayan groups. There's also an argument to be made that they existed in both La Noscea and Rabanastre, but those are yet more instances where it's messy and we don't have enough information, so people will argue whichever interpretations they like.

/DuskwightGrievanceRant
*cough*
Buuuut yeah. The conclusion of MotR wasn't exactly what I was hoping for either.

[MikkoAkure]

The whole Ishgardian thing is sloppy, and people will never agree on it, so I won't directly address it, but I'll point out that there's at least one Duskwight-model Elezen in the Shroud who was also retconned to be a Wildwood (Mother Miounne).

I wouldn't call the whole Ishgardian thing sloppy and I don't know what there is to disagree on. It's explicitly stated that Duskwights are all descended from Gelmorran Elezen who remained underground even after Gridania was established. The ones who remained in Gelmorra after the Hyur and what would become known as the Wildwoods left the caverns are the ones who became the Duskwight and have adaptations specific to living in that subterranean environment for a long period of time. Only the descendants of Gelmorran Elezen who stayed in the remnants of Gelmorra are Duskwight so while individually they could have traveled to other places, there are no Duskwight from anywhere else. What makes them unique only happened to a select number of people in a very specific place at a certain point of history.

Ishgardian Elezen are a completely separate lineage that had nothing to do with Gelmorra and the Elezen who lived in the forests other than a common origin on the Eorzean plains.

Mother Miounne could just have Duskwight ancestry just like how F'Lhaminn is a Sun Seeker who looks like a Moon Keeper and was stated as having interclan ancestry. Other NPCs may use Duskwight models but that doesn't necessarily make them Duskwights. Just like with F'lhaminn and also with Lyse, Yda, and Minfillia, what clan an NPC looks like doesn't mean they're actually that clan. For that reason, I wouldn't count an NPC using a Duskwight model as one unless it's explicitly stated they're a Duskwight. The Elezen in Ishgard who use Duskwight models are stated as being "Ishgardian Elezen".

They're really not. You probably remember the Lancer questline, and the two Duskwight NPCs in Gridania ("Damnable Duskwights!" and the airship ticket guy), but go do the rest of their quests and you'll see they're not prominent at all. In fact, they're pretty rare flat out in ARR onwards.

I was speaking about both Duskwights and Moon Keepers and in the context of storylines set in Gridania rather than anywhere else. The Archer storyline involved the treatment of Moon Keepers as well as a Postmoogle storyline. When the Dancer storyline came to Gridania it involved the Duskwights. Duskwights got a little mention (but not enough) when Palace of the Dead came out. But you're not going to find stories about Duskwights in La Noscea, Doma, or the New World because they don't live there.

There are still some named Duskwights around like Atelloune who is the world's most prominent living naturalist. And Valdeaulin who is from the Shroud but was on the wrong side of the wall when it went up and one thing led to another so he's with the Garleans. Similarly, Sadr Rem Albeleo is a Duskwight who was a thamaturge in Ul'dah who ended up with the Garleans and both give some level of believability for individual Duskwight being elsewhere outside of The Shroud and even Eorzea, but his family or at least his ancestors would still have to have been originally from The Shroud.

The problem is, is that Duskwights are stated to not really gravitate towards cities, to only be descended from a fraction of a population from a hidden group of people who remain mostly hidden still to this day, and are generally be said to be violent bandits when encountered outside the city of Gridania proper. They're probably the single rarest clan in all of the world and don't tend to mingle or interact with the greater world as a whole. That makes it very difficult to have very prominent characters in general who are Duskwight especially since the story has increased in scope away from Gridania which is the only place where Duskwights exist in any concentration and all our friends are Sharlayans.