Quote Originally Posted by Cybylt View Post
The metamorphosis of dragons was in the first encyclopedia.

We've seen dragons of Bahamut and Tiamat's brood in Coil and Aszys Lla, they follow the same morphology we've seen in Hraesvelgr and Nidhogg with the one possible exception of the 'Coeurl' Dragons which are land-bound dragons that develop agility rather than heavy defensive shells. The metamorphosis chart says the Brobinyak which we see among Nidhogg's brood is the stage before that, though.

"Her remaining brood can still be seen soaring through the skies, the wanderlust of their progenitor flowing strong through their veins."

Bahamut and Tiamat do feel like the most obvious draw because of titles, but they don't hold exclusive claim to day/night dichotomies and to our knowledge they'd only ever lived in Meracydia, and the Au'ra had lived on the Othardian continent since at least the time of Allag. There's also a pretty fundamental gap in the whole idea in that dragons came to the world after the sundering, and au'ra have counterparts on the reflections indicating the race was present before it.
But that’s the part I’m questioning; if it’s possible that Auri appeared on the First and the Source post-Sundering. I finally managed to find a copy of the the first lorebook and the part about aether affecting physiology further feeds my speculation that under similar circumstances and countless generations, we could end up with Auri with how drastically a dragon’s physiology can change to the point they practically are different creatures (the exact words from the lorebook).

It’s purely open-ended speculation on my part, but it is to me completely possible at some point a dragon ended up on the First somehow (whether by weird time shenanigans or any myriad of things related to Allagan tech and/or pure dimension-hopping) and under similar circumstances, Auri eventually evolved. People apparently had a decent enough idea of how dragons look to make the Fae Gwiber after all, and I’m not convinced First Auri being called Drahn is a coincidence. But of course they could have just gotten the idea similarly to how irl humans all independently have the same general idea of dragons as powerful magical reptiles/serpents.

I doubt it was directly Bahamut/Tiamat for a lot of reasons, but to me there is a good chance of some descendent of theirs being the ones involved. Honestly, if there’s any consistent pattern in FFXIV, it’s that the legends all have some grain of truth to them. We just alas, probably aren’t ever getting an answer anytime soon, but that doesn’t stop Yoshi-P and Co from playing coy on the matter. I will stand firmly on the fact the concept that was ultimately finalized is titled “Dragon_Race”.