The lamia

[Anonymoose]

Why they care about their aspect on the first place? That means they consider theirselfs ugly, but why?

This is pure, complete, utter conjecture ... but (assuming they were Allag creations) put yourself in their shoes. Imagine that you were grown in a lab based on chimerical splicing between various organisms, some of them possibly not even of this world, and then you're enslaved and weaponized. Some of Allag's methods of "breaking" their engineered animals for battle were brutal and they were hunted down by machina if they got out of line. As a weapon of Allag, your most potent attack is a gaze which makes all who look upon you turn to stone. If suddenly you had freedom... wouldn't the idea of being looked upon still haunt you? Still remind you of what your "purpose" was? The Lamia in Sastasha don't even try to use a petrification effect, do they? (I forget.)

If I had to psychoanalyze a lamia based on one piece of balloon text, that's my only idea so far, lol.

[Cilia]

A few ideas off the top of my head: Sastasha NM took place while the Garleans were still in control of Castrum Occidens, a base whose purpose was to secure, open, and explore the La Noscean hulk. More wild mobs got into the hulk than bioweapons got out of it. Also, do you recall at which point the Garleans hit an impasse with their exploration? The bottlenecked cave where ADS had set up shop? I assume that ADS did not take kindly to bioweapons attempting to run free. By the time Sastasha HM rolls around, the Imperials have been driven off and the La Noscean hulk has been disabled. Anything not out containment probably died when life-support went down, and everything that was out of containment was able to find freedom unhindered. Perhaps a slither of escaped lamia gained self-awareness and made a break for freedom like their Azys Lla bretheren, taking up a not-enslaved-bioweapon existence in the nearby cave system. Perhaps they had no reason to leave until the hulk's support systems went offline.

All reasonable possibilities, but at the same time, the only apparent exit from the Coil was through Castrum Occidens... which is still held by the Rogue XIVth, Wineport is on the way so the Yellowjackets should have noticed them, etc etc. Unless the ADS guarded slab wasn't the only exit from the Coil... but that would invalidate the hypothesis.

Lamia do have an association with water in the franchise.
In FFXI, the Lamia were a beast tribe that were also thought to have origins in chimeric meddling. A subset of the Lamia, the Merrow, had very strong associations with water and were seen as akin to mermaids. Both of these were also known to raise undead (to the point that their army was known as the Undead Swarm), strengthening their connections to what FFXIV would associate with the void.

While I'm not dismissive of the franchise's legacy... we have yet to see evidence of merrow in XIV. Until we do, I don't think it's particularly wise to bring them up. (I'm quite the stickler for staying with what we know, not what we can draw from the franchise's history.)

Captain Morgan doesn't know any more about Allag tech than the average Lominsan. (Probably less.)
Why wouldn't he assume that they were like his crew was?

Let's see if I can't do this right... *puts on darksteel foil hat*

Being massively suffused with water-aspected aether, Capt. Madison and crew are probably a lot more sensitive to aether than most people, akin to how Davy Jones in Pirates is portrayed as being "closer to the sea." As such, they're probably pretty well-suited to telling when someone or something is different from them - and lamia, being (sometimes artificial) voidsent, are distinctly not the same as people mutated from overexposure to Leviathan's aether.

Pretty sure they'd notice some voidsent all up in their crib, artificial or otherwise. Maybe they kept them around as sort of guard dogs, but... ehh.

I'm no lamia psychologist, but if they were enslaved weapons for their entire lives, became self-aware, and fled to live in a cave... maybe they didn't want to hurt people, anymore, until this group of adventurers came storming in and put them well under their "kill everything in our path" umbrella. The lamia also say, "There's no going back..." and (something that would be much better for the argument that they were tempered), "One of us! One of us!" (a reference to the 1932 film Freaks parodied by South Park, the Big Bang Theory, the Simpsons, and more). Interestingly, "Don't look at me! Don't look at meee!" was also on the Simpsons.

Not a lamia psychologist either (though I do have an Associate's...), but anyone who's studied just a little bit of psychology knows that it's a combination of nature and nurture. Allagan lamia, being genetically engineered demons for military purposes, probably do not have that kind of... gentleness in their psyche. Even assuming they weren't self-aware before, giving them self-awareness would probably not change much. Basically, it's highly unlikely there's anything in their psyche hinting at kindness and gentleness (they're freakin' demons), and such things were never nurtured in them either. I'd have to be a miracle for something like that to happen.

It's also important to remember they are hostile to us. Being super lazy, most players wouldn't bother killing them if it could be avoided (esp. when Sastasha HM was current - there's no reason to, since you get no XP and it just slows you down).

Lots of shout-outs in general here. We all know that.

[Rocl]

We're really dismissing Koji-Fox and Oda-san for Walt Disney?

[Cilia]

We're really dismissing Koji-Fox and Oda-san for Walt Disney?

I'm not dismissing anyone, just observing, considering, and reasoning for myself. (This often gets me casted as the "bad guy" in debates like this, but I don't mind...)

I mean, it's possible the Drowned Wenches and Drowned Courtesans are Allagan bioweapons who survived the Dalamud impact and took up residence in Sastasha... but I personally consider it highly unlikely. For all I know they were jes' trollin'.

Sastasha HM is full of shout-outs to Pirates anyway. In the English version, at least.

[Zojha]

For all I know they were jes' trollin'.

We now have a better phrasing for that:"For all I know, they were just spreading deliberate misinformation".

[Rocl]

An interview conducted entirely in English can't be canon due to the poor localization choices made previously by the team.

[Naraku_Diabolos]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrow I already knew what a merrow was. It's the Irish term for mermaid. Those drowned wenches in Sastasha HM were once human, but due to Leviathan's aether, they mutated into mermaids. Their character model just looks like lamia, but they are supposed to be mermaids. You are forgetting that in FFXI, there were both lamia and merrow monsters to fight. They looked similar, but were different. I don't think that the merrow in Sastasha HM have anything to do with the Allag. They were once human but mutated.

EDIT: Merman are said to be ugly while the females are supposed to be beautiful, as the merman were to be more fish-like in appearance with green hair and green skin. I did a research paper in Art History class on mermaids in contemporary art.

[Zohar_Lahar]

I hope the lamiae, reptoids, or even Allagan nodes in Azys Lla have Beast-Tribe quests added in a later 3.X version update. It would be quite interesting to see.

[LineageRazor]

The idea of being tempered so hard that your body is twisted into something else (perhaps something nearby or related to the element in question) hasn't really come up anywhere else, has it?

It's SORT OF come up, albiet by counterexample. Loon Gah's mother in the Ash Tribe questline was also overtempered - but the result was not the twisting of her body, but burning out her mind...

Although, to be fair, this might be a different matter. Loon Gah's mother was, if I recall correctly, subject to repeated temperings, not a single massive supertempering.

[myahele]

There is a FATE in Azsys Lla called "Late Escape" were it talks about Self aware Lamiae trying to escape the place ...