The Raimdelle Codex Alces

[sciencebot]

Well, it's delightful to hear it's still due for an update someday when it's less messy; Alces is probably my favorite FFXIV thing going! Best of luck figuring out what the heck an Anala is.

I have a strong suspicion that the anala are relatives of the ananta who have adapted to volcanic environments.

The big things that make me think otherwise are the hands and the locales. The Ananta have regular human hands, the Anala have these giant claws with two thumbs and two fingers between. The tails are pretty different too, as well as the whole skull situation.

Plus the Ananta are confined to a relatively average area of Gyr Abania, but when we first see the Anala it's all the way west to the middle of Dravania-- they're up in Sohm Al's depths -- and then when we see them again in Othard, they have the bulk of three continents between them. Which seems like a lot of travel for some dudes whose primary motivator seems to be "settin' stuff on fire"!

Typically other Spoken and tool-users like the Opken don't have quite as large a range unless they're out building boats or what have you. Usually the only things that make that kind of distance are flying creatures like Hydobus from Void Ark and its relatives in the Ruby Sea, swimming ones like abundance of crabs in either locale, or elemental or voidsent type situations.

Where that leaves us... I have no idea! They show up alongside the Anila, Dhara, and Apa in the Lost Canals, which seems like a selection of weird new elementals, but it's hard to be super sure about it on just that kind of evidence. It's pretty weak! Who knows?

[Mholito]

snip

I believe the anala are an adaptation of a much more widespread species that has since gone extinct. My reason for that is because of the large distance between known colonies. Unless their capabilities for long-distance travel is much greater than it appears, I find it highly unlikely that all currently known colonies originated from the same area. Therefore, it seems more likely that certain groups of "proto-anala" either chose to move towards volcanic territories for some reason, or that they were already living there before the volcanoes appeared.

There is also the possibility that they might be some kind of golem, though the fact that they wield weapons hint at a higher level of inteligence than what we've seen from golems so far.