Au Ra Origins: The Dawn & Dusk Theory [Spoilers]

[princefruit]

Despite the Voidsent inspiration, the Au Ra have always been moreso compared to dragons. Aside from the Ishgard persecution mentioned before, even the character creation screen mentions that there is ongoing debate about how Dragon-like the Au Ra actually are.

"The curved horns and beautifully patterned scales that characterize the Au Ra oft give rise to speculation that this Hyur-like race native to the Far Eastern continent of Othard are, in fact, the progeny of dragons. This, however, has long been disputed, with scholars citing several distinct differences in the two races as evidence of decidedly dissimilar roots—the first and foremost being the enhanced hearing and spatial recognition granted by an Au Ra's cranial projections (traits not attributed to draconian horns), and the second being the gross disproportion of body mass between Auri males and females (again, a trait widely unseen in dragons)"

And while scholars seem to shy away from the idea, we do know that gender disproportion IS a thing with several dragon species in game. Another thing to note is that the barbed tail option for Au Ra characters straight up matches the tails of some dragon enemies. (Then again another tail option is more similar to the Amaljaa).

Dragons are pretty powerful beings, I wouldn't put it in the impossible realm for some dragons, to be able to give birth to a new species or even to have other races conceive for them. It certainly wouldn't work in the traditional way we thing of conception though. It's probably much more abstract (for example Padjal, or irl The Virgin Mary or conception of Siddhartha). I'm not sure what would cause any sort of offense.

[Hinoto-no-Ryuji]

Bit late to the party here, but yeah, this is a bit of a reach, I think. TinyRedLeaf nailed my thoughts - the naming scheme certainly implies an intriguing link between Au Ra and the Meracydian-based First Brood, but any attempt to link them as literal offspring is working backwards from a conclusion to make the evidence fit. And, unfortunately, those Dawn and Dusk names are really all there is - nothing else fits. Not draconic methods of reproduction, not draconic growth cycles, none of it.

I'll say what I always have: the Au Ra are more likely than related to neither Voidsent nor dragon, and instead simply have horns and scales for the same reason Miquo'te have cat ears and tails, or why Lalafel are diminutive. They're a Race of Man, same as all the others: humanoid with certain regional distinguishing features. Nothing more, nothing less. That's what all the evidence points to at the moment.

[alimdia]

On Au Ra motif, why does it have to be either demon or dragon? Why not both? Their tail is not exactly demonic, looks pretty dragonish, but some of the horn options of Females can be compared to voidsents, one of them is basically a copy of the succubus model. But as it was stated this is aesthetic and not lore related.

On the theory, that's quite a stretch tbh, dawn and dusk are words used very commonly in this game, unless the dusk leathers we use for crafting are slices of Tiamat's skin (!).

You claim direct descendants, but so far we have never seen dragon offsprings being a completely different race.

On "Bahamut & Tiatmat vs. Azim & Nhaama" you claim that azim = azeyma, but azim was the dawn father and azeyma is a goddess, besides the entries about The Twelve have their own space in the lore book and they don't mention any dragons, from this to suggest that The Twelve are inspired on dragons... that's even a bigger stretch.

On "Dragon Reproduction" note that "The offspring produced in this manner is considered the same “race” as the parent, but over the course of its prolonged existence, a dragon undergoes a series of metamorphic changes that may result in a creature of vastly different physiology." is talking about all the different type of dragons we see, nothing in that text even implies reproduction with humans.

On "Mercydia vs. Othard", your largest issue is not this, your largest issue is literally every single point you made being inconsistent and frankly, a big stretch, and this point is no less of a stretch, Tiamat herself was the one who said they went to Meracydia, this isn't about Eorzean scholars.

[Alleo]

@princefruit: Was the different sizes of the dragon gender specific? I do kinda remember that this was just really random and it just happens that some dragon like Vishap get really big while some are smaller and others look even more strange..so maybe I am wrong but this has nothing to do with gender. I would not really take the form and look of the Au Ra tails as a hint of their origin. They had a dragon/demon motive for them so they probably just looked at existing models and thus that one tail was looking like one of the dragons.

The arguments from the scholars do speak against the theory because there are differences (which one could argue is something that happened over all those thousand years or so) and I believe that these hints are just there for us to speculate about the origin of the races. The best would be if SE will at one point outright say something about the Auri but at least its interesting to speculate about it.

[Aura_Shurifon]

Dragons don't have physical gender, they only have "psychological" gender. As one can feel "male" and another feel "female" but physically, they're the same.
So the scholar statement about disproportion still hold, some female can be very big while some male can be small. Which isn't a trait from AuRi as the male are ALWAYS far bigger than female.

[Annana]

And while scholars seem to shy away from the idea, we do know that gender disproportion IS a thing with several dragon species in game..

Every dragon, male or female, is the same size. There are different "subspecies" of dragons, depending on how far removed from the first brood they are, but there are zero gender differences other than the way they refer to themselves.

[WyrahFhurrst]

Could the Au Ra not be products of Dragons Blood like Niddhogg did, but perhaps using a different concentration, or made to grant less power, or change the peoples less? I agree that the Dawn Father and Dawn Dragon, along with Nhamaa/Tiamat's Dusk Mother/Dragon, correlation is suspicious, so perhaps it lends itself to the third mysterious clan of the Au Ra. Perhaps under Bahamut and Tiamat, they became aspected toward Dawn and Dusk (which wouldn't be unlike Eos and Selene, now that I think of it) while the older clan remains in Meracydia.

[Aryalandi]

This is extremely late unfortunately but I have been sort of considering something as of late that didn't occur to me before (which is amazing considering it is one of my favorite quests in FFXI)

While thus far there haven't been any dragons turning in to humanoid figures (without body snatching first) in Final Fantasy XIV~ in Final Fantasy XI there was one very powerful example of a Wyrm that could do so, and did so frequently while essentially testing mortals to see if they were worth protecting anymore or not since they had forgotten the oath they made to her once upon a time.


Areuhat

Bonus points for the fact that she takes the form of an elvaan, FFXI's elezen race



She transforms in to her dragon form during her personal quest chain to protect an elvaan descendant of her apperent mortal love interest from when the original pact was made, and again during the war related storylines if you finish her quest and recruit her then make her an offering~

So it really would not be at all unheard of for XIV which does draw heavily on XI for the direction of its lore in some places to have it be possible for powerful dragons to turn in to humanoid creatures with magic.

[My_Wet_Rooster]

All of the Spoken - Dragon mating speculation fails to answer a very key question:

How would it work? I mean, physically? There is a massive size difference between dragons (esp. Celestial Wyrms) and a Spoken of any race, and dragons in this setting are not known to be able to shapeshift into Spoken. Spoken can become dragonkin, but that is a one-way trip and they're not dragons per sé, just beings who heavily resemble dragons.

Doesn't Nidhogg transform from Dragon form to Humanoid form (Estinien being the host), then to its Celestial Wyrm form?

[Rocl]

Doesn't Nidhogg transform from Dragon form to Humanoid form (Estinien being the host), then to its Celestial Wyrm form?

It's.. complicated. That being even wasn't really Nidhogg any more exactly. Furthermore, like you said, Estinien was the host. So, basically it was Estinien turning into a wyrm more than a wyrm turning into a man.