Are Sprites "wild" elementals?

[Transient_Shadow]

I know there's 'the elementals' in Gridania and other elementals here and there that A-Towa-Cant helped but are Sprites sort of like "animal elementals"?

[Anonymoose]

It's a really easy leap to make, right? Unfortunately we just don't know for sure.

Sprites occur naturally; given certain aetheric conditions, they just happen. It feels logical that perhaps sprites, given certain age or development, might eventually become elementals. I'd thought so; especially because aspected elementals were found all over the world in 1.0, while the ones in the Shroud seemed to be led by older, more evolved versions of even those.

However, Eorzean scholars have consistently found sprites to be wholly devoid of sentience - and thus they believe them to be unrelated to the Shroud elementals, for now. How they did come into being we have no idea - perhaps they were even manufactured by man ages ago and this has since been forgotten. The people of Gridania, for their part, believe them to be spiritual fragments of Nophica, herself.

Sprites also might be related to plasmoids, which are theorized to be a combination of ceruleum fuel waste and lightning-aspected aether.

[MilesSaintboroguh]

Would you know or can speculate why the sprites are passive by default?

[Anonymoose]

Just a disclaimer that I'm shooting from the hip here, but...

Beings lacking in sentience don't have very complex behavior. Rather being motivated to act by past experiences and reinforcement, they would simply react to external stimuli based on their needs and limitations. They would seek out and consume aether of their aspect to persist and grow, for example. That's usually what they're doing when we come upon them. However, there's noting to motivate them to be the aggressor. Chasing, battling, killing, and consuming us would be an extremely inefficient way to feed, it might even be a net loss - we're not even aspected.

However, if a sprite experiences stimuli such as coming under attack, expending the energy to defend itself ensures survival.

The exception might be that a sprite's interest might be roused by the use of magicks nearby and try to feed from the aetherial source. Elementals aggrod to magicks occasionally in FFXI.

[AmalonStar]

Lmfao this is great XD

[MilesSaintboroguh]

too much moose to quote

Sounds logical. Now how about the ones found inside dungeons? Those are aggressive by default.

[Anonymoose]

Sounds logical. Now how about the ones found inside dungeons? Those are aggressive by default.

Ignoring "because game mechanics" (everything is aggressive by default)...
stares into the distance in cold calculation, blowing into a bubble pipe

We're often sent into dungeons to purge them of some threat or imbalance. The aether that gave birth to or sustains the sprites (or the sprites themselves by that point) would likely be either in jeopardy, in a tumultuous state, or outright tainted. Aether doesn't react well to imbalace e.g. elementals are easily angered, an enraged elemental enrages entities around it, etc. Bottle up an elemental and, like a primal, it will blindly attack everything around it when freed. The imbalance of Dalamud or even Toto-Rak caused fiends to grow restless and violent.

While not conscious, that might be enough to prime a sprite to lash out at a lower threshold.

[MilesSaintboroguh]

I don't care if you have to make it up, it sounds very believable.

Plus Aether died again and I can't play ><

[Belhi]

My thought is that sprites might be a very simple form of Aetheric entity similar to Carbunkles and the like but naturally occurring and far more simple. Its not hard to believe that if we can artificially create such entities simple varieties would naturally occur under the right conditions, particularly in a place as Aether rich as Eorzea.

[Alberel]

Personally I think there's a likely connection between elementals, sprites and the anima we create as part of the anima weapon quest series. It seems it is possible for highly concentrated aether to develop sentience so I wonder if the elementals underwent a similar process, albeit a more natural one. Where our anima was formed by concentrating aether in a weapon I wouldn't be surprised if the elementals were born from a concentration of aether in the trees of the Shroud. Sprites may simply be a non-sentient progenitor form.