Races born after Zodiark

[Eloah]

Without the actual dialogue I can't say for certain but I don't think its meant to be taken as a new "race" but just new life in general. While new sentient races are possible, I don't think the races we know of existed until Hydaelyn did her thing. The main reason I say this is because when Varis talks with us he idicated that we all use to be one "ultimate" race.

[LineageRazor]

Without the actual dialogue I can't say for certain but I don't think its meant to be taken as a new "race" but just new life in general. While new sentient races are possible, I don't think the races we know of existed until Hydaelyn did her thing. The main reason I say this is because when Varis talks with us he idicated that we all use to be one "ultimate" race.

I think that Varis's opinions need to be taken with a grain of salt. He's clearly enthusiastic about the whole "master race" idea (and very likely pictures that original "whole race" as being distinctly Garlean), but he could be filling in blanks from whatever tidbits of knowledge the Ascians in his life gave him.

That said, as has been mentioned, none of the quest dialog is clear in stating that the "new life" Zodiark created included sapient beings, or not - and with the latest quests, we now know that the Dissenters weren't motivated by protection of that life (at least, not solely). They were concerned that the Zodiark plan was only putting off the end, not fixing it. Whether there were thinking beings among that new life or not, the goal of setting Hydaelyn to protect it was for a greater purpose.

I tend to think that the different races were created before the Sundering, though, simply because they all exist basically the same on the Source as they do on the Shards. If there was just one race (the Ancients) before the split, then there would presumably be just one race (sundered Ancients) after the split, who would then "evolve" into Sahagin, Lalafell, Hyur, Gigas, and so on - and they did so the same way on every world? It makes more sense to me to assume that all of these myriad races existed before the Sundering, and afterwards were just copied to each world.