Sylphs on the First?

[JeanneOrnitier]

It's also possible that there were never sylphs there at all. It's not like we know anything about sylphic history. They may post-date the Sundering.

The Encyclopedia's entry on sylphs says even their own creation myth says other races existed before them, in contrast to how most creation myths say a race was the first to come into being. So that may mean they're post-Sundering.

[RyuDragnier]

The Pixies are in most likelihood the Sylphs of the First. They act like them to a fault, with the only difference being appearance (and we don't really know why Sylphs have the appearance they do to begin with).

[Vyrerus]

Sylph's are unique to the Twelveswood, so my guess would be that the devs didn't want to cheapen that. They aren't really like the Fae, save that they levitate and have Fae like mannerisms, as they were FFXIV's first take on a Fae-like race.

I'd say that it's because either the Twelveswood counterpart, if you don't view it to be Raktika, was destroyed by the Flood, or that there was never a Twelveswood, so there were no Sylphs on The First. That's just my take on it though.

[Morningstar1337]

Sylph's are unique to the Twelveswood, so my guess would be that the devs didn't want to cheapen that. They aren't really like the Fae, save that they levitate and have Fae like mannerisms, as they were FFXIV's first take on a Fae-like race.

I'd say that it's because either the Twelveswood counterpart, if you don't view it to be Raktika, was destroyed by the Flood, or that there was never a Twelveswood, so there were no Sylphs on The First. That's just my take on it though.

That does make sense, if the Sylphs were created by the Elementlas (which would either ceased to be on the First or just flat-out never existed there) then they are technically in the same boat as the Ixal "artificial" lifeforms who emerged after the sundering.

[Morningstar1337]

I mean they're technically alternate timelines, but the point of divergence was so far off that the ripples and butterflies resulted in them being very unlike the Source. Which I suppose tends to happen to alt-histories over a very long period.

[Draginhikari]

It's hard to say, the actual placement of the various races is placed somewhat difference in the First compared to the source just because of the difference in the history.

Like the Auri variation in the First were more common in the area that reflected Coerthas compared to the Source where they are primarily Migrants from Othard and Hingashi specifically.

Even the Beast Tribe quests spoke of the Namazu in the Rak'tika where there is no canon appearance of the Namazu in Eorzea. The Shards were only the same up to the point of the Sundering after that history could play out on the shards in their own way. This means any of the missing beast tribes or non-playable races such as the Garleans never came to be, went extinct for some reason, or disappeared due to the flood.