What exactly do we know as of 5.3 about the sound that was heard before Amaurot fell?

[Alleluia]

I thought we'd asked at some point in a lore Q&A if the Ancients were really that size and they said no...? Maybe I'm misremembering entirely or maybe that intent just got forgotten and drifted off-track as they had more reasons to use the character models that don't fit with the "Emet's illusion for dramatic effect" origin.

(Kinda like they forgot that Thancred's real body shouldn't match his appearance in the First.)

I think someone asked if the ancients really didn't have facial features like how Emet's shades portray them. And the devs said no, they did actually have faces beneath the masks.

... Not that we've really seen any evidence of that in echo visions or the holograms or Elidibus' lack of a face in the end, but yeah. lol

EDIT: Found it:

7. Did the Ascians Ancients really look the way that we see them in Emet-Selch's illusion, or is he making them look different for "dramatic effect"?

Oda: Despite the fact that they have kind of a glow to them, like a ghost or phantom, the culture from which the Ascians came did indeed wear robes and masks like that. The Ascians outfits descend from that tradition.

Yoshi: I'd like to highlight a point of confusion in our community: we are not calling all Ancient entities Ascians. The beings you see in Amaurot are not "Ascians" but the illusions of its Ancient citizens. So we can tell you for sure that the Ancient people you see inhabiting Amaurot did indeed wear robes and masks like those. When you look at them, however, you notice that individuals lack any real distinctive features. They are a bit blurry, and look a bit like aliens. This is an inaccurate representation. The actual Ancient people all looked different, but this is not reflected in their representation via the illusion. This is perhaps why some think Hythlodaeus and the apparition Emet-Selch sees when he looks at you might be the same person, but they are both imperfect illusions. Ancient people had faces just as unique as regular people. Hythlodaeus is also wearing a different mask than the apparition...

[Iscah]

Okay, I misremembered exactly what was confirmed, but still.

The Ancients have unique faces but that isn't shown in the "imperfect illusions" we see in Emet's recreation... except now they keep using the same alien-looking character models from those "illusions" as more solid recordings of real events or the direct manifestations of Elidibus and Hades in 5.3.

[BlitzAceRush]

The real world reason could simply be they either arn't ready to reveal or don't have models for them.
In game however one could explain the continued use of the "imperfect illusion" as we can't comprehend their true appearance so our mind just fills in the blanks and in Elidibus's case his memories were failing him, which could be why he sees them and himself the same way.
Or really they all just wear those robes and masks almost all the time in public and so we've simply not seen a memory where they're not yet.

[ObsidianFire]

Also, to continue to support my theory, the short story "Through His Eyes" from Tales from the Shadows tells how Emet and Hythlodaeus deal with the phoenix. It seems a soul is merged with the phoenix when it is created, which doesn't seem to fit with their creation magic laws. So Emet summons all his power and deals with the problem. Here it doesn't say what he does. I assume we are to speculate, so I believe he made a new Amaroutian because it had a soul.

What happened was that someone made the Phoenix Creation Magic as a bird with healing magic, but a soul that was on it's way to the Lifestream (IE: the soul was dying) got caught in the Creation Magic by accident and warped it. The soul didn't want to die, so it was fighting the pull of the Lifestream. Hades was the best Ancient when it came to seeing and manipulating souls and the magic of the Lifestream, so Hythlodaeus asked him to separate the Creation Magic Phoenix and the soul in it so the soul could join the Lifestream like it was supposed to.

One of the things "Through His Eyes" makes clear is that "souls" can only come about from life naturally being born. Creation Magic cannot make a "soul". At least, not like how "souls" naturally are.

"A soul... How?"

Through their mastery of creation magicks, men could weave anything into existence. Anything they could imagine, they could bring forth─anything, that is, except a soul. As Hades well knew, souls spontaneously manifested within creatures that were born in accordance with the laws of nature. It was a gift from the star itself, long held to be impossible to recreate. No artificial being, no matter how subtly sculpted in the image of nature, could come to possess a soul. Such creations occupied a separate classification known as arcane entities.

"There was an accident," Hythlodaeus began. "During the concept's examination, a drifting soul merged with it─a soul burdened with regret, judging by the being's behavior. It rages against the pull of the Underworld."

[ShadowMeowth]

What happened was that someone made the Phoenix Creation Magic as a bird with healing magic, but a soul that was on it's way to the Lifestream (IE: the soul was dying) got caught in the Creation Magic by accident and warped it. The soul didn't want to die, so it was fighting the pull of the Lifestream. Hades was the best Ancient when it came to seeing and manipulating souls and the magic of the Lifestream, so Hythlodaeus asked him to separate the Creation Magic Phoenix and the soul in it so the soul could join the Lifestream like it was supposed to.

One of the things "Through His Eyes" makes clear is that "souls" can only come about from life naturally being born. Creation Magic cannot make a "soul". At least, not like how "souls" naturally are.

Creation magicks cannot create a soul. However, the Anima Weapon questline shows that, through the process of memory and catalysts, a soul can indeed be made; that is the whole point of Heavensward's relic, creating a sentient weapon. Then again, this shows one logical but fatal flaw of the Ancients: though they did not compromise the land's aether in their arts, they relied too much in a single discipline, which was creation magicks. Through His Eyes mentions that Amaurot has no shortage of mages, but in a society as peaceful as theirs, how many of them would be martially prepared? We see many Amaurotines dropping like flies when the Terminus monsters attack and with their power they should have been able to repel the threat... at least more effectively. Of course, what is the conclusion a society relying that much on creation magicks would reach in that dire situation? "Let us bring forth with our creation magicks an entity capable of stopping this." They could not create souls, so they needed someone (Elidibus) to become the core to give it sentience. And we know that when summoning Guardian Forces, the Ancients more often than not offered up their own life force. So there you have the ingredients for your very first elder primal. You know how they say, "when all you have is a hammer..." I believe that was the true problem with the Ancients, not because they tapped too much on the land's aether (they did not) but because they tapped too much in their own. Emet himself, who shaped both Allag and Garlemald, nations well-known for their great technology, was utterly baffled at how exactly the Crystal Exarch traveled through time and the Rift and successfully summoned the WoL/D; he admits to the Exarch that not even he could have done so, at least keeping our flesh and all. Actually, if he kidnapped G'raha was not because he could not control the Crystal Tower (he could do that) but because he lacked the knowledge G'raha had about the method for time-space traversing, so of course he would need him alive.

[Alleluia]

Okay, I misremembered exactly what was confirmed, but still.

The Ancients have unique faces but that isn't shown in the "imperfect illusions" we see in Emet's recreation... except now they keep using the same alien-looking character models from those "illusions" as more solid recordings of real events or the direct manifestations of Elidibus and Hades in 5.3.

IRL casualty of Covid, maybe?

Hopefully that'll be patched, or at least fixed for anything in 6.0.

[JahD]

Aye, I can confirm. I mean, I play in English, but I am from Spain and we lack the neutral gender pronoun; we have masculine and femenine words and articles for abstract concept, items, you name it. I remember getting used to the forms of neutral gender in English being one of the hardest parts.

Right now I do not recall if in FFXII's Spanish localization Venat was addressed as female... I would have to check. I do know that in French, our Venat is openly referred to as a woman. But at the time of the previous post I did not remember that, what I had in mind was the English cutscene.

Hola yo también soy de España. He leido varios de tus comentarios y me parece increible el nivel de lore que llevas. Puedo conseguir en algun lugar tus comentarios del lore pero en español? Si no, deberias iniciar esa aventura, te ira bien. Asi solo sean tus pensamientos sobre lo que puede pasar a nivel de lore y desarrollo de la historia.

[ShadowMeowth]

Hola yo también soy de España. He leido varios de tus comentarios y me parece increible el nivel de lore que llevas. Puedo conseguir en algun lugar tus comentarios del lore pero en español? Si no, deberias iniciar esa aventura, te ira bien. Asi solo sean tus pensamientos sobre lo que puede pasar a nivel de lore y desarrollo de la historia.

(Contesto en inglés por deferencia a la mayoría de gente del foro, pero vaya, un placer ver a paisanos por aquí.)

Every two weeks on Friday I am part of a news / lore FFXIV podcast in Spanish on Twitch and YouTube. The channel is Base Avalancha in both platforms. By myself, when I have the time, I translate stuff from the game to Spanish, including cutscenes in my YouTube channel; as in most of the Internet, I go by the nickname of ShadowMeowth. If you want to contact directly with me to not turn this thread into a chatroom (and I apologize to everyone else for this post not being related to the topic) the surest way to do so is my Twitter, @MeowthTheStarry.