Quote Originally Posted by Puksi View Post
Did I miss something in that questline?
Apparently you did miss something in that questline, yes.

A huge part of the healer role quest is that Arenvald has found a new cause--and is actually pretty good at it, being able to convince people that the Crania Lupi deserve a chance to be treated as equals rather than pariahs. The role quests are all about the nations coming to terms with some unspoken social issues, and for Ala Mhigo, it's that they never really managed to resolve one of the consequences of liberating a nation; the fact that some amount of its people were turned on their own countrymen through no fault of their own, and are now vilified for what was ultimately a choice made out of desperation and often protection of their family. It's not like the Empire and Resistance were sitting with equal-sized stalls at the career fair.

It's a complicated issue, one that's played out in many nations in the real world, and one that Ala Mhigo, up until this point, hasn't really faced. But Arenvald's whole story is tied into furthering that dialog, reaching out that hand.


And as to that 'really ugly' comment...

I don't know what character you played as in Elpis, but it's mentioned in Elpis that we resemble a familiar--no matter what race we are (and in some cases they make fun of us for being made with weird proportions...). So it's not just that the sundered races had strengths and traits comparable to Ancient familiars, but that apparently that's where some of those appearances came from, somehow--maybe we'll learn that in Pandaemonium, who knows.

But remember the oft-forgotten vital piece of evidence about Ancient souls: That the Sahagin Priest had the Echo, and the Echo is sign of a sundered Ancient soul. So an Ancient soul can be of any form, the playable races aren't any more or less special. You can't point to a whole race and say 'these don't count as people' by this metric, because all of them could have a Sundered soul.

...the Ascians instead point at all races and say 'these don't count as people'. Again, in the text, in the post you quoted. So the Lupin implication isn't wrong, but it's not relevant; the Ascians look at a viera, a lupin, a sahagin, and an axolotl and see them all as 'not really counting'. This fact hasn't actually changed since Shadowbringers, there is no extra evidence to claim the statement's validity.