Garlean Inability to use magic.

[rainichan]

As far as Emet-Selch goes, he cheats and can cast magic on the Source due to the benefit of being an Ascian. He is basically a ghost of an Ancient possessing the body of a Garlean who was once his own person and had no capability to cast magic on his own. Whenever we interact with Emet-Selch on the First, he is not actually in the body of an Garlean, he possessed some random person and then molded his body to look like Solus because that's a form he's comfortable with.

He had clone bodies made for him, he mentions this when he's first introduced. He has many so he doesn't have to possess random people like Lahabrea did, which he takes umbrage with and mentions it "diminished" his ability and made him weaker: "According to Emet-Selch, Lahabrea had a habit of discarding host bodies when they were no longer useful, weakening himself and allowing King Thordan to absorb his essence." Having a body he already knows and likes is why he had the clones made and moving his soul into them and from a post from Anonymoose: "The clones were, according to Emet-Selch, just to save him the time and energy of molding a physical body to his preferred image." The clones were destroyed later by Estinien and Gaius iirc when they infiltrated the Capital, but by then Emet had his body and traveled to the First.

But since he is indeed an Ascian, he can cheat and use his own abilities even if he's in a cloned body of Solus.

[rainichan]

Emet-Selch states when you speak to him at level 74 that he possessed a random body upon travelling to the first. Not to mention that one of the main reasons he is so interested in the Exarch is because he was able to transport us through the rift to the first with our body, something Ascians are unable to do. Dialogue in question:

">> Choice 1: Why choose this form here in the first?
Emet-Selch: Well, well, what a curious question.
Emet-Selch: Mortal flesh is but the vessel into which we Ascians pour the elixir of our souls, moulding it as fits the occasion. Or not, if we so choose.
Emet-Selch: Be it for a year or a millennium, I prefer to retain the same form until my duty is done. So, after arriving here in the First, I fashioned some hapless body into the man you see before you.
Emet-Selch: Though as your friend over there can attest, there are those of us who forgo such alterations.
Emet-Selch: He was ever the rash one, Lahabrea. Jumping from vessel to vessel. Never heeding the toll it took on him."

Ah, I forgot about that, been a while. Cheers.

[Theodric]

Not really?

I suppose he looks more like an ancient than some characters, wouldn't say he's perfectly like one though. Maybe if he had a shave.

There's some differences, though I wouldn't consider Maxima to be too far off of an Ancient in terms of his appearance:



I daresay it's likely a slightly tweaked model, even. Much in the same way as how Themius is quite obviously an altered Ramza and Varis' facial features are built off of those of a male Raen.