Capabilities The Sharlayan Art of Familiar Creation/Quickening

[TheVegetable]

So, there's a thing I've been wondering, and I'm hoping someone out there has some obscure knowledge on the topic (or, should I be really lucky, one of the people who have knowledge we players don't!) could answer something regarding it.

From what's been shown, 'quickening', is a type of magick that can grant animals higher intelligence so that they can be of use to their creators. The ones we've seen include Poroggos (toads) and Skatene (Owls), and it can be assumed that Caith Sith is the same, albeit of Mhachi origin.

But I'm wondering, could this magick be used on any animal, or is there some kind of limiting factor that only makes it usable on certain animals? Could you, in theory, create a highly intelligent bear, or a squirrel, a coblyn, or even a Yol familiar?

[Cleretic]

I think we're in Air Bud territory on that: there's no lore saying you can't do that!

[Enkidoh]

Considering auspices are a thing, where animals seem to gain sentience and... deityhood... completely incidentally it seems, I guess that you indeed probably could.

Cait Sith though was confirmed to be a purely artifical construct though (she was an Ancient pre-Sundering creation - she can be found in Elpis standing on a ledge next to her apparent creator), so she's in a different league to "animals gifted sentience through magic". But given how loose the term 'familiar' was back in pre-Sundering times, Cait Sith may still count... or I'm just rambling on like Hythlodaeus again. :P

[Rannie]

I actually thought Cait Sith was a male kitty in this one.... Rofl...

[MikkoAkure]

Cait Sith though was confirmed to be a purely artifical construct though (she was an Ancient pre-Sundering creation - she can be found in Elpis standing on a ledge next to her apparent creator), so she's in a different league to "animals gifted sentience through magic". But given how loose the term 'familiar' was back in pre-Sundering times, Cait Sith may still count... or I'm just rambling on like Hythlodaeus again. :P

Lore book spends half of its description on Cait Sith describing how he was a normal stray cat caught in the rain until Cessair turned him into a familiar. I haven't seen the one in Elpis but it's probably just an easter egg than an origin story. Or the writers/devs placing entities into the world forgot their own lore, which wouldn't be the first time.

[Iscah]

It could just be that more than one person in history has decided "I like cats! Let's make a magic cat!"

[Cilia]

We don't know the limits of what can and can't be made into a familiar, but I doubt they'd make animals too big and dangerous intelligent.

Behemoth familiar? Uhh... we got a real problem on our hands if it rebels.

Lore book spends half of its description on Cait Sith describing how he was a normal stray cat caught in the rain until Cessair turned him into a familiar. I haven't seen the one in Elpis but it's probably just an easter egg than an origin story. Or the writers/devs placing entities into the world forgot their own lore, which wouldn't be the first time.

Yeah, the Cait Sith we know is a familiar raised up by Cessair; the one with the Ancient in Elpis is probably definitely just an Easter Egg (he's with an Ancient that looks just like Cessair, something you'd know only if you bought the lore book with her profile in it).

[Zero-ELEC]

It could just be that more than one person in history has decided "I like cats! Let's make a magic cat!"

To be fair, the ancient standing next to the Caith Sith looking cat in Elpis is the spitting image of the Mhachi Voidmage Cessair as depicted in the Encyclopaedia Eorzea. At the very least the implication is that Cessair was a shard of that Elpis researcher, probably which inspired her to "recreate" Caith Sith.

EDIT: This is what happens when I load a page and don't reload it before posting, I get beaten with the same point by hours. >.<

[Alleluia]

Considering auspices are a thing, where animals seem to gain sentience and... deityhood... completely incidentally it seems, I guess that you indeed probably could.

Cait Sith though was confirmed to be a purely artifical construct though (she was an Ancient pre-Sundering creation - she can be found in Elpis standing on a ledge next to her apparent creator), so she's in a different league to "animals gifted sentience through magic". But given how loose the term 'familiar' was back in pre-Sundering times, Cait Sith may still count... or I'm just rambling on like Hythlodaeus again. :P

Bit of an aside, but is this possibly what’s happened to the troll cub(kid? spawn?) in the labirynthos side quests?