Mysterious monsters without much explanation?

[RyuDragnier]

Even the infamous shoebill that popped up throughout ShB shows up under study in Elpis in another sidequest, and like the aforementioned fairy no one knows who created it or where it came from, and that in particular "resisted all forms of study" according to it's assigned researcher, but it did kind of pour cold water on the fan theory it was Emet's familiar (or at least a creation of his), as EW made no link of it to Emet in Elpis at all (if Emet did create it, the Bureau of the Architect would have naturally known about it, Emet did seem to be a stickler for following official protocol if nothing else, even reluctantly), so why it was shadowing the WoL throughout the First in EW is still unexplained.

A new headcanon just appeared in my mind...Azem made the Shoebill originally as a case of "What if I created a creature and have it act like Emet-Selch?" The shoebill follows the WoL because it's just as fascinated with them as Emet is.

[KageTokage]

For that matter, has the ambystoma made any sneaky appearances post 6.0?

The shoebill seemed to have at least one cameo per patch up through 5.3, but I haven't noticed the former since Ultima Thule.

And another thing to remember is the fae were also shown to have existed back pre-Sundering, and presumed to be an Ancient creation too - a certain sidequest in Elpis shows a fairy (an Il Mheg fairy, not a SCH fairy which is not the same), under study, with the puzzled Elpis researcher assigned to study it at a complete loss to explain it or knowing who even who created it in the first place. And their puzzlement turns to utter bewilderement when said fairy soon turns into a beaver, causing the fed-up researcher to throw in the towel and tell the WoL "Now let us never speak of this again". So the mystery remained! (Presumedly the Ancient researcher quickly swept the records of it under the rug).

The faefolk were always a...weird case to me given that they seem to be wholly absent from the Source.

They're believed to be the souls of children who somehow didn't pass on to the Lifestream and instead lingered in a new shape, but that's a strange exception to the usual permanence of death given that even ghosts are hand-waved as not literally being souls of the deceased but rather more akin to arcane constructs created by the lingering sentiments of those who've already passed on proper.

[RyuDragnier]

The faefolk were always a...weird case to me given that they seem to be wholly absent from the Source.

I think the Sylphs are what the Fae changed into on the Source.

[Cleretic]

The faefolk were always a...weird case to me given that they seem to be wholly absent from the Source.

I feel like they might not be absent so much as decentralized. They don't have a single specific seat of power to congregate in, so they're much more spread out, and probably doing much smaller things without the safety net of an entire kingdom to support them.

This is definitely the sort of thing I'd expect to get sorted out by the Encyclopedia Eorzea 3, though, and probably isn't important enough to get discussion outside of that.

[DPZ2]

Just a word of warning. We visited one facility on Etheirys. While one might be able to draw conclusions about some of the creatures we have encountered from that visit, I doubt that the facility held samples of every living creature in the world.

I don't remember seeing Au Ra, Miqo'te or any of the other peoples we've encountered during our visit. Just a lot of 12 foot tall Hyur.

[KageTokage]

Just a word of warning. We visited one facility on Etheirys. While one might be able to draw conclusions about some of the creatures we have encountered from that visit, I doubt that the facility held samples of every living creature in the world.

I don't remember seeing Au Ra, Miqo'te or any of the other peoples we've encountered during our visit. Just a lot of 12 foot tall Hyur.

They seem to be doubling down on the angle that the present-day races are largely descendants of the Ancients who were born of the imperfections they bore post-Sundering.

The fact that Hyur are the only race who don't get immediately dismissed as some manner of familiar due to quirks small or otherwise seems to support that there was only a single race of man back then.

I feel like Myths of Realm is the most likely place we'd get an explicit clarification behind that in-game if anywhere, though.

[Cleretic]

The fact that Hyur are the only race who don't get immediately dismissed as some manner of familiar due to quirks small or otherwise seems to support that there was only a single race of man back then.

When going through Elpis, I know that hyur and elezen get it mentioned that we look pretty much exactly like Azem, while the more unusual races like au ra, miqo'te and hrothgar don't get that, instead leaning more on the similar aether. We're treated as familiars no matter what, though.

I'm not sure what roegadyn and lalafel get; realistically I could see those two going either way on that. Hyur and elezen getting that treatment makes complete sense, though, since the Ancients have a structure of 'elezen frame, hyur head' that a lot of the more 'generic' Garleans also get.

[KageTokage]

Lalafells and Roegadyn get called out more then the other races since even in the initial Elpis cutscene where we get "fixed" by Emet-Selch, Hythlodaeus will accuse him of being lazy/overdoing it due to the size discrepancy (Though I think the latter might apply to any of the particularly tall race/gender combos).