Thancred's inability to interact with aether and Garleans

[MikkoAkure]

Very few things have zero exceptions in FFXIV. Even "Garleans can't manipulate aether" got scaled back to "it is very rare to find a Garlean who can", lol.

I always took that often-quoted line from the first encyclopedia “the arcane arts have eluded all but a few” to mean that their lack of ability to manipulate aether meant that only a rare few could even understand magic. At least some of them have to figure out how magic works in order to get magitek to work.

Or it means exactly as you said and we’ve just never come across any Garlean mages. At this point though I feel like if there were any then they would be significant enough to have popped up already in text if not in person.

I won’t stop being disappointed that the devs threw us a half-Garlean with a black third eye that went against everything we were ever told, didn’t even bring it up for a second in discussion in-game or out, and then the character vanished from the narrative, never to be seen or heard from again.

Snip.

I really like this idea. Ascendence of a Bookworm has very good world building and lore and they explain away their magic in a similar way in that it’s genetic because magic is produced by an organ that calcifies into a stone upon dying. I highly recommend the light novel to anyone who likes reading and well-crafted lore.


Speaking of Garleans, I wonder if it will ever be explained why some of them are tall and lanky like Elezen and others are much shorter like Midlander Hyur. The body shapes differences as presented are way too extreme. I wonder if the seven predecessor tribes also had differences (I know the actual reason is likely lazy devs than anything meaningful).