I wanted to post something lore-related to the story but I didn't remember what it was--this totally jogged my memory because I wanted to talk about Ascians, so thanks! :D

This contains spoilers for the main story's conclusion, so I'm gonna put the rest of this under a spoiler tag:

...So how do these new versions of the Ascians work?

Something I've noticed about the Ascians we have in ARR is that they're nothing like the pure one we saw in the 1.0 Path of the Twelve quest:



Instead, we get...actual people-looking Ascians, including Thancred/Lahabrea. But you realize later that it's really not Thancred at all; Minfilia explains later that the Ascians are more or less hosts on hopeless souls or something to that effect. I don't 100% remember entirely how the whole contract thing goes if there is a contract at all between man and Ascian now.(though i'm pretty sure there was a contract kind of thing in 1.0); I think now they can just find host bodies of those really downtrodden/hopeless people and use them because of the devastation caused by the Calamity. Maybe they're just not powerful enough in their pure form and are better off possessing people?

My theory on the whole "Calamity Lahabrea vs. Thancred Lahabrea" is that whatever bodies those Ascians were using in the Calamity were destroyed by the Megaflare. They weren't protected by anything at all; it's likely those bodies were destroyed and the Ascians free to look for their next victim--Lahabrea's being Thancred at his lowest point. I'm temped to see if he was possessed sometime during the story and if we can tell by his shadow or lack thereof, if the "no shadow" quality of the Ascians still exists. (I think someone debunked that earlier on in beta 3 but it might be good to re-check.) Would like to hear more on the Warburton theory, though. :P

I'm wondering too if those "pure" Ascians still exist or if they just feed off of host bodies now. Even at the very end post-credits cutscene, there are none of the skeleton-looking ones; they're all people. Whether they were born as a person-Ascian or they're all possessed/made a contract is also something I'd really like to know...

I probably forgot something but i'll edit this later if i remember. :D