So What's the Deal with Moogles?

[Wolfandre]

the part of moogle being rare is explained in V1.0 and what makes them even rarer was the fact that moogles were sold as pets after being poached from forest to people in uld and other places, this was in one of the missions in V1.0 where you get to talk to a moogle you save from poacher/trader who captures one to sell it to uld, saying that "it" makes the trip to grid quite profitable.

and as for moogle speak it seems only "hearers" are able to understand what moogle says, just as they are able to understand the voices of elementals, as player is counted as hearer they can understand moogles, but not everyone who is a hearer is a conjurer for grid either, as far as padjal are concerened the ones shown in game so far (A.K.A. Seedseer sublings) are all hearers so not sure if by default they can hear moogle speach as a racial thing.

so going by this theory I would count them akin to spirits but what kind I cannot say, as they have shown some of the similar abilities as the spirits as well, as for bard soul thing its because they love music and are very powerful when it comes to using magic, if I remmeber correctly they save player using time stop/slow magic and then charming the trent away, in orignal grid opening from a trent that actually ate the pack of wolves you were fighting the moments before.

I'll disagree. Those that can understand the elementals are different from those who can understand mooglespeak. That is to say, a Hearer might understand mooglespeak, but not all who can understand mooglespeak are Hearers, and vice versa.

The player is also not a Hearer, as is explained in the Conjurer quest line (we would have heard them the same time the NPCs did). We have the Echo, which is why we are able to understand moogles (though it doesn't cover why we can see them). Whether or not the Echo extends to the Elementals in ARR remains to be seen (we could speak with them in 1.0, via the White Mage quest line but it was never explained how), as the Elementals do not manifest the same way as they did in 1.0.