Unsolved Mysteries Of Vana'diel

What this says to me, is that when the darkness is within the people they have immunity from whatever causes the problems, and when it is removed they start to slowly devolve.

I think it's the protocrystals, that are in effect giving off massive elemental radiation or something. Since the darkness stops the 5 races evolving (they re-incarnate) and keeps them static, it doesn't harm the 5 races to live around them but everything else is changed by it and the elemental power forms in them (hence crystals, and beastmen possibly are the zilart brothers/sisters around them that were not close enough to be "contaminated" by the darkness) That would explain why the 5 races and the beastmen all appeared around the same time.

A group of Zilart in an area, some became 1 of the 5 races and the others that were not "contaminated" became beastmen.

The explosions didn't just release the darkness, it also allowed the protocrystals to form.

The prefix “proto" indicated that these weren’t the completed models of Ultima and Omega. You'll notice, modern Limbus takes the same approach with its NMs by calling them forerunners. Nag’molada referred to them as being the most powerful forces in Vana’diel which is quite the compliment when the dragon chasing his ship has control over the world’s Space and Time.

There were the “arch" Ultima and Omega in lvl99 Limbus, but this was during a period of very little lore/story supervision over its content. The only other time the “arch" designation was used was in the Sealed Fate Master Trial where these two weapons are literally unkillable, unless players follow a very specific set of requirements, all of this is to say, the game hyped them up and then never goes into detail regarding what role they played in Zilart society.

Interestingly enough, one of the guys I’m working with on a lore book stated that the writer has intended to reveal that Arciela and Ygnas’s father was captured by the Zilart in Jeuno. He was tortured for seeking out info on the Lightbringer, and then turned into Ultima. The story was never developed though, but this got me curious as to what else they may have had planned.

On the topic of Diabolos’s explanation, the Ultimania states that after removing the darkness, this is what made the Kuluu susceptible to evolution into the Tonberry. While I don't know if the Darkness makes them immune to evolution (it may, I’d have to look into it), it was a prerequisite for what happened to those people. The Emptiness and Promathia’s essence is actually a really convoluted topic that I won't get into here, but suffice it to say, the Emptiness seems to be the source of human cognitive sophistication. It is why enlightened races and beastmen are “people" and animals are not, in Vana’diel lore. This is what Diabolos was referring to when he mentioned how the Emptiness was essential to their survival, lest they become like the Tonberry.


The Beastmen did not come from the Zilart. They apparently evolved over the course of Vana’diel’s history. This is actually explored in tVR and confirmed when Garazu-Horeizu mentioned that Chaos does not attack the enlightened races out of his loyalty to the Zilart.


The Protocrystals are actually Zilartian creations. They harvested vast, practically limitless stores of crystal energy from the Mothercrystals and then isolated them by element. This is what formed the 8 protocrystals. Yve’noile states this in Rise of the Zilart.