highlander eyebrows?

so the viper job quest npc is a male highlander who most notably has eyebrows.

the highlanders in eorzea, ala mhigo, the far east and even on the first shave their eyebrows. i haven't finished the msq but i'm sure there's highlander npcs in tural who have...shaved eyebrows?

so what's with it

I'm very dissapointed that we didn't get eyeborws with the visual update, could have been the perfekt chance to do it...

Not sure what makes Highlanders with eyebrows “lore forums material” but the part I’m confused about is how do we have Highlanders who are not from Eorzea considering they supposedly only sprung into existence in Ala Mhigo.

I let the two Gerolt reflection clones slide because they’re obviously there as a joke. Others could possibly be explained via an overheard throwaway NPC line in Aleport I believe it was, where someone accuses a Highlander as being part Roegadyn, which despite being an insult could have some truth to it due to their nose shape and overall physique. Tural has no Roegadyn though other than one explorer and a bunch of Lominsans who only came recently so the only explanation is that they’re just being used when they need a large, physical NPC but not that large.

Otherwise, players cannot play Far Eastern Hyur, X’braal, Shetona, etc. You could headcanon as such but in-game we specifically play and are referred to as the versions of the races that are present in Eorzea, plus seemingly refugee Au Ra, Hrothgar, and Viera since none of those show up in Eorzea before Garlean involvement in their homelands and don’t show up in ARR or as NPCs who have lived here all this time. Just like how “Midlander” refers to the midlands of Eorzea, so too does “Highlander” refer to its highlands. Not that of any other region. Neither technically exist outside of Eorzea even though others may use the same models, so player Highlanders will always be Ala Mhigan.

Meta-wise, they’d probably need to add a whole other face like they did for stubble Derplander. Though if enough people keep bringing it up, particularly at fan fests, we might get it.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

Not sure what makes Highlanders with eyebrows “lore forums material”

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Weirdly, I think it does actually have some merit to ask as a lore question, because there is actually a lore reason why male highlanders don't have eyebrows; it's essentially an intimidation tactic from Ala Mhigo.

Of course, the lore always exists to give an in-universe reason for out-of-universe decisions, so the problem doesn't lie with the lore, it lies with a decision being made, back in 1.0, to not give them eyebrows. A Highlander main I once talked to seemed pretty sure it was because they're designed to take after a particular variety of 'tough guy from anime and manga'; not the protagonist, but the really bulky bruiser type that's got an absurd amount of muscle; think Balrog and Zangief from Street Fighter (at least sometimes), or any minor character in Fist of the North Star. A lot of those characters had understated-to-no eyebrows to instead put extra emphasis on the brow line itself, really give them a monster of a scowl.

It probably just hasn't changed because it's a really low-priority thing; someone who's made a Highlander man's probably noticed, but I feel like it's a fair bet a lot of other players haven't even noticed.

I saw that and now I want it. Makes sense since that Viper NPC isn't from Ala Mhigo.

Hope they add it at some point like they did with default male midlander stubble.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

Otherwise, players cannot play Far Eastern Hyur, X’braal, Shetona, etc. You could headcanon as such but in-game we specifically play and are referred to as the versions of the races that are present in Eorzea, plus seemingly refugee Au Ra, Hrothgar, and Viera since none of those show up in Eorzea before Garlean involvement in their homelands and don’t show up in ARR or as NPCs who have lived here all this time. Just like how “Midlander” refers to the midlands of Eorzea, so too does “Highlander” refer to its highlands. Not that of any other region. Neither technically exist outside of Eorzea even though others may use the same models, so player Highlanders will always be Ala Mhigan.

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This is kind of a funny conundrum in-game anyway, if you want to take the text at face value, because while it's true that character creation asserts (or at least very strongly suggests lol) that you're Eorzean, the text immediately asserts that you're a visiting outsider -- no matter where you go -- because character creation doesn't allow you to pick an origin, so the narrative can never reference it. Hell, it rarely acknowledges your race, even divorced from that context.

So, the WoL may well be Eorzean, but can never be from any parts of it that the story takes us to. Almost no NPC, no matter how reactionary, will ever look at your character and ever make even the broadest, most reasonable assumption based on player race. The WoL can be a Highlander, but they aren't Ala Mhigan. You can be the duskiest of Duskwights in the whole of the Shroud, and the text will never treat you like one. So, even outside of roleplay, it's difficult to take this kind of thing exactly as it's presented, IMO. Either you're left mildly confused at the inconsistency, or left to create a head-canon for these encounters... or entire expansions, as the case may be for folks roleplaying an Ala Mhigan in Stormblood, or an Ishgardian in Heavensward, and so on lol.

Point being, I guess, is just that I think this line of reasoning has its limitations, because it falls apart at least as early as ARR unless you're taking the RP approach and mentally rewriting as you go.

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Originally Posted by Turnintino

This is kind of a funny conundrum in-game anyway, if you want to take the text at face value, because while it's true that character creation asserts (or at least very strongly suggests lol) that you're Eorzean, the text immediately asserts that you're a visiting outsider -- no matter where you go -- because character creation doesn't allow you to pick an origin, so the narrative can never reference it. Hell, it rarely acknowledges your race, even divorced from that context.

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Yeah it's weird and a little inconsistent since they have to introduce new concepts to us and that's always easiest from the "outsider" POV.

But there's more of Eorzea than just the city-states. The party meant to mirror our own in the early ARR quests is from an unvisitable village in an unvisitable region in Abalathia's Spine. If this is meant to be a proper medieval world, the VAST majority of people do not live in the cities and instead live on farms in the countryside. We have to take a member of our Twelve (a religion that does not exist outside Eorzea) as our preferred deity in character creation, as well as Eorzea-only subraces like Midlander, Hellsguard, Wildwood, etc. In other expansions including this one, our character specifically is referred to as being "Eorzean". One place in Eorzea we specifically CAN'T be from though is Ishgard. The city has been closed for years until the events of HW and their Elezen subrace is different from the Gridanian ones.

Another thing that can only happen if we're Eorzean is summoner. The only way we're able to summon Bahamut and Phoenix is that our WoL was present in Eorzea during the Calamity and has bathed in the aether of both primals and I think the SMN quests mention that we were here during that time.

One thing I think I remember from my time in 1.0 though, is being referred to as coming from the "Old World" by my path companion, a name now applied to Old Sharlayan. Considering the Limsa Lominsa opening video has us arriving via boat with the twins and that city is made up of people from Eorzea who still have an Eorzean deity if at least in name only, that origin could be fairly likely.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

But there's more of Eorzea than just the city-states. The party meant to mirror our own in the early ARR quests is from an unvisitable village in an unvisitable region in Abalathia's Spine.

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Oh, I don't disagree that the WoL is Eorzean. Just pointing out, like I said, and on which we agree, that the text determines we're from no part of it that we have access to; that even our race apparently has no bearing on how the other Eorzeans view us, even when everything we know about the worldbuilding (up to a point) is telling us that it should.

And to bring this back to the topic at hand, that includes Highlanders -- and their eyebrows lol. When I said that the WoL can be a Highlander but not Ala Mhigan, I meant because that's what the text is telling us: they are an Eorzean Highlander, but apparently not from or related to Ala Mhigo, and somehow every Eorzean they meet can tell as much just by looking at them -- despite being confined to the same culturally eyebrowless characteristics, despite wearing the same gear as every other local NPC throughout the ARR leveling experience, etc., etc.... Or at least so long as we take the text at face value, and I don't know that we can. This doesn't appear to be so different from the way that the Ishgardian Elezen you pointed out are identical to those of the Shroud in every way, even in naming conventions, but are nonetheless a different subrace in the text.

So, when I see the Highlander model in Garlemald, Thavnair, Tural -- hell, Norvrandt or any other shard -- I just can't bring myself to wonder how or why. They're just, like you said earlier, a visual shortcut for any instance where the story calls for big-but-not-too-big guys lol. Not to mention that the revelations about the Ancients, the sundering, and the Eorzean races' appearance in the other shards that I mentioned, also means that anything we once thought about how these races evolved is all out the window anyway. Because, apparently, they just are and always were.

At the end of the day, I think we're supposed to roleplay it, we're supposed to head-canon our version of events, at least as it pertains to our characters. So yeah, let player Highlanders have eyebrows lol.

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Considering the Limsa Lominsa opening video has us arriving via boat with the twins and that city is made up of people from Eorzea who still have an Eorzean deity if at least in name only, that origin could be fairly likely.

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On this subject, though; do we know if Twelve worship was something they always did in tandem with the people of Eorzea, or if this was something they adapted during their time in the Eorzean Sharlayan-now-Idyllshire? Probably when they picked up (more?) of what we once thought of as distinctly Eorzean races as well. Not that they can't be sent there at any time before or since, like so many of our Scions, but ya know.

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Originally Posted by Turnintino

On this subject, though; do we know if Twelve worship was something they always did in tandem with the people of Eorzea, or if this was something they adapted during their time in the Eorzean Sharlayan-now-Idyllshire? Probably when they picked up (more?) of what we once thought of as distinctly Eorzean races as well. Not that they can't be sent there at any time before or since, like so many of our Scions, but ya know.

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Thaliak has been Sharlayan's patron deity since it was voted on shortly after its founding. Choosing a patron deity for a city-state seems to be a thing since at least the 5th Astral Era and the city itself was founded by Eorzeans. Lore book says they pray to all the Twelve besides Thaliak though, who was just chosen based on what he stands for. Sharlayans, or at least Louisoix and the Circle of Knowing, seem to be actively religious as well considering they attempted to summon the Twelve and were nearly successful, faith being a strong requirement in summonings.


Going back to the Highlanders, one of the things that upset me when 1.0 lore switched to ARR was that the Calamities didn't make a lick of sense with the already established lore and were very obviously just thrown in to excuse zone reconstruction. Dunesfolk came from desert island people and weren't Mhachi mages who somehow physically adapted and evolved to the desert in a very short amount of time. And Highlanders were originally a flavor of hardy Hyur who were the first Hyur settlers of Eorzea that made forts in the mountainous regions. Honestly I prefer that with an added vagueness of Roegadyn mixing (they live in the mountains and are sailors like Hyur too) over "they were Hyur mages who randomly ended up in the middle of a salt-blasted wasteland because they followed a star and abandoning their Mhachi Lalafell compatriots for some reason? and got big and decided to file their teeth, shave their eyebrows, and pick up the polearm and punching the heck out of things just because".