The boss Howling Blade mentions "The Earth is mine to command!" and i would think that it should be something like Eorzea or something instead, right? It just seems a bit out of place to mention Earth, or am i missing something where the planet Earth was mentioned. Call me out on my ignorance if needed, it just seemed off to me.
Lowercase E, 'earth' as in 'the element, the ground beneath us', not 'the third planet in the Sol system'. We've had earth as an element all through the game, your inventory is chock-full of earth crystals of various magnitude.
It feels like one of those weird instances where you question where we got the term in a fantasy setting without an Earth, but 'earth as in ground' is actually the earlier definition of the term in real life; calling the planet that name came later.
I find it far more plausible that a fantasy culture would follow the same logic as we did and end up calling their planet "Earth" (once they have a need to give it a name) than to invent some fancy name for it.
Even in the main FFXIV setting it seems that the planet is only referred to as Hydaelyn by the Sharlayans, and that is probably only because they made contact with what they understood to be the spirit of the planet itself and learned that was her name.
In pre-release materials for 1.x, it was stated that at the time (only five in-game years ago), most people living on the planet just didn't have a mental concept of what a "planet" was.
Generally, it's synonymous with "soil", here.Quote:
Originally Posted by Eorzea Pre-Live Report
Ahh yes! Ok, that makes a bit more sense. Thanks for clarifying! I thought I was overthinking it lol.
I thought that too for a minute and I was like wait, he’s supposed to be a face and that’s more of a villain line, and then I realized he meant the element.