New Y'shtola Short Story

"Private Reflections" from Chronicles of Light II reveals that Y'shtola has eleven sisters. Some of them we've seen, but most of them we haven't.

• Y'shtola has two full sisters, the twins Y'mallibo and Y'mhitra. The latter appears in the summoner quests and briefly in Heavensward's MSQ, but there it said she's her half-sister, so this might be a retcon.
• Y'ranmaia, Y'talhdi, and Y'raigoh are full sisters.
• Y'adebh, Y'sumbla, Y'sohnjin, Y'nazqha, Y'jhimei, and Y'napa presumably have different moms.
• Y'adebh's a Forum member who appears in one of the Cosmic Exploration quests. I haven't checked if she's in the Forum cutscenes but it'd be funny if she voted against us.
• Y'sohnjin's the weapon/armor vendor in Old Sharlayan. She's also Y'shtola's cousin because their moms were sisters.
• Y'jhimei appears in Final Fantasy XV. The short story supports this by saying she temporarily disappeared at one point.

Now I'm wondering where all their moms are from, because the story mentions Y'rhul was a gleaner who had children with women throughout the world. I'm not sure if that means any of them were from other Seeker tribes. With the way that culture works I don't think they'd like a different Nunh coming over.

We also got a slightly better idea of Y'shtola's age now. She left Matoya when she was seventeen, and the Exodus was about fifteen years ago, so she'd have been Thancred's age in A Realm Reborn.

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Originally Posted by StormChase

Y'adebh's a Forum member who appears in one of the Cosmic Exploration quests. I haven't checked if she's in the Forum cutscenes but it'd be funny if she voted against us.

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I just poked around in my recordings to see if I could, and I actually can't find any miqo'te in those scenes at all. I'm not saying they aren't there, but with the Forum uniform hat on all but a handful of them, and even less opportunities to see their backs to check for a tail, it's damn near impossible to tell if there is one. (I did see a xaela woman, though.) Not that I'd have much to work with, because I actually can't find if anyone took a picture of what she looked like when she turned up in that one quest!

Hopefully if she turns up once Phaenna is complete we'll remember to check.

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Originally Posted by StormChase

We also got a slightly better idea of Y'shtola's age now. She left Matoya when she was seventeen, and the Exodus was about fifteen years ago, so she'd have been Thancred's age in A Realm Reborn.

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It's good to see new data supporting this one.

If you calculated the age she went into Matoya's care and how long she studied under Matoya, my math said she would be between 31 and 33 as of ARR. I split the difference and said 32 - same as Thancred - because it was the cleanest mathematically and I thought that was the funniest option. (Why "forever 23"? She just swapped the numbers.) Also I have a running gag quasi-headcanon that Thancred and Y'shtola dated for one summer in 1561 and it went nuclear bad and everyone knows but no one talks about it, so for them to have "graduated in the same class" makes it funnier for selfish reasons, too.

Thanks for the info! I'll add it into the Seeker name guide when I get a chance.

We've already had information that points to Y'shtola being 32ish – I can't say where it was from exactly but we knew she started studying with Matoya at age 7 and was there for ten years, and then it's been fifteen years since the exodus and/or the time of 1.0 when she was already working with the Scions.

Also, does it say that Y'rhul was regarded as a nunh with that arrangement or is the entire tribe system out the window? The writers are really quite determined to invent alternate arrangements wherever possible instead of committing to how a tribe might work in a city setting.

Was there any mention of a brother? There's a Y'thub Tia at the Studium.

Interesting that Y'sohnjin is both sister and cousin to the others – in one of the levequest texts she specifically alludes to Y'mhitra as her "cousin". You'd think the stronger relationship would count first.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

Also, does it say that Y'rhul was regarded as a nunh with that arrangement or is the entire tribe system out the window? The writers are really quite determined to invent alternate arrangements wherever possible instead of committing to how a tribe might work in a city setting.

Was there any mention of a brother? There's a Y'thub Tia at the Studium.

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They specifically name Y'rhul a nuhn in the short story; and there is no mention of a brother, just the sisters.

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

It's good to see new data supporting this one.

If you calculated the age she went into Matoya's care and how long she studied under Matoya, my math said she would be between 31 and 33 as of ARR. I split the difference and said 32 - same as Thancred - because it was the cleanest mathematically and I thought that was the funniest option. (Why "forever 23"? She just swapped the numbers.) Also I have a running gag quasi-headcanon that Thancred and Y'shtola dated for one summer in 1561 and it went nuclear bad and everyone knows but no one talks about it, so for them to have "graduated in the same class" makes it funnier for selfish reasons, too.

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The reason for Y'shtola's 'age' seems to be in Endwalker's MSQ. In a quest where you're looking at books for info, there's a volume called "Forever Twenty Summers". Basically it tells you to pretend you're the age you were when you first read the book from that point on, so you ensure you look after yourself so you live longer and have more years to research.

Quest script here- Hitting the Books

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Originally Posted by Iscah

Thanks for the info! I'll add it into the Seeker name guide when I get a chance.

We've already had information that points to Y'shtola being 32ish – I can't say where it was from exactly but we knew she started studying with Matoya at age 7 and was there for ten years, and then it's been fifteen years since the exodus and/or the time of 1.0 when she was already working with the Scions.

Also, does it say that Y'rhul was regarded as a nunh with that arrangement or is the entire tribe system out the window? The writers are really quite determined to invent alternate arrangements wherever possible instead of committing to how a tribe might work in a city setting.

Was there any mention of a brother? There's a Y'thub Tia at the Studium.

Interesting that Y'sohnjin is both sister and cousin to the others – in one of the levequest texts she specifically alludes to Y'mhitra as her "cousin". You'd think the stronger relationship would count first.

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Y'rhul was the Nunh but his kids didn't all live with the Y tribe. He recently passed away in Nagxia from a local illness. Y'nazhqa was his apprentice and scattered his ashes because she couldn't bring back the body. Also the story didn't mention any brothers.

So, it turns out there's a bit more coming on this!

In the latest live letter, Yoshi-P mentioned that the variant dungeon NPC is one of Y'shtola's relatives. And that actually links up something: Y'nazqha is mentioned in this story as having found a magical book of Corvosi folklore. Which, naturally, tracks with the architecture we see in the previews of the variant dungeon!

The hairstyle she wears in the short story art matches the girl in the preview from the Live Letter, too. I saw it was a book and IMMEDIATELY clocked that was Y'shtola's baby sister.

The entire gimmick of the short story was that, despite the distance and lack of relationships most of the sisters have with each-other or their father, Y'rhul left each a book that was extremely in-line with his daughter's individual interests, and all of them were insanely valuable and/or rare. He collected odd tomes as a hobby. (He left Y'shtola a super rare and very likely forbidden Mhachi text on void magic. Man was plugged TF in. The older sister on the forum was very not happy about that choice.)

There was no brother. Once again the lore seems to go back and forth on if boys are just rarely born or not.

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Originally Posted by RedLolly

Once again the lore seems to go back and forth on if boys are just rarely born or not.

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I'd argue that it doesn't, necessarily. Male miqo'te rarely appear throughout the Source, and the game has always been consistent about that, thus far.

Hhetsarro (never mind the mystel of the First, or their equivalents on other shards) are another matter. Like the Ishgardian elezen, I think it's best to think of them as their own (sub)race with their own rules. Self-evidently, they diverged from their miqo'te cousins long enough ago (if we assume they were ever one race, post-Sundering) that either could easily have developed their own peculiarities, genetic or otherwise.

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Originally Posted by Turnintino

I'd argue that it doesn't, necessarily. Male miqo'te rarely appear throughout the Source, and the game has always been consistent about that, thus far.

Hhetsarro (never mind the mystel of the First, or their equivalents on other shards) are another matter. Like the Ishgardian elezen, I think it's best to think of them as their own (sub)race with their own rules. Self-evidently, they diverged from their miqo'te cousins long enough ago (if we assume they were ever one race, post-Sundering) that either could easily have developed their own peculiarities, genetic or otherwise.

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I just feel like the devs WANT Miqo'te men as a rarity in canon lore, but remain cagey on it because of how popular they are as playable characters.

And then Hhetsarro could easily be interpreted as the same as femme, Frau, and woman all actually describing the same thing in different languages. It's just what Miqo'te are called over there. Most players just seemingly accept that being the deal.

I do prefer the idea that it's just a genetic anomaly in the Miqo'te populations primarily found in Eorzea (and possibly a few others like the Corvosi) but then they don't find it tragic? Weird? Not something to really bring up or question even when so many other tribes of the seemingly same people don't so rarely see a son?

I'm flying into a wholly different subject here, but it just fascinates me and frustrates me when it could be as simple as "1 out of 7 Miqo'te children are on average male." Shoot, maybe it was Allag stunting the birth rate so their favorite slave race couldn't reproduce fast or free without intervention and that's why Mystel and Hhetsarro have an average 1 to 1 ration of each sex and Miqo'te don't.

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Originally Posted by RedLolly

I'm flying into a wholly different subject here, but it just fascinates me and frustrates me when it could be as simple as "1 out of 7 Miqo'te children are on average male." Shoot, maybe it was Allag stunting the birth rate so their favorite slave race couldn't reproduce fast or free without intervention and that's why Mystel and Hhetsarro have an average 1 to 1 ration of each sex and Miqo'te don't.

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I feel like people overestimate the difference in birth rate for Miqo'te. We're not going to see the men as much simply because they culturally tend to be loners or travellers, and (at least by the official lore) have reasons why there may be a lower adult population without a lower birth rate: Keepers have the danger of working as lone hunters in the forest, and the explanation for Seekers' tia/nunh system in the official naming conventions page indicates that a deposed nunh becomes a tia again if he survives the duel – there's no indication of whether it's a common or rare thing for fights to be to the death, but evidently not zero.

Also, from memory Viera males are born 1-in-5, and their gender imbalance is treated as a bigger deal than Miqo'te.

And I mentioned this in Iscah's own topic on suncat naming conventions, but...

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Originally Posted by RedLolly

I just feel like the devs WANT Miqo'te men as a rarity in canon lore, but remain cagey on it because of how popular they are as playable characters.

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If we're bringing player numbers into this, it bears repeating that those numbers actually still support the concept of a not unremarkable gender disparity -- one that's fairly consistent, whether you're looking at global stats or regional in the survey I linked.

The same can't be said about the Viera numbers Iscah mentioned, meanwhile, but here we are. And I think that's why taking player characters into account in discussions like this tow a fine line, even if I understand the concern/interest. But again, Miqo'te numbers specifically don't actually contradict the lore in that way to begin with lol.

Yeah.

I was finally able to get my hands on the first encyclopedia (fully intending to buy the other two asap), and it's just a weird quirk that I've been hung up on that's just maybe a fanon thing that was SO strongly regarded years ago that just isn't true?