Gridanian Religion vs Reality: How much do the Hearers really hear?

[FJerome]

Pretty much, we only see elementals once, in one quest in the CNJ questline. That is the single grand occasion they appear, to help out the party nontheless.

Are the elementals and the Guardian Tree in different factions then? I was under the impression that the Guardian Tree was a type of elemental.

Males in both clans are rare, but because Keepers tend to keep a matriarchal approach to life, they keep what precious males they do have safely hidden, probably strictly for breeding so that their clan doesn't die out.

No, I get that. The reason I asked is because Keepers are starting to settle in Gridania but since we're seeing no males it makes it feel like the settlers are only individual females rather than family groups. Keeper males may be culturally expected to stay safe at home but if there are entire families actually living in Gridania I can't imagine their males are so sheltered that they couldn't go shopping for dinner at the Ebony Stalls or for a pint down at the Carline Canopy.

Admittedly, it's even weirder that we're not seeing female younglings but given there's no younglings at Forgotten Springs either I'm guessing they just don't have a model for them yet. They do have a model for male Keepers so the lack of NPC ones in Gridania seems more intentional.

[Skies]

Are the elementals and the Guardian Tree in different factions then? I was under the impression that the Guardian Tree was a type of elemental.

Nope, they're the same thing (kind of, the elementals are within the tree but are not it), but the big difference being that whoever was the elemental in the Guardian Tree was wounded, and much like a cornered and wounded beast it lashed at whoever was the closest. That was also what your job in that final quest was about, calming it down so it could be healed.

[Velox]

No, I get that. The reason I asked is because Keepers are starting to settle in Gridania but since we're seeing no males it makes it feel like the settlers are only individual females rather than family groups. Keeper males may be culturally expected to stay safe at home but if there are entire families actually living in Gridania I can't imagine their males are so sheltered that they couldn't go shopping for dinner at the Ebony Stalls or for a pint down at the Carline Canopy.

Well it's not that they are all sheltered, there is free will which is why you have NPCs that defy the social norms of their race. Y'shtola certainly isn't hanging around with a Y nuhn all day, yet she retains the Y as a heritage marker, as many Seeker females do. Although they belong to different tribes, they chose to adventure out into the world rather than do what the U tribe did at the Forgotten Springs and stick together. The lore provides a foundation, but it's not a rule set so there will be plenty of exceptions. It's logical to think the same would be true for Keepers.The Coeurl King himself threw away the social "norm" of the Keeper way of life when he declared himself king. He's one of the exceptions of course. However, we must also take into account the rarity of males. Remember that Miqo'te (both Seekers are Keepers) are almost entirely female simply because of the nature of their reproduction (although one can argue this is an evolutionary design to control their population, as they would require larger amounts of food to help sustain their faster metabolisms, they could easily over-hunt an area dry if they grew TOO numerous). Because of this we can't look at their definition of "family" the same way we'd look at ours as humans. Their family structure would consist of females of many different mothers, but similar fathers, simply due to the lack of males. This means that a single Keeper family could consist of 20+ females and only 1-2 males. In order for the clan to keep surviving, a male would have to mate with many different females to maximize offspring since only a fraction of the number of offspring would yield more males. So a "family" might not necessarily be a single mother + father + children combination. It is more likely to be mothers + father + children. This is similar to Seeker structure, the key difference between them is that with Keepers it would be more like Polygamy (1 man with many wives) while Seekers wouldn't have the same emotional attachment between males and females (again, talking about the hierarchy like we see with the U, not the independent Miqo'te that didn't adopt this way of life like the ones found in Limsa) .

So what it all comes down to is a combination of many factors that leads to the practical "non-existence" of male Keeper NPCs.
1. Males are extremely rare.
2. Males have little say in social structure (the wives wear the pants in the family, so to speak :P).
3. Keepers are less numerous than Seekers (Seekers have settled throughout all of Eorzea, Keepers have yet to leave the Twelveswood).
4. Until SE says otherwise, it would seem inter-race relationships can't have children, so the only way for Miqo'te to continue to exist lies with the precious few males (more of a reason why the females would keep them hidden safe at home).

Yes the ones settling in Gridania are mainly individual females, just like how the ones settling in Limsa are individual females of Seeker tribes. Just look how long it took SE to finally reveal what a male Mithra looked like in FFXI. They are just THAT rare, and because Keepers are pretty much copy-paste of Mithras, it may be a VERY, very long time before an adventurer runs across one of the fraction of a fraction of a fraction of males that exist that would just be wandering around the world. What breaks the lore-immersion (and I'm guilty of it too) is that SE made male Miqo'te a playable race with 2.0...when in reality you'd never see that many males running around since only like 1% of the entire Miqo'te population is male xD. Of course, the PC itself can be the exception of the rule (like the Coeurl King), but the sheer number of them existing at once would NEVER happen.

Ok I drifted off topic enough, although I'm sure the whole "lore of Keepers" would be an interesting topic in itself as they are the most mysterious of all the races and clans. xD

[FJerome]

What breaks the lore-immersion (and I'm guilty of it too) is that SE made male Miqo'te a playable race with 2.0...when in reality you'd never see that many males running around since only like 1% of the entire Miqo'te population is male xD. Of course, the PC itself can be the exception of the rule (like the Coeurl King), but the sheer number of them existing at once would NEVER happen.

Ok I drifted off topic enough, although I'm sure the whole "lore of Keepers" would be an interesting topic in itself as they are the most mysterious of all the races and clans. xD

Actually, I rather like that we're suddenly seeing Miqo'te males of both sub-species after the Calamity, it makes a sort of grim sense. Miqo'te casualties were probably disproportionately female, given that they make up the bulk of the fighting troops and almost all the males were in safer leadership or stay-home-and-raise-kittens roles, so now there's a relatively large number of male Miqo'te who may be the only survivors of their clans and have taken to adventuring because there's nothing else left for them.

[Umbeliel]

Snip snip snip
4. Until SE says otherwise, it would seem inter-race relationships can't have children, so the only way for Miqo'te to continue to exist lies with the precious few males (more of a reason why the females would keep them hidden safe at home).

This actually has been done. I don't have the post offhand, but there are in fact cross breeds and they are very common according to a post we got..... Fairly long ago.

We won't be seeing them in game though because that would be a nightmare from a development standpoint.

EDIT: I found..... One of the old posts. But I swear there was another one that actually mentioned that it would be difficult to implement them in-game and also that they were common.