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

[myahele]

The lack of miqote in gridania could simply due to lingering prejudices.

Gridania was pretty isolationist before garlean invaded eorzea. It was only after the gc formed that they became more accepting of foreigners.

[FJerome]

Actually, to answer my own question, I just saw the text from the level 20 levequest "It's a Trap"

"The Keepers of the Moon who make Quarrymill their home have recently been troubled by Taker's Rot poachers who litter the area with their deadly iron leg traps. Three young women and a breeding male have already had to have their legs amputated after suffering wounds from these deadly hunting instruments. To ensure the clan suffers no further causalities, the Trappers' League has put a call out to local adventurers to assist in the search and disposal of hidden traps."

So there's at least one clan out in South Shroud that're living as Gridanians.

Also, that Keeper males are allowed out of the house long enough to take a walk in the woods. Except maybe not after this :P

[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

[Enkidoh]

Velox has summed it up nicely, but another thing adding onto that which just occurred to me, is the fact that the Keepers prefer darkness and nightime due to their veneration of Menphina, the goddess of the moon - they're nocturnal by nature. Hence, it's obvious they would prefer to live in a naturally darker environment, although caves would not do, as it's in their nature to hunt wild game. Hence, the Black Shroud appears to be the ideal location for them.

Although it's not really too apparent in ARR due to the destruction wrought by Dalamud's fall and Bahamut's resultant rampage, in 1.0 the Black Shroud really was appropriately named - the forest canopy was so thick, you couldn't even really see the sky at all. The forest floor was naturally dark in most places, even in the middle of the day, and especially so at night. So it's little wonder the Keepers of the Moon would want to settle there, which possibly didn't go down too well with the elementals and Gridanians who by circumstance have to abide by the elementals' will.

[Velox]

Velox has summed it up nicely, but another thing adding onto that which just occurred to me, is the fact that the Keepers prefer darkness and nightime due to their veneration of Menphina, the goddess of the moon - they're nocturnal by nature. Hence, it's obvious they would prefer to live in a naturally darker environment, although caves would not do, as it's in their nature to hunt wild game. Hence, the Black Shroud appears to be the ideal location for them.

You brought up a good point which I have missed that could be added to my list of why they are so rare. Keepers natural nocturnal cycle is in contrast to Seekers and the other races' diurnal cycles. This would mean most Keepers are sleeping the day away while the other races are most active, thus further decreasing activity between them.

[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.

[PArcher]

One thing to remember, lore-wise, there's really only YOU. There aren't these throngs of other adventurers out there; its you and 7 others who follow you (and the others technically would be more or less people in their classes to compliment you in a party; faceless, nameless lackeys probably following you from certain points in your adventures)

[Skies]

You are factually wrong, PArcher.
There ARE throngs of other adventurers out there, which is why the city-states have official adventurer's guilds, and even a system to allow them the power of police and other allowances in order perform tasks that need doing (levequests).

Hell at the start you can even see all those adventurers all over in the front of the first three dungeons.

[PArcher]

SNIP

Other adventurers, yes...but not tons of them. Definitely not another WHM. Not another DRG. No other Jobs at all. They would be people in their Classes (ACN, GLA, THM, etc), most of them being Midlander, Wildwood, and Lalafell (not sure which is more common, probably about equal really); some female Seekers, Duskwight, Sea Wolf and Hellsguard would be around, but not many Highlanders, Keepers (either gender), or male Seekers.

There's enough to keep things going, but overall, there really aren't a ton, not nearly as many as is suggested in-game (it is an MMO). After all, (lore-wise) you have almost no competition whatsoever for even the mundane...if there really were tons of adventurers, you'd be doing a lot less work, especially early on.

[Enkidoh]

That still isn't correct PArcher - the game clearly states and shows that there are plenty of other adventurers around -as Skies mentioned if there wasn't why would they have the Adventurer's Guild set up in the first place? The first page of the version 1.0 manual all but screamed this, and this information has been retained in ARR on the main website:

As the city-states continued to develop regular standing armies, a growing number of mercenaries and hedge knights found themselves without employment. Concerned at the rise in number of armed men and women resorting to acts of villainy to survive, several respected leaders gathered together to form a network of guilds. The guilds provided these lost souls with the chance to utilise their talents for the benefit of themselves and others.

Through the insight and resolve of these leaders a new industry had emerged-and the era of adventuring had begun.

The original opening movie for version 1.0 even clearly showed the Drowning Wench in Limsa full of adventurers within the first few seconds, in ARR the first three dungeons you clearly see other npc 'parties' attempting them as well (and failing as it turned out), and after the last one, you see a 'new' npc adventurer doing the same tutorial as the player did at the start with Momodi. And even by the end of the main story, Minfilia mentions adventurers were joining up to assist the Alliance with Operation Archon, including numerous Free Companies (the game actually states this). The player's party during Operation Archon is directly stated as being 'an elite adventurer unit', and, providing you don't skip the cutscenes, the game actually shows your party members there with the player during the cutscenes in the Praetorium. And the cruncher is, even in 1.0, during the End of an Era scene, look closely - virtually all of the Alliance 'soldiers' on the battlefield at Carteneau, were adventurers! Time and again both versions of FFXIV have shown and stated you are not the only adventurer in Eorzea.

Sure as far as Jobs are concerned, the player is pretty much the only one from a narrative point of view to possess them, but even then, there is at least one instance where multiple Job crystals are shown, if not several (the level 50 SMN quest for instance

shows Tristan holding a handful of SMN Soul Crystals,

and the first PLD Job quest the player was given a PLD Soul Crystal by Solkzagyl only to then have to exchange it for another with Jenlyns (and his comments suggest that all members of the Sultansworn possess them).

So even then, that arguement is rather illfounded as well - the point is, the player is not the only adventurer in Eorzea - there are thousands, if not millions like you - the last years of the Sixth Astral Era after all were known as 'the Age of Adventurers' for a reason you know.