Lalafel are beasts now?

[dezzmont]

I think it was said that Garleans were the ones that coined the term 'beast tribe' and that it was very arbitrary, much like our own 'first world', 'second world', 'third world'. And much like anyone making hierarchal designations, of course the people making them often put themselves on the top.

This is the correct answer. To those paying attention, FFXIV is in a very large part a story about oppression and relationships between different kinds of people, and artificial hierarchies, and extremism.

Garleans consider everyone outside of their society savages. The city states have a list of races that, even if they are peaceful, aren't allowed inside. Y'shtola rips Merlwyb a new one for casually breaking her word with the beast tribes she shares her land with just because she doesn't consider them 'real people' because it is causing not just suffering for the beast tribes, but her own people. Heavensward is literally entirely about a cycle of racial violence where no one alive currently deserves anything that is happening to them besides Thordan kinda, even Niddhog absolutely didn't deserve anything that caused this tragic chain of events and is a product of handling this injustice poorly, and the entire theme of this is summed up with Tiatmat feeling guilty enough to essentially stop living while alive over guilt. And of course, the Ascians have a similar view of everyone else, as those who beat Shadowbringers know.

Like the game pretty clearly points out that primal would be less common if people didn't consider the Beast Tribes their 'lessers' and that nothing really distinguishes a beast tribe from a playable NPC. The fact dwarves are beasts in the first is a really good way to subtly point out the arbitrary nature of racially motivated hierarchical social orders because we 'know' that is wacky and that Dwarves/Lalas are 'real people' while the amal'jaa are 'actually' beast tribe members.

[DubiousDisk]

Why are people surprised, for one thing this was mentioned at the start of Shadowbringers, and secondly, even the Hrothgar were considered "Beast Tribe" before they developed proper speaking language.

Beast Tribe is literally just a termed coined by hierarchy for species the populace doesn't fully understand. The First doesn't fully understand the ways of the Dwarves/Lalafells, thus there they are considered Beast Tribe.

[MsQi]

All the Lalas are like: "Damn Right!" /flex

[SamRF]

On a related note, what is considered mankind in FFXIV anyway? You hear Garleans always about strength of mankind and such and how mankind needs to advance, what is mankind? It's not just Hyur right? I'm assuming the playable races are all considered mankind?

[MsQi]

On a related note, what is considered mankind in FFXIV anyway? You hear Garleans always about strength of mankind and such and how mankind needs to advance, what is mankind? It's not just Hyur right? I'm assuming the playable races are all considered mankind?

The dragons also say that. I assume it's just all the playable races. They're probably all related anyways.

[Alestorm]

I think it was said that Garleans were the ones that coined the term 'beast tribe' and that it was very arbitrary, much like our own 'first world', 'second world', 'third world'. And much like anyone making hierarchal designations, of course the people making them often put themselves on the top.

I recall something in Stormblood where the Garleans view Miqo'te as a beast tribe that has yet to summon their "god" and tend to hunt them when a tribe gets too large.

[Vidu]

On a related note, what is considered mankind in FFXIV anyway? You hear Garleans always about strength of mankind and such and how mankind needs to advance, what is mankind? It's not just Hyur right? I'm assuming the playable races are all considered mankind?

There isnt an easy answer to this because of the way your question is phrased - so I'll try to give the two most fitting ones I can think of at 2 am in the morning:

1) Generally you'd use the term "spoken races" or "the spoken" when you want to refer to what we'd call "mankind" in the real world - that includes all playable races and excludes the "beast men" (seeing how they can learn and speak "our" language aswell its obvious how arbitrary this is in the first place).
2) The Garleans might have a very different answer to this question though and would only consider their own race the type of "mankind that needs to advance" while the rest are just savages to be used or discarded to reach this goal. So they probably wouldnt consider lalafell or elezen or Au ra "mankind". They probably wouldnt even consider Hyur mankind as long as those Hyur arent pure breed Garleans with a third eye and a proper title and rank - think nazi-germany here.

So generally speaking its not just Hyur - Garlean speaking is even less than all the Hyur. And "philosophically" speaking: should we really keep those labels and exclude and discriminate races...? Are we really better than the Garleans if we keep labels like "beast tribes" and have leaders who think its okay to take land away from them because they dont consider them real people?

[Wyssahtyn]

There isnt an easy answer to this because of the way your question is phrased - so I'll try to give the two most fitting ones I can think of at 2 am in the morning:

1) Generally you'd use the term "spoken races" or "the spoken" when you want to refer to what we'd call "mankind" in the real world - that includes all playable races and excludes the "beast men" (seeing how they can learn and speak "our" language aswell its obvious how arbitrary this is in the first place).

You're wrong. Spoken is a taxonomical term of which the only requirement is that the creature has a language that can be understood by others.

Encyclopedia Eorzea - Spoken: “The sole requirement for being classified as a spoken are that the intelligent creature not only possesses an independent language, but that the language be capable of interpretation by another spoken of a differing genus. Some examples of spoken not listed below include the five races of Eorzea, the Au Ra, and the realm’s myriad beastmen.”

[Averax]

I thought it was obvious?

[MikkoAkure]

I think it was said that Garleans were the ones that coined the term 'beast tribe' and that it was very arbitrary, much like our own 'first world', 'second world', 'third world'. And much like anyone making hierarchal designations, of course the people making them often put themselves on the top.

Garlemald is on a different continent and has nothing to do at all with Eorzea culture or terminology. “Beast tribe” was a term created by Ul’dah in the year 1559 of the Sixth Astral Era. It was in order to create divisions and expel elements of society they didn’t like. Ul’dah to this day doesn’t like “beastmen”. Limsa Lominsa however, has no care and that is why mamool ja, goblins, and qiqirn can be found inside the city. This does not prevent them from treating the kobold badly in order to steal their land, however.

The Garleans have nothing at all to do with this. They do, however feed into Eorzeans mistrust and hatred of these tribes in order to try to get us on their side. The fact that our own nations have done bad things and don't even hide it and don't see why it's reprehensible is some of what I like about the story connecting to the real world. This isn't about an evil empire oppressing others. WE are oppressing others. The whole point of the story when it comes back to the beast tribes is that we are no better than the empire. The beast tribes are summoning primals to fight Eorzea, not Garlemald. At least not at first. The Ascians stoke the beast tribe's hatred of us and taught them how to summon in order to break the world and we are not helping it at all. All we do is send adventurers to kill primals whenever they're summoned and do nothing to deal with why they're being summoned.


As to why dwarves are being held in this context in Norvrandt, they live outside of “regular” society like how the beast tribes of Eorzea do. A dwarf in the Crystarium interacting with people is an extremely rare sight and they were even said to attack random people in Kholusia before the Flood.