highlander eyebrows?

[MikkoAkure]

This is kind of a funny conundrum in-game anyway, if you want to take the text at face value, because while it's true that character creation asserts (or at least very strongly suggests lol) that you're Eorzean, the text immediately asserts that you're a visiting outsider -- no matter where you go -- because character creation doesn't allow you to pick an origin, so the narrative can never reference it. Hell, it rarely acknowledges your race, even divorced from that context.

Yeah it's weird and a little inconsistent since they have to introduce new concepts to us and that's always easiest from the "outsider" POV.

But there's more of Eorzea than just the city-states. The party meant to mirror our own in the early ARR quests is from an unvisitable village in an unvisitable region in Abalathia's Spine. If this is meant to be a proper medieval world, the VAST majority of people do not live in the cities and instead live on farms in the countryside. We have to take a member of our Twelve (a religion that does not exist outside Eorzea) as our preferred deity in character creation, as well as Eorzea-only subraces like Midlander, Hellsguard, Wildwood, etc. In other expansions including this one, our character specifically is referred to as being "Eorzean". One place in Eorzea we specifically CAN'T be from though is Ishgard. The city has been closed for years until the events of HW and their Elezen subrace is different from the Gridanian ones.

Another thing that can only happen if we're Eorzean is summoner. The only way we're able to summon Bahamut and Phoenix is that our WoL was present in Eorzea during the Calamity and has bathed in the aether of both primals and I think the SMN quests mention that we were here during that time.

One thing I think I remember from my time in 1.0 though, is being referred to as coming from the "Old World" by my path companion, a name now applied to Old Sharlayan. Considering the Limsa Lominsa opening video has us arriving via boat with the twins and that city is made up of people from Eorzea who still have an Eorzean deity if at least in name only, that origin could be fairly likely.

[Turnintino]

But there's more of Eorzea than just the city-states. The party meant to mirror our own in the early ARR quests is from an unvisitable village in an unvisitable region in Abalathia's Spine.

Oh, I don't disagree that the WoL is Eorzean. Just pointing out, like I said, and on which we agree, that the text determines we're from no part of it that we have access to; that even our race apparently has no bearing on how the other Eorzeans view us, even when everything we know about the worldbuilding (up to a point) is telling us that it should.

And to bring this back to the topic at hand, that includes Highlanders -- and their eyebrows lol. When I said that the WoL can be a Highlander but not Ala Mhigan, I meant because that's what the text is telling us: they are an Eorzean Highlander, but apparently not from or related to Ala Mhigo, and somehow every Eorzean they meet can tell as much just by looking at them -- despite being confined to the same culturally eyebrowless characteristics, despite wearing the same gear as every other local NPC throughout the ARR leveling experience, etc., etc.... Or at least so long as we take the text at face value, and I don't know that we can. This doesn't appear to be so different from the way that the Ishgardian Elezen you pointed out are identical to those of the Shroud in every way, even in naming conventions, but are nonetheless a different subrace in the text.

So, when I see the Highlander model in Garlemald, Thavnair, Tural -- hell, Norvrandt or any other shard -- I just can't bring myself to wonder how or why. They're just, like you said earlier, a visual shortcut for any instance where the story calls for big-but-not-too-big guys lol. Not to mention that the revelations about the Ancients, the sundering, and the Eorzean races' appearance in the other shards that I mentioned, also means that anything we once thought about how these races evolved is all out the window anyway. Because, apparently, they just are and always were.

At the end of the day, I think we're supposed to roleplay it, we're supposed to head-canon our version of events, at least as it pertains to our characters. So yeah, let player Highlanders have eyebrows lol.

Considering the Limsa Lominsa opening video has us arriving via boat with the twins and that city is made up of people from Eorzea who still have an Eorzean deity if at least in name only, that origin could be fairly likely.

On this subject, though; do we know if Twelve worship was something they always did in tandem with the people of Eorzea, or if this was something they adapted during their time in the Eorzean Sharlayan-now-Idyllshire? Probably when they picked up (more?) of what we once thought of as distinctly Eorzean races as well. Not that they can't be sent there at any time before or since, like so many of our Scions, but ya know.

[MikkoAkure]

On this subject, though; do we know if Twelve worship was something they always did in tandem with the people of Eorzea, or if this was something they adapted during their time in the Eorzean Sharlayan-now-Idyllshire? Probably when they picked up (more?) of what we once thought of as distinctly Eorzean races as well. Not that they can't be sent there at any time before or since, like so many of our Scions, but ya know.

Thaliak has been Sharlayan's patron deity since it was voted on shortly after its founding. Choosing a patron deity for a city-state seems to be a thing since at least the 5th Astral Era and the city itself was founded by Eorzeans. Lore book says they pray to all the Twelve besides Thaliak though, who was just chosen based on what he stands for. Sharlayans, or at least Louisoix and the Circle of Knowing, seem to be actively religious as well considering they attempted to summon the Twelve and were nearly successful, faith being a strong requirement in summonings.


Going back to the Highlanders, one of the things that upset me when 1.0 lore switched to ARR was that the Calamities didn't make a lick of sense with the already established lore and were very obviously just thrown in to excuse zone reconstruction. Dunesfolk came from desert island people and weren't Mhachi mages who somehow physically adapted and evolved to the desert in a very short amount of time. And Highlanders were originally a flavor of hardy Hyur who were the first Hyur settlers of Eorzea that made forts in the mountainous regions. Honestly I prefer that with an added vagueness of Roegadyn mixing (they live in the mountains and are sailors like Hyur too) over "they were Hyur mages who randomly ended up in the middle of a salt-blasted wasteland because they followed a star and abandoning their Mhachi Lalafell compatriots for some reason? and got big and decided to file their teeth, shave their eyebrows, and pick up the polearm and punching the heck out of things just because".