The Lore of Inter-breeding

[mr_wazzabi]

Okay, now we know there can be cross-breeding. But, we still aren't aware of a case of cross-breeding or the circumstances surrounding it.

This. How is it that the city state of Gridania has its flag crest representing the unity of hyur and elezen together for hundreds if not thousands of years, yet has no evidence of intermarriage among the population? This is a plot hole. If 2 races live together long enough, especially under the same banner, intermarriage is bound to happen.

[Calacitea]

How is it with the reproduction? If, as example, a Viera female and an Au Ra male are reproducing, which race does the baby have? I somewhere heard that it would always be the race of the mother, and so a Viera.

[MikkoAkure]

10 years... We're reaching new levels of necromancy.

How is it with the reproduction? If, as example, a Viera female and an Au Ra male are reproducing, which race does the baby have? I somewhere heard that it would always be the race of the mother, and so a Viera.

This was completely made up by RPers and has no basis in lore at all. If true, then Hilda wouldn't have pointy ears and Severa wouldn't have a dud third-eye. Genetics seems to more or less work how it does in our world from what we've seen.


A Viera/Au Ra would be some unholy jackalope thing, but it would be a mix of both. It's just that every single mixed race baby in the game has been half Hyur, and Hyur happen to be the most basic thing that everything else is based on. So that means that everything we've seen is just "non-Hyur parent, but less". If the game ever introduced something like you described that didn't involve a Hyur, the mixture would be more apparent and more importantly for the dev team, more expensive to model since it would need to be unique.

[Hurlstone]

It's a shame that we cannot see more hybrid individuals like Hilda, I have always liked when fantasy worlds do have that as a thing. Makes it more diverse and let's you explore more social tropes. Perhaps on time we will be able to see a few, if the budget allows haha.

[Wyssahtyn]

This was completely made up by RPers and has no basis in lore at all. If true, then Hilda wouldn't have pointy ears and Severa wouldn't have a dud third-eye.

It was not "completely made up", it was an inference based on the examples we were shown in game over time because XIV's worldbuilding has all the depth of a puddle half the time. Furthermore, the full inference that the other person is unaware of that people referenced was that the hybrid would take primarily after the mother and have some secondary characteristic reminiscent of the father's race. The fact that some people present it as objective fact and not mere inference is a inherent problem to XIV's community, to say nothing of the inevitable, inherent distortion that can occur in a ceaseless game of telephone over long time spans.

[Cleretic]

There's a hell of a lot of times when someone in the community comes up with something, and then the entire community just goes 'yeah, that seems legit' and accepts it to such a degree that they forget where the idea came from. From what I've heard this particular one comes from the roleplaying community; someone in some FC just laid it down as a sort of house rule or something, and because it took until either Stormblood's or Shadowbringers' patches to get an actual counterexample (I forget when exactly Severa got her backstory) it had a LOOOOOT of time to catch on without opposition.

This might be one of the most commonplace ones, but in my eyes it's almost forgivable; this one actually looked legit for the longest time, even if it mostly just got there because for the writers it didn't matter enough to refute. It's way better than 'Black Mages replaced their eye with materia', which is an idea that came from nowhere and is refuted by every single source you could possibly check.

[Lurina]

It's way better than 'Black Mages replaced their eye with materia', which is an idea that came from nowhere and is refuted by every single source you could possibly check.

I looked into this mystery a while ago!

The oldest mention I could find of the concept is from a early 2012 post where they describe it as a "theory" based on a cutscene where a black mage character's eye glows in a cool way. That's from the late 1.0 era.

It seems like an idea people were excited about just got mythologized into something actually in the game over the years.

[Cleretic]

I looked into this mystery a while ago!

The oldest mention I could find of the concept is from a early 2012 post where they describe it as a "theory" based on a cutscene where a black mage character's eye glows in a cool way. That's from the late 1.0 era.

It seems like an idea people were excited about just got mythologized into something actually in the game over the years.

Wow, that is... not even circumstantial evidence, that's just straight-out nonsense. Losing the evidence over the years probably made that more credible.

[Lurina]

Wow, that is... not even circumstantial evidence, that's just straight-out nonsense. Losing the evidence over the years probably made that more credible.

Yeah, I was surprised by how dumb the explanation turned out to be with how many people say it. I guess if you can't actively fact-check something, it can just spread around.

I did learn some interesting stuff about how the 1.0 job quests were structured looking into it (which I never made it far enough at the time to actually experience). Apparently, most of the structure and dialogue are re-used for the 2.0 ones, but they have different (and generally somewhat stupider) lead-ins. For example, in the black mage one, you find the Gem of Shatotto by killing killing poop bugs until it drops.

I hope it's okay for me to borrow this thread. Since it's been bumped from 2013 anyway, might as well use it to talk about 2013 content.

[MikkoAkure]

It was not "completely made up", it was an inference based on the examples we were shown in game over time because XIV's worldbuilding has all the depth of a puddle half the time. Furthermore, the full inference that the other person is unaware of that people referenced was that the hybrid would take primarily after the mother and have some secondary characteristic reminiscent of the father's race. The fact that some people present it as objective fact and not mere inference is a inherent problem to XIV's community, to say nothing of the inevitable, inherent distortion that can occur in a ceaseless game of telephone over long time spans.

To me, that whole idea is blind "justification" and not "inference".

The idea that the child takes the mother's race is justification to play a hybrid race in-game because of how popular those types of stories are even in writing outside of RP. Anyone who spends more than half a thought on the topic who doesn't want to RP as a half-something character won't come to the same conclusion.


The only way to perfectly make Hilda a half-Elezen would be to ever-so-slightly change the proportions of her body and make her just a tiny bit taller than Midlanders could be. That doesn't sound like the effort the devs would do so they just gave her a unique head like how the Garleans, Ancients, and other important characters have unique heads. Otherwise, she's still a max-height Midlander when NPCs are very rarely made max-height. Other than their wacky proportions that don't even make it into official art half the time, the only characteristics Elezen have unique from Hyur are height and ears so I don't know what people would be expecting anyway.

Then there's the legendary tale of the Au Ra who had a child with a Hyur that looked like an Au Ra but with less scales. But again, Au Ra are just "Hyur with extra bits" so I wouldn't expect a hybrid to be anything different than "race that isn't a Hyur but with less of those extra bits".

"Takes after the mom, but also the dad" is kind of how genetics work so the idea of "mother's race completely, but secondary(?) characteristics from dad" sounds super flimsy. Calling things that aren't on a Hyur "secondary characteristics" is just admitting that every single race is just "Hyur but different" anyway.