Actually, word-of-God says (a la, Ferne), that 'Derplander' and his party are both a metaphor for the player's own character, and are also actually unique npcs of their own. There was a huge thread made by Moose on the old 1.0 Lodestone (now archived) which went into great detail about that (and other 1.0 storyline-related material, in fact it was what effectively caused SE to add this Lore section to the forum in the first place, that thread became so bogged down it was decided it warranted it's own forum!). This is the thread in question: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...9-CG-Midlander

I admit it was that thread that drew me to finally signing up on the Lodestone in the first place after resisting it for so long ).