Burning Questions, Round One: It's Mostly About The Five Races

[Empressia]

FINALLY SNIP

1. Why the Twelve depicted as Hyur looking u ask? Simple, Hyurs are EVERYWHERE and the most populous of the five races.

2. Rhaegar based on Roe? U surely have seen all those Hyur Highlander Ala Mhigan refugees OUTNUMBERED Roe Ala Mhigan refugees yes?

3. As for Nald Thal, i'm assuming u didn't do the Princess Memorial Day event? Lore wise, that event simply depicted that a Hyur Midlander royal family ruled Uldah predating Lala royal family

4. Some real world lore depicts several mermaids as sirens, so would you describe the PS siren as more Hyur like or Roe like then?. On a serious note, Llymlaen mermaid statue depicts sexuality and pretty sure we've seen more Hyurs playing playboy type than Roegadyns.

5. Simply put, is the current/past Arch Bishop(s) a Hyur or Elezen? And are the Holy See seneschal council members have a balanced composition of Hyurs and Elezens? Is the Arch Bishop the embodiment of the Holy See or just the speaksperson?

6. TLDR, Hyur might be the religious one among the five races or they could be the only race doin masonry at the time when those twelve's statues were build

[Ansemaru]

Wow, most of those were... not helpful at all, or based on incorrect assumptions. If I had the time or energy, I'd go into detail about where you've jumped to conclusions or misread the text, but. Dear me.

[Alenore]

I'll reply to things I can actually give insight about.

Why are Padjali children only born to Hyur parents, and not Elezen? And why, for that matter, are they more commonly born to certain families? It seems all very odd.

Well, Padjals are chosen by the Elementals. Why exactly they only pick Hyurs isn't really known. Might have to do with ancestry, like more attuned with aether or something, or being a family who survived the War of the Magi, but we don't have a definitive answer about that.

In the description for Aloe, it is mentioned as being a plant native to the continent of Meracydia, and used in Miqo'te folk medicine. Additionally, the only recipe it is useful for in-game is a type of miq'abob that is a traditional Seeker of the Sun dish. In the backstory provided for the Miqo'te, it is mentioned that they migrated from a southern continent during the ice age of the Fifth Umbral Era. Does this mean that Meracydia is the native homeland of the Miqo'te? And does this mean that when the Allagan empire attempted to conquer the continent and were met by resistance from native peoples summoning primals, that these people might have been Miqo'te?

Again, no real answer to give you. So far, we don't know about any other southern continent other than Meracydia so it's probably correct. Were the Miqo'te already here when the Allagans invaded Meracydia is unknown though. I don't really see the Miqo'te being versed into summoning though. Finally, I doubt ONLY Miqo'te inhabit Meracydia. They could have met resistance from beasttribes, just like Garlemald did in Othard and Aldenard.

We now know that "De Nevelle" and "La Thagran" are taken from the names of Elezen explorers. Are "La Noscea" and "Costa del Sol" also originally Elezen turns of phrase? If not, who coined them? For that matter- is Vylbrand, like it sounds, a Roegadyn name for the island? What about Limsa Lominsa? It sounds Lalafell in origin.

La Noscea is most likely named from Elezen. Their names are pretty much french, and De/La are french. Costa del sol is most likely a shout out to the town in FFVII, but considering it was founded after the discovery of the island as a leisure town, it's most likely a local inhabitant name. Lalafel, Hyur or Roe.

It seems as though most of the beast tribes in Eorzea have been present in the region before any of the five playable races. The kobolds are intrinsically tied to O'Ghomoro, the sahagin to the Indigo Deep, the sylphs and moogles to the Black Shroud, and the Amalj'aa to their homeland of Paglth'an. The mamool ja, ixal, and goblins appear to be exceptions to this- the first explicitly being stated as having come to Eorzea as migrant workers in the wake of the Calamity, the second having originated in Ayatlan, and the third having a nomadic nature. So, is this an accurate assessment of things? Have the majority of beast tribes been the native peoples of Eorzea long before any Hyur, Roegadyn, Lalafell, Elezen, or Miqo'te ever showed up on the continent of Aldenard?

First, Moogles aren't really from the Shroud. Their legends say they came from Heavens. You could say it's similar to Ixalis and their Ayatlan.
We can't say for how *long* they were here, though. From what we've seen, Doga and Unei are Hyur. their clones as well. It kinda hints Allagan were hyurs, or atleast devolved into hyurs. Thus, they've been on Aldenard since the allagan empire was founded.
Were the beastmean on Aldenard before, though, is hard to say.

Amdapor predated the arrival of Hyur in the Black Shroud. Can one assume that the majority of its population was, in that case, Elezen? Presumably, there were a scattering of Keeper of the Moon Miqo'te there as well, but Miqo'te have always had less of a presence in Eorzea than the other races. Of course, one can assume that Nym and the unnamed third nation involved in the War of the Magi were predominantly Lalafell, Plainsfolk and Dunesfolk, respectively.

It just feels weird to me that Elementals would pick Hyur children to be keepers of White Magic, if Hyurs had nothing to do with it. Also, I think I remember the Padjals started appearing right after the war of the magi. That would mean (if Padjals are Hyurs only, though we have no proof of that) at least a few Hyurs were part of Amdapor.

Why are so many depictions of the Twelve so Hyur-looking? They've been worshipped in Eorzea long since before the arrival of Hyur, have never physically manifested in a form that could be visually replicated, and even now are worshipped by a variety of people in regions where Hyur are not in the majority or prominently involved in the regional religious hierarchy. There were even references back in 1.0 to depictions of Rhalgr from the Sixth Astral Era being based on a Roegadyn archon. So why do the statues of Nald and Thal in Thanalan look like Hyur men, when the region has been controlled by Lalafell since the Fifth Astral Era at the very least? Is the statue of Llymlaen in Aleport meant to be a Roegadyn mermaid, or a Hyuran one? Does the Holy See see to it that Halone is portrayed as an Elezen? Was Nophica always seen as looking like a Hyur, or was she portrayed differently before the Hyur and Elezen made peace?

As seen before, Allagan were most likely Hyur-like beings. A theory about the Twleves is they were high profile Allagan figures. That could explain why they all look Hyur-like.
Even if this theory is wrong, the Allagan Empire reached almost the whole world (from Ilsabard to Meracydia at least, that makes a big chunk of it!), and was thus the dominant civilization for a whole Era. If the Twelve are actually from before the Firest Era, it's pretty safe to assume the Allags were worshipping them. And obviously, they'd decide the gods look like them, just like our gods are also antropomorphic in real life.

[Ansemaru]

Hrm, here's the thing that bugs me about the "oh well the Allagans were basically Hyur" as an explanation for depictions of the Twelve: the 1.0 quest cited above. The text of it makes it pretty clear that depictions of deities are influenced by the people depicting them, and that they're frequently based on Archons from later eras rather than any given form of the Twelve, because they have never been seen in recent memory, or even ancient times. They're not like primals- they don't just get summoned into reality from aether all the time. A Kobold can make an accurate (if stylized) picture of Titan, because she can see Titan when he is summoned in the Navel. An Ala Mhigan sculptor can't just hang around and wait for somebody to summon Rhalgr if he wants to make a statue. And he can't ask anybody if they've seen Rhalgr, because there's nobody alive who can boast that! So he has to rely on what the common perception of Rhalgr is, or the closest thing, which is often an Archon. In the case of Rhalgr, this Archon was apparently a Roegadyn fellow.

What bugs me is that so many depictions are apparently based on Hyur individuals even with this in mind in the worldbuilding! Hyur aren't the "most numerous"- they're certain a plurality, but there are just as many Elezen in the Shroud and Coerthas (many more Elezen in Coerthas, really), and just as many Lalafells in Thanalan, and just as many Roegadyn in La Noscea. So it feels a little weird that nearly every depiction of a member of the Twelve that actually pops up seems to be a Midlander Hyur, when all signs in-universe and statements made by the lore team out of universe suggest that their depictions have varied over time and should not be "default human". Plus, it feels pretty lazy and unfair from an out-of-universe perspective for the art team and devs to just go "Hyurs are the average and the most normal so all of the 'good' gods look like them".

[Lukha]

It is definitely lazy from a design perspective, but I think that might actually give us our in-universe answer as well...lazy design.

I wouldn't be surprised if Hyur was sort of the 'default' artistically because of their very genericness...middling height, middling build, middling coloring, no particular special features, visually. Unless you have a specific reference or model in mind, they're kind of what you end up with. It might also be that it's easier for an artist to learn Hyur proportions as a sort of 'baseline'; since they're so generic, you start off with a Hyur and stretch it out to get an Elezen, add bulk for Roe, etc.

Though in more racially homogenous areas, they'd probably be considered weird looking, if not outright horrific (I imagine seeing Hyur ears for the first time could be quite a shock for a young Miqo'te).

[Myranda]

I can put a minor chime in about Costa del Sol:

While I can't comment on why it's Spanish etymology is there other than a shout out to FF7, I can add that it was only given that name by Gegeruju once he built his resort there. The region's original name is the Bloodshore (which is still used to reference the beaches north and south of the main resort area), but that's not a terribly attractive name for luring in potential tourists, hence renaming it to something a bit more pleasant sounding for a vacation.

[Ansemaru]

Hmm, so Gegeruju named it? That's an interesting bit of lore, though it doesn't answer the linguistic half of it entirely. Then again, if our other example of Eorzean-Spanish is the Sabotender Del Sol out in Thanalan, one starts to wonder if it's actually a Lalafellin language in origin.