Y'shtola and the "Y" tribe.

[Lucke]

Y'shtola is a member of the Y tribe, obviously, however there is currently not much known about them. Y'shtola was also born in Sharlayan(?). I wonder when she joined the "Y" tribe. Was she born into it? Did she leave her original tribe to join the "Y"s?

When Seekers leave their tribe, such as assimilating into Hyur/Elezen cultures, they will lose their tribal letter. We see this in the Amal'jaa Beastyman quests with Loon Gah. She's a Seeker that left her tribe to help the Amal'jaa, in the process losing her tribal letter, so there is a precedent. Also, it's assumed the Miqo dancers in UD have lost their letters.

If Y'shtola is from Sharlayan, she should have either been born without a letter, or lost it when she moved to Sharlayan. Now, females go outside the tribe to have adventures and stuff, and in this way they do keep their tribal letters in the process, but Y'shtola's been gone for quite awhile, she should have lost her letter, right?

I wonder where the Y's are located.

[PArcher]

When Seekers leave their tribe, such as assimilating into Hyur/Elezen cultures, they will lose their tribal letter. We see this in the Amal'jaa Beastyman quests with Loon Gah. She's a Seeker that left her tribe to help the Amal'jaa, in the process losing her tribal letter, so there is a precedent.

No, she was born into the Y tribe. Suncats don't lose their tribe because they leave their home, look around the cities for Suncat npcs. Loon Gah is a special case, she left her tribe and is considered to be an Amal'jaa, not a Miqote.

[WyrahFhurrst]

Unless the Y tribe is in Sharlayan, and are allowed to keep up their tribal heritage while taking part in Sharlayan society. The fact she and Y'mhitra both came from Sharlayan and recognize eachother as sisters lends credence to this thought. Also, we do know that Y'shtola is originally from the Sharlayan colony, so perhaps the tribe was there originally, but relocated with the rest of its citizens to Sharlayan?

[Fenral]

Loonh Gah is definitely the exception. Y'shtola and Y'mhitra are a different sort of exception, though, because aside from the U, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of anything relating members of the other clans.

At the same time, the rest of the Seeker NPCs seem to have a tribe letter assigned by region of appearance, not as an indicator of familial relation. G'raha, for example, briefly mentions having had a rough childhood, but that doesn't necessarily make fellow Mor Dhona questgiver G'jusahna either his sister or one of his childhood bullies.



There are a few stray exceptions here and there, but from what I remember off the top of my head, the distribution is like this:

La Noscea: Y K H W T R
Thanalan: U F
Black Shroud: Y
Coerthas: ?
Mor Dhona: G
Dravania: Q O

There are still a lot of letters unaccounted for except in player names. That is probably intentional.

[myahele]

I don't know, I guess the "traditional" Seeker tribes are very few and far between. You can still be a tribe, but without being a tribe like the a U.

We also know that there are Miqo'te outside of Eorzea (there's a male miqo'te TT player in Azys Lla), so it really wouldn't surprise me if the Y clan are in abundance in the Northern Continent.

What Loon Gah did was much more different than leaving her tribe to become an adventurer. Loon Gah essentially cut off her ties with the Seekers as a whole and is living her life as an Amal jaa

[AskaRay]

The Miqo in Azys Lla is a mooncat though- so it was probably expected of him to leave home.

[Kalamari]

While we're on the topic of Y'shtola, wonder what we will do about her slowly dying to her aether sight?

I've been spinning this theory in my head that Urianger has actually the same condition, but his goggles prevent any significant damage to his health while still allowing him to sense aether around him.

Which would explain why he was able to locate the residual aether from Y'shtolas teleportation spell while also being able to pinpoint where she had ended up after using it, all after fiddling around with his goggles. Being otherwise blind would be a good reason why he'd -never- take the goggles off. So maybe they can be replicated and/or stolen to save Y'shtola as well.

[Lucke]

Y'shtola claimed to have been born in Dravania though, didn't she, Sharlayan to be exact? Her Y tribe is on a completely different landmass. Unless there are 2 Y tribes, one in La Noscea and one in Dravania.

She either was indeed born into the Y tribe in La Noscea, migrated to Sharlayan with her sis from a very young age, and grew up there. So even though it's not, she considers Sharlayan her home even though she wasn't born there...or there's a tribe in Dravania that's also the Y tribe? What?

If only there was some way to signal the bat...

[myahele]

I don't see anything wrong with there being multiple Tribes of the same letter. We know that Tias/Nuhns can branch off and start their own tribe/family

Also, Y'shtola is too popular to die. In FF3 Matoya had crystal eyes she needed to see .... perhaps they'll do something similar for Y'shtola?

[TinyRedLeaf]

I believe I was one of the first few people in this sub-forum to explicitly identify Y'shtola as Y'mhitra's sister, so I was pretty happy to see the story officially confirm their relationship in Heavensward.

And, like Kalamari, I'm also crushed by the implications of Y'shtola's current condition. I started in Limsa Lominsa back in Version 1.0, so out of all the major NPCs, she's the one I've known the longest, and I've been quite fond of her from the very beginning. It's even sadder when we consider how Y'shtola is deliberately staying quiet about her disability, in keeping with her reserved personality. She probably doesn't want her friends to worry about her and, more importantly, she probably doesn't want anyone to feel guilty about the harm she'd inflicted upon herself for their sake.

As for the backstory behind the "Y" tribe, I'm fairly certain that most of you are over-reading the implications. I'm Chinese, and I share a surname with thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of other Chinese, not just in my country but around the world. But a common surname does not by any means suggest that we're all related. We may share a common ancestor, but after so many generations, we're all effectively different families.

I think of the miqo'te tribe letters in much the same way. They are effectively the "surnames" of the Sunseeker tribes (recall that a female Sunseeker's "last name" isn't actually her surname, it's her father's name). And just because the members of the tribe share a "surname", it doesn't necessarily mean they are blood-related. This becomes easier to understand if you imagine each pride of Sunseeker miqo'te as being a separate "family" sired by one particular Sunseeker male.

So, in that sense, Y'shtola and Y'mhitra belong to one particular family within the Y tribe. There are most possibly many other Y tribe miqo'te out there, living in many other parts of Hydaelyn, but that does not necessarily mean there are related to Y'shtola's "family". And there is very, very little in the game to suggest that each Sunseeker tribe is limited to only certain parts of the world. Given their hunter-gatherer origins, I imagine it to be far more likely that the miqo'te of each tribe are fairly evenly dispersed throughout the world.

If you do insist on pinning a region to each tribe, it's perhaps helpful to remember that each tribe letter corresponds to a totem creature. The Y tribe, for example, takes its name from the jaguar, while the U tribe is named after the drake. If you can locate the "origin" of each totem creature, my guess is that you'll probably have a good candidate for that particular tribe's region of origin as well.