Mithra - Ancestor of Miqo'te?

[ChocoFeru]

Looking at the description of the Mithra minion:




Is it just a FFXI reference? Or does this mean that Mithra really existed in Hydaelyn (Or Vana'diel)?

[Wyssahtyn]

Eureka's going hard on the XI references an stuff, iirc. Even bringing in classic armors and stuff from what I remember seeing. At any rate, I'd say it's just a reference until other stuff corroborates it. Or that there's a XIV version of the Mithra that existed in the distant past that eventually evolved into the Miqo'te.

[FJerome]

This may be another case of "the NPCs have only a limited world knowledge but think they know everything", which is especially a case with the Sharlayans.

The Keeper/Seeker split is very distinct, to the point where Sharlayan naturalists are probably having slap-fights over whether to classify them as the same species or sister species, so a Sharlayan Scholar coming up with a common ancestor hypothesis wouldn't be odd.

. . . the same Sharlayan Scholar then making a little dress-up doll of their pet theory, a tiny bit odd, but I've seen researchers do weirder.

[Anonymoose]

Anonymoose - Yesterday at 4:35 AM
"the Mithra─ancient ancestor of the Miqo'te"
Uh oh.
Braces for impact.

As far as I can tell from the flavor-text (which is still no less than 90% ribbing FFXI players via ambiguous language), if you were going to try to hand-wave it in-world, the implication would be that a Sharlayan scholar was attempting to replicate what they believed ancient Miqo'te may have looked like, and these ancient Miqo'te are known (at least to them) as "Mithra". It doesn't necessarily (without more concrete examples) carry any more transdimensional implication than the simultaneous use of "Moogle" or "Qiqirn" in both games.

That said, minions and mounts have been slowly, but surely, sliding into the same quasi-to-pseudo-canon bubbles as limited-time events and such, anyway. Notice the Fafnir minion actually makes a 4th-wall-breaking reference to Ridill's FFXI drop rate.

[Enkidoh]

Personally I'm taking that as more a meta reference of the mithra being miqo'te's 'ancestors' rather than an in-universe reference, as it makes sense. FFXIV 1.0 was originally planned to be FFXI's literal successor, and SE entertained the idea of transferring all existing FFXI player character data into the new game, which resulted in FFXIV's player races being based on the FFXI player races for this reason (Tanaka quickly realized the idea was going to be utterly unworkable and so scrapped that idea, but instead decided on FFXIV being a 'spiritual' rather than a physical successor to FFXI, retaining the similar races (this is also after all why only female miqo'te and male roegadyn were playable in FFXIV 1.0, just like FFXI with the mithra and galka respectively).

So in a meta way, the comment in that minion's description about the mithra being "ancient ancestors of the miqo'te" is a wry tongue-in-cheek in-joke to FFXI's races serving as the original inspiration for the design of FFXIV's races. It's most definitely not 'proof' that the mithra actually literally existed on Hydaelyn in the ancient past and the miqo'te descended from them somehow - as after all, we've already seen npcs of two other FFXI player races appear in Hydaelyn (tarutaru and hume) and there was absolutely no mention of how they might be connected to Hydaelyn's races... (apart from jokes about Shantotto's taru mannerisms resembling lalafell with her minion, only they're not), again I'm simply taking that as a funny joke at FFXIV's spiritual ancestor (16 years is a rather long time in gaming, as far as the life of a MMO is concerned, almost MMORPGs' early history in a way ) - in both cases Shantotto and Iroha are mentioned as coming literally from Vana'diel to Hydaelyn by transdimensional shenanigans.

And, as a final word, remember the statement made by Maehiro about Vana'diel and Hydaelyn not being the same world kind of proves that the mithra are not lore-wise miqo'te's ancient ancestors (and that was confirmed by both the FFXI special events outright saying that Vana'diel is a whole different world), but even if you ignored that, the meta references can be easily handwaved lore-wise away anyway as simply yet more mucked-up history-warping by Sharlayan scholars who simply made a mistake.

1:57:29
Q: A lot of names from Ivalice have been mentioned such as Dalmasca, Belias, and Zodiak. Is there some kind of connection between Hydaelyn and Ivalice?
A: Maehiro: To be absolutely clear, there is no direct connection between FFXIV’s Hydaelyn and FFXII’s Ivalice or even FFXI’s Vana’diel. They are not the same world in different dimensions or time—they are their own separate worlds. However, there are certain connections to people or objects that appear in these other worlds that figure into the story of FFXIV as it has been conceived and is being told.

Yoshida: We’ll be revealing more as we move forward.

P.S. And proving that Ferne has a wicked sense of humour, the comment from FFXI's Nanaa Mihgo (aka the notorious 'Cat Burglar' of Windurst) is actually taken from Nanaa's Trust NPC in FFXI (it's the comment the npc makes when the player summons her) - as the Trust NPCs in FFXI are not the real person but simply a magical construct (a magical robot if you will), then that makes this comment attached to a minion all the more ironic.

[SicariusSeven]

I know it's probably just funny flavor text/in game joke but you know now that a bunch of other players are going to take this as their head canon now.

[Yuriane]

I reckon it's probably just a case of reused assets as it were, as others have already said like the other similarities, it's not out of the realm of possibility what while Vana'diel and Eorzea are in no way connected the Mithra do exist in both, it's simply that the Mithra eventually became the Miqo'te in Eorzea for one reason or another. Mithra is probably what they where known as before they split into Moon Keepers and Sun Seekers.

It doesn't really need to imply any higher connection than the existence of the Goblins, Marmool Ja, or Qiqirn imply.

That being said there is something to be said for the idea that the FFXIVxFFXI crossover event with Iroha is an example of how the two worlds could be connected, and ancient Mithra could have come to Eorzea the same way she did and just settled here. But that's baseless speculation and the truth of the matter is simply that it's the name for the Miqo'te Ancestors.

[Risvertasashi]

Looking at the description of the Mithra minion:




Is it just a FFXI reference? Or does this mean that Mithra really existed in Hydaelyn (Or Vana'diel)?

Interesting. Devs very clearly stated that Miqo'te/Hydaelyn races have no relation to Vana'diel ones some years ago. I wonder if this means they're going back on that now...

[DamianFatale]

I don’t want ANY connections to Vanadiel aside from references, but I could see Hydaelin, and Vanadiel being two sides of dimensions, and nothing more.

[Cilia]

Well, based on this new evidence, there are two theories:

One, mithra really were the ancestors of miqo'te and just so happen to look identical to their XI incarnations.

Two, it's a historical inaccuracy and mithra are fictional on Hydaelyn, but the myth persists through word of mouth.

There's lots of similar instances in either direction. It's been repeatedly stated there's no direct connection between Hydaelyn and any other game world from the franchise, so this... doesn't really change anything besides providing a plausible ancestor race for miqo'te (who are, purely coincidentally, very similar if not identical to their XI incarnations).