Gender locked race?

[WhiteArchmage]

It's been a long time since I played tactics, does anyone recall a reason why a male wood warder would show up? Or if a female wood warder stepped in?

Viera do not exist in Tactics, they, as every other non-hume race, are extinct by the time of the War of the Lions (in fact, they've been extinct for so long that moogles are only legends). Viera debuted in Tactics Advance where, even if they were female only, the bulk of TA explicitly takes place in a Dream Ivalice only vaguely connected to the main series (St. Ivalice, where the protagonists come from, is a Town, rather than an Area/Kingdom). TA2 may have a bigger leg to stand on as far as "female-only" race since it DOES take place in the real Ivalice (Jylland, technically, but that could just mean that male viera haven't GONE to Jylland).

As an aside, Feol Viera were never in any Tactics title, either, they're exclusive to Revenant Wings.

Snip

Exactly! These are not Ivalice Alliance's Viera randomly sucked in through an interdimensional portal. Yoshi-P and the dev team can place male Viera if they want, they are literally writing the lore. Keepers of the Moon are even rarer than Viera, and you can count Male Keepeers on one hand and have fingers left over IN THE LORE, the race's popularity with the playerbase is another thing entirely (BOTH my manqo'tes are Keepers!)