Gender locked race?

[Gwenorai]

What about viera do you interpret as nice and gentle? Their entire gimmick is that they're superhuman guerrilla fighters and marksmen that render almost half of Dalmasca impossible to colonize because they tear apart anyone that tries to enter and doesn't respect the Green Word.

This here. Yeah, male viera's lore has them as cold-blooded killers. They kill on sight and often don't bother to even ask why you're there. You could be lost and they wouldn't care. This adds to the whole 'why no one outside of Viera and the dead' has seen a male. I'm certain plenty of outsiders have seen the male, but sadly they're all dead. Or so scared they don't wish to relay.

But that brings up the question of how we know this lore in the first place. At least one female must have shared some of the information. And one male must have shared the information on just how they operate when they're outside of the villages and going through those sacred rites to become a master of the wood.
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The only gentle male Viera would be a Viera that was taken away from the wood by their mother and never went through the brutal training. The training brutalises them. It, of course, would be great storytelling to hear the story of how one male who earned the title of master earned back his 'humanity' and was no longer just a killer who exist only to fight and breed. Or of course, be one that escaped the watchful eye of their 'Master' and ran away., etc etc