highlander eyebrows?

[Turnintino]

But there's more of Eorzea than just the city-states. The party meant to mirror our own in the early ARR quests is from an unvisitable village in an unvisitable region in Abalathia's Spine.

Oh, I don't disagree that the WoL is Eorzean. Just pointing out, like I said, and on which we agree, that the text determines we're from no part of it that we have access to; that even our race apparently has no bearing on how the other Eorzeans view us, even when everything we know about the worldbuilding (up to a point) is telling us that it should.

And to bring this back to the topic at hand, that includes Highlanders -- and their eyebrows lol. When I said that the WoL can be a Highlander but not Ala Mhigan, I meant because that's what the text is telling us: they are an Eorzean Highlander, but apparently not from or related to Ala Mhigo, and somehow every Eorzean they meet can tell as much just by looking at them -- despite being confined to the same culturally eyebrowless characteristics, despite wearing the same gear as every other local NPC throughout the ARR leveling experience, etc., etc.... Or at least so long as we take the text at face value, and I don't know that we can. This doesn't appear to be so different from the way that the Ishgardian Elezen you pointed out are identical to those of the Shroud in every way, even in naming conventions, but are nonetheless a different subrace in the text.

So, when I see the Highlander model in Garlemald, Thavnair, Tural -- hell, Norvrandt or any other shard -- I just can't bring myself to wonder how or why. They're just, like you said earlier, a visual shortcut for any instance where the story calls for big-but-not-too-big guys lol. Not to mention that the revelations about the Ancients, the sundering, and the Eorzean races' appearance in the other shards that I mentioned, also means that anything we once thought about how these races evolved is all out the window anyway. Because, apparently, they just are and always were.

At the end of the day, I think we're supposed to roleplay it, we're supposed to head-canon our version of events, at least as it pertains to our characters. So yeah, let player Highlanders have eyebrows lol.

Considering the Limsa Lominsa opening video has us arriving via boat with the twins and that city is made up of people from Eorzea who still have an Eorzean deity if at least in name only, that origin could be fairly likely.

On this subject, though; do we know if Twelve worship was something they always did in tandem with the people of Eorzea, or if this was something they adapted during their time in the Eorzean Sharlayan-now-Idyllshire? Probably when they picked up (more?) of what we once thought of as distinctly Eorzean races as well. Not that they can't be sent there at any time before or since, like so many of our Scions, but ya know.