Are there surviving Shetona villages in Yyasulani?

[Cutethulhu]

This is something that has bothered me since I played the expansion on launch. I was having a great time right up until act 2, even though I had been looking forward to going to Shaaloani the most.

Obviously the areas we have access to ingame aren't completely 1:1 to how big the world actually is or travel would be super tedious. But with the way the MSQ unfolded and how the patches have gone, it feels like the Shetona have mostly disappeared. And it doesn't feel like it's considered important enough to address later in the story, which really hurts.

In Act 1, we spend plenty of time with the peoples of Yok Tural, which I truly enjoyed. It felt like the team really meant what they said about doing their research on the South American cultures they pulled from. But it feels like they completely neglected the North American indigenous cultures. Compared to Yok Tural, we get some vague mysticism and atrocious flute audio from the Tonawawta and Hhetsarro and then it's time to go to Alexandria.

Viera are a race that is long lived, so the Heritage Found segment was really frustrating. 30 years should not be as much to them as the other races, yet it seems their culture is the one that has almost completely disappeared, assimilated by Alexandria. The viera Erenville meets when he learns his mom (whom I adore, but her treatment by the story is a whole other can of worms) is actually dead seem to be indistinguishable from native Alexandrians.

I'll detail more examples below because the character limit is my enemy.

It's hard to not feel like the Shetona effectively no longer exists in the game's world, drawing disturbing parallels to how indigenous Americans have been treated in real life. Xak Tural was conceptualized as a pre-contact America but we spend little time there until "contact" does happen and transforms a significant portion of it. It's incredibly unfair to indigenous American fans who seem to be the only ones pointing this out. Neither DT's detractors nor defenders seem keen to acknowledge this.

Maybe we should have expected this. The New World headdress is still in the game despite only being used by trolls and ignorant people who want to play "shaman". Square ignored the Saami Council's request to remove the Far Northern Attire from the store.

Obviously Dawntrail is just the first expansion in an entirely new arc. We were still seeing threads from ARR getting wrapped up in Endwalker. Maybe eventually we'll get to see the Shetona people in their own villages with their culture vibrant and alive. But I feel naive for hoping for this and the waiting has brought me a lot of grief.

The point of this long post is just as long of a shot: it would be incredibly meaningful for any of this to be seen by the team and help them understand how they've really hurt fans who otherwise adore the world of FFXIV and have made so many great memories playing it. I'd even gladly take a simple "yes, there are still plenty of Shetona."

[Cutethulhu]

There is a sidequest in the Outskirts where we help a Shetona rediscover her dead mother's (dead viera woman count: 2) farming notes. It doesn't make sense that the daughter would have lost such a thing in three decades. The reclaimers, who appear to live in a dump in front of the Origenics dungeon, are some of the only NPCs without regulators and some seem to allude that the Shetona who have adopted them have lost more than just the memories of their dead.

In the melee role quest, we do meet Kuiyki but aside from the value of the stolen relic we need to reclaim, we learn nothing about her people. The dead viera woman counter ticks up to 3 here as well when we learn that the antagonist brutally killed her mentor which is very dark compared to the other role quests.

The mining/botany questline in Wachumeqimeqi is one of the few places we get to learn more about Shetona culture and it is optional content. While all other Turali cultures get their time to shine in the MSQ, the Shetona are optional. It's an excellent storyline but it also shows that the way of life the Shetona lead is extremely at odds with that of the ones that are in Solution 9, who make no mention of having any connection with nature or seeking it out. I really long for more content like it though, as I thought learning about the parallels between the Veena and the Shetona, a young viera versus a way older one (with a dead wife. counter is up to 4) was really fun. With my Rava in the mix, you had all three types of viera getting to interact.

Also worth noting: I'm not interested in comment wars.

[Cleretic]

I genuinely got the idea that a lot of the Shetona are too nomadic to have villages in the first place. Yyasulani might have stood as the exception, but what I got from the Wachu MIN/BTN quest is that at least the men just... wander until they find a place to settle down, and that place doesn't need to be Shetona, or even a village.

Hell, even Yyasulani is hard to hold up as an exception, given we didn't see it standing, and we meet several other races in Heritage Found supposedly from the Tural side of the dimensional graft; it's circumstantial evidence at best. It's entirely possible Yyasulani wasn't a 'Shetona village', but just 'a village that had Shetona in it'.


But yes, it sucks to feel like your race/subrace of choice is shafted in a setting that you feel should talk about them more, I get it.

*laughs then cries in a distinctly Elezen way*

[MikkoAkure]

To be fair, like you said we have the Wachumeqimeqi quests compare and contrast Shetona with the Veena. Shetona themselves already have more focus spent on them in that questline than actually playable clans like Keepers of the Moon and Duskwight have in the whole game. The Shetona's original enemies and the Turali Hyur equivalent: the Tonawawta just get a couple of blurbs in another Wachumeqimeqi questline so it's not as though as the Shetona are alone in having their lore shunned by the MSQ.

The whole exposition dump tour for the people of Yok Tural worked since the focus for that half of the expansion was based on wandering around and learning about them, and that part of the story was over by the time we got to Xak Tural. The first half of DT for me was slow and repetitive going to each tribe and I don't think the MSQ would have benefited doing the same exact thing for the second half of the expansion and I think keeping the exposition to sidequests or future patch content for the people of Xak Tural is probably the way to go. The Hhetsarro got a short focus and more lore in 7.1 so it's entirely possible the same may happen with the Shetona later on, especially since one of them is supposedly one of the main characters of the expansion. There's still a few more patches to go.

[Cleretic]

The Shetona's original enemies and the Turali Hyur equivalent: the Tonawawta just get a couple of blurbs in another Wachumeqimeqi questline so it's not as though as the Shetona are alone in having their lore shunned by the MSQ.

Even the Tonawatwans aren't the worst off; I genuinely couldn't tell you if there are Elezen in Tural outside of Alexandria, that's how little they're discussed despite people like Shale being around to beg the question. I'm pretty sure there just aren't Au Ra.

I'd say that the Roegadyn are also in a bad spot by only getting one NPC in all of Dawntrail (and even that one being a migrant), but frankly, that's probably a good showing as far as Roegadyn tend to get.

[MikkoAkure]

Even the Tonawatwans aren't the worst off; I genuinely couldn't tell you if there are Elezen in Tural outside of Alexandria, that's how little they're discussed despite people like Shale being around to beg the question. I'm pretty sure there just aren't Au Ra.

I'd say that the Roegadyn are also in a bad spot by only getting one NPC in all of Dawntrail (and even that one being a migrant), but frankly, that's probably a good showing as far as Roegadyn tend to get.

Elezen in Tural are all either Alexandrian Eldites or travelers from Aldenard or Ilsabard. Whatever the Ninth's equivalent of anything that isn't Hyune (Hyur), Eldite (Elezen), or the Source's Milala that ported over and then back seem to have died in whatever happened there and weren't present in Alexandria's population.

I was expecting native Turali Hyur since we were already introduced to them in the BLU quests and the Hyur's whole thing is colonizing every inch of the world map. Turali Hrothgar and Viera make no logical sense but I feel like they were added to DT just for the developers to have an excuse to make actual male Viera and female Hrothgar NPCs. It makes sense that Elezen (outside of Alexandrians), Au Ra, and Roegadyn don't show up in Tural, but I still don't know what Miqo'te are doing there though. Hhetsarro also inexplicably have an even distribution of the sexes too.

Maybe someday with EE4, a sidequest, or a random fanfest comment we'll find out how the heck 2 of the most isolated playable races in the game that previously did not exist in any real numbers outside of 1 country each somehow ended up on the other side of the world and why Miqo'te are plentiful in the far west but do not exist at all in the far east despite being connected by land to the rest of the game world.

[Cutethulhu]

Elezen get it so rough sometimes, I really feel you there. Thank you for sharing your take on the in-world info we do have, though! I need to remember that people can interpret a story's text differently than I do lol

I think one of the big draws for Tural that they were angling for was that the "rare" races in the rest of the world have plentiful variations/roots in this (previously undiscovered by Eorzeans) other side of the planet.

Please bear with me while I put on my "erm acktually" glasses for a second- Yyasulani isn't the name of a village, it's actually the name of the area outside of Shaaloani! Erenville's home was Tesh'pyani village which was where I inferred there may be other Shetona villages. It seems like the concept was that the guys wander while the women hold the fort (which is why my beloved Cahciua is an icon for eschewing that) so there would be at least a few! One less since apparently Shunye's village got cratered by a meteor

I feel horrible now that I realize that this is probably how Elezen players may feel with how hardcore slighted Duskwights are...

I also laughed out loud (at work) at your location being "Solution Eight". I love that omg

[Cutethulhu]

You're right about the Hhetsarro getting some attention in the latest patch- I can't act like all is lost -__-

My I mentioned it to Cleretic as well (I'm a forum novice so srry about my rudimentary reply format RIP) I think Tural having Hrothgar and Viera and Miqo'te was kind of the team's way of showing that this "New World" is so new, we've just learned that these previously sparse peoples actually have thriving counterparts in this huge landmass Eorzeans are just learning about.

I guess we gotta wait until the next Encylopedia Eorzea, though -__-

[Raenra]

It definitely was pretty jarring for a story full of acknowledgement and respect to the local cultures, to not even comment on their effective real-time nuking of the north, its environment and inhabitants.
Doubly-so when they went to such efforts to show the loss and morning of the ~50 people during the invasion.
Out of sight, out of mind?

[Cleretic]

It definitely was pretty jarring for a story full of acknowledgement and respect to the local cultures, to not even comment on their effective real-time nuking of the north, its environment and inhabitants.
Doubly-so when they went to such efforts to show the loss and morning of the ~50 people during the invasion.
Out of sight, out of mind?

Presuming you're talking about Yyasulani, I think it makes sense in context, when you recognize the context is really weird.

Right off the bat after Zoraal Ja's attack, emotions are heightened and a little weird; yeah a bunch of people died, including the king, but they died in an attack; people are mourning on the small scale, but that understandably transitions into anger and retaliation. The warpath to Heritage Found is clearly fueled by rage, which is actually especially noticeable with Wuk Lamat, the girl who's rarely actually been angry before that point. They don't really know what's happened to Yyasulani, so there's not necessarily mourning to be had there either, and in the face of that kind of disaster people are inclined to cling to hope. Even if Yyasulani's chances aren't good, people are gonna go 'maybe my friend out there is alive'.

And then they get into the dome and find out that Yyasulani is fine but it's somehow been twenty years. Yeah, people have died, but they've died to things like sickness and old age. There's not really someone to be angry at there, at least until you get into the complicated nuts and bolts of things, and at that point it's hard to whip masses into a frenzy; people rarely get excited about complexities.

In the final Dawntrail cutscene we learn that there's a proper royal funeral for Gulool Ja Ja being planned, which has presumably either happened off-screen or will happen in the future. So the process of properly mourning this in Tural has actually been happening, it's just probably not a fun thing to watch; at least Sphene's funeral was plot-relevant.