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Swift · **07-18-2013, 03:41 PM**

((Hopefully this is the correct sub-forum to post this question in; I wasn't sure questions about lore were more of a "game" question or an "RP" question D:))

So, um, today I decided to start compiling all of my character notes together in an effort to adapt the backstory of a cat-like character of mine (that was originally made for a D&D campaign) into something that would fit into Eorzea's lore and setting--especially with the established conventions about how the Miqo'te name themselves and how their tribal culture functions.

While I was searching for some inspiration to get me started, I came across the "100 Questions to Ask About Your Role-Playing Character" thread made by Vash. I started going down the list, casually answering the numbered points to myself, but admittedly didn't make it too far before making a double-take to this:

"4. Do you have any siblings?Â What are/were they like?"

At first, I just shrugged it off as "Sure, considering the Nunh sires the children of an average of 50 female Miqo'te, I guess technically he'd have a ton of siblings."

But then, it struck me. You'll have to forgive me for being blunt:
If all these children are being born from the same father, doesn't that mean that there is a lot of incest going on in Miqo'te tribes once these children mature?

I suppose in very largely populated tribes, it wouldn't be as big of a problem, as there would be several entitled breeding males available. Additionally, the surname of the women is that of the Nuhn that sired them, so it's not like they'd be showing up on the Jerry Springer show any-time soon to figure out "who the daddy is," so direct father-daughter relationships would be unlikely to happen by mistake.

But what about smaller tribes? In particular, I remember reading in the Naming Conventions lore that some "Tia" males leave the main tribe to start their own, electing themselves as Nuhn and bringing a group of willing females along with them. If that's the case, then there seem to be instances where there might be only one current breeding male to the tribe, and given that not only are male children fairly rarely born, but must challenge the current Nuhn in battle (and be victorious) to take his place, having another to replace him by the time his children come of age is unlikely.

So, what happens? Is there some vital piece of information I'm missing? Are women rotated between different tribes to prevent this? Is it a cultural norm and genetic adaptation for incest to happen and turn out normal (i.e. are there no disorders associated with it)? I'm honestly kind of stumped as to where to go from this point.

P.S.
I probably should put a disclaimer here that I'm not here to discuss whether or not such relationships are "acceptable." I am a very open-minded person, especially in the realm of fantasy settings, fictional characters, and exotic races/species.

Desmond Aryll · **07-18-2013, 04:08 PM**

Great observations!

I likened them to a pride of lions. I'm assuming that like lions, the breeding male doesn't stay "champ" for very long. The title of Nuhn must get passed around quite often. With that in mind, the children being born won't necessarily be full siblings for very long before there is a change. The problem is also solved to a degree when there are multiple Nuhns, as one could look to mate with females outside of your own gene pool.

Also let's say you are a Tia and left your tribe as a juvenile or young adult, you might not have a chance to become Nuhn then but after a few years, you could come back and challenge. By that point, the ruling Nuhn could be someone else. Further changing the make-up of the tribe.

Another possibility not ruled out in the lore is that when a Tia who cannot hope to become Nuhn leaves the tribe, he possibly starts a new one. There isn't anything saying that Tia can't be a former Nuhn. If he were to try and form a new tribe, it's not out of the question that some of the females that share history with him would follow. Leaving the existing tribe to concentrate on new blood so to speak.

Lastly a female seeker with male children would understand the politics behinds who is Nuhn, since the tribes are made up of mostly females, I would surmise that they have a HUGE hand in deciding who is set up to "win" a fight. Like instigating a challenge before a young Tia is quite ready to take on the Nuhn for example.Â

In the end I think that, like several RP'ers have implied, the real power behind the tribes are the females. Leaving the males in some cases, to even be viewed as breeding studs for the good of the tribe. Even though I am positive that there are quite worthy Nuhns around as well.

Orlog · **07-18-2013, 04:26 PM**

You've come to the root of my problems with the tribal stuff going on with the Miqo'te. Considering that breeding outside of the clan is not exactly smiled upon, incests would definitely be a thing. A breeding male would stay in power for as long as he can maintain the position (especially if we're comparing it to a pride of lions), and there's no scheduled swap or anything of the like.

And since the comparison of Miqo'te tribes being akin to lion prides has been brought up a few times by people who play them, I'm going to assume that we're going all out and any new breeding male who takes down the old one eats all of the children who aren't bread by him alone.

'S fucked up.

Swift · **07-18-2013, 04:44 PM**

(07-18-2013, 04:08 PM)Desmond Aryll Wrote: Great observations!
Thanks! :3

I likened them to a pride of lions. I'm assuming that like lions, the breeding male doesn't stay "champ" for very long. The title of Nuhn must get passed around quite often. With that in mind, the children being born won't necessarily be full siblings for very long before there is a change. The problem is also solved to a degree when there are multiple Nuhns, as one could look to mate with females outside of your own gene pool.
Basing them on lions seems to bring up some resemblance, you're right. I can't help but think of all the underlying implications that were going on by what was meant by "being the king" in The Lion King, lol xD
Anyway, while it would definitely be convenient for the Nuhns to be switched out quite often--which is very plausible in large tribes where odds would be that there could be any number of male challengers--I can't really see this being too often the occurrence in smaller tribes with only one or two Nuhns. In such a case, the only challengers (unless they came from outside the tribe, itself) would be the sons of the Nuhn. That means that, should they succeed in overthrowing their fathers, they're going to end up breeding with their (step?)sisters.

Also let's say you are a Tia and left your tribe as a juvenile or young adult, you might not have a chance to become Nuhn then but after a few years, you could come back and challenge. By that point, the ruling Nuhn could be someone else. Further changing the make-up of the tribe.
This makes sense, I agree with you. But again, I see this occurring more in larger tribes rather than smaller ones. It also poses the question of what happens if a Nuhn (who just spawned a generation) is defeated, overthrown, and then comes back to reclaim his title (and succeeds)?

Another possibility not ruled out in the lore is that when a Tia who cannot hope to become Nuhn leaves the tribe, he possibly starts a new one. There isn't anything saying that Tia can't be a former Nuhn. If he were to try and form a new tribe, it's not out of the question that some of the females that share history with him would follow. Leaving the existing tribe to concentrate on new blood so to speak.

Lastly a female seeker with male children would understand the politics behinds who is Nuhn, since the tribes are made up of mostly females, I would surmise that they have a HUGE hand in deciding who is set up to "win" a fight. Like instigating a challenge before a young Tia is quite ready to take on the Nuhn for example.Â
Right. I'll have to repeat myself a bit, though: If very few Nuhn are available in a tribe, then this means that the challengers are likely to be his own sons.

In the end I think that, like several RP'ers have implied, the real power behind the tribes are the females. Leaving the males in some cases, to even be viewed as breeding studs for the good of the tribe. Even though I am positive that there are quite worthy Nuhns around as well.
This is very likely--and in the case of Keepers of the Moon, a fact. The lore mentioned that the title of Nuhn, on its own, does not carry any governing weight and, in fact, very few Nuhn are actually governmental leaders in their respective tribes.

Thank you for your comments. I definitely agree with you 100% as far as typical tribes go, but I'm not so sure the smaller ones, as I've mentioned.

(07-18-2013, 04:26 PM)Bea Wrote: You've come to the root of my problems with the tribal stuff going on with the Miqo'te. Considering that breeding outside of the clan is not exactly smiled upon, incests would definitely be a thing. A breeding male would stay in power for as long as he can maintain the position (especially if we're comparing it to a pride of lions), and there's no scheduled swap or anything of the like.

And since the comparison of Miqo'te tribes being akin to lion prides has been brought up a few times by people who play them, I'm going to assume that we're going all out and any new breeding male who takes down the old one eats all of the children who aren't bread by him alone.

'S fucked up.

While I can see comparisons being made, I don't think I'd go that far with it, lol.

FreelanceWizard · **07-18-2013, 04:48 PM**

Yeah, the potential incest element of tribal Seekers is something I've noticed as well. My guess is that the breeding groups in tribes are fairly large and that any individual miqo'te female of breeding age bears quite a few children. So, assuming 50 females bearing (let's say) 5 children each, the next generation is going to have 250 members, of which a comparatively small percentage are men, and every member of which is a half-sibling (assuming one nunh). With Eorzea being a potentially quite dangerous place, though, I imagine nunhs get successfully challenged by tia or outright eliminated from the breeding pool by external forces fairly regularly. As the generations progress, I'd expect the necessary genetic variation would emerge as nunhs rotate due to violence and select different groups of females with which to mate. There's also the possibility of tia or nunh from other tribes (or other hunting grounds) taking the position, which would further increase genetic diversity.

That said, incest is still a potential issue, since females are expected to breed with the nunh -- and there's no expectation stated in lore that if the nunh's closely related to you that you don't do the deed. This is a bit of a grey area that provides an opportunity for different backstories, IMO.

Desmond Aryll · **07-18-2013, 04:53 PM**

Hopefully the specifics of what goes on in the smaller tribes will be part of the bread and butter of RP'ing a Miqo'te. Thumbsup

Just off hand I would add that in a smaller tribe, actually challenging the Nuhn would happen much less often, so it seems like the tribe would have more freedom to let it happen on their own terms. Interesting stuff.

Myxie Tryxle · **07-18-2013, 04:53 PM**

Allow me to offer the biological perspective on in-breeding.Â Fair warning, this next paragraph will contain a bit of science and a little math.Â Skip to the paragraph after if you don't understand it.

Consanguinity (relationship through a common ancestor) is the term biologists use to describe this sort of relationship, and historically, consanguineous relationships have gotten a bad rap.Â From the mathematical point of view of population genetics, however, they become a lot more transparent.Â In-breeding within a population leads to a very peculiar effect.Â Genetic diseases tend to appear as rare recessive traits that only surface when an individual acquires two copies of the recessive gene.Â In an in-breeding population, this tends to occur more often due to the shared ancestry, but the opposite occurs more often as well.Â You also get more individuals carrying both of the dominant genes.Â I've done the math before in my college bio-statistics class, and it was a sound conclusion.Â You end up breeding out the carriers (individuals that have one copy of the disease gene, which is how it survives in the gene-pool).Â I've seen it theorized that each individual of an out-breeding population carries an average of seven deadly recessive traits, which is why in-breeding appears to be so bad.Â Over time, however, an in-breeding population will weed out those traits faster, depending on how closely related the consanguineous relationships are.

To sum up what the above means metaphorically.Â When it comes to in-breeding, in the short term, you get a lot of bad eggs, but your likelihood of getting a really good egg (twice the size with double yolks or something) is also higher.Â Over time, you obviously weed out the individuals with lower fitness (the slow ones with the terrible teeth and hemophilia), but you also remove the carriers, the ones where these genetic diseases hide within the population.Â For the first ten to twenty generations, the population on average suffers, but after that, they tend to be better off in terms of fitness than a continually out-breeding population, and your likelihood of producing one individual with exceptional fitness is actually higher than an out-breeding population.

Now if you consider the fact that in the Miqo'te structure, where it's basically a lottery and a winning male wins big, I'd actually say that in-breeding is not that frowned upon.Â Using the egg analogy from before, if that one special egg out of the dozen happens to be male, he's guaranteed to become a breeder when he reaches maturity, which from the point of view of fitness is a massive success and potentially worth the risk.Â There are species on earth (like the Japanese quail) in which the preferred mate is a first cousin for this reason.Â Over time, in-breeding breeds out the bad genes much faster than out-breeding.

To give a real-life human example, consider the royal families of Europe.Â They practiced a mild form of in-breeding, seeing as how they all inter-married over centuries, while at the same time out-lawing in-breeding among the populace.Â Why did that happen?Â The prevailing theory is one of wealth distribution.Â If the highest royals are forced to outbreed, it spreads their wealth around, as they are continually forced to choose a spouse less privileged than themselves.Â In-breeding at the highest tier of society guarantees that their spouse will bring in a comparable amount of wealth and aid in consolidating power.Â Conversely, if the lesser nobility are allowed to do the same, they could potentially maintain and amass enough wealth to become a threat to the throne.Â Forcing them to outbreed spreads the wealth around and maintains a lower average wealth and influence compared to the royals.Â In addition to a long-term biological benefit, there's also a short-term socioeconomic benefit to offset the short-term genetic cost.

TL;DR:Â In-breeding is not as bad as everyone has been led to believe.Â In the long-term, it actually improves the genetic fitness of a population.Â Socio-economic factors in human society offset the short-term costs.

Elisea Renyven · **07-18-2013, 04:58 PM**

(07-18-2013, 04:53 PM)Callipygian Wrote: Allow me to offer the biological perspective on in-breeding.Â Fair warning, this next paragraph will contain a bit of science and a little math.Â Skip to the paragraph after if you don't understand it.

Consanguinity (relationship through a common ancestor) is the term biologists use to describe this sort of relationship, and historically, consanguineous relationships have gotten a bad rap.Â From the mathematical point of view of population genetics, however, they become a lot more transparent.Â In-breeding within a population leads to a very peculiar effect.Â Genetic diseases tend to appear as rare recessive traits that only surface when an individual acquires two copies of the recessive gene.Â In an in-breeding population, this tends to occur more often due to the shared ancestry, but the opposite occurs more often as well.Â You also get more individuals carrying both of the dominant genes.Â I've done the math before in my college bio-statistics class, and it was a sound conclusion.Â You end up breeding out the carriers (individuals that have one copy of the disease gene, which is how it survives in the gene-pool).Â I've seen it theorized that each individual of an out-breeding population carries an average of seven deadly recessive traits, which is why in-breeding appears to be so bad.Â Over time, however, an in-breeding population will weed out those traits faster, depending on how closely related the consanguineous relationships are.

To sum up what the above means metaphorically.Â When it comes to in-breeding, in the short term, you get a lot of bad eggs, but your likelihood of getting a really good egg (twice the size with double yolks or something) is also higher.Â Over time, you obviously weed out the individuals with lower fitness (the slow ones with the terrible teeth and hemophilia), but you also remove the carriers, the ones where these genetic diseases hide within the population.Â For the first ten to twenty generations, the population on average suffers, but after that, they tend to be better off in terms of fitness than a continually out-breeding population, and your likelihood of producing one individual with exceptional fitness is actually higher than an out-breeding population.

Now if you consider the fact that in the Miqo'te structure, where it's basically a lottery and a winning male wins big, I'd actually say that in-breeding is not that frowned upon.Â Using the egg analogy from before, if that one special egg out of the dozen happens to be male, he's guaranteed to become a breeder when he reaches maturity, which from the point of view of fitness is a massive success and potentially worth the risk.Â There are species on earth (like the Japanese quail) in which the preferred mate is a first cousin for this reason.Â Over time, in-breeding breeds out the bad genes much faster than out-breeding.

To give a real-life human example, consider the royal families of Europe.Â They practiced a mild form of in-breeding, seeing as how they all inter-married over centuries, while at the same time out-lawing in-breeding among the populace.Â Why did that happen?Â The prevailing theory is one of wealth distribution.Â If the highest royals are forced to outbreed, it spreads their wealth around, as they are continually forced to choose a spouse less privileged than themselves.Â In-breeding at the highest tier of society guarantees that their spouse will bring in a comparable amount of wealth and aid in consolidating power.Â Conversely, if the lesser nobility are allowed to do the same, they could potentially maintain and amass enough wealth to become a threat to the throne.Â Forcing them to outbreed spreads the wealth around and maintains a lower average wealth and influence compared to the royals.Â In addition to a long-term biological benefit, there's also a short-term socioeconomic benefit to offset the short-term genetic cost.

TL;DR:Â In-breeding is not as bad as everyone has been led to believe.Â In the long-term, it actually improves the genetic fitness of a population.Â Socio-economic factors in human society offset the short-term costs.

I admit I like how you put it all into perspective.

Swift · **07-18-2013, 04:58 PM**

(07-18-2013, 04:48 PM)FreelanceWizard Wrote: Yeah, the potential incest element of tribal Seekers is something I've noticed as well. My guess is that the breeding groups in tribes are fairly large and that any individual miqo'te female of breeding age bears quite a few children. So, assuming 50 females bearing (let's say) 5 children each, the next generation is going to have 250 members, of which a comparatively small percentage are men, and every member of which is a half-sibling (assuming one nunh). With Eorzea being a potentially quite dangerous place, though, I imagine nunhs get successfully challenged by tia or outright eliminated from the breeding pool by external forces fairly regularly.

Assuming that is the case, we still have the issue of those 250 members all being related--again, it'd effectively be the Nuhn's own sons usurping him, and then the only pool of females they have to mate with within their own tribe are their sisters.

Swift · **07-18-2013, 05:17 PM**

(07-18-2013, 04:53 PM)Callipygian Wrote: TL;DR:Â In-breeding is not as bad as everyone has been led to believe.Â In the long-term, it actually improves the genetic fitness of a population.Â Socio-economic factors in human society offset the short-term costs.

(Just for the record, I read it all ;P)

Thank you! I was hoping someone with some biology know-how would show up, lol.

So, I was on the right track (at least) to suggest that perhaps the Miqo'te had some sort of "immunity" to the defects typically associated with in-breeding. Considering this has been their life style for who-knows-how-long, it sounds very plausible to suggest that they've significantly removed the bad genes from their entire race, if not eliminated it all-together.

This, combined with the fact that their concept of "family" should be very different from its conventional definition, would go further to assert that they're perfectly fine with in-breeding for the sake of raising strong, able-bodied children.

FreelanceWizard · **07-18-2013, 05:31 PM**

Thanks, Callipygian, for the great post. Smile

(07-18-2013, 05:17 PM)Swift Wrote: This, combined with the fact that their concept of "family" should be very different from its conventional definition, would go further to assert that they're perfectly fine with in-breeding for the sake of raising strong, able-bodied children.

That's my read on it as well from a story perspective. There's forces, I think, that would, in a large breeding population, probably force a certain level of nunh rotation, but I'd say that socially, the taboos on incest and in-breeding must be weak to nonexistent among Seekers of the Sun.

That's not to say that individuals, of course, may not experience varying levels of "squick" at their own culture, depending on the personalities in question and the closeness of the biological relationship involved. "Call me Daddy," indeed. Cool

Swift · **07-18-2013, 05:37 PM**

(07-18-2013, 05:31 PM)FreelanceWizard Wrote: "Call me Daddy," indeed.

Oh god, what have we done?! xD

Myxie Tryxle · **07-18-2013, 05:51 PM**

(07-18-2013, 05:17 PM)Swift Wrote: Thank you! I was hoping someone with some biology know-how would show up, lol.

So, I was on the right track (at least) to suggest that perhaps the Miqo'te had some sort of "immunity" to the defects typically associated with in-breeding. Considering this has been their life style for who-knows-how-long, it sounds very plausible to suggest that they've significantly removed the bad genes from their entire race, if not eliminated it all-together.

It's not so much immunity as it is a matter of prevalence.Â If you breed out a disease like cystic fibrosis, it no longer exists, thus isn't a concern.Â There will always be a few carriers, but you may bump that number down from an average individual carrying seven deadly alleles to an average individual carrying one or two.

"Immunity" brings up a good point, though.Â One of the other major costs when it comes to in-breeding is communicable diseases.Â In-breeding reduces diversity.Â If a strain of a disease like the flu comes along that is especially infectious, it will spread through the population in no time because everyone's immune systems will be essentially the same.Â This is a major threat posed today to our crops and livestock as in-breeding is an essential technique in the development of domesticated species.Â As stated earlier, it's the fastest way to increase the prevalence of a desired trait like increased size or crop yield.

In Eorzea, virulent diseases become a non-issue due to the prevalence of Esuna.Â This further swings the argument in favor of in-breeding being not terribly detrimental to Miqo'te society.

If this sort of science interests you, I would suggest reading The Red Queen:Â Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature by Matt Ridley.Â He makes the entire concept very readable, even if you aren't a biologist.

Swift · **07-18-2013, 06:11 PM**

(07-18-2013, 05:51 PM)Callipygian Wrote: It's not so much immunity as it is a matter of prevalence.Â If you breed out a disease like cystic fibrosis, it no longer exists, thus isn't a concern.Â There will always be a few carriers, but you may bump that number down from an average individual carrying seven deadly alleles to an average individual carrying one or two.

"Immunity" brings up a good point, though.Â One of the other major costs when it comes to in-breeding is communicable diseases.Â In-breeding reduces diversity.Â If a strain of a disease like the flu comes along that is especially infectious, it will spread through the population in no time because everyone's immune systems will be essentially the same.Â This is a major threat posed today to our crops and livestock as in-breeding is an essential technique in the development of domesticated species.Â As stated earlier, it's the fastest way to increase the prevalence of a desired trait like increased size or crop yield.

In Eorzea, virulent diseases become a non-issue due to the prevalence of Esuna.Â This further swings the argument in favor of in-breeding being not terribly detrimental to Miqo'te society.

If this sort of science interests you, I would suggest reading The Red Queen:Â Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature by Matt Ridley.Â He makes the entire concept very readable, even if you aren't a biologist.

Just to clarify, I understood it wasn't quite an immunity after your explanation. ^^
Prior to it, I wasn't sure if there was a realistic way to play around with genes to get a similar effect, so I wondered if perhaps Square Enix planned on giving it a "Because magic reasons!" explanation. But it seems that's not the case, thankfully. I like some mode of realism in my fiction to make it believable (just like, say, we might be able to use some sort of wide-spread occurrence of testosterone-intolerance to explain why most Miqo'te are female).

As for disease and infection, I was getting a bit worried that we might have another problem on our hands until you mentioned Esuna! People on the beta forums kept saying it was a bad spell, not knowing it's likely the sole thing keeping our precious catgirls/boys a legitimate, functional society.

I only hope that some illness that causes Weakness doesn't turn out to be a contagious effect down the line. Esuna doesn't seem to work on that :\

Also: I'll definitely save that and give it at read at some point. Biology seems to come up a lot as far as different fictional races are concerned, so it's always good to have some information to work with. Thank you ;3

Jonexe · **07-18-2013, 06:13 PM**

(07-18-2013, 04:26 PM)Bea Wrote: And since the comparison of Miqo'te tribes being akin to lion prides has been brought up a few times by people who play them, I'm going to assume that we're going all out and any new breeding male who takes down the old one eats all of the children who aren't bread by him alone.

'S fucked up.

I have nothing of value to add to this conversation, other than I'd loveÂ to see someone RP a Nuhn (or former) with this as part of their background.

"So, what happened when you finally won, and became Nuhn?"
"I ate his children. All of them."
"No seriously..."
*dead serious stare*

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Miqo'te Family-Tree Dilemma

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