Stop me if you've tackled this before! The Ultimania says that Trabia has an army, though the students and personnel make up most of the citizens. This could be leaving room for the shumi, but I wanted to ask: Is there a town or city we're not seeing? Do you think there are other towns and cities in the world of FF8 that we aren't seeing?
I don’t really have a concrete answer for this, as it’s something I have also wondered about at length. I’m not sure whether the Ultimania says Trabia has an army or had an army (if I recall, it’s literally a single sentence mentioned in an off-hand way, and the translations you can find on The Lifestream forums are at times questionable), and either way, it doesn’t adequately explain the current state of the “country.”
I personally can’t imagine that the cities/towns we’re shown in the game make up the entirety of the population. That would be a very strange economy, to say the least; add that to my ongoing feud with late-90s Final Fantasy’s spatial and geographical sensibilities, and I come near to frothing at the mouth in my frustration with the game(s). It made a whole lot more sense with sprites and grids.
Just as I will never accept FH being plopped in the center of a bridge that spans a body of water that is apparently the width of the Atlantic Ocean, I tend to view the areas we’re seen visiting in the game as representations of a larger whole. I’ve compared Balmb to Iceland on a couple of occasions (with the understanding that there’s probably several inspirations for the place), and I think the larger part of Galbadia can be likened to the Americas, Western ambitions and all. But Trabia’s very existence is something of a puzzle, since the only two groups of inhabitants we ever see are those stationed at Trabia Garden, the Shumi, and, well, Chocoboy.
But Chocoboy wouldn’t have a hobby, much less a business if the only people renting out his birds were Shumi and the odd Garden cadet. I’ll buy (heh) that there’s a lot of unused land in Trabia, and it’s great place to plant a survivalist branch of Garden alumni, but supplies have to come from somewhere, and if these railroad maps are accurate:
…Then they sure as heck aren’t coming from overseas. Esthar isn’t an option, either, all cloaking-shielded as it is.
While I do imagine there are some arrangements between the Shumi and Trabia Garden, and Balamb/Galbadia Garden might send further supplies via sea vessel, I don’t think it makes sense that those would be the only external resources Garden has in Trabia. More generally, the amount of space these continents occupy on the planet is just too big, and the economy of the locations we do see are too robust for those locations to be the only human settlements in existence.
The Ultimania also notes, when describing the destruction of Centra (which is treated in the context of a sociopolitical entity, rather than simply a continent or city), that Galbadia, the Holy Dollet Empire and Esthar emerged from the wreckage–again, as disparate political groups, rather than cities, continents or even countries (though Esthar manages to be all at once). Trabia, by contrast, is referred to simply as a remote country. Not a lot of information about its place in society as a whole is ever offered, to my knowledge.
So yes, I do think there’s a lot we don’t see. I think that what we’re shown in the game are the parts that are pertinent to the story, because it’s a game. I hate to go meta like that, but there’s just no excusing it, otherwise, and I prefer to make my assumptions based on what is in the game, as opposed to what’s not. With the possible exception of Esthar–which seems to subsist on some combination of magitek and positive thinking–the political environment we’re shown in the game could not exist without robust exchanges, and the limited view we’re given is not enough to produce that sort of capital, gil and goods alike. I think you can make a pretty good case for the countryside Winhill is a part of containing many other farming communities, I’m sure there are other cities and downs on other sections of the Galbadian continent, and I’m not convinced the island of Balamb is the only one of its kind. Those are simply the parts our game-map emphasizes, because we have to go there in order to progress.
There are even named sections of the map that you could imagine have communities; no explanation is offered for these names, but they had to come from somewhere.
I think it’s a pretty safe bet that there’s a lot we aren’t seeing, and while there’s no canon for it one way or another, every single RP group I’ve ever seen has assumed that the locations given to us to explore in-game are both:
1. Bigger than what we see and
2. Not the only points of civilization in the world.
@chrysalisthoughts might be able to shed some light on the Trabia army description, and you can find a lot of speculation if you dare to trawl LiveJournal or DreamWidth for analysis…but it may just be one of those things that’s mentioned in passing in the Ultimania but never expounded upon. Unfortunately you see a lot of that when Ultimania browsing.