#Garlean Experiment

[charmiespecs]

Light Party 🔥Four characters in my FFXIV FC adventuring together! After all that healing, Mylon definitely appreciates the marshmallows!

[khajiitclaws]

Miqomarch Day 13 — Wonder

Neon lights and the hum of electronics were ubiquitous, catching the eye with flashing images of models and products. This was only the beginning of the technological marvels.

[dovalore]

is it pronounced mica or mica?

[akirakirxaa]

Well, if no one else was going to use the antecedent's office... [Takes place shortly after 5.3] [Extended versions here on my bsky]

Consus belongs to the lovely @azems-familiar

[genderdotcom]

for a bg3 ffxiv au. idk if i want xaela lae'zel or mamool ja viper lae'zel

[jenessa-mercier]

Everything was wrong. Her limbs were too short, the armor didn't fit quite right, and each step threatened to trip her in the snow with legs that she was used to being a full three ilms longer. And that wasn't even getting into the sensation of utter wrongness that pervaded her being, the sword in her hand familiar and yet alien as she glared at the standard issued sword of the Garlean army.

It was a cruel joke, Jenessa stepping over the unfortunate opponent that had attacked her, his body already cooling in the fierce Garlean winter. Everything in her body ached; this body was not nearly as strong as her own, Jenessa moving through the alleys and destroyed buildings with the ease of a lifetime of navigating the capital. The patrols were evaded despite her inexperience with her forcibly swapped body, nearly tripping and banging on debris that she would normally avoid.

The few lone tempered soldiers she encountered were dealt with as best as she could, doing what she could to spare them in the hopes they could be treated later. But as severely weakened as she was meant, that less than she would have liked were rendered unconscious rather than slain, having to fight tooth and nail to keep herself safe.

Her stolen body heaved, crimson spilling through the mouth vented helm, an errant heavy blow from her previous opponent having smashed against her chest, and judging from the pain, at least several ribs had been broken at the very least. It was becoming clear that her time was running out, Jenessa forcing herself to breathe normally even as she could feel the wetness in her throat. Gods, it hurt more to not breathe...

The sound of conflict drew her attention, her head turning as she beheld a group of Garlean soldiers fighting a group of the tempered while civilains in winter clothes ran for the outskirts of the city, following the tracks towards the waystation where Julius and his crew had been holing up. It was like a jolt of aether through her body, Jenessa forcing herself to her feet and towards the conflict. Each unsteady step was quicker than the last, crimson marking her path as she reached a full sprint.

The tempered about to behead his kinsamn was crashed into with all the force her body could muster, the hoplon smashing against his helm with enough force to send the tempered sprawling across the ground. A wordless hand yanked her kinsman to his feet, Jenessa falling into formation in the line with the ease of a thousand drills as for a moment, she was not the Warrior of Light but once again, another soldier fighting to protect her people.

Her body screamed in protest with each swing, lungs burned, and the arcs of crimson marked the desperate struggle to buy the fleeing civilains as much time as possible. Blows were felt, ignored, and returned, the Garlean having no choice but to trust in this body's gear to keep her going.

The sound of a shuddering walker charging its primary cannons drew her attention too late. One of her kinsman's screaming about its core overloading reached her ears half a second before it detonated.

There was no sound. No light.

Agony.

She opened not her eyes behind a ruined helm, her limbs feeling like they weighed a tonze, forcing herself to a sitting position. The walker was no more, a smoking crater of ruined machinery and cerelum. Any standing close to the explosion no longer resembled figures as much as blackened messes of ruined metal and meat. Some of the others had fared better, looking over the fellows and urging others up.

One grabbed her shoulder now, speaking, but she didn't acknowledge him as she pushed herself to her feet, her armor smoking and ruined. The heraldy on her armor was still burning in places as she paused long enough to withdraw the scant few medical supplies she had scrounged, wordlessly pushing them into the youth's hands.

She didn't know how she looked, but the fear in the young man's face told her enough. Taking her fallen sword and pressing the other hand to her ruined side, Jenessa moved away from the survivors of her temporary company. Shifting her attention in the direction of Camp Brolen Glass, she began to walk; one agonizing step after the other, her boots no longer scraped the snow, crimson now lining her strides.

She prayed the few lives she had saved would not come at the cost of others.

[windupaidoneus]

there are certain things i do not feel comfortable saying just any fictional character is capable of doing like if i establish a backstory for an oc that involves npcs i find that some things are off limits with a great majority. but with these side content garlean generals its like. Well they were made to be the worst of the worst i don't know if anything is beyond them

[echthr0s]

Hey. Guess what.

I learned how to gpose.

[inhcritance]

Me, every once in a while: I should make Harry a FFXIV AU

Me, ten seconds later, looking at Cassius' blog: We know that Harry's AU would mostly just be Lucius, Solus' first son.

[anneapocalypse]

I wrote about this in the faith post, but every time I log in on my alt or just NG+ some ARR for Ariane, I am reminded that Urianger appears quite happy in ARR before a bunch of his friends are murdered and he's kidnapped and held hostage and then his best friend dies and the entire Crystal Braves disaster happens. He's not heavily involved in the plot for most of ARR but when you see him in the Waking Sands pre-Garlean attack, he is not lurking reclusively in the corner or buried in his books; he's engaged in animated conversations with other Scions, and he's happy to chat with you excitedly about their work if you talk to him.

There's this reading out there of Urianger as unhappy and withdrawn until he comes out of his shell in Shadowbringers, which I just don't think is actually accurate to his canon journey. I fell into it myself for a bit, because the Warriors of Darkness plot is when I really started paying attention to him, and from that point on he is very isolated and not doing great, for very understandable reasons! And for a long time, the image of him standing alone in the corner of the Wakings Sands was really burned into my mind--but that's post-WoD Urianger. That's not ARR Urianger.

Yeah, he struggled with socialization as a kid, but that was before he'd found his people with Louisoix and the Circle of Knowing. He clearly doesn't have trouble socializing in the Scions even if some of them find him peculiar. Like most of the Circle of Knowing members, he has some unresolved issues sure, but he's doing all right--up until he experiences a frankly unreal amount of trauma and upheaval in rapid succession, after which I think most people would not be doing all right.

And his dramatic visual transformation in Shadowbringers is inherently deceptive, not just because Urianger himself is involved in a big deception (delightfully lampshaded in the name of his gearset being "Soothsayer," truth-teller, exactly what he isn't at the time), but because arguably Shadowbringers is actually Urianger reliving all of his ARR-HW trauma and having all his old wounds opened:

relocated against his will

forced to lie to his friends for the greater good

forced to accept the sacrifice of yet another companion, and arguably a leader, as for the greater good

watching multiple friends suffer because he asked for their help

bearing witness to a messy adoptive parent-child relationship, which probably brings up some feelings about his own childhood and parental neglect

watching his close friend's old wounds and abandonment issues reopened

constantly living with the knowledge that all of this is, directly or indirectly, his fault

He is having such a bad time in Shadowbringers, and it's only with the lessons learned from that journey and the failure of the Exarch's plan that he eventually has an epiphany and begins to make peace with himself, culminating in the moon scene in Endwalker.

And that's part of what I love about his journey, I think, that it's not a simple A->B character transformation. We see him when he's doing pretty all right, all things considered, and then we see him fall and fall and fall, sometimes repeating the same mistakes multiple times before he figures out how to grow from them and ultimately find peace.

[reap-the-game]

"They engineered us—talked up and down about what a privilege it was to be accepted into the program, but we learned soon enough that we were just the guinea pigs for their experiments. They didn't want to put pure-blooded Garleans through something that wasn't tried and true. "Not all of us made it."

[catwhoisawizard]

Hello gposers of Tumblr!

I would like to get to know you all better and get more involved in the FFXIV community here on tumblr! My particular blend of brain weirdnesses make it difficult to be consistent about making gposes myself, but I do it when I can. I haven't made any recently because I've been on a bit of a hiatus from the game for personal reasons, but I want to share some of my older shots as a start!

So without further ado, here's a short introduction to my current cast of characters! Please feel free to leave comments or send asks with questions about them!

Name: Zhera Anki

Age: 35 (as of DT)

Gender/Pronouns: Cis female, she/her

Orientation: Polyam Lesbian

Canon combat jobs: SCH/WHM/SMN

Canon non-combat jobs: BTN/CUL/ALC

Homeland: Limsa Lominsa (raised there), Ala Mhigo (born there)

Notes: Mixed race Keeper/Seeker. Her Keeper family is descended from survivors of Amdapor. Her Seeker father was a member of the Fist of Rhalgr. She is autistic and has utilized her hyperfixations and special interests to learn multiple difficult skills quickly. Buff.

Zhera is a former Storm Captain and veteran of the Primal Wars, the Garlean War, and the Final Days crisis. Now retired, she became an Archon (her specialty is aetherology and Allagan Summoning) and now spends her time raising her adopted child Hhemetso and working as a freelance botanist. She is close friends with her worldline's WoL, but played a secondary role in most of the events of the MSQ.

Name: Retha Othan

Age: 84

Gender/Pronouns: Trans female, she/her

Orientation: Polyam Pansexual

Canon combat jobs: RDM/SGE/WAR

Canon non-combat jobs: ALC

Homeland: Tenth Shard

Notes: Was AMAB, but learned alchemy and transitioned by using transformative potions similar to Fantasias that she made herself, and continued to make them to help others transition. Was an Archmage of the Red in her prime, but an injury caused her to lose the ability to use magic, and she didn't get it back until getting her new body in the Source. Was happily married to a man named Tavel and had multiple children and many grandchildren.

Retha is Zhera's reflection from the Tenth Shard. She was her world's primary WoL and saved it several times over, but living a hard life eventually caught up to her in her old age, leaving her frail and unable to help when the Ascians made their final move to Rejoin her Shard. She escaped by volunteering for a desperate last minute plan to use experimental magic to send someone's soul to another Shard in the hopes of bringing back help. The transfer succeeded and she found herself sharing a body with Zhera, her counterpart in the Source, only to learn that she was too late: due to unexpected temporal weirdness in the Rift, she had arrived 1500 years after her Shard was already gone. She has since gained her own body and is now building a new life in her new home.

Name: Kjet Anki

Age: 143

Gender/Pronouns: Non-binary, he/him

Orientation: Asexual

Canon combat jobs: WHM/BLM/MNK

Canon non-combat jobs: BTN

Homeland: Hingashi/Gridania

Notes: He is a Viqo'te, as his other mother was a Viera. He is the reincarnation of Deudalaphon and was forced to take on his predecessor's memories against his will; he developed his time travel spell by adapting techniques used in one of her abandoned experiments. He briefly tried to learn the Dark Knight arts, and his Ascian memories took form and consciousness as his Fray before he accepted them; she is now his headmate, calling herself Hephaestia, the name of the previous Deudalaphon prior to taking the Seat.

Kjet is Zhera's son from a separate timeline than her. In his timeline, Zhera lost the war with her depression when he was about 20 and she gave in to despair. In an act of desperation to fix the world, she summoned a perfected primal using her own soul as it's core. The resultant entity was a fusion of her at her lowest and Ifrit at his strongest, calling itself Zhera Ifrita. Following her mandate to "end war by any means necessary", she started a campaign of political manipulation via tempered thralls and eventually outright conquest to unite the entire world under one state, with herself as something akin to a god-queen preventing war via tempering and draconian social policies. While extremely talented with both White and Black magic, Kjet is ill-suited for violence, and was forced to spend over a century in hiding as he watched the world around him succumb to the monster wearing his mother's identity. Finally, in an act of desperation, he managed to develop a primitive time travel spell and used it to travel back to before Zhera lost her hope, but unintentionally made a split timeline in doing so (the method he used does that to prevent a paradox). He has since started building a new life in this timeline, but the threat from his home timeline is not gone...

[maids-of-stardust]

LYSE WIR GALVUS

This is a likeable headcanon, if you consider it for a moment with us.(Spoilers for like... everything story-wise? In Stormblood??? Also, this is not Lyse hate, this is Lyse appreciation and character flavor.)

Lyse's complexion is notoriously non-congruent to the typical features of Ala Mhigans, despite being born and raised Ala Mhigan herself... for this, we deliberated with @feycircles that she, hilariously, looks more similar to Zenos, than to her own people. Which, really got us thinking... We know a few things about Curtis Hext, Yda and Lyse's father; that he was in King Thedoric's royal guard, and later fled with his daughters when the King's rule became too oppressive. But, we know nothing about Yda and Lyse's mother.

It makes sense for some intermingling to occur right at the beginning of, or even prior to the Garlean occupation of Ala Mhigo. It's not impossible for Varis, possibly a Legatus at that point, to have visited at such a time, to have came into contact with Thedoric and his guards, and possibly even the wife of one of these guards...

Well, you get the idea. Regardless of the details, it comes to be feasible that Lyse is Varis' bastard daughter- with Varis likely never knowing, and most definitely never finding out. It's equally feasible for her to be half Garlean by any other sire, but let's be real this is cooler and in some ways more relevant to the following themes in Stormblood...

One must imagine Lyse and Zenos as half-siblings, as fate would chance it.

If you told me these two were related, I would believe you.

Amazing things this does for the narritive:

Expands on Lyse's out-of-place position in Gyr Abania. She wasn't there to experience the fighting that broke it's spirit, true, and after spending all the time and effort to gain back their trust, girly finds out she is of the same blood as their colonizers. Not just one of them, but even related to the Viceroy actively oppressing them. The guilt and turmoil that goes into paying back an unpayable debt, one that even victimized Lyse herself, is intense.

Becoming a leader of the resistance, and actively vying for change and liberty that defies her heritage is an ICONIC contrast to Zenos, who has perpetuated the cycle of violence and invasion by their father and his father before. Just sibling dichotomy things✨

On a grander scale, this is representative of the empire having occupied Ala Mhigo for so long, the picturesque liberty they dream of is no longer something that can exist. The nations have integrated, and been changed forever, for better or worse. Their children are the greatest example of this- even up to being equal parts Ala Mhigan, and Garlean. The best they can do is often the most realistic side effect of war- try to heal, and bear the scars of the conflict.

In conclusion, do we think this is based in reality? NOT REALLY. However, if this WERE true, it would change next to nothing about the plot (especially if nobody uncovered this information), and it also explains/resolves a lot of the common issues with Lyse as a character. If you can suspend your disbelief and BE DELUSIONAL for that crucial moment then this is a VERY enjoyable hc to spice up your Stormblood experience.

[ishgard]

VIERAPRIL - Day 2: Tree / Perception / Reverie

Sevyn can sleep just about anywhere, and rarely has trouble with pesky beasts or unwanted company waking him. Even in slumber he sometimes feels... a presence. Not quite malicious, and not entirely comforting either - and yet, protective, in a sense. Those who would approach him with malice more often than not feel compelled to turn away.

Fen's mind and soul were shattered long before the Sundering, giving it somewhat unique properties. When the Garleans experimented on Sevyn as a child, they tried drawing the 'Devourer of Worlds' to the forefront to mold as a weapon against Eikons, but instead what occurred was... something of a 'Fray-like' incident.

[jenessa-mercier]

A deep inhale.

Every sensation of home flooded into her chest: the unforgiving chill and the faint scent of ceruleum on the wind. The air hitched momentarily in her lungs before old muscle memory kicked in, exhaling in a slow stream of frosted breath. Violet eyes raked the horizon, seeing not a spot of light through the snowfields. Even the worst of storms would have revealed something: a guidelight, trains, or the distant glow of the city.

Nothing.

Her armor was more than sufficient for this weather, having been considered too heavy and warm for most other parts of Eorzea while in comparison, the other members of the Ilsabard Contingent having bundled up in much thicker clothes to deal with the harsh cold. Even the Ishgardians were not exempt, having to add a layer or two to deal with cold they thought they had prepared for.

Nobody in the know found it odd how comfortable she was moving through the snow, always seeming to know when the winds would change and drive needles into one's face. Her companions knew, however. It was no secret but a fact simply that went unspoken unless prompted. Feeling the approach of two, Jenessa rose from her kneeling position in the snow, pulling her gaze from the distant shadowed city and to the twins, questions writ clear upon their features and in their posture.

"Later." She promised, raising a hand to shield her face and keep her bangs down as a Temple knight approached to collect the trio for the briefing. While her tone and expression betrayed nothing, the hand not shielding her eyes was clenched into a fist at her side as she strode back towards the company here to salvage what was left of her country.

[voidsentprinces]

Yoshi P please stop squishing two expansion ideas into one expansion. It makes the entire experience pretty shit. Y'all had a solid idea for Heavensward and it was focused and precise. You all couldn't lean on the other countries on Etheirys cause we were going to a new reflection, made 95% up of empty light blighted land in Shadowbringers and we were better for. But I swear I can sense a lot of shit being thrown onto the cutting room floor cause you smashed an Ala Mhigo and Doma expansion into Stormblood and then again in Endwalker as you scrapped the idea of a Garlean Expansion and just went for wrapping up the story. Now we're pretty much living the rest of the Alexandria expansion with the Post Patches and last 15% of Dawntrail.