#WoL Story

[ristineveineorzea]

Prologue - The Green Word

The Green Word sounded nice at first. It was all I knew. I always knew that I would be thrown away to the forest once I experienced my 13th summer. Like all Viera boys. Even if that was the way, I couldn't but long for those old days when I lived in the village of my birth with my friends. Playing, helping around and listening to stories of old. Being able to read books about the world around us. Stories, songs and history. I was quite a bookbunny and found early on drawn to the magics and aether manipulation. Whenever I was not playing with other kids or reading the few books our village had, I was either helping around or practicing magic with our village mage. She humored my curiosity and I thank her for that.

But that was not anymore an option. I was bound to the life of solitude as all Viera males were. After years of learning the way of survival in the surrounding forest, my master, Neve, deemed that I would be ready to go on my own. I knew that was the tradition. That was the way. But... My tears wouldn't stop flowing on the first day I was set to be on my own. It wasn't the solitude I was afraid of. I actually enjoyed the silence of the forest. The beautiful greenery and wild life. The nature's embrace. But I felt uneasy. It was the lack of connection that hurt me the most. Like I should be somewhere else. I found myself always going closer to my home village. Watching them live their lives. ...but sometimes I ventured too close. It soon became a problem. To the point that I would be facing the sharp tip of the spear of our esteemed female soldiers frequently. To the point that they threatened me with exile. That I should abandon the Green Word.

I chose for them. I camped at the edge of my home forest for days gathering courage to set my foot on the road to the unknown world. The first step seemed like the hardest thing I have ever done. I just couldn't do it. Rather than take step forward, I side stepped like crab, or backtracked to face my home forest.

But my struggles were not unknown. My master, Neve, had come to visit me. He was informed of my situation. Or so he told me. For one night, he sat with me. Under the moon and the starlight. We never talked too much, and this time was no different. But I felt like there was always a mutual connection. Understanding and love. I could feel that he only wanted what was best for me. And like always, he parted with wise words to rally me.

"Risti. You don't have to worry about the Green Word. It has been spoken for centuries, is spoken now and will be spoken in the future. Find your own Word. Your own voice." That's what he said. I hesitated. He could sense it.

He sighed with loving frustration. He knew me too well. "Five years from now. Under the same full moon. Let us meet again. Here. At the edge of the forest. Tell me of your adventures. Your joys. Your tears. Your love. Your Word. This is the final assignment I bestow upon you as your master."

Those are the words I live by. Those are the words that pushed me to take my first step outside. The first word written in my story. Now... It didn't feel final. I had a goal. I was no longer afraid of the unknown because I knew my master waited for me. I wasn't alone.

[vina-tealra]

Escaping Corvos

Vina escaping corvos successfully during garlean occupation and being on the first day of their long journey by sea to better shores. A time before they were a Warrior of Light, merely running to survive.

[destiny-islanders]

haven't beaten ffxvi yet, excited to get to the part where the dog flies

[lilyofthevalleycaughtintherain]

Live footage of me playing Eden's Promise raid questline

[abyssalmermaiden]

fellow wol x npc shippers- If applicable, what was the "oh" moment for you and your oc falling for their love interest? Was yours seperate from your WoL's?

[tearlunars]

a silver of faith.

[riftdancing]

I sat with my anger long enough...

until it told me its real name was grief.

I'm not a whole person...

and I don't think I ever will be.

Parts of me died in the house I grew up in...

and I visit them in my dreams.

When you aren't fed love on a silver spoon...

you learn to lick it off knives.

[tritoch]

in general trying to write a fully canon-compliant wol, as i conceive it, is an interesting project because the wol's life involves such a staggering amount of direct interpersonal violence it is almost beyond comprehension. the only people in the real world who did anything comparable are like, certain executioners for totalitarian states, and that's obviously a very different form of violence.

and like obviously combat in FFXIV should not in any way be taken as a 1:1 with real world violence, not least because the game repeatedly points to the idea that combat can in some sense be a joyous and glorious form of personal expression (as with ravana, susano, zenos, etc.), which doesn't really square with the reality of doing violence. but to even begin to conceive of a character who's capable of doing what the WoL does from ARR on and trying to take it somewhat seriously means basically making an extremely detached killing machine, who's fine using those skills for any rando willing to call the hit they're hiring you for a "quest".

it ends up dovetailing really nicely with the games as written, though; you start ARR being like "i am an instrument of violence directed by others :)" and not talking much or ever registering your own thoughts on anything, because who cares? you're a violence-doing machine. and then one of your friends gets mind-controlled and you gotta fight a might-makes-right fascist and you meet multiple people who think you personally are a really cool person with inherent value in their own right just by being a person and it's like, hm. maybe there are other ways to live. and that parallels really nicely with DRK in HW, and then you and alphinaud deciding that you are tired of endless sacrifices in the name of progress and you are going to save estinien, and then the WoL getting to walk into stormblood having really consciously chosen this fight rather than letting someone else choose for them.

obviously there are a lot of stories you can tell with your WoL but to me this is a big part of why my approach to it necessarily revolves primarily around violence and regret. you spend the core game and two expansions becoming a terrible angel of death and then get teleported to another world where you learn that some people literally consider you a psychopomp who escorts the dead to their final rests. then in the next expansion you meet someone who was unfortunate enough to be on the other end of things during your implacable killing machine days. THEN you accidentally cause the flower that symbolizes grief to be invented. the wol's whole life is haunted by overwhelming grief (mostly that of other people) and terrible violence (mostly their own).

[misedejem]

Sometimes I think about Hythlodaeus existing as part of Zodiark for so long, being the first to go of a trio of people who intended to live and die together, people he gave his everything to, and then returning to his senses and moving on after 12000 years of stasis

And despite all those years passing, getting to reunite with the souls of those two dear companions and maybe even fulfil the promise of returning to the Star by their sides after all

But Emet-Selch is twisted by millennia of grief and anguish, warped into a villain by a desperation to restore that which he lost, and Azem was sundered, soul split and reborn a thousand, thousand times, another person entirely

Of course he is not a negative person, and he - better than anyone - can see that they are not gone. Emet-Selch’s actions prove that he has not lost himself entirely despite all he has been through, and even though the Warrior of Light is not Azem, they still carry their legacy, and the parts of Azem that were so fundamental to their self that they were burned into their very Soul

But even so, they are undeniably different in a way that would be clear to anybody who had known them as intimately as Hythlodaeus had. How must that feel, reuniting with the people you loved so deeply and learning that they have changed so much while you have remained exactly the same

[alannah-corvaine]

ᴡᴏʟʙᴇʀᴛ ᴡᴇᴇᴋ 2024 ▶ ᴅᴀʏ 2 ↳ what if

say a prayer for the wounded heart within as i become the dark of you

[drag00ni]

Zana'a scars that i never posted

[this-love-is-delicate]

I think a really underrated moment in FFXIV is when Fordola is screaming at the WoL and Arinvald about how she swore she'd do whatever it takes to avenge her father's death, obviously out of pain believing that no one could understand that pain. And then she has an echo flashback to see the WoL's journey up to this point. "All that pain, all that power, it's too much for anyone... yet there you stand, unbroken," she says. I think that was really the first moment I realized and started to take into consideration just how hard everything had been for the WoL as a character. Suddenly they weren't just video game expansions that I played through, they truly became stories that became a part of my WoL's history, and I truly realized just how much of a journey I've been through.

[wildstar25]

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-> In pursuit of a playmate, a young Y'shtola created a water-based familiar by applying lessons learned from her mentor. -> As a lonely child, a self-taught Arsay used an aged codex stolen from her guardian to summon herself a friend.

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Them! Because sometimes your wolship end up having similar childhood experiences despite their different circumstances and I think that's a really sweet connection between them <3

[hueblees]

haven’t posted here in forever

anyway fell into the artist trap of playing the critically acclaimed mmorpg and getting attached to my wol. here’s her stb and post-ew glams

[deathflare]

o i forgot to crosspost this

meteor/erenville 🔞 (light) after lvl 92 msq dialogue line -> [poipiku]

[tearlunars]

the scions guard dog.