#and yes. macchi has the really pale eyes that ysayle has. this is all extremely intentional

[shivasdarknight]

i may have. a few.

Gwendoline de Lacroix is a Gridanian noblewoman, the team's main healer since ARR, a very well versed scholar, and your resident necromancer 😌

She's a bit snooty and selective with who she attaches herself to since her fields of study and work require her to be severely more cautious than most. Necromancy is something she initially began to study out of morbid curiosity, but now it's worked its way into being her main form of study. She already comes from a long line of conjurers and chirurgeons - specializing in conjury and alchemy long before ARR starts - and found necromancy to be a "natural conclusion" to these interests. By ARR, she already knows how to disrupt the aether of undead servants, can summon a handful of her own (mostly skeletons), and has a strong grasp of the magic's fundamentals. As it goes on, she gains greater control over what she can control, what she can reanimate, how much she can command at once, and has applied that - to a degree - to her white magic not just from studying how necromancy plays upon the nature of umbral magic and its ties to stasis, but from having to deal with a Dark Knight main tank who's extremely reckless but gives her ideas on how to adapt things (such as Living Dead) to her own spellbook. Souls still elude her, but that's part of why she works with The Great Work now :)

Gwen has major only child syndrome, and it can honestly be kinda funny at times when so much of this story does revolve around sibling relationships. She's a demi femme lesbian, she's polyamorous, and as of ENW she's seeing five people: Y'shtola, Nidhana, Venat, Zero, and Surkukteni (main wol, not an elezen so not here). So yeah, the white mage is a necromancer and is also dating God Herself.

Then there's this fruit. Seraphin Eldridge was a gladiator for the Bloodsands and merc-for-hire type before becoming a Warrior of Light. He was born into the Velodyna Duskwight clan to the Evrardoux family, but unfortunately never knew them too well as the Garleans swept in and slaughtered most of them. They lived on the border of the Shroud and Gyr Abania, mostly preferring to be in Gyr Abania as the Ala Mhigans were often way more welcoming of the group. And it's because of that, that not only did Seraphin lose his entire blood family to the Garleans, but was quickly adopted by Ala Mhigan family friends who took him and raised him in Little Ala Mhigo. They've done what they can to help him retain a connection back to his family - such as the face tattoo he keeps under his bangs that now has a dual meaning of both a clan mark and the traditional face tattoos that Ala Mhigans get - and he feels like he has to repay them somehow and quickly became the breadwinner of the family in his many jobs around Ul'dah.

Seraphin was the team's first tank, as of course he winds up as a Paladin. He falls more into the core belief system of Paladins rather than their role as police - which is a good reason as to why he cut ties with the Sultansworn quickly. He was only recommended because of his skills as a gladiator, but began to pursue what paladins were prior to them being effectively co-opted into Ul'dah's military. You can also tell he's genuinely more of a goody-two-shoes since he's quick to pick up Red Magic under X'rhun and continues to help him rebuild the Crimson Duelists.

This man's gay. Very gay. His boyfriend - Teodore - is a man he was supposed to guard, but the two fell for each other because they're hopeless. He and Gwendoline are apart of the original Warriors of Light group, which is funny because they're actually cousins. It's a convoluted plot that has to do with Gridania's nonsense, but in short: Gwen had a disowned brother, who would go on to be Seraphin's blood father (that he doesn't remember). Sera's a spitting image of his mother - aka the woman who got his father disowned - and the entire thing ends up getting to Gwen really badly, only driving her further away from the Lacroixs and into her controversial work.

and then this asshole, Melisande Lanverlais. She's the start of the weird ones, and the only Ishgardian Elezen I've got so far. Of course that's not why she's weird lore wise, just weird in terms of group dynamics because she can be a downright miserable person. I'm shamelessly plugging the fic she's predominantly featured in so folks can get a sense of how bad she can get, but her rancid personality comes from years of trying to keep people away from her. Messy family situation, messier relationship stuff, and just overall a very miserable person and miserable person to be around. Maybe she gets better once she's fully introduced to wol stuff, maybe she doesn't - you'll have to see :)

The thing that makes her the start of the weird ones is the fact that Melisande is someone who has not a hint of dynamis in her soul, and the only one that has no connections to the ascians whatsoever. She's an anomaly in the sense that she's mortal and has this aetherically dense soul, but it's not that weird if you consider her sole past life: that of the Great Wyrm, Ratatoskr. Melisande is the only example so far of a Great Wyrm reincarnating and has been diligently watched over by Hydaelyn and Midgarsormr both to see what would happen. Took nearly a thousand years to reincarnate, but here she is - without a single memory of who she was prior, yet this deep discomfort as she knows that something is wrong. She was born with natural heterochromia (bout the only one of my characters where that's the case), but because she's not one of the original souls of Etheirys, her receiving Hydaelyn's blessing caused things to go a bit fucky - turning that blue eye of hers to crystal. She doesn't realize that it's an Echo, but it's certainly made things harder.

She's drank dragon's blood and it didn't seem to have an effect on her, she's a top ranking fighter at the Bloodsands, she's the one who took Seraphin in and helped him get his bearings so he'd not be used by his manager. She prefers to keep to herself, but there's still that hint of wishing a few people could do better than she's wound up since she feels like she's a lost cause. She's the replacement co-tank when Seraphin can't bring himself to leave the Ala Mhigan resistance during the Doma half of STB, so this is her first taste of just...actually traveling, even if it's under the pretense of war. It's not fleeing for her life from Ishgard to Ul'dah - it's honest to god traveling and something kind of clicks.

Melisande is the epitome of a disaster bisexual, but there are so few people she has actual interest in - she mostly just uses this as a way to build herself a rancid reputation so that it gets back to her nasty family and hopefully tarnishes their image too, since that's the bastard kid- doing as a bastard does. She's gonna end up with Yotsuyu, so this is gonna be fun (:

NOW SHE'S A FUN ONE. This is the oldest person on this list, and this is Iolaine Monranguin - at least, that's her name presently. Iolaine is a ~3000 year old Allagan elezen, and unlike the Allagans we have met, she's in her original body. Iolaine used to go by the name Urth, and she was a double agent working to bring Allag down from the inside with her partner, Odin (who in this is @/hyllhund's oc, a he/him butch Odin .w.) but the two were found out. In order to maintain Iolaine's cover, Odin was slain by her hand so she could remain in the Empire's good graces and won herself the "gift" of immortality. She did indeed live to see the fall of Allag - aiding in it as best as she could - but she was the only insurrectionist to not be caught and executed.

Iolaine then proceeded to go through countless identities over the years as she went from Allag to Mhach to Belah'dia to early Ala Mhigo, scooping up whatever magicks she could. She was a proficient Summoner back in Allag, one of the original Black Mages of Mhach, was apart of the redefinitions of magic in Belah'dia, and one of the original Crimson Duelists that stuck with the order until Garlemald brought Ala Mhigo down. During the Sixth Astral Era, she took up the identity of Iolaine - which she has since maintained - and joined the with the Velodyna Duskwight clan around the time of its formation and remained with them as their history keeper. Of course everyone thinks she's fucking weird for being a 10'2" damn near purple elezen that never seems to age and has stuck around for centuries, but her memory is impeccable so they never complained.

Whilst living between the Shroud and Gyr Abania, Iolaine managed to summon and maintain the primal, Odin. And since then she has maintained his shade through the Eureka weapon, Zantetsuken. She's the one who lures adventurers to the blade so that he might rise again, time after time. When the Velodyna Clan was wiped out, she went further into Ala Mhigo to escape the destruction rather than flee into the Shroud. In a sense she has become somewhat of an asset to the Ala Mhigan Resistance due to her status as a Crimson Duelist, but it means that there's been a lapse in Odin's death and his reappearance - and she can't stand for that.

So she's a ~3000 gnc bisexual bitch who I was trying to effectively make into a female Howl but instead I got Jareth the Goblin King and y'know what, I'm fine with it. She's batshit and I love her.

and this guy's mega hella dead, but what do you expect when this is the past life of a character that's alive in the present day. Ammut was an Allagan elezen like Iolaine and actually worked with her to try and bring Allag down; they just had very different definitions of how they went about that work, and he was frankly horrified by the fact that she killed her own partner. Being a fairly high ranking member of that empire, he wound up as 12' and some of the best transitioning procedures to have ever graced the star (because yup, bi trans man). He was the brother to Amon, but the two very much so did not see eye to eye. He was a vocal opponent of the expansion into Meracydia, but he framed it in such a way that was constantly skirting what could and could not be said.

Behind closed doors, he was a lot more radical. At some point he found himself in contact with the Meracydian resistance and managed to funnel aid their way. One of his main contacts - the general, Macchi (a Mithra and close companion/pactbearer of Tiamat) - greatly disliked him and saw him as a path to ruin because he just didn't believe that Amon's own blood would ever turn against the empire, but Ammut was genuine in his intentions and aid. And honestly, his dedication to this work wound up with him being in a very similar situation as Macchi, instead having a very close relationship with/became a pactbearer of Bahamut. Eventually, Ammut and Macchi do end up together, but Macchi was right that the intervention would lead to their downfall - just not in the way he'd anticipated.

Amon caught the both of them. He knew that the vocal opposition wasn't everything to Ammut's betrayal and monitored his brother's actions for a while before capturing him and Macchi. And as a way to gloat that he finally had the upper hand, he executed them in a way even the Allagans found inhumane - summoning powerful voidsent into their still living bodies - so that they might be used to bring down the nation they sought to protect. Macchi was slain first with the voidsent, Macha (which would lead to the naming of Mhach, actually), while Ammut was killed with the voidsent, Diarmuid Ua Duibhne. The rage these two had kept them from reincarnating for three thousand years, and Hydaelyn wasn't exactly too keen on letting them go even after that long because of who their original souls were. But she did anyways-

-and Ammut would reincarnate as Surkukteni, the one Venat met in Elpis that had seen such horrific shit that it spurred her into becoming Hydaelyn. While Macchi would reincarnate as Ysayle, so this vicious cycle could repeat with those two, as well.

yeah the elezen blorbos are fucking batshit but i love them.

also just for an idea of how tall Ammut and Iolaine are, this is Surkie (6'1") vs Macchi (6'3" - Melisande is 6'4" as a comparison) vs Iolaine (10'2") vs Ammut (12')

also look at THEM

I love the ff community sometimes, like, with my OC post, I still get notes, I have followed like, 100 or so new blogs, I get to see so many pretty characters. I could say, "Hey, show me your elezen!" And get dozens of screenshots on this post.

In fact.

Please show me your elezen, I feel like I never see them.