#eidin lore

[eidingate]

Roevember Day 5: Stargazing

Excerpt from a letter to a little sister: Do you remember our summer in the Burn, how by day the white sand was piercingly bright, but by night it rolled out into malms of blackness, and the sky in response burst into colorful nebulas that we could have never seen closer to civilization? We would lay on our backs and fashion our own names for the shapes that we saw, inventing constellations and claiming them for our own. You insisted that one particularly vibrant cluster of stars was a whale. Your big blue sky whale.  Even in this dark place, I've caught myself searching for it. Am I looking at the same stars you and I did on those nights? If I gaze at them from the right angle, will I see them aligning? Your sky whale, following me all the way here to the end of things?

[eidingate]

Eidin’s goal in life is to have enough friends in every city-state that she’s always got a couch or a floor to crash on. She’s never been one to put down roots, so she’s uninterested in purchasing a house or apartment for herself. Inns are fine, camping is fine, but nothing beats rolling up to a friend’s door in the middle of the night, jetlagged because the nearest aetheryte is half a continent away from where she teleported from, and being welcomed inside by someone familiar.

She’s always a good guest: brings gifts from her travels, cooks, does odd jobs around the place, cleans up after herself. She’s rarely anywhere long enough to overstay her welcome, which is a nightmare for anyone trying to get ahold of her (delivery moogles invented entire curse words for her).

Since Tataru stuck her with an island, she was quick to set up extra campsites so that she could finally return the favor to some of her regular hosts. The island is always seeing a rotating cast of guests, even when she’s not around. Which is hardly ever. It’s really the mammets’ island.

‪#WOLpromptAday‬

‪February 15, 2024‬

Where does your WoL like to sleep/crash? Friends house, FC house, an inn, or camp in the wilds? OR are they the friend whose home everyone else crashes at? ‬

‪What feels safe enough for them to spend more than a few hours napping? ‬

[eidingate]

Excerpt from a letter to a little sister: Eden Foxglove is the name I called myself when I moved to Gridania. Something a bit earthy, a bit easier for the locals to pronounce. There are some in those woods who still call me that. Foxglove is certainly easier on them than Kupfohcwin. Daughter of copper fox. What do you suppose our Sharlayan grandparents were thinking when they imparted that name upon fatyr? Did they hope he would be clever as he is? Did they forget that foxes are known for their tricks? I remember the other time I changed my name, how you and Wilt teased me. "Why would you call yourself Eidin? What oath are you pledging?"  You misunderstood. I'm not swearing an oath. I am the oath.

[eidingate]

Roevember Day 30: Dawn

Excerpt from a letter to a little sister: Fraelona, when I started writing these letters to you years ago, it was with the promise that I'd share with you what I could not share with anyone else. That you would learn the good and the bad, the absurd and the all-too-real that would make our parents shudder to hear it.  I never realized what a comfort it would be, to have you as my confidant in all things, even the parts that it hurt to write of. Every path I have walked, I have walked with you there. Every mortal peril I have faced, I have known that I must survive, if only to tell you the tale of it. You have always been my traveling companion, and that means the world to me, little sister. We had some dark days, but things are looking brighter all the time. So get on the gods damned boat and come join me over here. I have a whole continent that still needs exploring, and I need my sister riding beside me. You're going to love the alpacas, I promise.  With love, always, Eidin

This isn't the end of Roevember for me, as I've still got several prompts cooking, but I'm going to take a page out of other people's books and jump ahead to join this "finale" day. Thank you all for the prompts and inspiration, for sharing your Roes' stories and photos, and for all of the encouragement and positivity. I am constantly blown away by the wit and creativity of this community, not to mention how kind and supportive all of you are.

It's been so much fun finding Eidin's voice and figuring out how to convey her story. Thank you for reading these little notes that she has written.

[eidingate]

Roevember Day 19: Temper

Excerpt from a letter to a little sister: Do you remember the kobold clan, Fraelona? The ones who travelled with us for a bit after they got displaced from their dig? We used to play with the young ones – games of quickness and cleverness, puzzles and stories and endless hide-and-seek.  They say that once a person is tempered, their mind is gone. They've no will of their own left. The best that can be done for them is to kill them quickly, before they summon their gods once again.  A tragic reality. Every time, a tragedy. There is an eagerness here to forget the tragedy of it, as if having their fears and their faith exploited is a crime worthy of the outcome. No one seems to see that the summoners themselves were the first victims.

[eidingate]

Roevember Day 20: Chase

Excerpt from a letter to a little sister: Do you ever wonder who we would be if we'd put down roots? Do you think we ever will? I sometimes consider what it would be like: a warm hearth, a familiar space, a garden and a cat and a teapot always at the ready.  But feet like ours weren't meant to keep still, were they? We skip on the wind, chasing new skies. Some boots were made to collect road dust.

[eidingate]

Roevember Day 9: Trade

Excerpt from a letter to a little sister: How easy it is to forget, among all the world-saving business, the simpler pleasures of the land around us. I've always been fond of flowers, but never had the chance to learn much about them.  I was honored to meet an expert in the field, but I must confess that I can hardly remember a word she said about them. When her callused fingers, hands accustomed to rough and heavy work, delicately tucked a sunflower into my hair, I was left utterly breathless.  (Yes, I know. Somebody in the world exists who can make me stop talking.) I had promised to make a trade for her gift, but the rough gemstones and bits of ore on my person could not have possibly sufficed. A beauty like hers deserves beauty in kind. I promised her that I would find her something worthy before next we met.  Yes, that was perhaps an excuse to ensure there will be a next meeting. Now, do I bring her a fire opal – warm and bright like her smile? Or perhaps a tourmaline from the Shroud – green and calming like her presence?

[Featuring @ravandfriendsxiv's Lone Snowdrop!]

[eidingate]

Roevember Day 18: Comrades

Excerpt from a letter to a little sister: She was the first of the Scions who I trusted. The only one, for a long time. I once watched her toss a hyur man nearly my height out the door with naught but her words, her pleasant smile turned to a bold smirk, and realized that she was not nearly so naive as her gentle demeanor suggested.  Tataru sees to the heart of people. Even when others have had reason to doubt me, doubt my intentions and my past, she never has.

[eidingate]

Roevember Day 10: Festival

Excerpt from a letter to a little sister: Do you know, in Gridania they have a festival devoted to frightening children on purpose? A relic of darker times, it seems, when the fright was real and voidsent were said to parade through the streets, plucking children in the night. Now it is a celebration of joy and laughter, terror turned to screams of delight and endless plates of cookies.  I sometimes wonder whether our own times will be immortalized in this way, the terrors stripped away in the retelling and distilled down to children's games. Would they chase each other around in cloaks of black darkness? Would they eat confectionaries inspired by each Primal? Would they create effigies of those who terrorized us, to tear apart or burn or hang aloft?  I hope they pick Zenos for that last one.

[eidingate]

Roevember Day 4: Ship

Excerpt from a letter to a little sister: There is a missive that circulated among Sharlayan's engineers, saying that in no uncertain terms was I allowed into the Ragnarok's engine room. Did they imagine that I would attempt to steal the bolts out of the very ship meant to fly my comrades and me into an unknown and likely hostile world? Actually, this sounds like Thuvwilt's doing. Leave it to him to sneak a means of teasing his little sister into the end of the world.  So anyway, I broke into the engine room.  I needed to see it, this miraculous aetherburner that was meant to propel us to the stars. This device, fueled by the very Primals that I once dedicated all my efforts to destroying. A ship that literally runs on hope and prayer.  I admit that for all the engines I have taken apart for scrap, I would not even know where to start with this one. All I can do is trust the hands that made it, the prayers that drive it, the plans we have made until now.

[eidingate]

Roevember Day 7: Crowd

Excerpt from a letter to a little sister: I won't pretend that there aren't times when it feels like I am suffocating beneath the weight of the world's darkness. When I can hardly breathe for it all: the horrors we have seen and the ones yet to come, the fear for our loved ones and the weight of the world's needs.  The best way I've ever known how to cope is to seek out others. To feel the throng of their movement around me, hear their myriad voices rising up into a roaring chorus. To see the tapestry of their faces in a dozen different colors, a hundred different expressions, all of it flowing and churning and bubbling like an incoming tide.  I am part of this tide. I must not forget this. I am not an island floating above it, alone with naught but the shuddering of my own breath.  We are beings of aether. We absorb it from the world around us, from the very planet beneath our feet. Why, then, should we not also draw on it from each other, in even the smallest ways? Surely there is some resonance between us when we gather.

[eidingate]

Roevember Day 6: Storm

Excerpt from a letter to a little sister: What does it say about me, that every person I have ever truly fallen for has carried a shield? Do I look at them and see a shelter in the storm? I cannot shake the feeling that I've never seen a shield that could not be broken.

[eidingate]

Roevember Day 22: Reflection

Excerpt from a letter to a little sister: It's far too complex, trying to make sense of where the Source and its reflections intersect. Sometimes I am stricken by a moment of familiarity: the curve of a coastline, the ornate base of a marble pillar, a pattern stitched into a tunic. It's enough to make me wonder if I am seeking patterns where there are none, reaching for familiarity to make sense of an alien world.  Sometimes familiarity resonates in the strangest of places. A shock of blue glowing bright, trickling and pooling along a darkened hillside. Not ceruleum spilling out from the bowels of a burnt out machine, but flowers.  There is some kind of poetry here, I suppose. How horror and beauty can so easily wear the same shade of blue.

[eidingate]

Roevember Day 21: Fear(less)

Excerpt from a letter to a little sister: What does an empire look like? For us, sometimes it appeared to be a force of nature: faceless, calamitous, inescapable. Like torrential rain, bearing down on everything beneath. Like the ocean, tides swelling up to flood the shores, carving and reshaping all that it met.  Except when we saw the cracks of fallible humanity in it. Arrogance making soldiers sloppy enough to leave valuable equipment unattended. Resentment making conscripted guards shrug and glance away from rebel movements.  Even so, I never thought of the face on Garlean currency as belonging to a person. What humanity could I ascribe to Solus zos Galvus?  Likewise, what humanity could I ascribe to the Ascians?  Is it easier to fight an adversary with thoughts and feelings of their own? Is it a comfort to know the destruction of places and people you loved was brought by calculated malice rather than simple causality?  When I look back on my life, I realize that I have spent nearly every day of it fighting the machinations of only one man. Can I feel better for it? Does seeing the cracks of humanity at the heart of the hurricane bring comfort? And yet, so rarely are we afforded the opportunity to confront the hurricane. To have it ask what made us what we are. I looked him in the eye, and I told him, "you are the architect of every nightmare I have ever lived."

[eidingate]

Roevember Day 17: Blood

Excerpt from a letter to a little sister: My nights have often been haunted by dreams of blood-red skies. I watch the meteors fall like glowing droplets, fire and blood weeping from the heavens.  They say that this is the inciting vision that always precedes the Echo, that meteors tearing through the sky often hail the coming of a Calamity and the awakening of new Echo users.  Not mine, though. My dreams trailed behind my awakening like an afterthought. An echo of an Echo, blood following the knife, a prophecy uttered after the fact.

[eidingate]

Glamtober Day 8: Ilsabard

This is necessary. When you live under Garlean rule, sometimes the only boots you’ll find are the ones you pulled off a dead soldier, and wearing the colors of your oppressors is what you do to keep warm.

But people forget that Garlemald is not Ilsabard. There were other cultures there before and they have not vanished completely.

The Sea Wolves of the Northern Empty surely would have spread into parts of western Ilsabard, as they did Sharlayan. Since they’re based heavily on vikings, this is how I picture traditional Sea Wolf garb.

Scavenger gear:

Head: Replica sky pirate's mask of striking Body: Late allagan robe of casting Hands: Tekko #55 Bottoms: Anamnesis hose of casting Feet: Chokka #55

Sea Wolf gear:

Head: White daisy corsage Body: Isle shepherd's tunic Hands: Serpentskin halfgloves of casting Feet: Tigerskin thighboots of aiming