#eorzea80 lore

[eorzea80]

Ok. So hear me out...what if Thom survives by being transported to The First? ----- "'Thoma! Please!" "Mr. Exarch! You are far too cautious. As you can see, I've made it down the rail unscathed!" The Crystal Exarch sighs and places his cooler hand against his temples. This new guest is not unwelcome, but rather challenging. "Yes, but this is our commercial district. Our citizens need to pass down those stairs and might want for the use..." He sighs deeply, yet again." ...Of a railing." "...at 6 AM? Really, 'Raha?" The Crystal Exarch starts forward to cover Thom's mouth. Thom pulls up his board against his hands. G'raha starts to flush and spit.

"Thoma, no! These people...how, how do you know? They cannot discover...!" Thom taps the rough of the board against his lips, looking innocently at the stained glass ceiling. "That's a secret of us stick holders. You know I was a Lancer, then a Dragoon for a time. I knew a little of your exploits on Sharlayan...from my wife..." G'raha starts to look pale. He looks pleadingly up at Thom to not destroy his legacy; Minfilia's legacy on The First. Not to destroy what Pryne helped him to accomplish.

Thom pats G'raha on the back and hears a disturbing rattle. His brain spins out, "Not just too stony, also much too thin...damn this guy."

Thom clears his throat. "But miqo'te to mystel," They both soften and smile. G'raha starts to melt with relief, "I'm in for whatever Pryne is in for. Your secret is always safe with me." "Except at dawn, apparently." Thom chuckles at G'raha's admonishment. "Yes, with dawn comes the truth..."

Thom spreads his arms wide around them both, soaking in the sunrise.

"Say, do you want to learn how to ride this thing, O CRYSTAL EXARCH!" He shouts to the ends of Musica Universalis, as vendors creep towards their stands in the dim light. From Philline emerges a small hoot of approval. Hanji-Fae just chuckles. "Goodness no! I couldn't..." "Come on then!" Thom grabs the leader of The Crystarium by the midsection and places his feet firmly on the board. "I know you need a better way to get around than on foot. Let's figure this out, mystel to mystel, understood?" G'raha blushes for a moment. He suddenly can see what Pryne was saying when she looked at the stars around the Crystal Tower, seaching for Thom in the unfixed aether. "Understood." ---- MEANWHILE IN EITHERYS ---- "MS. CARIS!! PLEASE DO NOT SKATE INSIDE THE BAR!" "Oh, Vendingway. You are a stuffed shirt." "MS. CARIS. I DO NOT KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS. I JUST KNOW YOU ARE SPLITTING THE FLOORBOARDS!"

[eorzea80]

[i have far too much power] Pryne and Thom fly back to the bar on Pip and Vesper. Ma Mère has the place positively crystalized. Banners made of prism cut glass, quartz and topaz. "My child is a magpie, I know what she wants! MORE GLITTER!"

From the moment Thom kicks open the apartment door, Pryne in hand, there's an absolute riot. Friends and relations from Sharlayan, Gridania, Ishgard, Ala Mhigo all go off like a meteor shower.

Thom and Pryne step behind the bar, open a Realm Reborn Red, soak their nearest and dearest friends and cross arms for a toast. "Alright, now that's out of the way, everything's on the house!" Pryne bellows, "OPEN BAAAARRR." "Whoa, are you sure that's ok? Do we have enough to cover?" Pryne winks. "It's my bar. Don't you trust me?" Thom sighs heavily, then rolls up his sleeves. "Alright. I haven't missed the culinary trade, but house rules!"

--

Once most of the party is sleeping all over Lily Hills, Thom tucks Pryne into bed. Ma Mère is cleaning; wiping down the bar and gently preserving every decorative bauble in a wooden crate. Thom squeezes her shoulder. "Hey." "My son. I think I know what you're going to ask."

"Yeah. She wasn't expecting anything, but..."

"Havre wasn't well. The doctors, they didn't recommend he make the trip." "I know, Amynedd. I appreciate that you asked them, all the same."

Thom gives her a great hug. "I won't be much longer. I'll ring the bell on the way out and then you can get on with the **real wedding**." Pryne's mother throws a knowing look Thom's way. "Ack. No, Ma Mère! Do not perceive us!" "Ha, and so I shan't!" Amynedd rings the bell by the door. "Blessings to you both. My children bring me joy upon joy!" Thom chuckles to himself as he navigates the narrow passage behind the bar and into bed. Pryne is already deeply passed out. It's only a small concern to him; he has the rest of his life to enjoy his wife's company. "His wife," hmmm. It does have a certain ring to it. He watches the early morning light play upon the stained glass above her, no **their** bed. It dyes Pryne's face in watercolors, rippling like pond waves. "Maybe I'm just lucky," Thom wonders.

[eorzea80]

So I'm toying with some anti-lore crud...

I'm thinking about a timeline where Thom Grimaline and Pryne Caris are both Azem. How would that work?

It wouldn't, unless someone who cared about them interceded on their behalf. Enter Emet-Selch/Hades. Pryne, who in my headcanon is Mnemosyne, becomes Azem. They are close to another Amaurotian named Calliope, aka. G'thoma Tia, aka. Thom Grimalline.

That being said, Mnemosyne has been close to Hades and Hythlodaeus for longer. They both love Mnemosyne and would do anything to keep them safe. Enter The Final Days. Pryne loves Emet-Selch, but they also love Calliope. Hythlodaeus sacrifices himself to see all of them live. When the second culling happens, Emet cannot bring himself to see Mnemosyne cast themselves on the pyre with Calliope. Emet intercedes on Mnemosyne's behalf. Calliope dies in the Zodiark culling, but instead of his soul joining with the primal, Emet lends a shard of Calliope to the soul of Azem. He allows Mnemosyne to have everything they ever wanted. Their lover, close as skin, can be with them forever.

"Isn't this what you wanted? Isn't this enough to make you love me?"

Mnemosyne's voice turns hard as glass. "It is not, Hades."

In later days, Pryne feels Thom's presence. Because Emet's intervention, Calliope is reborn. It's only after Thom disappears in The Source that she finally appreciates Emet's efforts. Calliope is always with her, and in a way, Emet is always with her, as well.

Which makes losing them both a third time...

[eorzea80]

As it is Solstice, and as I am wont to [stay up until dawn and worry the heck out of my living spouse, daroga], and wait for some House of Ill Repute to pay out its winnings, I suppose I will weave a yarn. I had always set out for my WoL...if I can call "her" that, to be "the older but wiser [girl]"

[From here on out, I'm going to dispense with qualifiers. While I have a rather casual relationship with gender, my character, despite their obvious Mary/Boy Named Sue qualities uses she/her pronouns. Anything beyond that is for her to figure out in time.] I didn't want her to be a chipper 17-year-old HS senior featured in so many fantasy and sci-fi narratives.

[Please ignore my Sukeban Deka cosplay in the thumbnail].

On the other hand, I didn't think she could carry a hardened Ripley-esque facade. A Merlwyb I am not.

I did want to integrate a few circumstances from my life and reflect the fact that I do have a partner whom I love and respect, but for whom MMO's are kind of a no-go. I want to be able to RP, but avoid some of the complications I've heard about. Please keep in mind that I do not possess the "smells like lore"...ya know, ...lore? I just looked on Amazon for those books and I think I'm going to be sick at the price. I'm just going off of what little I've played over 10 years. Remember, dungeons make me break out in hives, so I only ever got the courage to attempt them in Shadowbringers/Endwalker. [Deep breath] Pryne Caris is the child of researchers on Sharlyan, with family ties to Gridania and Ishgard. As is usually the case, once her mother was with child, she set aside her ambitions in favor of raising her daughter and supporting her husband's research [true story]. Pryne was a quick study. Beyond knowing *of* Y'shtola, who was a few years above her, *of* G'raha, who was a few years below her, and maybe babysitting the Leveilleur twins [THRICE, NEVER AGAIN, true story], Pryne had few academic contacts outside of her year [In theory, Krile should have been a bestie, but I can't find THE LORE to support that]. Nevertheless, she still rose through the the ranks, buoyed by her parents' confidence and competence. It seems to me that she would have sought out the opportunity to become an Archon and possibly been a Student of Baldesion...but a few circumstances intervened. In the years preceding the Seventh Umbral Calamity, Pryne's father began to go mad. As his work became increasingly useless to the cause of Etheirys, he was stripped of his duties and institutionalized in a facility within Labyrinthos. His family, not being current or vested researchers within Sharlyan, were given a choice: Stay in their home and work to subsidize his care, with almost nothing left over for their own needs; or leave and have his care fully funded by the institution. It really wasn't much of a choice. Pryne's research was left behind unfinished; a torch for other students to carry [true story, that's how it works in academia sometimes]. I haven't the foggiest clue what she was specializing in, as she came to her fighting class later in life, but I imagine she was trying to find some woo-woo link between magical and physical classes; something that G'raha may have picked up on as he became our favorite All-Rounder. She and "Ma Mère" left for Gridania, stayed with kinfolk in Central Shroud for a spell, and then splurged on an apartment in the Lily Hills complex. Beside doing academic spec work for Gridanian government and guilds, they established a bar, "Salutations" [Cheers], which is where they turned most of their gil. Within a year, they went from sleeping in a double-bed behind the bar to each having an apartment of their own, one floor apart [true story...you're going to see a lot of those *cough* Mary Sue *cough*] Around the end of their first year in Gridania, as conditions worsened, a regular patron invited her to the Lancers' Guild in town.

"You know, just so you can defend yourself." "I can defend myself just fine, thank you!" "I'm sure you can, but it's much more convincing with a pointy stick!"

Again, she was a quick study. He tutored her and when her researcher's mind absorbed all he could give, he referred her on to the guild leader; and then on to Coerthas.

"Come back to me when you are a Dragoon. Come back to The Shroud and we will be married."

In her head, the peace of The Sanctum and the fires of Carteneau flash back and forth, strobing, blinding.

"We were both there, side by side, hand in hand, ready to meet our uncertain future. We moved but a finger and one of us vanished."

Like most afflicted with post-Calamity amnesia, Pryne cannot remember the fate of her husband on the fields of Carteneau.

Unlike those afflicted, a new vision has cropped up to take the place of those irradiated memories.

Hydaelyn.

Pryne was not asking for someone to kick her in the pants and out of mourning for her husband. Her mother certainly wasn't going to go there, having barely mourned her own husband's loss as well. Oh, no, no. Our dear Hydaelyn, our Friend From Another End[walker], was there to show us the way out of our grief. Show us = SEND US ON A MESSIANIC QUEST WITH A BUNCH OF OLD CLASSMATES. So now she's here. Saving suicidal bird girls and trying not to see all the similarities between her husband [WHO MIGHT STILL BE OUT THERE] and this five-foot-three flagon of charged Hawaiian Punch. Who may or may not be a former classmate. Who she may or may not have saved from being a giant quartz statue. ----- [I WON THE LOTTERY! I NEVER WIN CRAP! It's kind of a life-changing amount of gil. I have no clue what I'm going to do with it [nothing, I'm doing nothing, I'm saving it for a nest egg and never touching it like in real life].

And now she's back at Salutations, watching careworn former soldiers make terrible jokes on her stand-up stage. Keeping Alisaile from raiding the bar ["Why do I never have this issue with Alphinaud?"]. Keeping gil in the jukebox. Keeping it all from slipping through her fingers a third time.

----- Please be kind to my lore that is not lore. A lot of it is left ambiguous so that I can maybe write my partner in at a later date, if they care to join. Also, because I DON'T HAVE THE LORE BOOKS BUT NOW I KNOW THEY EXIST AND I WANT THEM.

[eorzea80]

Some snapshots from Little Ladies' Day/Hatching-tide/Tribal Quests/That weird time when I tried to queue for "The Wind Rises" and kept getting timed out and a penalty (?). Things haven't been so great IRL and to complicate matters, I believe my Long COVID chickens have finally come home to roost. A ton of fatigue, joint and muscle pain, difficulty concentrating. I'm going to try and get through the Post-Endwalker content before Dawntrail drops, but...IDK man, it's going to be tough. I'm just looking for those little wins, so I thought a throwback post to the early days of Eorzea80 would be nice. No captions, no lore, just right.