#garlean warrior of light

[chrysalispen]

ffxivwrite collections

i am probably not going to take a very active part in ffxivwrite this year for a lot of personal reasons (i'm not going to stop writing ffxiv fic, i've just been busy and dealing with ongoing health problems this year) so instead i am linking my older works here for anyone who wishes to read them!

a lot of things in my writing and my longfic plans have changed from when i wrote some of these, but ffxivwrite has always made for very good writing exercises and has even helped me solidify backstory for my WoL, so i've left them up to that end.

collection 1, sept 2019: tales of radiance

collection 2, sept 2020: above the tide of hours

collection 3, sept 2021: the cold heavens (still in progress as this was written while i was actively in the middle of moving out of texas ;; but tbh this collection has some of my personal favorites so i'm very fond of it still!)

collection 4, sept 2022: my tale again for me shall sing (largely wol-centric backstory)

[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).

[nini-dirthara-lothlenanas]

I love this outfit soooo much.

[fatedroses]

Chance encounters in Costa del Sol.

[contresixted]

pixel perler comms done for

@sageexmachina

@miqolena

and

TheWalt70

VGEN / DISCORD

[akirakirxaa]

𝐴𝑛𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑚𝑒 𝐴𝑛𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑟𝑒𝑣𝑜𝑙𝑢𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑟𝑦 ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑣𝑒𝑛𝑙𝑦 𝑟𝑜𝑚𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑊𝑎𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑙𝑎𝑠𝑡 𝑤𝑎𝑙𝑡𝑧

[ the full screens cause they're pretty ]

[twinkle-art]

Andromeda's garlean, or at least raised in garlean society, right? How'd she take the whole Varis/Anima thing in Endwalker? Or just the Garlemald section as a whole? If you've done all the EW role quests, how'd she feel about that last blasphemy?

unfortunately for her, she sure is! she was raised by her garlean mother and spent her entire childhood in the capital city so coming back to that under the circumstances that she did was, frankly, the worst experience of her life. just a profoundly miserable, harrowing time for her.

wrt to the anima stuff, i don’t actually know how strongly it hit her through the noise of every other horrific thing she was seeing, but i think the revelation that the people of her homeland had been devoured by their own nationalistic fervor nauseated her first and foremost because of how it almost felt like a foregone conclusion- a sort of “of course that would be what destroyed them” reaction that, in the face of how gruesomely it actually played out, makes her too unsettled to really feel any sort of vindication at the karmic comeuppance. mostly it just makes her sad. 

(the particular way she personally suffered at the hands of garlean fascism did little to harden her to the many, many cruelties of war she both witnessed and participated in in her capacity as the warrior of light- she has always done what she must without complaint, but she has never been able to turn off the way she instinctively sees humanity in those she cuts down for the sake of justice, knowing they’re probably a lot like the kind of people she was raised in tenuous community with. she just tries not to think about it too hard.)

of course, within the larger context of the arc, it’s ALSO pretty hard for her to view it as any sort of divine retribution when she knows not only what real, tangible person is responsible for unleashing this disaster on them, but that he all but says he did it to get under her skin, specifically. she might even feel culpable for the massive civilian casualties, if she let herself think about it for more than ten seconds. good thing there’s always something else for her to be doing!

anyways, more broadly, the garlemald arc was when her elaborate lies about being a normal eorzean girl completely and utterly collapsed under the strain of actually returning to where she came from. the psychological toll of keeping up the façade with the ilsabard contingient (though the scions, lucia, maxima, and some others have all kept her secret for a while now) And being treated by the garlean populace as a foreign invader (which strikes a nerve she was surprised to realize was still raw after all this time) And not knowing if her mother, who she had very recently accepted might’ve been a more complicated figure than she assumed, was even alive was, frankly, just way too much. the jig is extremely up. she’s taking out her anguish by cursing out some uncooperative military guy who probably reminds her of her step-father in her native language. she keeps asking everyone they meet if they know a woman named lucretia eir caecus. she’s finding any reason to avoid regio urbanissima because if she sees her old home she’s probably gonna have a panic attack. it went Extremely Bad.

the one and pretty much only spot of hope for her during all this is that it did help to get it through her thick skull that her friends like, really really love her. alphinaud and alisaie were basically glued to her side as much as they could be and each had their own approaches to trying to protect her from something that they pretty obviously couldnt. and, for what it’s worth, even as word began to spread through the ilsabard contingient that Hey I Think She’s From Here? i simply don’t think it destroyed their respect for her the way she had convinced herself it would. if anything i think a lot of them just felt bad for how much of a toll this was clearly taking onher.

…sadly i have not actually done all the edw role quests (i’m REALLY bad about doing role quests. i didn’t even do the shb ones until i made that video essay in june. and we all know i’m a huge shadowbringers guy) so i can’t comment on that but i’m sure it’s probably in line with all of this. yeah <3

[ninitenebrae]

Niqesse in the new Reaper Artifact Gear.

[stephenfairbrook]

So, a wolqotd prompt on Twitter got me thinking. It's probably a good idea Gaius never took his helmet off during Praetorium. Don't worry, Cid. Cab's not that shallow. (...probably.)

[futureofdespair-xiv]

Are you honest? Is this what you wanted?

[ex-garlean]

“Was your journey good? Was it worthwhile?”

i think so.

[picaroroboto]

acta est fabula, plaudite

[amoebaforce]

Mayhaps you could do something with the scions' reactions to finding out the WoL is an ex-imperial soldier?

Maybe after they had fallen into a form of depressed state after killing (I forgot his name but big fucking shield dude from ARR).

ahh yes, our old friend Rhitahtyn! or as my fiancé and I call him, Ritalin.

this was a very good ask, anon! due to the time period requested, i decided to include Yda and Papalymo for your reading pleasure. enjoy! :D

characters featured: Thancred Waters, Y'shtola Rhul, Urianger Augerelt, Alphinaud Leveilleur, Yda Hext, Papalymo Totolymo tags: angst, canon war and violence, poor mental health, PTSD symptoms, ARR spoilers, gn!WoL

Thancred

He’s noticed the WoL withdrawing since Cape Westwind fell. Noticed how their eyes glaze when anyone brings up the Legion. It was a bigger, deeper sadness than Thancred had ever seen in their face. Closer to guilt, really. But why? 

The answer evades Thancred, until he catches the WoL crying in the back room of a tavern. Only then does he finally hear the truth. Thancred wishes he could say he’s surprised, but unfortunately, he isn’t. He’s suspected that the WoL was ex-Imperial for a few months now. 

The signs are all there — their unerring discipline, how fast they eat, even the way they make their bed. It’s all military. The kind of training that breaks you down and rebuilds you in a different shape. The kind that leaves a mark.

He keeps their secret if they want him to, of course. Thancred isn’t known for his loose lips. What he offers the WoL is discretion; a quiet place to cry, an open ear to talk to, a silent understanding when all is too loud. 

“You did the right thing,” he tells them one night, after a bout of panic drove them screaming from their bed. “I know it doesn’t feel like it. You feel selfish for leaving, selfish for living. But if the option is being selfish or being dead… well, then, I’m glad you chose the former.” 

Y’shtola

When the Warrior of Light comes to her quarters in the dead of night, with eyes full of tears and a heart full of secrets, Y’shtola can do nothing but let them in. They talk for hours, until the sun’s rays began to peek from under the horizon. 

Y’shtola is more horrified than shocked. She’d gathered through weeks of close contact that the WoL had a history with the Empire, but knowing it was that of a defected soldier casts all her experiences with them in a new light.

The news also demystifies the Warrior for Y’shtola, if only a little. Suddenly, their uncanny efficiency and knack for tactics make perfect sense… and so does the Warrior’s ferocity against the Empire. It isn’t just politics — it’s personal.

From that night on, Y’shtola brews the WoL a special herbal tea, one meant to induce a dreamless sleep. It works most of the time. When it doesn’t, Y’shtola wakes to a timid knock on the door, so faint she almost misses it. 

Without fail, Y’shtola ties her dressing gown, welcomes them inside. She might joke about the lateness of the hour, but in truth, she’d never think of turning them away. Not after all they lost to be here. 

Urianger

Urianger first learns of the Warrior’s past by accident. They were alone in the Sands together, combing through some scrolls about primals, when Urianger’s curious nature got the better of him. He asked one too many questions about their health, a conversation spiraled out of control, and suddenly the WoL was confessing to the crime of defecting from the Imperial Legion.

He feels incredibly guilty about this, seeing how much the admission upsets the Warrior, and swears he won’t tell another soul. He knows just how terrifying it is to be on the Empire’s hitlist, having been branded a heretic himself in the past. 

Urianger then spends several weeks trying to make up for the incident by any means he deems necessary. Mostly by expediting every research request the WoL gives him — but every few nights, an “anonymous” gift appears on the WoL’s door. 

Sometimes it’s food. Bowls of soup manifesting in their room, sweets delivered to inn rooms via courier. Other times, it’s a piece of equipment they’ve been meaning to purchase, or a vial of medicine. Always something useful; always lacking attribution.But the WoL doesn’t need something as base as a note to know their benefactor’s identity. 

The truth is written in the gifts’ timing. They only appear after the WoL spends a long day dealing with the Empire: spying behind enemy lines, putting down war machina, setting traps for Imperial scouts. All the tasks that reawaken bloody memories in the Warrior’s head. It’s the kind of quiet acknowledgement that could only come from one who knows.

Alphinaud

It had never occurred to Alphinaud that the WoL had been a soldier before. Not until Cape Westwind. He wasn’t there — he didn’t see the fracture happen. But when the Warrior returned, it was clear that something on that battlefield broke them.

Their face goes stony, eyes emptied as if glimpsing the future through an orb. The lines around their mouth become permanent. That’s when Alphinaud gets to thinking. Maybe it isn’t the future they see before them. Maybe it’s the past.

After a few weeks of watching the Warrior endure this silent torment, Alphinaud can’t stand it any longer. One night, he corners them after dinner and asks a very simple, very pointed question. “Were you an Imperial soldier?”

The Warrior flinches as if slapped. They can’t lie to the boy, though, especially not while he gives them that earnest look of his. The WoL nods cautiously, and over the next few days, they slowly begin to divulge their story. Why they joined, the things they saw, how they managed to get away. Alphinaud absorbs the information slowly, taking his time to mull over what they say, before concluding that it changes very little about his relationship to the Warrior. 

If anything, he feels even more respect toward them now that he knows. After all, they risked everything to leave the Empire. Once they got away, all logic dictates that they’d spend the rest of their life hiding from it. Instead, they’d put their life on the line again and again in the interest of destroying the selfsame power that indentured them. 

Yda

The WoL and Yda are doing reconnaissance on Imperial movements in the Twelveswood when all hells break loose. They’re getting ready to leave when a scouting party bursts out of the trees behind them, trapping them on a cliff near Sylph territory.

Things are dicey for the briefest moment, but between the two of them, the soldiers go down with relative ease. And yet, when Yda’s fist finds the last Imperial’s jaw and sends them tumbling, she turns to find the Warrior of Light frozen in place. Their eyes are fixed on the bare face of a fallen scout, wide and brimming with a kind of fear Yda has never seen on their face. They’ve been jumpy lately, quieter than usual, but this sort of terror is decidedly unprecedented.

“Hey,” she says gently, recognizing the jagged heave of their chest. “What’s got you so upset? Did you know that guy?” Yda’s jaw drops when they nod. The story comes out in broken snippets as she leads the WoL to safety, and every detail makes Yda feel sicker.

Immediately, conflict rings through her head. She hates the Empire, hates what it did to her family, hates everyone associated with it. She wants more than anything to watch it all burn. But in that moment, no matter how hard she might try to, might want to, Yda can’t bring herself to hate the Warrior. Especially not while they’re still wiping their eyes.

She doesn’t know what that says about her. Doesn’t want to think about it. She presses her mouth flat, face sullen below her mask. “We all have a past,” Yda says. “I guess it’s the future that matters.”

Papalymo

From the moment they met, Papalymo knew the Warrior was hiding something. There was just a certain look in their eye — a veil of mystery that hardly ever slipped an inch. It wasn’t the facade of a charlatan. Nothing so malicious; more like the carefully curated mask of one who may fall apart at any minute.

He said nothing of it, merely watched carefully, until after Operation Archon. That’s when the mask began to slip. The WoL’s under-eyes were suddenly streaked with purple, their mind far away. Papalymo made it his business to know why, but he could do nothing so tactless as ask them outright.

Instead, the thaumaturge consorts with the rest of the Scions, compiling data and comparing information, until he is able to reasonably hypothesize that the WoL’s past included some kind of military service. 

The rest of the pieces click into place when he overhears the Warrior talking in their sleep. Papalymo is roused from his bedroll by the sound of their mumbling, louder than the rustling of the Twelveswood overhead. “No, Legatus,” they whimper. “Don’t wanna… can’t make me.”

Papalymo’s heart sinks. So this was it — their deep, dark secret. He ruminates until dawn, wondering about every little detail of the story. Were they conscripted? Did they enlist? Where were they from, really? What sort of tragedies compelled them to disobey, to flee? He will never ask. He isn’t sure he wants to know.

[nini-dirthara-lothlenanas]

💐

[doodle-dragons]

high time i made a ref for my bby gorl

[dawnslight-aegis]

7. morsel

It began with a feeling one evening, right before she drifted off to sleep – a brush of a hand over her cheek, of lips against her forehead. Blinking awake in the gloom, she murmured a soft “Mama?” before shaking her head to dispel the feeling. A dream, no doubt, or perhaps the whisper of an elemental – ever since coming to Gridania, her ears had become even more sensitive to what her mother would have called the Green Word. It was the reason she had been permitted to become a Hearer, despite not being one of the forestborn. At times, their voices took on familiar tones – this must have been one such occasion, that her sleeping mind had associated with her long-distant mother.

Half a moon later, while walking through Stillglade Fane, she caught the quiet conversation of two traveling traders, and flicked one large ear towards them. Hyur never realized how keen viera hearing was, if they had even noticed her at all.

“A friend of mine who does some trading in Radz-at-Han, he heard from some associates from Dalmasca that Bozja Citadel is just gone. A flash of light so bright it illuminated the whole sky, and an explosion you could hear in Rabanastre. The whole city just a hole in the ground.”

“Imperials’ doing, no doubt. Serves them right. If it’s even true – probably some story cooked up to make us think they’ve got some weapon that can bring us to heel.” The second man shook his head dismissively, and they walked away, the distance and the rush of water from Apkallu Falls covering any other words they might have spoken.

A chill ran down her spine at the mention of the city of her birth, and though her logical mind agreed with the second man’s assessment, she could not shake the discomfort, even as she went about her duties for the day. The dread twisting in the pit of her stomach continued to grow, until three days later, without a word to anyone, she walked out of Gridania’s gates and into the eastern Shroud. The empire had recently begun construction on a great edifice against the corruption and influence of eikons, but it was simple enough to find a place on the fringes of the Shroud where the border between Gridania’s domain and Ala Mhigo’s was unattended, and slip across, as she had done years before the other direction.

Eirys Tswarra shed her forest name and became Linnaea eir Galanthus once again, passing unremarked through imperial-occupied Gyr Abania. The missives she had passed to her superiors in the XIVth Legion, full of half-truths and exaggerations – enough morsels of information to keep the Empire satisfied and wary of Gridania’s invisible protectors – bought her passage on an airship across the Ghimlyt Dark, to Locus Amoenus, but no further. The supply routes that had once connected to Bozja Citadel now ran to the port city of Kralja instead.

All along the journey she had attempted to make subtle inquiries about the city, but had been met with nothing but unsettling silence. To every imperial she encountered, it seemed as if it had never existed at all.

Linnaea’s dread and certainty that something was indeed very wrong only grew as she traveled from Kralja inland, and the land was silent. No flowers murmured, no trees sang. And when finally she reached the last leg of her journey, where she should have seen a sprawling sandstone city, replete with trees and brilliantly blue streets, there was only a crater full of twisted crystal and half-melted buildings.

And somewhere in the center of all that destruction had been her home, where her mothers had lived, quietly, tending gardens and teaching local orphans.

There had never been much love in Linnaea’s heart for the Empire itself – her stepmother’s status had given her citizenship, allowed her to escape the poverty and deprivation that most Bozjans who were not born into nobility faced. But she had not been blind to its sins. Bozja was isolated, no one allowed in or out, save the military, and this alone would have made her chafe under its yoke, even if she did not hear word of the wars of conquest waged against Dalmasca, or see the cruelties suffered by those few left in Bozja who did resist Garlean rule. Indeed, it was that very doubt that had made her the ideal candidate to spy on Gridania, for the operatives the Empire had sought to place there before her had been loyal, and thus taken by the greenwrath before they could even enter the city. It was only the implicit threat that her family would suffer for her defection that had kept her from walking away and never looking back.

Looking out over the desolate wasteland that was all that remained of her home, her childhood, her family, the last flicker of gratitude to Garlemald in her heart died, and she was left with only the deep-seated certainty that for the land to live, the Garlean Empire must be scoured from its face.

But where could she go? Gridania had doubtless discovered her duplicity, or would soon, making Eorzea a dangerous prospect. A viera traveling alone would be easily identifiable – something that Empire had always made sure to remind her of, as a way of ensuring her compliance. Garlemald’s reach extended to the entirety of Ilsabard and most of Othard. Hingashi did not accept outsiders, and Radz-at-Han was on strained but peaceful terms with the empire. She did not have enough gil to her name to buy safety there. Indeed, all she had left was herself – her mind and her magic, the secrets of Garlemald and of Gridanian conjury.

Of everywhere on the star, she could only think of one place where a viera might not raise eyebrows. One place that might hold the answers to the question of what sort of weapon could obliterate a city overnight. One place where knowledge and information was more valuable than currency.

Old Sharlayan.