#izaikil

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In the end I'm going with my original idea. I am still fond of recovering their original body but its just not as thematically poignant. I was stuck with the image up an ascent through Solm Al a climb that would be both physical and spiritual and at the summit izaikil would have shed their human form and be reborn in their original form, regaining the connection to the home universe they had lost. And with that spiritual transformation they would have taken flight under their own power for the first time since they were a dragonling and their song would have rang from the churning mists and encircled the world. so im ditching that for my original idea that they have changed beyond all recognition and nothing but the memory remains, the differences are irreconcilable. as long as their birth planet remained lost there remained hope that their original body may yet be reclaimed and finding the dragonstar is the final confirmation that there is no return to the past for them, there is no reclaiming what has been lost.

As for how this version affects Hydaelyn's contract, I still like the narrative parallel of both great wyrms exchanging a new home for becoming her guardians. i need to play endwalker. However I cant help but think that it would be very in-character for a contract renegotiation to happen, especially as Hydaelyn's power weakens. And afterall the seal on primal summoning was broken during the Battle of Silvertear Falls, so izaikil's contract may too be nulled or moved to a case by case basis.

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the convictory should have an aetheryte. i get that the in lore reason that the hw places don’t have aetherytes is that they were destroyed by the calamity or unsettled land... but if random camps like camp tranquil summerford farms or refugee camps like little ala mhigo, or moghome which hasn’t seen people in 1000 years can have aetherytes, the convictor’s camp, the observatorium, gorgane mills or hemlock, or whitebrim front could have had aetherytes. and just from a gameplay perspective the drop in aetheryte frequency in 3.0 maps compared to 2.0 maps in jarring and annoying. this will probably never be fixed but I can hope!

that’s oddly optimistic. well, in izaikil’s timelines this does actually happen so

he’s got a point.

yeah i got that sense that heretic is a generic term for anyone who doesn’t strictly follow the vault, the religious doctrine, and ishgardian society in general. so like 99.999999% of the worlds population. So anyone who breaks a law, has different religious beliefs (foreigners seems to have some leeway), has anything except murderous rage against dragons, doesn’t participate in the war, etc.

oh this is building to something.

its almost like the term heretic is so broad its useless and not only that but harmful.

thought this was about Margyt and Ayleth worrying about each other and leading to them professing eternal love before the questline took a HARD left turn and swerved to be about class inequality about making the convectors be recognized an an elite fighting force that can be just as effective by mixing nobles and commoners.

airships can get up here????? then why did we have to slaughter our way through solm al?!!!!!!

moogles are cowardly, lazy, and genocidal. they crave violence. but boy oh boy are they cute and fluffy.

well I suppose at least we aren’t murdering children again this time

huh I guess Tarresson and his crew of temple knights are a small enough group not to count though honestly 6 craftspeople could get the restoration done way faster than all the moogle herding we had to do. the moogle beast tribe quests have been rather entertaining so far too. so i actually had a bunch of beast tribe quests to turn in that were gatkeeped by dravinian forelands access which i do not have but that also meants i couldn’t start new ones. anyways, took the loss and now we doing beast tribes.

wait wait wait. THIS DUDE IS COUNT DZEMAEL???????

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new hair

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heavensward

weird that the convo uses the word primal like 4 times but not once in eng.

he’s got a point but is also deflecting how he perpetuated unjust social structures and the war that justified them.

i got vaguely spoiled again but doesn’t estinien run off somewhere

as aetheric constructs, what makes primals different from egi, or elementals? where does the power to temper come from?

ah. there’s garleans up in the sky. how convient that we came across them attacking the fluffy fluffy bird people and thus gained the tribe’s trust. haven’t heard that one before. the sea of clouds has so much vertical space. which wouldnt be a probalem except the map doesn’t show elevation

I LOVE THE VANU VANU. warm and fluffy! warm fluffy!

we’re going fishing!!

oh all the islands are giant chunks of wind crystals. that explains the floating

so we just did all the work for them. did no one think about this. like to get the key, pope dude would have to fight The White. We could have set an ambush for them, then no one would need the key. and The White has only been around for a few years? months? how did they swallow the key in the first place?

dont you dark touch my fluffy friends. i will end you.

why is everyone trying to go there? and all at the same time???

aurele looks Good in this cutscene.

imagine izaikil shooting that airship out of the sky

how did you get here. how did you get that here.

Lucia is garlean, yeah i got that when she first talked about her backstory as a spy in... 2.4??? i did not guess she was the sister of the gaius groupie tho.

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Izaikil Zarcosi is a possible warrior of light. They’re originally a character I made for something else and ported into ffxiv yay crossover character. so full on spoilers for them I originally came up with the idea to put them in ffxiv when I read some ffxiv spoilers for Midgardsormr’s backstory and went “hey wait a minute why does that sound super familiar. squeenix totally copied me”

Izaikil is a dragon from the same planet as Midgardsormr, but neither of them realize the connection for a long long time, I’m thinking like not until 3.5. But while Midgardsormr was the champion of the world and its strongest, Izaikil was nothing. They were born/hatched the lowest of low in those final desperate day of the world as societies collapsed a mad search for a way to survive. They died there, in the dark and alone, and yet something remained. A person is tied to the universe of creation, an umbilical cord that ever calls them towards home, the body grounding them in that reality. But when Izaikil next awoke drifting alone in the cold void of space, those connections had been severed. They never discover how it is they continued to exist after death nor how they lost their connection to their original body and universe. The spend the next several millions of years hoping from universe to universe

Their magic works similarly to a mixture of conjurer and arcanist in that they attune with the environmental fluxes and follow those natural flows and patterns to cast and they do so using calculations (when you’ve been doing mental math for 400,000 years you get so fast at it its like instinct). As is traditional in the City they often cast using song as a medium to attune with reality. And their alignment is with the heavens which in the ffxiv universe means wind, lightning, and light aether, though they are also pretty good with fire and ice. This combined with their focus of on manipulating reality and all of reality past present and future makes them comparable to an astrologian. The are actually a non combatant and their magic isn’t combat oriented but since they’re the warrior of light and generally follow the plot of ffxiv, they get forced into a LOT of fights, and complain about it the whole way. In combat they’re actually a support caster, manipulating the environment to force enemies where they want them and buffing/debuffing. The closest equivalent I can think of is Shiroe from Log Horizon. However they’re so overpowered that its faster for them to just blast enemies when dealing with smaller groups. Generally in small parties (4) they’ll mechanically work like an arcanist or all rounder offensive mage. In larger parties (8) they’ll work like a black mage since there enough other people that they can just focus on casting devastating spells. So its only on larger scale battles with an incredibly skilled team (24+) or on like a war/battlefield scale that you will see them acting as a support mage.

The seventh umbral calamity was a large enough magical event that it caused a blip of Izaikil’s radar and from experience the places that cause enough of a disturbance to be picked up by equipment this way tend to be interest (specifically its uh... the intersection of the... hmmm... fate lines(?) of humanity and dragons that caught their attention) so they sent a node over to investigate. (after so much time their soul is a tattered ragged thing held together with elmer’s glue and duct tape, and some other stuff happened but by the time they could have fixed it is was too late, and some other stuff happened with fragments lost and a war with themself).

Much like Midgardsorm, Hydaelyn approached them with a deal. In exchange for a body that actually fit them and being able to bypass all the stuff above (essentially being able to count themself as “belonging” to this world), Izaikil would act as Hydaelyn’s champion. I’m not sure the details of the deal but if Izaikil were a WoL this would be why. In this way Izaikil’s story is a foil to Midgardsormr’s. Both came from the same planet and traveled the depths of space and time to reach Hydaelyn. But Midgardsormr was the champion and came to Hydaelyn to secure a home and a future for his children, while Izaikil was a child, powerless there at the end of the world and they came to hydaelyn on a whim really. Both formed contracts with hydaelyn where in exchange for their services they were granted a home, and both got cheated by hydaelyn in that she totally got the better end of both deals. Both also got weaker from contracting with hydaelyn. Midgardsormr hatched before Izaikil but because time moves differently in different universes and because of their multi-nodal existence, Izaikil has lived more years than Midgardsormr. The contract gives Izaikil an inroad and connection to this universe but... its like a mold, it sets boundaries and structures and limits what they can be and do.

So everything I’ve said above is part of the canon timeline which I call timeline B. In timeline C, Izaikil doesn’t take Hydaelyn’s deal and makes their way to Eorzea the hard way where they wander eorzea studying magic at the various guilds and eventually meet Aurele. The two of them then go off on various adventures and completely ignore the main plot. This is the timelime where a lot of the side quests happen on.

In both timelines B and C Izaikil joins every magic guild they can get their hands on so they do meet all the guildmasters as well as most of the upgraded magic job mentors though I dont think most of the class quests actually happen or at least they dont happen as in game. But Nidhogg’s Eye does react to them when the meet Estinien and so they actually do become an Ishgardian dragoon (and the Azure Dragoon no less) which is just peak ironic comedy for me. they also totally become a bard and sing songs in the woods with Jehentel despite not being an archer. (i mean they can shoot a bow (when you’re that old you pick up a lot of misc skills) but not well).

its impossible to make Izaikil in the character creator so you’ll just have to use your imagination for how they look. Most people in Eorzea assume they’re an Au Ra and those with a bit of Au Ra knowledge assume they’re Raen. But the truth is that the body Hydaelyn gifted them is more of a cross between a dragon, a hyur, and an elezen. At first glace you’d think Au Ra because of the horns and tail, but if you were to look closely, you’d notice that all the details are wrong. The most obvious difference is that Izaikil has long pointy elf ears. Their horns are also a pearlescent silvery whitish color instead of the matte texture of Au Ra horns. because of the whole ear thing the placement of the horns in also different, being higher up on the head. Their scales are also smooth almost like fish scales instead of the more rugged Au Ra scales. Their tail is also larger at the base and longer with those same smoother scales. Their eyes are also like a cat’s (or a dragon’s) where the pupil is a vertical slit in bright light and dilates in darkness. They are also at a really weird height for an Au Ra being too tall for a woman and too short for a man. Honestly Izaikil looks nothing like an Au Ra but eorzeans see horns and think Au Ra and they mostly let that assumption remain uncontested because the truth is too much of a bother to explain.

Izaikil’s story has strong existentialist themes, touching upon questions like why are you here in this time and place and what it means to exist.

I also haven’t finished heavenward so a lot of stuff in there and shadowbringer’s could change what I’ve written here

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izaikil might get mistaken for an au ra in eorzea general but around the shroud they might get mistaken for a padjal between the pointy ears and the horns.  In addition in timeline B izaikil’s body is an aetherial construct made by hydaelyn so shapeshifting may be easier than ever for them.  And even in timelines C and D where they’re going around in a hyur body they bought, when going super saiyan/channeling massive amounts of energy, Izaikil will locally destabilize reality enough that an overlay effect is created (ie they have a super powered form because it increases magic efficiency) and they will appear as a humanoid with pointed ears and horns

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I’m ace aro spec so all my characters end up defaulting to ace aro too but idk it’s kinda boring for them all to have the same attraction orientations.

izaikil’s either ace aro or grey aro

aurele is ace maybe grey, and pan romantic maybe demi. but im also getting gay vibes.

Diamaunt is mostly straight like a 1 on the kinsey scale. that or mostly lesbian

albinnaux is asexual and unknown but im getting gay vibes

M’lau and E’noyu are pretty gay but titty is good too i guess. so pansexual/romantic but prefers men (especially in regards to romantic orientation).

(what’s really funny is that Noyu and Lau are get a lot of tail (literally ha!), but the others are not having none for various individual specific reasons). (its complicated because societaly straight sex is expected for a nunh but romance is gay)

you know what im making my own attraction scale. attraction is a series of spectrums

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3.0

maybe i should just cave and make an aether alt

still cant believe godbert has a seat on the syndicate. like the fact that they made the hildibrand quests canon and integrated the characters into the rest of the story.... its so jarring! just watching uldah cutscenes really and knowing thats godbert sitting there...

hildibrand has the echo??? time to make hildibrand the wol! looks like the scions just found its new meat shield. hey imagine hildibrand takes the place of the player character while izaikil and midgardsormr eat popcorn and watch the ensuing chaos. the events of ffxiv are a vacation to them. imagine alphinaud having to deal with hildibrand

I just realized it would make sense for aurele to be a healer. he has the personality of one and the only reason he isn't is because I'm a dps and when i started playing as aurele I wanted to play archer. i say "I'm a dps" even though i haven't played anything except tank in party content in months (I’m not a good tank btw)

when primals die they leave behind elemental crystals.

1. canonically is the player character soloing dungeons and trials and stuff or is it like a group of wols or what. 2. when estinien stabs nidhogg in the head, why did nidhogg go poof and not like leave a body? because the power level of the player character seems to fluctuate quite a bit...

albinnaux has an existential crisis about how this power isn't really his. izaikil is like: same bullshit different tuesday and i may or may not be making a third wol that's just a middle aged man cat.

Diamaunt is living her truths and compiling a comprehensive geologic survey of thanalan and maybe starting a mining collective

i just imagined aurele watering flowers. and my heart warmed.

now that i've thought about it. ffxiv crossovers really well with ffxv. like how there are similarities in settings of small kingdoms/city states facing invasion by technologically advanced empire, and in focus on the landscape and traveling. for example if insomnia was a city state in eorzea. or if adventurers and stuff existed in the ffxv universe.

oh so apparently the ffxv crossover and all crossovers, are canon. like vshooop! noctis got sucked through a portal and ended up in eorzea because interdimensional portals are just so common. the more i learn of canon the more i think wow this brand of chaos is so izaikil. is space time just unstable on hydaelyn??

... i just realized the reason izaikil has the same vibes as crossover events (ffxv, automata yokai watch, etc) is because they are a crossover character.

i think aurele would be a bit distressed when sanson and guydelot argue

aurele is a warm colored boy, but cool toned lighting looks really good on him!

still no elaboration of this. so they are summoning primals to awaken the hear of sabik to resurrect their god. sure jrpg logic.

the primals are also affecting the fabric of reality?

ok so i was doing the roulette and played as astrologian, but in the blade of light cutscene, my character used paladin weapons (sword+shield). I seem to vaguely remember hum only using a big light sword (no shield) the last time i played this. i don’t know why its different. could paladin be the default for magic classes?. I know nothing about endwalker but maybe this has to do with why meteore is dressed up like a paladin in the trailer. also got to hear hydaelyn’s lisp again.

maybe its because im only in hw but surprised i havent seen more giant mechs

if hydaelyn is a big crystal could i cut a chunk off and use it as a battery or grind it up to make aethersand?

izaikil eating crystals like potato chips *crunch* *crunch*

where is hydaelyn floating around in anyway? center of the planet. hallucination? deep space?

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this is izaikil in timelines C and D since the Izaikil of timeline A can't be made in character creator with any degree of accuracy. specifically they chose midlander because midlanders are everywhere so there's few places where seeing a midlander would be unusual.

Timeline D is where Izaikil refuses the contract with Hydaelyn but gets involved with the msq and the scions any ways because they’re interesting. btw timelines A and B as are not mutually exclusive they could happen in the same continuity, i just label them separately because they could also happen in different continuities. D is also compatible with B and to a degree C.

imagine going through the msq with not just ONE tiny dragon hanging on to your shoulder, eating your sandwiches, and snarking, but TWO ancient beings in very cute forms hanging on to your shoulder, eating your sandwiches, and snarking, So the main reason izaikil in timelines C/D even needs a body instead of just manifesting in the aether like midgardsormr is that they need a tether to remain stable in this universe. a badge that says you belong so to speak. In timeline A the contract and blessing of light acts as this, but without these they have to find their own tether, just as a body originating in that universe.

i made another one using a female midlander base

oh. btw. this is totally the version of izaikil that goes around snacking on primals.  unlike the suitable vessel provided by hydaelyn in timeline A as part of their contract. vessels that izaikil has to repurpose themself are like leaky barrels or like wearing a teapot as a glove, it is ill fitting and the aether that leaks out must constantly be replaced and primals are a nice concentrated way to do that and no one complains when they do it as compared to eating some lalafell's soul. a low quality and or low alignment vessel also limits their movements to areas with suitable aether concentrations (lightning and wind mostly), so like this they would flat out refuse to go underground (like for titan). they also have a similar deal to fourteen fifteen from twilight mirage. because jacke and i have the same taste in characters apparently. the quality of the vessel (how magically attuned/powerfull vs alignment which is how closely the body matches izaikil's... essence) also affects the rate at which they can draw and use power/energy. so Izaikil is much more powerful in timeline A. or... they don't have to pay a price in timeline A.  fyi, the body when izaikil first got it did not look like the above screenshots. They modified it heavily to better fit their needs and increase alignment (a better fitting glove).

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I made a chart for all my ffxiv ocs. You’ll notice only 1.5 of them is a wol. I created them separately so for the most part they all exist in parallel universes. Though now that I think on it, they could all exist in the same universe

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I am rather fond of izaikil or whatever name they're going by at the moment just hanging around the player character saying cryptic things, sitting on their shoulder, tag teaming with midgarsormr to bully wol, and being a general cat sized nuisance

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I'll make a little catholic priest boy. this was originally albinnaux's 3rd timeline but i might as well give it to a new character. so now i’ve got another dude working in a system that he resents. he got top marks in the scholasticate and is now working his way up the clergy ranks. they aspire to be pope i mean archbishop and revolutionize ishgard but the events of the game cut that short.

yveston is that character i’ve been sort of talking about for the last year. they have rejected gender altogether so no gendered pronouns for them and are a botanist with a deep connection to the land. there are few others who mourn the 7th(?) umbral calamity as deeply as them.

and yeah izaikil just breaks the plot too much when they try so they’ve been relegated to mandatory vacation time. so timelines C and D it is

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head full of aurele being illiterate

since im making timeline c canon. izaikil probably teaches him to read in gridania which is hilarious given they just learned to read. ugg now i'm thinking limsa adventures of shoreleave aurele (illiterate) and izaikil (also illiterate). after studying the arcanima of arcanists izaikil started on a elezen weeabo phase which led them to ishgard and then gridania, which is why aurele’s name is written using old elezen orthography. the got deep into the folklore and oral traditions and stuff

i imagine their final parting went something like this minus accents because i cant do accents.

*pause in conversation*

I: I’m close to becoming a full fledged arcanist (A: *gasp* Congratz!!) so I’ll be leaving Limsa soon.

A: Oh- then next time-

I: yeah

A: ...

I: im thinking of heading for ishgard next and gridania by the end of the year.

A: even I’ve heard of gridanian conjury. heard that one on the Petral ‘s the reason everyone thinks that ship is blessed. but ishgard, izaikil? no way you’re getting into there. I’ll send my post er well doodles to gridania.

I: you’ll keep up with your letters?

A: well I guess I’ll have to now

and then izaikil broke into ishgard but everyone was a raving xenophobic templar so they left. and started studying conjury in stillglade fane where aurele eventually found them though he didn’t not start to learn conjury until years later

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cant remember if ive said it but in the now defunct timeline b. meteor was the wol and mc but he disappeared into the lifestream when lousioux cast flow so izaikil was the hastily thrown together plan b. in timelines c and d they find their own way in.t

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mbti types for my ffxiv characters no i do not have a problem

u’rikfa: istp or estp

albinnaux: intj but deeply troubled so he doesn’t act like one

E’noyu: isxx

M’Lau: estj or estp

limsa catboy: esfp

izaikil: intj

aurele: this one i struggled with but at this point probably isfj

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since im here, here’s eveyone’s demeanor on the sharp (1) to soft (10), and cold (1) to warm (10)

and since im here might as well do pronouns

aurele (8, 10) he/him

izaikil (3, 2) they/them

albinnaux (1, 2) he/him

Diamaunt (7, 7) she/her

E’noyu (8, 5) he/him

M’lau (4, 8) he/him

undblyss (6, 7) she/they

dysfunct duo wol (1,1) she/they

dysfunct duo ret (7, 8) she/her

oldcat aka shitty old man (4, 6) he/him

m hyur (5, 4) he/him

xaela (8, 5) he/they

yuuhi (5, 9) he/him

yveston (7, 3) they/them

limsa catboy (2, 9) he/him