#msq probably will only take a few hours

[millionsnife]

//hi hello it's patch day so i am gonna be hella slow today; how fast i reply depends on how fast i blitz through xiv's new content lmao

[orcinus-veterinarius]

Do you believe that SeaWorld Orlando should get involved in the situation with Tokitae?

Oof... this is a... loaded question.

Should they get involved? From my outsider's perspective, I would answer with a hestitant yes. While the least stressful situation for Toki would be to build her a new, superior habitat on the grounds of the Seaquarium, I no longer think that's a viable option. The city of Miami has denied permits for a new tank in the past, although the current mayor touts herself as deeply invested in Toki's wellbeing, so maybe things would be different this time. However, the condition of the Whale Bowl is rapidly deteriorating. Based off what I've heard from current MSQ employees, the Dolphin Company hasn't addressed any of the issues that lead to the USDA condemning the tank last year, and it's kind of falling apart. With hurricane season having started up, there's real concern that the structure won't survive a direct hit. And even if it's decided today that MSQ will build her a new habitat onsite, it'll be months before construction is complete. The Whale Bowl honestly may not have that long.

Which brings us back to SeaWorld. Orlando is about four hours north of Miami. While still undeniably stressful, transporting Toki there would be a shorter and infinitely less complicated trip than getting her to the Puget Sound. The design of SeaWorld's current killer whale habitat would allow Toki to be separated from their resident pod of 5—probably permanently, but at the very least until it's determined it's safe and healthy for them to interact. Toki would likely move into "Orca Underwater Viewing" (circled in white), the second largest individual pool, which can be closed off from the rest of the habitat. This was actually already done a few years back, when the pool was used to house several recuperating pilot whales. While it may appear small from this aerial image, it's significantly larger and deeper than the Whale Bowl (when I visited in 2022, I was actually unable to see the whales from the viewing window when they swam to the far side of the habitat) and is equipped with rockwork, which would provide an undeniable upgrade in Toki's quality of living while allowing her to remain in cold, clean, pollutant-free water with access to the very best in managed cetacean husbandry and veterinary care.

This may sound almost perfect, but there are a few very real issues to be addressed. Most likely, SeaWorld's current pod would lose access to this pool until Toki either passes away or is transferred out—either to the fabled sea pen or a newly constructed habitat at the Seaquarium—limiting them to the show habitat and three larger back pools (the third is covered by the white roof). Additionally, underwater viewing is the only pool with rockwork, and it would be rather unfair to take that away from them. And while the risk is low, there's still a chance Toki could spread illness to the resident pod, or vice versa.

Then there's the financial perspective. Dine With Orcas is hosted in this habitat, and SeaWorld would have to discontinue that program for the foreseeable future if Toki moves in. Depending on public display permitting, they may also have to close the underwater viewing windows. This could lead to a lot of disgruntled park visitors, something upper managment doesn't want. And of course, there's the ever precaricous issue of public perception. SeaWorld has only recently recovered from the financial woes inflicted on it by Blackfish, and with the Tokitae drama very much in the public eye, her transferring there would undoubtedly be spun by animal rights groups as SeaWorld villainously snatching her from the precipice of freedom for their own greedy gains (even if the oppostie is true... they would be losing revenue due to program cancellation).

Ultimately, the decision lies with NOAA. They are the only ones with the authority to authorize a transfer, or to remove a cetacean from a facility should they deem it unfit. For Toki herself, I believe SeaWorld to be her best reasonable option. But I also understand why SeaWorld managment would be hesitant to take her in, both for the welfare of their own orcas and from a public relations perspective. Should they decide to offer her a home, I will be pleasantly surprised at their charity, because I do not forsee it going well for them.

[arinemone]

things I would do if I decided to go Full Ham and do a Dawntrail Rewrite fic for Aresiba (under cut bc it long. bc of me yappin):

Fuck this CS3 time bubble bullshit, The Hydaelyn saga takes 4 years, and post ew is maybe a couple of months? Haven't decided yet (But basically, Aresiba starts her journey when she's 23, and in Dawntrail she's 27ish)

Koana goes to Sharlyan for the same time Aresiba's gone, so 4 years instead of 3. He's her ride to sharlyan, and then from there she goes 2 limsa and then gridania, so like. they gotta leave at the same time

I'm sorry. i. love the twins so very much. but they add VERY LITTLE TO THE RITES RACE IMHO, SO I'm having them come in for the coronation. so that they're here for the Dome Nonsense. and I'm having Yahima/her current student (a hunter and lowkey protoge healer?? kids cracked) in their place instead

Basically I am making this a Girls Trip, moreso than the MSQ does. and yes Erenville/this new oc are also included as Girls in the Girls trip. For the Girlies and Erenvielle/new oc yk

But also I think the bonding moments/banter that Yahima/Wuk Lamat/Aresiba have would be alot. better to fill the dead air than what some of the scions companions give us tbh. There's still this level fish out of water/across the salt type beat tho, bc Outer Islanders (aka yahima and aresiba in our group) are Allies of tural, yes, but not PART of tural, so they're still seen as from beyond the salt. It irks Aresiba tho, bc she's spent a good portion of her life living/training in Tuliyollal/Tural, so she very much considers it like another home to her. Also I think krile and Yahima would make good friends so I want her to be there. also also WHY WOULD WE NOT BRING THE OTHER TRAINED VIDRAAL HUNTWRS TO /THE/ VIDRAAL FIGHT like it would even make sense. then. I want them there 🫵

I'd also probably add some time in places that feel like. happen fast. and overall have a more concrete time frame of when things happen.

Like I'd put at LEAST A DAY inbetween the group arriving to Tural, and the day the rites begin. The Rites maybe take like 2 weeksish. possibly a little less depending. I'd add a couple of downtime days to a week inbetween the final rite/finding the golden city and coronation day. The shaolaani trip maybe takes a handful of days, maybe a buisness week? The Dome Explorarion takes a few days, and ofc Living Memory less than a day. I'll keep the 3 day celebrations bc that's fun, then immediately after Aresiba goes on a full 7 day week No-contact vacation to see her family. and then that Final CS of her, Erenvielle and Wuk lamat takes place the day of her return to tuliyollal. probably a few hours since her arrival. After that it's all me time baeby YIPPIEEEEEE

Siba has her own subplot "Hero returns home from her heroes journey, bur both her and her home have changed", during the rites part of the expac, and how she's adjusting to it

Koana/Aresiba buildup is basically this Entire Expansion, getting together/confessing fee fees happens probably pre 7.1

i want a "Blessed Siblings" vs "The Seas Blessed" (Aresiba and Yahima) fight SOMEHWHERE before they hit the Jak tiika heartlands,/BEFORE the bkjj's redemption, so I can draw a parallel bc THERES ONE THERE I REALIZE. AND WHILE IT DOESNT AFFECT THE STORYLINE MUCH it only makes the hard scenes HURT MORE

Gulool Ja Ja and the Ca'aguey Grandmama getting drinks, catching up, and having a Parent chat abt their kids 🥺

[notallbloodmages]

One of my friends from ff14 passed away mid-April. I only found out because his house that we shared got demo'd this last round. He frequently logged on just to make sure it didn't get demo'd. I was already worried when I hadn't seen him for two weeks, but I got really worried then. So I messaged him on Discord, and a few days later, I got a message from his family with what happened.

It was weird telling our free company. I was sort of the only person who talked to him very often. So I got a lot of condolences and it felt..awkward.

Between the first reply and the one with more details, I hoped it was a cruel prank. Maybe someone stole his Discord info, or something. He wasn't exactly a prankster, but I thought maybe something awful happened irl and he turned mean? I dunno. I would have forgiven him probably. Even with proof I feel like any minute I'll see him log on and feel the relief wash over me.

It's weird when an online friend dies. My memory is shit, and I feel like I didn't know him at all in a way. I know he collected Miku and Touhou figs. I know he had a lot of tattoos and what style they were in. But when his family asked if I had any fun stories or anything, I felt like I was lying. I couldn't remember any single moment. I spent so much time with him doing treasure maps, fashion, deep dungeon runs, MSQ prog. And yet I couldn't remember anything. I somehow never managed to take any screenshots together. I never wrote down anything in my ff14 journal besides my garden schedule. I was able to tell them how we met in-game, because that's always going to stick in my mind.

He last logged in the day before he died. I know I was online that day, but I don't remember if I talked to him.

I didn't know what he sounded like. I never got to hug him. I didn't even know he was only a couple states away! He never indicated that he was depressed, so I never considered telling him how I would do anything for him. I would have driven there, any time, to meet up.

I feel so stupid for crying so much. Every couple hours I just...I can't stand it.

general content warning under the cut

He committed suicide. He did it the day after he last logged in. I thought, after surviving a couple already, that I would be smarter and know when someone was considering it. I thought that with how candid he always was with his feelings, he'd tell me something was wrong. It's so selfish to think I could have done anything, and also very normal. I just wish I'd kept better track of our conversations. I wish I'd made sure to write down when we hung out in a party.

He didn't have a facebook or a anything, there's no way for me to read about him unless I ask his family. No way for me to look at pictures or posts or anything written by him besides the message in my ffxiv house book, and his tattoo posts on the SA forums.

I re-made one of my retainers in his image, in his favorite glamour. I'm trying to bid on his previous house plot. I'm trying not to talk about him in FC chat, but the house came up when people were talking about last second bids. It's just weird. I feel weird in our FC now. I'm already made fun of by at least one member for being "the oversharer." Everyone already knows I'm sensitive as fuck. It's hard to act normal.

[zwei-rhunen]

I JUST CLEARED SEPHIROT EXTREME WTF

>be me, it's like 10pm, i'm on BLU, i saw a party in PF earlier doing a spell run, I've never done that before. I've only used PF like twice lol. I wonder if it's still up?

>it's not still up, ah well. but i still see a listing for Sephirot EX that i saw like 30 min ago - a someone requesting help to clear for their friend and there's like 4-5 roles filled already

>well. i like sephirot hard. i dont remember sephirot extreme. i probably cleared it once with @lucia-dartancours a long ass time ago, maybe. sounds like fun tho i'd like to help out. i'll probably remember some of it during the middle of the fight or smth.

>join, be upfront that i'm "not experienced with this one" and i'll drop if needed. im told its all good and we'll figure it out, cool!

>duty begins, and i get.... the cutscene???? huh??????

>oh. suddenly, a shadow of the past echoes in my ear. flashbacks flit across my mind's eye as i recall asking @lucia-dartancours to do sephirot EX with me, but we cannot, bc alas, it is one of the few that is difficult to solo and may require a party.

>ohfuck.jpeg i am about to act very clueless in front of strangers

>"i'M nOt VeRy ExPeRieNcEd-" hi sorry guys, by that i mean it as in i havent seen this AT ALL EVER IN MY LIFE LMFAO OOPS

>sweating.gif

>okay i've seen exactly ONE video and that was when @ was soloing it on WAR, and i probably had just finished HW, and knew fuck-all about trials. except that it was cool and flashy and looked fun and maybe someday i'd do it, when i got past all this dang MSQ.

>welp i guess it's "someday".

>get full party, do fight, our first ever attempt goes REALLY well. we managed to clear the first phase and wiped at maybe the second towers/right after the first towers? something like that.

>i have no idea what i'm doing and ngl i'm surviving off of sheer beginner's luck up until the very end of this first attempt lmao. idk how i managed to survive that long.

>... and i did not manage to recreate that again, up until the tail-end of that two hour time-frame.

>we try again a few more times, then the markers get broken out to divide the group up into 2 parties

>LMAO'ing because me and the other first-timer get the kindergarten shapes... xDDD

> the mentors/experienced people lay out the plan

>i understand half of what theyre saying, but i keep the mantra "green=hug, orange=spread out"

>idk what colors mean when they refer to that but i'll figure it out/i think it's similar to zurvan with the hot/ice debuff mechanic (i later figure out this is exactly what that is)

>tbh, at first that "color" meant the tether color. but now i think you get that tether if you stand close to Sephirot, regardless of your debuff color. And im MNK, so at first i thought i was always orange b/c the tether color is orange, and i was always getting that tether b/c i'm always up close as MNK. but color refers to debuffs, i figured it out.

>not me sounding like a lunatic everytime we get to the debuff phase, muttering "okokokokok, orange is run, orange is run"

we keep wiping in the first phase, but slowly learn and adapt and improvise and overcome our way to the second phase before the duty timer runs out.

lol

>it is 11pm. someone mentions they can stay on until the next duty runout, i'm like same (bc it's 11pm lol). one of the healers switches to SMN for shields, tank offers to do a discord call to do calls, no one takes the offer, so we continue on-wards

>about midway into the second duty attempt, i finally understand what people mean when they say "stack in front of green bubble for the flash to bait the (whatever you call it), and then spread out", bc i started noticing the flash, and at one point i had died early and was able to kinda notice what ppl were doing, plus short snippets from @'s video from 500 years ago are coming back to me and i'm starting to remember this part of the video)

>so i finally stop dying at that part (i always kept getting wiped out by his flash attack bc i kept forgetting that it takes up the entire side of the arena T_T)

>i keep dying at the 2nd phase, when he does the flash and then the first middle knockback fist, and im like how tf does everyone else keep surviving. oh, is it arm's length? and someone replies about positioning and i'm looking at the screen like "okay 1-130, i'll just stare hard at everyone else and follow them" b/c up until that point i was focusing hard about the debuffs and trying to make sure i was in the correct zone lmao

>AT SOME POINT, i dont die + the stars align for everything else + we have just enough people constantly alive and suddenly we survive phase two and we're blowing past the fist slidey part and now we're killing the air add and there's a flurry of pings going off in chat from the tank and now we're in the stack and the fist is going across the floor and THANK GOD the third phase is mostly a repeat of the second phase and LB3 gets hit and we trim off the last few HP on his bar and ITS OVER WE'RE DONE OH MY GOD.

15 minutes left to spare T-T we got out at 12:15am lol but shoutout to the person who stayed up till 1am to see this through

a few things:

> green debuffers are supposed to "pass the tether" to the orange debuffers. i still have no clue how to do that. I thought it'd be like, we run to them. but the green bubbles are always in the way, and i never saw people touch each other. so i have no clue how we pass on the tethers lmao

>tanks also take both towers in the second tower phase. but also, people with orange debuff must take towers? i am still confused on that part. I'll probably watch a video later.

that was really fun!

but also

i think i'm going to stay far the fuck away from PF extremes for a bit lmfao

[alicesadventuresinffxiv]

FFxivWrite2024 Thoughts at Halfway

It’s September 15th, and that seems as good a moment as any to stop and reflect! 

As someone doing this challenge for the first time, it's been an interesting mixed bag of an experience.

So far the biggest thing I’ve been enjoying is the prompts. The words by themselves have all been fun and inspiring. But it’s the surprise of not knowing what I’ll be writing each day that has really made me excited. And then getting the prompt and spending the next few hours debating how I want to tackle it (does it fit for a TCaFS scene? another AU? maybe a pairing or character I haven’t written before?) is exactly the kind of challenge that drives my creativity.

(Mini-goal unlocked: given the variety I've already written, I'm thinking of trying to write every major F/F NPC pairing at least once during the challenge. :3)

I’ve also been surprised and happy with how much I’ve been able to write. Normally I’m a very slow and perfectionistic writer, so I expected that I’d manage 500 words a day at best. Instead my average is actually (calculates…) 1076 per fill. Wow!! 

That all being said, the main reason I wanted to participate wasn’t so much for myself, but to meet and get to know other writers in the FFXIV community.

And in that regard… I’ve really been struggling. If anything, participating has made me feel more isolated and lonely than before.

Granted, one reason for that is probably because this is an OC-centric challenge and I'm more interested in writing NPCs. And not even very popular NPCs at that. 

Also this is clearly the Dawntrail MSQ-themed challenge but I am a relatively new player so I’m still working through my ideas about Stormblood/Shadowbringers/Endwalker, haha. ^^;

But another major part of it is also that I just can’t figure out how to balance my own writing with paying attention to what everyone else is up to. When I only have a few hours of free time each night, it comes down to a choice: do I read and comment on other peoples' work, or do I keep up with the challenge?

At first I was commenting and reblogging, then I was saving links to go back and read later, and lately I haven’t been able to keep up with even that… oof.

Meanwhile, spending so much time writing for this community has meant I feel like I’m neglecting my FC and Discord friends and what they are up to. (I am so so sorry to everyone who has sent me DMs I just do not have the time or energy to respond to. ;-;) Not to mention everything else tumblr, like what my mutuals are reblogging or stuff like Comment Day that I’d also like to do…

So that’s where I’m at. I had an idea I was planning to write for the free prompt today, but instead I think I’ll try to catch up a little on… everything?

Or maybe just take a break from tumblr/writing in general. Turn my brain off and do a bunch of level grinding or something. I even miss roulettes. <flop>

[alicelufenia]

I don't know how many people who follow me are totally new to, or never played 14, but this is PHENOMENAL advice.

It was my first (and tbh only) mmo, I got on board years before the extended free trial and all the Quality of Life changes to the base game happened, and it's now better than ever.

The only thing I would caution--and this will likely always be a challenge--the time investment is no joke. Playing at a moderate pace (watching cutscenes, reading dialogue) while doing no side content except trial/alliance raids, getting to end game will take 8 months to a year (personal experience). Now I was hooked early on so that was never a problem, but especially since I talk about games like Disco Elysium, which is also an incredible story with the advantage that it's told as a single player 20-30 hour experience , I feel the need to mention. You will need a draw other than the story, I think, if time is at all an issue.

So here are some things that hooked me in:

Fully playable on controller, whether on PS4/PS5 or PC. Probably the single biggest factor that got me to try it out. I know play at high end, clearing savage and learning ultimate difficulty fights, all on controller.

Making friends is fun. Easily the most accessible and easy to get to get started activity in game is just to start chatting people up and making friends. I just made a new friend in game bc she saw my starbird minion and showed off her matching glam, ice instantly broken.

Go into the game with at least one, maybe two spoilers for the story or a major side story. Possibly the most contentious piece of advice, with how prevalent spoiler culture is. However, I stand by my opinion that having a single major spoiler to hook you in will help getting through any story, and Final Fantasy XIV is no different. I watched a streamer's first few hours of Shadowbringers MSQ on launch week, and I saw THAT scene (if you know you know), and started playing a few days later. I then heard a spoiler discussion of the end of the Omega raid, and was surprised that even the side stories have these complex characters like Alpha and Omega, the latter which I only knew as a hidden super boss in old FF games and had basically no expectations. That got me to buy the game and subscribe. There are SO MANY memorable moments in the game, I guarantee knowing who Emet Selch or Zero are isn't going to spoil the story.

Would you suggest FF14 to someone who doesn't play MMOs? I followed you years ago for Bioware content but I'm extremely curious if there's any story in FF to get me to try it. Thanks!

i actually consider ffxiv's main story to be better than that of dragon age and mass effect (and i say this as a big fan of the games) or of any other form of media i've consumed. the world-building goes on throughout all expansions and has the player at its center/gives you a sense of influence even if core changing of events is understandably limited. added plus is that you don't have to have played or know what the other final fantasy games are, but if you do, you'll notice little callbacks or hints throughout

i don't know how adverse you are to actually playing the mmo side of it but the devs have been working to make most parts of the progress achievable solo if you wish. there are still story points you'll have to play with others to complete but the majority of the player base are eager to help new players/will go out of their way to explain things. fucking up, especially in normal content, isn't a big deal--you'll see people who have played for years and have done much harder content regularly screw up or die in easy duties because you forget things/aren't paying attention and that's part of the charm. maybe start with a dps job so you can get a feel of how tanking/healing looks like by watching others and having less responsibility. any assholes can be promptly blocked/reported. if you see someone with a giant toad head in your cutscene, understand it'll be you in four months

the only drawback, though i don't think it's that big of a deal since you won't know how much better everything gets later on till you actually go through it, is that the beginning stages can be a bit of a drag or not as interesting. things pick up considerably after a certain point but i found even the very beginning to be meaningful lore and character wise. if somebody tells you to skip A Realm Born (the first part of the story), i would highly advise you ignore them and give it a chance anyway. it'll be HIGHLY rewarding as you continue

[alvaar-aldaviir]

Movement: Nocturne 2/2

Time Frame: Shadowbringers MSQ. Spoilers accordingly up to Holminster Switch.

Notes: Grief and angst and a whole lot of comforting the best girl. Platonic SFW with an older Alisaie.

Chapter one here.

Cross-posted to Ao3.

You're probably ALSO going to need this if you want an idea of what Alvaar is singing.

-

On the eve of Holminster Switch, Alvaar just wants to get some sleep on the first proper night he’s had in days. But there’s no rest for the wicked, and it’s more than worth staying up to comfort the person who needs it most.

Handling loss and grief is starting to feel old hat to him anyway.

-

  “So that’s it. That’s what happened, I swear, if you don’t believe me, ask your sister,” Alvaar murmured, sitting on the steps of one of the stairways after dropping off the Red Mage’s gear with the mender. Alphinaud was perched nearby, mulling over the recap of Alvaar’s evening he’d been told while his carbuncle was currently draped across the man’s lap.

Breathing out a slow sigh, the Scholar finally eased a bit, though his face seemed no less troubled by the news. “So that sin eater was someone she knew... that would explain her reaction then. Who was it?”

“Tesleen. One of the carers at the Inn she was close with. Seemed a very sweet woman... she didn’t deserve that fate,” Alvaar answered, fingers still buried in plush fur. “That good? Not going to kill me now? Because I’m certain she won’t be too happy with what I have said, and any further details you’d have to ask her yourself. That’s just what I know from the brief time I was there.”

“I don’t imagine Alisaie will be either,” Alphinaud mused, studying his own shoes intently. “And... you’re fine Alvaar. My apologies. I should have known better, but even so I shouldn’t have reacted that way.”

Glancing at him, Alvaar shrugged. “You were worried for your sister after she was obviously showing signs of upset and distress. I don’t blame you. If I were in a similar situation, I would have done the same even if one of the Twelve walked out the door instead. Speaking of, why were you there anyway?”

“When Alisaie still hadn’t returned, I thought it best to try and track her down to ensure she hadn’t been ambushed by sin eaters. Moonstone had just led me to your door before you opened it,” he explained quietly.

“Ah... neat trick. You know, I didn’t get a chance to ask before Alphi... who’s this cutie? Moonstone obviously, but I don’t remember you using a white carbuncle before. Last I knew was obsidian,” Alvaar inquired, ruffling the carbuncles long ears and grinning slightly at the rumbly purr it earned.

“Hm? Oh... I suppose you haven’t. I’d only just finished the basic geometries before I left for Garlemald. It’s based from white moonstone, designed for healing support instead of offensive arts,” Alphinaud answered, studying the carbuncle with a faint puzzlement as it continued to snuggle into Alvaar’s lap.

“So you’re the one who left all those paw prints in that shack in Kholusia,” Alvaar remarked brightly, ruffling soft fur and grinning at the bright chirp he got in answer even as Alphinaud pulled an annoyed face.

“I told you I spent most of my idle time on refining it Alvaar, don’t tease me,” he huffed.

“Well, they’re lovely. Hmm... Can I call you Carbi?” Alvaar asked the summon, tilting his head as the carbuncle’s fox like face looked up at him before chirping again. “Carbi with an I, it is.”

“You can’t be serious...” Alphinaud sighed, pinching at the bridge of his nose.

“Well, I can’t call it Mooni. That’s just silly.”

“You’re insufferable.”

“I’m not the one that keeps designing cuter and cuter fuzzy pets for battle and then refusing to name them Leveilleur. You did this to yourself. But much as I would like to stay here and chat with you, and I do mean that I’ve rather missed our talks, I should be getting back.” He paused, mulling over the situation before meeting his friend’s eyes. “She asked to stay in my room tonight. If you wanted to talk to her before tomorrow, now might be the time,” he stated, offering an out that he knew the Scholar didn’t miss.

Glancing away in deep thought, Alphinaud sighed. “Knowing my sister if she wanted to talk to me than she would have. I fully expected her to be upset with my attempt to find her after she made it clear she wanted to be left alone. I had just wanted to ensure she was alright, and now I know she is. If she went to see you then that’s where she wishes to be.” Looking up at him, the Scholar gave a genuine if tired smile. “Contrary to my... less charitable reaction earlier... I know if she is with you, she’ll be fine. That’s enough for me. Anything further can be discussed later after we’ve all had some well-earned rest.”

“Sure?” Alvaar asked after a moment.

“Positive.”

“Alright.” Studying the Scholar’s face and the traces of weariness on it, Alvaar reached over to loop an arm around his shoulders and pull him into a one-armed hug. “Promise me you’ll rest? No staying up late for politics and research okay?”

A soft chuckle left the shorter Elezen after a moment. “I assure you my friend, the very next place I’m going to is my suite. ... Just... please take care of my sister.”

“I will. Now then, up you get Carbi. Cute as you are, I’ve a job to do.” The Bard waited as the carbuncle gave him a brief look before slipping off his lap to perch on the stairs with a dutiful if squeaky chirp. “.... Oschon’s bow and staff you’re so damn cute,” he murmured, ruffling the carbuncles fluffy cheeks. “Alphi I like this one. They’re so chatty... little charmer you,” Alvaar crooned, ducking down to press a kiss to the creature’s forehead before hauling himself up to his feet. Giving a last fur smoothing pet to the summon, he started up the stairs towards his room. “Get some rest Alphi. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Of course. Pleasant dreams Alvaar.”

-

Knocking on the door, Alvaar waited for the muted answer before letting himself in. Remembering to lock it behind him this time, he paused as he stared into the room. It wasn’t particularly difficult to spot Alisaie, especially where she was leaned against the side of the open window in a thin shirt and shorts, staring out into the night and edged in silver light. It only made her long wave of white hair glow even brighter in the dim where she’d freed it from its usual braid.

It wasn’t the first he’d seen it, given their travels and closeness in the past, but it was... different somehow. In a way he couldn’t quite place.

“It’s beautiful. I can only imagine what it must seem like for the people of the First. This would be the first time they’ve ever seen the night sky,” Alisaie mused aloud. “I didn’t think I would ever get used to that oppressive veil of light when we initially arrived. I spent the first few weeks perpetually sleep deprived and out of sorts because of it.” Trailing off a moment, she gave a single humorless laugh. “They used to tease me at the Inn. For patrolling at all the oddest hours. It took me what felt like forever to get used to it. Tesleen... she used to wait up for me, even when I told her not to. She said it was always important to welcome someone back home...”

Hearing the catch in her voice, Alvaar finally trailed closer. Stepping up beside her and meeting Alisaie’s gaze when she looked up at him with a watery and pained smile.

“I had hoped... I’d wanted her to see the night sky. She believed so... so firmly that one day things would be better...” Looking away abruptly she shut her eyes and hugged her arms tighter where they were folded over her chest. Gently thumping her head against the opened shutter, she let out a slow and shuddering breath. “Gods... I failed them Alvaar. A good soul was ripped away and it hurts... That loss and that failure hurts.” Falling quiet with a harsh sniffle she thumped her head against the wood again a bit harder. “Damnit... I’d always known one day I’d have to leave. It wasn’t even anything that serious... nothing there ever could be but... this hurts so much worse than before. It cuts so much deeper...”

Noting where her fingers were dug in against her arms, he tugged her away from the window and pried her hands free. Clasping them in his own and giving her a sympathetic look. “I know.”

“We used to go to the market together,” she continued thoughtlessly after a moment, voice soft even as her hands shook in his grip as she stared at them. “She taught me several recipes. We’d spar together in the early morning before the others woke. We used to stay up all hours talking about anything and everything. Every time another patient was too far gone, she would still smile and reassure them everything would be fine. She would hand them the poisoned food herself and I remember it... I remember her tears against my neck when I held her afterward as she would cry late in the evenings when the others were asleep... I remember the first time we kissed in the shade of those ruins. The way she looked so peaceful when she slept and-” Her words finally clipped off with a choked noise, burying her face against his shirt with a muffled sob.

Releasing her hands so she could grip against the fabric at his back, he settled an arm around her shoulders, gently soothing his free hand through soft glowing strands comfortingly.

“How could you stand this after Haurchefant...? It feels like my heart is ripping in two...” she whispered hoarsely.

That made him still, glancing out the window and into the moonlit night stretching out below…

He flicks his gaze back down to her quickly. “Sometimes I still can’t,” he admitted softly, going back to petting her hair gently. “But we endure. For those we have lost, for those we may yet save. We continue to carry on one way or another. It’s alright. Go ahead and talk. Cry. Whatever you need. I’m here for you Ali. And I promise you, I swear it, we’re going to save these people.”

-

Alvaar’s eyes are heavy when they’re finally settled back in bed, the Red Mage curled up against his chest quietly as they lay on their sides like before. Once again his arms are looped loose but protectively around her, humming softly out of habit. He almost thinks she’s asleep before Alisaie shifts enough to glance up at him, expression equally tired but still restless.

“What is it from? That tune. You said it was your take on Warden’s Paean. Did you write it yourself?” she asked softly.

“No, just a song my mentor used to sing. ... She was a healer. A White Mage. I tend to think of her when I channel it,” he answered calmly.

“Would you mind singing it?” Alisaie queried carefully. Likely because of how little he’d spoken of the woman in the past, only ever in the bits and pieces of memories as they came back to him.

“Can’t sing on my side like this, it’s bad posture for breathing. But let me lie on my back and I can if you promise to go to sleep.” It’s a pointless bargain when he knows how haunting the first night is himself, but her nod is something at least. Rolling onto his back, he frees the arm that had been slipped under and about her as she shuffles closer again to rest her head against his shoulder and stretch an arm over his chest. Curling his arm high at her back so he can rest his hand against her shoulder.

It reminds him of Ala Mhigo abruptly. That victory that has now been... Gods... how long had it been? Almost a year on the Source now surely but it feels like a weary lifetime and yesterday all at once. When he’d been so tired and soul sick after his multiple clashes against Zenos. The weight of so many attempts, deaths and failures, and the familiar and loving arms that had held him tight in that space between. The familiar gentle voice offering advice and encouragement in those scant moments. How badly, even now, he wanted to let go and let that quiet space keep him safe and warm with the man he loved…

But he couldn’t. Not when the warm press of Alphinaud and Alisaie, curled up against his sides on that overcrowded cot, had seemed to keep his soul chained to his body. Silently reinforced all the reasons he’d needed to stay with the support and companionship of his dearest friends and allies.

“Alvaar?” Alisaie asks softly, breaking him from his thoughts.

“Sorry. Lost in thought. Almost feels like Ala Mhigo... Your brother had been looking for you by the way,” he replies, almost smirking at the expected annoyed huff that leaves her.

“Why am I not surprised... I told him to leave me alone and he can’t very well trust me on that can he the meddling...” she groused, grumbling again as Alvaar chuckled.

“Don’t be mean, he was really worried for you. I would give up a lot of things to have family that cared so much about me,” he reminded gently. Surely Alphinaud hadn’t wanted him to mention it, but he was certain her stoked temper would cool by morning. Perhaps it would even open the way for them to talk. One really couldn’t have too many friends to help them with their grief.

“Don’t think you’re getting out of singing Aldaviir. Quit bringing up distractions,” she grumbled sourly.

“You say that like you’ve never heard me sing before,” he joked.

“I haven’t,” Alisaie returned curtly.

That made him blink, staring at her blankly. “Bullshite. I’m told I scarcely ever shut up in combat.”

“In combat, sure. The practice yard, yes... But that’s more instrument than voice. Whatever use of aether you do to call music without needing to play. But I’ve never heard just you sing...” she argued flatly.

“Lucky you. Alphinaud likely wishes he could have gotten me to shut up.” It’s accompanied with a soft chuckle as he remembers the Scholar’s hastily beaten retreats in the past. “Don’t get your hopes up. I’m tired and won’t be projecting properly.”

“I’ll withhold my critique.”

“That’s very kind of you. There’s a long build to it first, let me catch the tune before you get mad at me.” Settling back he studied the ceiling in the dark a moment, taking a few experimental deep breaths before starting to hum again. The same soft tune as he had before, slow and calming, though clearer and stronger now that he could breathe properly.

The lyrics were ones he’d long etched into his heart, and they rolled easy off his tongue on well-practiced habit. Words of comfort, almost like a lullaby, but speaking too deep for the different weariness that could fill a heart. A meaning he had only learned in the many years since, a world away from the echoes of thunder as he’d first heard them. The rasp of rain against treated fabric as he’d clutched into the warmth of Rosa’s robes when he’d been young, fragile, and small with malnourishment. Shivering with fear and chill in the nights storm. Afraid for what might haunt that dark when he couldn’t hear the approach of footfalls in the rain, a warning he’d learned to wake for in his troubled youth.

Rosa hadn’t been anything approaching a Bard. Her voice too untrained to hold the notes proper, more whisper singing than anything... But deep in his heart, as he’d spent many hours since contemplating and perfecting his craft, he knew it must have been the first flicker of Bardsong he’d ever heard. A melody and lyrics that had passed through the years into folksong, changing hands many times like a worn Allagan bronze before it came to him.

Strength. Endurance. Rest and peace in those moments they were most needed. Hope amidst the promise of those words.

All would be well in time.

He’s not surprised to feel her settle further into his side as he sings for her, the faintest bit heavier as the tension in her muscles ease. There are a few hot pinpricks of unconscious tears that sink against his shirt even as she falls asleep, the even and slow rhythm of her breathing an unconscious accompaniment he matches on instinct.

Finishing the last meter, he listens to the notes as they echo in the large room, a soft prickle against his skin that waits like a question. It’s something he’s learned is the hum of Resonance waiting for use, the aether primed from his music ready to find use with his additional skills. He lets it slip away as he closes his eyes, curling a bit closer and fussing the blankets about the young woman buried against his side unconsciously.

There’s a faint... something. A subconscious feeling, a knowing, that stirs in his head sleepily. The same way many of his memories come back to him, suddenly coming to his mind as if stepping free from a fog. But even when he waits it doesn’t reveal itself, and he falls asleep before noticing the other entity in the room. A pale ghost perched on the windowsill, sitting still and quiet with his eternally bloodstained axe shining like a crescent moon in the night.

[chrysalispen]

locum tenens (NSFW)

In which Nero is extremely conflicted about. Um. A lot of things, but Cid and Aurelia specifically.

(Set during ARR, post-Titan MSQ. Masturbation, but it’s an implied threesome and there’s fairly overt Cid/Nero overtones in this one, so give it a pass if that isn’t your thing.)

NSFW under the cut. 

===================================================

He has long since lost focus on the evening's work. For the last bell the buzz of the overhead fluorescents have proven a most effective distraction: one of the bulbs is about to die. It flickers at random, the flaring and receding patterns of light in his already sensitive eyes leaving him with both a burgeoning headache and an increasingly foul mood. 

Thus, the tribunus laticlavius has instead chosen to tilt the adjustable back of his office chair as far back as it will go and stare blankly into space for some unspecified amount of time. His pale blue eyes tilt upwards and relegate the faulty bulb to his periphery, tracking some fixed point within the maze of crisscrossed steel supports that adorn the castrum ceiling like a roof strewn with bones. 

It's quiet. Late night. Other than the Fifth Cohort's rookies running the graveyard shift guard duty along the castrum perimeter, everyone else has sought their bed. Everyone, that is, save one Nero tol Scaeva, currently finding his office ceiling a fascinating subject of study, and whomever else in the XIVth Legion that might at this juncture have eschewed the blood in their veins in favor of roughly equivalent amounts of caffeine. 

Van Baelsar being one of them, probably.

With a slow and careful exhalation Nero stares down at the files sitting in his lap. He's long since shed his armor; it's sitting polished and neat in its compartments until he has need to don it again -- another eikon investigation, perhaps -- and he is clad only in carbonweave breeches and a loose, untucked linen undershirt. Even his boots sit by the door, and if the legatus were to enter right this moment he knows he'd get a long and piercing hazel stare and a thinly veiled lecture about the dress code.

But neither the Black Wolf nor one of his lectures appears to be forthcoming, meaning Nero will pass another sleepless night alone with naught but a pile of tomestones and paper. 

More distractions from Project Ultima that he would prefer not to have. But he agreed to accept the posting, and the posting included a duty as the head of legate counterintelligence, and he might as well do something productive if he can't sleep. Old habits die hard.

At length he wrenches his gaze away from the ceiling (where it had returned while he considered putting his boots back on, at the very least). Runs a restless hand through thick platinum-blond curls. Glancing at the door one last time as if to satisfy his silent suspicion that he is the only man awake at this hour, before forcing himself to return his focus to the godsdamned reports.

He leafs slowly and thoughtfully through the copied printouts he'd selected from the raw data earlier in the day. Since Operation Quicksand's semi-successful conclusion he's had his men scouring the surrounding region for any sign of the missing adventurer who somehow managed to escape Livia's net. 

Somehow. He allows himself a smirk.

He picks up the reading glasses from their perch on the lacquered edge of the table and skims a few more pages of the assembled dossier.

His man's stakeout along the Sunroad has yielded unexpected fruit: not one, but two persons of interest. A woman matching the adventurer's description was recently seen around the so-called town of Camp Drybone, little more than a rest stop with a chapel run by some religious order or other.

He'd expected that, of course. She wouldn't have strayed far from Vesper Bay. 

It's the other one that catches his eye, one of the apparent clergymen at first blush. The beard throws him for a handful of minutes; it adds years to the man's face, makes him look far more like someone else Nero used to know. But the question lingers for barest moments, and then vestigial memory locks the rest into place, fills in the holes that time has eroded.

A cold and mirthless smile twitches at the edges of his lips. 

So. Alive, then. 

He's not sure whether to question the strange watershed sensation of relief or to let himself ruminate over that tight coil of anger already forming in his gut. The bastard should be  gone  , by all rights, out of  everyone's lives, but especially Nero's. 

He tosses that picture to the desk along with the neatly typed file clipped to it, reaches for his coffee (long since gone cold), and downs the rest of it in one sitting. It's only his iron control over his temper that keeps him from slamming the earthenware vessel onto the surface of the table in a fit of pique. 

Shite and hellsfire, matters were unbearable enough when he thought he must needs merely contend with the man's ghost. 

Setting the file and his glasses aside, he picks up the other: a much smaller dossier, owing largely to its subject's relative obscurity. There is surprisingly little information about her beyond army records. Highborn, but of unremarkable parentage and even less remarkable service. No different, surely, from any of the other pureblooded ladies who play chirurgeon for their requisite four year tours.

The difference, of course, being that this woman is supposed to be dead and clearly that is not the case. 

The Scions of the Seventh Dawn have done remarkably well to conceal her identity; it gives one cause to wonder what other secrets they might be keeping close to the chest. No doubt Livia is now taking great pleasure in wresting that information out of them.

She has been seen in Garlond's company, he muses. 'Tis most like she is an associate of his in some capacity, most likely professional by his man's reports, unless of course Garlond has taken more of a liking to the girl than he would have assumed.

Nero unclips the photo and studies it in silence, steepling his fingers before his lips as he leans forward in the chair. Committing that face to memory.

Carefully he places the file atop the collection of paperwork and pushes back the chair, padding towards the entrance to his quarters on bare feet. As he does so, he ignores the chill of corrugated steel against his soles. He's felt far worse. 

One of the few objective advantages of his lofty rank within the XIVth is the privacy it affords him. Second in command and privy to extremely sensitive information, he cannot afford a security breach. The door is soundproofed and can only be opened upon his command; locking it will alert the guards standing watch to dissuade any unexpected visitors -- and that he will brook no interruptions.

He throws the deadbolt. Behind him the dying light continues to flicker. 

He stares at the switch panel, considering for a brief moment, then uses the flat of his hand to push all of them down simultaneously, and the flickering is blessedly gone. Cool blue light from the walls spills across the darkened room like water.

That done, Nero turns towards the entrance to his personal quarters. Empty office space he only uses during his visits to this particular outpost, adorned with a desk, a small console with his feeds from R&D, and two small metal armoires. 

Between them, situated behind the soulless steel table, there lies a long and narrow cot with a stiff, uncomfortable mattress and a single thin blanket. Up until now, it has gone untouched. Nero has long since accustomed himself to falling asleep upon whatever surface exhaustion places him, and that's been in labs for countless weeks now, his fingers wrapped about a mug of coffee with a tomestone scrolling raw data for decryption on the screen before him. 

Nero sits down on the edge of the cot, swings his legs up and over the side, and stretches his lanky frame from end to end -- he is a tall man even by Garlean standards, and his toes are only an ilm or two shy of the armoire. There is no pillow so he folds his arms behind his head and lets his eyes fall shut, listens to the soft and even whisper of air through his nose as he takes a breath, lets it out, takes another. 

He's not going to fall asleep like this, though. Not with his mind defying him, still moving a malm a minute.

Sifting idly through spare bits of information for something his mind can use, his thoughts turn to the woman. Adventurer, defector, a cipher in and of herself. 

The photo that now lies in Frumentarium's keeping is somewhat outdated now, but still reasonably accurate to his memory of her battles otherwise: hair the color of honey, falling in soft and loose waves to tumble past slim, proud shoulders. Dark blue eyes. An almost unreasonable air of personal composure. In the dark and quiet stillness of his sealed chambers he can paint a picture of her in his mind's eye, what he has witnessed of her, a force of nature in battle -- and there is an appeal in that strength which Nero won't deny. He has ever appreciated power in all its forms.

Idly he wonders what she would look like without the unadorned battle robes of a conjurer: a context in which there would be no cause for her soft mouth to set in that grim line, nor eyes to harden as they stare down a dangerous opponent. No crudely fashioned silver circlet to conceal that third eye, a mark of her heritage that in a just world she could display with pride.

Softly disheveled, she would appear quite different. Candlelit glow against gold and the porcelain field of flesh laid bare, indigo eyes perhaps burning with a different sort of fire. Mouth slack and soft, the lips parted ever so slightly, to admonish or to laugh or to whisper. To smile. 

Perhaps even to kiss, he thinks, and for some reason that is the thought that spears itself down the core of his spine. Heat blossoms in his groin. 

His hand strays to his waistband and lingers, settling over the silver clasp of the first buttons without unfastening them just yet. As a younger man he would have been impatient to seek release, but now that he has so little free time to himself these days, save stolen moments such as these, he prefers to take a more relaxed approach. He rests the flat of his palm upon his belly, giving the heat and tension time to build upon themselves. Beneath his gently curled fingers he can sense the indentation of his navel and a light mat of wiry blond curls, tapering downward in a smooth line from the broad planes of his chest.

The tribunus opens his eyes, staring sightlessly at the darkened ceiling.

She'd smiled once, after one of those battles: a quiet, shy thing that had lit up her face as she said something to the man accompanying her. Another Scion associate, or a lover? 'Tis rumored the adventuring profession attracts a certain free-spirited sort of individual. If the defector is of that bent, he imagines she has had her share of suitors, if not simply like-minded souls willing to warm her bed when the mood strikes.

Perhaps Garlond is one of them. 

A sullen annoyance arises at the thought and Nero kills it swiftly, before it can put him back into the less-than-ideal state of mind he'd come in here to dispel. It isn't likely, for one. The same man who had reported their presence in Camp Drybone had also provided a rough map from his memory of the chapel interior, in case the tribunus might decide to order a raid on the premises to arrest them. The floor plan is open, spread among narrow and rough-hewn wooden pews -- no room there for trysting clerics.

Or is there? The Academy's floor plan had included a similar layout in the main lecture halls, and there had been winter nights where the snowfall had been so heavy and the gales so dangerous a student could risk their lives simply attempting to walk back to the dormitories. Sometimes they'd be shut in the school building for days at a time, bundled two to a pallet along the floors at night for warmth through body heat while the arctic wind wailed around steel eaves. 

Nero knows from personal and very lived experience that one could get up to some interesting pursuits beneath those heavy blankets with one's instructors none the wiser, were one so inclined. 

And the desert is quite cold at night. 

Have they maintained professional distance, or have they indulged themselves? Shared more than body warmth of a cold and lonely evening? 

Nimble fingers slip the silver-plated button through the first loop, loosens his breeches just enough to allay some of the growing discomfort, and his cock twitches at the sensation of touch in its general vicinity. His lower lip catches for just a split second between his teeth before his fingers move to unfasten another.

He would never admit it to a living soul but he can remember the precise location of every one of the calluses that work and long hours had worn into Cid nan Garlond's hands. Can almost feel the half-remembered sensation of roughened fingertips and broad palms tracing their circuitry patterns down his back from shoulder to waist and beyond. The memory brings no rancor with it, and that, he finds, is a surprise in itself. 

His eyes fall shut again, and this time his breathing is ever so slightly uneven. Another button slips from its confines, then a fourth when he finds no relief to be had from the pressure of his own clothing. A noticeable ridge has formed beneath the carbonweave and with a light and questing touch he places his palm upon it, notes the way it stretches and strains against the coated fibers. It's warm to the touch, and acutely sensitive; his breath hisses between clenched teeth upon contact and his knees flex in response, heels drawing an ilm or two upward. The motion drags his feet away from the cold steel armoire and he exhales, a trembling gust of air.

He begins to touch himself in earnest. Slow and firm and unhurried strokes, palm gently cupped about the half-clothed shaft, heel of his palm applying just enough pressure to feel each subsequent twitch as it occurs.

Nero knows his touch intimately, but the adventurer's (defector's) is as much a mystery as the rest of her. She would be soft, he muses. Soft and smooth, the tiny hairs on the surface of her skin like the nap of fine velvet: an exquisite contrast to her partner, toned muscle and wiry silver filament strands against the rough homespun pallet. 

From there it is easy to imagine the two of them entwined, concealed from prying eyes beneath their shared blankets in the cool desert night. Calloused hands upon slim and elegant shoulders, drawing the simple linen conjurer's robes along her limbs and down to pool at her waist. The heat in those ceruleum-blue eyes of hers, when those same strong fingers trace the shape of her collarbone before descending upon the soft and pliant weight of her breasts.

The final button undone, he carefully lifts his hips from the mattress so he can move his loose breeches to mid-thigh, then slides the elastic waistband of his smalls down and over the curve of his hips, just enough to expose his aching cock to the night air. The surface of his skin feels... electric, a living levin conduit. His heartbeat is a drum pounding its rhythm in his ears. 

He wraps a hand about himself, a short gasp escaping his lips at the sensation, and the pace he sets is far less measured than before.

It isn't only Garlond that Nero imagines now, breathing ragged and heavy beneath the close darkness of homespun blankets, learning the adventurer’s body with the meticulous eye reserved for an engineer's schematic. It's himself as well, his curious nature making it impossible for him to refrain from conducting his own investigation - and his jealousy, the pride that leaves him unwilling to allow even a phantom Cid borne of his own fevered imaginings to possess aught that Nero tol Scaeva wants for himself. 

The shy little smile he remembers has become something approaching wicked as she presents herself to him, lounging with her back relaxed against Cid's broad chest and his arms wrapped fondly about her waist. He would enfold that slender frame in his arms, soft warm skin damp from sweat. Inhale the scent he'd caught that day in the caverns, trapped within the skeins of blonde hair that slip across his chest. 

Her long legs flex when she parts them and his gaze catches upon the small cap of curls nestled at the apex of her thighs, soft and lush and inviting. 

In his mind's eye he sheathes himself in one stroke: an easy and perfect slide into her cunt, slick and grasping and as hungry for him as he is for her- and then there are hands, not one set but two, hers tangled in his hair and Garlond's rough, broad ones, dragging across his back, soothing and sure and familiar. 

His back arches, hips rolling into the quickening movements of his hand, taut flesh slick with his own fluids. A deep moan, urgent and frantic, threads its way from his lips and goes all but unnoticed. Wholly caught within the gossamer threads of his own fantasy, he is entwined with them, pressed into that warm closeness they share, overcome both by lust and a deep-seated desire to possess whatever undefinable quality it is that seems to draw others to them. 

That draws Nero, for all his protests to the contrary. 

The heat and the painful tension in his belly surge, drawing to a point as fine and white-hot as the tip of an iron. Nero's free hand finds desperate purchase in the scratchy fabric of the blanket beneath, pulls, clenches into a fist so tight it will leave crescent-shaped indents in his palm even through the cheap synthetic wool.

The phantom lovers in his head sigh. His name is a prayer on her lips as she shudders around him. Another (far more familiar) mouth presses itself against his neck, an echo of her cry rasped in hot breath and a soft male rumble, and it is his undoing. 

The sound he makes when he comes is a broken and stuttering cry. Wet heat paints his bare stomach and the fingers wrapped snugly about his length. He lies on the cot for long moments without budging, staring into the darkness with unfocused fjord-blue eyes, his breathing rapid and loud and the pounding of his heart keeping time with the bright pulse still thrumming in his spent cock. 

His eyes adjust, eventually, as his heartbeat slows from its breakneck pace. 

He sees the same ceiling as before. Standardized castrum architecture. Soulless black steel, the neat and careful lines backlit by cool blue light, light that will turn a deep scarlet were he to switch on the fluorescents. The last vestiges of afterglow have faded. Garlond has been presumed dead for five years, his adventurer associate is a stranger with a bounty on her head for defection, and Nero is the engineer Gaius van Baelsar has rather than the one he wants. The acceptable substitute.

He is also no closer to sleep now than he was before. Too much on the mind, too much still left to do before the project is ready for a field test. Garlond and his eikon-slaying friend, wherever they are now, will have to wait upon further consideration, and Livia will have to accept what means of intelligence she has available. For now. 

Nero swings his legs carefully over the side of the cot, grimacing briefly at the mess. He uses the corner of the blanket to clean what he can as he tucks himself back into place and stands, thoughtfully buttoning his breeches. First order of business: fresh smalls, and a long shower. After that he might as well get back down to his lab and put on a fresh pot of coffee. He can work out his leftover frustration on that damned servomech he's been wrestling for the past few days.

And if he finds himself distracted by an old memory, or the whisper of a scent-

Well. 

He can ignore it.

[princessofimaginarydragons]

Prompt #26 - Slosh

FFXIV Write 2019 - 30 Day Writing Challenge

Hosted by  @sea-wolf-coast-to-coast

~~~

Takes place after the events of Shadowbringers MSQ, but doesn’t really contain spoilers (maybe if you squint)

~~~

The tray of drinks sloshed around as they were deposited in the middle of the large table, the barmaid giving the group of Scions a wink as she slid away.

Iscara reached out for a bottle, flicking the cork out with a thumb, before taking a long chug, and then raising it up, “Cheers.”

Y’shtola chuckled, “I’m sure you’re meant to do that before you start drinking.”

“That was some hours ago,” Alphinaud pointed out, handing the miqo'te the glass of wine he had just poured.

“Yes, and some of us should probably stop,” Thancred interjected, pointedly looking at Ryne, who blushed, and pushed her glass away. 

“It’s a celebration Thancred, let the girl enjoy it.”

“She won’t enjoy the hangover tomorrow.”

“Never had one in my life,” the warrior of light grinned at him. Thancred narrowed his eyes at her, and muttered ‘lucky sot’ under his breath.

“Never ever?” Alisaie looked over at the warrior, who shook her head, and earned a sigh in response.

“What’s with the heavy sighing?”

“Oh, nothing serious. Just…” the young elezen looked over at her friend, “Sometimes, I think that I barely know you. I know that’s not true, but…”

Iscara put her bottle down, looking over at Alisaie for several moments, the table quiet. Then she let out a sigh, took a long swing, draining the bottle dry, and said, “Fine, let’s do this.”

“What?”

“You want to know things? About me? Ask away.”

“What, just like that?”

“You are my friends. My best friends. I trust you, all of you. And, lets face it, I am a close-mouthed bitch most of the time. I don’t want you to feel like you don’t know me. Aaaand Lolorito happened to find out I have a sister, and that fact that he knows that when you don’t makes me feel weird. Also I’m pleasantly inebriated, so ask away.”

“You have a sister?”

“Yup. And she’s got eight kids, I’m very used to being called ‘Aunt Is’.”

“How old?”

“Eldest is fourteen now, youngest is only a few months. Nine possibly? I lose count. It’s where all my earrings disappear to, they get used as chew toys.”

“Where do they live?”

“They moved into Ala Mhigo after we took it back from the Garlean’s. Oma brought the merc banner down to fight in the liberation efforts, and once it was free, she wanted to stay. Jaydra brought the family because she’s been wanting to move for a while, and thinks she can get a good foothold with her business in the city.”

“Oma?”

“What business is she in?” The twins simultaneously asked.

“Oma is grandmother. Jaydra’s a goldsmith, she makes a good two thirds of the stuff I wear.”

“Thou has mentioned before in passing that thou does not consider thyself Ala Mhighan. May I enquire as to why, as it seems thy family is closely tied to the city?”

“Oma is Ala Mhigan, and there’s a fair few in my family tree. But there’s also other bits and pieces of different nationalities in there as well. I wasn’t born in Gyr Abania, didn’t grow up there either. I’m highlander, for sure, but personally I don’t feel I have any ties to Ala Mhigo, their culture is second hand to me. I had what you could probably call a ‘blended’ upbringing. More than anything else, I guess I think of myself as ‘Eorzean’.”

“What are those other bits and pieces then?”

“Okay, family tree time. So, Oma is Ala Mhigan, and she got together with a Limonsan, which made my dad. My mum’s father was Ala Mhigan as well, but her mother was the product of an Ala Mhigan and a Gridanian. And I think the Gridanian was a product of a Gridanian and an Ishagardian, but I’d have to ask about that.”

Alisaie was leaning her head on one hand, listening with rapture, “Multicultural indeed.”

Iscara hummed her agreement, knocking back another drink.

“Where were you born then, if not in Gyr Abania?”

“Mor Dhona. Southern shores of Silvertear Lake. Of course, it’s the Carteneau Flats these days.”

“Was there a reason for that?”

“The family and the merc banner, actually back a little bit. So, Oma inherited the mercenary banner, ‘Winter’s Edge’, and made a name for it and herself. So when King Theodoric came to power, and started doing things she didn’t like, she just packed up the banner and went out on an ‘extended work trip’. Basically unofficially quitting the city until it got sorted out, which, well you all know what happened there. And since everyone knew what she was doing, some of the family members of the mercs under her banner came with her, and it kind of grew, until it was this large nomadic band, going where the work was. Mor Dhona was empty, and central, and a pretty good place to make a more central camp, so there were there for a few years, and that’s when I was born.”

“What’s your favourite colour?” Ryne’s soft voice came from the corner.

Iscara smiled at the young girl, “Blue. More specifically, pale blues, like ice crystals, or hydrangea flowers”

“I’ve got one,” Thancred leaned forward, “Best and worst fights. Your opinion.”

Iscara winced, “Give me something easy, why don’t you,” she took a swig of the bottle as she thought. “Worst, Zenos. Rhalgr’s Reach was probably the worst of them all. Best? Thordan. Not for the fighting, that was easy, he wasn’t as good as he thought he was. None of them were, and that’s why showing them what a real Fury could do was so satisfying. Not healthy, but really, really satisfying.”

“Are you a follower of Halone?”

“Yup. And before someone asks, no, I was before Ishgard. I’ve been her follower since childhood, she was who I invoked when I was named.”

Y’shtola frowned a little, “Were you not named when you were born?”

“No. Not properly. There’s a, I guess who’d call it a belief in my family that a person’s name says a lot about them. So when children mature enough, they can pick their own name. Until then, they tend to have nicknames or a ‘kit name’. Although there’s a couple of people I know who liked those names so much they kept them.”

“So you chose the name Iscara?”

“And Wintermere. We all tend to have winter in our surname, keeps the family connection. Mere is an old name for a lake, referencing where I was born.”

“And Iscara?”

She smiled, “My first ever friend gave the name to me. Well, she gave me a title in her language, and Iscara is kind of what is translates to when you put in Eorzean.”

“Which language doth it stem from?”

Iscara chuckled, “You’re clever people. Learned people. I’m not going to tell you, but I would be interested to see if you can work it out. And what it means.”

Urianger raised an eyebrow, Y’shtola chuckled. Alphinaud dived into a tome in his bag, Alisaie rolled her eyes. Ryne looked slightly confused, and Thancred shrugged, “Well I hope there isn’t a prize because I have no chance of winning it.”

The warrior of light chuckled, “I don’t know. You’re pretty good at turning up unusual information when you want to.”

“So there is a prize?”

“You want something more than the satisfaction of knowledge?”

“Yup.”

She tapped the table, “Alright. That pool Tataru has going. About my love life.”

“Ooooh, you know about that?”

“Course. Anyway. I’ll tell the winner the answer.”

There was a moment of silence, then Alphinaud stood up suddenly, redness across his cheeks, “SorrybutIthinkIneedtogotobenowgodnightall,” he said without breathing before turning and abruptly walking away from the table.

“Oi! Don’t you dare think you can go and break into the crystal tower at this point at night!” His twin yelled at him, also leaving the table to chase after him.

“Prithee excuse me, and I shall see that they do not cause too much ruckus,” Urianger said, exiting at a more sedate pace.

Y’shtola sighed, “You want to look in the crystal tower as much as they do.”

“The coin that hast flowed into aforementioned pot is vast.”

The thaumaturge waved a hand at him.

“Not joining them Y’shtola?”

“I doubt the information is contained within the Tomes of the Exarch. And yourself Thancred?”

“Oh, I was simply planning on taking a more immediate approach. More wine my friends?”

Iscara chuckled, leaning forward and meeting his eyes, “I could drink everyone else in the entire Crystarium under the table and still be lucid enough to not tell you a damn thing.”

“Now that sounds like a challenge.”

[hasty-touch]

Tips for leveling DoH & DoL

I am fondly known by my friends as "that guy who's obsessed with crafting and also Ishgard", so I'm ecstatic about getting to enjoy both those things in Shadowbringers. And I've been hearing a lot of my friends excited about the latter wanting to catch up with the former so they're ready to participate! I love crafting so much I've capped classes on 4 alts... so having leveled multiple times, I thought I'd share some of my thoughts and tips -- not a detailed how-to guide (though maybe I'll try to write one of those someday), but broader opinions about what strategies to take. This is geared more to DoH than DoL (which is more self-explanatory IMO) but I'll include thoughts on DoL too.

I learned how to craft back in the 2.5 era from GameFAQs and from ffxivguild -- though I can't easily recommend the latter anymore because their ads and autoplay videos have gotten really aggressive. If I find a good, current guide I'll add a link here.

Other resources well-loved by me or friends are Crafting as a Service for shopping lists and leveling planning, Ariyala for gearing, FFXIV Teamcraft for their endgame-invaluable simulator, and Garlandtools Bell for unspoiled nodes.

So let's see. What would my general tips be for people who are picking up DoH and DoL now in anticipation of Shadowbringers?

Your leveling options

There are lots of different ways for you to level your DoH and L, so if you hate one there's sure to be another option. Some of them, and my thoughts on the pros and cons of the different methods:

Class Quests. I strongly recommend doing your class quests as you unlock them! They give nice lumps of experience, shards/crystals for DoH, and gear (albeit NQ gear, so inferior to what you could make yourself). You should especially do 60-70, Stormblood era quests as you unlock them, as they give you powerful new traits and abilities. Of course, you have to fill the gaps between class quests with something:

Grinding. Just makin' stuff from your Crafting Log or gathering from your Gathering Log, or hanging out at a level-appropriate fishing hole and fishing. Potentially boring, but can actually add up to nice chunks of EXP, especially under Rested and with the aid of Engineering Manuals/Survival Manuals. (More on them later.)

Leveling DoH through grinding is probably your most expensive option, not only in terms of gil spent on the MB but retainer space used to store those materials.

Synthesize (manually crafting) gives more experience than Quick Synthesis -- if I understand correctly, the more steps you use in a craft the more experience you get, up to a point renofmanyalts says you get more exp the more you fill your Quality bar, which makes a lot more sense!

You can recover some of your gil by selling the items you make, so a little time researching what you can make at your level that sells well may be profitable in several ways.

Leveling DoL through grinding, on the other hand, is potentially a way to make money, if there's a high-demand item in the right level range.

You'll get more experience for HQ items and by maintaining a chain (i.e., not missing an item).

Since you can start and stop grinding whenever you want, you can use it both if you have lots or limited time to play. But I wouldn't recommend it as your primary method!

Grand Company Supply and Provisioning. One item requested each day for each class. You get a very nice chunk of experience, doubled if HQ, with a further bonus to starred items.

I like the GC as a leveling method. They usually take the length of one food buff (<= 30 minutes for all eight DoH classes, plus an additional <= 30 minutes for all three DoL classes), which is a manageable amount of chores per day. You get GC seals, which can be spent on manuals, Cordials, squadron missions, etc., to further help you.

You are limited to one item per class per day, so once you've handed in your day's items, you have to find something else to do. It's great if you play every day, but if you have a lot of playtime on just a few days of the week you may not be able to take the same advantage.

You do have to buy and store the materials, and since the assignment each day is random, it may take up a lot of retainer space.

Levequests/guildleves. While technically limited by your leve allowances (which can be checked at the bottom of your journal), you get 3 allowances every 12 hours and you can store up to 100, and you've gotta really grind leves to spend 100 leve allowances. They give nice chunks of experience, doubled for HQ.

"Levekits" are bundles of items sold by higher-level crafters and fishers which, when handed in to levemetes, get you enough experience to bump you up to the target level (50, 60, etc.) They're an option -- and if you really must be level 70 today, they're your only option -- but I don't really recommend them. If you learn to craft yourself while you level, you'll understand how the abilities work together and won't be overwhelmed by buttons at cap. Even if you intend only to craft at cap using other people's macros, a little bit of knowledge will help you troubleshoot and improve them.

If you take advantage of DoH leves, I would recommend you make the items yourself instead, gaining experience both for the crafting and for the turn-in. You will have to buy/gather the materials, but since you can decide what leves you're going to target in advance and just get materials for those, storage is not as problematic.

MIN and BTN leves send you to a location to gather key items that are handed in at the end of the leve, sometimes with special targets (changing what actions you'd spend your GP on). For the time invested you get more exp than just grinding, but you don't have items to sell at the end of it.

Large-Scale Temple Knight leves (marked with "(L)" in the levequest name) are generally considered not worth your time because they take 10x the allowances and only give 3x the exp.

You can do as many leves as you want per day as long as you have the allowances, so you can take advantage if you've got a lot or a little time.

Beast Tribes. You can get DoH exp from the Ixal (intended for level 1-50) and the Moogles (50-60), and either DoH or DoL from the Namazu (60-70). You're limited by Beast Tribe Daily Quest Allowances (12 per day for any beast tribes of your choice) and the number of quests that tribe offers (Ixal start with Deliverance, which is sort of like a bonus daily GC supply mission + 3 dailies, and progressively more are offered as you level up; Moogles and Namazu normally gives you 3 a day, but you get a bonus 3 on days your Reputation ranks up.) They give nice, moderate lumps of exp.

One of the great advantages of beast tribes is that you are given the materials for the item(s) required by the quest, so you only have to pay for crystals -- and you're often rewarded crystals for completion, making them free aside from teleport and repair costs!

Ranking up unlocks more items at the tribe's vendor. The Ixal have a wonderful selection of lumber, and you can buy the Adept and Trailblazer (level 58) sets from the Moogles with Carved Kupo Nuts, etc.

Unlocking Ixal only requires the level 41 MSQ "In Pursuit of the Past". But you gotta unlock the Moogles and the Namazu not only through MSQ (respectively, level 56 "He Who Would Not Be Denied" and level 66 "In Crimson They Walked") but through sidequest chains. The Moogle unlock chain is long and starts with "A Pebble for Your Thoughts" in Moghome (and then after "Trouble at Zenith" you gotta pick up "Into the Mists" from the Pillars). The Namazu require two short chains from Yanxia, starting with "Courage the Cowardly Lupin" and "Perchance to Hanami".

The Ixal daily "Deliverance" will take items you bought off the MB, but otherwise you must do all beast tribes tasks yourself.

The tasks given to you in the Moogle and Namazu DoH quests are really easy -- as long as you grasp the barest basics of crafting, you can succeed at them (and you can retry as many times as you like, only losing crystals). The Ixal dailies take away your hand slot gear to begin with and slowly add challenge with increasing restrictions such as cross-class ability lockouts. They're not hard, per se, but you have to puzzle over it a bit more than usual.

You can cheat and do Moogle dailies on a higher level class than you hand it in on. You can’t with Namazu -- you have to complete the quest with the same class you picked it up with.

Though quick, they do take a little bit of time, most of which traveling between quest points. Denisot's round today of 3 Moogle dailies took 5 minutes, but if you get one that involves repreated trips it can take longer. Still, they're good if you can play every day even if only briefly.

You might get asked to type "free kupo nuts" in /say.

Collectables (Rowena's House of Splendors). After (IIRC) level 50, after MSQ "The Better Half", you can unlock collectables via the quest "Inscrutable Tastes" in Revenant's Toll. You can then hand in collectables to the House of Splendors (via kiosks at the main cities, Revenant's Toll, Idyllshire, and Rhalgr's Reach) to receive experience and scrips. Like GC supply and provisioning, each day the requested items change. Also like the GC, there's a chance the requested items will have a star next to them, giving bonus scrip and exp. It's always the highest-level turn-in available to you that has a chance of a star.

Collectable crafting works exactly the same as regular crafting. You just toggle on Collector's Glove (an action you can get from your actions window and/or put on your hotbar) and craft as if you were trying for HQ; your HQ chance is converted into collectable rating.

Collectable fishing is AFAIK essentially the same as fishing for HQ. Again, you just toggle on Collector's Glove and try to land a big/HQ fish.

Collectable MIN and BTN, on the other hand, is its whole own little mini-game added on to the normal gathering minigame. You'll want to look up a guide on how to do collectable gathering -- I don't have one handy at the moment. It's not hard, necessarily, but it's a new system to learn!

Rowena's House of Splendors is truly unlimited, and you can hand in as many collectables as you want each day. The experience isn't great, though, even for starred items, so I would recommend against going crazy and doing these all day long. LOVE YOURSELF!

The amounts of scrip rewarded isn't great to begin with, so grinding for rewards will be pretty miserable until you get up into the mid-high 50s. However, if you must have the full Adept's set today, it's an option!

Red Crafters' Scrip (the current common scrip) can be traded for a variety of items, such as manuals, level 60 gear (via Rowena's Token (Blue Crafters' Scrip)), Soul of the Crafter (for changing specializations after your free choice of three from Alderan), IV-V materia, old mats, etc. Red Gatherers' Scrip can also be traded for gear and materia, more valuable old mats (like Pterodactyl), and good fishing bait like Brute Leech and Silkworm.

Collectables are not tradeable, so you must do them yourself. You can't buy the items or get a friend to make them for you.

For DoH, you do have to buy and store the materials, as with Grand Company Supply, unless you exclusively do:

Custom Deliveries. The first client is Zhloe Aliapoh, unlocked at level 60 with quest "Arms Wide Open" in Idyllshire. These tasks take collectables, like Rowena's House of Splendors, but are limited to 6 hand-ins per week per client and 12 hand-ins per week across all clients. If you do them at level cap, you get valuable yellow scrips, but you can also use your allowances for leveling classes below cap.

The materials for DoH Custom Deliveries are sold by vendors in town (Scrap Salvager in Idyllshire, Material Supplier in Rhalgr's Reach, and Blue Merchant in Tamamizu) They're cheap, and you're awarded gil at hand-in, so DoH Custom Deliveries are almost-free-to-profitable to do. DoL, as usual, cost only teleport and repair costs.

The time required is generally very little -- FSH probably takes the longest because of RNG. And you can do them whenever you have time during the week.

If you're using them for leveling, the experience is only modest. But it is a very easy, low-effort way to get red scrips and experience (if you do them below cap) and yellow scrips (if you do them at cap).

AFAIK, Zhloe only requires you unlock Idyllshire level and be 60 in one DoH or DoL class. M'naago requires the MSQ cleared through "Return of the Bull" (SB 4.1). Kurenai requires you to have unlocked M'naago and finished the quest chain that starts with "The Palace of Lost Souls" (including quests not currently marked with a blue unlocky !).

For DoH, like with Moogle dailies, you can craft the collectable item on any class, then change classes before handing it in.

Challenge Log. Don't forget that you get lumps of experience each week for crafting NQ and HQ items, melding materia, gathering NQ and HQ from nodes, and fishing NQ and HQ fish. The quantities are modest, but they're a nice bonus if you choose to level through a method that involves crafting/gathering items yourself (GC Supply/Provisioning, levequests, grinding, etc.)

Overall, my recommendation would be to try a little bit of every leveling method and find out what's enjoyable for you and fits nicely into your budget and schedule. We have a half-year until Shadowbringers, so if you start now you can take a relaxed pace -- no need to rush, grind doing stuff you hate, and burn yourself out.

Engineering and Survival Manuals and similar buffs

There are a variety of buffs that will help you level, giving you more experience per craft or gather. For DoH, you want Engineering Manuals (the yellow ones); for DoL, it's Survival Manuals (the green ones). You can get these from all sorts of sources -- all the ones I remember are:

Rewards from doing your class quests. Another reason to stay on top of em! These Commercial * Manuals give a 150% boost and last 60 minutes or up to 300,000 exp. You can buy more from Rowena's House of Splendors with red scrips.

Bought from your GC quartermaster (Grand Company Seal Exchange). The strongest ones available are Company-Issue * Manual II (+50% for 180 minutes or for 100,000 exp) for sergeants. Company-Issue * Manuals do not stack with Commerical * Manuals.

Free Company actions. "Helping Hand II" and "Earth and Water II" can be bought from the OIC Quartermaster and give 10% more experience to DoH and DoL respectively. The more powerful III versions are charged on an Aetherial Wheel and provide a 20% bonus.

Rewarded from Squadron Priority Missions. You unlock your GC squadron, IIRC, at Second Lieutenant rank, and unlock Priority Missions by completing the level 40 Flagged Mission. The Squadron * Manuals (+20% for 120 minutes, no limit) you can obtain once-a-week from Priority Mission manuals do not stack with Free Company actions.

Company-Issue/Commercial manuals DO stack with Squadron manuals/FC actions.

The recruit-a-friend reward, Friendship Circlet, can be worn while crafting and gathering for 20% more exp when level 25 or below. Same for the Stormblood preorder(?) reward, Ala Mhigan Earrings, which gives 30% more exp when level 50 or below. Brand-New Ring is wearable only by Disciples of War or Magic, so you can't use that.

While it's not an exp bonus, the crafting facility furnishings (Woodworking Bench, etc.) grant a nice 60 minutes of bonus CP to DoH of level 60 or lower, AND THEY CAN NOW BE PUT INTO STORAGE!!! \o/

And of course, don't forget to eat some sort of food while you're crafting or gathering for the 3% exp bonus.

Which DoH should I level up first?

The correct answer to this question has been, and continues to be, everything at once; omnicrafting is the best way.

In the eras of 2.0 and 3.0, the cross-class abilities you gained from the classes were essential to being able to craft HQ items. Not just at endgame -- having those cross-class abilities while leveling makes your life much, much easier. And because the recipes of each class take components from other classes (e.g., WVR recipes always want a bit of leather and metal), leveling everything up together made you self-sufficient and less vulnerable to wild mark-ups on processed materials at the Market Board. Therefore, I join the majority of crafters in continuing to recommend leveling up all your DoH together.

However...

In 4.0, Stormblood, the designers' vision for DoH changed. From levels 61-70, all classes learn the same abilities, which are stronger (but more expensive) versions of the old cross-class mainstays like Careful Synthesis, Manipulation, and Hasty Touch. Nowadays, if somebody slogged through levels 1-60 on one DoH with no cross-class abilities, they would actually be able to craft at level 70 almost as successfully as an omnicrafter. Since the developers have stated that they're very happy with the crafting system right now, it's reasonable to guess Shadowbringers will be similar.

Additionally, not all cross-class abilities are equally valuable. Whenever a new tier of crafting difficulty is added, the endgame meta shifts slightly, but right now, cross-class abilities like Waste Not and Flawless Synthesis aren't really used.

Therefore, while I do recommend you level up everything together, if you really don't want to, you can get away with abandoning some classes along the way. If Ishgard Reconstruction turns out to be similar to beast tribes, you might get away with having just one capped DoH. On the other hand, the developers have teased exclusive challenges for endgame crafters somehow connected to the Ishgard Reconstruction content, so if you want to be ready for whatever that turns out to be, you should at least get all your cross-class abilities.

My tentative recommendation for DoH leveling priority is something like this:

Get anything to 10 to unlock Quick Synthesis.

Get everything to 15. For example:

WVR 15 (Careful Synthesis)

ALC 15 (Tricks of the Trade)

GSM 15 (Manipulation)

CUL 15 (Hasty Touch)

CRP 15 (Rumination)

ARM (Rapid Synthesis), BSM (Ingenuity), LTW (Waste Not).

CUL 37 (Steady Hand II)

WVR 50 (Careful Synthesis II)

ALC 50 (Comfort Zone)

CRP 50 (Byregot's Blessing)

ARM 50 (Piece by Piece)

CUL 50 (Reclaim)

BSM 50 (Ingenuity II)

GSM 50 (Innovation)

CUL 54 (Muscle Memory)

If you MUST skip one DoH entirely, I'd pick LTW, since the Waste Nots are generally inferior to the Manipulations.

You COULD drop CUL after 54's very useful Muscle Memory. And since CUL doesn't correspond to gear, it doesn't help you repair or meld materia, and other classes generally don't need materials processed by CUL.

Various classes' level 54 Name of [Element] cross-class abilities aren't that useful at present -- they're sometimes used in endgame rotations. GSM's level 54 Maker's Mark is also not currently that useful, though it was OP a couple patches back.

Still -- I think it's safest, and for me less annoying, to level everything together.

Should I craft using macros?

Yes -- I think macros are great for relieving the tedium of the repetitive crafting tasks, which you’ll often have while leveling. (Wish I could tell you where to look for good macros, but as I mentioned, I learned years ago, and I just write my own macros these days!)

However, I think you should spend some time manually crafting as well. It will help you understand when and why you use certain abilities, how not to overcap Durability and CP, why you might or might not take Tricks of the Trade, etc. That skill and knowledge will help you even if you plan to primarily use macros at cap, since it will enable you to tweak those macros to be even better for your stats, teach you when you should cancel a macro and take over, etc. Nevermind that macros are very vulnerable to server congestion and lag...

And once you know how to craft, you will almost always have a higher potential quality manually crafting than using a macro -- your ability to respond to changes in Condition can get you precious more stacks of Inner Quiet or CP for upgrading Touches. I often use macros for putting together components but manually craft the final product to be sure I get the highest possible quality.

Other tips for leveling DoH?

I think you'll find one of the most invaluable resources for leveling baby DoH is access to a house or apartment with a Material Supplier. Your friendly FC (or apartment) Material Supplier will take care of practically all your materials needs through level 20 or more.

There are other useful Materials Suppliers scattered around -- in addition to the those in main cities and each of the guilds, check out the ones in the marketplaces out in residential districts.

I also strongly recommend unlocking every 2.0 A Realm Reborn beast tribe because even at mere Neutral standing the tribe vendors offer materials like Undyed Velveteen and Mythril Ingots that you’ll be using in quantity.

Don’t forget to upgrade your gear as you go, even if you’re just putting on new NQ gear from your class quests. DoL is particularly sensitive to gear -- you can really feel the difference when you upgrade a piece.

And really -- like in all aspects of the game, please be sure to pace yourself and make sure you’re enjoying yourself as you go. We’ve got plenty of time.

If you’ve leveled your DoH and DoL recently, what lessons have you learned you wish you’d had at the beginning? Or if you’re leveling right now, what questions do you have? I’m happy to opine or give basic pointers!

You may find my guide/checklist for DoH and DoL class quest items useful, if you haven’t already seen it. And as I mentioned, I may work on a more detailed, how-to-actually-craft-the-things guide in the future, if there’s interest.

Please, don’t be shy and get in touch! I am so excited to work together to rebuild Ishgard with you!!

[ritsykitty]

*breathes*

Alright, now that I’ve had a good night’s sleep to ruminate, I can approach last night’s FanFest opener with a more level head. There are likely hundreds of these kinds of posts going about but here’s my two cents.

Positives/Looking Forward To’s

As always, the new zones look gorgeous and I’m eager to poke about them

Lakeland is so my aesthetic!

Music is on-point, I always get hyped for the trailer music

I can learn to love the Ronso, hell, I’d probably play a female version if there was one!

I’m still on the fence about the direction for MSQ...so we will see.

The dimensional/time hop/whatever it is seems like a way for SE to draw out content longer. It leaves all the strife that’ll be ongoing in Eorzea for more content patches down the line, or hells, even another expac maybe.

However, I am a lore nut and I’m curious to experience the First

I am quite happy to have Dancer, both for PvE and RP reasons

I do have issues about the role (more later) but the class looks wonderfully animated with their abilities. I’m eager to see how they play

I am glad that it’s not gender-locked

We’d better jingle like in the trailer! \o/

Disappointments/Confusion/Discontentments

I suppose this is where I have problems understanding...SE has seen the community cry against gender-locks before and corrected it. Why now revert back to 1.0 times?

If SE is struggling to stay on schedule (which it appears to be based on this series of FanFests), why heap more issues upon yourself designing TWO new races, both with unique challenges to figure out, and rush to push them out ALONG with the whole new expac content?

To me, if they wanted two new races, it would make sense to release one on expac date with both genders and the other shortly followed up as a staggered release. This would ensure the love and detail worked out on both and sate the community’s mindset (for the most part, the community will never be 100% happy)

Caveat; of course I’m not a developer by any means, but this is just my take on it!

Also that they didn’t announce that Viera were going to be female-only in FanFest Paris right off the bat was a faux pa to me. I can understand by saying that upon Viera announcement that it would’ve opened up the theory-crafting to what the other race would have been, but at least folks wouldn’t have had to wait til now to find out any character designs they may have had have to be trashed or have to use a different gender model as I will be for my male Viera.

The lore-gating. *deep breath* If lore is being used as an excuse as to why male Viera aren’t playable, they might as well erase all Xaela outside the Steppe (posted an earlier reblog concerning the few exceptions) and erase all male miqo’te once more

If you want to keep the community on your side, stick on one side of the fence. Please don’t push aside lore in one case but then use it as an excuse for another

No new healer...here are my thoughts

Why exclude a role when you introduce a new DPS and new tank? It seems unbalanced to me.

My only reasoning to this is that the game is suffering a lack of tanks and incentive to make something new and shiny like Gunbreaker is a way to lure tanks to the role again...but why another DPS?

MCH seems to have been largely forgotten, will it now be further abandoned?

We haven’t had a new healer since Heavensward...and it looks like we won’t get another again. As a main healer, something new would be refreshing while I see the other two roles get something for this expac.

These are just my thoughts while I’m much more level-headed than I was twelve hours ago. /shrug/

[lightwarring]

REALLY LONG CHARACTER SURVEY. LUKE CASTAGNIER VERSION. RULES. repost ,   don’t  reblog  !  good  luck  !

TAGGED. @cielcrd​ tysm !! TAGGING. @breselin, @ofvesper, @ragerebirth, @azrdrg, @lazhadeg, @leveilleurisms, @landwaker, @gunslingir, @glacinium, @culturedconjurer, @deaegratia, @ivory-paragon, @aethersighted, @faithloved, @eoschosen, @unmeiha, @arduna-loka

BASICS.

FULL NAME: Luke Castagnier

NICKNAME: stutterbug ( former bullies )

AGE: 21

BIRTHDAY: 5th sun of the first Astral Moon (5 January)

ETHNIC GROUP: Midlander hyur

NATIONALITY: Ul’dah

LANGUAGE(S): Because of the echo, he knows most forms of languages

SEXUAL ORIENTATION: Demisexual

ROMANTIC ORIENTATION: Demiromantic

RELATIONSHIP STATUS: Single though has a crush.

CLASS: Lower class

HOMETOWN / AREA: Eastern Thanalan 

CURRENT HOME: Castagnier inn

PROFESSION: Warrior of light, sort of. Gambler.

PHYSICAL.

HAIR: Blonde and short. Bangs are swept to the right.

EYES: Light blue eyes with big irises. Sharp at the edges with a very light dark hue spread around them. Can stare for a long time though he’s also often mistaken for being unfriendly and judgmental since his gaze can be sharp.

NOSE: Sharp and average height.

FACE: Diamond shaped, jaws slightly defined.

LIPS: Thin while sort of dried because of the weather in Ul’dah. He’s drinking more water now though so it looks healthier.

COMPLEXION: Quite fair and smooth.

BLEMISHES: None

SCARS: Has a long burnt one that’s on his back, goes from his left shoulder to his lower hip. Ifrit sure knows how to hit hard.

TATTOOS: None

HEIGHT: 167 cm

WEIGHT: 60 kg

BUILD: Average height and lean. He is trying to get muscular though, under the training from Oboro ( @capjacke​ )

FEATURES: Nothing too outstanding.

ALLERGIES: Peanuts.

USUAL HAIRSTYLE: Basically, he only wears the same type of hairstyle lol.

USUAL FACE LOOK: Observing when he comes into an area he’s never been before. Otherwise, he sometimes drifts off to somewhere so he may look very distracted. Has a softer look when he’s dealing with minions or animals.

USUAL CLOTHING: Long white woolly sweater with a pink scarf around it ( it was the same as Estelle picked for herself too but she let him wear the style ). Light brown pants and thigh-high dark brown boots. Estelle put a flower on the side of his head.

PSYCHOLOGY.

FEAR(S): Begin stuttering again, public speaking, dealing with a crowd of people, losing more people that he care about

ASPIRATION(S): Wants to own every single minion and small animals in the world.

POSITIVE TRAITS: Hardworking, loyal, sympathetic, analytical, quick-witted, attention to detail, imaginative

NEGATIVE TRAITS: Somewhat of a pushover, unemotional, sensitive, indecisive, blunt, addicted to gambling, escapist,  moody

ZODIAC: Capricorn

TEMPERAMENT: Composed

SOUL TYPE(S): Scholar / Artisan 

ANIMALS: All but current main companion is a lesser panda

VICE  HABIT(S): Gambling, sloth, overworking

FAITH: He tries.

GHOSTS?: He hears them sometimes so yes.

AFTERLIFE?: Yes

REINCARNATION?: Yes

ALIENS?: Doesn’t know much about it.

POLITICAL ALIGNMENT: Liberal, perhaps.

ECONOMIC  PREFERENCE: Uhh ... prefers to have good savings on hand, maybe - which is ironic since he gambles. Pretty practical guy by heart if not for his habits.

SOCIO POLITICAL POSITION: No opinion

EDUCATION LEVEL: Lancer guild, rogue guild, and now studying under Oboro Torioi.

FAMILY.

FATHER: Cassius Castagnier ( adoptive ), doesn’t remember ( birth )

MOTHER: Doesn’t remember

SIBLINGS: Estelle Castagnier ( adoptive )

EXTENDED FAMILY: The other children at the inn.

NAME MEANING(S): Another form of ‘Lucas’ that means light giving.

HISTORICAL CONNECTION?: One of the bearers of the echo and various warriors of light that was chosen by Hydaelyn to fight as her companion. 

FAVORITES.

BOOK: Has a fondness for scholarly books found in the arcanist guild, along with wildlife documentaries of wildlife. 

MOVIE: None

5 SONGS: None

DEITY: Byregot 

HOLIDAY: Make it Rain Campaign 

MONTH: February 

SEASON: Spring

PLACE: Gold Saucer

WEATHER: A breezy day with a clear blue sky. 

SOUND: Coins clinking together, slot machines, soft murmurs that animals make and sounds of pages flipping in a book.

SCENT(S): Sky linen, a soft and not too overpowering smell.

TASTE(S): Average. Has a small inclination towards sweets thanks to Estelle

FEEL(S): Soft animal fur and woolly material

ANIMAL(S): .............. Too many to list, man. 

NUMBER: 777

COLORS: Soft blue, soft pink.

EXTRA.

TALENTS: Weaving, goldsmithing, information absorption, dying fabric, fishing, sneaking around, sulking

BAD AT: Speaking, 

TURN ONS: Praise, intense and slow, really loves the romance and light whispering, hand holding

TURN OFFS: Humiliation, ageplay, slaveplay, BDSM, uncouth dirty talking

HOBBIES: Gambling, fishing, sketching

TROPES: Baby of the Bunch, catch phrase ( ‘ want to bet ? ’ ), Socially Awkward hero, Cannot Tell a Joke, Hero Does Public Service

AESTHETIC TAGS: Clear blue sky, falling petals, deserts, furry animals, casinos, woolly fabric or furniture, cottages, teapots and teacups, libraries, lakes, cliffs, cemeteries 

GPOY  QUOTES: Not sure what this is.

FC INFO.

MAIN  FC(S): Himself

ALT FC(S): I can’t really think of any tbh.

OLDER FC(S): Closest I can think of is Totsuka Tatara from K Project.

YOUNGER  FC(S): Maybe Laphicet from Tales of Berseria?

VOICE CLAIM(S): Kaji Yuki - Japanese

GENDERBENT FC(S): None.

MUN QUESTIONS.

Q1: IF YOU COULD WRITE YOUR CHARACTER YOUR WAY IN THEIR OWN MOVIE, WHAT WOULD IT BE CALLED, WHAT STYLE WOULD IT BE FILMED IN, AND WHAT WOULD IT BE ABOUT?:

-

Q2: WHAT WOULD THEIR SOUNDTRACK / SCORE SOUND LIKE?:

-

Q3: WHY DID YOU START WRITING THIS CHARACTER?:

After some years or so, I’ve finally decided to return to the FFXIV rp scene with Luke as my fourth WOL that I’ve created. I just needed something new, at first, and to maybe dip my hands a little into writing original characters. I did write them before but not as much as I’ve written canon characters ( 98% of the time, really ). 

Q4: WHAT FIRST ATTRACTED YOU TO THIS CHARACTER?:

As I played his character in the game, his dialogues and thought process appeared in my head and there we have it.

Q5: DESCRIBE THE BIGGEST THING YOU DISLIKE ABOUT YOUR MUSE:

He’s rather internalized and indecisive. I probably wouldn’t get along with him very well irl since I’m usually very straightforward, swift and prefers not to complicate things lmao. 

Q6: WHAT DO YOU HAVE IN COMMON WITH YOUR MUSE?:

We are both really chill people and very introverted. Soft colours are our favourite too and uhhh... we are both pretty short ? but I guess this goes for a lot of midlander hyurs in comparison to elezens, roegadyns and au ra males. We like sketching too and are very, very vanilla physically ( i make a lot of innuendos for laughs though while Luke doesn’t ). But ultimately for me, I’m an aro/ace while he’s demi/demi.

Q7: HOW DOES YOUR MUSE FEEL ABOUT YOU?:

While we probably disagree with a lot of things, Luke probably likes the quiet, chill and need to be alone that comes along with me. There isn’t much opinion I’d imagine him having with me, other than the fact that I really need to do the shit that I wanted myself to do and quit adding more muses onto my full hands lmao.

Q8: WHAT CHARACTERS DOES YOUR MUSE HAVE INTERESTING INTERACTIONS WITH?

With my other muse, Laipheaux. While he’s often with Estelle, Luke really has a deeper sibling connection with Laipheaux because of how much he looks up to him and how Laipheaux is the one who managed to coax him into becoming more comfortable around people. He visits Laipheaux a lot and Laiph at times can tell when sometimes is weighing heavily in Luke’s mind but doesn’t pry. Luke was devastated when Laiph returned to the forest, of course, but becomes calmer when Laiph visits from time to time, bringing him small animals and minions as a show that Laiph still cares and that their sibling ship hasn’t eradicated. 

Q9: WHAT GIVES YOU INSPIRATION TO WRITE YOUR MUSE?:

Mainly, my love for the game. I’ve been playing it for a long time and I just can’t get tired of restarting the storyline over and over again. I still need to get past the msqs though but I have a blast playing it when Luke is on the screen.

Q10: HOW LONG DID THIS TAKE YOU TO COMPLETE?:

A few hours, to be honest, since there are some questions that I need a lot of googling to answer.

[rosffxiv]

Incoming Hot Takes:

Blue Mage is a mixed bag.

It is fun trying to optimize your performance in Masked Carnivale. It is fun to twink out gear sets with easily attainable (when not screwed by RNG) raid gear. It is fun to run around town breathing fire, shooting eye beams, table flipping the ground, etc. 

It’s not fun when the only thing you’re doing is one/two/three shotting things with 1K Needles to level to 50. It’s not fun when you’ve run the same dungeon thirty times for a single spell. It’s not fun when you’ve run the same primal a hundred times for a single spell.

However, this didn’t need to be a Limited Job. SE chose to implement it as is to keep the “feeling” of Blue Mage alive and I disagree with their stance 100%. It could have been kept as is and been made a full level 70 job. I’m going to run down a list of arguments a lot of the apologists are clinging to.

“Blue Mage is overpowered because of Missile/Tail Screw/Doom”.

There are already plenty of bosses, both in dungeons and trials and raids that straight up resist these. It would not be hard for SE to say that all monsters in current dungeons resist these spells straight up, barring them from being used to quicken your way through current dungeons.

“Blue Mage is overpowered because of Self-Destruct/Final Sting.”

These spells could have their potency reduced in dungeons, leaving them usable for Masked Carnivale as many of the times require the usage of these spells. Or, they could be given long cooldowns which reduces the ability to spam Self-Destruct for mass pulls. Three minutes would be more that sufficient.

“Someone could go into a dungeon without any spells and drag down the group.”

Vote kicking is already an option if someone goes into a dungeon and performs extremely poorly, is toxic, came in with broken gear, etc. Or, SE already has ilvl requirements for dungeons/trials. Placing a requirement to have X number of spells set to enter a dungeon/trial/raid is not out of the question. 

“Blue Mage is too overpowered and would require too much balancing.”

Blue Mage on its own isn’t overpowered. They might have some spells that are just straight up gamebreaking (like casting Doom on Fate bosses), but this falls back to my first point. Blu is not very overpowered without all its bells and whistles. First of all, it requires Off-Guard to be up 100% of the time to increase damage dealt by 50%, a thirty second debuff. This is a lame attempt at a “rotation”. Peculiar Light inflicts a 30% magic debuff for ten seconds, and Moon Flute increases damage dealt by 50% but at the cost of making you incapable of doing anything for a full 15 seconds which is basically Machinists’ Overheat mechanic but longer. Then there’s Bristle which has a short cast time and makes the next attack deal 50% more damage as well, but it’s not optimal to be casting this every other cast. Very few of their standard spells have potency over 130, and the ones that do have oddball requirements like the target being Petrified or in Deep Freeze status effect which may or may not work if we’re balancing Blu for current PVE. Their Primals spells which do have potencies over 130 are on actual cooldowns (30, 60, and 90 seconds) and aren’t effected by Bristle because they’re abilities and not spells. Without all these things lined up perfectly, Blu damage isn’t that great when compared to the rest of the jobs synced down to level 50.

And the biggest thing going against this argument point is the fact that it’s the dev teams’ job to make these classes and figure out how to balance them. They are paid to design the game. With everything that they have made for this game, with the dozen+ jobs already under their belt, you really think they couldn’t figure out how to make this job work in-game for current content? They were so worried about making the class “feel like Blue Mage” that it feels like they didn’t even bother to try making it work for current content. Between that and not letting Blu queue into content through duty finder (set spell requirements), not letting them run dungeons with Squadrons (why?), not letting them progress ARR 2.1~2.5 MSQ (why?), not letting them run PotD (again, set spell requirements), and the other numerous limitations that they put on this job its like they gave us as little as they possibly could.

“Blue Mage is meant to be a solo job.”

Clearly it’s not because if you want a half a dozen spells, if not more, you’re going to have to party up with people. Primal spells are a pain in the ass. 5% learn rate according to data-miners. Then there’s the dungeon spells that require at least one other person to run with you. And yeah, you can party up with other Blue Mages but odds are you’re probably going to be asking a level 70 friend to speed run you through dungeons and trials. The Masked Carnivale is good content, but it’s way too short and as soon as you know the trick to clearing the stage that’s pretty much it. If this was truly meant to be a Solo-only job, the spells would have been much more overpowered, stat weights would be higher to compensate for being alone, and the Dev Team could have made more unique content. FFXI had “Mini-Trial by (Element)” fights for Summoners to obtain summons alone much earlier than the standard fights. These fights were challenging due to the low level but they were available. Where are our Mini-Trials, our solo Primal fights for Blu with some form of actual challenge and a higher learn rate for spells rather than getting x number of level 70 players and running fights in 30~90 seconds over and over and over? Leviathan Hard Mode can be cleared in 18 seconds, but it can still take two hours or more to learn the spell. I’d rather have spent two hours learning a tricky solo fight, trying to figure out if I had the spells and skill to do it than to queue ceaselessly into a braindead fight, being carried by the four people whose turn it was to carry the four Blus until they finally learn the spell by grace of RNG then start all over for themselves after swapping if the four people who just learned were kind enough to stay instead of bailing immediately. This is not a solo job.

The job was for the most part fun for the course of a week but it’s also bringing out some pretty toxic people into the Party Finder. There’s been good groups, there’s been bad groups, then there’s been the entitled pricks who quite frankly can go jump off a cliff. It’s just a shame that aside from walking around town and those oddball “let’s try running X with only Blu” it’s just not going to be touched until the devs decide to bump the level cap up to 60. I also know that I’m never running an ARR Primal again by choice. The mini-game meant to make players play old content more has done nothing but turn me off of it. 

Until it’s relevant again, I guess it’s good for screenshots. 

[ungrateful-cyborg-moved]

The Magician - have you followed through on your original vision for your character? Are they as they were when you first began? (For all characters, if possible!)

Putting it under a Read More because it’s quite long but if others are curious, I talk about elements I’ve never mentioned before about a few characters and I give more info about Aïcha (my new WoL) and Jajalao.

Skaar was meant to be my avatar in the game, not a rp character. Turns out that I’m incapable of creating a character without having headcanons for them and I ended up roleplaying him with my partner before we left the game (and came back with a few more friends two years later @lanoscean-griffins). It’s actually why I use Skaar as a nickname: he got it from me XD

So I can't really say I did or didn't follow through since he started existing more or less on his own and changed and evolved as I got further involved with the game myself. I think he's still relatively close to my first ideas for him though, just more nuanced and obviously with more character development.

I made Inge because doing the MSQ with Skaar is a challenge sometimes since a lot of the dialogue options are absolutely not something he'd say (there’s a serious lack of “fuck no”, for a start). From the beginning, I wanted her to stay close to what we know of the WoL so I could go through the story and stay IC all along. I didn't want to RP her at all in the beginning and when I started considering it, I hesitated for a while between keeping her as the WoL or making a RP version of her in which she'd just be another adventurer. That's what I ended up doing.

The bifurcation between them takes place at the beginning of ARR: her RP version never met Yda and Papalymo in the Shroud and somebody else ended up with the job. Everything I say about her as the WoL before that is true for RP!Inge too though... like, you know, the fact that she's not afraid to be forgotten because it has happened already.

Took me a while to get there though. For a long time, I couldn't figure out what she had done with her life and it's only when @inah-ffxiv created Qin'sae that I decided to embrace who she was meant to be and stopped nerfing her. She's a lot more interesting that way imo because she might not be the WoL but she was a WoL and it gives a lot more meaning to many of her choices since then.

I hope y'all enjoyed the spoiler because that's probably the last time I'll say it in public and there's no chance she'll ever mention it in RP x) But hey, forgotten heroes is a fun trope (and at this point I think I like her better that way than as the current WoL).

You’ll notice a trend but she was (and still isn’t) meant to be RPed. I made Aïcha initially because I can spend hours watching people dance and I wanted to take screenshots with dance poses but it fits none of my other characters. Aïcha was basically just supposed to be an aesthetic muse.

Then I started getting ideas for her, not truly without expecting it to be honest. I was surprised though when it became more and more obvious to me than I only saw her as the WoL, and I think the fact that I like Inge better in her RP version probably plays a role into that.

I don’t know if I’m going to RP her (probably not because I’m not interested in RPing as the WoL) but I have ideas for her that I’ll probably explore in screenshots and writing. As it stands though, she’s still new so there hasn’t been any change made to her: Aïcha had to do unsavory jobs for a while to pay back her father debts (no prostitution though), fixed the problem as the WoL does it best--people died--and fled Thavnair to avoid trouble only to find bigger troubles in Eorzea. At least those aren’t personal though (and her father is safe).

Also this time she isn’t working for criminals and that’s a nice change.

“You know what’s always cool? Mysterious knights who’s name and face are unknown. Those characters are always so charismatic. I think it’s the armor.”

That was the very first idea I had for him. The second one was a character concept I’ve had in mind for years and never could use in RP because too powerful. I realized after a while that it could actually fit in FFXIV without breaking the lore and decided that fuck it, he’s gonna be OP but I want to explore it.

TA is still close to what he was in the beginning: a man who sacrificed himself to save people and whose sacrifice is more and more likely to have been in vain if he doesn’t find a way to either die for good or get rid of his curse. Either he manages in RP or he’ll end up as a world boss x)

The most important part of his current backstory are actually events I roleplayed when I was still writing him on forum. He was initially created as an ex-Auror who had lost his job after uncovering corruption in the Ministry of Magic with his mentor (and also work partner). The mentor agreed to back down and managed to keep his job since he was close to retirement but Wolfe refused. Two years later, he had rebuild an old manor into an inn and was running it, determined to stay away from anything related to politic and adopting a neutral stance in a political context that didn’t exactly made that a good thing. That was my base because I wanted him to be able to end up being a good or a bad guy depending on where roleplaying as him would take me.

Then his cousin (who was played at the time) came back in his life after years of absence and Wolfe, being a family man, did his best to help him, except the cousin fucked up so much and so often that instead of drifting toward lawful evil, Wolfe started leaning more and more towards goodness again and got involved with the plot. He eventually started investigating on his cousin and the woman that was protecting him, and had the forum not close its doors before I could finish what I had started, both would have ended up in serious trouble. It was incredibly fun, incredibly immersive and I was so frustrated to not have been able to end that arc that the temptation to play Wolfe again remained for two years before I eventually recreated him in FFXIV.

I changed a few elements about his cousin but the key parts are the same, and Wolfe himself is pretty close to who he was when I had to stop playing him.

His FFXIV self has gone through a few changes over time, however: initially he was managing an inn like his original self and had just opened his office as a private investigator after people kept coming to him to solve their problems. Currently, he lost his job only a few months ago, never had the inn but he opened his office for the same reason. Also I created him as a midlander in the beginning and as you may have noticed, he’s currently a catboy. It’s been the case for a good while though.

A’idan was created as an adoptable on the same forum as Wolfe but I fell in love with the concept and decided to play him myself. He was meant for light rp but he ended up involved with the plot when he got wind of a spy in Hogwarts (in a thread) and decided to try to uncover their name with a few of his friends. That’s actually what made it so easy to adapt him on FFXIV, albeit as an older him, since he’s always had that adventuring strike.

The reason why I decided to play him again is fairly similar to Wolfe: I had gone far enough into his story arc that I was feeling frustrated to not having been able to reach a satisfactory conclusion. I didn’t keep much of what I had done with him though outside of character development that I used as a base to make him more mature and grown up. He’s still pretty naive, but his people skills have improved x)

As for his FFXIV self, there hasn’t been any big change since I made him and the ones I expect will come from RPing him, not from me changing things OOCly.

The main difference between how Astrid is now and how she was when I created her is that I know exactly what happened to her on the Isle of Vale, where she was after its destruction and why she came back. She has no idea and while people with aethersight could clue her in, so far nobody did. Outside of that, I wanted a non-fighter character to explore part of the lore with and that’s exactly what she is. No real changes for her, she’s still a shy historian trying to put her life back together after years of being declared dead.

Kazan’s inspired by one of my favorite characters ever, albeit he doesn’t have as much blood on his hands and their story ended up being quite different. Much like Astrid, he didn’t change that much since I’ve created him, and both of their stories are solid enough that I don’t think I’ll have to retcon anything later on.

He’s at a place pretty similar to where Wolfe was in the very beginning: with potential to become good or bad. The difference being that he naturally leans more towards bad and at least Wolfe had his principles to keep himself in check. Kazan doesn’t give a fuck, he just wants to be perceived and get his revenge.

If you go back far enough, Hanae and her mother were actually one and the same: a woman that Inge had loved and lost years ago. Then I thought that it was actually more interesting to keep the daughter rather than the mother and the rest of her story came to me pretty fast after that. She’s still an NPC though, albeit mostly because until recently I didn’t really know what to make of her as a RP character. I often talk about Hanae on my blog however because what happened to her mother really impacted Inge, Wolfe and his work partner are looking for someone who’s currently in her crew, and quite frankly I just find her interesting on her own.

Up until recently, she was working for people who had an interest in letting the civil war go ahead for a while in Garlemald so they could seize the country more easily once every opponent would be weakened. Her bosses have stopped contacting her lately though so she’s mostly on her own now and with everything that’s happening in the Empire, she’s more and more tempted to just embrace the sky pirate life.... which would start with finding out where everything she’s stolen for them is now hidden.

My last born! Jalalao exists because we were joking about cleaning crews in movies with @flood-of-shadow and @enchanted-conversations and I was like, you know, that’s actually a good idea. I don’t know enough about him to make him an official RP character yet but it’ll come and I intend to follow through on the initial idea: a lala with a crew that disposes of dead bodies and cleans up crime scenes.

And that’s it! And more than enough.

Thanks for the ask, @ceduli!

[ffxiv-swarm]

(hello I am here approximately 1 year late with this fic. My Ritanelle’s no Warrior of Light, but she is an adventuring Scion who likes booze and has therefore managed (somehow) to befriend Emmanellain enough for this much-needed pep talk. I had to do SOMETHING with my feels after playing through the MSQ on my alt.)

----

The chirugeons swore that he would wake—that his injuries weren’t serious, and that truly there was no need for Emmanellain to fret so (all with the tone of people who were clearly wishing he’d make himself scarce)—but Honoroit was still and pale in a bed too large for his slender frame, and Emmanellain couldn’t tear his eyes away from the slightly oozing bandage on the boy’s brow.

My fault. Gods, this is my fault.

The hard floor radiated cold even through his layers, but he welcomed it as he knelt by the bedside. “...You little idiot.” It was barely a whisper—at first he wasn’t even sure he’d said it out loud—but once the words started coming he found he couldn’t stop, even when tears leaked treacherously out of the corners of his eyes. “You know I’m a fool, that you’re worth at least ten of me, and still you stood by my side...”

At least there was no one to see when he dropped his head into his folded arms, letting the tears soak the velvet of his coat. Not that he found himself truly caring if there had been, if the rumors swirling around him grew to include look at him, he weeps at the plight of a servant. Honoroit was more than that. He’s family. He’s...gods, he’s probably the only person who’s ever looked at me and thought I was worth pledging loyalty to. And how do I repay him? By ruining everything I touch. If he never wakes--

The door creaked open behind him; the soft voice which reached his ears chilled him to the bone even though it held only concern. “...How is he?”

He scrubbed ineffectually at his face with a spare portion of bedsheet, barely daring to lift his head to look at the adventurer who’d done so much for Ishgard. She’d been a guest of their house with the other Scions, she’d been in the crowd at the conference, and she surely had to despise him now, no matter how many drinks they’d shared. “He—he hasn’t woken yet.” It should have been me taking the blows.

Her heels clicked on the floor as she came to stand at his side; he froze as a gloved hand petted his hair. “He will. Trust me!”

At her tone, he risked a glance upwards. Yes, his fellow Elezen was smiling, faint and sad, and he couldn’t keep the bitterness from his voice. “You have such faith.” Of course she does. To a god-slaying summoner, an angry protester would have been the easiest thing in the world to deal with. His gaze drifted back to Honoroit’s face. Was that his imagination, or was there a slight tremor to the boy’s ears? She probably can’t even imagine…

The chair he’d been sitting in scraped loudly against the stone floor as she took it. “Honoroit’s a good example for that kind of stuff. That boy...” She sighed. “He’d follow you anywhere.”

He sucked in a ragged breath. “Gods, I’ve no idea why.”

“He sees something in you worth following.”

“If...” Gods, no, he was not going to cry in front of Miss Soleil. “When he wakes up, mayhap I’ll get him to tell me what it is.”

“...Hmm.” At her tone, he glanced up at her face to find her pensively stroking the lines of her tattoo. “You panic. You’ve probably spent these past few weeks in a knot of anxiety at the thought of actually having a responsibility. You drink too much, you’re a complete stranger to the idea of morning hours, and you run screaming away from combat. But...if I had to guess...I’d say that if I could spot your good and gentle heart within five minutes of meeting you, Honoroit has certainly noticed by now.”

The memory of Honoroit’s face covered in blood and dirt felt like a punch to the gut; his fist clenched as he muttered, “You say that, after what happened today?”

She cracked a humorless smile. “The woman is still alive, and the chirugeons say that if she makes it through the night she’s like to stay that way. You don’t want to know what happened the last time I panicked as badly as you did, but let’s just say I wear a mask in the Shroud for more than one reason.” Now the smile had taken on a truly cheerful tint, and she reached over to smooth away a tear track with her thumb. “So, you see, you’re already doing better than I did, and I think you’ve got plenty of potential to be great.”

He felt his face heat at her touch, instinctively pulling away and gazing back down at Honoroit. The boy still hadn’t moved. “Hrmph. I could never be like you. You’re a hero to half of Eorzea—Ritanelle, the Godslayer.”

Belatedly, he realized she’d probably be within her rights to be offended—after all, he had just made light of her years of valor—but she only grinned at him, green eyes sparkling. “You can still be a hero to him, at least a little bit! Especially if you make a good showing in the melee; just think of all the stories you can tell him when he wakes!”

Ah, yes. He sighed, closing his eyes. “You said it yourself, old girl, I’m a coward. I’m mediocre with a sword, at best, and I’ll certainly never be a hero in his eyes. In anyone’s eyes.”

“...Even so.” She seemed to come to some sort of decision; he flushed as a slim hand wrapped around his own, leather warm on his bare skin. “You want to be someone worthy of Honoroit’s trust and loyalty, don’t you?”

He blinked up at her. “Yes, but--”

Her grin showed teeth, and the light in her eyes had taken on a worryingly enthusiastic cast. “You’ll have to show me to the training grounds. I’ll make sure you’ll be able to hold your own in the melee.”

Memories of Ritanelle on the battlefield, aetheric energy coalescing into massive constructs of stone and flame, swam uncomfortably clear in his mind’s eye. Oh, this is going to hurt. Still, he let himself be pulled to his feet.

“Come on!”

She was bouncing a little on her toes, clearly itching to leave, but his gaze had fallen back on Honoroit. Before following her, he reached down to gently shift some of the boy’s hair away from his face. I’ll be stronger. Better. Never again will you be injured for my sake.

And then he turned to lead the way to the training fields.