#odzaya malaguld

[therovingstar]

Even though her much-needed vacation didn’t go quite as planned (and she saw that coming, let’s be real), I think she had a good time. Maybe now she can enjoy her tacos on the beach.

[hamethyst]

Gunbreaker

Started the job the other night and went to one my favorite locations to celebrate!

[blackfemmecharacterdependency]

O: The Characters

Ocoho Radiant | Odzaya Malaguld Final Fantasy | Okoye Black Panther | Ola Nyman Sex Education | Old Woman Josie Welcome to Nightvale | Olivia Pokemon | Olivia Pope Scandal | Olivia Walker The Falcon and the Winter Soldier | Olwyn Isola | Oola Star Wars | Orange Blossom Strawberry Shortcake | 

Original Cindy Dark Angel | Orisa Overwatch | Ororo Munroe X-Men 

[therovingstar]

[therovingstar]

Periodic obligatory ‘visit to the steppe’ pics. For my health and her happiness.

[therovingstar]

[therovingstar]

Coming off that reblog: Odzaya for the most part ain’t interested in romance. It’s never been something she’s seriously considered, let alone prioritized, to the point that I’d put her pretty fully on the aro spectrum, specifically as demiromantic, and perhaps even demisexual. It takes a long time for her to warm up to people, and it’s only when an established bond is firmly in place that she even considers something like, “hey, maybe I wouldn’t mind fooling around with this person.”

On top of that, every time I try to find one person for her to feel that energy toward, another crops up and gets her curiosity going. First Y’Shtola, then Aymeric, then Hien, then Ardbert, then Thancred, then Estinien, then G’raha. Very roughly in that order. Even her and Magnai have this weird love/hate thing going on in the background of all their interactions due to a fraught, largely antagonistic past coupled with their more recent, more cooperative present. And up until Sadu and Cirina really started hanging, Zaya had a rivalry-fueled “thing” with her, too. Then there’s some flirtation with Leofard, a camaraderie she’s noted with Erenville (they’ve clicked in a pretty amusing way), so on, so forth, I’m honestly probably forgetting some folks.

And the big thing is: Zaya’s a wanderer. I once had her settling down back home on the Steppe after her adventuring ended, then settling in Doma with Hien and (very reluctantly) becoming queen. But then I had a revelation that her settling down permanently anywhere just didn’t feel right. She’s a perpetual nomad, and she likes it that way, and I think, funnily enough, that applies to her relationships, too. All who have managed to get close to her know she’s never around for very long, and they’re good with that. And I’d like to think she’d be loved enough and understood enough and respected enough by these same folks that even if dynamics changed for the romantic, they wouldn’t expect her inherent nature to change, too. And again, they’d be good with that.

And I love the idea of her wanderings being punctuated by the occasional steadfast companion who’ll just wanna experience the world with her for awhile.

Yeah. Fun food for thought.

[therovingstar]

She’s living her best life here I know it.

[therovingstar]

Haven’t set sail yet cuz I’ve been leveling Viper and can I just say I love this job. I love. This job. The mechanics, the looks, the lore. Absolutely fabulous, to me. Also even more perfect for Odzaya than I hoped. Fun lore fact that, back when she lived on the steppe with the rest of the Malaguld tribe, her role was primarily that of scout, secondarily of hunter. She’d head out on horse and later yol-back and scan the surrounding area for resources, good grazing spots for the dzo, and food.

Deeper lore fact, class-wise, she was a conjurer, but also a rogue. For fun I like to parallel her job lore to that of Meteor Maincharacter-kun. He’s got seven jobs, she’s got seven jobs. Every time he learns a new one, she does, too. Know how in ARR, he was a Warrior, but also had history as an archer and gladiator, the latter of which the devs heralded back to by making him a Paladin in Endwalker? I did the same with Zaya; beginning as a conjurer pre-ARR, she took up her cane again as a White Mage main for Endwalker, with the same come-full-circle symbolism.

Now I’m buzzing cuz Viper’s introduction to the lore has allowed me to do it again, though this time with a lot less emotional weight for her to deal with and a whole lot more fun. Odzaya as a White Mage is Odzaya accepting her duty and calling. Viper Zaya is an indulgent return to that girl on the steppe who wanted little more than to escape from that calling and lose herself to the sky and the wilderness. And Dawntrail seems the perfect expansion for indulgence. I’m very happy for her.

[therovingstar]

Seventh Dawn, Seventh Dusk

[therovingstar]

Recently tried to put in some real effort on Odzaya’s job card thingies, and managed to make some I actually really dig. Left to right, then top to bottom are WHM, RDM, BLM, MCH, SGE, and DNC, plus her Adventurer’s Plate.

[therovingstar]

Ma’am, your brief, unsuccessful stint as a courtesan is showing. Calm it down.

[therovingstar]

Illustrious

Summary: When everyone lowkey wants to be your favorite. Chill fun with the OG Scions, set sometime post-5.3, I reckon. ~1600 words.

She should have known to stay away when she entered the Rising Stones only for every eye in the room to immediately find her. Odzaya resists a reflexive pause in her step and continues on her way to the bar, where Lucianne greets her with a tellingly amused smile and her usual cup of tea. “Should I be alarmed?” she asks, just loud enough for the bartender to catch, as she accepts the earthenware mug with a scaled hand and appreciative nod.

“Depends on your answer,” Lucianne cryptically replies, and lifts an encouraging eyebrow before scooting her way back down the counter with a chuckle.

Not promising. With a silent, preparatory sigh, Odzaya turns from the counter and, pointedly ignoring the half-dozen stares that follow, makes her way to one of the sitting area’s armchairs.

Before she has taken her first sip or even fully sat her rear into her seat, Lyse is in her sights, and practically in her face.

“Who got you to join the Scions?” she asks without preamble, hands planted on her red-clad hips as she stands before her.

Odzaya lifts a thick violet brow, just barely seen beneath locced bangs. “Good to see you, Lyse. How is Ala Mhigo’s restoration progressing?”

“Slowly but in a good direction. It’s annoying work sometimes but worth it. Raubahn and M’naago say ‘hi’. Who got you to join the Scions?” The first three statements fly nearly over her head, quick in succession as they come. The fourth – clearly considered by the monk to be the most important – is slowed just enough to register.

“Context?” Odzaya asks simply, eyebrow rising higher.

“Thancred says it was him,” Lyse vaguely clarifies. “But whoever of us you met first gave you the invitation, yeah? Between Thancred, Shtola, and Papalymo and me, it was us, right? It’s practically on record.”

Is it? Before she can ask, Thancred speaks up from his position leaning against Tataru’s desk.

“There is no record, Lyse. Just your word, which is wrong.” He tips his chin toward Odzaya with a small grin. “Welcome back, love.”

“Mm,” she sounds in acknowledgment as she settles back against the cushions and brings her mug to her lips, just as Lyse continues.

“Well, maybe not on written record,” the blonde amends, turning to the older man. “But it might as well be. We met her while investigating the Twelveswood, remember? Gave her her invitation to the Waking Sands after she helped us out. That’s how she got there.”

Thancred lets out an incredulous laugh. “Before or after you knocked your block and imagined it?”

“What?!”

“They’ve been arguing about it for near a bell, now.” Odzaya looks up to see Y’shtola planting herself at the nearby table, gaze narrowed in what can only be perceived as fond exasperation. “Lyse refuses to let it go.”

“Because I’m right!” the young woman insists.

“Meaning wrong.”

“Shut up, Thancred!”

“How did this begin?” Odzaya asks in a rare – and usually regretted – indulgence of curiosity.

“Fond reminiscence,” Urianger supplies, amusement writ clear on his face. “Knowledge of thy visit to the Sylphs prompted Lyse to recall your first fateful meeting ‘neath the great boughs of the Elementals’ domain.”

“You were practicing your conjury, remember?” Lyse takes over. “Saved Papalymo from getting nearly plucked up off the ground by a buzzard.”

“There’s some hilarious imagery,” Thancred comments.

Odzaya nods. “In the Central Shroud, near Bentbranch. I recall.” Though she was not so much practicing her conjury as ensuring the young Sylphie did not kill herself practicing hers.

“See?!” Lyse exclaims, aiming the declaration at Thancred. The older man graces her with a smirk.

“Odzaya’s memory is not the one we are calling into question. She would also recall our own first meeting underneath the Sultantree, yes?” He meets her gaze expectantly.

Odzaya takes her time enjoying a long draught of tea before agreeing. “We defeated a voidsent.”

“And in so doing rescued the Sultana,” he adds, his smirk widening at Lyse as if to brag. She sniffs at him.

“As if that’s relevant.”

“Of course it is. How else than through such a serendipitous partnership would she have been convinced to join us at the Waking Sands? Which, for the proverbial record, is located in the very region I monitored?”

“Proximity doesn’t mean anything! Zaya showed up in the Shroud long before she ever made it to you out there in the desert!” The monk turns back to Odzaya. “Right?”

“Mm...” the other woman begins, happily distracted by the taste of nutmeg and heavy cream on her tongue.

“Ha!” Lyse exclaims, taking the monotone intonation for confirmation as she whips herself around to Thancred, only...

“No,” the woman finishes.

...to whip right on back around in a near-complete circle, her expression plummeting in surprise. “Huh? No?”

“Ha,” Thancred mocks. Lyse shoots him a barbed look.

“I did reach Thanalan first,” Odzaya corrects, circling a clawed finger around the mug’s rim before bringing the residue she finds to her mouth. “By boat, coming from Kugane. I met Thancred soon after, and not long after that he gave me the name of the Scions and invited me to the Waking Sands.”

“But you never mentioned him when you met Papalymo and me!” Lyse questions. Odzaya briefly lifts a shoulder.

“I cared not for the invitation, nor the thought of involvement in an organization.” She spares a glance in Thancred’s direction. “Nor the not-so-subtle flirtations of a random rogue I met beneath a tree in the desert. I chose to forget the encounter occurred.”

“Are you serious?” the man questions with an incredulous grin. Odzaya grants him a small, teasing smirk, and he loudly chuckles. “Well, damn. Consider me effectively humbled.”

“Guess that extends to both of us.” With a slight pout, Lyse plops herself on the arm of Odzaya’s chair, the long red silk of her sleeve draping itself over Odzaya’s lap. “If you were looking to avoid joining any groups, I can only assume that means Papalymo and I didn’t convince you, either.”

“No,” Odzaya confirms, her smirk widening when Lyse answers her bluntness by wriggling herself partially into her seat, only to settle for the chair’s arm when the spikes of her friend’s curled tail promise something decidedly different from comfort.

“Well, if we failed to convince you, how’d you end up joining?”

Reflexively, Odzaya glances over her mug’s rim, sunset eyes finding their way across the table, only to meet Y’shtola’s own misty gray gaze.

Urianger catches the subtle exchange, and his delight is obvious. “And the sorceress strikes once more,” he dramatically intonates. Lyse whips her head around for what seems the umpteenth time.

“Shtola?!”

The scholar in question merely lounges further into her own seat, her own cup of tea in hand. She takes a leisurely sip, and the subsequent clink of the porcelain on the accompanying saucer seems to sound her answer better than words.

“Why do I feel like we should have known?” Thancred comments with an amused shrug.

“But that’s not fair!” Lyse exclaims, eyeing Odzaya. “You were never in Limsa! Were you?”

“For a brief time, yes,” she corrects once more. It was her original destination after leaving Kugane, in fact, only for the small ship to be blown off course by an unforeseen storm. It found purchase instead in Thanalan, at the docks of the Silver Bazaar, from which she found her way to Ul’dah on foot.

An attempted guiding by higher powers, it may have been, the more she thinks on it. An annoyance, it most certainly was.

“Just long enough to capture the attentions of the local populace,” Y’shtola confirms. “The commercial link between Limsa and Kugane does make the citizenry more accustomed to foreigners. Nevertheless, a rather elaborately garbed Au Ra adorned with both blade and scepter set tongues wagging rather enthusiastically when she arrived via airship.”

“Unsurprising,” Thancred comments, a teasing wink already on hand when Odzaya briefly meets his gaze.

“I shall enjoy my respite in peace now, yes?” she inquires of Lyse, the question just short of sarcastic as she makes a point of raising her mug back to her lips. The monk releases a final, resigned gust of air and theatrically drapes herself along the armchair’s back, her blonde head alighting upon Odzaya’s shoulder.

“I suppose,” she says, a pout pulling at her voice as well as at the bow of her lips. “Still think it’s cheating,” she mutters.

“Simply be glad our illustrious friend found her way into our midst, dear Lyse,” Urianger soothes. “Twas a united effort, one could say, for our prayers to be answered as they were.”

Just then, the din of Mor Dhona’s marketplace heralds the opening of the Rising Stone’s doors. A familiar sight soon follows: an enthusiastically arguing Alisaie, her arms a tangle of emphatic gestures, and a calmly protesting Alphinaud, at whom said gestures are aimed. The former only pauses in her tirade when she catches sight of Lyse’s figure and, apparently more importantly, the high-pinned fall of Odzaya’s locs partially obscured behind it. “Aha!” she exclaims. “Zaya will clear this up!” And against her brother’s protestations, she makes a beeline for them. “Zaya! Who do you rely on most amongst the Scions?”

Once more, the Warrior of Light lowers her mug, her expression characteristically neutral but for the slightest pinched purse to her lips. “And soon to find my way back out,” she quietly declares.

[therovingstar]

Lowkey obsessed with how she just...perfectly blends in lol. She’s finally found a place to hide away.

[therovingstar]

Odzaya being named what she was (od means “star” while zaya means “fate/destiny” in Mongolian/Ancient Auri) might imply that it’s symbolic of her eventual role as the universe’s savior. And in hindsight from a meta perspective, it is (also I wanted to keep to the FF protag motif of weather/nature-themed naming conventions, hence the “star” part of her name).

But in universe, her name is actually a reminder that she was never really meant to come about. Her parents, while not opposed to the idea of children, felt it wasn’t prudent to have any at the time (as they were busy leading rescue efforts for refugees across Othard who had escaped to the steppe) and so used pretty extensive birth control.

I don’t know which is funnier, that Hydaelyn was like “lol nah, I want my soul sister and you’re gonna have her” or that Odzaya herself, who I already characterize as being supernaturally stubborn when she wants to be, was like “you thought,” bypassed an at least 95% effective contraceptive cocktail (her parents are both alchemists, they had that shit locked down) and popped out anyway.

The point being that, as a joke, her parents put “fate” in her name because pre-ordained destiny was the only thing they could come up with as to how she managed to be conceived. And I mean, they were right.

[therovingstar]

Odzaya’s entire transition from the events of ARR to Heavensward was a trip given the circumstances laid out in that previous post. She dealt with a certain alienation and exotification throughout ARR already for being a race that’s still practically unheard of in Eorzea; add to that the more-or-less exile she experienced as a result of the Bloody Banquet and she was cursing the entire continent under her breath.

Then she (and Alphi and Tataru) make it to Ishgard, this supposed “safe haven,” and she immediately hones in on the hostility present in her not only being an active obvious foreigner, but a scaly foreigner. Edmont and Haurchefant actually tried to assign her a guard during a decent part of her stay there for fear of what the locals may do (an offer she immediately rejected lol). They were all aware how much of a bad joke of a ‘sanctuary’ Ishgard would be for her. In her canon, she meets Sidurgu/goes DRK pretty early on in the expansion (they literally stop on the street and stare at each other for a surreal second as they’re both keeping to the shadows to avoid attention like “am I actually seeing someone who looks like me right now in this place???” lol). She never tells Alphinaud or Tataru to spare them worrying about her, but part of the reason why she went DRK was not only to protect them, but herself, and her experiences in Ishgard (combined with the ARR stuff) were strong catalysts for Fray’s awakening within her, she was so (inwardly) upset at the time. And of course there’s the huge irony that someone largely seen as the enemy ended up being the catalyst for such positive change.

Things are okay enough now, and she genuinely has good relationships with multiple of the citizens we bond with during the expansion (and in a very bold gesture of solidarity as well as genuine affection for her, Edmond eventually officially adopts her into the Fortemps family with his sons’ support some time post-HW), but all that said, Ishgard will probably always be one of her least favorite places to be, and the folks she’s close to there know and respect that (Aymeric knows what a gift it is that she still pops in to check on and have the occasional dinner with him).