#teenage WoLs are. a special kind of fucked-up. babies....

[sunderedazem]

WoLposting on main for what (and how) he's doing after Endwalker-

He's starting with changing his hairstyle from the long braid with bangs to a shorter ponytail/shaggy bob cut after Endwalker because it feels like. The end of an era. And he's mourning losing his friends' constant presence, a little (even if he and G'raha are now courting and being idiot catboys about it). It's just. Cutting away what was out of grief. He's losing the Scions, at least ostensibly, because they're all splitting up and going different ways, and he's. A lot lost without them.

But also the haircut is because he doesn't want to be some folk hero and only that. Like he's cool with it, but also- he wants time to be Corrain, to figure out who Corrain is. He became the Warrior of Light when he was seventeen and has been that ever since, and before that was just a Keeper foundling in Gridania trying to complete a conjurer apprenticeship so he could get citizenship - he hasn't had the time to figure out what he wants. And sure, being adopted by Edmont and House Fortemps helped - he had a home and a family and a nation finally, even if he's sort of in the same sort-of son category Haurchefant was - but he's got little snippets of Azem's memory bleeding through, he knows there's a wanderlust in him that won't settle, and he needs Corrain de Fortemps to be someone who has the space to find out who he is. And for that he can't be clocked as the WoL everywhere he goes!

So he takes a knife and chops off his braid and then Y'shtola and Krile find him sitting in front of a mirror with this awful fluffy mess and help him shape it better, and when it's long enough to put up he just ties it back in a ponytail. And he just- wanders aimlessly. He helps G'raha a lot, they're definitely dating in a Halone-sanctioned way lmao, and he trails around visiting Scions.

And he's almost invisible. The people who know who he is know Corrain and not just the Warrior of Light, and now the bards' stories don't describe him perfectly and- he's got space to breathe. Space to discover he genuinely likes archaeology and researching bygone eras and writing about them, space to go around and record the mechanical particulars of his forays into ancient ruins and alternate worlds and etc, space to polish his knowledge about foraging and botany and learn how to travel with cookware only and make meals from the land rather than carry food with him-

And all of this to say he finds that - outside of being the Warrior of Light - he genuinely likes the kind of adventuring that comes with learning opportunities. He likes studying the things he's found, likes the challenge of discovery in the first place. He likes the kind of work the Students of Baldesion do, likes working with scholars. (especially G'raha. Nobody saw that coming 🙄) And more than all that- he's genuinely good at it. He gets to realize a lot of his own archaeological/adventuring skill, while supplemented by time-period experts, is in fact it's own branch of knowledge.

So by the time Dawntrail kicks off - I think he's fully considering trying to write a thesis on it, and maybe try to see if Sharlayan would give him an Archon's mark about it. Sure- he's not a Sharlayan citizen, he has strong ties to Ishgard in the vein of being an adopted son of one of the four high houses. But he's also openly dancing circles around G'raha and Artoirel is definitely interested in having a no-inheritance-threat adopted baby brother with a foothold in Sharlayan and- well, House Fortemps approved of G'raha already anyway, they're expecting that to happen.

He's definitely found himself in a lot of ways by the time the next expansion will kick off. Of course part of that is being an actual adult and a twenty-something instead of a teenager, but also- coming to terms with being nine-fourteenths of Azem, coming to terms with defining himself rather than letting what he can do define him, coming to the realization that he's allowed to like what he does and who he is.

That the hope he found in Ultima Thule is actually allowed to feel like his own, and it's not selfish of him to feel that way. That he's allowed to live for himself.

And. Like damn. Finally! but also I'm proud of him. He turns out alright in the end.

Excited to start Dawntrail with this version of Corrain. He's just so much less- desperate to prove something. He proved everything he needed to prove to himself already. And now he finally just adventure for adventure's sake.

[selchwife]

i should type up the pfeil lore tbh since ive changed it up a little bit recently (very minor changes)

so to start off with pfeil was um. a bit of an oopsie. as has been previously discussed his biological father is thancred. his mother was a noblewoman in gridania; she and her husband were like the only keeper family of any real status in the city and so they were very image-concerned, but didn't particularly like each other. thancred did his typical thancred shenanigans and ended up having a brief affair with pfeil's mom. pfeil, when he was born, was clearly thancred's kid and not his dad's, so it was a whole thing. (to clarify a little, pfeil calls the man who raised him his dad and just calls thancred thancred, so i do it too because it's easier lol)

his mom decided the best way to deal with it would be to just forbid pfeil from leaving the house and kind of. hide him. "What baby? It was a stillbirth! I don't have any conspicuously half-hyuran children!" kind of deal. she also kind of tried to ignore him the best she could when he was growing up because she just really wished he'd vanish. his dad was more hands-on and was sometimes okay but was often egregiously abusive. the servants kind of tried to just stay out of it because what do you even do in that kind of situation? this is where the csa part of pfeil's backstory comes from but that doesn't need any further details.

anyway, since pfeil wasn't allowed to like, go outside and play or anything, he was kind of a weird kid in the beginning. he did a lot of reading and both of his parents encouraged it because it meant he was silent and out of sight, so he had access to pretty much any reading material he wanted as long as it was something convenient for his parents. his favorite subjects were history and adventure fiction.

eventually he just could not tolerate how his dad treated him any longer though and ended up getting the idea in his head to run away from home at about ten ("i've read books about Outside. I can handle myself!" mindset). this would have ended disastrously for him but luckily after a little while of his wandering around gridania CLEARLY lost as fuck mother miounne took him in. she agreed to let him stay at the inn at the carline canopy in exchange for work from him (child labor laws who?) and he agreed. he mostly just waited tables and washed up and he was very cute and the patrons loved him.

the calamity happened when he was 12 and he ended up getting injured and trapped. while he was trapped he saw the Vision From Hydaelyn one gets at the beginning of the game of their wol kicking lahabrea's ass. this is when he got his echo, and also when he decided he wanted to be an adventurer and HERO!!!!!!1 so obviously he goes home and is like "mother miounne let me join the adventurers guild" and she's like "ummm....you're 12. how about you uuuhhh go do odd jobs at bentbranch! that's an adventure!"

so he went and lived at bentbranch for the next five years and got Really Good at caring for chocobos, which became his special interest, and also at hunting using a bow and arrow. he was given a little leeway with hunting in his spare time because it was a useful skill in that it helped feed everyone who lived at the stables or worked there for very long periods, especially immediately post-calamity. as discussed earlier he did not like castrum oriens (i got the name wrong last night LOL), it was always something of a risk to go near it armed even though he was just a teenager with hunting equipment, and it disturbed the wildlife in the area which made his life a little harder. he definitely threw rocks when he thought he could get away with it lol. during this time he also ended up developing amnesia for a lot of his early childhood.

once he was 17 he felt confident enough in his skills with archery to join the adventurer's guild. and then everythign in his life went wrong. Actually it went great at first. at the end of ARR he's like "oh i'm the coolest hero boy ever and everyone loves me and i'm hydaelyn's gift to mankind" but the ARR patches were uhh...well they kind of disabused him of that notion. he had a massive mental breakdown at the beginning of heavensward, became a dark knight, and then awful things just Kept Happening! he did not start getting any better mentally until like, the tail end of endwalker, although he had a bit of a false start for winning at mental health during shadowbringers up until mt gulg.

anyway that's the sort of short pfeil primer. i have some more thoughts about individual expansions but we could be here all day