S

 cions & Sinners.

laila's ffxiv characters

A

 bout Me.

i the player ;

ii Hello! Thanks for checking out my Carrd. My name is laila, I live in southern England with my husband and my cats, and I've been playing FFXIV since April 2020. I started out on Balmung on the Crystal Datacenter, moving to Seraph when the Dynamis DC opened in November 2022. I like to say I relocated due to the housing crisis. I usually divide my time between Seraph and Balmung, depending on how sociable or otherwise I'm feeling, and whether or not the friends I usually play with are online.

iii If one of my characters reminds you of another you have come across in a book or a show, that's probably entirely intentional. Many of my ingame avatars are based on pre-existing characters I already loved, including both of my versions of the Warrior of Light. My growing fondness for the world of FFXIV, however, has seen me try to transplant the individuals that I based them upon to the world of the game - hopefully without losing the core of who they are. Whether or not I've succeeded is very much up to the observer!

ivBefore interacting with me ingame, please bear in mind the following:

C

 haracters.

seraph ‧ dynamis
duty progress: 7.2

i Born too late and called too soon, Ayah sometimes wonders if her previous incarnation might have been better suited to her position.

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• carrd
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seraph ‧ dynamis
duty progress: 5.55

ii A former Garlean conscript, Ken is an old hand at being charged with fighting other people's wars. What's one more?

• profile
• lodestone
• carrd
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balmung ‧ crystal

i Raised among the Redbelly Wasps, Manon made the difficult decision to break with her people and her past. Starting again in Ishgard, the Skysteel Manufactory offers sanctuary, of a sort.

• profile
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seraph ‧ dynamis

ii Heiress to the Saint-Meran fortune, and secretly engaged to a Hyuran knight, Valentine fled Ishgard following an attempt on her life. Now alone in Eorzea, she seeks a new purpose, and her old love.

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• lodestone

ultros ‧ primal

iii Only child of a dread pirate, Styrmbryda came to Limsa to hone her skills with an axe. Somehow, she ended up a Mealvaan's Gate assesor with a sniffer carbuncle instead. Funny how things work out.

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seraph ‧ dynamis

iv Proud daughter of Tomra, Maritt has no idea what she's doing here or even how she made it across the rift from the First to begin with. Perhaps it's time she swore off the nitrobrew for good?

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• lodestone

A

yah.

i the basics

ii the detail

iii statistics

iv biography

Born in a Miqo'te commune approximately a bell's walk from the sleepy North Shroud town of Hyrstmill, Ayah's childhood was happy and largely unremarkable. The eldest daughter of settlement herbalist Cemi Mhakaracca, Ayah was raised alongside her four sisters by her mother and her wife Pelhi Tayuun, a modestly talented Guild-trained conjurer who served the community as a healer and midwife. In the traditional Keeper of the Moon fashion, her father, Sahja'a Molkot, was only an intermittent presence in her life, something Ayah regards as entirely to have been expected.Never particularly academically-inclined, Ayah proved skilled with the bow, and from an early age was noted to possess a precocious gift for music, and a prodigious memory for songs and verse. To make the best of her talent, her mother saw to it she learned the lyre at the feet of community elder Wyra Amariyo; Ayah proved an apt student, adding the flute to her repertoire a year or so later, followed by the fiddle. Some of her happiest hours were passed in the Hyrstmill home of her closest friend, Keelty Weaver, whose mother Meriel taught the girls the fundamentals of dance.As they had been left largely unaffected by the Calamity, Ayah and her family found their services much in demand among the worst-afflicted communities of the North Shroud. At eleven summers, Ayah was old enough to be charged with delivering medicines to the needy, errands of mercy which kindled a profound sense of wanderlust in the girl. Determined to see something of the world, she set out for Gridania at the age of sixteen, hoping to put her talents as a performer to work for her. Practicality, however, saw her enrolling at the Adventurers' Guild to earn her keep in the meanwhile, a decision that would prove fateful. The girl may have spent her youth singing of the bold deeds of brave heroes - but now, as Ayah treads the hero's path herself, she isn't sure that her songs are enough.

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i the alternative

ii Making her way from Gridania to Ul'dah, Ayah very quickly realized that the world of the professional entertainer was somewhat different from what she had been imagining. Though working as a dancer on Emerald Avenue proved difficult and sometimes even dangerous, her fortunes took a turn for the better when she caught the eye of the dance master Guillaunaux. Spotting her potential, he took her under his tutelage.

Guillaunaux was a hard taskmaster, but in Ayah he had found an ideal pupil: eager, hardworking, and capable. Her confidence growing with her newfound skill, she obtained a position as a dancer for Gegeruju of Costa del Sol, remaining under his employ until the arrival of Ranaa Mihgo and Troupe Falsiam. To her surprise and delight, she was offered the chance to join the troupe, an opportunity Ayah gladly and gratefully accepted.

A

yah's Gallery.

Gallery contains potential unmarked spoilers for all content up to Dawntrail patch 7.1.

A

yah's Gallery.

Gallery contains potential unmarked spoilers for all content up to Dawntrail patch 7.1.

K

 en.

i the basics

ii the detail

iii stats

iv biography

The third of five children, Ken spent his childhood in Minato, a port town in the Territory of Doma which had once served as the cradle of a short-lived and ill-fated revolt against Garlean rule. Military presence in the area was high, and not a day passed where the smallfolk were unaware of the presence of the occupiers. The son of a fisherman, born into the stateless Peregrinus caste, Ken was groomed for Imperial service from his schooldays and grew up seeing his conscription into the Garlean Legions as inevitable - though, much to the dismay of his schoolteacher, he never was quite able to consider it aspirational.Though his parents strove to shield their children from Imperial rule, Ken's childhood was nonetheless troubled, with two of his siblings dying young and his mother carried off by the same illness that claimed his brother Riki. Worse was to come when Calamity beckoned and his father broke under the strain, seeing the confusion Dalamud's fall was wreaking amongst the occupying Garleans as their best chance to flee to free Hingashi. Caught by a patrol on the far side of Minato Bay, the escape foundered almost immediately, tearing what remained of the family apart. Ken, thirteen at the time, knows only that he was released after questioning. As for his father and sisters, he can only hope some of them survived.Conscripted shortly after his fifteenth nameday, Ken joined the XIVth Legion following basic training. Posted to Ala Mhigo, he joined the garrison at Castellum Aeris. When the local Qiqirn, pushed too far by the harrying actions of Garlean troops who saw them as nothing but bests, summoned a Primal, the now eighteen year old Ken was among the legionaries sent to drive it back. Surviving only by providence, he seized his chance to desert, eventually making his way to Baelsar's Wall and thence the Black Shroud. Arriving in Gridania with nothing to his name but the clothes on his back and his skills as a soldier, he determined to try his hand as a sellsword.

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i the alternative

ii Posted to Dalmasca following basic training, Ken joined the IVth Legion under Noah van Gabranth. Though otherwise an unremarkable conscript soldier, Ken's ability to use aetherytes made him a natural courier. When a rebel ambush left his comrade Scapus dead, he decided he'd lost enough to Garlemald. Burying the documents he'd been charged to deliver, he traveled to the remotest aetheryte he knew, and started walking.

Ken's peregrinations took him back to Doma, where he joined up with Resistance forces the first chance he got. Surviving the doomed rebellion in the wake of Solus zos Galvus's death, he retreated to the House of the Fierce with the remainder of the insurrectionists, unwilling to give up on the dream of freedom he had come to embrace as his purpose. The arrival of the Warrior of Light was, to him, providential.

K

 en's Gallery.

Gallery contains potential unmarked spoilers for all content up to Shadowbringers patch 5.55.

M

anon.

i the basics

ii the detail

iii stats

iv biography

Born in a bandit camp in Silent Arbor, Manon's childhood with the Redbelly Wasps was itinerant and hardscrabble. Her mother Oriane, ill-suited to the life she had been led, died giving birth to her second, stillborn child; father Marcelloix, an unsuccessful footpad, spent much of his time in jail. Their daughter fell into the care of her mother's sister Saulette Selcerre, wife of the camp tinker Ursulin. Raised alongside their four children, Manon did not want for attention or affection, and considers her aunt and uncle to be her parents indeed.Manon did not set out to change her life. Her own vague dreams of a life outside the Redbelly Hive might very easily have stayed just that, had her cousin Alexois not seen a close friend crippled in an attack on a merchant caravan. A talented woodworker from an early age, his fear of losing his ability to work wood drove him to flee the Hive in the hope of finding legitimate employment as a carpenter. Manon, then engaged to be married to fellow-poacher Silvaire Vaincannet, saw in his flight a chance to escape the marriage she was coming to dread: much as she loved Silvaire, the closer the day drew for them to be wed the more her mother's fate preyed on her mind. When Alexois approached her with his plans, she leapt at the chance to join him.Where Alexois took to life in Gridania, Manon found adjustment more challenging. Though accepted into the Archer's Guild and thence the Gods' Quiver, she found herself restless and unsatisfied in her new role. The prejudices she faced as a Duskwight rankled with her, suspicions which were hardly helped by being, in her case, more or less true. Starting again all over again increasingly occupied her thoughts - and her participation in the Grand Melee as part of the Gridanian contingent opened her mind to the possibility of a future in the newly-uncloistered realm of Ishgard. Taking her leave of the Gods' Quiver and the Twelveswood, she presented herself at the Skysteel Manufactory to learn the fundamentals of Machinistry.

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V

alentine.

i the basics

ii the detail

iii stats

iv biography

The only child of Halonic Inquisitor Gerard de Villefort and his first wife Renee, Valentine is if she but knew it the apple of her father's eye. Unfortunately, he is terrible at exhibiting affection, leaving the girl bereft following the death of her mother while she was still but a child. Though raised in comfort and splendor in the Pillars, Valentine's was a lonely childhood, a solitude that was not much relieved by her father's remarriage to the far-younger Heloise de Marinterre, or the birth of her half-brother Edouard, too young to be a playmate or confidante, and a holy terror to whom her stepmother was unashamedly partial besides.Valentine's best companion for much of her youth was her beloved paternal grandfather, old Noirtier, a storied dragon-slayer. When he was crippled by a stroke, Valentine was devastated. Unable to believe that her grandfather could live but yet be lost to her, she tried and tried desperately to communicate with the old man - discovering, to her joy, that though he was unable to move anything but his eyes, he was still as alert and astute as ever. With the aid of a dictionary, she found she was able to speak with him still and, in her dual role as his confidante and his interpreter, she since has spent as much of her time as she is able by her grandfather's side.The heiress through her mother's line to the immense Saint-Meran fortune, Valentine is pledged against her will to the aristocratic Franz, scion of House de Epinay. Her heart, however, is devoted wholly to another - Convictor Knight Maximilien Morrel, a Hyuran lad of mercantile stock, newly risen to fame and glory for his bold actions against the depredations of the Lady Iceheart and the Dravanian Horde. Desperate to be together, the couple planned to elope on the eve of her engagement - a plan that was foiled by the sudden and mysterious death of her grandparents. Now her house seems as if accursed, and the servants whisper that there is a poisoner at large. Torn between her loyalties and her love, what hope for Valentine now?

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S

 tyrmbryda.

i the basics

ii the detail

iii stats

iv biography

Born at sea to a buccaneer and his corsair bride, ere she drew breath Styrmbryda appeared to be fated to live the life of a pirate. Fate, however, had different ideas.The event that most served to steer Styrmbryda's life off-tack was the death of her mother, Ceigthota, in the course of a boarding action. Though he was but mildly wounded in the skirmish that claimed his wife, Wistund, her father, quite lost the appetite for life on the high seas. Retiring to Moraby Drydocks with his young daughter, he took to the comparatively safer trade of a fisherman and settled down to raise his daughter, ultimately remarrying the widow of a crewmate. Styrmbryda remained the couple's only child.It always grieved Wistund somewhat that Styrmbryda didn't take more after her mother, for she grew up resembling him more than her, and had inherited the steadiness of temperament that had ultimately made him so suited to a quiet life on land. Nonetheless, she was a dutiful daughter. Unfocused and unsure of herself, Styrmbryda cleaved to her father's expectations as much because she didn't know what else to do with herself than any sense of filial piety. Feeling vaguely that somehow it would make him happy, she headed to Limsa Lominsa to enlist in the Knights of the Barracuda, joining the Marauder's Guild in preparation.It was in Limsa Lominsa that Styrmbryda's vague sense of longing coalesced into something more focused. Walks down Hawker's Alley led her past the Arcanist's Guild, and past it, and past it again, and every time she crossed the threshold she grew nearer to nerving herself up to going in. The day that, brand-new grimoire in hand, she stood in the basement of the Guild and first summoned her Carbuncle, she realized that she had after all found her calling. A job as an assessor for Mealvaan's Gate followed: the distracted pirate's daughter yielding, at last, to the firm and focused customs-mistress.

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M

aritt.

i the basics

ii the detail

iii stats

iv biography

Maritt Tholl of Tomra has no idea how she got here.She remembers the burning skies of the First, of course. Growing up a proud Tholl beardmaiden in the Kholusian village of Tomra, her childhood may have been harsh by the standards of the Source but with nothing much to compare it to, she felt none of it. Where her three big brothers took to mechanicking, endlessly fidgeting with gadgets and gears, Maritt took to the axe, following in the footsteps of her Grandmama, a fearsome warrior in her day, who once took down three Eaters armed with naught but a hammer. Or maybe it was four Sin Eaters and a spade, the stories get a little bit muddled. Either way Maritt, every Tholl worth their beard agrees, is a chip off the old block.Maritt's not beat Grandmama's record yet, but the day she saw off a half-dozen hobs who were poking round the still was a banner day all the same, and a banner day deserves celebration. Well, one thing led to another, and another to one, more, and next thing anyone knew she and her best friend Kimutt were helping themselves to Chief Xamott's stash of nitrobrew. She isn't sure what happened after that - well, obviously except that they drank the nitrobrew. Couldn't leave a full barrel half so, and Xamott would know watered grog at first gulp - so, to keep him in bilssful ignorance, they'd smash the barrel and bury the bits. No barrel, no crime. And to do that, it would have to be quite empty. She remembers Kimutt saying that maybe they should stop.Now Maritt finds herself surrounded by curious creatures known as "Lalafells", and not a Dwarf in sight for malms. Beardless, unhelmed, and undwarvenly averse to tinkering, carousing, and tinkering while carousing, everything about these familiar strangers seems designed only to baffle and enrage - why, the hobsons won't even match a Lali-Ho with a Lali-Ho. This new world seems downright unhealthy to her, and she suspects a Goggish plot. At least they still have booze?

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L

ore.

i On Eorzean Geography

A European opinion on how the not-quite map of Europe that is Eorzea might, in fact, line up with reality a little more neatly than it at first appears - and why, at least to me, it matters.

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ii On Keepers of the Moon

When Hal, it's about cats met Harold, they're lesbians. Personal extrapolations on Keeper of the Moon culture and family dynamics, as expressed through the background of my Warrior of Light, Ayah Mhakaracca.

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iii On Fantasia

Some thoughts on how and where the Phial of Fantasia might best fit into the world of Final Fantasy XIV now that its canon status has, at least for me, been confirmed beyond point of argument.

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iv On Garlean Names

Names are very important. An explanation as to why, though my Warrior of Light Ken may be no Garlean citizen, he still has been given a Garlean family name.

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v On Aristocracy

What's a class-bound society to do with inconvenient sons of powerful men who shouldn't have sired them? An attempt to put the issue of Aymeric de Borel and his parentage in some kind of wider historical context.

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G

eography.

Eorzea is Europe.This isn't really up for debate, is it? If one looks at the map of the world of Hydaelyn, it's pretty obvious that was the intent. While not everywhere in the game maps perfectly or even particularly adequately onto its real-world equivalent - where, for instance, Is Old Sharlayan supposed to be except somewhere vaguely north? - it's getting more and more clear as time goes on that the world map in Final Fantasy XIV is pretty much analogous to our own. Is this, therefore, even what anyone would rightly call "headcanon"? I'm not sure it is, but as a European - albeit not a Continental one - I thought it might be worth my time, or at the very least be passably interesting, to map Eorzea onto Europe and see what that gets me and why.My starting premise? Limsa Lominsa is Portsmouth.Before I get started, however, I should make it plain that I (like, I would imagine, most people) consider Eorzea to be much bigger than it is depicted in the game. I feel that the world map we have is a condensation and a simplification, and that outside of the world of the game our characters have to travel much further and make many more stops than they do to actually get there from here. There are, to my mind, plenty of places to be from and go to that are not on the world map. They can't be, because that would be extremely impractical on just about every level a game could possibly be impractical upon. I don't think this is a particularly uncommon opinion, and mention it only because otherwise my attributing vast swathes of real-world geography to a half-dozen map screens feels a little bit silly.To return to my thesis, then: the island of Vylbrand, in Eorzea, is analogous to Britain, to the Channel Islands, and also to Southern France. It's a rather larger and more diverse proposition than the British Isles are in reality, with Limsa Lominsa and its immediate surroundings - Western, Middle and Lower La Noscea - being roughly analogous to Britain, most particularly the south coast. Upper and Eastern La Noscea and the residential area of Mist leave the British Isles behind, being akin to the wine-producing south of France and the upper reaches of the Mediterranean. The last map, Outer La Noscea, is more fantastical, being host to the ruins of the city of Nym and the home of the Kobolds in O'Ghomoro. I can't think of any real direct equivalences being drawn here, unless the ruins of Nym and Bronze Lake are an Eorzean interpretation of the Roman ruins that can be found in Western Europe.Moving onto the continent proper, we find Northern France in Ishgard. This was a bit more obvious in 1.0, when it wasn't completely covered in snow and looked rather more like the surrounding area of the Black Shroud, Northern France not typically consisting of blasted tundra. Things get decidedly alpine in the higher reaches of Coerthas, with the mountains of Abalathia's Spine taking the place of the Alps themselves.

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A fair amount of Ishgard, however, defies easy mapping, being far more fantastical than many of the places the Warrior of Light has traveled before or will afterward - the floating islands of the Sea of Clouds, The Churning Mists and Azys Lla defy easy categorization, and Idyllshire isn't much easier to pin down. These, however, are areas added during Heavensward: it's no wonder they don't quite fit with the vision of a fantastical Europe. Nor, for that matter, does Mor Dhona - not quite. There's nowhere quite like this that I can think of, at least nowhere settled, which is appropriate given its status as a border area nobody quite likes to go.South of Mor Dhona we hit Ul'dah, which takes in Spain and North Africa. Specifically, Ul'dah draws its influences from a period in European history in which parts of Spain belonged to and were governed from North Africa. The influence of Islamic culture on what was known as "Moorish Spain" explain a lot of the design motifs that are used in Ul'dah proper and its surrounding areas. The desert areas are mostly influenced by the Middle East, save for Southern Thanalan, which has more in common with North Africa, southern Europe not really being known for its deserts.Gridania is the Eorzean equivalent of Central Europe, taking in Germany, Austria and Czechia, but to my eyes its strongest influence is the Black Forest region of Germany. This is a region whose folklore inspired many of the traditional fairy tales known in the West, including the very idea of forests as a place for fairytales in the first place; naturally the fantasy version of the area, complete with all of the perils that would imply, is taken up by the Black Shroud, a name which is highly unlikely to be any kind of a coincidence.This parallelism continues across the world map as a whole, though there are some notable exceptions. Both Doma and Hingashi, for instance, are based on Japan, but are separated by chronology rather than notions of country; Garlemald, by contrast, is absolutely and entirely Soviet Russia. The only thing that's Roman about them are the naming traditions and the Emperor-worship.Why this matters to me personally is accents.All Eorzeans speak the same language: that's established. Personally, however, I like the idea of there being regional accents and variations in Eorzea similar to those found in Europe. I think, for instance, the Sea Wolves sound Welsh: the pronunciations of Roegadyn names - and the word "Roegadyn" itself, for that matter - become very musical when spoken with a Welsh lilt. Does this super make sense since accents when speaking a foreign language are influenced by the inflections of one's native language? No, not at all, but I like the idea and it adds a little more distinction to the various regions. Thus I believe that my Warrior of Light Ayah, born and raised in the North Shroud, has a light accent which would sound to a real-world listener rather akin to German or Swiss. Her theory on how you approach the name "Thancred" does not and never has quite matched Thancred's own. They're working on it.

M

ooncats.

As someone whose Warrior of Light is a Keeper of the Moon Miqo'te, I've spent a fair amount of time pondering how their society might look and function. Extrapolating from what we know of them in FFXIV canon, both as depicted in game and detailed in supplementary source material - that they are nocturnal and matriarchal, that they tend to live in small family groupings headed by women - I've drawn the following conclusions.At the heart of the differences between the Seekers of the Sun and the Keepers of the Moon lies, or so I imagine, lies a singular truth: where the behavior of the Seekers of the Sun is based upon the habits and behaviour of big cats, most specifically lions, the Keepers of the Moon are based upon small ones. Their culture has more in common with the behaviours noted in feral cat colonies than it does with the pride of lions with its dominant male mimicked by the Seekers of the Sun. In a manner akin to community cats, Keepers of the Moon form small enclaves of interconnected families, headed by matriarchs and consisting almost entirely of women (mothers, grandmothers, aunts) and their respective children; the males, similarly to tomcats, are ultimately transient. Though they may spend long periods of time in one place, or return to it regularly, they nonetheless drift from enclave to enclave as the mood takes them.Unlike the Seekers of the Sun, the Keepers of the Moon are not what would correctly be described as a tribal culture. What they are is communal.There's a precedent for this and it is, fittingly enough, commune living. Thus, this is how I pattern the day-to-day life of the "standard" Keeper of the Moon community. Greater or lesser degrees of isolation and lawlessness could be accommodated for, depending on thew community, but at their heart I see them as small - described in lore books as usually consisting of 2-3 families, though in Ayah's case I decided there were four - largely self-sustaining units living some way outside the settled towns and cities of the Shroud, though how far would very much depend on the individuals involved and how willing they were to traffick with Twelveswood civilization.Ayah's community, if I am to treat that as a blueprint, live about a bell's walk from the North Shroud village of Hyrstmill, in a settlement they simply refer to as home. At some point in the past, the women of the enclave decided that the best way to ensure a peaceful existence alongside the representatives of settled Gridanian power was to take care to abide by Trappers' League guidelines regarding hunting and gathering, and to make themselves too useful to trouble; by the act of proving themselves good neighbours, the powers that be would regard their comings and goings without suspicion, and trust them to manage their own affairs. This has, for the most part, worked, and they are regarded by the people of Hyrstmill in much the same way the people of a small town might do the members of a women's commune a short drive away - slightly odd, living unconventional lives, but utterly unremarkable once one got used to the idea that they were there.In the interest of proving themselves useful to the wider community, a number of the adult women have taken to trades such as herbalism, weaving, or leatherworking, with much of the day-to-day business of hunting and foraging left to older children and teenagers, with what men may have attached themselves to the enclave at that time undertaking anything that is considered beyond the abilities of the younglings.

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They are known for producing woven cloth and blankets, clothing, leather accessories, dyestuffs, soaps and tinctures, and herbal remedies, much of which is sold or bartered at markets in Hyrstmill for what necessities they cannot provide. Come market day the families of Hyrstmill will endeavour to get there early, as the nocturnal Keepers will have packed up their stalls by eleven bells and gone home to rest, taking their produce with them.The Miqo'te hold most property in common, with tools and even furnishings being swapped freely from household to household as required. Personal belongings are limited to articles of clothing, children's toys, the tools of one's trade, and things like jewellery, combs and keepsakes. Community members have only a loose sense of what counts as personal space, and are frequently found in and out of one another's houses whether the designated occupant is at home or not. Meals are taken communally almost as often as with immediate family. In Ayah's community doors are usually left open or screened with curtains; a closed door is a sign that a person or family wishes for whatever reason to be left alone, and is for the most part respected.The largely-female children of the community are educated in the home, and much of what they are taught is practical. Priority is placed on the acquisition of life skills over and above the workings of the wider world: learning to support oneself in a situation where that means knowing how to hunt and trap and what plants are safe to eat takes precedence, all the more so given that most of the children of the community will never travel more than a dozen malms in any direction, but will need to know how to forage for food. Children are taught how to hunt with a bow; how to prepare traps and snares; how to butcher and prepare meat; how to cook and preserve food; and how to spin, sew and knit as a matter of course. Learning one's letters and one's numbers is still seen as a matter of some import, but "book-learning" is as a whole de-emphasised compared to the passing on of practical knowledge. Beyond that point education depends more on talent and proclivities, and the occupation of their parents.Day-to-day parenting is the responsibility of mothers. Fathers are a more intermittent presences in their children's lives, though to what degree depends to a large extent on the individual, with some men choosing to stay in frequent contact with their children, while others remain largely hands-off.As it is the nature of Keeper men to be constantly roaming, I believe it is not unusual for Keeper of the Moon women to form long-term romantic relationships with one another. Girls in these communities grow up seeing same-sex relationships as entirely ordinary, and would not be discouraged from seeking them out themselves when they grew. Many families are headed by pairs of women living as wives, taking joint responsibility for bringing up their children. Among the Keepers of the Moon, no stigma attaches itself to the children of such relationships. It's simply seen as another entirely valid way of living, and one which confers a degree of stability on children that the transitory presence of men in the house simply doesn't provide. Ayah, for instance, considers herself the daughter of Cemi Mhakaracca, her birth mother, and her mother's wife Pelhi Tayuun - though she loves her father, she doesn't really see him as a parent in the same way that she does Pelhi. Theirs remains, however, a culture that prizes family and continuity: a couple who choose not to raise children at all would still be seen very much as an oddity.

F

 antasia.

There seems to be not much room left to doubt it now: Fantasias are canon items. Of course, it's easy enough to argue away the existence of one or two NPCs, should that be something you as an individual feel is best; but, to me, the permanent presence of the Medicine Merchant in Ul'dah and the so-far transitory one of Gridania's Wandering Moogle, both of whom hand out your (first?) hit of Fantasia free of charge to anyone who asks, suggests that we the players need to come to some kind of accommodation with the idea of the Fantasia being, for the people of FFXIV, "a whole thing".How, then, to make this compatible with a setting in which people are clearly not changing their appearance at a whim in the same way we the playerbase are encouraged to? Where nobody ever thinks to account, for instance, for the possibility that a man on the run can simply Fantasia his way out of the tight spot he finds himself in? If these things are really for real, why isn't everybody using them all of the time? When considering the canon status of the Fantasia, I lean into the circumstances in which we, the player-character and Warrior of Light, are offered them ingame. Namely, by an extremely dodgy character hawking them on the street in Ul'dah; and by a Moogle, who are essentially fae: so, unsavoury elements and known tricksters. The implication? Be very, very careful around these things!So yes, this is a world where Fantasias exist.The caveat? They are phenomenally difficult to come by and use.I believe that ordinarily, that is when we are not being offered them by strange Moogles and stranger men, Fantasias are extremely expensive. (We the players do usually have to go to the Mogstation to acquire them). The average person on the Source would never be able to raise the gil for one without putting in a concerted, long-term effort over a period of what would probably be several years. Think the equivalent of buying a brand-new high-end car, and doing so upfront and without financing. Most people simply aren't in a position to be able to do that no matter how much they might want to, and even the wealthy might well consider it a bad investment.Got the gil? Well, next you the buyer will need to find someone to sell to you. Unfortunately, in my accounting, this is also extremely difficult. There are very few people who are willing or able to sell you a Fantasia even if you have the money for it. This isn't a thing that you can simply walk into a store and buy over the counter; even the average Alchemist's Guild won't do that. There are very few legitimate ways to buy Fantasias, and to access what channels exist there's a lot of reliance on word of mouth, moving in the right circles, and knowing a guy who knows a guy. Most of the people who will be prepared to sell you a Fantasia probably aren't the kind of people you should be buying them from, and a lot of them will also be the kind of people who couldn't be trusted not to sell you a watered-down bottle of nothing if you're fortunate, and a Potion of Gut-Ache that gives the dodgy cove what sold you it time to skip town if you're not.Or, if you're really unfortunate? You might end up with an actual Fantasia, which nonetheless doesn't work.The reason behind the high price and the dodgy distribution? As well as being phenomenally expensive, and phenomenally hard to source, they are also phenomenally difficult to make. Most alchemists, no matter how competent and highly-trained they are otherwise, simply won't be capable of it. The materials are exceptionally rare and can be used much more profitably in other, less volatile concoctions, and the skill required is above Guildmaster-level. In my estimation, Severian is about the only person in Ul'dah who would be capable of it, with a handful of equally competent alchemists in Old Sharlayan, and more among the Thavnarians at the High Crucible and Great Work. This doesn't mean others don't try, but results... vary.

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Taking a Fantasia is not a thing to do lightly. If the compounder of a Fantasia gets things wrong even a little, the ability to shape the result with your own desires is the first thing that's lost, and you're essentially playing Wheel of Fortune with your own physical form. That's the good outcome: that you wake up in a body that's even less in tune with your heart's desires than you had to begin with, sometimes quite radically so. After that things get even less desirable, with results ranging from getting very sick, to getting extremely dead, to out-and-out-body horror. And this is for the price, lest we forget, of a new car. An expensive one. And, just to add the final twist to this increasingly knotty problem, there's no way for an alchemist to know if they've compounded a Fantasia or liquid death in a pretty flask unless they give it to someone to drink, and they wake up the next morning delighted with the change.With magic, intent matters. That's especially the case with something like a Fantasia. If the creature that drinks it cannot desire to change, nothing will happen when they do. Without the subject's desires to work upon, even if they're misread or twisted in the process, there's nothing for the magicks to latch onto. Animals don't possess the higher awarenesses necessary to kickstart the process, and so they're useless as test beds for Fantasias. End result? No way to test it. You simply have to trust to the skill of whoever compounded it and pray to the Twelve that nothing will go wrong.Therefore: a single phial of Fantasia costs a small fortune, it's exceptionally difficult to get hold of one, and while there are no laws prohibiting their sale or use it's still extremely risky to the user. Long story short, this is not a thing to be done on a whim. Drinking Fantasia is something an individual would have to really, really want to do before it would be worth the risk and the cost. If you're determined enough you can do it, and it absolutely can work perfectly when you do. But it's a gamble, and a pricey one at that, and not one to risk simply for the sake of convenience.So, what of the Wandering Moogle, and our suspicious friend in Ul'dah? Where do they fit in?My understanding of the Medicine Merchant is that, suspicious though his affect is, he absolutely has the real deal. He has managed, by whatever methods, to get his hands on genuine Fantasias. What he needs now is for word of mouth to spread that he is a reliable source of it. It's worth it to him to peddle a few Fantasias at bargain basement prices because he knows they work and knows it'll pay dividends. Sourcing one for a man who he hopes will make a name for himself on the Bloodsands is, in a city like Ul'dah, an excellent way to kickstart the rumor mill - and it absolutely worth it to hand one out to free to an up-and-coming hero (or, depending on the point in time that we undertake the quest, an established one) like the Warrior of Light. As for the Moogles - well, it's a little more complicated.What the Moogles have is, in my mind, the thing that all this alchemy was aiming to replicate. They don't have a Fantasia as Severian or Nidhana would know it. What they have is the transmogrification draught it is based on. Which is even rarer than Fantasias, and comes with an even higher and perhaps even costlier barrier to entry: you have to get it from a Moogle.Most people can't see Moogles. Not only do you have to be in the handful of people who can see them, you have to then be able to get along with them; and the Moogles then have to like you enough that they'd give you an actual Fantasia, and not something else they thought it would be funny to watch you drink. Get too pushy with them, make it too obvious that the Fantasia is all you want from your acquaintance with them, and your chances of actually acquiring one drop to zero. Though they'll happily give you potion after potion after inappropriate potion until you get the picture and leave.Getting the wrong thing from a Moogle (because, you know, they thought it would be funny) is considerably less likely to get you killed or injured! But it's also considerably more likely to be extremely annoying. Either way, you should very definitely Handle With Care.

N

ames.

It's Imperialism.The answer is always Imperialism.One of the things that we have to do with ourselves here in England - or should be doing, at least - is grapple with the legacy of our Imperialist past. We used to rule about a third of the world, we made new maps where we coloured vast swathes of land in pink and said it was ours now, we exported "civilization" in return for committing wholesale plunder of natural resources and pretended we were the ones operating at a loss here, and now everybody else hates our selfish and arrogant asses and we deserve it. There's an object lesson in that for, uh, some modern powers out there but they really don't seem to be learning it, and I wish them good fucking luck in the future because they are going to need it.This may be why Garlemald fascinates me so. It's very unusual for video games to grapple with issues of imperialism and colonialism, and what happens when empires fall with the kind of nuance that FFXIV brings to the discussion, all the while still firmly treating the Garlean Empire as the Big Bad and its influence as unquestionably a malign one.I see a lot of the British Empire in Garlemald, alongside the more obvious candidates such as Soviet Russia and Imperial Rome. The belief held by men like Gaius van Baelsar that what they are bringing to their conquered territories is culture and refinement and higher moral principles and stability and a chance to better themselves, all under the guiding hand of a "superior" nation is pure Kipling, 100% uncut White Man's Burden. We did this. It was chauvinistic and hopelessly misguided at the very very best, but this is exactly what the more high-minded of the British (and by British I mean for the most part English, and the distinction matters) told ourselves we were doing back in the day. Propagating the Imperialist agenda, the spreading of "civilisation" and "civilised values", by which of course we meant British values, was seen by my countrymen as a responsibility - indeed, as a duty. We were bringing not repression, but light and enlightenment. The natives should jolly well be grateful that we were taking such trouble to teach them!So, what does this have to do with names?One of my favourite novels is a book called English Passengers, by the author Matthew Kneale. It's a fascinating story, about the attempt by a group of delusional fools, the titular Passengers, to find the Garden of Eden in Tasmania. It grapples with issues of race and racism, colonialism and imperialism. It is also frequently extremely funny. One of the narrators is a man called Peevay, a native Tasmanian who regards the coming of Englishmen and Englishness with well-founded scepticism. His life is marked - indeed, ruled - by the excesses of empire: from the wanton rape and pillage of racist profiteers and opportunists; to the cruelties wrought by the deeply deluded do-gooderies of Christian supremacists, who were only trying to help. It's in a section dedicated to the latter that he is renamed.This stuck with me. This, the wholesale renaming of a people who had perfectly adequate names of their own already. Names that they, you know, liked. Names that meant things to them, that had been chosen by parents and by communities, names that connected them to their past, their beliefs, and their ancestors. But their English masters deemed them confusing and hard to pronounce and, worst of all, Unchristian, so they had to go. Go, to be replaced by things the English decided they liked better. This is treated in the novel as an exercise rather akin to naming pets, with many of the native Tasmanians being assigned fantastical names that no English man or woman would have been given. Worse, some of the "new and improved" names, so-called, are little more than an excuse by the Brits to pass not-so-loving comment on elements of their personalities, commentaries that they know will pass undetected by a people lacking in the cultural context required to decode them. The Tasmanians were not consulted - hell, they weren't even warned. They were simply rounded up one day by their effective jailors and told they were all getting different names now, and that they were expected to use them.

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I'm also very fond, if "fond" is the word to be used about what was actually rather a harrowing evening of theatre, of Brian Friel's play Translations. This is set in Ireland in the 19th Century, and it revolves around the efforts of the British to... well, to do exactly the same thing, but on a national level. This time it's not the people who are being renamed, but the places. The British occupiers want to produce an accurate map of Ireland, but they don't want to go to the trouble of having to learn the Irish names for things. It is instead deemed easier to translate the names of literally every single town and village and farm and copse and river and bay and divot in the soil in the country into English, despite the fact that a lot of them don't actually have single unchanging names in the way the English are imagining. This doesn't matter. It is more important to make Ireland easily definable and describable to its occupiers than it is to respect anything the Irish might actually think of the place.The real kicker? These names are still in use. Common use. Take Dublin, the capital city of Ireland. The Irish call it Baile Átha Cliath. If an Irish person called it as such, in conversation with an Englishman, that Englishman would have no idea what he was talking about. County Wicklow? That's Contae Chill Mhantáin. Wexford? Loch Garman. This is the legacy of Empire. Even after a hundred years of freedom, it remains.We haven't even given all of Ireland back yet.Names are important, names have power. What you are called, and what you call yourself: that matters, and mismatches between the two have the power to be extremely upsetting. Anybody who has changed their name voluntarily can tell you how jarring it is when people insist on referring to them by the name they have left behind. It feels like a refusal by the world to accept who you say you are.This is why I have decided to ignore the fact that, canonically, the Garlean empire does not make a habit of imposing Garlean names on the peoples of the provinces, treating it instead as a mark of citizenship - something that visibly signifies one's presence among the elect, or their lack of same. This is also a really interesting way of using names. It is, however, not an idea I found as compelling, as psychologically interesting, or as representative of the way that the imposition of Imperialist values leaves its marks upon the people and the places that they subjugate, as the assignation of names chosen by fiat to inflict Garlean values on conquered peoples: names which they were then compelled to go by whether they liked the idea or not.In my headcanon the people of Ken's home of Minato - a port town on the northern reaches of the Bay of Yanxia created to allow me freer rein with his backstory than was possible using an ingame location - were renamed en masse by the Garlean authorities following a short-lived and entirely unsuccessful attempt at rebellion shortly after Doma fell to the Garleans in AE 1555. The subsequent rigid imposition of Garlean values upon the smallfolk of the town, of which the forced renaming of the citizenry was but one aspect, was mandated by the commandant of the local Castrum; a place I have named Castrum Algidus. Though Ken had not been born at the time of the failed uprising, he felt the after-effects of it throughout his childhood and youth. He spent the first eighteen years of his life answering to Serrula, or "little saw", a name inspired by his grandfather's now-prohibited trade as a shipwright. He first learned what he came to think of as his real name only by accident, and heard it spoken no more than a handful of times until, on coming to Eorzea, he adopted it for himself.The Garleans, too, make something of a habit of using assigned names to pass comment on the traits and behaviours of subject peoples, unbeknownst to the recipients. Take the surname Arvina, seen ingame on two Roegadyn men with Garlean citizenship: Rhitahtyn sas Arvina and Grynewaht pyr Arvina. These men are not related, they are never seen to meet; they may well not even have known the other man existed. But they have the same family name, because it's a name that is commonly given to Roegadyn men and women who obtain Garlean citizenship.Arvina, in Latin, means fat.Ken's family got off extremely lightly.

A

ristocracy.

If I were to say, Lord Aymeric de Borel is a bastard… what would I mean by it?In this case, I'm using the word in its historical context. A bastard, as English teachers the world over have had wearily to explain to classes of extremely amused teenagers, correctly means "a person who was born out of wedlock". I would not mean that I thought Aymeric was a horrible person. I don't, for the record. I rather like him. I think he's a solidly decent guy with progressive views and a willingness to countenance positions many of his countrymen reject out of hand as frankly heretical, who was, after displaying prowess in a specific field - in this case the military - handed a no-questions-asked sinecure suitable for a man in his position. But what position is that? It's certainly complicated by the circumstances of his birth.There's a lot about Aymeric, about who he is and where he fits in to Ishgardian society, that is left unstated. Unstated, because it is assumed to be common knowledge... and you know what they say about anything prefixed with the word common. Things that would be understood instinctively in any country with an extant aristocracy, but where that's an unknown quantity might not be as self-evident as they seem.As anyone who's cleared Heavensward could tell you, Aymeric de Borel's father is Archbishop Thordan VII, the head of the Ishgardian Orthodox Church. Dragon Pope for short. This is somewhat awkward, as the clergy in the Church of Halone are sworn to celibacy. What does a country like Ishgard do with a man like Aymeric - a man of apparent position, and not a small amount of personal power - who isn't really supposed to exist?Powerful men being powerful men, basically every single country with a hereditary aristocracy has had to work out pretty fast what to do with the inconvenient sons (and for the most part they would be sons, daughters being seen as less desirable and therefore less likely to be seen as worthy of protection) of noblemen. As one might imagine, noblemen siring inconvenient sons on women they really shouldn't by rights be having sons with happens with quite some frequency. For the lower orders, this would result in exactly what one might assume: ostracism and an extremely low social status. In a tightly class-bound society, however, class trumps almost everything.In many countries with aristocratic traditions, there was traditionally a belief that aristocrats held the status they did because they were favoured by the local god or gods, with actual royalty believed to be touched by the divine. This is also a belief that attaches itself to Popes, be they fictional Dragon ones or the one sitting in the Vatican. If one is to hold the belief that a King or a Pope is a sort of demigod, then it stands to reason that their offspring would be similarly blessed - whatever side of the blanket they were born upon. In short, the higher the rank of the father, the more awkward it becomes to discreetly dispose of the son - and, further compounding the issue, while men of rank and power absolutely sire children with women of no particular importance, they are every bit as likely to turn their attentions to the daughters or wives of other aristocrats.Should the King (or the Pope, or the Dragon Pope) sire a child with a married woman, the remedy is fairly obvious. In those cases, the expectation would be that the child would be passed off as her husband's, and everyone would pretend he didn't look uncomfortably like the Prince of Wales or the Bishop of Bath and Wells. Sometimes, however, she was not.

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Enter the Official Mistress.Back when this all mattered, it was largely expected that powerful men would marry lovelessly for status and then take mistresses, and in one of the many open secrets this behaviour engenders, polite society generally knew exactly who these mistresses were because the mistresses moved in the same circles. They were, in the parlance, "kept women": their lover would set them up in a grace-and-favour home, and call upon them. Ser Haurchefant's mother would have been something akin to this. Lord Edmont de Fortemps's father would have picked out a wife for him because her father owned half of Miller's Glade and they'd have somewhere nice to go in summer; his mistress, by contrast, would have been a woman he actually had feelings for. It's stated ingame that Lady de Fortemps knew damn well Edmont had a lover and a son by that lover and was desperately unhappy about all of it, but could do nothing about it. This would not have been considered particularly bad behaviour; from men in his position, it was expected.In the case of Pope Thordan, however, things are complicated by his avowed celibacy. He, unlike the philandering nobleman, could not be open about having a lover - though this too would have been the subject of rumors and gossip, and nowhere near the secret he would have preferred it to be. Noblemen talk.The children - children such as Aymeric - are a quiet problem. Nobody really wants the bastard sons of kings (and Dragon Popes) around: they're exceedingly inconvenient. What they absolutely cannot do, however, is throw them out in the street. That would be seen as an act of extreme disrespect to their father, whoever he happened to be - to his position, if not to him as a person. End result? Though they lack an acknowledged aristocratic family, these children have to be raised as aristocrats. Minor aristocrats, admittedly, attached to families of no real repute, but aristocrats nonetheless. Aymeric being the scion of the otherwise utterly unremarkable (but still noble) House de Borel is absolutely in line with this practice. Scandalous a rumour as his being the Archbishop's bastard son is, the idea the Archbishop had one would not have been considered particularly unusual by Ishgardian society.Not that this meant they'd have a particularly easy time of it. Aymeric would have been accepted in high society but at the same time would have been looked down on, not quite considered an equal, and never actually allowed to forget how it was that he came to be there. The secret of his birth is basically an open one, but in public everyone pretends for the sake of decorum not to know anything about that.As regards Aymeric's status within House de Borel, a lot depends on the circumstances of his birth. It's quite possible that his birth mother is Lady de Borel, and that he was raised as Lord de Borel's son; I personally tend to the theory, however, that he was essentially the former Lord de Borel's ward. If that was the case, he would be unlikely to have been formally adopted by the couple until he was somewhat older, and then only to ensure succession. Actually suggesting that he was raised as Lord de Borel's child would probably have been seen as casting shame on the house, as it would imply that the circumstances were in fact those outlined above - meaning that his father was a cuckold, and his mother an adulteress. No such stigma would be attached to the couple who simply took in a foundling of noble birth, whose parents were simply strangely absent.

H

ousing.

i Arbor Vitae

A forestborn girl's dream home: a small and quiet sanctuary in the heart of the Lavender Beds, to retreat to when adventure stops calling for a time. Owned by Ayah Mhakaracca.

i Thornwatch

Home of the Briar Wood Free Company, the hostelry at Thornwatch offers company members, their friends and invited guests, and tired and thirsty travelers alike a place to relax and unwind on the far side of the world.

i The Garden's Gates

"If you have a garden in your library, everything will be complete."
Chamber of Ayah Mhakaracca.

ii Tsukiakari Sento

Tired adventurers' bath house. Warm water, fresh towels, rice wine. Retainers in attendance. Open all hours!
Chamber of Ken Hidaka.

iii Temenos Selini

A forgotten room from a long-lost world, out of place and time.
Chamber of Calliope Kouria.

iv Basileuousa

A touch of Ul'dahn splendor, for one who misses the desert sun. A stolen princess's oasis in a strange city.
Chamber of Valentine Villefort.

i Peacegarden Botanics

Herbalist's atelier selling tinctures, tisanes, lotions and potions. Don't forget to stop and smell the roses.
Apartment of Ayah Mhakaracca.

ii ただいま

A homesick Doman's remedy. (Do not let him drink the tea.)
Apartment of Ken Hidaka.

iii The Fauborg

2,3-Dimethoxystrychnidin-10-one. A young lady's chamber, in an accursed house.
Apartment of Valentine Villefort.

iv Chalet Gris

You know what they say about taking the girl out of Gelmorra.
Apartment of Manon Beaudonet.

F

 riends.

♡ yuuki tayuun balmung ‧ crystal

Amazing healer, dubious homemaker, terrible cook. Please give this man sandwiches and save him from himself. Likes to think he's the responsible friend and maybe he is, except for all the times where he very manifestly isn't. Just try and have a bit of self-preservation sometimes, Yuuki, please.

♡ luna'to amariyo balmung ‧ crystal

Disaster cat. Fond of blue things, Triple Triad, werewolf feet and killing himself with Final Sting. Probably in the Gold Saucer RIGHT NOW. Won Jumbo Cactpot one time, the lucky devil. Now he just has to win it three more times so he can finally afford that dang airship.

♡ Khogaghchin Adarkim ultros ‧ primal

Tiny force of nature with a giant axe and a flair for interior decoration. Usually a Xaela, though the packaging has been known to vary: it's fairest to say she's whatever she wants to be. When she's not axing things in the face and patching them up afterward, she is a curry connoisseur and owner of an extensive library of books she's never going to read.

♡ megumi yukimura balmung ‧ crystal

Stylish and multiskilled Matricatte with a charming and extensive family, and a passion for fashion. Megumi is outspoken and tender-hearted, with a ready smile and a generous and giving nature, and Ayah would kind of like to be her when she grows up. Her hair is full of secrets.

♡ dmitri ovasch balmung ‧ crystal

Obligate carnivore and walking Soviet Russia meme. Dmitri is Dmitri and we all appreciate him very much.

♡ kikisu kisu dynamis ‧ seraph

Turned on, tuned in, and dropped out. A transplant from the Far East and now friend to Kobolds everywhere, when city life didn't prove to her liking she retreated to the wilds of La Noscea to grow flowers and learn the gentle art of bomb-making. Live those dreams, scheme those schemes, et cetera.