STATUS:
Starting to think I'm the sort who gets tired of people and pushes them away without meaning to. That's no way to treat others. Gotta stay positive.
3 yrs ago
Current
Starting to think I'm the sort who gets tired of people and pushes them away without meaning to. That's no way to treat others. Gotta stay positive.
3
likes
4 yrs ago
Placed on quarantine for the next two weeks thanks to a family member popping positive for COVID. Well, thank you for the vacation!
1
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4 yrs ago
Playing: Dissidia FFOO, Red Dead Online, and Among Us. So little time to* accomplish anything!
A refreshing song that had come and gone too soon. The carriage reached its halt before anyone had even piped up to join the next verse. A pity, for true. Good company was hard to find, yet J'torha was making a good case for himself. All the same, it was time to go to work. X’gihl hopped over the side and out from under the carriage’s canopy with gusto, stretching his legs and performing squats to work the feeling back into them.
The privateer’s eye perused the Silver Bazaar from beside the carriage, getting a bearing as the good lady herself began to lay out some details. X’gihl had never been to this particular venue. From what he understood, the place had once been a spot of fine trade before the Calamity hit. Not that he would remember it too well. He’d taken a boat out of Vesper Bay to Limsa Lominsa shortly before the Calamity had struck. Five years later, it was a shadow of what it had once been. Nonetheless, it seemed merchants still took up spots here and there, setting up their shops and wares for all to see.
If this is a shadow, thought X’gihl, ’tis a very fine one likely made of some well-woven dark silk. Lyveva separated from the group to pursue a piece that she believed had come from the very home she had hoped to save, leaving the fresh recruits to now fend for themselves and carry out the investigation at will. At least she’d left them with a few important bits.
One of which included a man who may be off fishing. X'gihl looked toward the docks himself, partially drawn by the smell of brine and fish, partially hoping that Galfridus' past time might give him a good excuse to make it down that way. Aye, that sounds like a plan. With an unapologetically excited grin, X'gihl waved to the rest of his company before making way that direction.
Down the steps on the northern side of the Bazaar, X'gihl could see the fishing boats in port. Sailors hauled their catches from vessels as the sunset in the west glinted off the sea and wet stones of the environs. A perfect time, hopefully, to catch the man in question and relieve some nostalgia.
"Hoi there!" Called the privateer, stepping onto the wooden pier. "Pardon my intrusion, gents. Yer sails look as tired as you do! Would you accept another's hand in heaving the boats down for the eve?" Galfridus was sure to be among them. Which one was he, though?
Crossbow leveled at him, followed by a snap as it failed to go off. Something must not have caught properly. Ashdane, of course, was more worried about why it didn’t work than having not been skewered at the end of a bolt. His eyes flicked to the crossbow as he curiously began to imagine how the insides worked based on its appearance. He’d had a mental list of each piece and part and how they may have worked together in his mind, but it was a theoretical figure at best. To properly know how it works, he’d have to see the inside and either confirm his theory or change it to meet reality’s version.
Ash’s attention got caught back to the world at large, where he again looked at the rabbit-person holding the tool. The boy (girl?) or man (woman?) seemed frazzled over the malfunction. Focus! The maybe-noble behind the beastman didn’t seem ready to harm Ashdane, and another person who approached, he figured a mercenary, appeared with sword-in-hand. She was tall and had an unusual elvish look to her. A beastman, a noble, and a half-elf walk into a tomb infested with corpses and horrors. Now where have I heard this one, he remarked.
"Kaeci, why don’t you take your new friend to meet Alm; maybe he can shed some light on this clusterfuck.” Must've been the company’s leader, Ash figured. Things were looking up. This group, if nothing else, seemed to want something to do with Frances’ expedition, and that would make him an asset.
What now? What now? But he knew what then. Now he had to meet with the guy and make a report. Maybe get rescued from this place finally. Frances had been taken further in a couple weeks ago, abducted by the ones living here. Surely that meant that he was dead and there’d be no reason to go further? No, no he knew better than that. They’d want proof. Something to return to whoever hired them, either of Frances’ demise, or potential survival. Cursed nobility. Wouldn’t accept being told something without a piece of Frances’ armoire or jewelry or his personal emblem to prove it.
At least, that’s the expectation Ashdane set in his mind now. He relaxed his sword stance and sheathed the blade next to its mate, following the prompts to accompany the crew members back to this “Alm”. The mercenary a moment ago nodded to him, he found the gesture reassuring. He replied with a nod of his own and faced forward, prepared to hear the bad news when they met with their leader. These tombs weren’t done with him, not after two weeks of that odor, surrounded by death and risking being found again by those scaled bastards.
They passed a young woman along the way that appeared to be picking through the corpses for useful or profitable items. He couldn’t blame her, as he himself had been doing the same for the past time here. Ash had survived on scavenged rations and canteens, kept his gear clean and oiled and maintained after his own supply had run out by robbing the deceased. Whatever she'd hoped to find, he quietly hoped he wouldn’t have needed later.
Then they'd found the man himself, Alm. He stood over a corpse Ashdane recognized as Frances' captain, reading the dead man's journal. I can only imagine what that ass had written about me before… The weight of the situation crept upon Ash's face suddenly. Emotional scabs that had coagulated to cover the fear and desperation and had allowed him to persevere through the worst days here seemed to open momentarily. He sharply inhaled and used the pressure to push those feelings back down. Now wasn’t the time.
Another time, another place. Ashdane remembered the noble's captain as a buffoon who yelled orders better than he'd worked. He'd had questions about Ashdane's craft. Not intellectual ones like, “how does this work?” or “how much force could this device exert against an object three inches left of its primary focus?”. More along the lines of, “can you blow the latrine holes up so we can’t smell them anymore?”. The idiot.
Alm clearly seemed to find the journal worth reading, at least. Ash found it comical what the dead man may have written in it about their interactions. The thought brought a smile to his lips, dry and cracked from living as he had recently. Alm's eyes darted up to look at Ashdane before verbally pegging him by name. ”The Captain here seems to have thunk you were a capable sort, although it does seem you two didn't get along too well. So can the "Insufferable Bastard" give us a clue into what was going on here?”
Ashdane never made a response, not one that sounded louder than the echoes that came at that moment. Orcs, he thought bitterly. Did this group just lead them in here?! Orcish warhorns blasted through the tomb’s walls, drawing both eye and ire of the company, and they weren’t the only ones. From deeper within came animalistic hisses and the sound of scales rubbing against stone. The snakemen were coming to answer the call.
Where once he had hoped the danger had passed, now it came again tenfold. Alm directed the group into a corridor to the side, where they began to head. Ashdane stayed back a few split seconds more, intending to bring up the rear if only to prevent getting a knife in his back. He took off after the group, eying each individual to watch their movements. The beastman from earlier seemed to be meddling with the crossbow as they ran. Ashdane looked back to the two groups of foes as they watched one another before engaging directly.
Inside the corridor, Ash pressed his back against the wall and listened as Alm threw out an idea, which was answered by the mercenary who’d reassured Ash before. Run or kill the leader and hope one group leaves? How would that let them handle the second? How would they go about dispatching a single orc in that instance, nonetheless one considered their strongest and most aggressive member in the party? What if? What if?
What if? What if? One target. Easily notable. The cogs began to turn. Snakemen who could ambush and crush a group of human expeditioners. The situation was different. The current engagement involved orcs in a head-to-head melee. Casualties on both sides would be unavoidable. Kill the leader, the orcs leave. But what if the snakemen force looked too weak at that point? You wouldn't leave a weak enemy to survive just because your on-scene commander was wounded or killed in action. It would demoralize them, but a foe on its last legs took priority.
The survivor’s pulse began to race as the idea struck home. He needed something to make it work. Needed what? His eyes darted to the crossbow in the hands of that beastman. What was their name? ”Hey, Rabbit!", he called in an excited whisper. Ashdane’s hands were groping about his tool satchel, pulling out a metal cylinder. ”You got that thing working? Throw me a few of your bolts.” He untwisted the lid from the cylinder and tried to estimate the contents within. Normally, the amount he had left would be good for another razor wire trap or a pair of small shrapnel bombs, but neither were quite what the group needed right then.
Ashdane took off his right glove and used his bare hand to pull out the remnants of the moist seed-filled resin that made up the primer from the container. The beastman had passed him the crossbow bolts he’d requested. The survivor tore off a bit of the resin and molded it over the head of the bolt firmly and slowly, leaving the sharp tip exposed. He repeated the process thrice more, leaving no resin unused and four boom-headed bolts that he held out for the beastman to take.
"Use these. Wherever they land, the primer will react. It'll explode. Get it in a vulnerable spot, that orc boss' neck, for instance." He looked to the rest of the company. There may have been better times to make a plea for them to leave instead of delving deeper, but Ashdane felt it worth trying, especially when the others seemed to already agree. "Forget the expedition, Alm. I saw Frances get dragged in deep weeks ago. The man's dead. We should focus on striking when we can do the most damage, when we can get both of them to consider retreating. We could get out of here!"
Morning came, as it is wont to do, upon Aldenard’s lands, and Vylbrand too. All of Eorzea seemed to stir and stretch at its own pace, each living creature falling into its own routine to run their race.
X’gihl’s eyelid quivered as the ocular beneath darted back and forth, his dreams came and went either chaotically or peacefully. One moment he was enjoying company in a pub, the next came a crashing wave on the sea as The Gallant charged through tide and terror with a storm roiling above it. It swung back and forth that way; flashes of faces, X’gihl’s old mates, became lightning-seared skies and Garlean ships. A drink he couldn’t taste, cannon fire he couldn’t feel. Imagined laughter rippled into violent screams. Deep breath.
The eyelid opened, showing to the inn’s walls a brightly-colored green eye. X’gihl huffed air through a parched mouth. He was soaked with sweat. He turned from the wall to the rest of the room to see a barely bright light making it inside through the window shutters. The privateer hoped it wasn’t much later than five morning bells. Raising from the bed and pouring a cup of water were laborious tasks at the moment, but he managed them. Cool moisture relaxed the issue, but didn’t take away the ache in his side from sleeping as stubbornly as he had.
Today’s going to be a fine day, thought the privateer with false assurance. Nightmares and sweats didn’t make for a good start to a day when he had to meet new people, much less ones that could affect his future employment. It would be alright though, it had to be. Drinks were on someone else’s tab, so he could save his money and get a proper buzz. Drunk? No, not X’gihl. He rarely got drunk anymore. The drink would take an edge off, though. A little relaxation and he could make a proper first impression.
Clothes lay on the dresser in front of a mirror, freshly cleaned by the Quicksand’s staff as he’d requested yesterday. Nothing special, just his usual attire, but the freshly cleaned fabric would make for a better appearance. To the side of them sat his usual horas and a fake eye with a radically different color from the real one it usually accompanied. X’gihl took another drink of water before he popped the fake eye into his empty right socket and put on his eyepatch. He faced the mirror, scoffing at the Miqo’te in it. ”You look like trash, mate. Gotta work on that.” The reflection showed agreement with a nod.
The privateer went into a series of stretches and exercises, part of X’gihl’s morning routine for the past several years. He performed repetition after repetition of push-ups and sit ups, butterfly kicks and squats to prepare for what came after. The body followed easily as the weight of sleep gradually lessened on his shoulders and back. A breath with each push, exhale with each pull, till the sweat had a different meaning to it. No longer was it from tossing and turning in a bed as he slept fitfully. He’d earned this.
X’gihl rose from the workout and picked up his horas by their handles before standing in front of the room’s desk, back facing the window, the door in front of him. A room in the Quicksand was a luxurious thing; spacious, well-furnished, and the staff was usually very sweet. The space is what he appreciated most, and he would be taking advantage of it with the next set of actions. Dropping his center of gravity and coming up on the balls of his feet with arms raised before him, fists clenched tightly against the horas, X’gihl didn’t need to think about the motions to follow. He had practiced them nearly every morning for the past several years now.
A turn of the hip, forward with the right side abdomen, lashing out in a jab with his right arm. Perhaps “lashing” was the wrong word, but “throw” didn’t quite fit it either. X’gihl didn’t throw a jab, he reached it out quickly and intentionally. If something lay between him and what he was reaching for, it (or he or she, for that matter) would find regret in doing so. Stepping forward with his left, X’gihl brought his hip and torso to follow it as well as he reached with the left arm now.
It flowed from there. Punch led to punch, which led to kicks, into a dance of footsteps that kept him quick and on his toes. X’gihl spun on his heel and repeated the movements as he slowly worked his way across the room again with the kata prepping his muscles for the day’s later work. Sweat left a proper gleam on his skin as he worked through the series of actions once, twice, thrice more. His mind began to relax as he let his body do what it knew based on the memory imprinted upon it by the repetition of each move.
With every breath of air, every move of a muscle, X’gihl found comfort. He took in the gravity of it, the weight that he felt work against his body with each act, the push of his will and the pull of everything that tried to hold it back. It was reality, and that understanding slowly banished his nightmares and let him accept that he was awake. The world around him was not one of a ship out to sea under storm and assault. It was not one in which he still sat alongside good friends and shared stories. Not yet, at least.
X’gihl’s body turned with a raised forearm to block an invisible strike from an imaginary opponent. He responded with a couple jabs and a sweep of the leg, letting him snake in closer and deliver a hook to the foe’s jaw. As with the jabs, he didn’t “throw”, but he swung his body to accommodate the rotation of the hook, to make it stronger and cleaner. Whatever it was he was aiming for was on the opposite side of that jaw, and X’gihl wanted it with every fiber of his being. Each punch was an act of intention, of reason, of will. What he longed for moved constantly, and his need to reach for this object was second nature. It was intrinsic in every flown fist. Even a block, of which the most ideal were strikes of their own, held this true.
It continued on like that, practicing blocks, punches, kicking at the enemy’s legs when in close quarters and only when there was an opening for it. X’gihl didn’t feel the surge he would have in actual combat. He stayed just himself, no electricity, no urges to move quicker or harder. He stayed stout, however, blocked a few strikes from the right before delivering a few himself in reprisal. He dispatched the imaginary enemies and just worked through the motions, quickly, firmly, he spun on his heel and did it again. Working the movements, working the body, running through his kata heatedly.
Where freedom of will found root, so too did that which seemed to linger in the back of his mind. The kata itself only helped to an extent, and X’gihl could feel the crest coming, but he didn’t quite realize when he had begun to descend on the other side. A flash of memory, a sound all too real in the instant rippled through him. Cannon fire and screams brought pain that manifested itself suddenly. The privateer stopped dead at the end of a jab. Skin chilled as the world burned brightly around him. Then it was gone and replaced by grief-fueled anger. X’gihl stopped the rhythmic breathing as he tried to continue with the routine.
Focus had left him, replaced with a sense of emptiness. Sorrow’s rage began to climb into its place. He stopped using his eye, stopped feeling the sweat on his skin. X’gihl stepped forward for the second punch in the sequence. He didn’t feel it. Breath didn’t feel so vital, diaphragm didn’t push him to breathe. X’gihl turned out of sequence, lashed out with a kick, spun into a shoulder tackle and two more punches.
“Navigator save us all!” Screamed Captain Blynanka. She hadn’t.
“Lads we know not who came fer us.” Said a somber Captain Blynanka, tricorne over his breast. He had known.
“It be time to give her a proper pyre.” Aye, Captain. “Commit her to sea…” Aye, Captain.
Punch, punch, kick, sweep the leg. The movements found momentum, X’gihl found strength. Punch, punch, kick, sweep the leg. Faces so friendly, so foreign in decay. Fire burning bright, wood burning down. Punch, punch, kick, sweep the-
CRACK! The Quicksand’s bed leaned toward the corner that X’gihl had just removed the leg from. Between low-voiced sailor-bred curses and a struggle to remain composed against the pain, the privateer practically danced in a manic fashion as he spun about listening for sounds beyond the walls to react to the loud wood-breaking. Nothing, so far. X’gihl grunted and limped his way to the dinner set to take a seat, grabbing his flask along the way. His manners were assuaged as he drained the alcohol from it before looking at his leg and deeming the result to be a large bruise, nothing terrible.
The door to the room opened, revealing one of the staffing ladies, who gasped at the bed’s state and looked to the room’s inhabitant, still only in his knickers. X’gihl stared at her with a wide-eyed, fearful, and very bashful smile. ”I can pay for that.”
A light purse made for a slightly bitter X'gihl Tia. After his accident earlier that morning, paying to repair it had taken a fair amount of his personal coin and his savings. He quietly believed that perhaps the staff lady had intentionally upped the bill for the damage, or perhaps she just knew she'd caught him vulnerable. Caught in his underwear, hardly able to walk, and having clearly just broken inn property were just a few of the problems. Either way, he felt the fool that morning.
Originally intending to take the day off from his leves and just stay in town, X'gihl instead went out and worked his tail off to try to recoup from the mugging, sorry, “repairs". Leve after leve taken and dealt with, X'gihl could now return to Ul'dah and seat himself at the Quicksand with a comfortable drink just in time to catch the appointed hour for “The Blessed Twelve’s" ad. One good stroke of luck in a day of crap. A waitress took his order, he asked for a mug of ale and a mead to fill his hip flask, and made sure to mention it was on that “Lyveva's" tab. With that taken care of, he shimmied low in his seat, leg across knee, arms crossed, ears flicking in one direction after another to catch any useful tidbits.
He had no exact idea how the meeting would go down. How he would have joined any others looking to take part. The only choice he had now was to be attentive and try not to miss his shot.
“So I said, ‘yer mum's a namazu an'-.” Definitely not interesting. But what the hell's a namazu?
“If he didn’t wanna take the tentacle, he shoulda-.” Right, not that one. Anything but that one.
“-what happens if we mix the drought with sleepweed?” “Based on their properties, it might make a noxious gas or-". Mmk, maybe change tables. He didn’t want to be near those alchemists at the wrong time.
The waitress returned with his drink and a full flask, both of which X'gihl took greatly before standing to move to a different table. Bad timing, or perhaps another rare stroke of good luck, happened at that time. X'gihl paused mid-step and mid-swig when a clatter at Momodi's bar gathered people's attention. A blond Hyur stood atop the bar, and greeted the patrons as though they were all here at the time exactly for the same reason he himself had been. X'gihl stood uncomfortably among the others in the room, drink still to his lips as she continued.
It seemed she was pouring her heart out to the people in the bar. X'gihl himself wasn’t unmoved. The woman seemed young to be a leader, and from the sound of it the company wasn’t in a good situation. Perhaps the role couldn’t have passed to anyone else, perhaps if the Carteneau Flats hadn’t happened…he wouldn’t have been in his situation either. He noted she stopped on a person's name, perhaps the previous leader's, but he noticed a bad memory in her facial features. He quietly admonished himself for thinking lightly of it. Yeah, I know that feeling too.
You won’t find fame or glory here.
When did I ever want either of those?
The woman, Lyveva, finished her speech asking for help instead of offering it. The way it ended, X'gihl's instincts told him to be wary. The people who stayed or volunteered would be in the know. But nothing would stop him from cutting and running. She wasn’t the first pretty lady he saw since the Calamity to ask for help only to try stealing or murdering the person who offered it. In the pit of his stomach, X'gihl felt his nerves come over him.
No, it wouldn’t be like that. What could they take from him, but his body? What could he offer besides labor? He was dirt poor, worked for every gil. Maybe he could play along, see what was going on and get out if it went sour. If it was something dark and ritualistic, he'd fight tooth and nail. If he was just being unnecessarily suspicious…damn.
X'gihl drank deeply from his mug and finished with a loud breath. The company would front the tab here. All he had to do with stay or leave. That choice was getting easier by the second. He raised his empty mug and called out from amidst the patrons. “Here here, to the good lady Lyveva! Leader of the Blessed Twelve and shaker of wills. Where's the line for me to sign my life away?” His voice may have sounded a little sarcastic, but he tried to sound as sincere as he could when saying something like that. It just didn’t come easy. Maybe if he…
”Come hells or high waters, I'll venture through them. So long as I don’t go alone. Till sea swallows all!” Perhaps that was him getting carried away on the buzz that was slowly beginning to take over, but it felt kinda right at the time. Cheers to the Twelve, this was going to be an adventure.
General characteristics include being approximately 5'4", with lightly tanned skin, dark green hair streaked with white, a light green left eye and purple artificial left eye. Flexible and toned with a few scars hidden beneath his clothes, X'gihl has a body that reflects his years of combat and martial arts training. He often appears tense, even at rest, as though ready to react at a given moment.
X'gihl's face is somewhat round and he appears younger than his twenty-some years, with high cheekbones and a sharp chin. His green eye, though glittering, is alone. The other, being a fake, has a dull purple color to it and is often covered by a red eyepatch. He wears an open-chested faded red shirt with long sleeves and flame patterns decorating the cuffs and collar, beneath a brown vest. On his hips are a purple and white sash and a hip flask often filled with some mead for his excursions. Brown pants with large pockets are worn on his legs and black boots below them.
ＰＥＲＳＯＮＡＬＩＴＹ First impressions mean much to most folk. X’gihl likes to make good first impressions, and he loves to meet new people and their faces. His preferred method is a time-honored tradition in Limsa Lominsa, and it’s one that he will always stick to and vouch for as being the only way to meet others: sharing a pint and trading quips. It’s a fun way of doing things that helps people to loosen up, open up, and get to know the company that you’re in. Plus, you get a fair laugh out of someone with a good wit, and ain’t that what matters more? Seeing inside another person’s head is a valuable thing. The liquor, it opens minds, lets you see the one behind the mask. A person what’s going to stab you and take your money, be his pal for a while and you’ll either avert it or take his instead. Aye, liquor and alcohol are great things. But they are tools, and tools have many purposes. Making friends, opening hearts, and covering wounds. X’gihl makes use of all of its powers. Some may see him as a drunk, others may see a friend, still others will see a man what needs a new liver. Oh, he could use something new alright, but it ain’t a liver.
Jokes and barbs, songs and shanties, dances and drinks. X’gihl enjoys it all, and through them he keeps a cheerful demeanor and an open mind. But don’t let the persona trick you into believing that he’s the fool. X’gihl’s persona is one that he’s built up as a way to cover his softer bits, to prevent him from getting attached. He likes company, but getting beneath the armor takes a little bit more than mead and companionship. Stick around, get to know him. The cover hides a man who longs for partnership, family, a place to call home, and well-paying work to get him out and about.
Until then, he’ll keep his bottle filled, purse close, and hands at the ready.
ＢＩＯＧＲＡＰＨＹ
Being born in Gyr Abania made one accustomed to the heat of northeastern Aldenard. It did not make one accustomed to the entire nation collapsing in on itself. It also did not make a young Miqo'te child accustomed to being uprooted and moved along with some several thousand refugees fleeing from the Garlean occupation that came afterward. Certainly, it hadn’t been his choice at the time, nor does he remember the time spent before the move. X'gihl Tia's earliest memories are of groups of people traveling together, as nomadic as any Miqo'te, surely. He hadn’t known why or what lay behind them, hardly even knowing what was ahead.
The choice, of course, had been that of his mother. Whatever she'd done, X'gihl couldn’t remember or comprehend at the time. He just knew that they'd never be welcomed back home. And what a time to be exiled, with the Garleans taking over the land and Ala Mhigan refugees rushing across the Velodyna to find some new place to call their home and lay their burdens. His mother had thrown her lot in with them and followed the caravan of fleeing Hyur, she carried her weight as an experienced hunter and hard worker, earning a place for her and the boy she'd taken with her.
By the time they'd reached the Shroud, X'gihl had a vague recollection of events. He knew that people had fear and desperation. That it drove them to move and move and move. He didn’t know why it made them move, just that the group would keep running. Why? He asked one of the men once, one of the older ones who didn’t have the strength to hunt with the group that provided meat. “You wouldn’t understand,” was the answer he'd gotten. The old man was mean. Why wouldn’t he tell X'gihl? The boy wanted to know. He pestered the old man. Asked him question after question, some of them a hundred times over.
The old man just laughed. He said to X'gihl, “you're like my grandson. He was an inquisitive little brat, too.” A look of sorrow crossed the man's face, like a candle winking out of existence before it'd begun to burn. X'gihl knew that feeling too, by now. He wanted the old man to laugh again. How? He looked up at the man again, from where they sat against the trees in the Shroud. “What’s that mean?” the boy asked. And the man smiled down at X'gihl with sad, nostalgic eyes. “Inquisitive? It means you ask a lot of questions, little one.”
Of course, that question led to more questions. Which led to more. The hunting party came back before X'gihl was done with his inquiries. The man spoke with his mother, who seemed all too happy that he'd made a “friend" in the group, or at least someone else the boy could talk to while she was gone. The man, Mennis, had been a teacher and a member of the Fist of Rhalgr before the invasion, but was now long past his prime. He couldn’t fight, couldn’t hunt. All he could do was run, along with the rest of the group. That meant that, if nothing else, he could keep an eye on a young Miqo'te boy, surely.
But it hadn’t stopped there. With X'gihl now under Mennis' care when his parent was out hunting, others were beginning to look to Mennis as something of a caregiver as well. There were other young ones in the caravan, and as things were looking, they would be on the road a very long time. For all their traveling on the hard road already, the residents of the Twelveswood were adamant they not stay for long on account of these nebulous Elementals they spoke of. The hard road continued onward.
By the time the caravan had made it into Thanalan, Mennis had become a teacher again. His classes were entertaining and he'd earned the respect of his students. Many looked to him as a fatherly-sort of figure when their own were handling other duties in the caravan. Rationing supplies, hunting, medical care, there were many necessary duties to handle to keep the other adults busy. To have the security that their children would not grow up wholly ignorant was a welcome respite from a burden that few admitted to openly. Mennis was happy with his place in the caravan.
Happiness is always fleeting for the many, however. The group made it to Ul'dah, and they were not a kindly people to the lost and the hopeless. Refugees didn’t exactly make things easy for a people ruled by coin. Naturally, they were shunned and written off by the masses as a sink hole for coin. Luckily, they were not the first refugees to have arrived, however. Those who were similarly shunned or couldn’t eke out a life in Ul'dah had begun a new settlement in Southern Thanalan.
This group that that finally arrived in Little Ala Mhigo was a fraction of that that had originally left from Gyr Abania. But the extra hands the caravan provided helped to bolster Little Ala Mhigo nonetheless. The adults worked, Mennis taught, children learned. Life went on, even when some adults chose to forego the hunting and travel back to Ul'Dah, rationalizing that Little Ala Mhigo had enough mouths to feed and enough hunters. There now needed to be a way that the settlement could earn coin to build and trade with. X'gihl's mother was among those who went back while he stayed.
X'gihl became a teenager before he had known it. He wasn’t tall, but he was strong enough to work, to hunt, to care for others. And there was something he had his eyes set on. Mennis, as mentioned before, had been a member of the Fist of Rhalgr. What that meant, was that he was a trained Monk with knowledge and techniques that Little Ala Mhigo could benefit from. That X'gihl could benefit from. He approached his longstanding teacher and requested mentorship. Mennis agreed, against his better judgment.
So it went that where one student had come, more would follow. Mennis gathered a small following who wanted to learn to fight with their bodies, instead of with swords and shields that they could not afford. X'gihl used those years to practice and spar. The better he was, he believed, the better he could do in Ul'dah. Or anywhere else for that matter. He would be a hard worker, he'd get a steady job, earn pay, send supplies and money back to Little Ala Mhigo. Maybe see more of the world beyond, too. As far East of the Velodyna as he could go.
The time passed like sand through his fingers. Ul'dah was no longer a star on the horizon, as it remained as unfriendly to the refugees as ever. And yet, with so many Ala Mhigans trying so hard to make a life, there were few jobs to go around for them. X'gihl never met his mother in the city. The city was used to mean opportunity, provisions, more for the oppressed and his people. But hard truth came with tears and disappointment.
Becoming a gladiator didn’t suit X'gihl, nor did street dancing or other seedy businesses. Instead, he turned back to Little Ala Mhigo with a heavy heart freshly filled with lead. After working to his late teens, his eyes set on Ul'dah all that time, he would need a respite. If he could not come to this city for an opportunity, then where? Mennis might have an answer. With all his worldly knowledge, perhaps there was an alternative. If it involved becoming a merchant, something that X'gihl considered only with much apprehension, then it would take more time, more work, an entirely different specialty than a hard back and a willingness to do…well, not anything as it turned out.
“Vylbrand. The city state of Limsa Lominsa may have need of sailors.” Mennis stared up at a bright red night sky with a smile as he said it. “It would be hard work. Maybe not what you're used to, but there’s a chance.” X'gihl turned it over in his mind. Limsa Lominsa was a place for pirates, right? Did Mennis mean to send him away to piracy, thinking that it would prove more profitable? But then, Ul'Dah surely hadn’t been that far out of the way of immorality either. Perhaps it wouldn’t be much different, or maybe it'd be more different, for the better.
“Be careful, when you go. There’s no telling what danger lies that way, with the way of the world right now. Garlemald wages war with the Alliance, and suddenly the sky is falling. Whatever's coming our way, we need to be ready. Prepared.” Mennis turned away from the falling moon of Dalamud. He held a hand out to X'gihl, offering out a small yellow stone. “No Monk worth his salt is going anywhere without one of these. And boy, you better not lose it anywhere. Else my old self will hunt you down personally and stick it somewhere it'll never come out.”
A Monk needed a Soul, after all. X'gihl kept it close to his heart as he traveled to Vylbrand from Vesper Bay. The trip itself was frightful, with the seas acting dangerous due to Dalamud's descent, but Meteor was still weeks away yet, not that X'gihl would know it at the time. He arrived in Limsa Lominsa with nothing more than wobbly legs and a new paranoia for keeping hold of his property (long story, lots of chasing and punching, then deck swabbing). The young man found lodging at the Drowning Wench, naturally, whilst he tried to find work. The city, however, was in a state of uncertainty due to Meteor edging its way closer each day.
Then it happened. Fire, desolation, ruination all about. The roar of a mighty Primal filled the sky on the Carteneau Flats. And with it, came everything else. Limsa Lominsa was not protected from the Calamity that followed. Terror like this didn’t have a word in X'gihl's vocabulary. Screaming, explosions, the sounds of splitting wood en masse and stones being shattered as much crumbled into the surrounding sea. Cries heard all around. It all became a blur after a certain point.
What X'gihl remembered after that was the sky above being smoky and cloudy. He was a part of a crew formed to help with the wreckage and reconstruction. He still didn’t quite know how it happened. What mattered is that he had a job, had work, something to focus on after the Calamity had ravaged the people, the land, and the city. He worked as hard as he could and kept going. People needed the help. Whether or not they were his people at the time didn’t matter.
The next few years passed, X'gihl made sure to keep correspondence with friends in Little Ala Mhigo, made sure to send money and supplies as he could. There was lasting consequences to the disaster, including people in the streets who would have to steal and con and more to make their living. X'gihl made the conscious decision that he couldn’t afford to help them all. Other people needed what he could provide. Instead, he turned to privateering on behalf of The Maelstrom. The Galadion Accord having come into play to outlaw pirating, those actions would no longer be tolerated. But privateering meant it was open season on the Garlean ships. For their part in the thrashing the city received, X'gihl was more than happy to loose some payback upon them.
ＯＴＨＥＲ -In the years following the Calamity, X'gihl took up pirating to make ends meet. After the Accords, his crew begrudgingly accepted the change in targets. X'gihl took to them happily. -Mennis passed away a few weeks after the Calamity. X'gihl couldn’t attend the funeral, which troubled him greatly. -X'gihl belonged to the crew “The Gal Lent", whose name comes from a mangling of “The Gallant.” Turns out, the captain has made some questionable choices in female companions and the joke was all too easy to make. -In spite of his business and years in Limsa Lominsa, X'gihl has never made a visit to a brothel or whorehouse and is, for all intents and purposes, a virgin. -Due to his experience in pirating, X'gihl has managed to make a few contacts in Limsa Lominsa's underworld. These contacts are primarily for black market trades in stolen goods and nautical routes of ships ripe for pillaging. The former comes in quite handy for some extra gil. The latter is good for finding the occasional Garlean vessel. -Due to losing his right eye in a ship raid, his depth perception is often untrustworthy. That disability matters little when you're within reach. -Favorite food is a meat miq'abob or smoked raptor legs. Both of which are rather easy to eat on-the-go, allowing extra time to focus. -Preferred chat color: ABA000
ＲＥＡＳＯＮ ＦＯＲ ＥＮＬＩＳＴＭＥＮＴ
The Gallant lurched and pulled as the water beneath began to rile. Brine sprayed across her deck while her crew prepared their positions. Up at the helm, Captain Blynanka held a private conversation amidst the unsteadiness with his quartermaster. To and fro, the Gallant rocked as she ebbed over the next wave and the wave after. Crewmen scuttled this way and that, both beneath and on the galley. Within the hull, on port and starboard, men and women prepared the cannons for volleys or hurried to man stations that wouldn’t yet be needed until the fray broke free.
X’gihl Tia, or Gill to his mates, hung from the riggings with a spyglass aimed at the northern horizon. He wasn’t the only one keeping watch. The crow’s nest, of course, had a spotter of its own. As did the rigging opposite Gill. As did the prow and the bow. If the information had been correct, then the Gallant’s target would be somewhere within this area, to the North or East by some degrees. If they could bag this vessel and its cargo, the payout would keep them aground for a few weeks before they were back to the seas again. Besides, the dear old ship could use some maintenance. Wear and tear were nipping at the rudder and hull. They’d last long enough to get them back to Limsa Lominsa, but without maintenance, no one would trust them for another voyage.
Something felt wrong, however. Their captain had seemed shifty, uncertain. He hadn’t been himself on this voyage. Part of Gill, the part that had learned not to trust just anyone in Limsa Lominsa, wanted to find a way out of the situation. But they were too far out to escape. Every other hair on his body stood at attention, as if waiting for the ball to drop and the entire ship to come down on his head. He itched to let go of the riggings and run for a life boat. Duty told him not to. Duty held his arm around the ropes, kept that boot in place and spyglass to his one good eye. No, he wouldn’t turn tail just to die of starvation or dehydration or sickness out in the middle of nowhere on some dinghy.
Down below, a sailor called his name. “Ya see anything?”
The question stirred X’gihl back to the horizon, where nothing but more water could be seen. With an angry groan he yelled back down to the guy, “Nothing. Just sea, clouds, and yer great aunt’s whiskered cheeks.” Gill raised the spyglass in mockery. “Oi, my mistake! S’just catfish off the bow!” He lowered the glass again and looked at the crewmate below with a smirk. The Hyur he recognized had been a member of the Gallant since before the Accords had been put into place, a pirate before it had become reputable. Before, even, the Calamity.
That being said, Birstul had never caused X’gihl any harm. Had never stolen or stabbed at him, and any misleading was done in jest. In return Gill tried to give him the same respect one would pay a friend. He remembered Birstul’s nameday, some relatives, recalled stories the man had shared, even his favorite drink (which happened to be a pint of anything that didn’t knock him out in one go). It didn’t take much to enjoy a person’s company, just a little attention and some consideration. With that, the two shared barbs time to time and, at least in X’gihl’s mind, they had enough to trust one another.
Birstul, being himself, smirked right back up at Gill and traded a remark for another, though X’gihl never heard it. What all happened at once was the crow’s nest yelling out a sighting, the captain calling the men to arms, and footsteps pounding at the galley as men scrambled to assume their stations or straighten up where they’d gone lax. X’gihl knew why; just off to port, a ship had begun to close distance between itself and the Gallant, a ship that had approached more quietly and suddenly than what seemed reasonable. How had no one seen it? How could no one have noticed? What in the hells were the other spotters doing?
“Navigator save us all!” Cried the captain. The other ship’s flags were lost to a darkly clouded retinue and the shadows that came with them. Whatever this vessel carried, whomever it held, must’ve brought with them something horrifying. And it had intentions of not being found out.
The ship that now ran aside the Gallant loomed closer with every second. X’gihl raised his spyglass to get a sighting. On the other side, he only found more shadowy smog covering whatever crew might be working the damned thing. “A glamour!” Yelled the spotter in the nest above. “It’s a glamour to conceal!”
“Fire to port!” Called the captain. Men obeyed, and within a second the Gallant’s side was aflame with cannons launching their payloads against the ship. The cannonballs vanished into the smog without a sound of impact or sign of damage done. The ghost ship’s hull remained wholly complete for something that had just taken fourteen shots.
“Captain!” Cried the spotter above. “Another approaches to the starboard!” The Gallant’s attention turned to the right of their ship to see what the spotter already had. Indeed, another vessel was present some short distance away, likely having approached while the privateers had focused on the opposite side. Unlike the first, this one had its own cannons visible. Also unlike the first, this one launched a very physically present volley at the Gallant. The crew below deck screamed in fear and agony as the shot broke through and struck several members. One didn’t easily shrug off a cannonball impact.
Holes made in the deck above made things look worse than they were. The captain called his orders the same as he always had. People ran this way and that to prepare a proper retort. X’gihl climbed the riggings to the mast above. He hadn’t heard his captain’s calls, but knew exactly what they would have been. “Prepare a response, we’re closing the gap”. It didn’t seem like a smart move, but the Gallant’s crew were hardier than her guns. “Loose the sails, ready a volley, and prepare a boarding crew!” Gill knew it by wrote. Someone else would handle the volley, but he would worry about the sails before getting back down to begin their crossing.
“Captain!” The spotter cried again. “They’re moving against us!” X’gihl turned back to the assailant vessel on starboard. The spotter was right, and the ship was moving quicker than expected. What’s more, they were approaching on the side X’gihl was facing. Well, if they were going to do the gap closing for him, then that would save a bit of energy. He could work with that.
X’gihl climbed around the riggings to face the outer side of them, facing the ocean and the incoming ship as it approached. He raised his spyglass to watch the deck and spotted numerous people, real people. Ones who could be seen running hither and thither across the deck, and a man at the helm with the wheel in his hand. If the other ship was just a fake, not a glamour that concealed but an illusion that fooled, then perhaps this one set it. Among the crewmen, he saw robed figures. Ones with wands or scepters in-hand or on their hips. That supported the theory.
Either the captain had already been informed, or saw through the bluff at once. He ordered the starboard cannons fired at this vessel, and in that instant did fourteen cannons fire their shots into it. Through his spyglass, X’gihl saw the damage the impacts caused. Holes in the sides, crewmembers regaining their footing or struggling against their wounds. Real people. Real ship. Real magic. And it was still closing in. He knew the captain’s next order: take the fight to them.
The distance was closing fast. The assailing ship was coming in at an angle but its helmsman was turning quickly to prevent a direct charge. X’gihl’s spyglass told him that some of those robed figures were drawing their wands, his intuition told him that flames were coming next. Distance was short. His spot at the riggings was high. He took a deep breath with a short prayer for his next action.
X’gihl leapt. Arms outstretched, legs pushed behind him, and the riggings of the other ship before him. His hand caught a rope and at once his muscles tensed, squeezing it as his grip let him swing around to the inner side of them before releasing the rope again. Gravity drew him back down, where he landed on one of the mages. His other hand, the one that wasn’t sore from the rope, grabbed a hora from his hip before he drove the front of it against the skull of this fool. Eyes closed, mouth agape, breath freed. The mage was hopefully unconscious, at the least. X’gihl stood with both his fists raised as he roared aloud. The mages beside him might get startled or distracted. He hoped it would ruin their concentration. Interrupt spells, prevent the flames from licking the Gallant, while her crew mustered the first wave of their offensive.
It worked, perhaps, or perhaps the mage he’d stomped on had been enough. X’gihl saw two mages adjust their stance to face him, heard footsteps clapping the deck behind him. He took a breath and went to work, both horas in hand. Stepping forward, turning his hips and torso as he brought a knuckle up to the throat of one mage. Spinning on heel, he faced a Hyur with an axe coming down in a vertical swing. X’gihl dipped to the left, placing the man between him and the mage he’d struck before retaliating with a kick to the back of the calf and, as he fell to one knee, X’gihl vaulted over the man’s back and crouched on the other side as the second mage threw a fire spell their way. The axeman took the brunt of it with a yelp, proving once again that friendly fire wasn’t friendly. X’gihl pivoted around him and sprinted toward the second mage, tackling him shoulder first into and over the railing. Two mages out, one crewman burned. That count seemed off, somehow.
The reason why came in a sudden freezing force striking against his backside. The mage he’d punched in the throat had found their voice again and loosed that frost. X’gihl grabbed the railing to steady himself and turned to the mage. The next spell, it seemed, would be one of flame. A slap of planks and movement in front called X’gihl’s attention back toward the Gallant, where his people were now crossing the gap on gangplanks. His crew had the same idea, neutralizing the mages being a top priority. As Gill watched his mates, two tomahawks flew through the air followed by a javelin. Three mages, including the one that was attacking him, fell to the deck either dead or dreadfully injured with the weapons now sticking out of their bodies.
Absolutely bleeding perfect, thought Gill. The timing couldn’t have been better. He turned around to face the next foe in line, another thaumaturge. They were the enemy’s frontline, given that they were intended to shoot fire across the space between, and so they would be the first to go now that the planks were in place and the ship was getting invaded. This one here, a Lalafell from his size, turned and ran from the monk. A Roegadyn axeman stood in front of him instead and leveled a swing at Gill’s body. The monk stepped back out of reach before lunging forward and delivering a series of punches to the man’s belly and diaphragm. He recoiled away from Gill, trying to catch his breath while the monk pursued and drove both his fists at once into the axeman’s chest. The Roegadyn stumbled back but raised his axe as he regained his footing. X’gihl leapt forward before the axe could be swung, he swept the man’s leg out from beneath him and delivered a punch quick as a snap to his throat. A gurgling sound exhumed from the Roegadyn’s throat as he fell to the ground, whether dead or unconscious X’gihl didn’t know.
As soon as his fist had struck that last blow, however, X’gihl began to feel that strength, that speed, that notion of electricity that flowed through his muscles. It was small, but certainly present. The concept of it was something unique to pugilists and monks, people who learned to work their bodies through these martial arts. “Greased lightning” was named for the sensation it brought; a tingle in the joints and a looseness of the muscles. It coursed through the body, urging the user to move, to attack, to keep going. And that’s just what X’gihl was going to do.
Gill waded through the melee, his crewmates and the enemies alike swirled in tandem as blades clashed on axes, lances and swords. Scepters raised over the remaining mages as flame, ice and thunder manifested in the air to find their marks. Meanwhile, Gill pushed onward. He struck at his foe’s backsides and flanks, helping to get his crew, his friends, his family through the battle. From the bow to the prow, enemies were knocked down or thrown overboard as they bled or breathed their last. Greased lightning welled up in Gill ever slightly more as it drew on. He wasn’t a full-fledged monk, he knew that. But if he kept going, kept getting stronger, faster, working to push his limits, he’d learn to reach further to draw it out.
Flames licked the ship from prow to bow, port and stern, the sails above were coming undone, and the galley seemed to shudder from the force of the men above having crushed its own crew upon it. The thaumaturges, if nothing else, would manage to prevent the Gallant’s crew from using their ship to maintain their own. The enemy captain’s quarters were reduced to naught but a burning cabin, destroying any evidence within that may explain why they had attacked. The Gallant’s men had to hurry across the gangplanks again before the vessel crumbled beneath them.
Once back on their own ship, Captain Blynanka brought the Gallant away from the burning wreckage with a fear like any man would to protect something precious to him. X’gihl could appreciate the swiftness, but he had to wonder if the captain had known more than he would let on. Perhaps he pulled them away so quickly because he didn’t want anything about it known. Those mages certainly hadn’t. They had begun to purposely conjure flames when the battle swung out of their favor. Flames that had been launched to the mast, the sails, the quarters below and above decks. In a way, they’d surrendered to their fate and tried to bring as many of the Gallant’s crew down with them as they could.
The crew. Gill leaned against a support rail on the galley, his legs wobbling beneath him from the excitement, while looking over his mates. Immediately he counted four people missing. He knew their names, knew where three of them had grown up, met the families of two of them, and had been the confidante of the last. R’jhaal Vhig, Ahtzaberk, Neldon, and Birstul. There had been more, Gill could see. But these four were the ones that pained him immediately, the rest would come later.
Up at the helm, Captain Blynanka and the quartermaster made their discussions unheard to the rest of the crew. A feeling of distrust welled up in X’gihl’s breast, animosity, anger, grief, and tears rising to match it. That man in the tricorne had been to blame for this, one way or another. Some decision he’d made, or underhanded trade he’d planned. And it had gone belly up with a good chunk of the crew. Then the man yelled something to the crew on deck. Perhaps something about finding land, respite, and repair. X’gihl didn’t hear him.
The Gallant, having tread malms of sea long after the battle, had begun to wear down to her last, finally. She’d made port without a port to make it in, having made do with an inlet closest to Thanalan. The crew disembarked from her and, X’gihl among many, looked over her wounds with much fear and grief. Yet another casualty of the captain’s poor decision-making. The man himself disembarked last with his quartermaster. “I think this be as far as she’ll take us, boys.” He said to his men.
“It be time to give her a proper pyre. Commit her to sea she walked on and carried us through.” To this, the crew rallied for different reasons. Some believed the Gallant could be repaired. Some thought she could still serve one way or another. Others believed that it was the best decision to let her rest. The captain said it best himself, for another reason entirely. “Lads, we know not who came fer us. Those sails bore no crest or sign! Perhaps it be smarter to let them think we fell to the drink or the flames. Let them believe that we be no more, so that we might be free of them!” He had final say, in spite of the crew’s disagreement.
X’gihl, stoking his anger towards to man, quietly found every reason imaginable to be justified in his feelings. The captain was responsible, the captain had set them up, the captain was at fault for being targeted by these mysterious buccaneers. He’d known that something was going to happen. Of course he’d want to play dead! Was it a debt? Was it getting on someone’s wrong side? Who do we owe? What do we need to know that he’s not telling?
Whatever feelings were in the crowd at that moment in time, they were quieted. Beaten and unhappy, the Gallant’s crew were in a bad position. Crewmen dead, ship a broken burned wreck, and the captain hid something lethal from them all. No one spoke, but more and more seemed to be keeping their backs to the captain. As he hid something from them, they would hide their feelings and suspicions from him. Meanwhile, their beloved, dying vessel was steered out to sea, where they lit it ablaze before taking the dinghies back to land. She burned quietly on the horizon, fitfully, angrily, but quietly. X’gihl suspected it was because no one was close enough to hear her sobs, her creaks, the wood giving way to ashes while its bones fell under. The mast cracked while flames ate away at its support, it fell to the side and splashed into the water. Her crew that she’d faithfully served stood at attention for her from the inlet until, finally, she was sunk.
Captain Blynanka turned to face the crew and looked at each of their faces in turn, his tricorne held to his breast, tears painting his face a glossy green to go with his natural Sea Wolf heritage. “It is today, with a heavy heart, that I declare the Gallant to be laid to rest. Her crew is released from service. Say a prayer to the Navigator for her, lads, and for the ones we lost today. Dismissed!”
A mix of reactions went through the crowd. Angry outbursts, sorrowful tears, and more. X’gihl turned away and began his march further inland, stowing away his feelings until he was in a better place to process them. With him went three other crewmembers intent on putting distance between themselves and this sorrow-scarred place. Together, the four survived making their way to Western Thanalan, where they parted ways at Horizon. Two went to Vesper Bay, one went towards the Copperbell Mines. They all had a plan to find work. If the captain had been right, then it was better to stay away from Limsa Lominsa, better to not be themselves. Not privateers. Not the crew of the Gallant. The crew of the Gallant had burned away and drowned in the seas between Aldenard and Vylbrand
X’gihl took the opportunity to check prices for a chocobo porter. What little gil he had on his person, he would put to use getting further inland before finding a place to drink his worries and wounds away. The Black Brush Station in Central Thanalan seemed as good a place as any. He hired a ride and it carried him through the desert lands with speed and safety. Throughout the ride, X’gihl didn’t watch the sights, didn’t see the sky overhead as clouds and the sun carried on, didn’t see the Brass Blades and the merchants and the people as they went about their business.
No, he stayed inward. In his own mind, he kept running through possibilities of his trusted captain’s deception and trying to process his loss of the crew, the ship, the family he had been a part of ever since the Calamity brought down Limsa Lominsa and people worked together to bring it back up. Well now he faced another Calamity. Home gone, family gone, livelihood over with, he would need to find lodging and work and pay if he ever hoped to help the refugees at Little Ala Mhigo again.
Oh dear. Little Ala Mhigo. It hadn’t crossed his mind that he’d have to send a letter at some point. Not to Mennis, who passed years ago now. Not to his mother, who worked somewhere in Ul’dah. But he had to keep in contact with the refugees. Perhaps he wasn’t as close with them as he wanted to be anymore, but they were family, too. The people he’d traveled with throughout his boyhood were there. Maybe he’ll just end up visiting directly. He was, after all, now in Thanalan. It would be just a short venture away from the city. But things had changed somewhat now. In the years since he left he’d become a different man. X’gihl had been a pirate, a salvager, a privateer. He’d fought Garleans and rogues and beggars alike.
Black Brush Station came sooner than he would have liked. The chocobo stopped just around the aetheryte crystal that lit up Black Brush’s plaza-like area. X’gihl dismounted on unsteady feet and sat down beneath the crystal to continue his thoughts, but they were becoming too painful. Yes, the things he did were to support his lifestyle and give the refugees supplies to live on. Yes, he had to protect his own funds and resources, even if it meant killing a group of people who had tried to knife him because they themselves had nothing else and the only help they would accept came from mugging him! Yes, becoming a pirate was better than nothing, even if he ended up hurting and robbing innocents himself at the time. It provided pay, provided experience, and food, and lodging, and protection.
X’gihl didn’t like this train of thought. Rationalizing something despicable meant you regretted it. Once upon a time, it hadn’t seemed so bad. He hadn’t felt like a sinner, just a man surviving. Yet now, it all seemed like a glass globe. Within it, he could see himself committing theft and burglary and piracy. It was all just part of the still, it couldn’t be changed because it was already set, already done. The Gallant was a group of pirates. He met them when Garlemald brought Eorzea low, and he joined them to help pick the city back up. From there, it became about the city, then about the profit, then about taking the fight to Garlemald for what they did. And still, it just seemed an excuse to continue piracy, but at least their targets were justified by then. The Accords fixed that. So why did we get attacked by an Eorzean vessel? Why were we out there, looking for a ship, only to be stricken by one?
Bollocks! Shut up, shut up SHUT UP! A drink. A drink would silence all this infernal bellyaching. Rising to his feet, X’gihl asked a passing merchant about the closest bar. “The Coffer and Coffin, just down the way. Can’t miss it.” He was told. That’s the way he headed, Southbound by no more than a few malms. The merchant was right, one couldn’t miss The Coffer and Coffin settled just beneath an overhanging of stone. The lantern out front looked like it got a lot of use in the perpetually shady spot, and the place it lit appeared refreshingly homely. X’gihl walked in and took a seat at the bar. He had a couple hundred gil left in his purse, it would serve to get him well and duly drunk.
Drink after drink went down the privateer’s gullet. X’gihl took every bit of alcohol gratefully, as if it would eventually make up for every loss suffered in the past few days. A buzz filled his mind and his hands had begun to lose their dexterity. Cheeks flushed, eye half-open, memories leaked free. It was almost like they were hovering before him. As if he could pick one and see it over again. The happier ones were harder to reach, but he found them.
Birstul stood next to him, one arm over his shoulders while Gill had an arm over Birstul’s. The two had mugs in their hands and were singing a jolly song in a tavern with some goofy dance they’d seen performers use earlier that day. It involved a swing of the body and a kick of the leg. Everyone in the tavern was laughing, watching them make fools of themselves. But it made Gill happy to share such merriment.
His mother brought him along on their first hunt together. He had to help provide for their “tribe” of refugees. The first bit of prey they’d spotted had managed to get away because X’gihl was too noisy. It earned him a scolding. X’gihl was just happy to spend time with his mother.
R’jhaal Vhig was pretty, for a pirate. She made sure to tease Gill about his inexperience with women often. Gill managed to make her blush with a comment he couldn’t remember. She challenged him to a duel. She won. He remembered her face as she blew him a kiss afterward.
Neldon’s often quiet demeanor made people think he was a simple midlander. Gill knew the man was more of a scholar. He abstained from liquor and preferred the company of his books. It made him more than a little different from the other crewmen. Neldon never turned away someone’s curiosity, however, and he often became excited and ecstatic when someone inquired on his worldly knowledge. Gill learned many things from him.
Mennis had been a teacher for children in the group for weeks now. Yet it wasn’t until their company had come under attack from bandits that they found out he had been a monk in his younger years. He fought to protect the group with several others. The old man was brave. X’gihl wanted to learn to be brave too.
Birstul and R’jhaal dragged Gill out to face the world. He was grieving over Mennis’ passing. It was heart wrenching. Through his tears and shudders, these two comforted him. They spent the hours out and around Limsa Lominsa, watching the stars, drinking the night away, dancing, singing, meeting strangers and telling tall tales. Gill held a special place for this memory in his heart.
Upon sunrise, he found himself amidst a bale of hay and chocobo dung. Fine bedding for a drunken griever who smelled no better. X’gihl stood on wobbly legs and dusted himself off as best as possible, but when one smelled like these birds, the smell didn’t just go away. He made certain to check his purse, empty though it was now, and to take inventory of his belongings. Luckily, aside from his money, all was present. One less worry to have. With that managed, he walked out of the chocobo pen, waving a thanks to the porter who had, hopefully, been the one to put him there.
The porter, in good sense, called after the strange drunk who’d risen from the hay. “Hold up there, lad.” And before he could get anything else out, X’gihl turned on him.
“If you fear for your birds, mate, don’t. I’ll take me companionship furred before I’ll have’em feathered.”
He made to leave again, but the porter halted him once more and addressed the privateer with a sternly distressed toned. “Now, look here, that’s not at all what I had in mind! I was going to ask if you were the adventurin’ sort.”
X’gihl stopped and leveled a confused stare at the porter’s mask. “Well, I suppose so. Had my fair share of it, and I aim to have more.”
The porter must have thought the privateer was being funny. They clapped a hand to their mask and shook their head despondently. “Well, if you want to earn some good gil, there’s a man back down at the Coffer and Coffin what needs a hand. You look pretty able, and pretty poor. Figured you’d appreciate the opportunity. Now go on, walk with the twelve or whathaveyou. And stop sleeping with my chocobos!” With that said, the porter returned to their post.
To the porter’s credit, they were right about somebody at the Coffer and Coffin needing some help. They hadn’t mentioned it involved a large wagon filled with goods tightly packed. Workers stood atop and to the sides, passing goods along and calling them out to one another as a person with a manifest checked off each good that found its way to the wagon. Last night’s barkeep caught X’gihl approaching from the corner of his eye and walked over to address him.
“Sorry to tell you, lad, but I don’t think you need another drink so soon. You-“, the barkeep was cut off by the privateer and they both spoke over one another for a second. Both stopped speaking and X’gihl took the chance to get his thought out.
“Forgive me of last night’s conduct. I was told you needed some help in exchange for coin.” The privateer set aside his Lominsan dialect that had become so normal to use. He’d try to sound professional, business-worthy. Anything that could possibly make the man overlook the events before, though X’gihl couldn’t remember exactly what happened.
A chuckle came from the Hyur man. “Lad, you had the lot of us laughing and singing! I thought, the way you’d come in, that you’d be cryin’ inta yer cup til we shoved you out. But no! You gave us all a grand time. Bah, I’d be happy to have you over again when ya find the time. Now, about business.” He straightened up and wiped the smirk from his face. “I’ve got this shipment of goods here, ya see it back there.” He gestured with his thumb back to the wagon. “It’s been paid for and needs to arrive safely in Little Ala Mhigo, down ‘round Southern Thanalan. Them refugees, they need any as they can get. This? Needs to get to them at all costs. I might be Ul’dahn, but my heart and good business goes out to them. You manage to bodyguard this here wagon down to Little Ala Mhigo, we’ll talk about payin’ you. Fair?”
“Aye. We’ll call it fair.” X’gihl grinned. Excitement began to blossom in his chest, covering whatever grief had managed to fester again. The idea of getting back to Little Ala Mhigo, even for a job, even for a little bit, would be a perfect change of pace. It’d be the first time in five years that he’d return. He could share some tales, get some rest, and get back on the road to-…what?
Right. No ship. Half-crew that’d been disbanded. Traitorous captain what may have gotten every sailor in his command blacklisted. X’gihl Tia; private privateer, looking for work. In Thanalan, no less. No seas for a privateer to sail. This was the mainland.
His future in the air, X’gihl continued on. If nothing else, he could use the time to think of another plan after he got some gil in his pocket. What’s more, he wasn’t the only man bodyguarding the wagon on its route. Two others came with him, though neither was quite notable. The journey itself consisted of little more than a trek for hour after hour, fighting off a band of dastardly marmots, until they hit the lands of Southern Thanalan. The familiar sight of Little Ala Mhigo in the distance sent X’gihl into a nostalgic tornado. For professionalism’s sake, however, he kept himself solid and focused. They approached Little Ala Mhigo, reaching the mark just before the sun met the horizon.
The faces that greeted the wagon were both familiar and frightening. The ones that frightened him were those he hadn’t remembered, ones that had to be new faces in Little Ala Mhigo since he left. More refugees. Gyr Abania was occupied by Garlemald, but in the five years since it had taken place, even more people had come seeking freedom from the empire. Letters from home had surely told him of it, but to see it in front of himself brought an impact that he hadn’t expected. There were still more people making the journey.
Wagon delivered, the other two bodyguards went back with it after the goods it had were brought into Little Ala Mhigo. X’gihl said his farewells and asked them to let the barkeep know he’d be along days from then for payment. With the job complete, and a warm reception from those who’d known him, X’gihl settled in with the community quite nicely. For the most part, he occupied his days training with Mennis’ other pupils and hunting with the others. It gave him experience he hadn’t had before, hunting in Thanalan’s deserts and crag lands were a far cry from the grassy knolls and forests of La Noscea. He also made it a point to travel to Mennis’ grave, where he got to properly pay his respects.
Grief seemed to fall away and worries withered as the work allowed X’gihl to process the events transpiring about the Gallant’s downfall. It kept him focused, gave his hands and muscles something to work with, whether it was sparring or hunting, or some other labor the community required. As time passed, however, he began to miss the freedom of travel. Little Ala Mhigo was no home for a privateer, no home for an adventurer of one shade or another. He wanted more, wanted better. Having enough of respite, he took a small bundle of supplies and struck out towards Ul’dah. His plan was to properly join the Adventurer’s Guild and work from there.
Ul’dah was a city built on financial gain and blood sport, this much everyone knows. Entering the city for the first time in his life, and truly seeing it for what it was after being turned away at the walls all those years ago, was both inspiring and dispiriting. Perhaps he’d built it up in his mind long ago, consciously or not, that Ul’dah was no place for him. Limsa Lominsa had taken that spot. Yet with recent events reminding him of why Limsa Lominsa may not have been a safe place to be, Ul’dah would have to fill the gap.
X’gihl proceeded with his intentions. The Quicksand, home of Ul’dah’s Adventurer’s Guild, struck him as not so different from The Drowned Wench. Momodi was every bit as welcoming as <Lominsan Proprietor>, perhaps more. Definitely more. She’d gotten him signed up and registered, allowing him an inn room at all hours of the day and giving him access to take what she referred to as “leves”.
Guildleves. Now that was something he’d never given thought to when adventuring had crossed his mind. Mercenary work was one thing. It was easy to work out a contract with people for a job they wanted done. Hells, the job that the Coffer and Coffin owner had given him was mercenary work. But a place where you could go to browse requests, accept work, do the job, and earn the agreed upon weight of gil was…it was…
Why didn’t I do this sooner? Thought the fool. And he did feel the fool. Perhaps this wouldn’t be as profitable as privateering at the time, but it allowed him free lodgings. Allowed him to work his own hours, pick his jobs, and still got him out of the city for an adventure. He buried himself in leves. Worked several day-in and day-out. He would roll in the gil, stashing a little back from each job to send to Little Ala Mhigo, drink a bit here and there (or more than he’d admit to), hit the inn, and get back out again.
It was a feverous process. It was a lonely process. He loved the work. He hated the quiet. Enjoyed the drink and company at the Quicksand. But an inn room was no home. It was something for vagrants, migrants, people who would come and go. X’gihl worked this way for months, he had no intention of going anywhere, exactly. The adventurer just wanted to earn his fill and pay his share. Yet there was more. He wanted more. There was something to the life he’d had before, living amongst the crew of the Gallant every day. The one before that, traveling from Gyr Abania for so long with the entire group being your family. You were never alone. The silence that now burgeoned in his mind became a weight, a truth that changed the perspective of how he went about his life. There was an answer. Surely. Many adventurers feel like this, don’t they? They didn’t all live in silence, coming together only once in a blue-moon to work towards the occasionally common goal.
Free Companies. X’gihl walked into the Hall of Flames one day to ask about it directly. He couldn’t ask just anyone, could he? Momodi had pointed him this way, saying that he should either ask the Grand Company clerk about them, or ask other adventurers. So maybe he could ask just anyone. But would “just anyone” answer? Would they have seen his eyepatch, realize his disability, and say they didn’t want him? Would they have known he was from Gyr Abania and written him off as just enough refugee looking for a handout? He had his reasons to be worried. But that didn’t mean moving forward wasn’t the practical thing to do. He just had to get the courage up to do it. A swig from his hip flask and a deep breath pushed him forward.
The Grand Company Administrator was more than happy to provide information on the topic. But he didn’t have a list of active Free Companies on hand, nor did he handle enlistment in them. “The only way to get into a Free Company is to get invited by a member directly. We may keep track of them, but we don’t handle or administrate them. Here, some companies like to put out flyers like this one. Meetings for potential recruits aren’t uncommon. Mayhap you'll find one that way.” He handed X'gihl a piece of paper.
The flier promised free drinks on a day coming soon, and that “The Blessed Twelve" was opening for recruits. If nothing else, the free drinks were a good way to get X’gihl's good will. Well, he had a place to start now. It would give him a few days to think, not that he needed them, and a little while longer to work. Surely, this would be something life changing.
General characteristics include being approximately 5'4", with lightly tanned skin, dark green hair streaked with white, a light green left eye and purple artificial left eye. Flexible and toned with a few scars hidden beneath his clothes, X'gihl has a body that reflects his years of combat and martial arts training. He often appears tense, even at rest, as though ready to react at a given moment.
X'gihl's face is somewhat round and he appears younger than his twenty-some years, with high cheekbones and a sharp chin. His green eye, though glittering, is alone. The other, being a fake, has a dull purple color to it and is often covered by a red eyepatch. He wears an open-chested faded red shirt with long sleeves and flame patterns decorating the cuffs and collar, beneath a brown vest. On his hips are a purple and white sash and a hip flask often filled with some mead for his excursions. Brown pants with large pockets are worn on his legs and black boots below them.
ＰＥＲＳＯＮＡＬＩＴＹ First impressions mean much to most folk. X’gihl likes to make good first impressions, and he loves to meet new people and their faces. His preferred method is a time-honored tradition in Limsa Lominsa, and it’s one that he will always stick to and vouch for as being the only way to meet others: sharing a pint and trading quips. It’s a fun way of doing things that helps people to loosen up, open up, and get to know the company that you’re in. Plus, you get a fair laugh out of someone with a good wit, and ain’t that what matters more? Seeing inside another person’s head is a valuable thing. The liquor, it opens minds, lets you see the one behind the mask. A person what’s going to stab you and take your money, be his pal for a while and you’ll either avert it or take his instead. Aye, liquor and alcohol are great things. But they are tools, and tools have many purposes. Making friends, opening hearts, and covering wounds. X’gihl makes use of all of its powers. Some may see him as a drunk, others may see a friend, still others will see a man what needs a new liver. Oh, he could use something new alright, but it ain’t a liver.
Jokes and barbs, songs and shanties, dances and drinks. X’gihl enjoys it all, and through them he keeps a cheerful demeanor and an open mind. But don’t let the persona trick you into believing that he’s the fool. X’gihl’s persona is one that he’s built up as a way to cover his softer bits, to prevent him from getting attached. He likes company, but getting beneath the armor takes a little bit more than mead and companionship. Stick around, get to know him. The cover hides a man who longs for partnership, family, a place to call home, and well-paying work to get him out and about.
Until then, he’ll keep his bottle filled, purse close, and hands at the ready.
ＢＩＯＧＲＡＰＨＹ
Being born in Gyr Abania made one accustomed to the heat of northeastern Aldenard. It did not make one accustomed to the entire nation collapsing in on itself. It also did not make a young Miqo'te child accustomed to being uprooted and moved along with some several thousand refugees fleeing from the Garlean occupation that came afterward. Certainly, it hadn’t been his choice at the time, nor does he remember the time spent before the move. X'gihl Tia's earliest memories are of groups of people traveling together, as nomadic as any Miqo'te, surely. He hadn’t known why or what lay behind them, hardly even knowing what was ahead.
The choice, of course, had been that of his mother. Whatever she'd done, X'gihl couldn’t remember or comprehend at the time. He just knew that they'd never be welcomed back home. And what a time to be exiled, with the Garleans taking over the land and Ala Mhigan refugees rushing across the Velodyna to find some new place to call their home and lay their burdens. His mother had thrown her lot in with them and followed the caravan of fleeing Hyur, she carried her weight as an experienced hunter and hard worker, earning a place for her and the boy she'd taken with her.
By the time they'd reached the Shroud, X'gihl had a vague recollection of events. He knew that people had fear and desperation. That it drove them to move and move and move. He didn’t know why it made them move, just that the group would keep running. Why? He asked one of the men once, one of the older ones who didn’t have the strength to hunt with the group that provided meat. “You wouldn’t understand,” was the answer he'd gotten. The old man was mean. Why wouldn’t he tell X'gihl? The boy wanted to know. He pestered the old man. Asked him question after question, some of them a hundred times over.
The old man just laughed. He said to X'gihl, “you're like my grandson. He was an inquisitive little brat, too.” A look of sorrow crossed the man's face, like a candle winking out of existence before it'd begun to burn. X'gihl knew that feeling too, by now. He wanted the old man to laugh again. How? He looked up at the man again, from where they sat against the trees in the Shroud. “What’s that mean?” the boy asked. And the man smiled down at X'gihl with sad, nostalgic eyes. “Inquisitive? It means you ask a lot of questions, little one.”
Of course, that question led to more questions. Which led to more. The hunting party came back before X'gihl was done with his inquiries. The man spoke with his mother, who seemed all too happy that he'd made a “friend" in the group, or at least someone else the boy could talk to while she was gone. The man, Mennis, had been a teacher and a member of the Fist of Rhalgr before the invasion, but was now long past his prime. He couldn’t fight, couldn’t hunt. All he could do was run, along with the rest of the group. That meant that, if nothing else, he could keep an eye on a young Miqo'te boy, surely.
But it hadn’t stopped there. With X'gihl now under Mennis' care when his parent was out hunting, others were beginning to look to Mennis as something of a caregiver as well. There were other young ones in the caravan, and as things were looking, they would be on the road a very long time. For all their traveling on the hard road already, the residents of the Twelveswood were adamant they not stay for long on account of these nebulous Elementals they spoke of. The hard road continued onward.
By the time the caravan had made it into Thanalan, Mennis had become a teacher again. His classes were entertaining and he'd earned the respect of his students. Many looked to him as a fatherly-sort of figure when their own were handling other duties in the caravan. Rationing supplies, hunting, medical care, there were many necessary duties to handle to keep the other adults busy. To have the security that their children would not grow up wholly ignorant was a welcome respite from a burden that few admitted to openly. Mennis was happy with his place in the caravan.
Happiness is always fleeting for the many, however. The group made it to Ul'dah, and they were not a kindly people to the lost and the hopeless. Refugees didn’t exactly make things easy for a people ruled by coin. Naturally, they were shunned and written off by the masses as a sink hole for coin. Luckily, they were not the first refugees to have arrived, however. Those who were similarly shunned or couldn’t eke out a life in Ul'dah had begun a new settlement in Southern Thanalan.
This group that that finally arrived in Little Ala Mhigo was a fraction of that that had originally left from Gyr Abania. But the extra hands the caravan provided helped to bolster Little Ala Mhigo nonetheless. The adults worked, Mennis taught, children learned. Life went on, even when some adults chose to forego the hunting and travel back to Ul'Dah, rationalizing that Little Ala Mhigo had enough mouths to feed and enough hunters. There now needed to be a way that the settlement could earn coin to build and trade with. X'gihl's mother was among those who went back while he stayed.
X'gihl became a teenager before he had known it. He wasn’t tall, but he was strong enough to work, to hunt, to care for others. And there was something he had his eyes set on. Mennis, as mentioned before, had been a member of the Fist of Rhalgr. What that meant, was that he was a trained Monk with knowledge and techniques that Little Ala Mhigo could benefit from. That X'gihl could benefit from. He approached his longstanding teacher and requested mentorship. Mennis agreed, against his better judgment.
So it went that where one student had come, more would follow. Mennis gathered a small following who wanted to learn to fight with their bodies, instead of with swords and shields that they could not afford. X'gihl used those years to practice and spar. The better he was, he believed, the better he could do in Ul'dah. Or anywhere else for that matter. He would be a hard worker, he'd get a steady job, earn pay, send supplies and money back to Little Ala Mhigo. Maybe see more of the world beyond, too. As far East of the Velodyna as he could go.
The time passed like sand through his fingers. Ul'dah was no longer a star on the horizon, as it remained as unfriendly to the refugees as ever. And yet, with so many Ala Mhigans trying so hard to make a life, there were few jobs to go around for them. X'gihl never met his mother in the city. The city was used to mean opportunity, provisions, more for the oppressed and his people. But hard truth came with tears and disappointment.
Becoming a gladiator didn’t suit X'gihl, nor did street dancing or other seedy businesses. Instead, he turned back to Little Ala Mhigo with a heavy heart freshly filled with lead. After working to his late teens, his eyes set on Ul'dah all that time, he would need a respite. If he could not come to this city for an opportunity, then where? Mennis might have an answer. With all his worldly knowledge, perhaps there was an alternative. If it involved becoming a merchant, something that X'gihl considered only with much apprehension, then it would take more time, more work, an entirely different specialty than a hard back and a willingness to do…well, not anything as it turned out.
“Vylbrand. The city state of Limsa Lominsa may have need of sailors.” Mennis stared up at a bright red night sky with a smile as he said it. “It would be hard work. Maybe not what you're used to, but there’s a chance.” X'gihl turned it over in his mind. Limsa Lominsa was a place for pirates, right? Did Mennis mean to send him away to piracy, thinking that it would prove more profitable? But then, Ul'Dah surely hadn’t been that far out of the way of immorality either. Perhaps it wouldn’t be much different, or maybe it'd be more different, for the better.
“Be careful, when you go. There’s no telling what danger lies that way, with the way of the world right now. Garlemald wages war with the Alliance, and suddenly the sky is falling. Whatever's coming our way, we need to be ready. Prepared.” Mennis turned away from the falling moon of Dalamud. He held a hand out to X'gihl, offering out a small yellow stone. “No Monk worth his salt is going anywhere without one of these. And boy, you better not lose it anywhere. Else my old self will hunt you down personally and stick it somewhere it'll never come out.”
A Monk needed a Soul, after all. X'gihl kept it close to his heart as he traveled to Vylbrand from Vesper Bay. The trip itself was frightful, with the seas acting dangerous due to Dalamud's descent, but Meteor was still weeks away yet, not that X'gihl would know it at the time. He arrived in Limsa Lominsa with nothing more than wobbly legs and a new paranoia for keeping hold of his property (long story, lots of chasing and punching, then deck swabbing). The young man found lodging at the Drowning Wench, naturally, whilst he tried to find work. The city, however, was in a state of uncertainty due to Meteor edging its way closer each day.
Then it happened. Fire, desolation, ruination all about. The roar of a mighty Primal filled the sky on the Carteneau Flats. And with it, came everything else. Limsa Lominsa was not protected from the Calamity that followed. Terror like this didn’t have a word in X'gihl's vocabulary. Screaming, explosions, the sounds of splitting wood en masse and stones being shattered as much crumbled into the surrounding sea. Cries heard all around. It all became a blur after a certain point.
What X'gihl remembered after that was the sky above being smoky and cloudy. He was a part of a crew formed to help with the wreckage and reconstruction. He still didn’t quite know how it happened. What mattered is that he had a job, had work, something to focus on after the Calamity had ravaged the people, the land, and the city. He worked as hard as he could and kept going. People needed the help. Whether or not they were his people at the time didn’t matter.
The next few years passed, X'gihl made sure to keep correspondence with friends in Little Ala Mhigo, made sure to send money and supplies as he could. There was lasting consequences to the disaster, including people in the streets who would have to steal and con and more to make their living. X'gihl made the conscious decision that he couldn’t afford to help them all. Other people needed what he could provide. Instead, he turned to privateering on behalf of The Maelstrom. The Galadion Accord having come into play to outlaw pirating, those actions would no longer be tolerated. But privateering meant it was open season on the Garlean ships. For their part in the thrashing the city received, X'gihl was more than happy to loose some payback upon them.
ＯＴＨＥＲ -In the years following the Calamity, X'gihl took up pirating to make ends meet. After the Accords, his crew begrudgingly accepted the change in targets. X'gihl took to them happily. -Mennis passed away a few weeks after the Calamity. X'gihl couldn’t attend the funeral, which troubled him greatly. -X'gihl belonged to the crew “The Gal Lent", whose name comes from a mangling of “The Gallant.” Turns out, the captain has made some questionable choices in female companions and the joke was all too easy to make. -In spite of his business and years in Limsa Lominsa, X'gihl has never made a visit to a brothel or whorehouse and is, for all intents and purposes, a virgin. -Due to his experience in pirating, X'gihl has managed to make a few contacts in Limsa Lominsa's underworld. These contacts are primarily for black market trades in stolen goods and nautical routes of ships ripe for pillaging. The former comes in quite handy for some extra gil. The latter is good for finding the occasional Garlean vessel. -Due to losing his right eye in a ship raid, his depth perception is often untrustworthy. That disability matters little when you're within reach. -Favorite food is a meat miq'abob or smoked raptor legs. Both of which are rather easy to eat on-the-go, allowing extra time to focus. -Preferred chat color: ABA000
ＲＥＡＳＯＮ ＦＯＲ ＥＮＬＩＳＴＭＥＮＴ
The Gallant lurched and pulled as the water beneath began to rile. Brine sprayed across her deck while her crew prepared their positions. Up at the helm, Captain Blynanka held a private conversation amidst the unsteadiness with his quartermaster. To and fro, the Gallant rocked as she ebbed over the next wave and the wave after. Crewmen scuttled this way and that, both beneath and on the galley. Within the hull, on port and starboard, men and women prepared the cannons for volleys or hurried to man stations that wouldn’t yet be needed until the fray broke free.
X’gihl Tia, or Gill to his mates, hung from the riggings with a spyglass aimed at the northern horizon. He wasn’t the only one keeping watch. The crow’s nest, of course, had a spotter of its own. As did the rigging opposite Gill. As did the prow and the bow. If the information had been correct, then the Gallant’s target would be somewhere within this area, to the North or East by some degrees. If they could bag this vessel and its cargo, the payout would keep them aground for a few weeks before they were back to the seas again. Besides, the dear old ship could use some maintenance. Wear and tear were nipping at the rudder and hull. They’d last long enough to get them back to Limsa Lominsa, but without maintenance, no one would trust them for another voyage.
Something felt wrong, however. Their captain had seemed shifty, uncertain. He hadn’t been himself on this voyage. Part of Gill, the part that had learned not to trust just anyone in Limsa Lominsa, wanted to find a way out of the situation. But they were too far out to escape. Every other hair on his body stood at attention, as if waiting for the ball to drop and the entire ship to come down on his head. He itched to let go of the riggings and run for a life boat. Duty told him not to. Duty held his arm around the ropes, kept that boot in place and spyglass to his one good eye. No, he wouldn’t turn tail just to die of starvation or dehydration or sickness out in the middle of nowhere on some dinghy.
Down below, a sailor called his name. “Ya see anything?”
The question stirred X’gihl back to the horizon, where nothing but more water could be seen. With an angry groan he yelled back down to the guy, “Nothing. Just sea, clouds, and yer great aunt’s whiskered cheeks.” Gill raised the spyglass in mockery. “Oi, my mistake! S’just catfish off the bow!” He lowered the glass again and looked at the crewmate below with a smirk. The Hyur he recognized had been a member of the Gallant since before the Accords had been put into place, a pirate before it had become reputable. Before, even, the Calamity.
That being said, Birstul had never caused X’gihl any harm. Had never stolen or stabbed at him, and any misleading was done in jest. In return Gill tried to give him the same respect one would pay a friend. He remembered Birstul’s nameday, some relatives, recalled stories the man had shared, even his favorite drink (which happened to be a pint of anything that didn’t knock him out in one go). It didn’t take much to enjoy a person’s company, just a little attention and some consideration. With that, the two shared barbs time to time and, at least in X’gihl’s mind, they had enough to trust one another.
Birstul, being himself, smirked right back up at Gill and traded a remark for another, though X’gihl never heard it. What all happened at once was the crow’s nest yelling out a sighting, the captain calling the men to arms, and footsteps pounding at the galley as men scrambled to assume their stations or straighten up where they’d gone lax. X’gihl knew why; just off to port, a ship had begun to close distance between itself and the Gallant, a ship that had approached more quietly and suddenly than what seemed reasonable. How had no one seen it? How could no one have noticed? What in the hells were the other spotters doing?
“Navigator save us all!” Cried the captain. The other ship’s flags were lost to a darkly clouded retinue and the shadows that came with them. Whatever this vessel carried, whomever it held, must’ve brought with them something horrifying. And it had intentions of not being found out.
The ship that now ran aside the Gallant loomed closer with every second. X’gihl raised his spyglass to get a sighting. On the other side, he only found more shadowy smog covering whatever crew might be working the damned thing. “A glamour!” Yelled the spotter in the nest above. “It’s a glamour to conceal!”
“Fire to port!” Called the captain. Men obeyed, and within a second the Gallant’s side was aflame with cannons launching their payloads against the ship. The cannonballs vanished into the smog without a sound of impact or sign of damage done. The ghost ship’s hull remained wholly complete for something that had just taken fourteen shots.
“Captain!” Cried the spotter above. “Another approaches to the starboard!” The Gallant’s attention turned to the right of their ship to see what the spotter already had. Indeed, another vessel was present some short distance away, likely having approached while the privateers had focused on the opposite side. Unlike the first, this one had its own cannons visible. Also unlike the first, this one launched a very physically present volley at the Gallant. The crew below deck screamed in fear and agony as the shot broke through and struck several members. One didn’t easily shrug off a cannonball impact.
Holes made in the deck above made things look worse than they were. The captain called his orders the same as he always had. People ran this way and that to prepare a proper retort. X’gihl climbed the riggings to the mast above. He hadn’t heard his captain’s calls, but knew exactly what they would have been. “Prepare a response, we’re closing the gap”. It didn’t seem like a smart move, but the Gallant’s crew were hardier than her guns. “Loose the sails, ready a volley, and prepare a boarding crew!” Gill knew it by wrote. Someone else would handle the volley, but he would worry about the sails before getting back down to begin their crossing.
“Captain!” The spotter cried again. “They’re moving against us!” X’gihl turned back to the assailant vessel on starboard. The spotter was right, and the ship was moving quicker than expected. What’s more, they were approaching on the side X’gihl was facing. Well, if they were going to do the gap closing for him, then that would save a bit of energy. He could work with that.
X’gihl climbed around the riggings to face the outer side of them, facing the ocean and the incoming ship as it approached. He raised his spyglass to watch the deck and spotted numerous people, real people. Ones who could be seen running hither and thither across the deck, and a man at the helm with the wheel in his hand. If the other ship was just a fake, not a glamour that concealed but an illusion that fooled, then perhaps this one set it. Among the crewmen, he saw robed figures. Ones with wands or scepters in-hand or on their hips. That supported the theory.
Either the captain had already been informed, or saw through the bluff at once. He ordered the starboard cannons fired at this vessel, and in that instant did fourteen cannons fire their shots into it. Through his spyglass, X’gihl saw the damage the impacts caused. Holes in the sides, crewmembers regaining their footing or struggling against their wounds. Real people. Real ship. Real magic. And it was still closing in. He knew the captain’s next order: take the fight to them.
The distance was closing fast. The assailing ship was coming in at an angle but its helmsman was turning quickly to prevent a direct charge. X’gihl’s spyglass told him that some of those robed figures were drawing their wands, his intuition told him that flames were coming next. Distance was short. His spot at the riggings was high. He took a deep breath with a short prayer for his next action.
X’gihl leapt. Arms outstretched, legs pushed behind him, and the riggings of the other ship before him. His hand caught a rope and at once his muscles tensed, squeezing it as his grip let him swing around to the inner side of them before releasing the rope again. Gravity drew him back down, where he landed on one of the mages. His other hand, the one that wasn’t sore from the rope, grabbed a hora from his hip before he drove the front of it against the skull of this fool. Eyes closed, mouth agape, breath freed. The mage was hopefully unconscious, at the least. X’gihl stood with both his fists raised as he roared aloud. The mages beside him might get startled or distracted. He hoped it would ruin their concentration. Interrupt spells, prevent the flames from licking the Gallant, while her crew mustered the first wave of their offensive.
It worked, perhaps, or perhaps the mage he’d stomped on had been enough. X’gihl saw two mages adjust their stance to face him, heard footsteps clapping the deck behind him. He took a breath and went to work, both horas in hand. Stepping forward, turning his hips and torso as he brought a knuckle up to the throat of one mage. Spinning on heel, he faced a Hyur with an axe coming down in a vertical swing. X’gihl dipped to the left, placing the man between him and the mage he’d struck before retaliating with a kick to the back of the calf and, as he fell to one knee, X’gihl vaulted over the man’s back and crouched on the other side as the second mage threw a fire spell their way. The axeman took the brunt of it with a yelp, proving once again that friendly fire wasn’t friendly. X’gihl pivoted around him and sprinted toward the second mage, tackling him shoulder first into and over the railing. Two mages out, one crewman burned. That count seemed off, somehow.
The reason why came in a sudden freezing force striking against his backside. The mage he’d punched in the throat had found their voice again and loosed that frost. X’gihl grabbed the railing to steady himself and turned to the mage. The next spell, it seemed, would be one of flame. A slap of planks and movement in front called X’gihl’s attention back toward the Gallant, where his people were now crossing the gap on gangplanks. His crew had the same idea, neutralizing the mages being a top priority. As Gill watched his mates, two tomahawks flew through the air followed by a javelin. Three mages, including the one that was attacking him, fell to the deck either dead or dreadfully injured with the weapons now sticking out of their bodies.
Absolutely bleeding perfect, thought Gill. The timing couldn’t have been better. He turned around to face the next foe in line, another thaumaturge. They were the enemy’s frontline, given that they were intended to shoot fire across the space between, and so they would be the first to go now that the planks were in place and the ship was getting invaded. This one here, a Lalafell from his size, turned and ran from the monk. A Roegadyn axeman stood in front of him instead and leveled a swing at Gill’s body. The monk stepped back out of reach before lunging forward and delivering a series of punches to the man’s belly and diaphragm. He recoiled away from Gill, trying to catch his breath while the monk pursued and drove both his fists at once into the axeman’s chest. The Roegadyn stumbled back but raised his axe as he regained his footing. X’gihl leapt forward before the axe could be swung, he swept the man’s leg out from beneath him and delivered a punch quick as a snap to his throat. A gurgling sound exhumed from the Roegadyn’s throat as he fell to the ground, whether dead or unconscious X’gihl didn’t know.
As soon as his fist had struck that last blow, however, X’gihl began to feel that strength, that speed, that notion of electricity that flowed through his muscles. It was small, but certainly present. The concept of it was something unique to pugilists and monks, people who learned to work their bodies through these martial arts. “Greased lightning” was named for the sensation it brought; a tingle in the joints and a looseness of the muscles. It coursed through the body, urging the user to move, to attack, to keep going. And that’s just what X’gihl was going to do.
Gill waded through the melee, his crewmates and the enemies alike swirled in tandem as blades clashed on axes, lances and swords. Scepters raised over the remaining mages as flame, ice and thunder manifested in the air to find their marks. Meanwhile, Gill pushed onward. He struck at his foe’s backsides and flanks, helping to get his crew, his friends, his family through the battle. From the bow to the prow, enemies were knocked down or thrown overboard as they bled or breathed their last. Greased lightning welled up in Gill ever slightly more as it drew on. He wasn’t a full-fledged monk, he knew that. But if he kept going, kept getting stronger, faster, working to push his limits, he’d learn to reach further to draw it out.
Flames licked the ship from prow to bow, port and stern, the sails above were coming undone, and the galley seemed to shudder from the force of the men above having crushed its own crew upon it. The thaumaturges, if nothing else, would manage to prevent the Gallant’s crew from using their ship to maintain their own. The enemy captain’s quarters were reduced to naught but a burning cabin, destroying any evidence within that may explain why they had attacked. The Gallant’s men had to hurry across the gangplanks again before the vessel crumbled beneath them.
Once back on their own ship, Captain Blynanka brought the Gallant away from the burning wreckage with a fear like any man would to protect something precious to him. X’gihl could appreciate the swiftness, but he had to wonder if the captain had known more than he would let on. Perhaps he pulled them away so quickly because he didn’t want anything about it known. Those mages certainly hadn’t. They had begun to purposely conjure flames when the battle swung out of their favor. Flames that had been launched to the mast, the sails, the quarters below and above decks. In a way, they’d surrendered to their fate and tried to bring as many of the Gallant’s crew down with them as they could.
The crew. Gill leaned against a support rail on the galley, his legs wobbling beneath him from the excitement, while looking over his mates. Immediately he counted four people missing. He knew their names, knew where three of them had grown up, met the families of two of them, and had been the confidante of the last. R’jhaal Vhig, Ahtzaberk, Neldon, and Birstul. There had been more, Gill could see. But these four were the ones that pained him immediately, the rest would come later.
Up at the helm, Captain Blynanka and the quartermaster made their discussions unheard to the rest of the crew. A feeling of distrust welled up in X’gihl’s breast, animosity, anger, grief, and tears rising to match it. That man in the tricorne had been to blame for this, one way or another. Some decision he’d made, or underhanded trade he’d planned. And it had gone belly up with a good chunk of the crew. Then the man yelled something to the crew on deck. Perhaps something about finding land, respite, and repair. X’gihl didn’t hear him.
The Gallant, having tread malms of sea long after the battle, had begun to wear down to her last, finally. She’d made port without a port to make it in, having made do with an inlet closest to Thanalan. The crew disembarked from her and, X’gihl among many, looked over her wounds with much fear and grief. Yet another casualty of the captain’s poor decision-making. The man himself disembarked last with his quartermaster. “I think this be as far as she’ll take us, boys.” He said to his men.
“It be time to give her a proper pyre. Commit her to sea she walked on and carried us through.” To this, the crew rallied for different reasons. Some believed the Gallant could be repaired. Some thought she could still serve one way or another. Others believed that it was the best decision to let her rest. The captain said it best himself, for another reason entirely. “Lads, we know not who came fer us. Those sails bore no crest or sign! Perhaps it be smarter to let them think we fell to the drink or the flames. Let them believe that we be no more, so that we might be free of them!” He had final say, in spite of the crew’s disagreement.
X’gihl, stoking his anger towards to man, quietly found every reason imaginable to be justified in his feelings. The captain was responsible, the captain had set them up, the captain was at fault for being targeted by these mysterious buccaneers. He’d known that something was going to happen. Of course he’d want to play dead! Was it a debt? Was it getting on someone’s wrong side? Who do we owe? What do we need to know that he’s not telling?
Whatever feelings were in the crowd at that moment in time, they were quieted. Beaten and unhappy, the Gallant’s crew were in a bad position. Crewmen dead, ship a broken burned wreck, and the captain hid something lethal from them all. No one spoke, but more and more seemed to be keeping their backs to the captain. As he hid something from them, they would hide their feelings and suspicions from him. Meanwhile, their beloved, dying vessel was steered out to sea, where they lit it ablaze before taking the dinghies back to land. She burned quietly on the horizon, fitfully, angrily, but quietly. X’gihl suspected it was because no one was close enough to hear her sobs, her creaks, the wood giving way to ashes while its bones fell under. The mast cracked while flames ate away at its support, it fell to the side and splashed into the water. Her crew that she’d faithfully served stood at attention for her from the inlet until, finally, she was sunk.
Captain Blynanka turned to face the crew and looked at each of their faces in turn, his tricorne held to his breast, tears painting his face a glossy green to go with his natural Sea Wolf heritage. “It is today, with a heavy heart, that I declare the Gallant to be laid to rest. Her crew is released from service. Say a prayer to the Navigator for her, lads, and for the ones we lost today. Dismissed!”
A mix of reactions went through the crowd. Angry outbursts, sorrowful tears, and more. X’gihl turned away and began his march further inland, stowing away his feelings until he was in a better place to process them. With him went three other crewmembers intent on putting distance between themselves and this sorrow-scarred place. Together, the four survived making their way to Western Thanalan, where they parted ways at Horizon. Two went to Vesper Bay, one went towards the Copperbell Mines. They all had a plan to find work. If the captain had been right, then it was better to stay away from Limsa Lominsa, better to not be themselves. Not privateers. Not the crew of the Gallant. The crew of the Gallant had burned away and drowned in the seas between Aldenard and Vylbrand
X’gihl took the opportunity to check prices for a chocobo porter. What little gil he had on his person, he would put to use getting further inland before finding a place to drink his worries and wounds away. The Black Brush Station in Central Thanalan seemed as good a place as any. He hired a ride and it carried him through the desert lands with speed and safety. Throughout the ride, X’gihl didn’t watch the sights, didn’t see the sky overhead as clouds and the sun carried on, didn’t see the Brass Blades and the merchants and the people as they went about their business.
No, he stayed inward. In his own mind, he kept running through possibilities of his trusted captain’s deception and trying to process his loss of the crew, the ship, the family he had been a part of ever since the Calamity brought down Limsa Lominsa and people worked together to bring it back up. Well now he faced another Calamity. Home gone, family gone, livelihood over with, he would need to find lodging and work and pay if he ever hoped to help the refugees at Little Ala Mhigo again.
Oh dear. Little Ala Mhigo. It hadn’t crossed his mind that he’d have to send a letter at some point. Not to Mennis, who passed years ago now. Not to his mother, who worked somewhere in Ul’dah. But he had to keep in contact with the refugees. Perhaps he wasn’t as close with them as he wanted to be anymore, but they were family, too. The people he’d traveled with throughout his boyhood were there. Maybe he’ll just end up visiting directly. He was, after all, now in Thanalan. It would be just a short venture away from the city. But things had changed somewhat now. In the years since he left he’d become a different man. X’gihl had been a pirate, a salvager, a privateer. He’d fought Garleans and rogues and beggars alike.
Black Brush Station came sooner than he would have liked. The chocobo stopped just around the aetheryte crystal that lit up Black Brush’s plaza-like area. X’gihl dismounted on unsteady feet and sat down beneath the crystal to continue his thoughts, but they were becoming too painful. Yes, the things he did were to support his lifestyle and give the refugees supplies to live on. Yes, he had to protect his own funds and resources, even if it meant killing a group of people who had tried to knife him because they themselves had nothing else and the only help they would accept came from mugging him! Yes, becoming a pirate was better than nothing, even if he ended up hurting and robbing innocents himself at the time. It provided pay, provided experience, and food, and lodging, and protection.
X’gihl didn’t like this train of thought. Rationalizing something despicable meant you regretted it. Once upon a time, it hadn’t seemed so bad. He hadn’t felt like a sinner, just a man surviving. Yet now, it all seemed like a glass globe. Within it, he could see himself committing theft and burglary and piracy. It was all just part of the still, it couldn’t be changed because it was already set, already done. The Gallant was a group of pirates. He met them when Garlemald brought Eorzea low, and he joined them to help pick the city back up. From there, it became about the city, then about the profit, then about taking the fight to Garlemald for what they did. And still, it just seemed an excuse to continue piracy, but at least their targets were justified by then. The Accords fixed that. So why did we get attacked by an Eorzean vessel? Why were we out there, looking for a ship, only to be stricken by one?
Bollocks! Shut up, shut up SHUT UP! A drink. A drink would silence all this infernal bellyaching. Rising to his feet, X’gihl asked a passing merchant about the closest bar. “The Coffer and Coffin, just down the way. Can’t miss it.” He was told. That’s the way he headed, Southbound by no more than a few malms. The merchant was right, one couldn’t miss The Coffer and Coffin settled just beneath an overhanging of stone. The lantern out front looked like it got a lot of use in the perpetually shady spot, and the place it lit appeared refreshingly homely. X’gihl walked in and took a seat at the bar. He had a couple hundred gil left in his purse, it would serve to get him well and duly drunk.
Drink after drink went down the privateer’s gullet. X’gihl took every bit of alcohol gratefully, as if it would eventually make up for every loss suffered in the past few days. A buzz filled his mind and his hands had begun to lose their dexterity. Cheeks flushed, eye half-open, memories leaked free. It was almost like they were hovering before him. As if he could pick one and see it over again. The happier ones were harder to reach, but he found them.
Birstul stood next to him, one arm over his shoulders while Gill had an arm over Birstul’s. The two had mugs in their hands and were singing a jolly song in a tavern with some goofy dance they’d seen performers use earlier that day. It involved a swing of the body and a kick of the leg. Everyone in the tavern was laughing, watching them make fools of themselves. But it made Gill happy to share such merriment.
His mother brought him along on their first hunt together. He had to help provide for their “tribe” of refugees. The first bit of prey they’d spotted had managed to get away because X’gihl was too noisy. It earned him a scolding. X’gihl was just happy to spend time with his mother.
R’jhaal Vhig was pretty, for a pirate. She made sure to tease Gill about his inexperience with women often. Gill managed to make her blush with a comment he couldn’t remember. She challenged him to a duel. She won. He remembered her face as she blew him a kiss afterward.
Neldon’s often quiet demeanor made people think he was a simple midlander. Gill knew the man was more of a scholar. He abstained from liquor and preferred the company of his books. It made him more than a little different from the other crewmen. Neldon never turned away someone’s curiosity, however, and he often became excited and ecstatic when someone inquired on his worldly knowledge. Gill learned many things from him.
Mennis had been a teacher for children in the group for weeks now. Yet it wasn’t until their company had come under attack from bandits that they found out he had been a monk in his younger years. He fought to protect the group with several others. The old man was brave. X’gihl wanted to learn to be brave too.
Birstul and R’jhaal dragged Gill out to face the world. He was grieving over Mennis’ passing. It was heart wrenching. Through his tears and shudders, these two comforted him. They spent the hours out and around Limsa Lominsa, watching the stars, drinking the night away, dancing, singing, meeting strangers and telling tall tales. Gill held a special place for this memory in his heart.
Upon sunrise, he found himself amidst a bale of hay and chocobo dung. Fine bedding for a drunken griever who smelled no better. X’gihl stood on wobbly legs and dusted himself off as best as possible, but when one smelled like these birds, the smell didn’t just go away. He made certain to check his purse, empty though it was now, and to take inventory of his belongings. Luckily, aside from his money, all was present. One less worry to have. With that managed, he walked out of the chocobo pen, waving a thanks to the porter who had, hopefully, been the one to put him there.
The porter, in good sense, called after the strange drunk who’d risen from the hay. “Hold up there, lad.” And before he could get anything else out, X’gihl turned on him.
“If you fear for your birds, mate, don’t. I’ll take me companionship furred before I’ll have’em feathered.”
He made to leave again, but the porter halted him once more and addressed the privateer with a sternly distressed toned. “Now, look here, that’s not at all what I had in mind! I was going to ask if you were the adventurin’ sort.”
X’gihl stopped and leveled a confused stare at the porter’s mask. “Well, I suppose so. Had my fair share of it, and I aim to have more.”
The porter must have thought the privateer was being funny. They clapped a hand to their mask and shook their head despondently. “Well, if you want to earn some good gil, there’s a man back down at the Coffer and Coffin what needs a hand. You look pretty able, and pretty poor. Figured you’d appreciate the opportunity. Now go on, walk with the twelve or whathaveyou. And stop sleeping with my chocobos!” With that said, the porter returned to their post.
To the porter’s credit, they were right about somebody at the Coffer and Coffin needing some help. They hadn’t mentioned it involved a large wagon filled with goods tightly packed. Workers stood atop and to the sides, passing goods along and calling them out to one another as a person with a manifest checked off each good that found its way to the wagon. Last night’s barkeep caught X’gihl approaching from the corner of his eye and walked over to address him.
“Sorry to tell you, lad, but I don’t think you need another drink so soon. You-“, the barkeep was cut off by the privateer and they both spoke over one another for a second. Both stopped speaking and X’gihl took the chance to get his thought out.
“Forgive me of last night’s conduct. I was told you needed some help in exchange for coin.” The privateer set aside his Lominsan dialect that had become so normal to use. He’d try to sound professional, business-worthy. Anything that could possibly make the man overlook the events before, though X’gihl couldn’t remember exactly what happened.
A chuckle came from the Hyur man. “Lad, you had the lot of us laughing and singing! I thought, the way you’d come in, that you’d be cryin’ inta yer cup til we shoved you out. But no! You gave us all a grand time. Bah, I’d be happy to have you over again when ya find the time. Now, about business.” He straightened up and wiped the smirk from his face. “I’ve got this shipment of goods here, ya see it back there.” He gestured with his thumb back to the wagon. “It’s been paid for and needs to arrive safely in Little Ala Mhigo, down ‘round Southern Thanalan. Them refugees, they need any as they can get. This? Needs to get to them at all costs. I might be Ul’dahn, but my heart and good business goes out to them. You manage to bodyguard this here wagon down to Little Ala Mhigo, we’ll talk about payin’ you. Fair?”
“Aye. We’ll call it fair.” X’gihl grinned. Excitement began to blossom in his chest, covering whatever grief had managed to fester again. The idea of getting back to Little Ala Mhigo, even for a job, even for a little bit, would be a perfect change of pace. It’d be the first time in five years that he’d return. He could share some tales, get some rest, and get back on the road to-…what?
Right. No ship. Half-crew that’d been disbanded. Traitorous captain what may have gotten every sailor in his command blacklisted. X’gihl Tia; private privateer, looking for work. In Thanalan, no less. No seas for a privateer to sail. This was the mainland.
His future in the air, X’gihl continued on. If nothing else, he could use the time to think of another plan after he got some gil in his pocket. What’s more, he wasn’t the only man bodyguarding the wagon on its route. Two others came with him, though neither was quite notable. The journey itself consisted of little more than a trek for hour after hour, fighting off a band of dastardly marmots, until they hit the lands of Southern Thanalan. The familiar sight of Little Ala Mhigo in the distance sent X’gihl into a nostalgic tornado. For professionalism’s sake, however, he kept himself solid and focused. They approached Little Ala Mhigo, reaching the mark just before the sun met the horizon.
The faces that greeted the wagon were both familiar and frightening. The ones that frightened him were those he hadn’t remembered, ones that had to be new faces in Little Ala Mhigo since he left. More refugees. Gyr Abania was occupied by Garlemald, but in the five years since it had taken place, even more people had come seeking freedom from the empire. Letters from home had surely told him of it, but to see it in front of himself brought an impact that he hadn’t expected. There were still more people making the journey.
Wagon delivered, the other two bodyguards went back with it after the goods it had were brought into Little Ala Mhigo. X’gihl said his farewells and asked them to let the barkeep know he’d be along days from then for payment. With the job complete, and a warm reception from those who’d known him, X’gihl settled in with the community quite nicely. For the most part, he occupied his days training with Mennis’ other pupils and hunting with the others. It gave him experience he hadn’t had before, hunting in Thanalan’s deserts and crag lands were a far cry from the grassy knolls and forests of La Noscea. He also made it a point to travel to Mennis’ grave, where he got to properly pay his respects.
Grief seemed to fall away and worries withered as the work allowed X’gihl to process the events transpiring about the Gallant’s downfall. It kept him focused, gave his hands and muscles something to work with, whether it was sparring or hunting, or some other labor the community required. As time passed, however, he began to miss the freedom of travel. Little Ala Mhigo was no home for a privateer, no home for an adventurer of one shade or another. He wanted more, wanted better. Having enough of respite, he took a small bundle of supplies and struck out towards Ul’dah. His plan was to properly join the Adventurer’s Guild and work from there.
Ul’dah was a city built on financial gain and blood sport, this much everyone knows. Entering the city for the first time in his life, and truly seeing it for what it was after being turned away at the walls all those years ago, was both inspiring and dispiriting. Perhaps he’d built it up in his mind long ago, consciously or not, that Ul’dah was no place for him. Limsa Lominsa had taken that spot. Yet with recent events reminding him of why Limsa Lominsa may not have been a safe place to be, Ul’dah would have to fill the gap.
X’gihl proceeded with his intentions. The Quicksand, home of Ul’dah’s Adventurer’s Guild, struck him as not so different from The Drowned Wench. Momodi was every bit as welcoming as <Lominsan Proprietor>, perhaps more. Definitely more. She’d gotten him signed up and registered, allowing him an inn room at all hours of the day and giving him access to take what she referred to as “leves”.
Guildleves. Now that was something he’d never given thought to when adventuring had crossed his mind. Mercenary work was one thing. It was easy to work out a contract with people for a job they wanted done. Hells, the job that the Coffer and Coffin owner had given him was mercenary work. But a place where you could go to browse requests, accept work, do the job, and earn the agreed upon weight of gil was…it was…
Why didn’t I do this sooner? Thought the fool. And he did feel the fool. Perhaps this wouldn’t be as profitable as privateering at the time, but it allowed him free lodgings. Allowed him to work his own hours, pick his jobs, and still got him out of the city for an adventure. He buried himself in leves. Worked several day-in and day-out. He would roll in the gil, stashing a little back from each job to send to Little Ala Mhigo, drink a bit here and there (or more than he’d admit to), hit the inn, and get back out again.
It was a feverous process. It was a lonely process. He loved the work. He hated the quiet. Enjoyed the drink and company at the Quicksand. But an inn room was no home. It was something for vagrants, migrants, people who would come and go. X’gihl worked this way for months, he had no intention of going anywhere, exactly. The adventurer just wanted to earn his fill and pay his share. Yet there was more. He wanted more. There was something to the life he’d had before, living amongst the crew of the Gallant every day. The one before that, traveling from Gyr Abania for so long with the entire group being your family. You were never alone. The silence that now burgeoned in his mind became a weight, a truth that changed the perspective of how he went about his life. There was an answer. Surely. Many adventurers feel like this, don’t they? They didn’t all live in silence, coming together only once in a blue-moon to work towards the occasionally common goal.
Free Companies. X’gihl walked into the Hall of Flames one day to ask about it directly. He couldn’t ask just anyone, could he? Momodi had pointed him this way, saying that he should either ask the Grand Company clerk about them, or ask other adventurers. So maybe he could ask just anyone. But would “just anyone” answer? Would they have seen his eyepatch, realize his disability, and say they didn’t want him? Would they have known he was from Gyr Abania and written him off as just enough refugee looking for a handout? He had his reasons to be worried. But that didn’t mean moving forward wasn’t the practical thing to do. He just had to get the courage up to do it. A swig from his hip flask and a deep breath pushed him forward.
The Grand Company Administrator was more than happy to provide information on the topic. But he didn’t have a list of active Free Companies on hand, nor did he handle enlistment in them. “The only way to get into a Free Company is to get invited by a member directly. We may keep track of them, but we don’t handle or administrate them. Here, some companies like to put out flyers like this one. Meetings for potential recruits aren’t uncommon. Mayhap you'll find one that way.” He handed X'gihl a piece of paper.
The flier promised free drinks on a day coming soon, and that “The Blessed Twelve" was opening for recruits. If nothing else, the free drinks were a good way to get X’gihl's good will. Well, he had a place to start now. It would give him a few days to think, not that he needed them, and a little while longer to work. Surely, this would be something life changing.
All right! X'gihl Tia is ready for grading and open for criticism!
@Obscene Symphony Male Seeker. Still kinda working on the bio, but I'm mostly settled on a Gyr Abanian, M tribe brat who migrates to Limsa (still figuring out how) around the time of the civil war against Theodric. Placing him in his late twenties or early thirties by modern day.
Appearance: Ash stands at approximately 5'8" (173cm) with brown hair cut short on the back and sides, the length on top pulled into a tail. Soft brown eyes that lighten to an amber color in sunlight and a skin tone carrying a light tan with it. His body appears athletic with the baggy white clothes and his leather armor, but beneath them Ash is lean and toned, befitting a person who prefers dexterity and agility over strength and hardiness. His face is largely angular, having a narrow jawline and high cheekbones with a face that often appears to be scowling when at rest. The choice of a baggy white shirt and pair of pants allows for breathable attire when his thick leather armor is finally removed at the end of a long day or mission. Even relaxed Ashdane remains tense and wired, though. A nervous disposition and eyes that often dart around his surroundings with subtle bags beneath give this man a dangerous, paranoid look that can easily set others on edge.
The man in the modern day, the one who rarely looks you in the eyes, whose mind is constantly running thought to thought with no end. The guy that always seems like a tightly-wound coil at all hours and whose eyes never find enough rest. He was a child at some point, too. Not all lives are so glamorous, nor are they all so dark. Ash has a past that is less storied and mysterious, more fearful and manic. Ups and downs, every life has them. One just has to work and earn those ups; bright sides and good endings don’t find the lazy, the lost, or the clueless.
Not a coin, a cloth, or a heritage in any sense to his name. Ashdane's earliest memories are of rooms of orphans, scents of sweat and body odor, and simple instructions here or there. Out at the Golden Shores, Ash ran with small-time thieving crews, earning his weight in food and clothing. There would always be someone in charge, with one idea or another. Ideas that would land other thieves in danger, detainment, or death. Ash himself would be the first to admit, he was nothing special. Pick a pocket, keep an ear out, don’t lie to the man feeding you for today. If you got a beating, you deserved it no matter what you thought. If there was a heavy purse out at the docks, you better find it, because it could be what keeps you alive and fed a little longer. Just make the crewleader happy. Ash probably went through a hundred of them in his youth. The life of a thief was what he’d known from dusk to dawn.
You needed to be aware, be ready, be playing that “what if?” game. What if that guy next to you had a knife? What if your good will with the big guy was running out? What if you got caught on the street with your hands red and it ain’t yours? Ash had an advantage in that department, though he didn’t know it. A hyperactivity disorder is a pretty nifty thing when your continued existence depended on being alert to your surroundings and the people around you. A wild imagination even moreso. Innate curiosity and deft hands make for good partners. What if he could use that? What if he was good at what he did? What if *they* knew? And, hey, how did that thing over there work?
People in crews had some tricks here and there. Some had uses for spare metal bits and pieces. Nothing big or harmful, no. If those things started showing up on the streets, marks would get scared. Targets would stop coming out with so many Soverns. Less pay, more guard patrols, and a city with too many eyes out made for bad business, both in the light and out of it. Looking back, that makes a lot of sense. More sense than a 17 year old lifelong thief on the streets had at the time. But making use of scrap was an opportunity. A good one. One that could, maybe, make you a real important guy in the crew. So what if a few people would get hurt? What if some marks started getting a little paranoid? We’d have more ourselves! That’s all that mattered. Right?
A single little contraption goes off in broad daylight. One noble young buck, with too much money in his purse and too little sense to properly hide it, gets hurt. Not dead, just a few scratches across his pretty face. Boy, those look deep. Maybe too much primer, Ash would have to change his first formula to-what if? What if that kid prattles to his daddy and makes things harder for us to steal? What if we can’t make enough to live another week? What if the guards find any of us? What if…the next one is better? What if the next one goes cleaner? It could happen.
Never got the chance. That noble boy’s scars became an example of just how bad thieving was getting. More guards! Keep a closer eye out! There’s an artificer out there leaving his dangerous toys out and targeting noblemen for coin and virtue and their lives and…what if Ash was no longer useful? What if this had made him a detriment? A marked man? That’s what came next. A wanted artificer, targeting nobles, patrolmen on the look out for any unusual mechanisms and descriptions passing through the areas his crew had frequented. They’d have to give up their hunting grounds. And that description that people were using to find the mad artificer? It matched Ash to a point. He must’ve been seen running with that purse! But his crew would hide him! He would be alright! The guards would never find out who he was and everything would be fine! Except…
What if it wasn’t? His crew didn’t stand with him. He had become a liability. A recognizable face being sought out around the Shores didn’t make for good thieving work. They had turned him in before a week had passed from the event. Now he’d spend the rest of his short days stuck in a cell. Sentenced to execution for terrorism and assault against a member of the noble class. The theft itself wasn’t even on the rap sheet! And here come the guards now! He knew the sound of metal boots and cuisses and plate mail, had run from it too often, had survived by being out of sight from the ones who make it. The cell offered no such cover or methods of concealment. He’d been left out to dry by his crew. The cell, the sentence, the damned cuffs chafing his wrists! If he hadn’t started to trust in this crew, for once, none of this would have happened!
But the man on the other side of the cell door wasn’t the bailiff. He wasn’t the executioner, either. So who was he? This older fellow, he wore no uniform, no guardsman armor, but he had a crest on his doublet. Ash didn’t recognize it. Was this man another noble? Why’s he got a guardsman with him? How important is he? And then he spoke.
“A thief off the streets, playing with toys and surviving by the skin of your teeth. Hardly a terrorist. Come here, boy, let me get a good look at you.” Ash didn’t question the man, but he had a few for him. This mysterious old coot looked him up and down, and watched Ash's eyes closely. To his credit, life on the streets had taught Ash a few things; such as when he was being analyzed in more ways than one. The boy didn’t look this man in his eyes. He diverted his gaze to the left or right, or down to the floor, all the while keeping the old man in his periphery and looking him over as well.
The old man grinned, Ash didn’t know if that was good. “You’d be useful. Plenty of potential in you, yet.” He turned to the guardsman beside him. “Tell your captain I've got a favor. This boy comes with me. Make haste, and be discreet!” The guard looked a mix of surprise and worry as he scampered off, leaving Ash alone with this enigmatic fellow. “You already know what you did wrong with that device that landed you here, yes? Too much primer, too much OOMPH and hurt the boy you were trying to scare. Would’ve worked, if not for that.” The voice of experience, Ash would have guessed.
Ash was released into the old man's custody. The captain had indeed owed him a favor, the nature of which Ash could only guess. As it turned out, the geezer was the commander of a mercenary company, one with rather loose relationship with the law. Ash's previous life was put to the axe (or had it been the gallows?), a replacement made from another unlucky criminal in order to sate the noble he'd scarred. From here on, he would be Ashdane of the Wayward Wolves; the name was a symbol of the company he now belonged to.
Errol was the name of the man who’d taken him, and he himself had been an urchin before. While maintaining ties with the underground, Errol used his ties mainly as a way to get jobs for his mercenary business. Each and every member had been a “rescue" in one form or another, be they a previous convict, or a person trying to better their lot in life. He was a firm, fair, and consistent individual, and over time Ashdane began to see him as a true father. It was through no fault of Errol's own that Ash had trouble trusting and being at ease in the company. A lifestyle of thieving would carve its nature into a person’s bones. His mind stayed racing, he would often flinch in the presence of his comrades, and looking a person in the eye was very difficult for him. Always, Ashdane looked through a person rather than at them, because surely if they weren’t a threat, something or someone nearby was.
Despite his issues, Ashdane would spend the next several years of his life with the Wolves. Errol was as much a leader as he was a teacher, and he was often honest with his men about the contracts they fulfilled to make their living. Even Ash, who hadn’t had an education or an opportunity in his life, was not left out of this process. He was an illiterate teen on the cusp of adulthood, and he knew nothing more than surviving on the streets. And yet, he took to it like a fish to water. Being able to clearly define what was needed to fulfill a contract seemed like a simple expansion to having an objective back as a kid. Pick a pocket, cause some ruckus, kill a monster. Perhaps it wasn’t so simple, now that he could read the once-nonsensical scribble (not that contracts were a large part of thieving, but marks the crewleader would point out were sometimes picked by another, and Ashdane was beginning to figure out how), but it gave a greater degree of certainty in what form of action to take.
By the time he was a man grown, Ashdane could read, write, negotiate, and make a more proper little trap than the one that had landed him in prison. The last of these were taught by Errol directly. He was an old hand at the skill, and took great interest in what few pupils the Wolves could scrounge together. Ash learned and memorized numerous blueprints throughout his few years, and learned to always keep a few pieces of scrap on hand and a few traps ready to set. It had come in handy through a few missions, maybe that was an understatement. He could trap their campsites to provide defenses while his squad slept, could set a stage for a fight that would go heavily in the Wolves' favor, or even detonate directional shrapnel bombs mid-melee. A thief, even one no longer a thief, had to be pragmatic. It was only natural that a tool should be used against something that wanted you dead.
The Wayward Wolves had molded the once-thief into a proper mercenary. And mercenaries knew how to survive. Being one didn’t necessarily mean that you were invincible, or that you were immune to age and decay. Errol’s death is one such example of this. He had been both outlaw and merc. Had taught so many so much. He had been a paternal figure in the lives of many of its members. But all these accomplishments did not make one immortal, it just meant that he passed away surrounded by family. Pride in his pack flushed through his chest until the light finally left his eyes. Ash had been taught another thing in Errol's passing: the pain of losing a beloved parent. This experience, he learned at the age of 26.
The Wayward Wolves dissolved without a leader, unable to elect another. Ashdane's squadmates went their separate ways, either continuing their mercenary lifestyle in another company, or becoming contacts in the underworld for one another. His family all but gone, and reeling from the loss, Ashdane was among those who continued as a free mercenary.
Fighting Style: “Artificianado.” A joking name a comrade from the Wayward Wolves once used to describe Ashdane's methods. Naturally, Ashdane ran with it. This style consists of a mix of swordplay, throwing knives, and artificer gadgets such as shrapnel bombs, razor wire traps, and more. When dealing with direct confrontation, evasion is a high priority and countering with quick strikes or a gadget when opportunities present themselves.
Equipment: -Two spathas in scabbards across the back. While initially intended to be used in a dual-wielding stance, Ashdane usually uses one at a time and keeps his off-hand empty to utilize his throwing knives or gadgets.
-Studded leather armor meticulously cared for and modified heavily from his time in the Wolves. Thick armor around most of the body, leaving only the head, arms, and legs exposed for maneuverability.
-Three throwing knives located at the right hip. Reliable, sturdy, and retrievable.
-Leather toolbag typically situated on the left hip, filled with artificing tools along with metal and leather field care items, such as oils and whetstones. A separate pocket contains some extra scrap metal bits for use in field-crafting extra shrapnel bombs or replacement gadget bits. Ashdane will normally drop this bag using a quick release strap before engaging enemies as it can be cumbersome.
-Shrapnel bombs are small clusters of junk metal set into a metal base with just enough primer to launch the pieces at a respectable level of force capable of embedding and cutting flesh at a radius of 5 feet in a full circle. With slight modifications, and angling the base, Ashdane can give better aim and reach to the shrapnel, giving his teammates a better chance of not getting sliced and delivering more focused blasts to his foes. Bombs are primed by removing a small plug that acts as a brake for a dial on the underside of the base in place and twisting it 15 or more degrees clockwise, the bomb then detonates between 2 and 3 seconds later. Keeps 2 bombs on his person at the start of every mission.
-Spring razor wire traps are set into a tightly-wound cylindrical coil set into a cylindrical pillar that is hollow at the bottom, where it connects to the metal base. The hollow space is filled with enough primer to launch the pillar upwards roughly 4 feet, where it separates from the inside brake and the coil untwists at a rapid speed, flinging 3 strings of razor wire outwards in a 4 foot radius and dealing numerous cuts to those unlucky enough to stand in reach until the coil is at rest. These traps are primed similarly to the shrapnel bomb, having a dial at the underside of the base. Like the shrapnel bomb, the dial has a plug that acts as a brake for the device in order to prevent it from going off prematurely. The dial is turned counterclockwise by 45 degrees and plugged loosely so that most light vibrations through a nearby surface will release the plug and the dial will set the primer off. As a result, the spring razor makes for a good perimeter mine and alarm system. These traps are also made to be reusable, so long as more primer material is at hand and the base of the cylindrical pillar isn't too damaged to contain it. 4 of these are carried at the start of every mission.
Skills/Abilities: -A skilled artificer, Ashdane can craft gadgets and traps from small metal pieces for use in combat and battlefield control.
-With his past as a street urchin, Ashdane is an accomplished pickpocket, eavesdropper, and adept at walking quietly without being noticed.
Other Information:
1. Listen to the GM(s), If you have a complaint tell me. I am not an evil dictator and if I am wrong I will admit it. 2. Romance and Gore allowed, But keep it in good taste and in site rules 3. Now not all characters will play nice with each other I understand that, but keep the disputes in the RP not in OOC 4. Be civilized and polite please 5. All basic RP rules apply to this roleplay: Power playing, Meta gaming, and others are not allowed. 6. The story isn't exactly set, If you have an idea for a mission feel free to pm me the details and I'll try to work it in. 7. Copy the rules into a Hider in the "other" of your cs so I know you read them. 8. Get into your character's skin become him or her as you are playing have fun and give us insight into their thoughts. 9. Try to keep active, in both the IC and OOC pages please. And even if you don't have anything to say, at least read the OOC
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