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#Aiswyda Nuthalwyn
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lettersnorth · 3 years
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The Visit
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In some ways, Aislinn considered the job in Thanalan a failure. That they had somehow managed to survive, set up the required equipment and therefore, at least by the letter of the contract, secure payment was beside the point. The job itself had exposed fault lines, cracks in a foundation that if they weren’t careful could lead to catastrophe down the line. It easily could have done so this time. If she hadn’t grabbed Mivo’to when she had. If she had wasted precious seconds arguing with Riylli instead. If.
When all was said and done, there had been very little of note to salvage from the fiery wreckage left behind by the Reaper’s explosion. Upon her return to Heartwood, a dusty and soot-streaked Aislinn had wasted no time making her way to Nyscera’s door to inform the Director of the fissures forming within the Company. Who the hell leaves a teammate for dead? No one Aislinn wanted watching her back in the field, that much was certain. Riylli was unpredictable, ruled by her whims. That made her a liability. And then there was Cravendy. All too ready to pull the trigger for too little. She had said it herself, she had killed for less. Aislinn hoped it had been hyperbole.
The thoughts whirled around her, constant, unwanted companions, until she knew she had to go. That night she collected a few things and made her way out into the Shroud. Down a familiar path that she could most likely walk by heart, blindfolded. The hot spring was nigh undiscovered. A well-kept secret hidden away in a secluded glade. It had taken her and Wyda ages to find it, even with some verbal guidance from a Gridanian in the know. That first visit they had lounged in the heat of the hot spring and spoke long into the night about everything and nothing at all. Since Wyda’s passing Aislinn had come here more and more. Perhaps it was foolish, but when she was here, she felt she could say anything. As though Wyda was still there, sitting off to the side on one of the rocks, smiling a sunshine smile as she slowly swirled her legs in the warm waters. 
This night was clear and cool, the silvery face of the moon above attentive as Aislinn stripped down and slipped into the hot spring. She let the heat sink into her skin as she drifted out across the star-studded water. Briefly, she disappeared, submerging herself. Her hair unfurled like crimson streamers suspended beneath the surface. Rising above the water once more, she made her way to the rocky boundary of the pool and settled back against the stone. For a long while she merely sat and listened to the sounds of the night. The whirling hum of cicada song winding up tight and slowly unraveling. Again and again. 
“The Garlean called us savages.” she said into the quiet. “I haven’t heard that in a long time. And I used to get so angry, but now. This time. I have to agree.” she wiped the water from her face in a slow, tired motion. “You should have seen it. The two of them were like damned dogs baying for blood.” 
She could still hear Cravendy’s snarled words. “I’ve KILLED people who’ve done less. And Riylli’s right. ‘e’s Garlean, armed with a child-robot, up to who knows what. Ain’t that enough?!”
It was nowhere near enough for Aislinn. It never would be. 
When she tipped her head back, her green eyes awash in the moon’s pale light, her expression was hard. That is until, like ice, it cracked and slipped away in the warmth of the hot spring, leaving behind a rueful vulnerability. The Wyda in her mind’s eye tilted her head, her expression softening as if to ask what was wrong. Curling forward, Aislinn pressed her brow to her knees, a heavy sigh gusting out of her. 
“How did you ever get along with her?” she murmured. “Probably a stupid question. You got along with everyone. Even me. Cravendy is prickly from every angle but you were always good at finding ways around that.” She stared down at the water, letting the steam mist over her eyes. “What I should be asking is how in the hell am I going to get along with her? Do I need to? I feel like you’d want me to. But Twelve above, I think we’re too different. Or too much the same. We’re too...something.” All she knew for certain was that the friction between them was constant. There was a silent, mulish pause as Aislinn lifted her head and stared out across the pool. “I wish you were here. She does too. Suppose that’s something we agree on.” 
A gentle breeze rustled the branches of the alder trees overhead but, of course, there was no answer forthcoming. There never was. 
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nutley-rp · 3 years
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heartwoodventures · 3 years
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Primary Access Required: A Thirst For More
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As the members of Heartwood started to gather within the manor they would be met with the Head Medic dressed in rather warm winter attire, the look on her face however showed the news she had wasn't good. Looking around the crowd a soft sigh slipped past her lips as she figured out the best way to tell the news.
"As you all know, an Ishgardian Knight had brought a job for Heartwood. Yesterday Tynos and I had gone ahead to investigate the area to make sure everything was safe. But what we were met with is something we weren't expecting, we came across the body of the Knight who had given us the job, he was found depleted of aether and left for dead in the cold. A paralyzing bullet was found stuck to his armor, the other object found was rather....odd. I have no words for it. It was allagan made but there was flesh around the limbs." She paused a moment. "I am no expert with allagan but if any of you are, Tynos does have the object in question. So please pay him a visit to help us better understand this object, we also have to unlock it somehow, there's a code to it but at the time we're unable to crack it."
The young sorceress Edda peered up from her steaming cup. "...Do you happen to have a copy of the sequence written down?"
Lumarto's ears perked at the mention of allagan-made objects. "Haila and I worked on Allagan contraptions in the past, so we can investigate into the bullet with time. She would obviously have more experience in it than I." Luma said, remaining leaned against the counter.
Amasar furrows his brow. So much of what was said had just gone over his head. He looked around at the others to gauge their reaction to the explanation.
"Apologies but I don't, if you wish I can give Tynos a call after this so that he may bring it to the house so that others can take a look at it." G’lewra offered.
Livia Arkwright shook her head. Allagan was apparently not her strong suit.
"Oh, I don't need to examine the machine directly. I just need it to spit out the aforementioned code." Edda pointed out.
Well, at the very least, Amasar won't feel alone in his confusion. Sval'li's expression is... woefully blank. He's attentive, he just has no clue what's being conveyed. Allagans? That's said in a way that seems like it should hold significance.
Aiswyda Nuthalwyn nods knowingly, feigning understanding. But truth be told, she doesn’t understand the first thing about Allagan thingamabobs and whazzits.
"Aside from examining this... thing, what can we do?" Amasar asked curiously. 
"I wish to go back to this area and see if we can find more of this....thing." G’lewra wasn't even sure what to call it. "Perhaps track where it's coming from and why it's going around draining people of aether."
Full Logs here!
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blooms-of-ice · 3 years
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Wyda is officially retired...for now. She had a good run, and I loved writing for her! GOD the existential dread I felt as I drew closer and closer to running the event that would end her.
Her story continues through another. Give a follow here! :D
I’ll be keeping this blog up as an archive, although I might still post every now and again. But since her arc is done, here goes! An unedited, unfiltered slurry of words-directly-from-brain-to-keyboard about Wyda! I’m warning you, this is true farm fresh to you stuff. And spoilers for many events in FF14. Read on if you dare.
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Strap in, it’s going to be a long and bumpy ride.
Did I say that I love Primals?
Primal lore gives the FF14 devs a lot of creative freedom when it comes to designing bosses. Want the arena changed? Want something/someone to look absolutely wack? Want to spin up a threat without having a villain train for years prior? Bam, primals.
It also gives us, the players, the same creative freedoms when it comes to roleplaying!
The requirements to summon one are humorously low. At first, primals result from misguided and zealous beastmen shenanigans. Ifrit, Titan, Ramuh, Leviathan, Garuda...but then we get a bunch of weird summonings. Like when Ga Bu summons a funky version of Titan through his despair alone. Or when Yotsuyu brings forth Tsukuyomi because she really, really wants to see the world burn. Hell, Gilgamesh just thinks about his friend Enkidu in the presence of some crystals, and that’s enough to bring forth a primal. So I guess the only requirements for a primal summoning are 1) crystals and 2) thinking kinda hard? Strong feelings, especially negative ones, seem to be more effective but then again! What the heck happened with Gilgamesh? Who knows?!
But this is one of my favorite things in FF14. It’s a powder keg of a situation that will, and HAS, gone off multiple times.
Being tempered, meanwhile, is a fate worse than death. You’re forced to change sides and fight for the enemy. You don’t even find peace when you die - tempered souls linger in Eorzea thanks to how messed up they are by the process. But you don’t become a mindless servant either. *Points to Emet-Selch who is....kinda...on your side (???) but also on Zodiark’s side*
Things aren’t nearly as dark now that tempering can be cured. I’m very thankful, since otherwise my campaign would’ve had a very, very depressing ending. One that I originally planned for but STILL. I’m weak. ;_;
Riding off the Rails
Primal lore is flexible. In ARR, the rules are established, but later expansions took those rules and went “Well, what about this? And this? And this?” In other words, this is me admitting that I’m shameless and will stretch this lore until I reach the moon.
Developing Wyda was a ‘chicken first, egg later’ sort of situation. Though trite, I gave her amnesia in order to give myself an excuse for knowing nothing about FF14 lore (and because I was new to roleplaying). When I finally sat down to flesh her out, my mind kept returning to primals. I love ‘em and their potential for drama! So yeah, I was determined to make it work.
There were a lot of questions I had to answer. If Wyda is a primal, then why isn’t she tempering everyone she meets?! How is she getting away with being a ‘normal’ person? And how do I avoid power creep? I know, for a fact, that if I walked into an RP event and just said...hey. My character is a primal, are you cool with that? The answer would be a solid no. Nooooo! I’d tell that to myself! So I wanted to solve these questions in a fair way that would allow others (and myself) to remain immersed in the roleplaying world. Luckily, FF14 lore is like a bottomless chest of building blocks. It was just a matter of stacking them carefully.
Primals are summoned when someone thinks around some crystals (Ah, Gilgamesh...)
The primal’s purpose is based on the summoner’s desires, but with a monkey’s paw twist (Ga Bu’s Titan punching the other kobolds away is indicative of this)
The amount of aether used in the summoning determines how powerful the primal will be (Shinryu being beefy as hell)
Primals can be summoned out of thin air, or be channeled into someone’s body
When a primal is channeled, the summoner needs the Echo to resist (Ysalye and Ryne). Otherwise the summoner is tempered by their own creation.
Now, with those blocks in hand, I started spitballing...and it led me to this thought. If a primal’s purpose is to NOT be a primal, what happens?
Would they know that they’re a primal?
Can they still use their primal powers?
What happens when the primal is based off of someone who still exists?
For Wyda, I chose to swing this way.
Her memory is garbage because she’s a primal based on someone else. Even if you know someone really well, you can’t perfectly recreate/emulate them.
She’s normal-powered because all her primal magic is going towards suppressing her powers. Extremely inefficient. And she’s very human-like because she’s possessing someone else’s body, as opposed to being made purely of primal aether.
Primals temper whether they want to or not - aether leaks, and it corrupts. To solve this for Wyda, instead of leaking aether out of the wazoo...thanks to the nature of her summoning, she just leaks a tiny bit all the time. Not enough to temper.
But I also wrote myself into a corner. If Wyda isn’t going to behave like a primal, then how does she exist for so long? They need a constant source of aether to survive, and she’s not doing primal stuff since she’s too busy being human. And so...the answer is that she doesn’t. Once her aether runs out, then poof.
See? Fun! (But also pain. So much pain.)
Playing with Fire
Eorzea (like most fantasy RPG settings) is a nightmare factory. Most, if not all, who make their living ‘adventuring’ are scarred from what they have to face. For every success story (WoL), there are countless more tragedies (Avere). And even if you survive...who wouldn’t get trauma if you were an adventurer and it was normal for your buddies to be eaten by a beast, tempered by a primal, possessed by a ghost?
Which is to say, Wyda's scars run deep. Shit goes down. 
To repeat that in slightly more words: Wyda is an accidental byproduct of Cravendy’s grief and longing. At her lowest moment, Cravendy (a Seawolf pirate) thinks of her friend Dots and the unfairness of it all. And oops, there are crystals nearby. So now, we got Wyda walking around in Cravendy’s body, thinking that she’s someone named Dots. By the way, Dots is still alive! Very awkward.
Wyda is a denial incarnate. She is Cravendy’s dream for safety, family, and happiness for Dots. But denial does not erase the past, nor does it change how you feel. By existing, Wyda suppresses those feelings for Cravendy and freezes the other woman in the past. With the both of them like this, Cravendy will never accept her trauma and Wyda will be plagued with a stranger’s guilt.
Primal souls are weird. I have no idea where they come from, but they seem separate from the summoner’s. So as Wyda’s influence wanes, Cravendy’s soul begins to resurface. This forces Wyda into a cycle of self-discovery and self-destruction that, unfortunately, convinces Wyda that she ought to disappear. It’s a tragic conclusion she reaches after having her worldview shattered. She’s a copy of Dots, she’s a primal. What’s real, and what’s not? What even matters?
The Power of Love
Love is a persistent theme for all of my characters. For Cravendy, love is why she hurts, so she would rather forget it than bear any more pain. But Wyda is the opposite - she loves too much. When all else is a sham, Wyda trusts that the love she feels is real. And ultimately, this love dooms Wyda and saves Cravendy.
Wyda’s fatal flaw is her self-destructive selflessness. Thanks to being mistaken for Dots all the time, Wyda develops a low sense of self. Then events of the campaign erode that into nothingness. She’s a second rate copy full of brittle memories, she’s a fake! And discovering Cravendy’s sleeping soul only pushes Wyda further into her flaw. Here is my purpose, she thinks! My original! And I’ll save her no matter what, because she deserves to live!
But it’s a mistake. Certainly, Cravendy is saved, but Wyda deserves to be saved too. Although she loves with all her heart, Wyda never learns to love herself and see her own self-worth. She doesn’t understand that her friends don’t share her view of herself - as a worthless copy that can only find value in saving another. Her selflessness loops into selfishness.
Maybe Wyda will come back...She certainly has a lot to learn still!
The TLDR version of all this is that I accidentally pulled a Kingdom Hearts plot with this character, and now I understand, Nomura. I UNDERSTAND WHY YOU BRING BACK YOUR CHARACTERS. ;_;
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second-chance-stray · 2 years
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(( Happy Wydaversary! It’s been a year since retiring the character (which is crazy - it feels like MUCH longer). I wrote a little vignette in Crav’s POV because she has come a long way too! And then after that, some more OOC ranting. ))
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anniversary
If asked, you don't think you can point to the exact moment it happened - when that burning grief you shouldered like an ox's yoke began to cool. When it went from blinding wildfire to smoldering ash, warmth comforting instead of destructive. Your love and loss are indescribably writ upon your soul, and they will never disappear, but you knew that already didn't you? Because that's what she taught you. Your inheritance.
To stop running and be the change that you're waiting for.  To have faith not in absent gods, but in yourself and your loved ones. To forgive yourself for what has happened, is happening, will happen.
The good, the bad, and everything else in between.
You recognize that it's a painfully slow process and that there aren't clearcut beginnings and ends when it comes to growth. Similarly, there are no right answers, but this? This feels right. Life is messy and so are you, and that's okay. What else can you do but face these challenges head-on and do your best? And not a weak "you did your best" excuse after the fact but to actually, earnestly, do your very best. Then, no matter what happens, you can carry on without regret.
Perhaps you're realizing this now. That when you ran from responsibility, it was not only because you feared for what you might mess up for others, but also because you feared being responsible for yourself. You thought that if you didn't care, then the guilt-shame-frustration could be left behind, and yet it only made it worse. But when you finally gave in and became the shoulder others leaned on, you learned to care for them and consequently, yourself.
In truth, you will never forgive yourself for what you did to Dots or Wyda. Forgiveness is not acceptance, however, and you are beginning to make inroads with the latter. They're gone, but their legacy lives on in you. Can you live up to it?
You can. You can. You can.
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OOC ranting commence!
I kind of flip flop between having a “vague goal” and “extremely focused goal” for a character. Cravs falls firmly in the first category, where I knew I wanted her to mature but didn’t have a detailed plan to get there. By design though! And it’s funny because I also didn’t realize her growth until I looked back and went - oh, wow. She’s come a long way and it doesn’t make sense to have her double down on old ways of thinking.
As I’ve said in the past, hers is a journey that starts at self love. Funnily enough, she gets there in a roundabout way - by caring for others who, in turn, care for her. Through this proxy, Cravs slowly comes to terms with accepting responsibility for past actions. It’s never about excusing yourself but about understanding what happened, what to do differently in the future. It’s fine to have outstanding frustrations as long as you at least begin to address it, break it down, deal with it at your own pace.
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second-chance-stray · 3 years
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Trimming the hedges!
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second-chance-stray · 2 years
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Can you spare a heart?
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lettersnorth · 3 years
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They clean up nice
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second-chance-stray · 3 years
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Outfit swap!
While Wyda is a mish-mash of Cravs and Dots, she physically takes more after Cravs. Wyda is (basically) Cravs if she washed her hair, wore dresses, and smiled all the time! However, their body language, demeanor, and fashion sense couldn’t be more different...Which is how they get away with being distinct from one another.
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nutley-rp · 3 years
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nutley-rp · 3 years
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nutley-rp · 3 years
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second-chance-stray · 3 years
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Love will live Love will last Love goes on and on and on
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nutley-rp · 3 years
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nutley-rp · 3 years
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