#ffxiv nixie

[willowwhiskershop]

some ffxiv minion charms ive been working on c:

[idanwyn-et-al]

There was a fair maiden/she lived all alone. (The Nixie's Tale, Part 2.)

For Eras, a geas binding the Nixie has prevented from revealing her story in full. As her current crew and friends continue to unravel this geas, the Nixie creates these crystalline memories; they are available for any to access within the ship.

((♪ ))

I was a magician.

This is what I remember, second. Lullabies: a babe’s first memories, dim and wordless like moss beneath the towering boughs of one’s mother. The spark of aether: a babe’s second impressions; a connection to life itself, freedom and cage in the same roving package, like one’s father. Scents of one’s first surroundings; the cleats that secure the mooring ropes of recollections, separating one from mother and father, becoming one’s own person with one’s own perspective.

Gentle, everyday gifts from the gods; the hallmark of the Age of Prayer, when I was born. They lived in everything around us: the crackling embers of the hearth; the eddies of wind that heralded weather’s changing; the thousand-thousand songs of mycelial filaments connecting plants beneath rich black soil. Too, they lived in spears of levin that rent blossomfruit trees asunder; the rustling of carrion birds picking scraps of scaled flesh from my father’s skull; the spiderwebbing cracks of ice across the waves that heralded the return of the Autumn Queen’s reavers. The shamans of my island walked closest to the gods and all their boons and burdens, but to know the gods was all of our birthrights. Yet another gift of ours that the reavers claimed as their own.

If only I had known that they were not alone in their rapacious appetites. That in comparison to the great Empire that fished me up from the sea Eras later, the Autumn Queen was no greater than a hedge witch. But even though I was a magician, the gift of clairvoyance was not bequeathed unto me, when I still walked the land to which I was born.

My final act as Himawari, the girl with cedar-green skin and sand-white scales, was to trap the Autumn Queen’s fleet within the shamans’ great undersea temple, calling upon the nixie-spirits of the river delta to aid me. The ships are still there today; suspended, half-broken, their crew members frozen for thousands of years within my song, augmented by the ice they carried in their northern blood. Because I was not a shaman, I, too, was trapped in this song of my own making; rolled within clear blue crystal like a grain of sand within an oyster’s protective pearl. I was cast away from my ancestral home and foes alike, trundled by the ocean’s currents along the seabed, the last glimmers of sunlight above receding until all that remained was the dim blue glow of my self-made prison.

I thought every thought that my mind could conjure. I clung to language; to spells; to lullabies and roving freedom and the smells of home and hearth. I tried to remain who I was; tried to remain part of the land and all its gifts, even as the great, silent beasts of the dark drifted past me, testing my crystal-pearl with teeth and tentacles. Finding it unbreakable, some carried me as an aegis; others carried me as a lure, using me to draw in half-blind creatures of darkness starving for light. Over time, I forgot my shape; I was nothing but blue crystal, born of a now-lost tribe and the spirits they shared life with. There was neither past nor future; only each moment, stretching out in blue-tinted darkness, its unbroken sameness occasionally jostled by some leviathan of the depths.

I was a magician trapped within my own threads of magic. An errant appliqué separated from the greater tapestry of the frozen reavers and their vessels, my physical form unravelling within the crystal-pearl, my flesh taking on qualities of the life that surrounded me. I hungered like they did, you see; to remain alive, despite the improbability of such a goal in crushing blackness.

One day, an unfamiliar sound scraped my crystal-pearl, harsher and sharper than teeth. I remembered a sensation I had forgotten; that of ascent. I was rising through the waters, clutched in some sort of shining claw. My crystal-pearl rotated within the claw until my eyes faced the surface, and I saw light. Impossibly-bright after the abyss, it grew nearer and nearer, partially occluded by a dark form riddled with red and blue lines of a different sort of light. I was pulled above the waves for the first time in centuries, and onto the deck of what I would later learn to be a battleship of the Allagan Empire.

They studied me, the men and women of the Empire, from outside the crystal-pearl. I was moved often, far from the sea, sometimes even into the heavens above. I could not understand how this was possible; at first, I thought these were the gods I dimly recalled from my youth, wearing elaborate robes and examining me with what I assumed to be holy relics. Once, I saw myself projected onto a screen in the middle of the air. I would not have known it was me if the tattered remnants of my colorful island robes hadn’t been floating around my… fins?! I had begun to change; to take on the physical qualities of the depths in which I’d tumbled for so long. My legs had begun to fuse into a finned tail, just like the nixies of the river; my pale scales were now the same color as my green skin; the webbing between my fingers, always present on those from my home isle, had grown larger, and each finger was tipped with squid-beak claws.

I did not know what they sought from me. After hundreds of years in the ocean’s solitude, there always seemed to be too much happening at once; my mind could not keep up. They spoke to me, sometimes; drilled tiny holes in my crystal-pearl and fed snaking tubes within them to reach me. I did not feel any pain; I had not felt anything since my own spell collided with the Autumn Queen’s protections and trapped me within my crystalline home. I did not understand the Allagan language, at first; but they kept me for so very long, and eventually I understood more than I did not. I watched some of their researchers, as I learned they were called, go from youth to old age before vanishing, replaced by a new crop. Sometimes, there were copies of the same researcher over and over again; clones, brought about in the Empire’s later years. It is difficult to recount these things now with the knowledge that hindsight brings; at the time, it felt like being in the deep sea all over again, with no concept of past nor future, only the brightly-lit chaos of each day, self-contained.

I was a magician, and now my magic was theirs. Another rapacious empire, come to claim the gifts of my birth.

Of all those who researched me, one was preeminent. I do not know what he looked like before he wore the elaborate plumed hat, the silver skull-like mask with chains for a mouth, the riotous varicolored coat. Amon, he was called, and he assured me he would give me purpose. He said I was a special being, indeed; that I would assist one Master Sari in his most holy endeavor; to lay enemy magicians to waste, that the Allagan Empire might reign forever more.

Amon gave me a voice; the voice I still bear to this day, when I am not in my own domain. It is not Himawari’s voice, I do not think; but then again, I do not remember what I originally sounded like; only that I was a musician, and a magician. Over the centuries, my crystal-pearl had absorbed the endless droning of the clipped-emotionless-mechanical voices around me; now, my voice was another in the chorus. My physical form within the crystal-pearl continued to grow and change; I knew this because the researchers became smaller, more distant, until eventually, they built walkways, each a story apart, so they could access all of me.

Master Sari took over the project. He was a magician, too; a powerful one, who had learned how to conquer what he called summoners, magicians from another isle, now under Allag’s yoke. I knew that I should be upset about this, but the grain of sand that was Himawari had not yet had time to lament this ironic twist of fate. As he settled me carefully within the center of a half-constructed ship tethered to an isle floating above the clouds, he told me of my great duty, zealous rapture enlarging his eyes. I was to bear his own summoners into battle against the remaining Meracydian insurgents. I would be a living ship’s core that could connect with each carefully-crafted soldier, tribes of summoners conscripted and corralled, their birthrights used against their former countrymen.

“It will help them to be able to refer to you by name, my dear. What is your name, exactly?” He paused, hands above the console, his self-constructed summoner’s horn pointed right at me. It was the first time any Allagan had ever asked me that question.

I was a musician, long ago. I was a magician, more recently, but still long ago. I could not remember my name, but I could remember my magicks. “Nixie”, I replied, in the voice Amon had given me; the voice for a creature molded in equal parts by the ocean’s ink-black crucible and the empire that had harnessed the sun's refulgence.

[nshi-ao3]

And here is a little sketch I did for the surprise baby Y’shtola!

[rowan-stitches]

new pattern available in the shop <3 froth and foam!

[hazelkjt]

"Pleaseeeeee, Y'shtola?" "No." "C'mon, just once. Just show me how to do it once!" "My familiar is meant to help locate Zero in the Thirteenth should we return and for emergency communication to the Source. It is NOT for you to talk through and distract her whenever you start missing her. I am sorry about your romantic circumstances, but I will not allow such blatant misuse of my own magic." "I'll even take the 'froth and foam' version. I'm begging you here!"

[archer3-13]

Ah you finally saw her cute familiars!

the end chant for summoning them is also perfect. i love them. please give me one y'shtola.

[commodorefluffypawz]

Drippy says don't forget to stay hydrated and take breaks! :]

Sticker available in my Etsy shop!

[trybard]

mug :)

[7marichan714]

🫧Water, water, froth and foam🫧Drippy pin design 🫧

MY COMMISSIONS INFO

[clea-dessendre]

finally finished the msq up to dawntrail last night (after about a week of trying to get groups for the trials lmao)

so I found the whole thirteenth storyline really boring before I stopped playing ffxiv last year and coming back to it... it's still kinda boring. it's not *as* boring as it was, but I think it's helped when you're not playing little bits and pieces in the patch drops.

I just found it hard to care too much about azdaja's fate and zero bounced between being likeable and interesting and then kind of flat. golbez wasn't compelling until the last few quests (and even then it was too little too late - I mean he was actually a kind of emet-selch figure but without any of the character depth emet had). it seemed really lacking in any notable character moments from the main crew. and the humour was missing. it became super earnest, especially re: zero's shift into mini wol. and that was fine and all, but just kind of eh.

things I did like:

learning more about the thirteenth and its fall

the dungeon where you go back to the contramemoria and play through golbez's memories

y'shtola revealing she changed the incantation for her nixie and then threatening wol and estinien into silence about the old version

GAIA ACTUALLY REAPPEARING AND BEING VOICED though right at the end and with the whole 'you should have asked me for help' YEAH WE SHOULD HAVE WOW WHAT A THOUGHT SQUEENIX

that moment when they're talking about the trust and belief in someone displayed by clasping their hand (like a handshake) and wol thinks about zenos reaching out to them as he died (made me a little feral!!!!!)

but the big thing that seemed off to me was that... this kind of felt like a big side quest? I kept waiting for the moment where this would tie to a bigger story and then they were like 'ok all done bye zero'. we didn't even get any significant payoff in terms of establishing cross rift travel? and THEN the dawntrail msq started.

speaking of the dawntrail stuff... I'm also kind of 'eh' about it. I liked that they actually stressed that maybe it's not a great idea to just jump into a foreign country's power succession process and that you know very little about the person whose claim you might be supporting. I like that krile is finally getting a chance to shine (though I am FURIOUS about g'raha staying behind). but I'm not super invested atm. the only thing I am very curious about is what thancred and urianger are up to (besides being unable to stay apart).

and i'm sorry but pictomancer looks kind of ridiculous

[willowwhiskershop]

Just added some mini charms to my shop !! Final Fantasy 14 minions that are perfectly sized at 1.5 inches to take with you anywhere !! ✨

3 styles to choose from: Paissa Brat, Drippy & Soot Bunny

(LINK)

[idanwyn-et-al]

Where the seas make themselves seen.

I changed Idanwyn’s surname due to many, many RP developments! Now to update all the carrds.

[fantasydoctoratesquad]

been enamored with drawing Little Guys recently

[elizabethrobertajones]

Oh, Custom Summoner Options Question pt.2:

If your WoL was raised a Sharlayan Arcanist Nerd like Urianger, with his custom Amber Carbuncle or Alphy with his thematically appropriate Moonstone and Obsidian Carbuncles, which specific gemstone would your WoL have spent way too long transforming into a pretty Carbuncle? :D

[radigalde]

Familiars: Master Matoya Nixie

[electrocandii]

Drippy commission for @xxlimei on Twitter!