#☉:ﾟ* ℍ𝔼𝔸𝔻ℂ𝔸ℕ𝕆ℕ𝕊 .

[fourteenth-seat]

paion being split into 9 shards instead of the usual 14 is not just because his aether was That Immense due to being an unfathomably old interstellar entity, but also a direct reference to tolkien's "nine mortal men doomed to die." whether in their past or current lives, all of paion's shards have more or less been what one could term as "great kings of men."

[fourteenth-seat]

the seat of azem is less of an honor or promotion for paion as it is a way for amaurot and its government to maintain a semblance of keeping paion in check and monitoring him, as well as trying to put him in a situation where they're more confident that he'll use his powers for good. given paion's history of having accidentally created massive, powerful creatures that were similar to terminus beasts in nature (that venat and other members of the convocation at the time had to team up in order to take down) as a child + soulsinging not being very well understood or studied outside of aeolia, his powers can be inadvertantly destructive and he's very mercurial and kind of unstable at best, so you wouldn't necessarily think that he'd be the #1 candidate for any seat on the convocation, (aside from maybe altima due to his singing.) like instead of paion fucking off into the wild and doing whatever he wants, they give him a government job for the sake of having more of an excuse to monitor and control his actions.

i wonder if laha.brea specifically had mixed feelings; i feel like he might've been one of the first to speak against the notion bc as paion's adoptive father, he's seen first hand the kind of accidental mass destruction paion is capable of, though he might've also been proud to see his foundling elevated to such a status.

[fourteenth-seat]

well, here it is 😭😭 it took forever to make but. here we are! the sound of aeolian creation magic (specifically paion’s.)

more specifically, i'm playing with the idea of this being the sound people hear when paion is using his azem summoning invocation, but idk. i’m not married to it yet. it could just as easily be the sound of him having an emotional meltdown on the verge of transformation, as there really is just sort of a frantic and extremely emotional vibe to it.

additionally, the ‘laaaaaaa’ bits are actually what the aeolian language physically sounds like; they don’t make ween-woon noises the way amaurotines do.

[fourteenth-seat]

paion listens to gossip not because he actually gives a shit abt gossip (and arguably, he ends up overhearing it anyways even when he's not intentionally trying to listen) bc he wants to know his friends' eating habits and their fav foods without having to ask them.

anyway uhhh putting doom and tragedy aside for a moment....what are yall ancient muses' favourite foods and beverages, and would paion possibly have reason to know about them?

[fourteenth-seat]

things that live in my head rent free: the shoebill being emet's familiar (or his creation in some capacity) and him sending it to keep watch over paion (and sometimes to harangue paion whenever paion annoys him too much.) paion is mortally afraid of it for he longest time, because it doesn’t seem moved by his voice and it just sits there and glares at him.) for the longest time, paion doesn't know whose goddamn creature it is until one day it flies up to him and perches on his shoulder, and he pets it. and paion is like my GOD, that thing was yours the whole time?? and emet is just like of course. didn't you know? 😏 so paion gets revenge on him by creating the first ever kookaburra. thus, the shoebill gets a very noisy friend too!!

[fourteenth-seat]

paion was definitely a warder in pandaemonium for a short time after serving as something of a go-between for athena and the other warders (although he was transferred to elpis due to the lack of authentic sunlight down there having an averse impact on both his mood and abilities) but he kept his funny crystalbelt thingie from that time bc it reminds him of his adoptive family when he’s out somewhere on a particularly unpleasant journey and keeps him going :^)

[fourteenth-seat]

very enamored with the notion that all of azem's little fragments retain speicific aspects of their original personality and/or they possess misc. isolated talents of paion's and that becomes sort of a guiding aspect for each of their lives. for example, i think ardbert is the only one out of all of paion's fragments who can actually cook. he also has paion's proclivity for chattiness and extremely shitty puns. abbas (my wol) has paion’s cryptic, poetic, goofily quasi-Shakespearean dialogue tendencies and is good with most instruments. i know xande doesn't technically count since abbas is simply a continuation of that soul fragment that exists on the source but i think he had paion's penchant for weird solutions and their strong disregard for rules and convention.

[fourteenth-seat]

i'd like to think that the child whose creation magics ran rampant whom venat saved (as mentioned in A Friendship of Record) was actually none other paion himself!

paion struggles with creation magic not because he lacks talent at manipulating aether -- he's actually quite adept at it. the issue is that he lacks discipline, and he's just so emotional and unstable as a result of his singing (tbh paion is arguably worse than hermes when it comes to being extremely emotional and emotionally unstable.) he generally needs to sing or produce sound in order to use magic, that's just how he is. whenever he tries to use magic without singing, the results are NEVER as good or impactful. i also don't think he has the patience or desire to change that.) his singing entails the invoking of emotions he's not actively allowd himself to experience. conceptually speaking, its a bit similar to what dark knights do by harnessing their inner darkness to protect others -- except in this case, its harnessing the power of one's voice and one's emotions and combining them to perform magic. among aeolians, this is both an instinctual occurrence and something they train themselves extensively to harness -- but paion never recieves the requisite formal training in how to harness his voice and emotions, and due to the fact that he's immensely gifted with it due to him being a literal reincarnation of the first aeolian, this makes for an incredibly volatile and dangerous situation. not to mention he would’ve been a literal child when this happened....with lahabrea and athena as his adoptive parents....YIKES.

when paion invokes creation magic, it’s a very slippery slope of having his mind wander, or having his own music trap him into an emotionally destructive feedback loop that results in him essentially going into a frenzy, singing until he passes out, which results in him creating incredibly intricate, giant, hostile monster. i think this came about because athena might’ve pressured little paion into creating something too soon for his own good on account of seeing the immense power and latent potential of his innate gift for sound-based creation magic, and this was ultimately the result.

[fourteenth-seat]

thinking abt how paion desperately wanted a partner and to have baby soulsingers with them and how that probably never happened, thinking abt how he recorded his last wishes and desires and his life’s story on his amalista (songstone) and how his amalista (along with many other aeolians’ amalistae) survived the sundering thanks to the convocation attempting to preserve records and memories of their existence after they all sacrificed themselves to zodiark willingly, and thinking abt how one of the unsundered DEFINITELY found and possibly kept paion’s amalista, which would’ve contained all of paion’s honest feelings and intentions towrd that person, and how listening to the soulsong recorded on the amalista would induce echo-like visions and phantom sensations projecting images of the future paion wanted for them, conveying all of this information to the listener in that way and how paion recorded his last song well in advance of his own death because He Knew It Was Coming and. yeah

[fourteenth-seat]

i am a huge sucker for characters that go absolutely crazey when they're truly upset or grieving. paion grieves with his entire body and experiences sorrow and anguish on a physical level, to a visceral extent . when he's in pain, he's in pain, and there is absolutely no question about it. the word ‘hysteria’ does not even fully encapsulate it. he self-isolates for a while, ensuring that none will be privy to his anguish and just...loses it in solace. he'll cast himself on the ground after tearing off his clothes, he entire body writhing, twisting and coiling in pure agony, half-wailing, half-singing seemingly endless and excruciating lamentations.

idk. he's a lot like the way the phoenix is described as singing mournfully and bashing itself against the ground only to rise up again and grieve more.

[fourteenth-seat]

i think paion would finally live up to the "traitor 14th" expectation that everyone has of azem and formally, overtly betray the convocation (which he does not do in his canon, as i've said) if he were ever an ascian because i just don't see him being okay with what the ascians are doing, even if it's for a cause he would empathetic and understandable; even though lahabrea has essentially been a father to him, and even if we factor in a potentially shippy context with either emet or elidibus. he is literally just too somft and loves the star and its creatures too much, even if they're all horrible, scringly wrong-sounding little versions of what they should be. however, ascian!paion keeps this sentiment for a long time, being generally nonverbal, nonexpressive and almost never sings (partly because his sundered vessels die horribly whenver he tries to; you will pry the "frail sundered body cannot handle wildly advanced ancient magic" thing from my cold dead hands, especially as it concerns something as physically taxing as aeolian sound magic.)

out of all the unsundered, paion would remain the closest to his old self despite it all (which i generally explain via time travel and him not being properly tempered,) but even in the context of him being tempered, i still feel like he'd be a lot less fanatic and bent to zodiark's will...a bit like when we encounter hythlodaeus in mare lamentorum, who isn't yammering on about zodiark/the world unsundered/how unfair it is the way the other sacrificed ancients are and he just approaches us as a friend (and i have a lot of headcanons abt that but this isn't the right blog to discuss them LMAO)

[fourteenth-seat]

paion is like an elder scrolls game player character because he’ll eat random plants and stuff to figure out what effects they’ll have and what they’re like.

[fourteenth-seat]

some paion cooking and misc. food-related hcs (courtesy of @seatedsacrifice​!)

paion is something of a gourmet. he is absolutely meticulous and exacting when he cooks -- and yes, he does actually cook to some extent, combining varying degrees food amalgamation magics with the art of manual cooking. as he is a huge proponent of variation, this allows for each meal experience to be slightly different; with no two meals sounding or tasting quite the same. since the act of manually cooking tend to be a more drawn out process, paion is able to enjoy the various sounds that might not have otherwise been made if he'd simply used the more instantaneous process of food amalgamation magics alone. the sounds made during cooking are pleasant, therapeutic, and stimulating for paion, often soothing his easy-wracked nerves. he tends to speed up cooling, heating, and setting times with magic however, as he is not particularly patient when it comes to the parts where you just have to sit and wait. during intervals where he has no choice but to wait for the best results, you can catch him engaging in bizarre theatrics in the background, striking strange poses, doing bizarre little dances, or performing acts of fitness such as lifting magicked weights. that said, he is more considerably patient when he’s actually involved and immersed and the process. he would absolutely make those oddly aesthetically pleasing cooking asmr videos you find on youtube. however, he cannot stand having anyone else in his kitchen whilst he is cooking, and may become agitate or even hostile if someone attempts to communicate with him while he is cooking, or simply enter the kitchen while is cooking.

meals paion makes tend to be a feast for multiple senses, as paion enjoys food that makes satisfying sounds (such as fruits and vegetables), but also ones that are bright or appealingly-coloured. one of his favourite ingredients is honey, although he is mortally afraid of bees. he delights in creating what some may judge to be eclectic but nevertheless delicious combinations.

post-sundering, all of paion’s shards retain his incredibly large appetite, although none of them can cook, with the sole exception of ardbert, who can manage to make at least a four-star meal out of a random scrinkly little fish found in one of norvrandt’s lakes. a single meal for paion could probably feed several average people, and the same applise for many of his shards. his sundered incarnations on the source tend to have the largest appetites, however. during the early days of the allagan empire, emperor xande was rumored to have prized food above that of the ever-changing tide of battle, and was more than happy to lend his knowledge of his newly-developed art of aetherochemistry to aspiring culinarians, in order to expedite and improve upon inefficient old cooking techniques. in contrast to paion (who was fond all foods), xande favoured savoury and spicy foods, and was said to have scorned all things sweet, with the sole exception of honey.

[fourteenth-seat]

some misc. sinday tidbits.

paion is supposed to have nip, hip, and navel piercings (but it's hard to find mods for his specific body type so the screenshots are only gonna give so much  -_-). also, if you were expecting him to have a super huge d!ck then i’m sorry, but he’s literally intersex (and i don’t subscribe to the bbc stereotype bc its fetishistic and racist, especially for darkskin black masc ppl; and in general the unhealthy obsession we have with d!ck sizes as a society is also very harmful to trans and intersex ppl...not to mention that lot of it stems from toxic cishet male ideology toward women...but that’s a discussion for another time.) due to this, he doesn’t have any weird genital preferences with his partners and he’d only lay with someone who felt the same. but as for the burning question of “what does paion have down there?” well...only people who ship with him will find out!

paion is also neither submissive nor dominant -- or perhaps you might say that he is both in equal parts, depending on the situation! he is a true switch with no lean and will go with whatever suits his fancy at the moment. he’s picky about who he lays with and would prefer to have a partner that genuinely loves him before trusting an individual with his body. he also sings during sex sometimes, and is super big on aftercare. he will absolutely make his partner breakfast the next morning and prepare them a bubble bath or smth.

[fourteenth-seat]

since, the echo is a fraction of the power of the ancients, paion's songs (as well as that of other aeolians) can trigger visions in those who listen to his songs (akin to what the WoL and the scions experience.) and since his voice and his songs are shaped by the culmination of his emotions at the time and his experiences...yeah. that's why aeolians are very strict about not listening in to songs meant for a specific person, because their songs can literally cause you to see things about their feelings and experiences aren't meant for you to see. it's part of how aeolians communicate with each other, and part of why they have such an emphasis on honesty and authenticity.  it's a very raw, direct form of communication and it is (or can be) very intimate.

thus, the act of singing is not only immensely powerful, but also immensely personal. paion isolating himself where he thinks people aren't likely to come across him and listen to him is done for a reason, usually because he's singing in a way that is the equivalent to him venting or talking to himself.

[fourteenth-seat]

on Apollon, The Music (Paion’s first ever incarnation upon Etheirys)

Apollon (alternately known as "The Music" or "The Tuner"), a recurring figure from Aeolian legend -- and indeed, legends from civilizations all over Etheirys -- was most likely a primordial ancient born when the star and mankind were still very young. when asked who he was, he would often reply with something very cryptic, usually to the effect of  "I am the music. The one who plays. Who transcends time. Who fulfills the word with sound." He was, for whatever reason, incredibly gifted with aether acoustics and very powerful at using song-based magic. there were many who theorize that Apollon was the closest thing to a living embodiment of sound suffused with light-aspected aether (since nobody really knows exactly how souls come to in existence, save that they are comprised of aether, and that sound appears to be a force that can be used to manipulate aether.) There is no account of who he is or where he came from, but it's generally that he was among the first of what could be called men upon the star. he travelled all across the star and taught people how to sing and pull sound into music, and for those could not sing, he taught them how to make and use instruments (the structure and function of instruments being something both the music and those he worked with all just kind of figured out together through trial and error.) it's likely he did all this because he was attempting encourage people to attain some level of harmonization with the sound of their souls, though he soon found that no sound of anyone's contrivance would ever match the sounds of their aether and their souls. he is said to have been able to hear problems and potential conflicts before they are, and would arrive inceptively to try and prevent them. he led a small group of potentially warring ancients (who would ultimately become the Aeolians) to the isle of Aeolios, where most of them would settle down to keep a watchful vigil over its supermassive volcano.

The Music lived far longer than your average ancient, likely out of his own choosing, until one day, out of either boredom or exhaustion, he sang a very incredible song to his loved ones before disappearing into a cave near the Aeolian Tear and was never seen or heard from again (he basically laid down for nap and gracefully surrendered his soul to the star.) before this, though, he used his voice etch many of his experiences upon a very large crystal, which was the first aeolian amalista in existence (amalistae being the crystals that aeolians record their voices and memories on to pass on to loved ones, and for posterity and information’ sake, since aeolians scorn the written word.)

The music is Paion's first ever incarnation upon the star, since reincarnation is literally just a fact and function of souls existing in FFXIV. Paion's father named his child for this figure from Aeolian legend, as Paion has flowing red-gold hair, something which the original apollon is said to have possessed (although it is debated whether Apollon’s hair was golden or red.) Most Aeolians believed that Anaxagoras was The Music’s reincarnation, and they don’t recognize Paion as such until after he saves his people and breaks The Music’s amalista simply by singing at it (as it was believed that only a voice that could match The Music’s could break his amalista.)