#Falerin Arcita

[the-wardens-torch]

I feel like I'm being annoying and posting too much, but he just looks so good in this lvl 100 gatherer gear! BTN and MIN at 100, crafters at 92-99... haven't finished the MSQ or even gotten to the last zone.

[elektroyu]

FFxivWrite2023 Participation Prize

for @the-wardens-torch of their beautiful character Falerin Arcita! Go check him out if you're into FFXIV, he's such a lovely and cool guy! This sequence is what inspired this drawing:

Trembling Hands

Hesitate

Wilt

(untitled)

Thank you @sea-wolf-coast-to-coast for hosting this amazing event each year! I'm honored to have been able to participate this year for the first time, even if it was just with an art contribution. ♡

[adeat]

Tris, aka @asphaltvalkyrie / @the-wardens-torch and I have been best friends for a really long time - about 18 years. Thus, I wanted to do something special for her birthday. I thought of doing pictures of her FFXIV character, Falerin Arcita, in fashion model poses, since Tris became enamoured with the true endgame. I found a reference online and thought to depict Fal in these poses alongside some of Tris' favourite Fal glams, plus some chosen by me.

Then real life happened and I never got a chance to finish the pictures. However, right now I'm at home and I have no excuses, so I spent the week to finally finish the rest of the set. I had fun to do these pictures and I hope you enjoy them!

Click on the images for a better view of the quality(?).

-> Strathmore Vision watercolour paper -> Platinum Carbon Ink + Jane Davenport pen -> Ecoline watercolour inks + some of their markers for highlights

[aspected-benefic]

sparklefrisbees.jpg

Guest starring Falerin Arcita @the-wardens-torch

[sworn-unbeliever]

Hanging out with Falerin Arcita @the-wardens-torch!

[the-wardens-torch]

New 7.0 Fal while I wait for my login queue again because my sound died.

In some light his hair looks more gray than black, and sometimes his eyes are a little too reflective and its hard to see the blue, but other than that, I think he fared pretty well! His scars look like actual scars instead of drawn-on lines, the shadows on his face aren't so stark and hard-edged, and his skin just generally looks better in all lighting conditions. He looks a little tired around the eyes in some light, and like he's wearing eyeliner in others, but I think both fit him very well since he'd totally wear eyeliner and/or not sleep for days. I'm sure I'd notice some annoying differences if I put the before and after side by side, but I'm content with being too clueless to notice.

I'm not even to the first dungeon yet, but I'm having a pretty good time so far and I've managed to avoid all of the major spoilers. That said…

-I think Gulool Ja Ja's sleepyhead has ulterior motives and is controlling Zoraal Ja through their shared blood or some shit like that. One brother betraying another, and they share a body... and a son. Would that be fucked up or what? -Koana mentioned secret helpers, and my guess is they're Urianger and Thancred.

[the-wardens-torch]

FFXIVwrite2024: Hackneyed

Prompt #18, Entry #8

Masterpost

((Fal is a LTW specialist, and one of his fortes is making really cool abstract art pieces with leftover bits of leather. Some become useful things like book bindings, weapon sheaths, jewelry, etc. Some of them are just neat artsy things to look at. But they're always eclectic. Also Geva is the head of the LTW guild, if you're not familiar with crafter quests.))

"I'm not sure what you're going to do with all these odd little bits and bobs, Fal." T'Majaan leaned over to set a large basket of irregularly shaped leather scraps down on Fal's home workstation. As he straightened his back again, he caught a glimpse of the space underneath the station… which already had several similar baskets of scraps shoved under it, barely leaving any legroom for the Hyur to practice his leatherwork.

Fal paused awkwardly for a moment, noticing Maj's surreptitious glance before sitting down at the workstation. "Uhh, if I'm being honest I'm not sure what I'm going to do with them, it just… seems like a waste to throw them out." he said, imperceptibly nudging one of the other baskets with the tip of his foot. "Just the same, thanks for saving them for me."

Maj sighed, crossed his arms, and gave a rather paternal shake of the head.

"Its definitely true that the leatherworker abhors waste, but even that damned harpy Geva would throw these away." Maj picked up a bit of sickly orange ziz leather between two fingers to illustrate his point.

"Most of them are too small even to patch a hole in a shoe. Plus, there's at least one score of creature's worth in here if there's a one, and you can't sew a piece of cloudkin leather to a piece of beastskin leather to a piece of gods-know-what leather and expect something to be durable enough for footwear or comfortable enough for clothing."

"…Who said I'm making those things?" Fal said, flashing a smarmy grin.

"I thought you said you didn't know wha…" Maj interrupted himself to wave one hand. Despite his tone and body language, the smirk on Maj's face conveyed that he was more amused this little proclivity of Fal's than he was put off by it.

"You know, nevermind. Just be sure to show me if you pull of anything miraculous, okay? You've really got me curious."

"Promise that if I do I'll be sure to call it 'The Benevolence of T'majaan Tia' then." Fal quipped.

"Hah, then we can both rub it in Geva's face. But if you'll excuse me, I have some monetarists to speak with and I don't want to keep them waiting because odds are they'd find some way to charge me for it."

Fal stood up and hugged the smaller man, and the two patted each other on the back amiably before Maj left through the front door.

Fal dumped the scraps on his workstation desk and sat there staring at them for a few minutes, before moving a few of them this way and that as if playing with game pieces. After a time he had perhaps two dozen that he had arbitrarily singled out, shoving the rest to the side.

They were a very incongruous bunch. …It wasn't the first time he'd done this. He was beginning to think he just liked looking at them for some reason that was utterly beyond him. And looking was usually all he did before just putting everything back in the basket and shoving it under the desk again.

Maj wasn't wrong… What in the seven hells was he going to do with these? He had wanted to say something like "I was a cast-off scrap myself and you took an interest in me" or "we have to honor the animals that died for these" or "I grew up poor, can you blame me for not wanting to waste things?" to make Maj believe he was pursuing some sort of noble cause, but they seemed like such hackneyed excuses. Heroic notions to justify hoarder tendencies.

He stared hard at the few pieces he's chosen, asking himself why he was so drawn to them. The circle of Smilodon leather that was a particularly rich shade of honey brown, the zigzagging strip of Titanoboa leather happened to be snake-shaped, the bit of chimera leather that had an interesting scar on it, the reasons were as diverse as the pieces themselves. And the ways they could fit together seemed infinite. Angular pieces crossed and parallelled one another and radiated into arcanima-esque sunbursts, curved pieces moved fluidly along with one another like ripples on a pond. Here bright Turali colors, there Gridanian earthtones.

Pushing aside all notions of "usefulness," he began to sew.

((Ugh. this one seems dull and forced and probably has errors… but it is inspired by me and my collection of feathers, bones, shells, rocks and other nature garbage that I keep saying I'll make something with and never do, so make of it what you will.))

[the-wardens-torch]

FFXIVwrite2024: Telling

Entry #7, Prompt #14

Masterpost

((ts a tradition of mine to come up with at least one "folktale" sort of story per FFXIVwrite... So this is telling as in... Fal telling a story.))

The forest of the Ja Tiika heartland has a sort of smothering strangeness to it. Its canopy is taller and thicker than anything in the Shroud, the trees having shut out nearly all natural light in their merciless battle for the sun's favor. Despite the vastness of it all, its home to only one city, sparsely populated by a people both weary and wary. I can imagine there were once more cities but they, like small, fragile trees, had long since perished after being shut out of the light.

I saw lots of creatures there, everything from Wivres to walking topiaries to giant carnivorous butterflies. But the one that caught my imagination the most was the Branchbearer; a great birdlike thing, twenty fulms high if it was an ilm. Its silhouette made it look like some kind of incomplete gagana - two legged with a lizard-ish tail and small wings, but with not a muscle or sinew of flesh on it. My first thought was that it was some sort of Ashkin, perhaps an unlucky gagana worn down to its bare bones by the corrupted aether that had sickened the forest many years ago. The thought made me a bit sad, but the longer I looked at it, the more the thing felt… wrong. It was beautiful, but it wasn't so much a bird as an approximation of one. After a time, I noticed that what I thought was bone was actually a thick tangle of vines and bark, scattered with patches of moss that could have passed for scraps of flesh. It seemed to have a ribcage, but the ribs went nearly all the way down the tail, anchored to a longer bone along the bird's belly when they should have been anchored to its spine. Even its wings seemed to bend at an uncomfortable angle, with stick-like projections where flight feathers would have been. And wouldn't the feathers have rotted a long time ago?

The next time I was in Tulliyolal, I asked a Hoobigo woman whom I knew to be a native about those weirdly compelling-yet-off-putting birds. She hesitated to speak at first. Her bright, dark eyes seemed to cloud over just slightly, and the angle of her head dropped ever so slightly. I haven't met enough Mamool Ja to fully understand their body language and facial expressions, but it seemed unmistakably like a gesture of sadness.

"…Those are the trees that grieve for their birds."

She told me that in the distant past, long before she was born, the forest was bright and flooded with gentle, nourishing sunlight. And in the forest there were bright and beautiful birds with feathers of pearly white and iridescent green whose outstretched wings rivaled a peacock's tail in splendor. She said that those birds were the forest's favorite creatures, as they ate its many fruits and travelled great distances with it in their bellies, leaving fresh seeds and fertile soil in their wake. She said that despite their immense size, they could perch on the tiniest and most frail branches with ease, because the forest loved them so much.

But when the meteors came, the water and the soil became polluted, and the forest sickened. Desperate to find enough energy to heal itself, the forest pushed its trees to grew taller and taller, until they blocked out all the other plants. Over time, the dancing dappled glow of sunlight streaming through leaves from above, was replaced with the cold, unchanging light of the landed meteors. Unable to survive in such light, the plants began to die. And as those plants died, so too did the birds who depended on their fruit to live. By the time the forest realized what it had done, the birds had all perished.

And then she told me that in its grief, the forest tried desperately to revive the birds. But sadly, all it had at its disposal was the corrupted aether of the fallen meteors and a few picked-clean carcasses. The birds returned after a time thanks to the forest's love for them, but they were… different. Not exact copies, but memories of creatures of flesh and blood and feather recreated in wood and sap, held together on a scaffolding of rotted bones…

Some of the citizens of Mamook believe that the abnormally fierce branchbearer known as Starcrier may have been the firstborn of its kind, turned mad with its long ages of sorrow and suffering. It was the forest's grief personified, and true to its name, it cried to the stars and raged for what it had lost. Over time, the birds grew more docile, as the forest's grief was softened by the years, and its will sapped by the corrupted aether seeping into its heart.

But every so often, you can still see a branchbearer raise its bloodless wings and cry to the stars.

((Blam! This might be the first entry I've done this year that I'm actually really proud of. As soon as I saw my first branchbearer, they rocketed up onto my short list of favorite FFXIV monster designs and I just had to speculate about how they came to be.

...Collected an awful lot of rarified dark mahogany logs while I was hanging out on the map trying to soak up inspiration too. /$))

[the-wardens-torch]

FFXIVwrite2024: Halcyon

Prompt #6, Entry #4 Masterpost so far

((This thing fought me SO HARD. However, the prompt was to spot-on to ignore considering Fal's father's last name, and the fact that I wrote about names for my last prompt as well. This bit comes directly after this bit, by the way. Which I wrote... too many years ago.))

Uther was already talking about arcanima and what sorts of things his son could do with it, oblivious to the fact that he wasn't listening.

Falerin had managed to still the shaking in his hands, although a pair of sharp blue eyes still seemed to peer at him from the darkened corners of the room. It had been months since he'd had the dream about those eyes, and now, thanks to what his father had just said, he could put them to a person. His grandmother. The Duskwight witch, ever preoccupied with herbs and charms and fortune-telling.

"What was her name?" he asked.

"Didn't you hear me before? I brought you here to show you the possibilities of someone with a unique talent like… yours, not reminisce for what never was and never will be."

When he had said the word "yours," Uther's gaze had lingered on the tiny red glow emanating from just behind Fal's head where Ruby was hiding. Unfortunately the soft reflection of her light against a backdrop of dark hair made her easy to spot in Uther's dimly lit house. Her wings quivered softly against the nape of his neck. She had always had a tendency to hide herself from prying eyes, but that tendency seemed especially prominent around Uther. Fal casually moved a bit of his hair over his shoulder to block her.

"Look. The way I see it, you have a lot to answer for here… I haven't even touched on the fact that you had a kid with a married woman and left him to rot halfway across the world."

Uther sighed. "Her name was Laragenie Alcyone. Its a name that appears nowhere in the annals of Gelmorra, or in the Ul'Dahn citizen's registry. From all I can tell, its just a name for a fish-eating bird. Utterly worthless."

He said it with the callous contempt of a spoiled child given an inadequate birthday gift, even down to the way he crossed his arms after he was done speaking. But the distant look on his face betrayed his real sentiment.

"Honestly, I don't understand why the sudden preoccupation. Of all the things we could be talking about right now, you choose this nonsense?"

Falerin leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms, studying his father's face carefully to gauge his reaction to what he was going to say next.

"Its because I saw her in a dream."

Uther's eyes widened for a split second as he made a nasal sound somewhere between a scoff and a chuckle. Fal wouldn't have even had to be looking directly at him to see that the revelation had caught him off-guard.

"Ah. That would be just like her to still be spreading nonsense even after her own death. She fancied herself an oneiromancer… One who can read the future through dreams. Junk science and parlor tricks, all of it."

Falerin froze. That certainly wasn't the answer he was expecting. Uther picked up the nearest book and shufffled the pages.

"…And did I not tell you that you inherited her eyes? They're practically a mirror image of hers. It's... strange. Your mind was probably reconstructing what you saw when you last saw yourself in a mirror. Not everything has to be a melodrama."

"I see." Falerin mumbled. His father's use of the word "mirror" sent a sort of hollow chill through Falerin's body as he recalled the unfamiliar female voice that had spoken to him in that dream.

…We see one another from opposite sides of a mirror of blood…

Falerin clasped his hands in front of his mouth and resting his elbows on the table to disguise the renewed shaking in his hands.

((Also, kingfisher birds are in the family Alcedinidae, a name that shares the same mythological root as "Halycon," and here's a picture of my personal favorite species because I just love birds so much you guys.))

Photo by whistling wings photography.

[the-wardens-torch]

FFXIVwrite2024: Stamp

Prompt #5, Entry #3

((From when Fal first arrived on the mainland with his mother.))

The red ink of the custom agent's stamp had barely dried, but Falerin's eyes seemed to see past it to the black letters beneath.

The word "Arcita" appeared twice… Once listed as the port of origin, and again where his surname should have been.

Each "Arcita" was written in a different hand… The first penned by a Maelstrom sailor in a rough, hurried hand, and the second by an Ul'Dahn customs agent in a practiced script.

When he'd first boarded the ship in Arcita, his paperwork had been an afterthought. No one felt they needed to nitpick, and sailors hate paperwork. After all, he and his mother were friends of the late Rymmharr Sylbundsyn. No one who had known them or Rymm could imagine them causing any trouble. He even carried with him Rymmharr's exquisite old accordion, left to him in writing when he died.

The arrival in Vesper Bay had been different. What little they owned had been searched mercilessly, everything from his mother's prayer fan to that old accordion, which he'd had to play to prove it wasn't full of stolen crystals or a ceruleum bomb or some other nonsense. After what felt like hours, they seemed content that this incongruous pair could be safely deposited on the mainland.

But there was one last thing, they said. The Hyuran boy's surname. Why wasn't it written on his passport?

He had been about to open his mouth, to sarcastically quip that it was the same last name as his mother's, but before he could speak, his mother had hissed at the customs agent, silencing them both. What a waste of time such a question was. Why couldn't they just go already? There had just been a calamity, for shite's sake. She had family in Thanalan and needed to make sure they were all right. Weren't there more important things to worry about? Her ears had been flat against her head, her golden gaze burning like the sacred flames of Azeyma herself. Even her tail bristled with anger, flipping behind her as if writhing in agony.

Rather than face her ire, the agent had merely written something on his passport, stamped it and shoved it into Falerin's hand. He hadn't had time to look at it then, but once he did…

"Arcita."

His mother had already told him that giving him her last name would make no sense, as female Miqo'te surnames were given by their fathers, and male surnames were only to denote status in whatever tribe the man belonged to. And no, two strangers made family by circumstance didn't count as a tribe. On some level, he'd hoped they had moved beyond that line of thinking. But seeing "Arcita" written so neatly and so permanently dragged him right back over that line, black ink bleeding slightly into red. But it made a blunt, clumsy sort of sense. It was common among Hyurs to name bastards, orphans and people of no particular import after whatever city they were born in. He could have been all three, for all he knew.

But what did a piece of paper matter anyway?

((Wow, I wrote this in about 80 minutes. I think that's some kind of speed record for me.))

[the-wardens-torch]

FFXIVwrite2024: Reticent

Prompt #4, Entry #2

((A long time ago, featuring Fal and his old friend Sunnthota… who ended up pushing him to try arcanima in the future, just the way her father pushed him to try music in the past.))

"You gave up conjury?" Fal blurted, setting his mug of tea down on the table before him and immediately regretting taking such a shocked tone of voice.

"Not as such." Sunnthota fiddled with her spoon, turning it over in her hand. Her pale gray eyes glanced briefly to one side . "Well, yes. I guess I did." she said allowing the spoon to rest against the inside of her cup with a soft clink as she looked back at him.

"I thought you liked being a healer… The only reason I'm still alive after Copperbell is because you were quick enough with your Cure spell to keep everything inside of my skull, eye and all." Fal closed his left eye and ran his index finger gently down his face, tracing the thin ribbon of scar tissue that spanned his face from hairline to eyelid to chin. "And if you're worried about it, this scar is no skin off my nose. Uh, face. In fact, ladies and gentleman both find it very alluring, and I see just as well out of this eye as I did before."

"Yeah, but you were in the infirmary for weeks after that. Our 'light party' broke up and scattered to the 4 winds." Sunnthota's hands balled into loose fists in her lap as her eyes started to mist over.

"Sorry, Sunn… I'm not trying to make light of what happened. Not at all. I've… got my own reasons for wanting to forget that time." he said wistfully. The story of what had happened between him and Alain the last time they'd seen each other was one he still didn't have the nerve to share with anyone.

Sunnthota sighed, dabbing at the corner of one eye with a cloth napkin, careful not to smudge the patterns of blue-green eyeshadow that seemed to get more elaborate every time he saw her and was now threatening to smudge at the touch of an errant tear. She always had a saying about it. When she next spoke, Fal matched her word for word.

"I thought wearing this might force me to learn to stop crying over stupid stuff." they said in unison.

Sunn laughed. "I know I know… I can cry whenever I damn well feel like it and I don't need anyone's permission or anyone's shame." she said, repeating a mantra she'd heard from her father and then again from Fal years later.

"But that's not the point. The point is that yes, I do like being a healer. But… I'd never had a close call quite like that." she set the napkin back down on the table and took another sip of her tea before continuing in a quick cascade of words. "I felt like I had no idea what I was doing. Like nothing was under my control, like the magic was just pure luck. Its not that I don't have faith in the elementals or the land or its aether or any of that other magical spiritual stuff… I just don't want faith to be the first thing I resort to anymore."

"Just look at this." She summoned a small book to her hands with a command word and a snap of her fingers. Despite his lack of experience with magic, he knew a grimoire when he saw one. Though it looked fairly small in her Sea Wolf hands, it was at least three ilms thick and meticulously bound in boar hide and some sort of soft, gray metal. The pages didn't lie straight and even the way they would have if they'd been machine printed.

"I started studying arcanima instead, and it makes so much more sense." she opened the book to a random page.

"Bodies are made up of energy and aether, yes, and that's important to remember. But its not as easy to quantify as… I don't know, the angle between two misaligned broken bones or the velocity of blood through tiny veins in the cornea. I would rather have all of the facts and all of the knowledge and then let faith pick up the rest."

She pushed the tea service aside gently and placed the book on the table, opening it to a random page.

"See?"

On one page a sketch of lightning radiating off in every direction, each branch becoming a smaller and smaller version of itself. On the opposite page, a web of blood vessels following in the same patterns. Both seemed to shimmer slightly like bright fish barely glimpsed in murky water.

"Its gorgeous… Why didn't you become an arcanist first, then?" he asked tentatively.

Sunnthota sighed and paged through the book reverantly. It contained diagram after diagram, some in patterns that echoed and elaborated on the same contours she used when doing her eyeshadow, others that made more comparisons between disparate parts of nature and living bodies, and a wealth of even more complex patterns with precise angles that seemed to radiate magical energy.

"I thought that, well… I could be like my dad." she closed the book sheepishly.

"Well, not just like him. I mean, a free spirit who lived for joy and beauty and song and… all those other things I was never any good at appreciating because I'm always too worried and questioning everything. I thought maybe if I became a conjurer, I could take that joy from the beauty of nature, and that the inner peace would come with it. But it never did. I just… think too much."

"Maybe thinking too much is what you need then." Fal couldn't help but notice that she was smiling in a way he'd never seen when she'd discussed her conjury.

((Abrupt ending and it probably has editing mistakes but I have work in the morning buhhhh.))

[the-wardens-torch]

FFXIVwritePrompt #2: Horizon

Prompt #2- Horizon

Entry #1

"Are you still here? Gods, its like the Archer's guild is rotting… And Luciane just keeps letting it happen by admitting outsiders! If the Twelveswood is on peril, its because of people like you."

The voice had come from behind Falerin's back, and its shrill cadence left no doubt as to who it belonged to. Falerin lowered his bow and stretched his arms languidly, not bothering to turn and look at the Wildwood who was speaking to him. Instead he leaned back against the railing between the lobby and the shooting range.

"Take it up with Luciane then, Silly. She invited me to practice here." he said, pretending to stifle a yawn. He'd learned long ago that the best way to piss people like him off was not with heated arguments so much as casual dismissals. Just the same, hearing that voice brought bile to his throat.

"My name is Silvairre." the Elezen said. His voice was almost a growl.

Fal smiled widely, still not bothering to turn around.

"Oh I know. But believe me, its better than the other things I want to call you." he raised his bow again and took aim while still leaning on the railing, knowing that showing such a disregard for proper Wildwood archery form would irritate the man further.

"Every day we see more and more of you disrespectful, blasphemous, filthy Ala Mhigans. The elementals rejected you for a reason, you know. You fools think you're entitled to our land just because you let yours fall to the Garleans. This would never have happened to the Wildwood." he said, having all the bluff and bluster of an angry chicken.

Falerin took aim carefully, disguising an irritated sigh as a meditative breathing exercise. Turnabout was fair play. He'd told Silvairre he wasn't actually from Ala Mhigo just as many times as Silvairre had corrected him on the pronunciation of his name, to just as much success. The bile in his throat rose even further. Fal knew that he should let the conversation go at that and not engage the man further. But if he'd learned anything from living with the 'Mhigans, it was stubbornly refusing to lay down and die, literally or metaphorically. One could only gracefully evade for so long, especially when the blows were aimed as low as blaming the dispossessed subjects of a mad king for their own suffering.

"You're wrong." he said simply, loosing an arrow, which thudded into the target just a few ilms off-center.

"Remember what Luciane said - right and wrong are merely questions of perspective. And that was a terrible shot."

Fal finally turned around, greeting Silvairre with his wide smile. Hearing him quote the guildmaster was rich. He'd probably already called her a fool more than once that day, albeit behind her back. He was a man who would only grant respect for others if it benefitted him, and even then only in certain situations.

"I know you love the sound of your own voice but do you even hear yourself?" Fal said calmly, crossing one foot over the other and leaning on his bow. "Of course your perspective is shit - you're so far up your own ass that you cant even see out of your own arsehole, not that you'd want to come out of it, what with how much you revel in the smell of your own farts."

Silvairre's face reddened. Fal continued to smile.

"Would that your arrows were as accurate as your insults are vulgar!" Silvairre spat, abruptly turning around and storming out of the guild.

((Okay, you got me. This has fuck all to do with the Horizon prompt. I tried to work the word into that last insult, but "You can't see the horizon past your own arsehole" just sounded too wordy. If this one wins me a prize, I'll abdicate. : P))

[the-wardens-torch]

I posted a couple more Fal vignettes in my Ao3... Including a story in which I use the word "cock." That one got a kudos and a bookmark mere moments after I posted it, but...

Does this happen often on Ao3?

I had intended to post several more (I still have almost 50 to go,) continuing to piece them together in the chronological order of his life. Then I realized that I'm at what is by far the murkiest time period, provided that "murky" means "I didn't feel like writing it." Its the pre-SMN, pre-dad/post Alain, post-mom parts when he's coming out of a depression, rediscovering old friends/making new friends, and figuring out his innate magical talents.

Now the question is whether I just keep posting stories that just ignore important transitional points that I just didn't want to write, or just wait until FFXIVwrite to see if I can fill in this gap the way I haven't been able to for the past 5-9 years.

I just really love this guy is all. I've played this game for 10 years and not a single one of the 3 alts I've tried to write for have stuck with me even a fraction as much as he has.

[the-wardens-torch]

So I bought myself some denim pants and a silver guitar

But I politely told the ladies "you'll still have to call me Sir"

Crappy pics because I need to go to bed, but I decided to level BRD having no idea what the artifact gear looked like. Needless to say I am not disappointed. Its gaudy, mismatched and slightly slutty - aka PERFECT for Fal.

I might have to become a BRD main again... I haven't been one of those since late Heavensward.

[the-wardens-torch]

As a venerable Tweet once said,

"people who celebrate fictional characters' birthdays are annoying, pass it on."

Therefore celebrating your OC's birthday must be doubly annoying, so prepare to be annoyed! The 16th Sun of the Fifth Astral Moon (September 16th, the Day of Spirited Energies) is Fal's nameday.

If real time were passing, he should be… 31 now? But like every soul on Etheirys, he's been in a bit of a Simpsons-esque time bubble since the Calamity, and I never can quite commit to his real age.

Art by @chop-stuff, @adeat, @ninalyncoco, @tenalac, @sassmasterhareth and @vulpine-gf (Not 100% sure about this last one! Let me know if this isn't you, hahaff)

[the-wardens-torch]

Prism

((This one is inspired by real life events. My father was a musician, and before he died - 6 years ago today, actually - he gave his old acoustic guitar to a friend of his… Which made a few of my relatives quite angry, but struck me as perfect.  I don’t play guitar after all. So now instead of being buried in my garage, it helps a queer woman teach music to autistic kids.))

Falerin had his eyes closed, but he could tell by the murmur of voices and the shuffling of feet that he had gathered a small crowd.  Breathing deeply, he moved his fingers across the keys of his accordion, touching each one as if it were a tiny, delicate bird. The melody that issued forth from the instrument was soft and low, and as he sang in accompaniment, his voice was like blue smoke on black velvet. The song was lonely and wistful, a song of sea and sky that seemed otherworldly echoing through the streets of Ul’Dah.

When the last of his song’s ghostly notes had been whisked away on the stiff desert breeze, the small crowd began to disperse.  Falerin graciously accepted their tips,  meeting each with a charming wink or a friendly quip.  The last one to approach him was a Roegadyn woman about his age, who furtively handed him enough gil to buy several decent meals.  When he looked up to thank her, he noticed that her eyes were red, and she was clutching a handkerchief to her nose.

“I can’t have been that bad… Or else I don’t think you’d be tipping me this much.” he said, his brow furrowing with concern over his sly smile.

“I-I’m sorry… Its just…” the woman took a deep breath and twisted her handkerchief in her hands, not meeting his gaze. “I’m sorry to ask this, but does that accordion… I think it was... “ she shut her eyes tightly and paused for a moment  “Does it have a… little carving of the sun on the back?”

Falerin’s eyes grew wide and his face paled slightly.  He knew without even looking that the drawing was there… Crudely but lovingly scratched into the red enamel just behind the keys with a sharp bit of metal. The voice of an old sailor named Rymmharr Sylbundsyn’s voice drifted into his mind on a salt-scented breeze of fond memory.

I scratched it on there on the day she was born because her name means “Sun Daughter.”

“Are you… Sunnthota?”

The woman nodded her head, meeting his gaze for just a second before squeezing her eyes shut as a fresh flood of tears came.

“You know my name… He must have talked about me.“ she said, a wistful smile coming to her tearful face. “That accordion was my father’s. When his accordion didn’t come home with his body I… wasn’t sure what had happened to it.”

“I-I’m so sorry… He, he talked about you all the time… If I’d have known where to find you I would have…”

Fal hesitated, looking grimly at his feet, not able to finish his sentence. Would have what? The old sailor had given the instrument to him with his blessing. He could even prove it with a letter written in the man‘s own hand… But how would Sunnthota feel if she knew her own father had given his most prized possession to someone she didn’t even know? He didn’t want to break her heart any more than it already had been. He took a deep breath, hugging the instrument to him for a long moment.

“If you want it back, its yours. I never meant any harm… An officer gave it to me when they came to send his body home. I-I would have looked for you but all I knew was that you lived in Ul’Dah.”

Falerin had intended to hold the instrument out for Sunnthota to take, but his muscles were paralyzed by the love he had for the wonderful old thing.

Sunnthota closed her eyes and crossed her arms in front of her chest, holding the handkerchief to her face.

“No, no… I’m not here for that. Its…. He would want someone playing it. I-I‘m… happy. If I had it, it would just gather dust.  No one would know how to take care of it, let alone play it. The last couple of times that he was home before he… passed-” -she paused here to take a deep breath, as if just saying that he was gone was like losing him all over again. “-before he passed away a few summers ago, he told me about a Hyuran boy he’d met in the Cieldalaes who could play almost as well as he did. He seemed to think that your talent was being wasted. I… I can see, well, hear, that you‘ve gotten to be even better than he was.” She blew her nose politely and cleared her throat.

“Your name is Falerin, isn’t it?”

Falerin choked back a lump in his throat and nodded, now fighting tears himself.  She had said his name with a reverence one might normally reserve for a long lost family member. As she spoke, something opened in his mind’s eye like a dusty brown moth, spreading its wings to reveal a whorl of heretofore unseen colors.  For the first time in a long while, he was at a loss for words. But in a situation like this, words in conversation were clumsy things; wan and dull.  Recalling a single line of postscript in the old sailor’s hand, Falerin stared down at the rickety, crooked-rayed little sun.

P.S - Her favorite song is The Briar and the Rose.

Concentrating on the whorl of color, Falerin stood up straight and began to play.  That particular song was so familiar to him that scarcely had to think about it, but the lyrics caught in his throat somehow.  As if the moth-turned-butterfly could only escape through his fingertips.  But a gently hollowed-out song was a beautiful place for memories to nest, and perhaps she was imagining his voice singing over the notes the same way he was.  For a brief second, two complete strangers shared a memory.  An overlapping rainbow of two spectrums wrought from the same prism of song.

When he looked up from the song, Sunnthota was watching him with a sad smile. Tears were streaming from her eyes again.  Eyes that he now saw were the exact same frost-gray as her father‘s.  Looking at her, he could almost hear Rymmharr’s voice telling him to press the keys more gently, and smell the aura of spiced rum and sea salt that always seemed to hover around him. Had anyone on Sapphire Avenue been paying attention, they might have noticed which one of them reached out first to hug the other.  Was it the sister meeting her new brother, or the brother meeting his new sister?

It really didn’t matter.

((And here’s your reminder that every work leading up to this is on my Ao3))