#ysayles so fkn cute

[shivasdarknight]

So these are mostly for myself, hence it being just. Wherever I was standing, but I've got some fun reference photos for Surkie and her tanking looks over msq (HVW and on). Plus, Ysayle minion being cute af as usual

(images below the cut because there's a lot)

So let's start with Heavensward.

This is when Surkie first picked up tanking and was learning how to be a Dark Knight. While not the main outfit she wore as a WoL, this ensemble she picked up to not stand out as much would just kinda become part of her usual clothing. The Dreadwyrm Claymore was her main weapon, as this was when she still had access to the weird summoned weaponry from dealing with Bahamut (lingering pact that Ammut had made, it reawakened in her). What's most notable here is the armor, which is a conjured set that she manifested to better hide herself while running around taking out Temple Knights or other jobs (and then eventually hits for Aymeric and his safety). This was not her main class at the time, but she would sometimes pull it out (with the first outfit) around the others of the og WoL crew. To everyone but them, a few of the WoL-adjacents, Sidurgu, Rielle, and Aymeric, no one had any indication that she was this new Dark Knight.

But that Kinda shifted with post-Heavensward.

This is immediately after the fight with Nidhogg. Surkie lost her ability to be a Dragoon from her injuries, but found that her conjured weaponry had warped substantially due to Nidhogg's body being composed this raw primordial power. Seeing as her conjured arsenal was based in a bond with Bahamut, it was susceptible to Nidhogg's aether and corrupted it to take after him. She has been unable to conjure those weapons since (there's one exception in enw, but otherwise she's stuck like this).

Seeing as this is when she begins to seriously take up being a tank, this becomes her public identity. This is around the time she gets the suit of black armor (the behemoth king one) that would replace her previous image as a WoL. It's often described as wraith-like, and it just kinda became synonymous with her. If you notice, she's still got the braid she adopted from Ysayle. She's still down Really bad.

Which makes post-Stormblood hurt.

This is the full adoption of Dark Knight as her identity, seeing as she got severely fucked over during Stormblood and Really can't be a Dragoon anymore. Between her injuries, past-self bullshit, Zenos bullshit, etc., it overwhelms her and in a moment of dissociation and dysphoria, the lops the braid off. ...Which sends her into a panic and keeps her from doing anything else. She gets Lyse to salvage her hair as best she can, and it's Lyse's idea to add the two braids on the side. The beads and feathers were also her idea. One braid is held together with the pale blue ribbon that Surkie got from Ysayle; the other is a red one she got from Lyse. Both are hidden by the beads, but regardless the sentiment still stands: less keeping one braid to mourn someone she can't publicly talk about, and more about those they'd lost altogether as it'd well exceeded just one person they were mourning. Kind of a physical representation of that saying in XIV of "for those we have lost; for those we can yet save".

She doesn't really change much from here during Shadowbringers, but she is affected by Shadowbringers.

Very minor change here, but her left eye (our right) becomes scarred with light aether. It also somewhat destabilizes her Horde weaponry for a while, which is a scary fucking thing for her. She's got a lot more scars under the armor, but this is when she begins to refuse to wear anything that shows off her back because of the damage from the lightwarden's aether. She also will not show off her right side (our left) because of the multilayered scar there.

Post-Shadowbringers comes with a weapon change.

Part of why she readily accepts this is because of the damage to her conjured weaponry, but the other part is it's from Altan. While Surkie was on the First, Altan was working in Bozja and on the resistance relic restoration project. But unfortunately, she gets grievously injured right before Delubrum Reginae, meaning Surkie has to step in. When she initially goes to Gangos to check on things, she's met with an unconscious Altan and it really fucks with her. More so when W'khittri and Bajsaljen give her the recreated weapons, Woeborn and Dreizack Recollection. Atlan was only able to get Dreizack to awaken, but had specifically worked to give Surkie both a weapon she could immediately use, and something to maybe help get her to work towards being a Dragoon again. ...So obviously, she adopts both weapons because her sister went out of her way to restore them and wound up losing both of her arms in the process (literal arms, like flesh and bone).

And then towards the end of 5.55, Surkie finds out she's pregnant and she sits out of things for a While. And part of this has her not taking care of herself as much because she's just trying her best to deal with Everything Else. Which is how you get her Endwalker look.

Which is mostly just. Her hair grew out severely. It's still got the two braids, it's still got the ribbons and their meaning. She's just kinda let herself go and keeps a mullet now. Not much else changed, because the significant one is actually at the very end of Endwalker, when the fight with Zenos busts her armor.

Which of course leads to:

Surkie's own aether ate away at the integrity of her original armor set and she's frankly lucky it didn't break sooner. The fight with Zenos pushed it to its limits, and the metal is completely unusable as a result of how unstable it is. This set was kind of a surprise? She went to H'naanza to see if her armor could be repaired (see something Surkie wasn't), but it was a mess and unworkable. H'naanza tells her she'll figure something out, and Surkie comes back to this set, which was a combined effort from a lot of skilled folks to give her something that could withstand her wild aether and not break down. Woeborn is stable for now, but she does end up worried that she might end up breaking it, too. And that would destroy her.

So in part to alleviate the burden of that weapon, she does get a new one forged along with some lighter traveling gear:

So this is the look Surkie's going into Dawntrail with. The other armor is obviously still something she keeps, it's just more...serious armor? This is more with traveling in mind. I need to figure out how she gets this claymore since the Manderville quests are not at all canon to her, but regardless it's a bunch of stuff meant to withstand her crazy aether while also facilitating her ability to shift into a demonic form (a form that was influenced by her original set of armor that got busted).

but yeaaaaaaaaaaaah lets see what Dawntrail brings to her growth as a tank main