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[xiv-nightshade]

i was exploring the rising stones during 2.X. msq and found five women fighting over thancred

[xiv-nightshade]

A Nightshade in Bloom

Spies don’t retire. 

Ultimately, even Illua knew that when she sundered her own sword her work wasn’t going to just let her go. Someone like her, a shadow of Garlemald, either died alone and disavowed or served. It didn’t matter that she’d been in Eorzea for three years, or that she deserted with a military asset, or that she served in a local Hystmill militia. 

For years, she managed to maintain the illusion of her retirement by feeding both the Alliance and the Empire information that was ultimately useless. By being each side’s double-agent she managed to keep her allegiances to whomever she was in a room with at the moment. Everyone found her slightly useful, and no one wanted her dead. 

That\s as close to retirement as a spy gets. 

And she thought it was going pretty well for her, all things considered. Until Ewen came for her.

Keep reading

[xiv-nightshade]

Cadena pyr Febrii, Illua goe Jovian, Juno kir Celsus… the long list of names and identities worn by the Empire’s Nightshade end at Illua eir Corcavo. Illua, who is quick to point out that this is not her real name, served as a Shadow in the Empire – a spy and assassin traveling from territory to territory rooting out sedition, insurrection and insubordination with as much violent zeal as she did her fellow spies. She believed wholeheartedly that one death could save hundreds of lives. 

That changed with the brutal razing of Doma. What a targeted killing of Gosetsu and Hien could’ve accomplished was done instead through mass cruelty. This broke Illua’s conviction. While one live could save hundreds, the Empire was not as concerned with lost life as Illua was. So she literally unforged her gunblade and joined the Hystmill Militia in Eorzea. She figured a region rife with expatriots was the right place for her to defect to. She found her mind, keened on the practice of subterfuge, useful as a private investigator as well.

Or is that what happened? Because with Illua, her stories have stories and her lies have lies. At present, she has positioned herself to be a slightly useful asset to the intelligence operations both of the Alliance and the Empire, neither side knowing her true allegiance. In fact, the only people who do are the Khamja, the secret cabal of Garleans long-predating the Empire (dating back to Ivalice) and seeking to guide global affairs for their own enrichment through targeted espionage and the collection of leverage.

Illua is unaffiliated with a Free Company on Balmung

[xiv-nightshade]

Haven’t unlocked SB hunts on Kiran yet so I snagged a screenshot of the blank board for everyone to have fun with. 

Draw dicks for the resistance! Leave messages! Etc etc, have fun :D

[xiv-nightshade]

Cold Winds: The Door

She sighed and leaned against the street sign. “Wouldn’t do that,” she advised with minimal interest. The four men, Brass Blades given their uniforms, looked over at her and back at the door to the business they had come to raid for some inane or annoying reason. 

“T’fuck you know?” asked one of them after a moment’s confused silence. “This is a san-”

“Right, look, I don’t care,” she shrugged slightly. “Maybe the people in there are Really Bad Dudes, maybe they pissed in your porridge. Whatever. I’m just saying I wouldn’t do that.” 

The man who had addressed Illua spat on the street and motioned to his man. “Breach.” One of the Brass Blades lifted his shield in front of him and charged the door, smashing whatever feeble barricade was on the other side.

And tripping the trap. Glass shattered and smoke poured out on to the city streets. Before the Blades knew what was happening, a wave of force sent them flying across the street and three mages, robed in red and holding bone staves, emerged from the cloud.

“Doors and corners,” Illua shook her head as she watched the fight unfold. “Why do I bother? Savages are too fucking stupid to listen.” 

Keep reading

[xiv-nightshade]

Asina’s Daughters

FFXIV Write 2017 | Part 16: “Ceruleum” Starring Illua Corcavo

“Research Specimen 115, C. Lucianus.”

Illua cleared her throat. She shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “It’s actually surprisingly uncommon that people connect me to that file…” she found herself momentarily distracted by the tassels on her dress uniform. Little golden tassels. She wasn’t trying to focus on something else. Nope. Not at all.

The man who sat across from her set his papers down on his desk. “I grant you that the experiment performed on you was, charitably, insane, but you have to admire mal Asina’s recordkeeping. Psychotic and unhinged, but an excellent scribe,” the man casually waved a hand. “I have to ask, did it work?”

“That depends, sir,” responded the spy, “was the goal to make my blood burn in the Gyr Abanian theater? Or to turn my hair blue? Either way, Master Asina was a success. If it was to give me magic, though, I’m afraid he’s the fraud you think he is.”

“Well, may the graces spare you should we push farther into Eorzea,” the man snorted. He was short for a pureblood, and had hungry features. His hair was oddly dark too, a sandier blonde than most Garleans. “My name, eir Lucianus, is Ewen pyr Gathena, and I’m interested in what makes you special.”

Illua rolled her eyes and brushed a strand of blue hair from her face. “Asina didn’t make me special, sir. He made me disfigured.”

“Now, now,” Gathena folded his hands and rested his chin on them. He searched her, seeing more than she thought there was to be seen, “one man’s curse is another’s blessing. The way I see it, you were given not magic as might’ve been intended, but something else entirely. You can sense magic on a level I can’t even fathom. Even being around it makes the ceruelum in your blood react. It harmonizes, it buzzes. It, oh, what did you tell your doctor? It screams.”

He pushed the file across the desk, but she didn’t look. She was in the clandestine services of the greatest empire in the world. If someone called her in to a meeting and couldn’t produce her file, the odds were good she was spying on them. Gathena didn’t impress or intimidate her. 

“The mad bastard bathed me in poison, dosed me with poison, and scarred my being in ways I can ill describe, sir. That you found value in his butchery is a bit dark, even for a Shadow.”

“Didn’t you?”

That made her brow furrow. “Excuse me?”

“You’re a spy. Some of your best work has been digging for the corruption in our own ranks. Illua goe Jovian? That work was brilliant. And instead of coloring your hair to look ‘normal’, you kept the blue hue. You wore it like it was the disguise. Improbable, distracting, and exceedingly dangerous for you, given that not many could fail to recognize the Empire’s Nightshade after seeing her once.”

She straightened, but let the words linger in the air. She had no rebuttal or retort. 

“You’re not the only one, you know,” he added enticement. “Specimen 115. He’s tried before. And, if rumor is to be believed and in our line of work it usually is, he will again. He’s got a new patron for his… eccentricities. Now, I can help you find the other girls…”

“There are others.” She’d always known there had to be. Someone like Asina wasn’t going to try just once. And he wasn’t likely to be dissuaded from his goals by being a laughing stock, or by a litany of failure. She frowned deeply. “You didn’t call me here to tell me that. And if this was a new assignment, you’d have just given it, you wouldn’t bother with this… whatever you’re doing. So what do you want, sir.”

He seemed a bit pleased, though held most of his assessment of her close to the vest. Whether he was pleased with her for poking that line of reasoning or if he was pleased with himself for unnerving her, she couldn’t say.

“The codeword you’ll need to remember is ‘Khamja’.”

[xiv-nightshade]

Juno kir Celsus

FFXIV Write 2017 | Part 6: “Identification” Starring Illua Corcavo

She looked over the papers in front of her and scowled at them, like it would make their contents less displeasing. It was less than a year after the Calamity and it seemed like everything with the effort to refocus on Eorzea was as doomed to failure as the last. 

Illua relished missions that weren’t based in Eorzea, therefore. so when a file came up on the eastern front, she was thrilled to take the work. The issue on the table was counter-intelligence. That much was a blessing. Internal affairs work was unpopular with the troops and kill orders were messy. Even if she wasn’t a real person for the job, she did take it home with her, so to speak.

Every assignment she took on involved becoming a figment. Someone only real enough to stand up to scrutiny, but not real enough to bring any consequences with her. Sometimes it meant being a civil servant, sometimes it meant being a infantry soldier. Sometimes it meant being a deserter. 

Today, it meant creating an informant. That was a tricky thing to do, actually. An informant needed to check out, to have a history the Othard Resistance could check out. She needed a reputation. She needed the people to spread that reputation to not know they were lying. That meant a lot of planning. It would take at least six moons before she could actually deploy into the field, which meant it had to work. Six moons wasted was unacceptable.  

“A doctor,” she reasoned aloud. That made sense. Physicians had heart, they hated suffering. It would be relatively easy for the rumor to be that this doctor sympathized with the suffering of the common aan. She jotted down ‘kir’ on the paper. Of course she’d be a kir. High enough ranked in the medical division to have access to information but low enough ranked that her lacking much in the way of a known history wouldn’t raise alarms.

On a quick job, you could get away with being highly ranked. There isn’t really enough time to look closely. On long games like this, though, she had to expect that all of her story would be picked to pieces. 

“Juno kir… Celsus.” She liked how that sounded, so jotted it down as well. Making up names was honestly the most fun part of designing a cover. 

Next there was the rumors she’d need to start. That wouldn’t be too hard, she would make sure the right gossips heard the right conversations. A surgeon, Celsus, reassigned to Doma. Of course the paperwork would list the reason as a routine troop rotation, but there’d be suggestions that it was something else. Maybe she was stationed at Castrum Abania, maybe she was too friendly with some of the aan laborers. Moving her to staff to the Consulate would get her away from the common rabble, leave her treating proper Citizens. Civilized folk.

She smiled softly at the idea. Yes, and more. Her lux was concerned about her. Not her loyalty, that’d be too much. Concerned about her… shell shock. She’d seen too much battle. Yeah, she needed some time outside the theater of war. Everything to make her more approachable to enemy spies. She’d known a lot of people who’d seen hell on the field and none of them were disloyal for it, but it might make her a more appealing target.

The matter of getting the documents forged was a simple one, she’d just request it from the handlers she had both in Abania and Doma, but making the character real was more than rumor and paperwork. It was a ritual. Did Juno have family? Yes. A sister and a brother. The sister was a centurion and the brother an artist. Did she like Eastern food? Hated it. What about Nael? He was a psychopath, that was easy. Easier still because she believed it. 

Everything about the persona, the figment, had to somehow contribute to selling the story without being obvious. She didn’t want this reassignment, but was determined to make the best of it. She hated travel, but enjoyed consulate life. It all needed to create a person that someone could believe, reasonable, could be seduced into selling out Imperial secrets, someone who was disillusioned but not dishonest. Someone who saw disloyalty as patriotic under unjust circumstances. 

Doman spies would recruit her to their cause and she would strike them from the world with the fury of thunder. 

Una Salus Victus. 

[xiv-nightshade]

Haha, a Garlean! How absurd!

How to Tell if a Garlean has Infiltrated Your Free Company:

YOU CAN’T.

WE’RE ALL AROUND YOU. WE LOOK LIKE YOU. THERE’S NO MAGIC POTION TO REVEAL ALL THE GARLEANS IN A GIVEN AREA.

HAVING BLONDE HAIR DOESN’T INSTANTLY MEAN SOMEBODY’S GARLEAN, EITHER.

SO THERE.

[[ When it comes to figuring out if someone is Garlean IC: unless they tell you, IC, that they’re Garlean – you have no idea. It’s been established that glamour crystals can be used on scenery, even, so a pureblood glamouring their third eye is not out of the question.

Seems like accent can’t really be used either, since the Garleans we’ve met have the same sort of accents as many non-Garleans. ]]

[xiv-nightshade]

Rejected Garlean Magitek Weapons (Probably)

Three big guns that spin like a revolver barrel, but it has rocket jets to fly around

Original Construct, Do Not Steal

[xiv-nightshade]

[xiv-nightshade]

Your friends in the Imperial Legions.  Bringing an end to religious zealotry one Eikon at a time.

[xiv-nightshade]

Cold Winds: The Team

“A pirate, a Garlean and an Ala Mhigan terrorist walk into a bar,” began the Miqo’te. Green eyes fell on her expectantly, but were only met by impassive purple. “It isn’t the beginning of a joke, Andromeda. It is the beginning of your assignment.”

Rommie sighed and lowered her head. Of course it was. And of course it was an ‘assignment’. “I manage a business now, Iris. A pretty sucessful one. I can’t just run off because you need someone to rouse rabbles in the Brume or put out your messes in Parliament. All debts have been paid. Accounts are settled. My security chief would ne-”

“You’re going to be robbing a Castrum, Rommie.”

This stopped Andromeda mid-thought. She blinked a few times. She leaned back in her chair. She thought. She thought some more. She thought again. A heist? Against a fantastically dangerous and well-secured target? With a pirate, a terrorist and a defector as her team? This was the shit legends were built on. This was the shit that people talked about for generations. 

“Go on.”

Iris made a small hand motion and a little red sphere rolled from behind her chair. It began to glow and lifted off, hovering above the ground. It was Odelia, Iris’ data storage node and lab assistant. Rommie’d been uncomfortably catalogued by it once and given the designation S-H133. In response, Rommie called the node ‘Creepybot’.   

Creepybot spun her bottom and top hemispheres in opposite directions, revealing a red core at her center, and from that was projected a beam of light. The light cast an image of a map of Coerthas on the table, all red lines and harsh edges. Above the frozen walls of Snowcloak was a large triple-diamond emblem, the symbol of the Empire. Below that symbol read the name “Castrum Aquilonis’.

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[xiv-nightshade]

My AI aesthetic.

[xiv-nightshade]

happy ides of march

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I mean, sometimes its hard to tell though. NOT SAYING ANYONE IN PARTICULAR *coughmecough* but some people its hard to really determine from the outside where they stand!

#NotAllGarleans #JustMe

#PunchAGarlean

#VivaLaResistance

@laznenharuya @philosopher-agni @dmlynx @thecatsmeowbarandgrill

[xiv-nightshade]

#NotAllGarleans

#PunchAGarlean

#VivaLaResistance

@laznenharuya @philosopher-agni @dmlynx @thecatsmeowbarandgrill

[xiv-nightshade]

More Animated Artwork Wonderfulness from  Gui Guimaraes  -aka Moonlightorange

Fantastic digital painting from Gui, you can watch his process on https://youtu.be/WxMDAR8BaHo

Gui is from Quebec, Canada

He also is on DeviantArt and Artstation

I have posted Gui before but couldn’t resist these latest animated artworks :)