Join the Ishgardian Foreign Ministry
and the Knights of Saint Nymeia for the
THIRD GREAT ISHGARDIAN FROSTFAIRE!
Take up a lance before the festival to champion a charitable cause as the knights of eld, before heading into the city and doing your Starlight shopping. Get snacks, take in some festive music, buy gifts and see what a rebuilding Ishgard has to offer! A portion of Faire proceeds will go to the Firmament Restoration Project!
Do you want to joust? Sing? Dance? Do you own a shop and want to sell your wares? Join us on Discord!
Otherwise come celebrate the season Dec. 19, with a joust at 6PM and the faire at 8PM Eastern.
Statement by House Blanchimont on the Execution of the Steel Campaign
House Blanchimont formally denounces the deplorable display of enemy corpses in violation of agreed conduct of Ishgard's host in this campaign. Lady Blanchimont joins MP Gaultier in calling for an immediate investigation into this behavior and demands the parties responsible be suitably charged and punished for violation of this agreement by the leadership of the campaign. Further, between this and certain recent matters considered by our most righteous Knights, House Blanchimont implores the military to not lose sight of ethical practice in the horror of war.
Of the Sky, From the Sky, For the Sky
Audrey Slaith du Blanchimont
Missive authorized by Lady Iris Blanchimont
A Garlean commercial airship procured by... unconventional means by House Blanchimont. Selected both because commercial airships are inherently easier to steal than military assets and because the Alliance wouldn’t have let Iris keep a military asset if she could’ve successfully ‘liberated’ it, Iris sent a team to steal and secure a Prima Vista-class performance ship that House Blanchimont and Atelier Iris are converting into a personal yacht and mobile lab.
Because it is a stolen Garlean asset, the Astraea is not safely flown outside of Alliance-controlled airspace, the ship is not able to fly outside Eorzea itself. International air is just too dangerous for nonmilatrized stolen airship. As a long-term to address this, Atelier Iris is working on affixing crystal-based Astral Cannons currently in development to the Astraea in the future to allow a comparatively ineffective airship to at least provide for it’s own defense. At the moment, though, the Astraea flies with an escort of Red Wings modified Manacutter-class fighters.
The skiff and cargo hold of the Prima Vista-class has been refitted to serve as both a lab and hanger for Iris’ personal modified Manacutter, the Northswain.
The Republic of Ishgard’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has teamed up with the almsgiving Knights of Saint Nymeia to pair two Starlight traditions! The Great Ishgardian Frostfaire meets the Starlight Joust in an entire day of festive Ishgardian delight!
First meet outside the Fury’s Gate in Central Coerthas to take in the spectacle of brave jousters tilting at the famed Starlight Crown in honor of their favorite charity! And when the joust is complete join businesses and entertainers like Bandee Pakshee in the Pillars for an evening of Starlight shopping and showstopping festive music provided courtesy of Pakshee, House Blanchimont Chamber Orchestra and more!
Do you want to joust? Contact the Knights of Saint Nymeia (Aegir#5138)
Do you want to perform or be a vendor? Contact the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Rommie#9450)
Do you just want to attend? Mark your calendar for the Fifteenth Sun of the Sixth Umbral Moon (December 15, time TBA) and watch for further announcements about the Starlight event of the season! We look forward to seeing you in Ishgard (on Balmung) this Starlight!
The Republic of Ishgard’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has teamed up with the almsgiving Knights of Saint Nymeia to pair two Starlight traditions! The Great Ishgardian Frostfaire meets the Starlight Joust in an entire day of festive Ishgardian delight!
First meet outside the Fury’s Gate in Central Coerthas to take in the spectacle of brave jousters tilting at the famed Starlight Crown in honor of their favorite charity! And when the joust is complete join businesses and entertainers like Bandee Pakshee in the Pillars for an evening of Starlight shopping and showstopping festive music provided courtesy of Pakshee, House Blanchimont Chamber Orchestra and more!
Do you want to joust? Contact the Knights of Saint Nymeia (Aegir#5138)
Do you want to perform or be a vendor? Contact the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Rommie#9450)
Do you just want to attend? Mark your calendar for the Fifteenth Sun of the Sixth Umbral Moon (December 15, time TBA) and watch for further announcements about the Starlight event of the season! We look forward to seeing you in Ishgard (on Balmung) this Starlight!
Alchemy, like any science, focuses on the creation of great works. Once, Iris chased the fool’s chrysopoeia that was true resurrection. Thankfully, someone beat her to that tragic miscalculation, and she veered off that idea to this one, the driving force she’d pursued since she was old enough to understand the ways of the world.
Iris could not restore Eliza from the dead, so she did the next best thing. For four years she had amassed resources, tested theories, and determined the one course of action she could to achieve the dream she once shared with her now long departed beloved. The dream she’d held in her breast since a child. The dream of a daughter.
Now, Iris Blanchimont obviously knew the typical process for attaining a daughter. It disgusted her. She didn’t think less of those who engaged in such brutish, animal forms of creation but it was not suited to her, either from a pragmatic ‘enjoyment’ sense or from the elevated ideals of the polymath’s soul. No, she pursued her anthropian, her Great Work. Her homunculus.
Thanks to that woman, the proper clever one at Facta, she had what she needed. She had the blood of an Allagan.
“Analysis confirmed,” her node Odelia had given the good news. “Synthesization of Allagan technology activation gene successful. Aetheric manipulation of Allagan equipment enabled.”
That was all she needed. She’d tried dozens of times to recreate the chimera technology of the Allagans, but it just wasn’t working. It was too much to reverse-engineer. You can know how to build an airship, but if all you have is twine and rocks you won’t fly far. So, this was the only means she had. With this tool, with these gauntlets, Iris was as woman of Allag, as far as machines could tell. And so, the machines obeyed her.
Her House Knights -- or at least the four she’d been spared by the manager of her estates Audrey -- had joined her in Azys Lla. They’d been given transport by Highwind Skyways, but Iris had flown ahead in her personal pinnace the Northswain. She knew her Knights were there to keep the project secure, but she had to risk being there first. She wanted to embrace the gravity of what she was setting out to do.
The gauntlets were a bit of a pain. They were cumbersome, and they upset her sense of aether. But many of the mechanisms of Azys Lla gave her a wide berth as she walked through the forgotten, desolate land. They were working. The technology did not see her as a threat. Odelia, the analytics node, had taught Iris to give her Knights some measure of the same protection, but without the ATA Gauntlet she wasn’t sure how safe anything would be. Which was, ultimately, the point of her Knights to begin with.
Safety, though, was tangential to what really mattered. This showed in practice what her nodes had said in labratory conditions that morning. The gloves worked.
Now all that remained was bringing the ancient lab back to life. Over the coming weeks she’d have to move more of her equipment to Azys Lla, but that would take a small effort. It was not exactly friendly airspace and so bringing in a cargo ship like the Somnambulist would be tough. But the work could begin now. She’d been to the old, abandoned Allagan atelier before, she’d looked for the tanks that held against time the best. She’d prepared over countless moons.
She couldn’t save Eliza. She couldn’t bring Eliza back to her. She couldn’t have that happy ending. So, instead, Iris was going to give ‘birth’ to the daughter she and her once-loved deserved. And in so doing, the Researcher Renown was going to change the world. And to think it took her thirty-one trips /round the Star to finally, unquestionably, become the greatest scientist alive.
Granted, she hadn’t invented the recombination chamber she was using, that had been Allag. But in some respects it was easier to create from whole cloth, or distort what was the natural world. The Ixal, that was small popotos. You could have near countless trials, near countless chances to work out conflicts in the blood. And those conflicts were glaringly obvious. Taking a blood sample from two Keeper women and reconciling the whole tree of life’s design into one being, with such small nuanced conflicts and with but one trial? That was masterwork.
She waved her hand in the air. The aethercells on the ATA Gauntlets flared to life, and eons-old mechanization began to hum quietly to life. This made Iris smile. The Allagans must seem like gods to the average modern illiterate. And so, Iris invented god, and wore it on her arm.
She inserted the samples she carried in her coat’s pockets as data began to spool to life for the recombination pod she’d chosen. They were listed Unidentified Sample and Meracydian Genetic Data, which gave Iris mild alarm -- was the machine too damaged to work? But no, other than the identification process being clearly decayed beyond use the other data seemed to match the simulations she’d run in her lab.
So she’d need to bring some analytical equipment to replace the damaged sensor, it was one of the parts that only mattered infrequently as she monitored gestation and could be easily replaced by her own computer systems. It was the tank itself she couldn’t replicate. The anvil upon which could be forged living cells from data. The artificial womb within which the anthroparion could be monitored, edited, preserved.
That would spare Iris displeasure, but it was more important than vanity. Using an organic body to gestate this first homunculus would pose unknown risk both to the body and to the homunculus. When more was known about the process, maybe a living host could carry to term, she understood that process facilitated mother-daughter bonding and was quite important to some people. Not to her, but to some people. But she needed as much data as possible about her first chimera child, and organic bodies were poor sensors and data analysis devices.
She looked up at the chamber, brightly glowing green and reporting ready to begin parthenogenesis. She’d wanted to have something to say to commemorate the completion of a life’s ambition. Maybe she’d have something more on mind when the child was ready to leave the chamber? As it stood, she simply lifted her arm and the aethercells flared. The chamber flared in return. The die was cast.
At all times, she wanted this lab guarded by two of her Knights, the other two would be able to rest at quarters in the Residential Complex that Iris could prepare with the ATA Gauntlets. And she’d prepare a suite there for herself as well. She... she didn’t want to be far from her experiment. It was her life’s work after all.
That was it. It was her life’s work. It was that she’d watched a lesbian parthenogenic conception for the first time in eons, possibly for the first time in history. It wasn’t that she now, in the most abstract of senses, had a child. That would be sentiment.
The Honorable Lady Iris Lilith Blanchimont, Vidame under the House Haillenarte, Member of Parliament, Researcher Renown, Baroness of Coldwind, Envoy to the Wanderer\s Palace of Nym from the Republic, Foreign Minister, Matriarch of the House Blanchimont and Servant of the Republic collects titles. Since she has trouble collecting respect, titles have to make due. Part of this is her ‘unblooded’ nature; adopted despite being a ‘glorified beastman’ to a Lesser House of Ishgard and assuming control of that house as the result of a power vacuum in the wake of her grandfather’s death. She is a symbol of change, and as such is hated to her core by those of ardent faith.
Her political career is, to put it charitably, not something she was looking for. She rather resents it, actually. What she wants to set her frankly incredible mind to is the sciences. She follows a renaissance-style polymath view of the world. She invents, she engineers, she studies, she theorizes. She produces root beet. She seeks the world’s knowledge in its entirety and sees the machinations of politics as an important, albeit irritating, distraction from the real work of the sciences.
She’d always been focused on her work to a point of emotional distance, but when her betrothed Eliza Scarlet was killed on the fields of Carteneau essentially before Iris’ eyes, something broke inside the researcher. That took her interest in the world outside her lab away entirely. It was years before she could even be friends with a person again, and the pain of her loss has damaged her irreparably. She’s become harder to know, more cold, more callous. And yet, she’s opened herself hesitantly to the world again, resulting in repeated romantic failings fueled by her own deep emotional damage. So, to Iris, the work is all that remains.
Iris is presently not enlisted in a Free Company on Balmung, but is associated with Arche Koeln on Lamia.
“Oh, House Bayle is leading the Temple Knights. That makes sense, there's no way Parliament would've sent actual troops to this thing if a Noble House didn't want to preen.”
She made a mock over-dramatic stand to attention to tease Hestia. She didn't actually know Hestia de Bayle, she just wanted to be equal opportunity in her sourness.
Concocted by noted alchemist Iris Blanchimont, the beverage was her attempt at finding a softer beverage than the alcohol she personally had a distaste for. So, using effervescent water and the root of the Sassafras plant from the East as a base and mixing it with vanilla, molasses, honey and other flavors, Iris attempted to create a sweet, non-alcoholic ale.
Named ‘Root Beer’ by an unimaginative lab assistant, Iris has begun to market the drink to pubs and restaurants realm-over. And by that, of course, I mean just Stellazio’s Pizzeria. But the House hopes to mass-produce and sell the drink to businesses if it proves successful paired with the pizza place’s odd flatbread cuisine.
Iris’ father and eldest son of former Lord Arstide Blanchimont. Felt had no interest in politics or leadership and was widely seen as a black sheep of the family until recent events brought him back to Ishgard. Felt spent most of his life so far as captain of a trade vessel, the Yuveria, owned by the Blanchimont family.
In his middle age now, Felt never stopped acting like a child. He is still given to bouts of wanderlust and encourages fellows of all ages to come sail away from their problems for a while on his ship. He has a wife, Audrey, whom he spends a lot of energy avoiding despite his intense fidelity to her.
Felt and his sister found their ‘daughter’, Iris, washed upon the shore of Moraby Bay. Despite some significant effort, Iris’ family could not be found, nor could much information be gleaned from the unregistered ship that carried her to Vylbrand’s shore. He left much of the parenting of the lost kitten to his sister Visse, though would often sweep the young Iris off on grand adventures around the Known World.
Felt had intended to marry Audrey Slaith, a hyur heiress to a small silversmith and mining empire, far younger than he did, but Visse’s untimely death affected the strange family formed by he, Visse and Iris rather profoundly and his wedding plans were delayed. When he did marry, the family was exceptionally proud of the union as it gave them a controlling interest in Slaith Silver.
As Garlemald’s intentions toward Eorzea became more dramatic, Felt defied both his family and country and enlisted his ship in the service of the Maelstrom. He was dispatched to Thavnair on a mission to secure trade routes during the Calamity.
A bit more than a year ago, his father died. His disinterest in leadership and the fact that most of the family truly disliked him left House Blanchimont in significant upheaval. While the efforts of his daughter brought a tense peace between various factions of the family, many blame his lack of potential for the fact that their house is now lead by a Miqo’te, a point of shame levied on them by some of their fellow Ishgardian nobles.
As much a pet project to allow Felt to do whatever he wants as an actual trade company, Yuveria does hold several trade deals between Ishgard and Limsa Lominsa, as well as precious deals between House Blanchimont’s other projects and businesses in Thavnair.
Named for the ship captained by Felt, Yuveria Seaways actually employs a few other, much smaller, trade ships to fulfill relatively small and principally local contracts, as well as a dedicated cargo carriage to deliver goods from Coerthas to either Idyllshire or Vesper Bay to be picked up by a merchant ship.
As for the Yuveria itself, the ship ostensibly takes the large cargo, long distance and high-priority freight that cannot, or shouldn’t be handled by lesser ships. In truth, it’s projects are far more governed by Felt’s whims and where he feels like traveling to than by any more pragmatic measure.
Despite strong disapproval of certain among the House, Yuveria Seaways has also regularly given preference to Maelstrom contracts and pledged itself to the Maelstrom as a Free Company at the time of the Calamity. This helped fuel the tensions in the family that caused the internal political strife that existed before and during Iris’ ascent to power.
The Somni, as she’s called, is a cargo airship based heavily on Ironworks’ Invincible II class with some minor improvements learned from Iris’ improvements made on the Northswain. As such, Somni is one of the slower ships that could be widely considered part of the Eorzean Air Fleet, but one that can sustain longer flight than most.
The Somnambulist technically fall under the Yuveria Seaways cargo fleet, but being that it serves the skies and not the seas, it rarely is considered as such by the Seaways crews. It tends to make expensive runs from the city states to the Dravanian settlement of Idyllshire, but running cargo in the sky is far more dangerous than running it over seas, and so the Somni takes rather infrequent runs, typically with a small escort of Manacutter-class ships to provide it some small measure of defense.
Felt, the director of the Yuveria cargo company, insists that the Somni is not going to replace sea haulers any time soon, but admits some concern that one day skyships will be a faborite for shipping of goods.
The airship Northswain is Iris’ personal Manacutter-class pinnace. It is one of the first few corrupted crystal pinnaces developed and was procured by Iris at considerable discount thanks to her contributions to the scientific development of Garlond Ironworks.
The Northswain has a darker-hued frame and a body of purple suited to Ishgardian colors as opposed to the more generic light gray and Eorzean Alliance blue of the standard Manacutter-class. While designed to be operated by a single pilot, Iris’ model can also carry a single passenger.
Further customization by Iris has increased the fuel efficiency allowing the Northswain a longer extended flight or, alternatively, slightly faster top speeds under full burn than the average ship of her size. Though she hasn’t entered any races with the ship, Iris considers it the ‘personal racing boat’ of House Blanchimont - more a symbol of status than a statement of the intended purpose of the craft.
Iris is as caring toward and proud of the Northswain as her father is of his large, full-crewed cargo ship the Yuveria. She is rather contented that this love of ship has brought her and Felt closer together as they take pride in their ‘girls’.
Audrey, or ‘Fee’ to her friends, is in charge of House Blanchimont’s day-to-day operations as Iris, the house’s titular leader, is far more concerned with research to handle the house’s business arrangements. Audrey is married to Iris’ father, Felt Blanchimont, and is the heiress to the mineral concern Slaith Silver that operates out of the Coerthan east lowlands.
Audrey is a capable woman with an acumen for business that was taught to her by her father, Maxwell Slaith. She grew up studying laws in the various nation in Eorzea to best represent her family’s company and intended, for a time, to seek work as a barrister. Ultimately, though, Maxwell’s poor health prompted her to stick to her business training and become the primary negotiator for her company.
Slaith Silver had contracted a noble’s trade ship, the Yuveria, to fulfill orders placed in Limsa Lominsa, and in the negotiations over their contract, Audrey was swept off her feet by the dashingly cavalier captain, Felt. She became a strange part of the even stranger family structure formed by Felt, his sister and the Miqo’te teen they cared for. When Visse died, Audrey made no attempt to fill the role of mother to the mourning Miqo’te and still acts more as an equal to the young noble than she might a child of her own.
Audrey, Felt and Iris spent the first year after the Calamity stuck abroad in Radz-at-Han, and to pass the time she learned a few skills in combat from the Thavnairans. She also secured some trade relationships overseas for her father’s company.
Ultimately, upon Iris’ ascension to Matriarch, Audrey’s business sense became essential to managing the family’s holdings and business ventures. Despite Iris’ rather immodest remarks about her own intellect, the Miqo’te lacked business experience or negotiation skill, and knew it, so she has leaned heavily on Audrey. Some in the family prefer to think of Audrey as the ‘actual Lady Blanchimont’ and dismiss the more troublesome figurehead provided by Iris, but Audrey has taken offense to such notions.
