A'dhen Tia

yet another FFXIV Character blog | he/him | NeroWoL, with a sprinkling of other minor ships | Endwalker Spoilers abound | Ship and Let Ship

[adhenxiv]

Written as the warm-up for @ficwip's Rain and Stars Writing Retreat.

Fandom: Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers Character(s): unnamed/generic Warrior of Darkness Theme: Thunder & Rainbows CW: None

With the Night returned, thunder rolled over the hills of Il Mheg for the first time in a hundred years. Its air was heavy with the perfume of wildflowers and rain on Light-parched earth. The Warrior of Darkness faced the levin-dark sky, arms wide, feeling every drop on their skin.

[lastlabyrinth]

Listen to my voice.

Listen to our heartbeat.

Listen...

[noctglaive]

‘I’ve shed a thousand skins since then.’

Perfect Blue poster redraw in 2026, why not. :’)

[adhenxiv]

To the Point of Invention

As I cannot draw myself and the gpose camera makes me terribly motion sick, I humbly present for Nero Day the following: nearly 2k words of Nero-centric meta analysis! Happy birthday, @otherworldseekers! And I hope everyone else enjoys what I’ve wrote.

There is a common opinion in the fandom at large that Nero only cares about Cid and therefore does not, or cannot, care about the Warrior of Light. Naturally, when NeroWoL shippers try to point out the opposite, any evidence is dismissed because of the absurd notion that wanting the wry, blond Ken doll to smooch our own Barbies and Kens makes it less relevant. Yet the game itself crafts a story that, while not explicitly stating it, disproves this common opinion; there may be other explanations for this story, but I believe there is little, if any, narrative evidence to disprove it either. I speak, of course, of a set of items that nearly everyone who has played and leveled through the game can access and most likely used: the Scaevan Tome gear.

Before I present my evidence, I’d like to acknowledge the limitations of it. I’m not a hardcore raider, so if there’s more info given in either the Omega savage raid series or the Omega ultimate raid, I am unaware of it. I also only speak English and I am concentrating on the English translation of the game. Other languages, including the original Japanese, may be different or outright omit what I state here. In spite of these things, I still think examining the provenance of the Scaevan tome gear proves my point.

Let’s begin with the quest “Return to the Rift” which kicks off the Sigmascape tier of the Omega raids. Right before Cid, Nero, the Warrior of Light, and Alpha head off into dangers unknown, Jessie gifts Alpha with his own custom made Ironworks uniform. Immediately after, the Warrior of Light gets a choice of dialogue.

Which results in two possible responses from Jessie, as follows.

If the response is: “I wish I had that uniform…”

(Aside: I love how catty Nero is here.)

If the response is: ”What about my protective equipment?”

(I… don’t know if I’d call that “joking,” Jessie. Especially with what you’re paying us…)

After the conclusion of both of these, Nero is there to remind everyone that there are better things we could be doing.

The importance of this scene to my thesis is that Nero is present for the conversation where the Warrior of Light asks for their own protective gear and is, for lack of a better term, brushed off. He doesn’t seem to be too concerned because there’s a more interesting toy to play with… for now.

After the end of the Omega quests, but prior to the Endwalker follow-up quest, the player can return to Jessie and speak with her, to which she says:

Which gives us two questions. The first of which is “Why was Nero making patterns for new uniforms?” It could have been busywork assigned by Cid or Jessie during his “forced convalescence.” He could have complained enough about them, like he did so above, that they told him to try to do better. However, I believe the best answer to this question lies in the second: why did he sell the pattern to Rowena?

As a short refresher, Rowena is the entrepreneur who set up in Mor Dhona, specializing in buying relics that adventurers find on their travels and selling them gear. She takes all those tomes you collect when doing roulettes and gives you the tome gear in exchange, like, say, the Scaevan gear.

These two conversations prove that Nero, having heard the Warrior of Light ask for protective gear and be turned down, designed new gear for them. He then burned whatever goodwill he had with Jessie to make sure the Warrior of Light could obtain this protective gear if they so chose.

Keep in mind, Jessie was willing to pay Nero 80% of Cid’s salary (“a sultan’s ransom” in Cid’s own words), up front, because she wanted him to work with the Ironworks. While it is by far one of the funniest things she does, she does not make business decisions lightly. Throughout the Omega raids, she is often at odds with Cid because she is focused on making the Ironworks profitable as a business. She has to be, having kept the Ironworks afloat during Cid’s absence between 1.0 and ARR. It’s not something she did just to piss off Cid. If you speak to her just after starting the first quest in the Omega raid series (“The Hunt for Omega”), she is upset that Cid and Nero are wasting time—and therefore money—bickering. Jessie would have had to think at some point that Nero was a worthwhile investment for the Ironworks.

And Nero threw that away. For the Warrior of Light.

But, you say, Nero must have been acting in his own self-interest, right? He certainly could have been, but there is no narrative evidence to suggest it. In fact, there is evidence to suggest the opposite.

During Deltascape and Sigmascape, Nero gives the Warrior of Light gadgets to help them during Omega’s tests: The anti-gravity gimble to go against Catastrophe (O2N); The Chocobo Brush for Chadarnook (O6N). His behavior of gifting the Warrior of Light useful technology is one that was introduced back in the Crystal Tower alliance raids, albeit in a much more condescending way. Not only does Nero not mind giving the Warrior of Light tools he’d made for other purposes, he jumped at the chance to make the Chocobo Brush, for which Cid gives him a little light ribbing.

The reason why he’s forced to convalesce, why he’s not available to give the Warrior of Light gadgets during Alphascape, is because he was injured by Omega. Omega attacks Nero when he was alone in order to traumatize the Warrior of Light. Nero could have done what would have been in his own best interests, even his own survival, by getting medical treatment right then. He chooses not to do so, in part to spite Omega, but also another part that it may have a chance, no matter how small, of affecting the Warrior of Light before the fight to come. Both of these things together prove that Nero not only wants to make things that help the Warrior of Light, but that he can also act in ways that are detrimental to his self interest.

Why, then, did Nero not give the Warrior of Light a set of gear himself? There's a few possible diegetic answers. He could care enough about the Warrior of Light for them to have access to his work but not so much that he'd do the actual forging of the gear himself. His injuries from Omega may have prevented him from whipping up a prototype set before he left. Nero may have even been protecting his own feelings by not giving the Warrior of Light a chance to turn him down. (Non-diegetically, the answer is that FFXIV is a mmo with the expectation that you'll grind for in-game currency for rewards. Go figure.)

For my final caveat to this narrative theory is that Jessie only mentions that Nero sold “the pattern.” The. A singular article, meaning that he likely only designed one set. There are seven different sets in the game. There are a few ways to square that circle. Nero may have only designed the one set, which just so happened to be similar (or he’d claim better) to what the Warrior of Light already uses, also known as whatever your main job is. The other sets that the Warrior of Light does not use do not exist in the story. Another option is that Nero gave Rowena the rights to modify his pattern when he sold it; Nero created the base specifications, requirements, silhouettes, etc. and Rowena had other designers create the actual gear we see in the game. It’s possible, but unlikely, given that Nero is a talented designer in his own right.

The last option is also my favorite: Nero does not grasp the concept of moderation.

He may have offered or been assigned to create a single pattern for new engineer uniforms. However, we all have ran Praetorium: there is a significant amount of space dedicated in it containing spare arms for the Ultima Weapon. We must also recall that in the Sorrows of Werlyt questline, Nero ended up making so many spare parts for the damaged G-Warrior, the Ironworks not only repaired it, but built a whole new mech that would become the G-Savior Mk. II. He may have been responsible for making one pattern, but made seven (or more) just because he could. Because he wanted to do so. Because Nero does not do anything by halves. It’s one of his charm points.

As I come to the end of my analysis, I cannot help but think on when, specifically, the Scaevan gear is given to the player in the game. As the final tier of tome gear for the Post-Stormblood patches, there is hardly any better or any more convenient gear to use when heading into the next expansion, Shadowbringers. In which, the player finds out that Nero, along with the rest of the Ironworks crew, worked and fought and toiled through a calamity, an apocalypse, to lay down the theories for travelling across time and dimensions, the fruits of which they would never see, for the smallest chance to undo it all. The calamity. The pain and terror and starvation. The loss of dear friends and comrades, including the Warrior of Light’s own death. I keep thinking about how we can walk past the aetherometer Nero casts away at the end of the Crystal Tower raids, the symbol of his past obsession and jealousy. How the armor and arms Nero designed could be what protects the Warrior of Light block one more hit, cast one more spell, take one more step on the First. The Scaevan gear is not only proof that Nero cares for the Warrior of Light (whether its interpreted platonically or romantically or otherwise) to the point of invention, but how he’s grown as a character himself. Perhaps that growth only happens because he does learn to care for the Warrior of Light.

(Congratulations! You made it to the end! Now, I have engagement bait homework for any other NeroWoL shippers: Does Nero make things for your WoL? What is it? Does your WoL help him design the things he makes for them? Reblog, leave a reply, or even send me asks with your answers!)

[otherworldseekers]

Hey, all. So... my birthday is coming up. (March 31) And I planned to do this sooner (where did the first half of March GO?) but alas. Anyway, I've been struggling a lot lately (who hasn't?) and I thought to myself that very little would go so far to cheer me up as having my dash just flooded by Nero on my birthday. So I am taking the rather presumptuous initiative of declaring March 31 to be....

(I hope you like my graphic. I put like 30 seconds of effort into it.)

My request for my birthday is that you post anything and everything Nero related or adjacent or even barely relevant.

Gpose Nero! In any context.

Gpose Severia and Nero! You can find mcdfs of Severia and Nero here. (I include Nero cause I have a couple of mods on him to remove his neck seam and such. But you don't have to use it.)

Post any screenshots or art you have of Nero!

Talk about Nero! How do you feel about him? Like him or love him? (You can also talk about not liking him as long as it's interesting.) Favorite Nero moments. Favorite Nero fails. Anything goes.

SE doesn't have any intention of making use of him. But Nero thrives on attention and praise. For One Day Only, let's make Nero the fandom's favorite!

Use the tag #Nero Day or #FFXIV Nero Day or tag me directly.

Thank you in advance to anyone who participates! Reblogs appreciated.

[headspace-hotel]

As a society, we need to return to plant symbolism, but not the obscure and arbitrary stuff—a lot of plants' meanings were connected to their medicinal properties or other properties. More of that, and include the ecological roles and values too. More plant symbolism where plants "mean" things because they really do literally mean those things

Red poppies came to symbolize remembrance of fallen soldiers and hope for a peaceful future because they flourished in the fields after WW1 due to the disturbance caused by the bombings, which created the perfect environment for an early-successional-stage plant. Do you see what I'm saying

[headspace-hotel]

Cedar symbolizes purity which probably has something to do with its insect repelling properties

[headspace-hotel]

Plants and suggested meanings:

Dandelion: Resist Annihilation, hope, anarchy, anti-authoritarian

Oak: Strength, protection, providing for others

American Sycamore: Resilience, Survive Extinction, Stay Hydrated

Allegheny Blackberry: Be nice but have boundaries

Osage Orange: Don't make yourself palatable to others

American Pokeweed: Make the best out of a bad situation, Loud Colors

Bradford Pear: The ideal of American suburbia is hostile, false, and will inevitably collapse under its own weight

Kudzu: The danger of limitless growth

[headspace-hotel]

Amaranth: Fuck Around, Find Out

[castielscaplan]

23.5K Prompts <3

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Apocalyptic World/Horror Prompts (1741 Prompts)

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Random Titles Prompts (2720 Prompts)

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updated February 6 2026 - Deleted several lists and added them elsewhere! Added tabs to most of the lists for easier searching! Added Several Athletics prompts to the Occupations tabs.

PLEASE reblog if you use any of these/wanna share with your writer friends!!

No credit is necessary, just have fun!

[wolquestion]

12/5/25

What does your wol(oc)'s handwriting look like?

[sometiktoksarevalid]

[acegender]

explain your gender in 10 words or less without using boring words like “male”, “female”, “nonbinary”, “masculine”, “feminine” or “androgynous”.

go!

[goodolddumbbanana]

I’m a banana

[axel-jesterally]

Im a racoon

[sillyzone1209]

I’m a clown

[moonsandloons]

Lady and the tramp I’m both

[catboy-tdick]

all the stars are us and me

[grey-rays-of-sunshine]

i’m a creature who wears fishnets

[marquise-spinneret-mindfag]

im a silly creature

[red-leaves-of-autumn]

evil rock with dysphoria

[kittysnail-sadweasel]

autechre

[vigilo-audio-opperior]

mothman

[fraud---third]

I’m ballsboy

[thatnewcarsmeli]

I’m the mortal flesh of a forgotten deity.

[niseag-arts]

gender is a sometimes thing. i think. it’s confusing.

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

why are we forgetting that fanfic writers write whatever they want to read because they write for themselves and are just kind enough to share their hours of hard work with us to read for free?

don’t like something? don’t read them

realizing you don’t like what you’re reading? click that back button

not understanding why there are so many fics about x and not enough about y? read the beginning of this post, “fanfic writers write whatever they want to read because they write for themselves”

wanting more fics about y? then you write fics about that thing you want to read for yourself the way others write fanfics about things they want to read for themselves. that’s the point of fanfiction

fandoms become more toxic when we think we have the right to shit on fanfic writers just because what they write for themselves isn’t to our personal liking. so here’s the thing, it’s not to your liking because they didn’t write it for you.

[adhenxiv]

A'dhen's All Saint's Wake costume for this year: The Mad Hatter!

It's his favorite holiday, can you tell?

[bounce-a-coin-off-your-witcher]

Oh you're writing a gay smut fic with a fantasy setting? Don't forget to give one of your characters a

[philosophicalparadox]

It’s not that mysterious though.

Anyone carrying a bladed weapon carried oil. (More on that in a sec) Oil is what you use to clean and condition steel, especially, since water will rust it.

Many people in the Middle Ages used scented oils for their skin and hair from noblemen to lowly serfs.

Oil was incredibly abundant and quite cheap. The TYPE of oil however does matter in this.

Sheep oil (rendered from their fat) was very common and used for all manner of things from making soap to treating skin conditions. Rendered sheep fat has a very light texture and is a decent carrier oil without too pungent of a scent. Unfortunately it did rancid fast so it was common to add lots of herbs to it to help preserve it, especially rosemary, borage, marjoram and citron peels. This is how it became a common “perfume” oil used to scent hair skin or clothes. Nearly anyone would have had this handy somewhere.

Rendered pork oil was very common too and was most popular as a cooking oil.

Vegetable oil made from walnuts, almonds and flax seed was by far the most common non-animal oil. Nearly anybody had a bottle of almond or walnut oil in their pantry or on their person. These were by far the most popular oils used for conditioning steel, with walnut oil preferred because its tannins also gave armor a patina that kept it better. Only the absurdly wealthy ever wore polished armor. Everyone else blackened it to make it keep better. Walnut oil is good at doing that.

Walnut oil also works well as a lubricant. People back then DID use sexual lube by the way. No prostitute would be caught dead without it. Their favorite types were walnut and olive oil, though almond oil might be used in a pinch. They also used watered down acacia gum in southern Europe, which was sticky but slick and easy to re-wet.

Olive oil though was THE oil in Europe. It was expensive, comparatively, but obviously people considered it well worth its cost because it was found everywhere south of the Seine and frequently seen in even minor lordly houses or knights quarters much farther north. Considering quite a few people of the time thought it had aphrodisiac qualities when applied as certain way (likely because raw olive oil has a warming effect) I think you can imagine the most common reason it was sought after by men in particular.

Olive oil was also used in medicine and just about any church had some floating around somewhere because it’s conveniently good at treating minor infections and is wonderful for toothaches.

So the mysterious vial of oil isn’t at all mysterious and even if he were carrying it around with the sole intention of using it for sex, that wouldn’t actually be that strange either.

[taldigi]

Hello???? Suggestions????

[sezja]

I'm sure there are situations in FFXIV that would not be improved by Just Add Nero tol Scaeva, but I'm gonna be real, there are shockingly few of them

[otherworldseekers]

I literally say this every single time there's new content. There should be some Nero Scaeva in this. Let him bring his particular brand of chaos to more things! Let him snark and smirk in more locations! Like almost everything would be more fun with him involved.

[theworldwalkerswols]

Alt text:

Twitter user Athenaeum @/athen_aether on Jul 29, 2022

Aymeric carrying Estinien from the Steps of Faith ought to become an entire genre of art 1000 years after The Dragonsong War. Y'know like the Lamentation of Christ. It’s ‘The Mercy Of St Aymeric’, sometimes styled ‘The Deliverance of St Estinien’ and it’s always very homoerotic.

[wandringaesthetic]

This scene is so !!!!!! to me, because there is So Much There. Not only is there what Aymeric says here (“let me do this at least” or something to that effect) i.e. let me help him now because I couldn’t help him before and in fact tried to kill him and I feel guilty about that. But also, there was a heavy risk of Estinien’s head ending up on the chopping block after this. There he was, transformed into the nation’s most hated dragon, attacking the seat of a country that regularly tortured people to death for ~fraternizing~ with dragons.

So by carrying him from the Steps of Faith, Aymeric was putting his foot down and saying “No, he is a hero.” And making it true by treating him like one. Consciously making a scene. One for the history books. And anyone who wanted to throw Estinien to the inquisition was going to have to push back against That Image. (And I wonder if that imagery might have partially become popular because in his armor Estinien was sort of Every Dragoon and you know the casualty rate for them had to be so high, especially toward the end of the war) Maybe Aymeric especially did it because it wasn’t clear Estinien was going to recover at that point. “If he dies I am burying him with the Highest Honors and you can fucking try to stop me.”

So I think Aymeric was intentionally Creating A Tableau there but I don’t think he realized quite how far that would carry, because he is far too self-effacing to believe that they’re going to be trying to elevate him to sainthood the second his body is cold. If he thought the moment that important it was because of Estinien rather than because of himself. Because he’s always believed that Estinien would be successful in his quest, and Of Course if he succeeded in slaying Nidhogg then his name would live on Forever. As long as Haldrath’s, if not longer.

And Aymeric, to Estinien? Aymeric made Estinien, who hasn’t had any hope for the future beyond vengeance, not since childhood, Aymeric made Estinien believe. In the future. In an end to a thousand year war. In peace, maybe not for him, but for someone. He made him believe there was an after. And if he could do that for someone as bitter and jaded as Estinien, what might he do for others?

They both believe that they are standing beside a living legend, a walking saint, and both believe they are barely fit to untie the other’s sandals. But if this man, this man, calls me friend. If this man believes I am capable of my frankly quite idiotic ambitions. Then maybe…? Maybe I am something. Maybe I am not a fool. Maybe I can really do it. Maybe we can actually….

I am rotating their relationship in my mind like the proverbial fork in the microwave. I am doing a stupid looking stomping dance about how much these two love each other.

As far as the homoeroticism goes. It’s funny. Even though every time either of them speak about the other I’m like “those cats love each other” I think I find the idea of them having a very intense friendship as appealing if not moreso than the two of them as lovers? I like fanfic of them together, but I think that what is canon to me is a very ride or die friendship. Even in a universe where they are the platonic ideal of war buddies, I think they are the sort of tight with each other and have the sort of mutual admiration for each other that everyone thinks they are fucking anyway. So. Lol. You still get Aymeric kissing Estinien’s bloodstained brow in church windows for as long as the Halonic religion survives. I don’t think either of them would even be that mad about it.

[adhenxiv]

i'll give you my best shot - NeroWoL Week 2025

Rating: Mature Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply Category: M/M Fandom: Final Fantasy XIV Relationship: Nero tol Scaeva/Warrior of Light Additional Tags: POV Third Person Limited, neroshipweek2025, Canon-Typical Violence, Patch 2.0: A Realm Reborn (Final Fantasy XIV), Crystal Tower Questline (Final Fantasy XIV), Omega Questline (Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood), Nero tol Scaeva being Nero tol Scaeva, Sex Toys, Anal Sex, Bottom Nero tol Scaeva Language: English

Read Here!

Content warning for light, canon-typical violence in chapter 1, explicit sex in chapter 7.