#alin gale

[thatsadorbsyo]

LFRP: Alin Gale [Balmung]

Basic Information:

Full Name: Alin Gale Gender: Nonbinary Male Age: 33 Race: Midlander Hyur Birthplace: Camp Drybone Current Residence: Wandering in the Shroud

General Character Info:

Sexual Orientation: Pansexual Relationship Status: Abstains Occupation: Conjurer, Itinerant Ascetic Hobbies: Woodworking, Fishing, Botany

Notable Features: Alin is often dressed in simple but clean clothes dyed in earth tones, favoring function and simplicity over form or embellishments. He wears no jewelry nor makeup. His face is mostly soft-featured, with few sharp lines. He has a long-healed scar across his face, and the beginnings of crows’ feet forming in the corners of his eyelids. He is often tanned by the sun on his face, arms, and legs.

Physical Appearance: 6 fulms tall, 175 ponze, with tawny skin, dark brown eyes, and shoulder-length lightly wavy grey-black hair. Alin is heavily freckled across the face and shoulders. His build is strong but slight, as he’s no stranger to hard work nor to meager rations.

Personality: Happy to be the anchor in any room, Alin exudes a strong, stable, calming energy. He is a bottomless well of curiosity for the world and people around him, but he does not pry, choosing only to drink from what is freely offered to him. A little too old to be wide-eyed but still far too young to be jaded, Alin is a person of patient optimism. He is deliberate and steady, even-tempered, and rarely displays emotional highs or lows where others can see it happen. To some, however, Alin’s outward placidity may appear to be a bit of a mask... and they’re not entirely wrong, either.

Hooks:

Acolyte of the Twelve: Though Oschon is his patron, Alin is dedicated to following all Twelve of the Eorzean pantheon. He actively seeks to learn about the other gods directly from their most devoted acolytes through service, conversation, and ritual. Characters with active or strong bonds to their patron god(s) are welcomed as past or future mentors and colleagues. His current focus is on Nophica, and he is eager to meet and work with followers of the Matron.

Professional Exorcist: Alin was formally trained in conjury, and his primary occupation, if he can be said to have one, is in the purging of void taint on the land or performing exorcisms on people afflicted by voidsent possession. This is one of the few things for which he will accept monetary recompense, but he won't deny someone in need who cannot pay. If your character is in need of such a service, they may have heard of his skill and wish to consult with Alin for further action.

Always a Helping Hand...: Beholden to no country or creed, Alin's only philosophical loyalty is to the act of service and in doing small deeds of direct, impactful good. He makes himself available to all who need succor, wherever they are, in whatever way they need it. Medical and emotional healing, education and counseling, short-term physical labor, or even if one simply wishes for company in order to feel a little less alone for a time, all of these (and more) are services that Alin is grateful to provide. All one has to do is ask.

...Accepts Help in Return: Given his transient lifestyle, Alin often relies on the kindness of strangers to provide food and lodging while he's staying in their area. He's more than happy to work in exchange for the accommodation, and will insist on it if the provider isn't a direct beneficiary of one of his other acts of service. Alin will sleep in your guest bed, on your floor, or in your barn, and will eat whatever you cook without complaint. He'll leave a blessing on your home before he departs! Thank you for the kindness.

Itinerant Ascetic: Alin has taken many vows, the most important of which are his vow of poverty and vow of unattachment. As such, he tends not to stay in any one place for very long. Though he may cycle through revisitations of places where he once worked, he cherishes his influence as a positive but fleeting force. Alin often falls out of contact with people for years before reconnecting with them. Maybe he helped your character in the past and they are only just meeting him again. If so, they likely knew him by a different name...

OOC:

Server: Balmung/Crystal DC Timezone: EST Type of RP: Action and adventure, faith and counseling, healing/medical RP, mentor/mentee training, dark/mature themes, magical realism and horror, plot-driven RP, combat RP, situationally dependent erotic themes. Hard Limits: I will not roleplay anything that uncritically reflects real life prejudices, and I will not roleplay with players or characters who are under the age of 18, even if the subject matter is strictly safe for work. Contact: thatsadorbsyo#6895 on Discord, or Tumblr IM to @shay-ooc.

Visibility tags: @mooglemeet​ @ffxiv-crystal-rp​ @balmungrp​ @crystalxivrp​

[thatsadorbsyo]

Duncan(?) - Muster (3)

(art credit: italian coast scene with ruined tower by thomas cole, 1838)

Summer’s close brings the start of my pilgrimage, which always begins in the same place it ended the previous summer, so that my turns mark a full circle just like the star I walk upon. I return to the mark of the past year’s patron to reflect on the work I’ve done in the interim four seasons, and from there I visit each of the Twelve in turn, culminating in a visit to my patron for the year to come. I never know who it will be, not until I find myself standing before them at the capstone of a predictable sequence.

This year, I begin at the stone of my personal patron. The Wanderer’s mark sits on a cliffside overlooking a long-abandoned city, where white stonework pillars reach up out of a calm Vylbrand bay like mildewing bone fingers grasping in a hapless attempt to steal the stars from the sky above.

The wind races up the face of the cliff, sending my hair flaring all around my head in an exhilarating rush of fragrances from the water below. I smell algae, rotten wood, and the picante bite of smoke from the mines in the distance. In this sudden whirlwind I feel the caress of his hand against my cheek. He is with me, and I smile in blissful confidence.

I have earned his favor through deed and devotion. It’s been a productive year; I have touched so many souls in his name. Malms beyond malms lie at my feet, behind me and unspooling before me, with countless hands left to grasp along the way.

A warmth spreads through me, a flickering spark that kindles in the belly and fulminates in a sudden billow up my chest, spreading in a red flush over my darkened cheeks. My breath is gone with the wind that shakes me, and I am left breathless and hot as my god wraps me in his blustering touch. I stand still at the the pitching edge of this cliff, arms spread in an open invitation for him to send me careening into the depths if I do not pass his judgement. It would be so easy. His winds are strong and for all my height I am still infinitely small; I feel his fingers grasp as deep as the bone through my thin wool coat.

Of course, I know the answer. I am good and faithful, and my relationship with him is an amiable one. My pulse throbs in rabbity beats, in my ears, in the thin space between my lungs, and all ten of my fingers grow numb from the wind’s bite, but still my feet stay planted in Oschon’s dirt. Breath returns to me as the vortex recedes once more into a calm breeze, and this is both a blessing and a curse. I touch so many, but rarely am I so touched. I miss it already.

My cheeks stay hot even in his absence, and I realize that I have turned my face toward the midday sun. A smile, joyful, breaks over me even as I double over, panting with euphoria. My trembles are those of eager hands, patient and ever hungry.

Azeyma next, then. And from there, I cannot say. It will be written.

[thatsadorbsyo]

this screenshot is about as ooc as it gets, i just think he is very pretty

[thatsadorbsyo]

Duncan(?) and Ashton - Lush (9)

Physical labor was a welcome respite. Most of the following day was spent up a ladder with my arms over my head, twisting apples on the branches until my shoulders ached from repetitious extension. My muscles burned, but it was an honest heat, one that brought clarity of focus not unlike my belt of tines. In these small discomforts, we sometimes find peace in the rhythm of life.

The morning was brisk, so we bundled ourselves in flannels and wool jackets that we shed throughout the day as the sun rose high enough to warm us even filtered through the leafy canopy. Ashton worked beside me, but it didn’t feel like a weight so long as I didn’t look at him. My eyes stayed on my work, inspecting each apple for bruises and holes before I rotated them in my hand, plucking them from the bough and then sorting them by clarity. Ugly apples go in pies, pretty apples go to market.

A simple camaraderie is born when two people work in tandem, and this was no different. Ashton and I worked out a mostly wordless system: You hold my ladder now, I’ll hold your basket after. Careful, that one’s still crawling with spiders. I won’t mention that I saw your erection if you won’t comment on how you walked in on mine. No, this one has been taken by the worms, leave it for the squirrels. A generous truce at best, one that implied that he would forgive me of the sin of laying with his mother as long as I held up my side of the palanquin. But with time and synergy comes trust, and so his tongue began to loosen.

Ashton spoke of a young man’s concerns. He had a girlfriend, whom he worried he was disappointing, both as a lover and a future provider, and a cluster of friends who kept encouraging him to try his hand at adventuring to make up for the slack that the orchard couldn’t carry. He was considering taking up the lance, but feared that if he did so, his mother would be all on her own to tend the land and run the business. The orchard that his father intended to be Ashton’s inheritance had instead become a shackle.

By late afternoon we had several full bushels and retreated to the barn, where we set about arranging the apples on wood pallets to breathe prior to processing or packaging. Melody joined us for this part, taking stock while we arranged the harvest’s bounty for her perusal, and together the three of us shared a small keg of cider from the previous year. It became a game among us, to fantasize about the fates of various apples -- this one will be stewed down for pies, this one mashed into butter, this one buffed to a shine and sold whole on the market. This one, right here, this one I’m going to eat right now, still in its flesh like the gods intended. With the cider, our smiles came easily and the work sped by.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all, especially with an extra pair of hands to share the workload. Even with just what he had hauled on that day, it would be enough for Melody to keep the farm for another year. I went to bed alone in the barn, heedless of the light that stayed on in the farmhouse for several bells into the night; a silent invitation to join. I had already ministered to her -- she had what she needed, and to give her more now would risk an attachment I couldn’t afford.

For reasons I couldn’t discern, Ashton lingered in the barn with me after she left, though he didn’t resume his prior confessional. He didn’t speak much of anything, and I wasn’t inclined to break the silence with a story of my own. We sat in this stillness for what felt like a bell or longer, emptying the keg and playing Triple Triad for valueless chips -- for glory rather than gold -- until the lantern was the only light that illuminated our table and the stars hung high over the Twelveswood.

A moment came at the end of the night where he placed his cards face down and turned to stare at me, with dark green eyes dulled by the buzzing numb of alcohol but still burning with some untold feeling in the crease of his amber brow, and I suddenly felt a pang of dread that he was either about to proposition me for sex or threaten me with violence. Or, worse, that he was about to intimate something to me that would leave me flat on the floor, weighted down by a responsibility that I did not ask for.

Dangerous, he was so dangerous.

You should retire for the evening, I had said to him before he could speak his mind. Sleep is the balm that you need. If there was disappointment in his eyes, embarrassment came quickly on its heels. I can only hope that he saw the same echoed in the flush on my cheeks. The regret was mutual, but necessary. As I said, sweet friend, I went to bed alone that night, on the scratchy hay of the barn but wrapped in a warm wool blanket. I moved the cilice to my other leg before sleeping, and barely felt its bite.

I did not dream, but when I woke it was to a curious odor, acrid and vinegar, sweet and earthy but far, far too much. Overpowering, cloying; it made my stomach churn in a way that couldn’t be explained away by overindulgence the night before. It didn’t take long to locate the source; after stumbling around the barn, blinking and tugging on my trousers, I came upon the pallet we had filled with healthy ripe apples merely bells ago.

Somehow, in the dead of the night while I slept only fulms away, every last one of them had rotted clean through to the core.

[thatsadorbsyo]

i took a queue penalty for this

ooc, because alin would never wear clothes this fancy

[thatsadorbsyo]

Duncan(?) and Ashton - Irenic (28)

Ashton came to visit me on my last night at the Groves’ orchard. I knew him by his footsteps even before he broke the ring of shadow drawn by the dim lantern around my hay bed; apart from this small dome of orange light, the rest of the barn was vast and dark, and presumably beyond its wooden slats the stars shone above the canopy of the forest. I was a small thing, blanketed within many other, much larger strata of vacancy layered over life, and so on, and so on. At the core of this cell was I, and the man who came to confess to me.

I won’t share what he told me, not even with you, dearest friend; I hope you can forgive me. It’s too fantastical to repeat, and there’s only so far that I can ask you to stretch your belief. Know that when I looked in his eyes, he believed every word of what he intimated to me. A man burdened beyond belief; humbled, humiliated, shackled.

It is my nature to hold as many realities within myself as I can. Every voice of the Twelve speaks in different facets of my soul, as it does in all people, but seeking harmony among the chorus of voices is, at times, nigh insurmountable. Conflict, even impasse, can lead to a deadlock of wills that traps me in paralyzed inaction if I don’t weave exactly the right path between the oft opposing demands of the gods.

For the problem that Ashton brought to me with shaking hands and a posture that made him small, for once aware of his Spoken fragility, I could not find an easy path through the forest of sacred pillars. It doesn’t happen often, my beloved friend, but sometimes I come... untethered, is the word. The thread of divine wisdom slips between my fingers, drawn in too many directions to hold. It unravels in my hands, yanked out of my palm quick enough to burn. The gods leave me behind, and I am filled with the unbearable lightness of their absence; a barn full of shadows and only a mote of light.

I was made to face Ashton alone, as only myself. The person who would for now call himself Duncan, born of Thanalan clay, forged in the belly of a beast and reborn as a vessel for celestial voices. A sanctuary empty of a choir, I am still only dust. I am dirt, meat. A crisp filler like the pale flesh of an apple. Featureless but sweet and grainy, heavy on the bough.

Weak, is what I am. Without an anchor, I let him put me on my back. I couldn’t solve his greater problem, couldn’t even find a consensus in the congregation of the gods, so instead I allowed Ashton to mold my clay into whatever would be a balm for now. A cheap fix, a cloth bandage over a festering wound.

Sometimes, I cannot help them.

[thatsadorbsyo]

Duncan(?) and Ashton - Panglossian (18)

(art credit: the old hay barn by jason sacran)

For half a day after I returned from the woods, all I could do was sleep. I laid dreamless in the coarse hay of Melody’s barn for the better part of twelve bells until she brought me a mug of soup sometime the following afternoon. A broth with root vegetables, a welcome warmth against the chill that still clung to my extremities. Exposure to the elements was a necessary evil to achieve the type of clarity I had sought, but it did require recovery. The days were getting short, and I was at her mercy.

I told her everything. My meditation, my rote suffering. The vision of Caora, wandering voidsent, a parasite in some poor host’s body. Their orchard hadn’t shown the only signs of rot in the forest; I had counted at least a dozen other fruit-bearing trees with the same affliction on my way back to their home. Aether is aether.

At some point, before the sun went below the treeline, Ashton joined us. He leaned against the barn door with his arms crossed, lingering at the threshold, neither in nor out. Unwilling to voice his concern for me, but too stubborn to look away.

‘It’s simple, then. Are you an exorcist or aren’t you?’ Melody had said in a sudden rush of exuberance. I met Ashton’s eye from across the empty barn, and he made a show of inhaling deeply, long-suffering. ‘The gods must have brought you to us for a reason. A purger of the void at the very moment we needed one. It’s serendipitous. It must be fate,’ she continued.

I hadn’t the heart to tell her that at this point, my concern was no longer for her apple trees. My hands curled around my cup, clinging to the warmth that remained in the broth within as I chose my words carefully. ‘I won’t act until I know more. There is a woman to consider. I know not how it holds her.’ Another glance to Ashton, hopeful. ‘We should ask around; mayhap there are others who have seen her -- ah, it.’

He nodded, murmuring a simple assent, but already Melody was grabbing my hands to squeeze them in her haste to thank me for a job I had yet to complete. ‘A savior,’ she insisted. ‘You will save us.’ A grimace fought hard to blossom on my face, discomfort taking root. I wished not to be anyone’s lifeline, and for none to be indebted to me. No expectations, and no rewards; this was how it must be. No attachments.

At this, Ashton finally pushed away from the wall and inserted himself between us. ‘Ma,’ he said to her, gentle but firm. ‘You should finish your letters while there’s still sun left, aye?’ The reminder shook her out of her gratitudinous reverie, and only then did she leave my side, returning to the farmhouse with a glance over her shoulder.

Ashton dropped to the edge of my makeshift bed, leather boots creaking loudly in the quiet air. The golden hour was upon us, shining through the slats of wood, lighting a bonfire halo in his hair. When he spoke again, I struggled to find my tongue. ‘We’re fucked, aren’t we?’

‘I can’t help you recover for the year.’ The admittance pained me. ‘But I may be able to stop it from happening again.’

He nodded, grim and resigned. The weight of being an only son with an absent father settled around him; responsibility sat on him like a shroud. I burned to comfort him, to place a steadying hand on his shoulder or over the back of his palm, but the thought of touching him burned even hotter with the very thing I could not allow. This, too, hurt me. My own weaknesses made me fail him already, but I couldn’t afford to ignore my lessons.

Caora, the demon sucking the world through a mortal woman, was a warning to me from the gods themselves. Do not grow complacent. Do not drink too deeply of the land around you. Do not succumb to apathy, to excess, to the numbing balm of pleasure. This could be me.

So I didn’t touch him. I failed to make a connection when one was sorely needed, and in turn I had to watch while his jaw worked with unanswered frustration. He bottled his feelings, and I was too weak to help him express them. ‘What do I have to do?’ he asked.

My smile was placid, timeless. ‘Go comfort your mother.’ And in so doing, comfort yourself. ‘I’ll continue to meditate on it.’ Maybe we could still fix this.

[thatsadorbsyo]

Duncan(?) - Lucubration (16)

(art credit: vestige, rob mulholland)

The dusty streets of Thanalan were my first home. I am not forestborn, and as such, I am no Hearer. The elementals don’t speak to me, but there are still answers to be found among the trees, if you ask apt questions in the correct manner. It’s all about tailoring your approach to appease the right authority, and the elementals are not the only guardians of the Shroud.

Yes, I speak of the Matron.

I warned Melody and Ashton to leave me to my work, but in truth, they were ill-inclined to disturb me. The rot that began in the apples we’d harvested had begun to spread to the trees as well, opening moldy pits in some of the fruit still hanging from the boughs, threatening the entire grove. Could it be isolated and contained? Could any of the crops be salvaged, or were they about to face a winter with no windfall at all? These were the questions that concerned them, and understandably so.

With other matters to attend, I faded into the Twelveswood without protest from either of my benefactors. A full waterskin, a handful of ethers in a pouch, and my cane etched with scripture were all I took with me. It would have to last two suns. Maybe three.

Deep enough into the forest that I could no longer see Melody’s farmhouse, yet still close enough that I could feel the living beat of the orchard, I sought a place to sit. A patch of mossy earth, cradled between two roots, where I could lean my back against the trunk of a old tree and allow my heartbeat to sync to the sluggish flow of its veins. Trees contain a lifesblood much like our own, but sticky and sweet; time is not the same to them. I slowed myself down to meet them in the middle. My breath all but stilled. My heart became a whisper.

Two suns, maybe three. My lips would begin to crack at the corners. My ankles would develop deep sores where they crossed under my legs, pressed against the tree roots. Ants would explore my body, tracking through my hair and up my sleeves before ultimately deciding I carried nothing of interest, but I paid them no mind. I was not there for them.

As time went on, each new throb of pain began to melt into the others. The dull thud of my tailbone harmonized with the sharp discomfort in my feet. The pangs of hunger set a bass note for the others to follow. This was a tide that I could find myself in, lose myself to, follow in blissful nonexistence until something arose from the noise both within me and without, until the barrier between the two became indistinct. My spine sang with the same frequency as the crickets. What was the difference? There was no difference.

If I cease to exist, so does the pain. After the self is dissolved like powdered ash in a light breeze, all that remains in its wake is the song of Hydaelyn, a euphonious humming without beginning or end.

And in that nothing that is still everything all at once, I felt it.

I felt her.

No, not Hydaelyn. Not the Matron.

I later came to know her as Caora. But in the moment, all that spoke to me was the icy frost of fear crusting over my heart.