#illyria capriccio

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if sil'dahn was ruled by lalafell why is this chair so perfect for me

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I barely play Sage but I needed this weapon glam

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WOL question time!

18. What is something they would never tell anyone? (a memory, a wish, anything)

Oooh, that's a really tough one.

For Illyria... that she's actually glad that House Fortemps took over raising her daughter for her, and that her daughter doesn't currently know who she is. She really, truly loves her daughter, but a) she'd be a pretty terrible mother (or, so she thinks anyway. it's not as though she's tried.) and b) it's far too dangerous for anyone outside House Fortemps to know she even has a daughter. So... that's two secrets, really: that she has a daughter at all, and that she's glad she doesn't have to be a mother to her daughter.

For Ryuu... probably that she sometimes resents Kian (the WoL in her story) and even finds him annoying. He's her best friend but sometimes she just wants to throw him down a well. There's times when she even thinks it's stupid that Hydaelyn chose him to be The Warrior of Light (TM) and not her, that she'd be way better at it than him. Ironically, this is, at times, how Hyperion (her Ancient) felt about Azem -- that he would have been better in the role and that the only reason he wasn't chosen is because he's Venat's little brother and thus being chosen to be the next Azem would have been seen as nepotism of a sort. At the same time, Azem became Hyperion's best friend and someone he would willingly die for, despite those feelings. Some things don't change through all the eons.

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look, when you're already an empty shell inhabited by two (2) souls and one (1) weird memory construct... entity... thingy, held together by dynamis and memory

you don't actually stand out that much in Solution 9

(you can't sleep forever, Illy. The gates will be thrown wide, and you'll have to wake up...)

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👩 = What’s your muse’s relationship with their mother, what made it that way?

Illyria: Complicated! Eidenghota (just Eid, for short) is the head of the Black Shroud Players, a respected theater company in Gridania. Before that, she was a bard and dancer who made her way contracting on pirate ships. Voyages get long, people get bored, a ship's bard is actually a great investment (plus a big help in battle). Illyria, meanwhile, had absolutely zero talent for music, dance, or performance; she was cripplingly shy and had a bad stutter as a kid. In a lot of ways, Illy felt like she could never live up to her mother's legacy.

Except, well, then, all the Warrior of Light stuff happened. Illy still doesn't feel like she earned all that, even if Eid insists she absolutely did and that she's so proud of her daughter.

When Illyria was about to head off to Ultima Thule, Eid actually traveled all the way to Sharlayan to see her off, and gifted Illy her very own Dancer job stone, so that even if Eid couldn't go with her to the ends of the world, she'd be with her daughter in spirit.

Ryuu: Also complicated. Leonie Serafinaux died five years ago in the Calamity, unfortunately. Leonie loved her daughter, and was more forgiving than her husband Edouard when Ryuu ran away from home at age 14. She and Ryuu actually did exchange a few letters, even though Edouard refused to communicate with his daughter until just before the Calamity (sadly). Part of why Leonie was more understanding was that... well, both she --and-- Edouard were the children of cultists that had fled Ishgard for Gyr Abania, but Leonie's parents were part of a very particular cult called the Daughters of Ratatoskr (This cult is not canon and is one I invented for this story). This cult reasoned that since the Knights Twelve had devoured Ratatoskr, that by breeding certain bloodlines they could "revive" her by producing a child with a large percentage of Ratatoskr's blood, and then feeding the child with blood from one of Ratatoskr's brood. They'd then present the child to Nidhogg. This... never worked, as you might imagine; Nidhogg would generally kill the child and everyone present at the "ceremony" out of rage. Cultists gonna cult though, so they kept trying. Leonie was supposed to be the latest attempt, but her parents were like "Wow actually hell no" and fled Ishgard with her.

Leonie's high concentration of dragon blood, however, meant that much like Rielle in the Dark Knight quests, she did have a lot of strange powers and unnaturally dense aether, so she was less blindsided by Ryuu's Echo than Edouard was (Edouard's family were Peacemakers, a relatively benign cult and precursor to the Disciples of Saint Shiva). She still didn't quite understand it, and worried a great deal for her daughter (especially once she found out that her daughter was homeless on the streets of Ul'dah for five years!), but also always respected Ryuu's choices.

Ryuu misses her a lot. One of her greatest regrets is that she didn't get to see her, or her father, one last time before the Calamity.

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3, 5, 14!

3. Is it important to you that you "like" your OC (as in consider them likeable)? Or is it more important to create a distinctive character, even if they are unpleasant or evil?

I think it's more important to make a character that I find interesting to play. The characters I play in MMOs do often end up likeable to me, but I don't go into it thinking "I want to make a likeable person." They also tend to involve personality traits of my own that I magnify and focus on? Both Ryuu and Illyria I find to be frustrating people at times, but they're also sort of wish fulfilment in the sense of "they can actaully solve problems and help people."

I have played an unpleasant person before; that'd be Krin Daro / Grucching Catte in Elder Scrolls Online. She's a Speaker for the Dark Brotherhood (eg, an assassin) and a vampire. She's got good reason for doing what she does (long, tragic backstory) but she's still an unrepentant killer.

5. How important is it to you that your OC is attractive? Does that mean attractive to you personally (sexually or just for purposes of playing dress-up!)? Or do you aim to make an OC over which others will inevitably thirst?

Not at all! I made both Illy and Ryuu very attractive (to me) because I wanted to, but my Elder Scrolls Online characters and my main Guild Wars 2 character aren't conventionally attractive at all! Grucching Catte is 65 years old, overweight, and looks... look, let me just post my favorite picture of her:

Yeah.

14. How do you want other people to view or react to your OC?

Honestly I don't really think about that much...? I make my characters for me, first and foremost. I suppose I like it when people find my characters interesting or want to learn more of their stories. How they actually react to those stories is their business, though I'm always interested in their opinions! I suppose if I were to sum it up, "Wow, that's a really interesting character concept/story! Tell me more?"

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How did you decide on the sex and/or gender of your OC? Was it important that it was the same as yours? Or the same as what you personally find attractive? Or did it not make much difference either way?

In general, when I play MMOs I tend to play female characters. I'm genderfluid/agender/nonbinary myself, so it's very, very rare that I get that option as an explicit choice in a videogame. I enjoy being a bit subversive though, and even to this day many games assume a "default" of a male character, so picking a female character feels like the more daring, interesting choice, at least narrative-wise. I also just often feel like the aesthetic choices for male characters are kind of boring (FFXIV does better in this regard).

Specifics...

Illyria was originally just supposed to be a 1:1 port of my Elder Scrolls Online character, Illyria Hlaalu, who is also a woman. But then I saw female roegadyn and fell completely in love with them. Just. Wow. What a gender! What a concept! I love every femroe.

Ryuu is more interesting! She's actually based on a kind of cringe OC I used to RP in high school along with an internet friend of mine. She was also a woman but you know Badass and Cool and had Cool Magic Powers and was Part Dragon and could use both Healing and Destruction Magic and was So Cool and Not Like Other Girls. My friend and I recently reconnected after nearly 15 years (!) and re-made our cringe high school OCs in FFXIV.