Day Three of Martim Week 2025 has "Au Day" as an option, so I decided to do A Final Fantasy 14 AU for it!
And if I left it at the first picture It could have staid as the general "This is a fantasy AU. Martin is A paladin of a species called Roegadyn who grew up in a port town called Limsa Lominsa, and Tim is a foreign Viera and a Lancer." Just a fun joke about lancer mechanics from the game and it's all over!!
But than I realized an element of ff14 makes for a *wonderful* backstory for Tim:
So to explain to non ff14 players: There is a magic that lets faithful people summon false versions of their gods, these "gods" have a mind control ability called "Tempering". Until the last expansion there was no cure, and the only thing you could do for the afflicted was to kill them humanely so their souls could be put to rest. BUT, some people have an ability called the Echo that makes them immune to this. Summons are mostly done by Indigenous groups that are desperate to keep their land.
Tim is of a race that is very reclusive, if they want to explore they have to choose to be expelled from their tribe and never return. His brother Danner wanted to be an explorer, and even though he was happy to be a Wood Wailer, he was hardly going to let his baby brother go off to another continent alone. So they both packed up and left to become adventurers.
Unfortunately, on arriving in Limsa Lominsa they ran across a fight that involved one of these summoned gods. Danny became tempered, but Tim discovered he had the echo and was immune. At a time with no cure, Tim had to deal with his brother.
Tim hears about a group called the "Scions of the Seventh Dawn" who recruit people like him to stop summoning and stop things like what happened to his brother from happening to others. He joins quickly, and mostly does well though he has a problem with being more reckless than he should be. Martin helps him a lot.
Things crash when one of the inner circle finds a cure for Tempering, and they start dealing with summoning by making peace, and Tim suddenly realizes that revenge meant a lot more to him then protecting people.
Martin tries to help, but he can't say much. He's a citizen of one of the city states that forced the hands of the tribes into doing summoning, in his mind he's more at fault for what happened to Tim's brother than the Kobold's. There is a hard time where they have to accept that this is for the best for everyone and that it still very much sucks that it happened too late to save Tim's brother.
I got the urge to draw our normal ffxiv light party with boba hehe due to the gong cha collab :3
left to right, honey, caii, asteri, and yehnny!
i love miqote girls, roe women, and viera boys ; w ;
My amazing friend Rachael Bryant gave me the commission of my FFXIV character today! Meet Brosuke Hanamura, my self-insert Monk! I adore this to pieces.
