Third commission completed for @misslaamb !! This is her and her sister's FFXIV versions of the Moomin characters, Little My and Snufkin! I may have lost myself through the details along the way LMAO but I always have so much fun working with my colored pencils so I was excited for this :>
Thank you very much again for commissioning me!!!💜✨
GOOOOOOD THIS IS SO GORGEOUS!!! The colors are so vibrant and well mixed together, and honestly props to the amount of detail work you put into this. Thank you soooo so so so much for this beautiful piece, Auro! ^^
After many great losses, trials and tribulations, the siblings now stand at the end of the universe. Their hearts and weapons at the ready to battle a worlds ending avatar of despair with their loyal companions of another star at their sides.
May Hydaelyn’s light, and the god of all small things from a star so much further away than their legs can travel, walk with them into The Final Day.
Hello everyone! This post has been a long time coming and we didn’t really expect to get as much traction as we have, but since we’ve managed to accumulate a few curious folk, we wanted to shed some light on this little AU for some of y’all who have questions but don’t know how to ask. The goal of this post is to answer a few basic questions for folks across the fandoms we tag so that there’s a bit of clarity around what the heck we’re doing here.
So without further ado, let’s begin!
WHAT IS THE WANDERERS OF LIGHT AU?
Wanderers of Light is a crossover au between two Moomin characters and the world of Final Fantasy XIV. It is an AU started by siblings who play two of our favorite fictional siblings going through the main scenario quest (MSQ) together. There is a bit of lore as to how these two started their adventure, but essentially, we're taking Little My and Snufkin from Moomin valley and transport them to Eorzea, Narnia style.
We go through the MSQ together, while also pulling shenanigans on the side. So if you like Moomins x high fantasy adventure setting, have a soft spot for sibling adventures that sometimes get a little TOO adventurous (think saving the world, killing corrupted authority figures, fighting wars, and leading revolutions among other things), or you're a FFXIV player who likes to see what other players are doing with their downtime bc oh look! G-poses, drawings, stories aside from the msq??? If you're any of these things, we welcome your follow and added interest!!
I'M A MOOMIN FAN BUT I DON'T KNOW WHAT FFXIV IS, CAN YOU EXPLAIN?
Yeah! So FFXIV is an open world mmorpg where you play as the "Warrior of Light" aka your super customizable main character that can be of any of the playable races who work under any classes of your choosing.
Already lost you? Ok so take Little My, she's a Lalafell who's a warrior class, so she's the smallest race available who swings a big froggin axe! And Snufkin's a Miqot'e bard (but started as an archer!), so he's a cat boy with a bow/arrow and an array of instruments at his disposal.
(screencap courtesy of our friend, Tristan)
Back on track, as the Warrior of Light (WoL), you start out as an adventurer with the class you've picked in character creation. Depending on how you want to play the game, you can follow the msq where you meet a cast of lovely characters with a storyline that packs some heavy punches in each arc--or as we call expansions, which our pinned posts are made to indicate where we are in the story so as to let people know not to mention spoilers. You can also play the game for completely different goals, like g-posing (essentially playing dolls with your characters and posing them for pretty pictures), pvp fights, Dungeon crawling/Raids with friends and complete strangers, home decoration, crafting up clothes, AND SO MUCH MORE! But for most things available, you have to unlock via msq, so be ready for that!
The community is full of friendly people who LOVE new players!!! Like if you enter a dungeon with a party of strangers and you tell them in the chat that you're new, they will be SO patient and supportive bc generally everyone wants you to have a good time here.
The story of the game revolves around you, the WoL, having time-traveled 5 years into the future from the original upload of the game where a great dragon, Bahamut, destroyed much of the world of Eorzea, and you--along with your friends, the Scions--are helping the land recover and rebuild after the Calamity.
I'M A FFXIV PLAYER AND I THOUGHT YOUR BLOG WAS CUTE, BUT WHAT ARE MOOMINS AND WHO ARE THESE CHARACTERS?
HI!! Welcome! So, I could go on about Moomins, in fact I don't think I could do much justice in a couple paragraphs. But for this au, I can give some brief explanations.
So if you google Moomins, you'll find these little white plump creatures that look so pleasant, right? Those are the titular moomintrolls created by the lovely Tove Jansson in her Moomin novels in the mid-1900s that have since expanded and exploded into a world-wide phenomenon. You have the books as well as the comics Tove and her brother created together, as well as multiple film/tv adaptations of the characters and stories. Some of the most well-known tv depictions are the 1990s anime and the 2010 Moominvalley, but there are also gems in the fuzzy-felt version, other stop-motion, and even live-action adaptations! The Moomin stories cover subject matters regarding love, loneliness and aloneness, family, friendship, growing up, and freedom among other things. It’s definitely something much deeper than what it seems on the surface!
Anyway, as you google the Moomin family, you’ll notice that among their cast of characters, you'll find an angry little girl in red and a polite looking fella in green:
Those are our siblings! Half siblings, actually, which is why we've given them different races because Snufkin's papa (The Joxter) is often depicted as a cat-like creature, so he mostly takes after him.
Little My is the smallest of mymbles (which is commonly believed to be her race/species type?) who is known to be the mischievous, not afraid to speak her mind, and has an honesty in her that sometimes people don’t want to hear. She's also Snufkin's older sister. Snufkin is the baby younger sibling of the two and arguably the wisest of their friends. He's well-traveled and loves his alone time, but is a friendly fellow to find on the path. Both value their independence but usually make a great team, especially when wreaking havoc together!
END NOTES
So that should be a fair introduction! If you have any questions, we welcome asks and may even draw them out if the mood suits us. But yeah, this is basically a self-indulgent au between us that we wanted to share with the communities here. Hopefully this explains why some of y’all keep seeing them in certain tags, and let us know if you’re interested in either of the content this post has enlightened you about!
That much she could tell from the way everyone was acting, especially Moomintroll who sat by the old bridge every day since the first day of spring. It was just a day or two of absence at first, but days turned into a week, and not even a songbird tweeted a new tune to hint at the vagabond's presence. The valley was songless without its bard to herald it.
No one wanted to humor a thought for his being this late. 'He needs his space', everyone knew. Little My was most understanding of this, knowing if he had a habit of returning in spring, he'll come back in his own time no matter when that may be. No need for fuss. Her brother, though a slave of his own inner workings, was a creature of habit.
She didn't know him as a cruel thing, but what else could she call him when she watched heartbreak fall upon the valley folk without so much as a letter to ease their fragile hearts?
Abandonment. The word was never spoken, not even by the girl who spoke the difficult truths aloud. It merely crosses her mind and her blood starts to boil. She wants to scream and shout with every little hopeful light she catches when someone looks out a window for a green hat, or when a twig snaps in the woods and her friends perk up until they realize it’s not made by worn old boots.
No. He is not a cruel thing. A satisfied cat always comes back, and they left with a smile and a promise. Which meant there was another reason for his being missing, and it wasn’t one she willed to cross their minds either. She considered it herself early on, but didn’t truly entertain the thought for another few days, and when she did, her blood didn’t boil, but turned to ice.
He could be dead. She thinks as she watches her friends sit by the bridge today. Snorkmaiden, who understood how horrible this was making her beloved Moomintroll feel, was good enough to sit with him today. The poor couple looked shattered, even from behind she thought they looked quite small as they silently pleaded the forest to give them back their friend. They did not think the dreadful thoughts Little My did, and to her own surprise, she didn’t want them to.
--------------------
‘Out to look for Snufkin. --Little My’
Her letter was intentionally brief, but she would not repeat her brother’s failings and leave them with an empty promise. She didn’t know what she would find if she does find them at all, so she couldn’t promise to bring him back with her.
‘But I’ll find him.’ She thought resolutely as she tied her bag of essentials around her shoulders and tip-toed down the dark halls of Moomin House. Though night time was not the ideal time to travel, she couldn’t risk being followed. If her darkest concerns ended up being truth, then as his elder sister, she will take the burden of finding him and spare the grisly details from their beloved valley friends. Then she will carry nothing else but a message.
When walking out onto the veranda, a warm glow caught the corner of her eye. The Moomin mother was sitting at the table with a lantern on the railing, appearing to have been waiting herself, but whether it be for Snufkin or Little My she didn’t quite know. However, the small mymble was startled all the same when their eyes met.
“I’m going to find them,” she announced to the mother. Silence befell the two, she wondered if Mamma was looking at her like a mother would to her eldest child going to retrieve her lost sibling from some horrible doom that awaited them. She wondered if Mamma was going to ask her to bring Moomintroll along if for nothing else but to let him have some peace knowing he can help. She wondered if Mamma could see what made the little mymble tremble beneath her skin, yet made her firmly aware that this was a venture she couldn’t bring the soft hearted Moomintroll along for.
She gulped down the sick feeling in her throat and dared to voice, “I’ll be back--” but snapped her jaw shut before daring to leave a promise she couldn’t keep.
Moominmamma must have caught her fuddle. She rose up from her seat to gently take My’s little black paws into her soft white ones, and the two were locked in a gaze of silent understanding. Moominmamma knew.
“Take care of yourself, my brave Little My,” her words were soft and warm, but there was a slight betrayal of deep worry. Moominmamma knew.
“And when you find them...” she trailed off, not daring to suggest much else. Moominmamma knew.
Little My squeezed the fingers she could wrap her paws around. “Then I will drag them by the ear back to Moomin Valley.”
That was her gift. Hope. Her words earned a smile and a hug from the worried mother before she was allowed on her way. They knew not what’s become of their lost vagabond, but death wasn’t certain, and she will not leave her dear Moominmamma with such sorrow in her heart.
--------------------
From times in their lives when she lived in his hat, she remembers the path he takes through Lonely Mountains. He was a creature of habit, she thought, so why would he stray from that path if he wanted to leave the valley? She took it too.
Grateful was she that the valley had no dangerous animals living in its woods, for nowhere else was it this safe to walk the woods at night. These woods had no great beasts that could steal a soul from its body in a single swipe, yet she kept her senses sharp for any familiar campers that could stop her venture before treading the mountain path. Of course, there wasn’t one, so she kept moving forward.
She searched parts of the foot of the mountain, keeping her eye on every stone that looked to have fallen recently along the path, expecting to discover green or yellow cloth spattered in red. To her relief, nothing came of it.
Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.
Up those lonely cliffs she climbed, the waking sun at her heels as it turned in its celestial blanket, and still no sign of her lost brother. The stars were vanishing and she could hear the birds waking, so when a light graced her vision she thought it was the sun.
But the sun doesn’t whisper.
A cave in the mountainside glowed bright blue from within, and even from her distance she could make out the whispers of a careful tongue. Like a moth to a flame, she tread off the path and climbed her way over.
The closer Little My got to the cave, the easier she could make out that that was indeed a voice. Curiosity tugged at her, and she told herself that her journey could end here, or she could find a fair lead from whomever lived inside. Finding no reason to not investigate, she proceeded into the light.
The blue glow that dotted the stone walls almost shone like crystals guiding her path safely in the cave, yet the source had yet to be found. Certainty grew in her chest the deeper she went, that this was indeed the right path to finding her lost brother. Her pace quickened as she followed the voice that seemed to call for her.
Or, really, something within her felt called to it.
Suddenly, her boots were splashing in shallow waters, black as the night she left home in. Her eyes spun from the ground, then to the cavern that was no longer a cavern, but an inky black abyss. The walls no longer caught the blue light that beamed just meters away, and she could no longer find the tunnel where she came from. But the call was still tugging, so she marched toward the light.
--------------------
HEAR....FEEL....THINK....
Her being shook under the weight of the words that echoed in this black abyss lit only by a crystal far bigger than the mountains she was climbing. Crystal bearer. Light bringer. These were not her names, nor the titles she carried, but her soul shone brightly at them like a dog responding to its owner.
Before she could forsake these names, before she could register she was no longer in the body of a mountain, before she remembered she was looking for her brother, her chest grew heavy, and the light faded beneath her. Bubbles escaped through her teeth and danced through the tendrils of her orange locks, and her body kept rising, and her legs started kicking, and Little My started wondering if she had merely slept walked to the coast and now she was drowning?
But she MUSTN’T drown! She resolved with gritted teeth, and remembering her frog strokes, she swam far, far away from that wretched light and towards the lapping of waves above her.
‘I’m going to find them.’ She climbed the walls of the salted water, the wear in her limbs from the earlier travel and lack of sleep were second to the air her lungs desperately longed for.
The Desolate Village and the Kingdom of Plenty (Part 2 of 2)
Shaken by the unfairness of it all, the siblings are adamant to take council with the mayor of this land, and by good fortune, managed to land an opportunity to enter the resplendent capitol. As they cross the threshold separating the desolation of Gatetown and its governing tower, our heroes are stricken pink by the elaborate and gaudiness of the interior. It became immediately clear why the citizens of Gatetown were so desperate for the opportunity to live here, for not even our heroes could shake themselves from Eulmore’s allure.
The Desolate Village and the Kingdom of Plenty (Part 1 of 2)
As our heroes traverse this strange star with blinding skies, they encounter many scenes of disparity in every corner. Here they find themselves in a town on the outskirts of their bright and colorful capitol, where the citizens starve and claw their way for a chance to live in the land of splendor where they are promised a better life than the squalors of Gatetown.
