(no subject)

[ OOC Information ]

Player Name & Pronouns: Nao, they/she
Player Age: fairly sure you have known me for almost as long as people able to app to this game have been alive
OOC Contact: lollichop @ plurk, seer0ftime @ discord

Reserve Link: here

[ IC Information ]

Character Name & Pronouns: Scintilla Caminus, she/her but mostly answers to whatever.
Character Age: Mid-30s
Canon: If your character is a canon OC or comes from an AU, specify that clearly.
Canon Point: Where in their canon you're pulling them from.

History: i'm sorry, sub-600 words for the entire thing is is legitimately not possible. But the main points leading into the larger MSQ:

☉ Born to unknown parents, abandoned as a nameless orphan in Limsa Lominsa and grew up on the streets, stealing to survive and often leading fellow street kids in doing the same.
☉ Roughly around age seven or eight she was with a group of kids stealing a shipment of food, getting caught because she stayed behind kicking sailors, Yellowjackets, and anyone else that happened to be nearby in the shins so the rest could get away cleanly.
☉ Amidst the general ruckus, she was picked up by a few members of the rogues' guild; rather than hand her over to the Maelstrom or the Yellowjackets, they ended up securing her a place with the blacksmiths' guild as a needed extra pair of hands.
☉ Named by the guild members; Scintilla Caminus being 'spark' and 'forge'.
☉ Spent the following several years running errands for the guild and learning her way around metalworking, becoming a full-fledged member in her own right.
☉ Approximately late teens/early 20s as of the Seventh Umbral Calamity (we don't think too hard about the progression of time in XIV), Scintilla spent most of the days leading up to Dalamud's fall hard at work with the guild supplying weaponry to the Eorzean Alliance as conflict intensified. As a noncombatant, she wasn't present at Carteneau, instead witnessing Bahamut's rampage from Limsa's upper decks.
☉ While picking up the pieces and rebuilding in the aftermath of the Calamity, she sought out the green-clad guardians that had left her with the blacksmiths' guild years before; finding them through a girl named V'kebbe that used to run in Scintilla's gang of fellow strays, she sought to learn to defend herself.
☉ Five years following the Calamity, she was sent to pick up supplies from the miners guild in Ul'dah. On her way back she shared travel accommodations with Alphinaud and Alisaie, and in a dream heard Hydaelyn's voice for the first time. Meeting Y'shtola a short time after, she was very quickly caught up in a whole mess and trying to keep up with the current while well out of her depth.

Personality:
☉ Used to rarely talk at any length; when she did speak up her wording was very carefully chosen and with the deliberate air of someone concealing an accent and borrowed terms/phrases heard from people like Y'shtola or Alphinaud. More often she would contribute in nods or gestures, leaving the others to formulate plans that she followed through on. This persisted up until Endwalker, but even then she'll mostly defer to the others before speaking up herself.
☉ Her real speaking voice is extremely coarse in structure and heavily Lominsan accented; at worst she trips over syllables when in a hurry. (ex. "Estinien" becomes "'stinyen", "Hydaelyn" becomes "Hyd'lyn", "Urianger" becomes "[unintelligible]")
☉ Often avoids telling anyone much about her past for fear of damaging the image of 'the Warrior of Light/Darkness'. The only people who know are the ones she can't keep it secret from; the blacksmith and rogues' guilds. She nearly came clean with Lyse after the 'Yda' persona was dropped, but backed off at the last minute. As time goes on and she trusts her companions a little more, she's more willing to admit to where she's come from provided she knows it'll be kept quiet or that it won't really matter to her reputation at large.
☉ Very open and friendly despite the prior point; able to befriend most people quickly whether through a willingness to do fetch quests for them or just by being herself. Though she's had doubts over whether her friends value her as much or more as what she can do for them, she'll gladly live and work alongside them without hesitation. This self-doubt lessens significantly over time, effectively disappearing altogether around most people by the time of mid/late Endwalker. Has a strong sense of morals and camaraderie, following the ironclad rules of a rogue: never steal from one's comrades, never fail to stick up for the defenseless, and never be afraid to fight a little dirty.
☉ Extremely lacking in academic knowledge or general booksmarts, Scintilla is extremely low INT high WIS; her street smarts and common sense are sharp as a tack, but she tunes out immediately when the conversation turns to anything scholarly or technobabble-focused. When it's necessary for her to understand something (usually so she can kill a given problem) such as the circle of aetherial elements, she needs it put in straightforward and clear terms. However, she has incredibly sharp reflexes in and out of battle while also a genius at crafting with her hands, and is often quick to catch on when someone's trying to lie to her.
☉ Harbors a strong sense of justice, in the sense of believing that the world at large is naturally unfair and the concept of 'justice' exists only as enforced by people willing to stand and fight for it. Painfully aware of the difficulty inherent in that concept following conflicts with Emet-Selch and Elidibus, but if anything both situations have only made her more resolved to follow through on protecting the current world(s) while making sure to remember the ancient one.
☉ Not incredibly skilled at manipulating aether to the extent that Y'shtola or the others do; after bringing the Scions back to the Source, she asked Alisaie to help her find X'rhun Tia and worked incredibly hard to learn red magic, believing the fusion of physical and magical combat was the only path she could take in order to continue to get stronger. She uses aether-infused tattoos on both arms to help her control her spellcasting, due to being the equivalent of a magical hydrogen bomb.

Abilities: She's coming in with her Red Mage job stone, which I'm going to suggest we cut down/simplify for your benefit (and mine) to sword skills as well as single-target unaspected/thunder/wind/fire/earth spells. While she's experienced with multiple weapons (dual daggers, dual swords, gunblade, rapier), the job stone itself is what enables her to use more than mundane combat expertise. Additionally, she's an incredible blacksmith with skill in crafting as well as augmenting weapons given the right magically-charged materials. Additionally, she carries a crystal that summons allies to help her fight--for blatantly obvious reasons this will just be a cool rock that does nothing.

She also possesses a form of the Echo, which allows her to both understand and communicate in any form of spoken language, and more to the point gives her the ability to see others' past memories. Neither is something she has conscious control over, and obviously it's going on an opt-in thread on her permissions post.

Bloom Bond Flower:

Forget-me-not
Scintilla spends a lot of time helping others; sometimes guiding them to find their passions, sometimes helping them achieve it, and sometimes making sure they live long enough to do either. She also harbors incredible affection for her friends as well as strangers; if she didn't, she probably wouldn't so readily throw herself into insane danger a few times a week. However, with this tendency to be a magnet for peril often comes death and loss: several close friends and loved ones have died over the course of her adventures, and she carries most of them with her in either memory, small trinkets, or both--with remembering those left behind also being a core theme of the game from Shadowbringers onward.

Geranium
As the Warrior of Light, Scintilla is a dedicated protector both of the world and the people in it; whether this role was destined or something she fell into out of freak chance is a question she spent a long time struggling with, often questioning if others would have been a better fit for the job. However, an incident with time travel and a stable paradox in Endwalker put this mostly to rest; as she chooses to understand it, Scintilla is the Warrior of Light because she always was, long before one was ever necessary and thousands of years before she was ever born. That said, she still occasionally questions herself--prone to recklessness and mistakes as anyone else would be, but with far greater stakes when those missteps are made.

Tulip
Much of Shadowbringers and Endwalker especially were spent working towards securing a future in the face of two or three forms of the potential apocalypse, with the literal driving force in the latter expansion being hope itself preventing people from becoming literal monsters and overcoming the personification of despair. The fact that this was achieved with the help of at least two previous-and-also-current enemies complicated things, especially where one was Emet-Selch--who she'd gotten to know through previously mentioned time travel and also had a close relationship with in a forgotten past life. Which of them had the unrequited feelings was somehow both and neither at once; he was more focused on who she used to be, and she can't totally get past that he tried to end the world that one time even if they kind of settled things in the end.

IC/OOC Permissions & Opt-Out Link: i'll code it later i promise

Sample: tdm thread

Anything Else?: look you don't have to read the whole history of a 10 year old mmo just trust me not to be obnoxious