just the important beats for now i'll fill whatever else i need later
☉ Following 5.55 and preparing to venture to Sharlayan, Scintilla starts getting excessively nervous; knowing a city full of scholars is the last place she can fit in or keep up her charade, she finally cracks and confesses she's an out of her depth uneducated blacksmith to the Scions...who inform her that they all figured it out along the way because she had never exactly been very good at hiding it. As a result she slowly eases a little more into being 'herself' around their allies and especially the Scions themselves.
☉ As for the plot itself, she keeps her mouth shut and head down in Old Sharlayan as much as she's capable, letting the others handle things while she hangs back with the equally out-of-his-depth Estinien. (She elects not to mention that she had no idea he had a normal surname.)
☉ Thavnair goes both better and worse; catastrophe is far easier to deal with than interpersonal family relationship and politics.
☉ Garlemald, -20/10, would not do again ever. On top of the rest of the waking nightmare of a heavily indoctrinated surviving populace, temporarily losing her body was extremely disorienting and frightening, to the point that what she shouted at Zenos-in-her-body was nigh incomprehensible and laden with curses that would make Sicard blush. She quietly elects to never speak of it again.
☉ Mare Lamentorum, weird enough, was almost a welcome break. Sure, she had to kill Zodiark, but it wasn't like she ever expected otherwise. Dealing with gods of untold power, Fandaniel, and Zenos is practically an average day. And there's talking moon rabbits. That's probably the weirdest thing to happen today.
☉ So then the apocalypse. The whole thing sets off deeply uncomfortable memories of the time leading up to the Calamity, and the powerlessness she felt to do anything meaningful at the time. However, that is not the case now--she throws herself into fighting back now more than ever, through Vanaspati trying desperately to clear the terminus beasts out of Thavnair to help Vrtra and his people.
☉ Elpis was, ultimately, a strangely calming and beneficial trip. Her feelings regarding Emet-Selch are complex and contradictory: romantic? Maybe. Confusing? Absolutely, especially upon seeing who he was before tempering and grief drove him mad. But she does consider Hythlodaeus a friend with far less hesitation, taking to the living one as quickly as the recreated phantom and the departed spirit. And as someone who often questioned the 'why' behind her circumstances, she felt for Hermes and his despondent uncertainty as well as quickly took to Venat as a genuinely kind and helpful mentor figure.
☉ The return to Sharlayan and resulting regroup/redoubling of efforts saw Scintilla running around giving words of encouragement and doing the usual fetch quests for anyone that needs feting done. Fully emboldened and encouraged by her friends both here and gone, she went through the Atiascope and the aetherial sea to confront Amon-Fandaniel once more and then to pass Hydaelyn's test with her closest companions, allowing Venat to finally rest.
☉ Ultima Thule tested everything Scintilla and the Scions were both together and individually; losing her closest friends one by one tested the absolute limits of her own resolve; difficult as it was and upset as she may have been, she kept going with the remaining hope that somehow she'd get them back, and called on the only two people she could reach: Hades and Hythlodaeus. The three of them reintroduced hope to a hopeless world, allowing Scintilla to summon her friends back and eventually stand against the Endsinger supported by the hopes and dreams of her friends.
☉ When it came to Zenos...she had to admit the truth. She loves adventuring and thrives on fighting; but at the same time, she knows fighting for the sake of it is pointless. To her, there has to be a purpose for it--and making sure Zenos didn't make it back to Etheirys was good enough for her. In the end, she threw aside all else and went back to the child who scraped and clawed to survive on the streets, full-on fistfighting Zenos to what might have amounted to mutual destruction had the remote teleport to the Ragnarok not come back at the last moment.
☉ Upon the (supposed) dissolution of the Scions, when asked what she planned to do, Scintilla was finally able to come up with an answer; she'd do exactly what Hades had suggested. She'd seen the world but not really seen it, and had every intention of retracing her steps across Etheirys for a proper adventure. But first, she was going to go home to Limsa, and then home again to Ishgard--she's pretty sure she's earned a little break.
☉ That said, the first thing she did upon getting home and to the guild's forge was start work on a new gunblade for herself made with backbreaking effort and a shard of auracite she'd kept after the battle with Hades back on the First. She called it Odune--'sorrow', for what she had been tasked to remember and what she would carry forth into a more hopeful future.
this is where the 6.0 spoilers are
☉ Following 5.55 and preparing to venture to Sharlayan, Scintilla starts getting excessively nervous; knowing a city full of scholars is the last place she can fit in or keep up her charade, she finally cracks and confesses she's an out of her depth uneducated blacksmith to the Scions...who inform her that they all figured it out along the way because she had never exactly been very good at hiding it. As a result she slowly eases a little more into being 'herself' around their allies and especially the Scions themselves.
☉ As for the plot itself, she keeps her mouth shut and head down in Old Sharlayan as much as she's capable, letting the others handle things while she hangs back with the equally out-of-his-depth Estinien. (She elects not to mention that she had no idea he had a normal surname.)
☉ Thavnair goes both better and worse; catastrophe is far easier to deal with than interpersonal family relationship and politics.
☉ Garlemald, -20/10, would not do again ever. On top of the rest of the waking nightmare of a heavily indoctrinated surviving populace, temporarily losing her body was extremely disorienting and frightening, to the point that what she shouted at Zenos-in-her-body was nigh incomprehensible and laden with curses that would make Sicard blush. She quietly elects to never speak of it again.
☉ Mare Lamentorum, weird enough, was almost a welcome break. Sure, she had to kill Zodiark, but it wasn't like she ever expected otherwise. Dealing with gods of untold power, Fandaniel, and Zenos is practically an average day. And there's talking moon rabbits. That's probably the weirdest thing to happen today.
☉ So then the apocalypse. The whole thing sets off deeply uncomfortable memories of the time leading up to the Calamity, and the powerlessness she felt to do anything meaningful at the time. However, that is not the case now--she throws herself into fighting back now more than ever, through Vanaspati trying desperately to clear the terminus beasts out of Thavnair to help Vrtra and his people.
☉ Elpis was, ultimately, a strangely calming and beneficial trip. Her feelings regarding Emet-Selch are complex and contradictory: romantic? Maybe. Confusing? Absolutely, especially upon seeing who he was before tempering and grief drove him mad. But she does consider Hythlodaeus a friend with far less hesitation, taking to the living one as quickly as the recreated phantom and the departed spirit. And as someone who often questioned the 'why' behind her circumstances, she felt for Hermes and his despondent uncertainty as well as quickly took to Venat as a genuinely kind and helpful mentor figure.
☉ The return to Sharlayan and resulting regroup/redoubling of efforts saw Scintilla running around giving words of encouragement and doing the usual fetch quests for anyone that needs feting done. Fully emboldened and encouraged by her friends both here and gone, she went through the Atiascope and the aetherial sea to confront Amon-Fandaniel once more and then to pass Hydaelyn's test with her closest companions, allowing Venat to finally rest.
☉ Ultima Thule tested everything Scintilla and the Scions were both together and individually; losing her closest friends one by one tested the absolute limits of her own resolve; difficult as it was and upset as she may have been, she kept going with the remaining hope that somehow she'd get them back, and called on the only two people she could reach: Hades and Hythlodaeus. The three of them reintroduced hope to a hopeless world, allowing Scintilla to summon her friends back and eventually stand against the Endsinger supported by the hopes and dreams of her friends.
☉ When it came to Zenos...she had to admit the truth. She loves adventuring and thrives on fighting; but at the same time, she knows fighting for the sake of it is pointless. To her, there has to be a purpose for it--and making sure Zenos didn't make it back to Etheirys was good enough for her. In the end, she threw aside all else and went back to the child who scraped and clawed to survive on the streets, full-on fistfighting Zenos to what might have amounted to mutual destruction had the remote teleport to the Ragnarok not come back at the last moment.
☉ Upon the (supposed) dissolution of the Scions, when asked what she planned to do, Scintilla was finally able to come up with an answer; she'd do exactly what Hades had suggested. She'd seen the world but not really seen it, and had every intention of retracing her steps across Etheirys for a proper adventure. But first, she was going to go home to Limsa, and then home again to Ishgard--she's pretty sure she's earned a little break.
☉ That said, the first thing she did upon getting home and to the guild's forge was start work on a new gunblade for herself made with backbreaking effort and a shard of auracite she'd kept after the battle with Hades back on the First. She called it Odune--'sorrow', for what she had been tasked to remember and what she would carry forth into a more hopeful future.