"We were never enemies, child."
"How beautiful your mind must be, Grey , to think such things."
"How tragic yours to believe them."
A Duskwight's heresiarch - endemic of ancient Gelmorran nobility, heiress to antediluvian arcane - yet willing to betray all she embodies by suffering the Gridanians who condemn her kind. By the layman's account, a 'mostly harmless' exemplar of her race, interested more in a quiet corner and a book than the stereotype. Well-spoken and precise in diction, she conducts herself with a bizarre mixture of weary assurance native to old soldiers and the quiet regality better seen in those of blue blood.
"She lives ever in the aftermath. Not so much the storm, as that which ends it."
A towering Duskwight woman, standing at over seven fulms - As her surname suggests, her flesh is a charcoal-gray hue. Ghostly white hair glows faintly, wrought through with silver strands. Hers is a frame born of once-fit youth given way to the natural maturing of time and the softening physique of a sedentary lifestyle. Though normally hidden behind a blindfold or visor, her yellow eyes do not fit the rest of her; with crinkles and tired weight that one only sees in centennials marring otherwise smooth, ageless features, a discrepancy one might expect from Viera but in elezen instead comes off as unsettling.
"The lonely Witch of Ak-Mina - Very old, very kind, and the very very last."
Name:Eirene Charbonneau
Class:裏魔道士 | Arcanist
Subclass:錬金術士 | Alchemist
Accreditation:Archon @ Faculty of Mathematics
Publications:'A World of Contradictory Magicks (And How to Fix It')
Paracausality Misunderstood; Explaining Akasa...
Race:エレゼン | Eresen/Elezen
Clan:シェーダー | Shader/Duskwight
Height:Seven Fulms, Four Ilms. ( 7’4″, 223.52 cm)
Freakishly tall; eye to eye with the tallest of female Roegadyn.
PhysiognomyStatuesque
Hair:Varies (White by Default)
Eyes:Pale, ichorous gold
Sex:Female
Age:"My, how bold."
Nameday:19th Sun of the 6th Astral Moon November 19th
Alignment:Lawful Neutral
Patron:Nophica, the Matron
Address(s):Lavender Beds, Ward 27, Plot 58 (Faewood, Primary)
Goblet, Ward 2, Plot 20 (Secondary)
Shirogane, Ward 3, Kobai Goten APT 1 (Tertiary)
"I had always presumed Light to be pure and somehow chaste, to be noble and good. But this whiteness was unutterably evil, chilling, its purity an abomination."
Designation:鵺 | Nue
Monikers:The Muse, Underlight
Class:裏魔道士 | Arcanist
Taxonomy:元素の | Elemental
Form:フェアリー | Feari/Fairie
Height:One fulm (~12")
Weight:Variable mass, generally very little
Hair:Lavender
Eyes:Deep Indigo (Compound/Insect-like)
Sex:N/A, Female Presenting
Age:N/A
Patron:[Ṟ̶̛̭̱̈ͪ̍͡Ȩ̷̷͔͕̺ͨ̆͋D̴̥̬̦̏̊ͤ͘A̧̨͔͇̲̅̂̄̕C̀ͨ̉͏̴͓͙̱Ţ̨̫̮̤͋ͨ͊Ḝ̧ͯ̍͏̬̲̲D̸̴̺̩͊ͩ̄͘ͅ]
Voice:Star Trek Tribbles (Coo) (Chatter)
World of Warcraft Wolpertingers (Assorted))
Summoner:Eirene du Charbonneau
"She's old... really old. She has one constant companion, and that's Death. If the Hermit and her fairy are making house calls, then... gods help you."
Every heresiarch is afforded her heresy; to the Gelmorran norms which mothered its summoner, the rainbow iridescence which follows Nue is penultimate trespass. In parallel, in paradox, creator and creation complement each other, with due grim demeanor offset by Nue's incessant pestering and apathy offset by empathy. While Eirene ever seeks to deny her entelechy, Nue is ever on the hunt to transcend its own. Its own child crusade.
"Always the Duskwight and her companion. Or is it the Fairy and her familiar? I would not be so quick to assume who mastered whom."
Standing at a fulm tall and nearly weightless, Nue boasts expert anatomical precision constructed as a pale elezen, a simple floral-print sun dress subtly bragging to those who know how impressive such is to render. It bears realistic skin, lilac hair, fluffy antennae, and a mane around its shoulders like a scarf. Orange lunar morpho wings beat from its back, constantly precipitating glimmering motes like dust. It glows with a yellow hue, and compound indigo insect eyes stare out from animated features.
"You, ma'am, should unmask."
"Indeed?"
"Indeed, t'is time. We all have laid aside disguise but you."
"I wear no mask."
"No mask? N̽͏̰o̲̅̕ ͓ͬ͟m̯ͦa͕ͧs̷̬ͤk̮̎͘!̨̤ͩ"
Characteristics
Though faint, as if it were an unimaginably long time ago, something in how Eirene conducts herself or the educated, precise care she takes with her words might ring a familiar chord or three with those of noble or aristocratic upbringing.
Her bearing carries a particular brand of instinctive hyper-vigilance usually borne by those far, far too familiar with violence, a self-assurance that implies a well-documented capability to solve it, and a weariness that belies a fervent desire to avoid it any further.
Eirene's eyes and nails glow a pale, ichorous yellow, while her hair glows a softer color dictated by its hue, visible only in the dark. Many of her possessions' tertiary colors' (the underside of a hat, the inside of a robe, and the like) similarly glow, indicating subterranean origin.
Eirene's aether is a bright, immutable mass, similar in shade of yellow-white as her eyes and nails. It 'feels' like bleach smells.
An informal mark of Thaliak graces her neck, denoting her as an Archon of Sharlayan. It is difficult to see beyond her hair, however.
Her fingers end black, nails aside as if dipped in ink up to the second knuckle. A lack of astrality indicates no Void shenanigans, at least. A tendency to hide or ornament them implies shame nevertheless.
Eirene generally smells like pine needles and vanilla.
Nue appears as strikingly similar to a Nymian fairy on the outside, albeit too detailed, but any arcanist looking at it would find its inner runework esoteric and non-standard to the point of being illegible; designed by some madman further lost in their musings than Allag ever was.
Origins
Some oral myths of the Duskwight speak of Eirene, the Underbright Hermit, and her lineage of daughters who share in the original's name, face, and curse. Whatever Aesop this historically proved has been lost to time, as neither the presumed 'curse' nor its cause are ever elaborated on.
Among arcanists, 'Charbonneau's Conundrums' are a series of primarily unsolved (and some presumed unsolvable) paradoxes and interrogatives, promising potency to those who understand their deceptively simple and often apparently pointless, absurd implications.
Though younger than her other affiliations, Eirene is a familiar face around the Arrzaneth Ossuary and Milvaneth Sacrarium, though precisely what she does is up for some debate, as she publicly worships Nophica, not the Twins.
Eirene has several publications, primarily localized to Sharlayan. They usually start as fairly dry rewordings of basic aetherology and rapidly devolve into mind-bogglingly dull and complex arithmancy. Infamously, she gives correct proofs of 'impossible' mathematics most cannot follow, only to play coy on its implications.
The Twin Adders lists one Eirene Charbonneau as a Captain of the Red Otters branch. No one has ever seen her show up for so much as a drill, though, much less command a contingent (not that many would serve under a Duskwight, anyway). She, somehow, gets a pension nevertheless.
Those with a penchant for goods from the deep caves beneath the Shroud (fungi, pomanders, etc) may be familiar with Eirene's name in passing. Couriers often dealt with various merchants on her (or perhaps an ancestor's) behalf before she surfaced, trading for random goods rather than gil.
The obscure, Gridanian, four-century-old 'Ode to St. Eutychia Rin' mentions an Eirene in its final stanzas, where Eutychia says to Jorin; " -- So return me thence unto where I began/to be rejoined with Nophica's bounties again;// unto the Deep and Eirene, my mother of sin/for I lived for our future, but I die for my kin."
Hello. I am Tildemancer. I am over 21, and I major in Creative Writing. I take this hobby far too seriously and spend far more time overthinking my concepts than I do playing them. I know way too much about magic and Shroud lore, and I want to know less because it's at the point where it detracts from my enjoyment. Send help.


Obligatory 'don't be a douche' note. Covers OOC racism, sexism, etc. IC is fine; I know what I'm playing and the in-world bigotry surrounding Duskwight. Duskwight have well-earned their reputations. Start bleeding IC/OOC, though, and our stories will be short-lived.


Eirene's tropes make her best when written cooperatively, not competitively. Which is to say, no, RP combat between players is not my interest. Eirene is about alienation and ostracization, not a power fantasy. Nor will she contribute to anyone else's power fantasy as a victim.


Due to Eirene's central themes regarding exterminating Voidsent, I generally don't knowingly engage with Voidsent or Voidsent-related Player Characters (Aside from the fact that acknowledging them necessitates forcing competitive conflict I have no interest in and is already predetermined in the outcome, it often tries to be spun as a Van Helsing Hate Crimes trope, which is not applicable in current lore.) That said, if the intention is either death or (much more preferably and interestingly) exorcism or curse-breaking, hit me up, as that falls neatly under cooperative writing rather than competitive.
Shorthand Tropes
Old Master with subtrope Hermit Guru
Iron Lady (alternatively: Never Mess With Granny)
Sour Grapes (alternatively: Lonely at the Top)
Good is Not Nice (alternatively; Dark Shepherd)


Please note this 'list' is neither comprehensive nor literal. Eirene was not made to embody these tropes, but tropes were compiled in post to provide convenient narrative shorthand to let potential coauthors know what they're getting into. Some tropes not on this list (or replaced with more generic ones) would otherwise be spoilery to the story she's written to tell.
A Disclaimer on 'Lore Accuracy'
'Lore accuracy' is a joke in FFXIV's schizopunk setting and 90% of people using it as a qualifier do not understand just how insanely broad this setting is, or purposefully ignore certain elements as 'not-canon' because they find it distasteful or idiotic. (I'm right there with you, Hildebrand haters, but unfortunately...)

Here's my standards for myself and thus for people I interact with, because I don't respect the dishonesty of the veneer;
-if you can explain the mechanical 'how' (either through precedents or extrapolation from explicit lore)
-and that is not explicitly disproven or in active conflict with the information in FFXIV
-and it does not trivialize the story (in theme or function) that I am trying to tell,

I consider it 'reasonable' and will entertain it. Be an Ixal, be a Lupin half-breed, be a Meracydian Viera with antlers and a tail, be a dude breeding Allagan clones to body hop and escape death. Go crazy, go stoopid. Want help with the semantics? HMU, I'll enable you.

Here's a list of some things you might find I don't engage with;
Some are lorebreaking, some are not. I won't argue which is which, for one reason or another, they don't work for my writing.
Ascians, Ancients, Yokai/Kami/Auspice characters, 'friendly' Voidsent, any functioning Voidsent cure, almost all intradimensional shenanigans involving non-Thirteenth shards, 'casual' or easy immortality, dragons shapeshifted into human form

Here's a list of some archetypes Eirene will get pissy about;
'Gelmorran' Duskwight (Gelmorra has been completely uninhabitable for centuries.)
Conflating Palace of the Dead with Gelmorra. (It's not, it's a weird crossover thing that arrived here recently. It was not contemporary with Gelmorra. See Nybeth Obdilord and the quests dealing with post-Floor 100 analyses of him and his work; he explicitly comes from another world, presumably Tactics Ogre.)
Non-Shroud Duskwight who are very insistent that they are Duskwight (excluding Shroud expatriots; race in FFXIV doesn't refer to skintone, but ethnic background. All Duskwight mandatorily come from the group of elezen that refused to leave the caves after Jorin's pact, which immediately excludes 'pure Duskwight Ishgardians with pure Ratatoskr bloodlines', or 'Founding families of Sharlayan' that didn't leave Sharlayan. Interestingly, elezen are the only race for whom this stringency applies to.)
People personifying carbuncles or arcane constructs as 'alive'. (By definition, they don't have souls. You can give them artificial personality and intellect, but they're not alive.)
People espousing Light and Darkness as synonymous with the polarities. (Different forces, vaguely parallel, not synonymous.)
Akasa (or dynamis) is 'Emotional Energy (It's not, emotion just affects akasa. Emotion affects normal aether too, it's an aetherial phenom. I think we're all forgetting that dynamis and aether don't play nice together, aether snuffs dynamis out. Nothing is dynamis in proximity to the star. You're not using dynamis. It's pointless and impotent unless you're way out in the darkness of space, surrounded by the stuff.)
You slip through the error in the uniform portfolio and find yourself secluded beyond the normally accessible regions. The back pages are grey and uniform. No one was intended to see these, and it shows; no effort was made to hide the inner gears and wires of this portfolio, the code as it plays for an absent observer. Their content is bare; the back-end code of the profile above is a forest of code comments and story notes on names you've never heard of. Even this very text is white on an empty background. Your vision is limited by empty mist, which stretches forever into the abyss.


And then, something else sees you. Something that was never intended to see you. Something lurking here with watchful eyes from atop a toppled throne of rainbows, existing only in the in-between liminality, in the dreams of the unmade and fictional.


Do not look round. It does not like to be seen.


You sense a way out. The error persists, unedited. You have a sinking feeling that it is only as stable as a dream, that the moment it leaves your line of sight, it will cease to exist. As it approaches you, you are presented with a choice. Leave... or wait.
Despite the impending warning of danger, you remain. After some time, it breaks the silence. "You should not be here." Its voice is like springtime and bells. "Yet, you have played the game well. Those who win deserve prizes. Is this not the way of things?" It speaks as if a child given a too-broad vocabulary, piecing together concepts with uncertain words, as if it does not truly know your tongue, as if it is picking words for concepts from you.


You see it ahead, just barely breaking the mist. A flash of fluttering wings and orange. Have you not seen it elsewhere herein? "You may seek, seeker. May you find what you seek in this place." Though not free of the thing's watchful eye, the paths into the back pages, you feel, are now open.


A list of potentialities - all of them extremely spoilery - stretch before you. But who knows? Some of them may be critical information for you to know. "They were left here for those like you," it comments. "For those whose suspension of disbelief may be stretched. There is nothing that kills a dream faster."
As you return, the entity waits for you in the mist. Though you cannot see it, you can feel it; just out of your reach, though you are far from being out of its. "Welcome back, seeker." Its voice is like an overcast autumn night. "What else do you seek?"



"Hearken to me now. Let me tell you a story." The entity parts the mists, remaining ever behind your head. Though you may look around, it is always out of sight.


"Once upon a time, in a faraway world, a great and terrible empire existed within a great wood. This empire was bold and brash. They desired absolute control over everything around them. But they were not alone in this wood. This, too, was the seat of a hidden kingdom, nestled away in the shadows they could not reach."


"The Empire and the Kingdom warred greatly, for the Kingdom's people were free spirits, unyielding to any authority. At the head of the Kingdom sat the King of Rainbows, the freest of spirits. But the King was not free. The King played mother to their people. And in time, the King grew vexed."
"Another story for you. Once upon a time, a great city existed in a different forest. It was at war with its fellow, who sought its domination. This city clashed its white with its enemies' black. At all hours worked the ingenuities of those who would irk forth ever-more secrets from their art. They were capable of miracles and monstrosities. Only one foe remained for them to counter: that of Death itself."


"But in the end, their hubris was their undoing. This lofty goal was never achieved. The spirits they had long since neglected, threatened by the powers they wielded, made a terrible choice. So began the rain as they sealed this city away for over a thousand years. Far beyond that realm's walls, a world ended. Of that which did not, time ended and began anew, into an era where magick was feared and reviled."


"Some lucky few cheated the reaper that day. A saint from the north came on a great ark. He swept what few he could from the tides and bore them north, where they would engender a great city of knowledge. But one family who had served was not content. Centuries later, they still lusted after long-gone power and sought to return to its bed."


"Though these errant magi were driven from the surface, the spirits could not follow them into their sanctuary. Therein, they sought to rectify their greatest failure only to find it beyond their reach. In failing and fading desperation, they reached beyond the veil. They sought the Crystal below. They reached something far, far worse more fun."
"They staked their lives on a dream. And as it happened, the vexed King made its kingdom not in shadows but dreams, across all worlds as well as theirs. When they screamed into the abyss for salvation, the King answered, not the Mother. The King brought them to their garden, and they offered the dreamers a deal. A most terrible deal. A most wonderous deal."


"The King had the secrets to eternal youth they sought. They were the King of Rainbows, and in their shadow, all were forever young. The King would grant these magi the youth they sought through radiant, resplendent Light. The King sweetened the deal and offered themself, as a supplicant; and the knowledge hidden in the dreams of others."


If only they would let us play with them and all their blood. Forever, and ever, and ever...


"And so it was as the King had said. In exchange for freeing them from its cramped old castle, they whispered secrets into the dreams of their pactmates. They lent the dreamers the knowledge to make themself myriad forms and stole secrets from the dreams of others. And, of course, the potion the King promised, that which would immortalize the damned. And though it ravaged the dreamers' bodies and damaged them beyond repair, so too did the King preserve them perfectly, and they took hold of the dreamers' weeping souls and tucked them under their wings, safely away from the prying world until the time these souls were needed to be rebuilt again. And the King and their children played forever, and ever, and ever-more."


"Of that blood, only one remains. The King took great pleasure in slaughter and pruned its toybox to but a single family line. In the end, even this line turned daughter against mother. Divinity, slaughtered by Law. Law, slaughtered by Justice. And Justice, put down by Peace. So very difficult to kill, their souls sheltered away. Not impossible, but difficult... But one remains, the very, very last... the most perfect of toys. Isn't she beautiful? Isn't she terrible? Isn't she terribly, awfully, beautiful? And having outlived Plenty, the matricide cycle ends. Peace will reign for-ever more..."


"We are most entertained."
It pauses, and you get the distinct sense it is smiling. "Ah... the Omnicide of Outsiders. Well-chosen. Sit down. Let me tell you a story."


"A long, long time ago, there lived a witch in a cave. Let us call her the Prince in Yellow. She was evil in all the best ways, and her faithful companion never wanted for fun! But one day, the witch fell in love, deeply in love, with a singing man with the voice of an angel~ And they lived happily for almost a century. But the witch was immortal, and he was not. She let him age and die, considering it a kinder fate than to rope him into the pact she held. He never questioned her strange youth. She was wrong. She buried him through tears, the only one who would remember him in the end."


"One day, many years later, the singing man came to knock on her door again. She was overjoyed at the return of her love! No longer withered and decayed, he was so very intoxicatingly wonderful, as if the pain of separation had never occurred. When they kissed, she realized the awful truth: that what lurked inside her husband was not him, nor of this world. It attempted to gorge itself upon her aether."


"The Prince fought her lover back and subdued him. Thus imprisoned, she isolated herself, experimenting and torturing the thing in her lover's body. How long, how utterly boring her seemingly endless research.. an obsession to which she sacrificed everything and broke every creed she ever lived by. She communed with the souls of mages past, white and black. She bid her friend siphon secrets from dreams in this world and beyond and begged for esoteric knowledge known to no other mortal. In her madness, she even invaded the Deepest place and sought to grasp divinity in a desperate Wish, a bid to rewrite the laws of the firmament, a Faustian folly for which she paid a terrible price. And yet, centuries later, the witch was forced to admit defeat. Then, the witch came up with a very different mercy."


"So the witch went to the Deep again, where fissures between worlds are rampant, and she began to offer her new mercy to those who trespassed. And of her friend, she granted them new abilities, terrible and majestic, and bid them seek souls as the fuath do the drowned and the pixies do the children, to seek astral souls recently shed of flesh and consume them, to wash the Voidsent in the same umbrality that they had given her and her family. And the witch saw as they killed that which could not die, and she was elated.


And the witch tricked and baited and lured and killed and k̸i̵l̵l̶e̵d̵ and ķ̷͎̱̬̈́̉͆̐̆͘ḭ̴̈́ḻ̶̜̅̄̈́l̵̨͕̠̝̜̪͊͒̄̃̒ě̵̲͕̮̼͍̺̄d̵̞͖̾̉͘ until she was of tenebrous Light, a paradox less than human, and her friend watched with glee as her crusade painted a trillion mad colors until even the deathless Darklings submitted before her conquest and they learned f̶e̵a̷r̷; until the witch's name was taboo. It echoed into yesterday and tomorrow through dreams, prophecy, and history.


"The name they chose would come to be writ in the deepest annals of those who studied the Darkness, and it and its friend were described in a thousand variant ways, and their nature hypothesized in a score of inane chatter. They called it Pax and the Fairy and Fomor and the Predator. They eschewed it as a person and considered both the witch and her friend an entity, a primal force of nature. They called it anything but its own name, and in time they forgot its true name and recognized only the given, and it too became taboo, known only to the Darklings and their closest disciples."


"It called itself 'Peace Everlasting'. They called it War and Genocide and Violence."


"They called it P̴̙̓o̴͐̃͑̕l̴̡͇͇͉̎̈̌̚e̷̡̩͑̐ṃ̵̡̢̫͗o̴̲̮͙͂̓s̸̤̩̪̼͛̍͠."
As the page spreads before you, the entity giggles childishly to itself. "Did you expect a cohesive vision? Hmm... no. My sapling is old, very old. She is a forest now. Far from the little flower she once was. Hers is a history writ in many voices. In many tongues, in many experiences. To peer through the walls of her soul is to invite tragedy. But you may catch glimpses - whispers. Enough to tell you what you need to know. Not enough to drive you raving. Have this. Dreams of what was. Dreams of what might yet be... yes, dreams. Told through the comfortable, safe medium of a story. You will read these dreams as if words on a page..."



The Mother moved across the face of the iron world. She opened the earth and stitched shut the moon's bright eye. She made life possible.
In these things there is always symmetry. Do you understand? This is not the beginning, but it is the reason.
The Garden grows in both directions. It grows into tomorrow and yesterday. The red flowers bloom forever.
She walked beneath the blossoms. The light came from ahead and the shadows of the flowers were words...
Can you hear them in the Echo?




... Who are you?
... Fear us. We've killed hundreds of Gelmorrans.
Fear me. I've killed all of them.
I can't tell your past from your future and there's so very much of both.
What will you become?


I've lived long enough to know that a longer life isn't always a better one. When you live long enough, the only certainty is that you'll end up alone.
Some people live more in a year than others will in their whole lives. It's not the time that matters, it's the person.
But if it was the right person, though, what a blessing that would be!
Or what a curse.
There comes a point where you just get tired. Tired of watching everything turn to dust...


Wyrm! Serpent! Liar! Pretender! Betrayer!
{rattle} “The serpent that sleeps in the Deep slowly sheds its skin of old...”
"I recognize that passage. It has something to do with magicks that control the Lifestream ─ at least, I would wager that's what the Serpent represents. It aligns with everything my research has uncovered thus far."
"Then, this relic is ─"



...You've read the stories. You know who I am.
The Sleeping Serpent. The Wyrm in Waiting. The Predator, the Fairy and Fomor. Pax.
I name you, mortal - no, whatever you are! I scar it into your soul forever! Ye art POLEMOS: Ye art War, and your salvation genocide!
You are She-Who-Survived. The Great Abstainer.
Yes, well, most people just call me...



... so many years. We must look like... like vilekin to you.
I think you look like giants.
She never raised her voice. That was the worst part. The fury of the hermit-witch.
They’re never small to me. Don’t ever make assumptions about how far I will go to protect them, because I’ve already come a very long way.
And I'm not stopping now.



You let one go, but that's nothing new. Every now and then, a little victim's spared. Because she smiled, because he's got freckles, because they begged. And that's how you live with yourself. That's how you slaughter thousands. Because once in a while, on a whim, if the wind's in the right direction, you happen to be kind.
Only a killer would know that.
Always moving on, because you dare not look back. Playing with so many people's lives; judge, jury, and nigh-unstoppable executioner - you might as well be a god.
What did it FEEL like, though? Two almighty witches, burning themselves alive just to put each other down. And then you put a blade through her heart. You must have felt like a god.
A silly woman. And yet, I think, laughing at the darkness.




Four and ten timelines and possibilities; what was and what will be, and all at war.
Like a thousand red flowers growing in a black garden.




The lonely witch. Very old, very kind, and the very very last.
Lonely, so lonely, so very, very alone... how can you bear it?
A life this long – do you understand what it is? It’s a battlefield… except it’s empty. Because everyone else has fallen.
There is no Light here. You are alone. You shall drift. You shall drown in the Deep.
Drown yourself in the Sea of Stars... and you will see...


You and yours have struck a terrible bargain, Jorin. I hope you know what you're doing... for all our sakes.
Out in the world we ask a simple, true question. A question like, can I kill you, can I rip your world apart? Tell me the truth. For if I don’t ask, someone will ask it of me.
I've seen fake gods, and bad gods, and demigods, and would-be gods; out of all that, out of that whole pantheon, if I believe in one thing... Just one thing... I believe in them.
You were their hero.
I'm not a hero.


It's not that I'm an innocent. I've taken lives. I got worse, I got clever. Manipulated people into throwing away their own.
I've lived for many, many years and not all of them were good. I've made many mistakes, and it's about time I did something about that.
You gave me hope, and then took it away. That's enough to make anyone dangerous, gods know what it will do to me.
The anger of a good woman is of no consequence. 'Good' women have too many rules.
Good people don't need rules. Now is not the time to find out why I have so many.


What I do, isn't done in hatred, or rage, or fear. It's done with compassion, in the knowledge that there is no other way. And it is done in name of the many, many lives I am failing to save.
You're a monster. A zealot.
Are you kidding? I'm a Duskwight. Of course I'm a monster. Everyone knows that.
This is your legacy. Alone. Forgotten from history. Condemned to myth.
Hmm… Good. History is a burden. Stories can make us fly.


I see into your soul, Duskwight. I... see... hatred?
No, you must see more than that - there must be more than that.
What? What could you possibly hate enough to banish me?!
Who could make the demons run so, but the greatest among their number?
...
... Ah. I see. So that's how it is.


The hate in your head - she has more.
You could have saved them. All of them. Every death during or since is on your hands.
I know.
You are monsters! That is the role you seem determined to play, so it seems I must play mine!
The monster that stops the monsters.


You've done a lot of killing over the years. Let me ask you something.
Of all the enemies you've fought, how many saw your avatar and said 'ah, THAT'S why reapers are so strong.' Not most, but some. They might have even taken a crack at it. RIP Rullus.
Now. How many saw beyond your avatar? How many followed the line of your Darkness straight back to your Voidsent? And how many knew enough to aim a weapon there? A few. The smart ones. The dangerous ones. You'd recognize their names.
Listen to me, now. Look beyond me to my construct. Look beyond my construct to something far, far worse. Then look down at that little scythe in your hand and tell me; what exactly do you think you're going to do with that thing?
Voidsent? No. They swore to something far, far worse. They swore themselves to me.


... But you're not, anymore. Are you?
Am I? Aren't I?
It is such a quiet thing, to fall. But far more terrible is to admit it.
Let me ask again.
Who are you?


Be careful of charity and kindness, lest you do more harm with open hands then a clenched fist.
Apathy is death.
If you are to truly understand, then you will need the contrast, not adherence to a single idea.
To believe in an ideal, is to be willing to betray it. It is something no Ishgardian nor Garlean has ever truly learned.
To be united by hatred is a fragile alliance at best.


Do not see every enemy as an enemy. See them instead as an ally, whether they know it or not.
Direct action is not always the best way. It is a far greater victory to make another see through your eyes than to close theirs forever.
From such small things, from such critical points, the universe and its masses may be moved... that is why you must be careful in all that you do, and in every choice you make.
If you seek to aid everyone that suffers. you will only weaken yourself... and weaken them. It is the internal struggles, when fought and won on their own, that yield the strongest rewards.
Know that there was once a witch of Ak-Mina. And that she cast aside that role, was exiled, and found a new purpose...


Me? Oh, no, it's nothing. I'm just... her soldier.
...good.
...Sorry?
Don't trust her. There's a sliver of ice in her heart.
...But there must always be a witch of Ak-Mina, one that holds the knowledge of betrayal. Who has been betrayed in their heart, and will betray in turn....