Character notes

[lightduties]

Pre-ARR

• Rhea'li is the 3rd born son of Rhea of the Akhbala clan, located in the Black Shroud/Twelveswood. They're classed as poachers, but largely stick to themselves and hunt for food, so they haven't the notoriety of the Coeurlclaws. He was the smallest of his family and was largely left to his own devices.
  
• He wandered off and stowed away on a ship to Limsa. He was discovered, but since the crew weren't the sort to throw him overboard, they put him to work as a deckhand. He proved to be swift and decent at learning the skills needed, and he discovered a love for sailing. He arrived at Limsa and kinda didn't return home.
  
• Because he grew up hunting and away from civilisation, he largely did ok without money and had to be taught the value of it.
  
• Curiosity ends up having him poke his nose into the Arcanist guild in which he showed talent for magic, but he was a student who just couldn't sit still so he drive his instructors crazy. He was functionally adopted by one of the officers (though he doesn't acknowledge it as such), though he is a wild child and just kinda does what he wants on his own. But he would always return when he feels a need for somewhere safe.
  
• He was never actually officially employed as an Arcanist largely because he would be shitty at actual Arcanist work.
  
• He wriggled into a lot of sailing, working as crew on a lot of ships. Travelled a lot in Eorzea and lived a very hedonistic, self-centred life during his teenage years. He picked up the sailors' superstitions and beliefs in Llymlaen and adopted them as his own.
  
• In the lead up to Carteneau, he did not join the armies and thus did not participate in battle. A lot of his friends, however, did.
  
• During the Calamity, he was fishing in Whisper Woad Canyon, safely away from the destruction. He watched the sky burn from afar with a deep pain from an unknown source.
  
• Returning to Limsa he discovered that basically everyone he knew had been killed in either the battle or the Calamity. the guilt at surviving and grief had him flee to Thanalan. He didn't like it at all, mostly due to the heat.
  
• He returned to the Black Shroud to attempt reintegration back into his clan. He got his face tattooed for undergoing the clan trial for adulthood (at a much older age than normal, due to being away). The trial involved hunting a particular kind of elk(?)... which happens to be a sacred animal in Gridania. So uhhh needless to say, in current times part of the trial is making sure you don't get caught. The Woodwailers have had trouble with poachers in general and haven't been able to catch them. Unfortunately, technically Rhea'li would have been classed as a poacher, if anyone found out.
  
• Still, even after taking the trial, he can't say that felt at home. After living in Limsa for so long, it was hard for him to reintergrate, his ways of thinking too different, and being third born son was never particularly going to have much attention paid to him anyway.
  
• Eventually after chafing for so long with his clan, he left (once again, he didn't say goodbye), returning to Limsa, leading to the events of the ARR.

ARR

• Aside from the horrors of the Calamity giving him a newfound sense of empathy, he gets pulled into the whole adventuring, Scions and Warrior of Light business in part because he doesn't know what to do with his life. If he can do something useful with it, then by all means, he will do whatever people want. Over the course of events, he realises that caring for other people and doing right by them feels good, and that while he didn't fight at Carteneau (the survivor's guilt fills him with deep regret that he wasn't there, even if back then he likely would have died), he can fight now and feels a need to make up for that time.
  
• He found out about what happened to Louisoix with Alisaie and Alphinaud in the Binding Coils of Bahamut. Compelled out of respect for what Louisoix had done, Rhea'li looked a little more into what Phoenix was. (It's a surprise tool that will help us later.)

Heavensward

• He didn't like getting exiled to Ishgard at all (it felt like a betrayal, but he also dislikes cold weather) and was pretty grumpy about it, largely going off on his own for long stretches at a time, which, tbf, is what he normally does anyway. He ended up falling in with the machinists for a while (equivalent of the 30-50 questline) while he, Alphinaud and Tataru were getting acclimatised to the weather and the work done on behalf of House Fortemps. (Sneaking back out to La Noscea with the machinists was another reason he got sucked into it all.) He doesn't have a gun anymore but he still knows how to shoot one. He left the machinist job stone with Stephanivien so the elezen has something to help train up new machinists.
  
• He had some apprehension about learning how to enter a trance using the lingering aether of Bahamut. While he had defeated the Bahamut kept in the Binding Coils, he still clearly remembers Bahamut bursting free of the moon and raining destruction on the land below. Getting tricked into entering the trance and also having the opportunity to speak with Tiamat goes a long way to making peace with his fear of the dragon.
  
• He took a long break after the Dragonsong War was officially over in part to go on that pilgrimage (you know the one), but also to hang out and help the tribes and such. He wasn't able to help the moogles much because he's no artisan, but he did hang out with them nevertheless. He helped out the sky pirates because he's sailed the seas but never really sailed the skies, it seemed fun.
  
• He's given up drinking. People keep drugging his drinks and it's NOT GREAT.

Stormblood

• He got dunked on by Zenos so hard it made him mad.
  
• If he ever retired from the WoL business (he's skeptical about that), he'd hang out at the Azim Steppe. It's a way of life he could enjoy for a long time before he got bored.
  
• Did not call Zenos friend.
  
• He helped the stormblood tribes, too. Yes, even the hapless namazu (via gathering). He agrees with Cirina though; they do look like they would make a good meal...
  
• Thinking about his situation after taking back Ala Mhigo from the Imperials, he had started out in the business of helping people, but damn man, he's killed a lot of people in the process. He can't help but feel a little weaponised. That's why it is so important for him to do all those little things for people; he can't quantify the effects (both positive and negative) he's had on something as large scale as a war in a meaningful way for himself (even though people are praising him all the time). The small things in front of him, however, are real. The relief on peoples' faces, the joy of being reunited with loved ones, the warmth of food on the table, those are all things that stay with him.
  
• Having finally made his peace with his feelings about Bahamut, he learns to create his most powerful summon, Demi-Bahamut. He largely doesn't bring this out in fights while having others about; the Calamity is still in living memory. But he hopes that the still living dragons don't mind that he is drawing on Bahamut's strength to protect those he loves.
  
• Lost vision in his left eye due to freak accident while adventuring between Stormblood and Shadowbringers.

Shadowbringers

• Struggled in the first encounter with Ran'jit because of his injury and Ran'jit likely took advantage of that.
  
• Started work on constructing a new summon after the encounter with Sin Eaters at Lakeland after watching Alphinaud run off to heal the wounded Crystarium soldiers and thinking about how Alphinaud created Moonstone. Rhea'li has never been the most studious in the craft of Arcanima and all his summons previously were handed down to him via Y'mhitra and Prin. He's not very well versed in modifying spells or creating them (as he lacks the practice, creative thinking and problem solving skills), so it would take the majority of his time on the First for it to come into fruition in the form of Demi-Phoenix.
  
• When he overheard Urianger and Y'shtola's discussion in Slitherbough, he knew he was turning into a sin eater, as he's quite well aware of the state of his own aether. Nevertheless, he chose to put his trust in the Exarch and Urianger.
  
• It was so, so tempting to try and use the dwarves' blowgun to try and reveal what the Exarch looked like under the hood. He refrained, regrettably.
  
• The news that an entire timeline possibly died for him to live doesn't sit well with him at all. He's grateful to be alive and he can respect the determination to change the course of history (thinking about what it took the Exarch, knowing what he was like as G'raha back in the day, fills him with a very healthy respect for the trials that he and the generations of engineers endured) but also... well. That just makes him think about all the other deaths that could be prevented. Like the Calamity. Past calamities. The Sundering. And that seems like a big rabbit hole. While he likes his life (and thus fought Emet-Selch to keep it), he does empathise and wishes their goals weren't so mutually exclusive. He tries not to think about the implications of time travel too hard and move forward with the life he has. He thinks of it as a second lease on life, even if he never actually experienced his death in the bad timeline.
  
• The echoes of Ancient society strikes a chord. If he were in Azem's position, he wouldn't be able to sacrifice half the population to make the summoning of Zodiark either.
  
• I'm sorry his reimaginings of primals in Eden are so horny.
  
• Wtf is wrong with the people who made the Archon loaf.

Endwalker

• WHY IS GARLEMALD SO COLD this is worse than Ishgard. Ifrit-egi may have been used as a heater at some point.
  
• Garlemald is... well, he knew the reality of being part of opposing fighting force, the name spoken of in fear for their lives, but this is the first time he's really been confronted with it. Murderer, they called him at Tertium. As disheartening as it is, people are people, and they need help.
  
• Get the hell out of his body, Zenos
  
• Elpis was enlightening. And confusing. Why time travelling again? And by going back, is part of the reason why things turned out the way they did is because of him revealing what the future holds? He is getting a headache thinking about this so let's not. Getting to see what things really were like (and not just the haunting recreation of Amaurot) puts things into better perspective, and it's so indescribably sad to have lost that.
  
• The thought of having nothing to eat but carrots for any extended period of time feels like a banishment to the seven hells.
  
• Willingly fought Zenos at the end of the world because it's true, he does like fighting. But it was also to kill him and allow Zenos to die satisfied, most people don't have that opportunity. Does Zenos deserve that? Well, that's not for Rhea'li to judge

Other character notes

- noting that his skills are very poor when it comes to study and experimentation, despite being an arcanist/summoner.
- his magic largely scales for fighting primals not people. This means that he has a harder time fighting people, especially those who are trained or specialised in fighting people. (This is my way of resolving why the WoL struggles against Zenos and Ran'jit, but also a balancing factor for RP)
- in addition to his normal clothes, he always has a skinning knife on him, on account of regularly hunting still
- has a tendency to never say anything about who he his on a larger scale, which is how he manages to fly under the radar so much. The tony hawk experience.
- he is very simple, which is why largely he just does what he's told. there's a brain in there... somewhere. (joking aside, he's just largely really straightforward in thinking.)
- very prone to wandering off, largely not concerned with big picture things.
- REALLY bad at telling people what he's been up to -- sorry he didn't tell you he was travelling with the father of all dragons for two entire expansions, Cid -- so he probably hasn't told his friends about like, any of the allied raid/normal raid stuff if they weren't involved (tho i guess i'll leave that up to other players if they want to know stuff)
- really not very good with technology, it's amazing nero and cid even trust him with their stuff. maybe it's the equivalent of handing stuff over to someone technologically illiterate to test how well things hold up to improper use...
- more interested in hearing what others have to say.
- assumes a peaceful death is unlikely to be in his future
- if he were to no longer need to fight, he might consider learning to cook better.
- he used to hang out with pirates. sorry alisaie.
- a quiet admiration for people who can stick to something for a really long time, like, he's quite aware that he wouldn't be able to handle the responsibility of the city state leaders, doing their best to lead people to a better future day in day out. He's pretty aware that he's just someone who kind of breezes in and changes the fate of others, but it is the hard work and on going dedication that makes things stick. And he's just not someone who can stay in one place for a long time when the option of going places is there.