diadem app

Player Information

Player: jay
Contact: charred / falchions @ discord
Invitation OR characters played: currently playing Lucina (heritors)!
Are you over 18?: yes


Character Information

Character: Aria Forzane, Warrior of Light
Canon: Final Fantasy XIV ( & near the end of base 6.0, just before she's about to be teleported back on to the Ragnarok after her battle with Zenos ).
Age: 28.
History: The Warrior of Light is a malleable protagonist/player character in FFXIV! Given this, I wrote an entry on Aria's backstory & specific details for MSQ, which also includes links to a comprehensive summary for each expansion.
Possessions: Clothes on her back, the Azem soul crystal (now useless), the Scholar soul crystal.
A bag containing tinctures, materia, food, herbs & other botanical goods; none of it will be enough to do anything significant.
Weapon: Her codex, which looks like this. ICly, it's her own personal notes & 'shortcuts' for her to cast her spells, and the primary weapon of Scholars in game.

This does imply that she can cast spells without it; and I imagine she can for spells she's cast hundreds of times, like summoning Eos — but it will be much, much slower (sort of like doing complicated math without a calculator), and limited to simpler spellwork.

Powers/Abilities: For the sake of brevity, only the powers I intend to bring/use will be listed. I'll give a brief description of how each power works, whether they'll be brought ✓ as-is, or ↓ nerfed with any relevant addendums.

✱ Anything that affects another player character (or named NPC) will require explicit permission from the player/mod (this is most of her kit, so please consider this a blanket disclaimer).

AS THE WARRIOR OF LIGHT
The Warrior of Light (WoL)'s described to be someone who is so powerful that her power can rival that of gods. The reason for this is explained away with her "dense aetheric composition"; 'aether' here is the ambient magical energy that occupies all living beings. For Aria specifically, this mostly just means she's a very talented spell caster, but it also comes with some protag buffs.

✱ Blessing of the Light: A ward placed on her by Hydaelyn to prevent aetheric corruption. It keeps her from being magically charmed or manipulated, and protects her allies from intrusions by Hydaelyn's enemies. — ↓ nerfed. The blessing still holds despite Hydaelyn's death, so she'll still be protected from magical/mental manipulation. The ward on her allies will be gone entirely.
✱ The Echo: The "power to transcend souls". It lets her see & experience the memories of a person as they lived it, speak all languages naturally, and catch glimpses of a person's soul. — ✓ as-is.
✱ Soroban's Blessing: It lets her breathe underwater. — ✓ as-is.
✱ Warrior of Light: She has a natural aptitude for picking up skills quickly, and she can freely learn & switch between all 20 combat styles ( jobs ) with the help of a Soul Crystal ( an artifact that distills a particular job's abilities ). — ↓ nerfed. She'll pick up mundane skills easily ( like driving a car ), but anything more complex ( like hand to hand combat ) will still take time. She'll also lose the ability to switch between jobs, unless it's been earned via player plot.
✱ Spell-caster: Spell casters in FFXIV can use magic for practical reasons that have nothing to do with combat or healing: such as animating objects, basic telekinesis, transfiguration, teleportation, etc. — ↓ nerfed. There's no explicit scene with the WoL doing most of this, but she's presumably a very powerful individual. So I'd like to propose that: all practical magic she casts will be weak & just for flavor ( limited to things like floating objects or starting a campfire ); she'll never solve a significant problem ( ie, the conflict in a thread ) with just this and nothing else. If this isn't an option at all, that's also totally fine.

AS A SCHOLAR
Scholars are one of four available healers in FFXIV — they're users of Arcanima, a school of magic that manipulates the aether via mathematics. They were originally battle medics that doubled as on-field tacticians to help shield and protect their allies. While the civilization that used Scholars is long gone, its field of study as a variation of Arcanima still remains.

For reference, here's the Scholar job guide; she has access to skills up to & including Expedience @ level 90. That said, FFXIV skills don't translate very well to a written medium! So I've grouped & distilled them into sections, with extra descriptions for any notable skills.

✱ Any area of effect (AoE) spells will affect up to 8 people (including herself) within 15 yards of her.
✱ Healing: Spells like Physick, Indomitability, Lustrate, and Excog fall here. What it says on the tin! If someone gets hurt, she'll be able to heal it with magic. All of of her healing is for one person, except for Indomitability. — ✓ as-is. The raw healing of Scholars in-game is definitely lacking, and I'll be playing it accordingly. She can heal, does it well, but her area of expertise is limited to what a battle medic could do. She won't be able to magically cure illnesses without the research to back it up.
✱ Mitigating damage: Spells like Adloquium, Succor, Sacred Soil, and Deployment Tactics fall here. A scholar's kit really shines with its shields & mitigations that either reduce or negate the damage that someone takes during battle, avoiding the need to heal them in the first place. Most of these are AoE, with the exception of Adloquium! Notably, Expedience gives everyone a speed boost for a little bit. — ✓ as-is. To lean on the lore origins of scholar, I may occasionally play this off as her magically reading the 'flow' of a battle and using her magic to circumvent possible damage (a weapon being deflected by an unknown force, a trajectory of a bullet changing just slightly, reinforcing parts of someone's armor, etc). But the spirit of the skills will be retained; if someone was going to get very hurt, they might be slightly less hurt thanks to her fast thinking! Expedience will be limited to once a thread.
✱ Offensives: Spells like Broil, Ruin, Biolysis, and Chain Stratagem fall here. If they know how to use their magic to heal, they can definitely use their magic to harm. They don't do a ton of damage, but they definitely enable others to do a ton of damage in their stead. — ✓ as-is. Biolysis is a weak but constant poison. Chain Strategem increases the chance that anyone who attacks them may 'Critical Hit' (ie, do extra damage), which will translate to her exposing an enemy's weakness. Chain Strategem will be limited to once a thread.

✱ Summon Eos: Everything under the Pet Actions section of the job guide falls here; 90% of this are healing skills. Scholars can summon a fairy (Eos) that heals their allies, effectively working as an extension of the Scholar's will! Eos requires an order from Aria to cast a skill; if not given an explicit command, she'll just follow Aria around and heal any of her allies that take damage. Very occasionally, she'll transform into a Seraph, which allows cast protective shields on her allies. — ↓ nerfed. As Eos is an extension of Aria, she'll follow the same rules on healing/shielding as her ( so she'll injuries, but can't heal illnesses, etc ). She'll only be summoned when there's an explicit task to be performed, and disappear shortly after. I'd like to imagine with how powerful Aria's aether supposedly is, and with fairies being largely a creature of aether, her personality is more a reflection of Aria's current mental state. If this isn't allowed, please let me know!
✱ Role actions: Specifically repose (inflicts a target with a sleep), esuna (cures a detrimental effect / status condition), and rescue (magically brings a target to her side)! — ✓ as-is. Repose is a very light sleep that can be shaken off if someone else is around to wake them. Rescue only works on party members, so someone would have to be working with her for her to be able to use it on them. Repose and rescue will be limited to once a thread.
✱ Resurrection: Used to bring allies back from being knocked out at a temporarily weakened state — ✓ as-is. The "weakened state" would translate to grogginess & disorientation. Limited to once a thread.

MISC SKILLS.
✱ Researcher: Arcanists are magical scientists, mathematicians, and engineers. This is all Aria's done for most of her adult life — if given the opportunity, this is all she would be doing as a full-time job! Combined with the Warrior of Light's supposed aptitude, she's an incredibly smart individual with a lot of knowledge in how magic in Etheirys works, the mortal body, and Arcanima. She's got an affinity for the maths & sciences, and her memory is very good. She's probably got a healthy knowledge of a whole host of other topics as well, but I'm personally not that smart so I'll be limiting myself to this.
✱ Alchemist: Her one crafter/gatherer option. With the right equipment, she knows enough to create her own tinctures, inks, and codexes to keep her self-sufficient as a scholar. This can naturally translate to other chemistries as the game progresses, but those will require some level of effort on her part.
✱ Adventurer: She's used to roughing it out there; she's got some decent survival skills! She's used to long travel & navigating on her own. I imagine this + her alchemist background means she has working knowledge of botany / foraging, but it's not particularly impressive.


Application Questions

Who is the most important person in their life and why? What might be different if this person hadn't been around?
At the exact moment of her canon point: as embarrassing as it is, it's herself. Hero of the Star, Savior of Eorzea, the Warrior of Light — the fate of the world rests solely on her shoulders, and she knows it. Not to say that she could have done this alone or that she didn't have any help to get here, but on the flip side, no one else but her could defeat the embodiment of despair and keep her from destroying everything. The world was not going to save itself; it couldn't be saved by some of the most powerful people she's come across — which makes her importance even more paramount. If she doesn't exist, neither does anyone else. Ergo, it's her. It can't be anyone else but her.

Which — she succeeded! The world is saved! And she's at the point where she's going to suddenly become a lot less important in her life very soon. Aria doesn't necessarily equate the impact someone had in her life, or how much she cares about them to importance. Whoever is important is the key person that can continue to protect the people that she cares about. In times of crisis, that's (usually) her.

Though for what it's worth, there was a very long stretch of time when none of this was the case; for a long time her brother was everything; her best friend, her only ally, the person she trusted more than anyone else. This became doubly true after his death. After a long time of grieving him, it was the long, long list of everyone she had lost during the events of the game ( as strange and backwards as that is ). It's the fact that she had to lose them that makes more of an impact in her life than their identities, because every subsequent death just reminded her of the first. They ( or their deaths ) were the most important thing in her life then.

Is there an event in your character's life that they'd do differently? How so and why?
Unfortunately, her life is a series of poor life decisions that have led her to this moment. Aria's motivated by her desire to be her own person, which doesn't mix well with her responsibilities as a hero. She's moved past most of it now, and she knows to curb her impulses and do her job ( sometimes to the extreme ), but it took a lot of hard lessons before she could get there. ( In her eyes, ) Her passivity and wariness in the early days after joining the Scions of the Seventh Dawn was what caused the betrayal of the Crystal Braves, overconfidence in her abilities led to Haurchefant's death, and her resentment towards the Doman Resistance led to Yotsuyu and Zenos getting far as they did. Then of course, this began because she dragged her brother to his death when she wanted to be a hero by joining the resistance all those years ago.

This leaves her in an interesting spot; she knows she needed these lessons to be who she is today. She knows that who she is today is better, in that maybe — just maybe — she's learned enough lessons that she doesn't have to learn any more ( lmfao ). The first time was enough, thank you, and the idea of having to go through it again is kind of devastating. So if there's a world where Hayato didn't die but still leaves her in the right space to make every correct decision, then she'd probably take that. But that's a tall ask; what's more realistic is that she'd probably have to learn some other lesson along the way, and — yeah. No thanks. She'll just stick with what she has, losses and all, and keep moving forward from here.

What's the greatest challenge you foresee your character facing in the setting? How might this impact their ability to adapt and in what ways will they confront this challenge?
Her biggest challenge is also going to be her biggest strength — the Scions of the Seventh Dawn, her beloved castmates and friends, are here. She cares about them very much! She just thought she would have lost them for good, barely got them back, and thought that in the process of making sure they'll be okay, the price to pay would be her life ( which ... she was okay with, sure, but it's still a pretty big decision for someone like her ). She's going to want to shoulder on every burden ( again ) to make sure that she can protect them from the worst of it ( again ), while pretending like nothing is wrong ( again ). Such is the duty that she's chosen to take on when she chose to really live up to being a hero.

It's probably not the healthiest mindset to have. She's going to struggle with it regardless of their presence; if they're here, then she has to protect them. If they're not, then she's devastated by the fact that they're gone.

What's the easiest thing you foresee your character adapting to in the setting?
Honestly with the sheer amount of nonsense she's seen, and her general "sense of adventure" that comes with ... well, being an adventurer: she'll very quickly hit a certain 'this may as well happen' with the general landscape of the Diadem. She's traveled through time, to other worlds, gone to space. Seen horrors and wonders she could have never imagined. Not to mention she's probably dead when she gets back?? So why not have one last, grand adventure? What's the alternative? Not explore every nook and cranny of a landscape that's always changing? What kind of hero doesn't persevere against their circumstance? Definitely not her. She'll adapt and overcome, or so help her.


Samples

Sample: Stephen Strange, Estinien, Ardbert