Kristoff Gelder

INFO

HISTORY

Overview

• Ala Mhigo
• Limsa Lominsa
• The Maelstrom
• Mercenary
• The Astral Era

Kristoff was born in Ala Mhigo 16 years before it’s fall to Garlemald, and was the only son of a wealthy merchant and seamstress. His birthday was under the star of Oschon, the wandering god, and true to his fate Kristoff would not stay still for long.As a teen he and his father clashed over what to do about the King of Ruin, Theodoric. Kristoff's father supported the monarchy, but a young and idealistic Kristoff wanted to see Ala Mhigo establish a republic. This came to a head when Kristoff cut ties to his father and ran from home to join the rebellion against the King of Ruin. After the death of King Theodoric and the Empire's conquest of Gyr Abania Kristoff’s family fled. Kristoff, separated from them by the war, remained trapped in imperial Ala Mhigo without any news of their fate. He did what he could to survive, and even helped carry messages for the early resistance, but life was bleak. After 6 years under the imperial yoke he seized an opportunity to escape and fled to Limsa Lominsa, taking up work as a mercenary.Once In Limsa he spent the better part of seven years serving as a Marauder and pirate. In this time he made an ugly name for himself brutally slaying hundreds under the black flag of piracy. He used the lessons he learned as a child solider to grizzly effect on the high seas. His cruelty and brutality were in part spurred on by Demezel, a crewmate who Kristoff would fall deeply in love with but who would ultimately betray him. Demezel had been the catalyst that turned Kristoff from a Marauder to a pirate in the first place, and for years had been a driving force in Kristoff's life. His betrayal left Kristoff shattered. Without him Kristoff lost his apatite for piracy and elected to join the Maelstrom in exchange for clemency for his past crimes and to try and find a new start.Kristoff took well enough to the Maelstrom, his background as a revolutionary made him a skilled solider, and his time as a pirate helped him culturally connect to his comrades, many of whom were former priates just like him. Before long he held a decent rank and was given the freedom to travel Eorzea under light supervision. During this time he tracked down his family, who had survived the fall of Ala Mhigo and migrated to Gridana’s shroud. Kristoff found them living like paupers, but safe, which is more than he could have hoped for. Kristoff found a new purpose in life by providing for them, though he still relished opportunities to strike out at the garleans, more out of revenge than any true hope for the liberation of his homeland. These golden years were truly happy for Kristoff, for the first time in decades he had his family, he was building healthy friendships, and was even finding love again in an Elezen woman named Olselle. Kristoff had dreams of ending his contract with the maelstrom, and resettling into the shroud to live out his life with the family he recovered. Fate, of course, had other plans.During the calamity Kristoff's family was killed by the fall of Dalamud. This grievous loss, along with the fact that the Eorzian Alliance was pivoting to a more defensive strategy, caused Kristoff to lose faith in the city states. He retired from active service and took up life as an independent mercenary seeking out more aggressive contracts against the empire. Blinded by grief he doubled down on the darker sides of his past and reimagined himself as a weapon against Garlemond. This alienated many of his friends and loved ones who would not accept the monstrous things Kristoff was willing to do in the name of revenge. Once again alone and without roots, he floated through several fronts, engaged the Garleans whenever possible, and made a name for himself as a brutal combatant.In the wake of the calamity small skirmishes were numorous and Kristoff found consistent work killing Garleans. But as time passed on, tensions cooled and the people became comfortable with the new status quo. As honest men stopped paying for fights against the empire, Kristoff turned to criminals and rouges for opportunities to strike out at Garlemond, but these high stakes contracts were few and far between. Kristoff found himself needing to lean more and more on more conventional mercenary work. Eventually Kristoff's need for gil led to him taking a long term position as a combat instructor in Ishguard.Kristoff never was fully accepted by the Ishguardians, but he found their open hostility oddly comforting. In lower Eorzea folks would often pay lip service to being equal partners while looking down their nose at Kristoff for his job, race, or his past. In Ishguard everyone was out in the open with their prejudice and it was easy for Kristoff to understand where he stood, giving him some perverse sense of belonging. While these years cemented Kristoff's self image as a brute with little more to offer the world than his blade, his consistent work in the city state and sense of purpose as an instructor helped to cool his rage.Once this contract was up, he was turned out of ishguard. Kristoff returned to greater Eorzea a tempered man. He still kept his burning hatred of the empire, but had long stopped believing that he could accomplish anything to truly hurt them. His life had settled into a pattern. Kristoff would travel the city states, looking for whatever work that would pay, and prioritizing any jobs that could cause damage to the Garleans, driven on more by habit than passion.Now Kristoff is an older man, with no real home to return to, no enemy to wage war against, and no family to remember him. He had spent more than 30 years of his life in constant fighting for one cause or another. Now he spends his days wandering from city to city, staying long enough to drink his fill, have his fun, and find some work before moving on againDeep down he knows that sooner rather than later this lifestyle will lead him on to the wrong end of a blade and he's resigned himself to it. Not because he thinks he deserves it, but because its impossible for him to imagine any other way to live.

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GALLERY

• The Present

• The Past

GALLERY

• The Present

• The Past

HOOKS

Ala Mhigan History Hooks

Ishguardian Hooks

OCC

Hi! Thanks for taking some time to visit my page, I go by Chris, I'm in my early 30s and I have 15+ years of RP experience behind me.I really fell in love with FF14 in 2020 and decided to go whole hog and make an in depth character backstory which as you can see has been incomplete for about half a decade!As much as I love the game, sometimes work gets in the way, so I'm not always subscribed. But regardless of if Im online, reach out and I'd be happy to chat!

About Me

Prefrences / Looking for

Timeline

• Full Summary

Arcs

• Ala Mhigo
• Limsa Lominsa
• The Maelstrom
• Mercenary
• The Astral Era

~ Please Read This First ~

This section covers Kristoff's long history. If you just want to go over one page summarizing his entire backstory, please click on the Full Summary button, or Here.If you want a more detailed telling of Kristoff's story go ahead and click on the arcs. Each arc coverers a part of Kristoff's life and will go into much more detail on the events that shaped him. There is a lot to read here, but none of it is critical information important to RP with Kristoff. Think of it more as a fun read if you really love his story and want to know more.Each arc will have a summary of the major events in Kristoff's life during that time. Some Arcs will have chapters that dive into much more detail of that time, or even short stories going over important events.NOTE
The Full Summary and arc summaries are intended for all ages, the chapters might contain graphic depictions of violenceIf you would like to start at the first arc go ahead and click on the Ala Mhigo button, or HereIf you are reading Kristoff's story for fun and want to skip any spoilers I recommend just diving into the chapters.If you want to start at the first chapter please click HereIf you are interesting in building up backstory ties and want to insert your character into a specific chapter of Kristoff's life then just let me know! I love backstory ties and would usually be happy to work out a history together!If you ever get lost, or want to get back to this page just click the "Timeline" button at the top of the screen, or the "History" button at the bottom.Thanks for reading!

Story Tweaks

Ala Mhigo

0-22 years old

• Ala Mhigo
• Limsa Lominsa
• The Maelstrom
• Mercenary
• The Astral Era

Chapters

• Early Years
• Civil War
• Imperial Rule

Kristoff was born into a Royalist family, his father was a wealthy merchant who used his ties with the king to monopolize the market on imported goods from Limsa Lominsa. As a boy Kristoff was more bookish, taking after his mother. His younger sister was more the fighter, and she inherited the aggression and will of their father. When Kristoff was young, King Theodoric made his move on the Fist of Rhalgar, killing the monks in a politically disastrous move which created a state of total unrest in Gyr Abania.Kristoff’s father remained a staunch Royalist, but Kristoff began to sympathize with the Republicans, this led to several arguments as he was growing up. Finally when he was 14, the political state of Ala Mhigo was so volatile that Kristoff’s father demanded he swear fealty to the King. Kristoff ran away that night to join the rebellion.Kristoff grew up in the harsh world of a child solider in the rebellion. He took lives, believed in the cause and reforged himself into a capable solider. After 2 years of fighting for the rebellion Theodoric fell, however much to the Ala Mhigan’s despair, he was replaced by the Black Wolf of Garlemond. Kristoff snuck into imperial Ala Mhigo to search for his family, but they were gone, and Kirstoff had no idea if they were alive or not.When Ala Mhigo fell Kristoff was in a small village on the outskirts of Gyr Abania, with the other members of his unit from the rebellion. But he quickly left them to find his family in Ala Mhigo. The capitol of the city state was in shambles, and he was heartbroken find no trace of his family in their home. Without much direction, he tried to get back out meet his unit, only to find that the empire had restricted travel.With no other choice he blended in with the locals, and eventually found work in the mines in order to keep up with the imperial tax. During this time Kristoff would sometimes use his background of merchant's son to go and trade with local villages, and he would pass secret messages to the new cells of the budding resistance, and to search for word of his family.After 6 years of slavish work, Kristoff began to notice many of his resistance contacts disappearing. When a close comrade from the civil war disappeared from a mine Kristoff was working in, he became terrified and decided to try and escape imperial Gyr Abania. He was able to locate a smuggler his father had dealt with before the war and traded away the last of his valuable possessions to be smuggled into Free Eorzea.

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The Early years

0-14 years old

• Ala Mhigo
• Limsa Lominsa
• The Maelstrom
• Mercenary
• The Astral Era

• Early Years
• Civil War
• Imperial Rule

Kristoff was born under the star of Oschon, the god of the travel and vagrants. As an adult he would never pay much mind to the gods or their purviews, but all the same his life would be defined by the same wandering of his birthgod's domain. In spite of his efforts he would be destined to roam the harsh lands like a battered gale, never settling by the warmth of hearth and home.Kristoff's parents were Johannes, a merchant specializing in imported Lomisian goods, and Mar'ee Gelder, a seamstress. Johannes was a powerful man both physically and politically, with a sharp intelligence that had elevated his family from mere traders into formidable merchants living well inside the walls of Ala Mhigo. By contrast his mother was beautiful, soft, kind, and spiritual. She seemed to have a natural gift to soothe the hearts of those around her, and an impish humor.To the surprise of both his parents, he was a mild natured child, who seemed to take more after his mother. He preferred to spend his time reading or listening to songs rather than play in sport like his father had. He had a deep and natural sense of empathy which made him softhearted, even more so than other children, who all have some inclination to softheartedness. After a few years his parents gave him a younger sister, Sigberta, who had taken a shine to art and unlike Kristoff, had inherited their fathers love of sport, general physicality, and his uncompromising temperament.As a child Kristoff would often act as a calming force against his younger sisters chaos. It was said he considered himself like a third parent to the young girl, and was fiercely protective of her, especially against the strict discipline of their father. Johannes didn't always understand his son, but he loved him fiercely, and he saw promise in the boy. Given his cool head and love of learning, his parents assumed he would be a merchant like his father, or maybe a scholar, which was Kristoff's dream.However Nymeia would not be so kind as to allow Kristoff his scholarly pursuits. When Kristoff was 11, King Theodoric sentenced the First of Rhalgr, ancient warrior monks who had long been symbols of Ala Mhigo's piety and might, to death. The king claimed treason, even calling their worship of Rhalgr heresy. He ordered the monks and many of their supporters burned alive in a bloody political coup.A young Kristoff couldn’t comprehend the gruesome execution and despised the "King of Ruin", as Theodoric came to be known. His mother, a compassionate but largely apolitical woman, empathized with Kristoff. She shared his horror at the kings actions, spoke with him long into the night about the injustice of it, but stopped short of any immediate solution. She attempted to instill in him lessons of empathy, and kindness. She emphasized how losing track of these traits can make monsters out of good men. She tried to redirect his anger, encouraging him to persue positions of leadership and use his own benevolent influence to gently guide the world to a better tomorrow.His father on the other hand was not so patient.The Gelder family had been staunch royalists for generations, and their loyalty to the crown had proven fruitful, allowing them license to trade in foreign goods that were usually difficult to pass into Gyr Abania. Kristoff’s father had conceded that the First of Rhalgr should have been dealt with more humanely, but ultimately he sided with the King. He believed the Fist were overstepping their bounds as a religious group by openly undermining the king's rule, and that it was no surprise that Theodoric would put them down for that behavior.Johannes was a self-driven man who lived in the pragmatic world and had no time for idealism or perceived injustices, to him there was simply the calculus of power. More than that, he was stern and expected respect and obedience, if not understanding, from his children. Any disagreement by the young Kristoff was met with strict punishment and lectures on the chaotic nature of man and the necessity of the crown.Despite Johannes' heavy hand, Kristoff looked up to him, and begrudgingly acknowledged that his father's logic was sound, but no amount of logic could make the boy's soft heart forgive the brazen slaughter. At first the boy desperately tried to argue with his father, following his rules while working to convince Johannes to see his point of view. But when it became clear that Kristoff would never be able to change his fathers mind, he began to openly defy his patriarch's wishes and he participated in the backlash against the ruined king.Kristoff began attending public forums where free thinkers discussed the corruption of the throne and the possibility of a republic. He would bring these ideas home with him and spread them amongst his friends and his father's patrons, much to Johannes' embarrassment. This political divide threw a great wedge between father and son, and after years of fruitless debate the two barely spoke to one another without screaming. These were hard times, and Kristoff would have run away if not for the constant soothing of his mother.On the worst nights, when Johannes would lock Kristoff in his room, she would slip in and let her son vent his frustrations and feel heard. She would praise his bravery and compassion, urge him to reconcile with his father, but she also acknowledged his independence and strength for standing up for his ideas. Then, when Kristoff's head had cooled and his tears dried, she'd remark on how when he was a child they always thought that Kristoff was more like her, but as he grew into a man she saw so much of his father in him: his strength, his intelligence, his self assuredness. Kristoff hated hearing this, he didn't want to be like his father, and much preferred the idea that he was more like his mother. In the dawn of his adolescence she was his sole ally, but even her careful mending could not keep her family together forever.Ala Mhigo's political tensions would come to a head when Kristoff was nearly fourteen. All over Gyr Abania the opponents of the Ruined King protested and unified. The once fanciful talk of overthrowing the king and forming a republic had become a very real threat of revolution. It was not long before the first sporadic revolts sparked up around the city state, and each flashpoint made civil war more and more likely. The King had become paranoid with the upheaval and was looking for traitors and spies everywhere. Johannes would debate his young son no longer, the stakes were too high. Once having a republican sympathizer in the Gelder household was merely embarrassing, now it was dangerous.Johannes demanded that Kristoff abandon his Revolutionary ideals, the message was clear: Stand together with your family, or become a threat to it. The boy and his father spit venom at each other, loosing all of their frustration and anger at like arrows from a bow. Each seeking to kill the stubbornness in the other as they lashed out in one final verbal bout.Kristoff unleashed all his angst. He called his father cruel, and heartless. He said his father didn't care about anyone, not even his family, that all he cared about was his profit and gil. That it didn't matter how much blood stained each coin as long as the coffers were full.Johannes bit back, calling Kristoff a stupid boy who would see his mother and sister executed for his own childish and impossible ideas. That he was a fool who would burn down the world in a tantrum rather than accept his place in life. And that he was ashamed that any child of his could be so thoughtless.The bout ended as many bouts had ended before, with Kristoff being locked in his room until he was in a more 'reasonable state of mind'.Something that night snapped inside Kristoff. Its possible he was mature enough to understand the danger he put his family in. Its also possible he was an angry shortsighted teenager, dramatically lashing out without any real understanding of the consequences of his actions. Regardless of his motivations something critical inside him had changed, and his mind was made up, he was done fighting this fruitless battle.When his mother came to comfort him, as she always did, he did something he had never done before.He lied to her.He told her his pride was wounded, but he understood why he had to stop. He told her that he knew he had gone too far, and that he would give up on his talk of republicanism. He told her he knew that his father was right, and that loved her, but he wanted to be alone for a little while. She didn't want to leave him, so much was said in that fight, but he convinced her that he needed to move past this on his own.Then to his surprise his younger sister came to him too. She didn't get involved nearly as often as their mother, but the intensity of the fight had scared her, and she wanted to make sure everything was going to be ok. Lying to her was more difficult than it had been with his mother. He told her that it was just another fight between father and son, nothing to worry about. He told her that he didn't mean any of the things he said, he just got angry, and that after they cooled down, maybe by morning, things would be back to normal. He told her to be strong and not let such things worry her, that he loved her so much, and that he needed sleep.Hours passed.Johannes had sat in his study the whole time until his own temper cooled. The patriarch knew he was right, but the fight had gotten too nasty, too personal. The situation was serious, but this was no way for father and son to speak. He stared at a picture of the two of them from when Kristoff was younger, back when he was his son's hero, before the wedge had driven them apart. Johannes cursed the king's name under his breath for causing this divide in his family. Frustration and fear nipped at the man until tears stung the corners of his eyes. By the time the moon was high his mind was calmed and he had come to a realization. His family had to survive, but they didn't have to fight this way. If Kristoff couldn't understand the greater politics, he could at least understand the pragmatic need to hold his ideals close to his heart. If not for his own safety than for that of his sister and mother; he was sure the boy would understand that.Johannes did something he'd never done before. He opened the locked door to his son's room with an apology on his lips. He was determined to mend this gap, to shelter his family through the coming darkness. But when he called his son's name, the sound died in an empty room.The boy had slipped out before midnight. He slid down a rope and scurried through the streets. He snuck into a dark hovel that some might consider a tavern, and met with a group of older revolutionaries he'd known from the forum, all reliably drinking themselves away as they lamented the state of the world. The revolutionaries had no qualms about accepting a young teenager into their ranks, no instinct to turn a young child to his warm bed and loving family, no conscience to spare a little boy from the horrors of a hopeless civil war. Instead they filled the 14 year old's cup with ale Kristoff took his first sip of the drink as they called him a man.Kristoff watched Ala Mhigo disappear from the back of a textile cart bound for the fringes, where the revolutionaries fought constant revolts and formed makeshift armies. His eyes held onto the lamplight that blazed on his ancestral house until he couldn't make out its shape amongst the shadows. Deep inside him something sad stirred. Kristoff couldn't name the somber feeling, even as it danced amongst his conviction and excitement. There was no way he could have known what lay ahead, but something inside him understood that long as he lived he would never be that close to home again.

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Civil War

14-16 years old

• Ala Mhigo
• Limsa Lominsa
• The Maelstrom
• Mercenary
• The Astral Era

• Early Years
• Civil War
• Imperial Rule

Within months the small revolts around Gyr Abania had erupted into full civil war with revolutionary militias forming up to attack what they now called 'Royalists' and their strongholds. The Royalists, under decree of the king, responded brutally, murdering and torturing revolutionaries and their civilian sympathizers as retribution for their disloyalty. The harsh treatment galvanized the scattered revolutionaries to unite under the banner of 'Republicans'. The group were woefully ill-equipt, but Theodoric's harsh treatment had given them a single name and voice, and their numbers swelled.At only 14 years old, Kristoff was a thoroughly untested warrior, and he was now thoroughly in over his head. The child had never been particularly good at sports, let alone life and death combat, and the dirty camps out in the fringes were nothing like the Royal Academy where other boys of his class learned the art of warfare. All the same he was given a spear and slapshoddedly trained for service in the nascent Republican Army. The transformation from bookish boy to guerrilla fighter was difficult, and fraught with pain along the way. His father's outspoken royalist loyalties did not make him very popular with the officers of the fledgling rebellion, and his upper class manners made him even less popular with the regular soldiers, many of whom came from poor houses and were fighting the elites just as much as the king.He spent many hard days being drilled to the point of exhaustion. At nights he would think of his mother and sister, and fight back tears of homesickness. Some nights the sorrow was too much to hold back and he would bawl into the night, and on those nights the other militia would beat him in his bed until he was quiet.The reality of the rebellion was a far cry from the heroic exploits in Kristoff's storybooks, and farther still from his own lofty ideals. Kristoff had lived a sheltered life and joined the rebellion out of pure ideology, but many of his new companions had no such luxury. They all believed in the fight, but many were driven to arms as a direct result of hardship and oppression. They fought more to improve their own individual futures than to champion and ideal. This difference only served to make the boy feel more out of place and he often regretted his choice to leave his family. On some of the hardest nights Kristoff would fantasize about running home, leaving this hard choice behind and uniting with his mother and sister. But his pride weighed him down like an anchor. His fathers words stung in his heart. The man had essential called Kristoff a stupid failure, and he refused to return home with his tail between his legs and prove the man right.The hard times continued rolling from one painful day to the next until in a moment everything seemed to shatter. During a raid against a royalist supply shipment, Kristoff took his first life.He had been tasked with sneaking in behind the initial assault and stealing as many cases of goods as he could carry; a common task for the younger or smaller soldiers and one that Kristoff had already done several times without any issues. Armed with a spear, the boy flanked the caravan, and while the guards were occupied with the fighting he slipped behind the wagon and began looting. However this time a royalist guard, no older than 20, spotted him and moved to strike.Kristoff caught the movement out of the corner of his eye and in an adrenaline fueled frenzy he whipped around and threw the whole of his weight behind the spear. He felt some unfamiliar resistance, and then the spear jerked backward, slamming down on the ground. Kristoff watched the soldier bear down on him, he tried to move the spear back and thrust again, but it felt so heavy, as if it was bolted to the ground. The man looked as if he was going to overtake Kristoff, but stopped as his chest was caught by the wings of the spear. By the time the boy could begin to think a thin river of blood had already traveled down the shaft of his weapon and began to pool against his hand.All at once Kristoff realized he had pierced the soldier. He could feel the weight of him bind the spear in place, he could feel the shaft wobble slightly in his hands against each of the soldiers panicked breaths. The boy lifted his head to see the stunned look on the young man's face, and the horrifying sense of mortality in his eyes. Kristoff held the weapon with a white knuckle grip for what seemed like an eternity and felt the soldier slowly die. Unable to pull his weapon free from under the weight of the corpse, he let go and watched the young man collapse to the ground with a thud that would echo in Kristoff's mind for all his years to come.When he returned to camp he was a shade. The 14 year old boy could barely form a thought, but behind a catatonic stare he was a whirlwind of emotion. He had considered running away from home to be the most difficult thing he would ever do, but blood now stained his hands and he understood the true cost of the republic. At first he was in denial, pretending that what he had done was barely noteworthy, but then the soldier's horrified stare would blaze in Kristoff's mind and his stomach would turn into a knot. He would think of his family, royalists just like the solider he killed, had he known his parents? He began to see himself in the ghost of the soldier, a different Kristoff, a bit older and more devoted to his father. He considered the soldier's mother, and all the blood seemed to drain from his face. The emotion overwhelmed him and he would shut down, go back into denial until the eyes of the dead solider once more gripped at his soul.That night during dinner, while sitting safely at the outskirts of the fire, Kristoff's fragile shell finally collapsed and the boy sobbed uncontrollably. None of his comrades lifted a finger to beat him into silence, as had been their ritual so many other nights. Instead an elder revolutionary sat beside him and tenderly put a rough hand on the boy's back back. He didn't say a word, didn't even look at Kristoff, he just sat there and rubbed his back until his tears gave way to a solemn silence that the whole militia shared. Kristoff had paid his dues to the republic in blood, and no longer was he treated as an outsider.Kristoff's life in the rebellion changed dramatically after his acceptance by the militia. The teenager had been starved for a sense of belonging, and now that his compatriots accepted him he soaked up their influence like a sponge. The once polite and bookish schoolboy now found himself cursing, spitting, and drinking with his regiment. The crass behaviors didn't come naturally to him, and his companions would always refer to him as a posh boy regardless how of rough Kristoff became, but even this teasing warmed the boy's lonely heart and made him feel accepted.The memories of his first kill would haunt him still, but even this pain tilled the ground for growth, as his comrades shared their own harrowing stories of their first blood. With the encouragement and comradery of his fellow soldiers it all became easier. Not just the killing, but all of the atrocities of war. A child has the uncanny ability to adapt to anything, and even as the horrors of war twisted Kristoff in ways it would take him decades to understand, he found purpose. He took no pleasure in the killing and the destruction of war, but he was convinced of the nobility of his goal, and any blood shed in the name of the Republic would fertalize the ground for a more abundant tomorrow.One of the more surprising discoveries Kristoff made in this transformation was his love of blood sport. As a child he had always been timid, especially compared to his spitfire sister who was far more likely to get into a fight than he was. And he had never taken to sports, preferring the fantastic adventures of his books. But in the rebellion it was normal for regiments to hold small gladiatorial bouts to keep everyone fresh. They trained in both armed combat and in unarmed Ala Mhigan martial arts. Most members of the rebellion trained in pugilism, many saw it as a way to honor the Fist of Rhalgr and keep their legacy alive by using their techniques to fight Theodoric. Kristoff of course was forced to participate, and once he learned enough to start winning, found the melees addicting. The cheers of his comrades as he beat down an opponent filled him with a pride and sense of life that neither sports or his books had ever given him.Kristoff spent two years growing with the republicans, making friends and memories along bloody roads of battle, forging the lessons of his growth in the crucible of death and war. The time had changed him so much that he barely resembled the boy he had always been. His heart had grown bold from the regular acts of heroism which war demands, his eyes sharp from many brushes with death. Of course not every change was for the better. His empathy, ever his strength as a child, was a critical weakness in war. The pain he felt was immeasurable, and his heart quickly hardened from many friends lost. Worse, his mind was scarred from all of the atrocities he had watched the loyalists commit in the name of their King of Ruin, and the atrocities he had committed back in turn.Despite the great toll the fighting took on Kristoff’s soul the boy kept his humanity and his faith. All of these evils were in service of a brighter future. More than that, the darkness of the war only doubled Kristoff’s resolve to fight. What better proof was there that Ala Mhigo needed a republic than watching the Royalists butcher their own people in the name of their king. And by the time Kristoff was 16 years old, his faith had been rewarded.The war had turned. Theodoric’s own queen had attempted to end the tyrants life, and after the King of Ruin put her to death, even the loyalists of Ala Mhigo revolted. Rumor had even reached the republicans that Theodoric had taken his own life.After years of hell and death it appeared like a new dawn was finally coming on a free Ala Mhigo.Then the Garlean Empire invaded.

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Imperial Rule

16-22 years old

• Ala Mhigo
• Limsa Lominsa
• The Maelstrom
• Mercenary
• The Astral Era

• Early Years
• Civil War
• Imperial Rule

Any hope of a republic within Gyr Abania died the moment Gaius van Baelsar, the black wolf, sat on the Ala Mhigan throne.The nascent republic shattered overnight as its leadership split in the face of imperil occupation. Some turned their weapons onto the empire in a futile hope of pushing them back. Others willingly joined the imperial army, hoping that an early pledge to Garlemond might secure them comfort if not power. Some put down roots in small villages but welcomed in the Garleans, believing that the limited self government under the empire was better than life under a king. Most simply faded from view, too exhausted from the war, and too afraid of the might of the empire to take any stance at all.No one knew what the Garleans would do in their rise to power, and who they would blame for the city state’s instability. Many feared that ties to the Republic would brand them as rabble rousers and lead to a quick execution. Kristoff’s unit elected to assimilate into the nearest small village, trading in their good will with the locals to make it appear as if they were nothing more than humble disciples of the land who had lived there for generations.Kristoff himself could not sit idle. The Garleans had sent their full force onto the city of Ala Mhigo, while largely ignoring the countryside. Many of the revolutionaries came from poor villages out in the peaks and the fringes, and they saw this as blessing. A tangible hope that their homes and families would be spared the harshest crackdowns during the occupation, but to Kristoff it was the opposite. His last memory of his family's home in Ala Mhigo burned in his mind, and he bid farewell to his comrades to make the harsh journey through occupied Gyr Abania to Ala Mhigo.With the city's surrender Gyr Abania was steeped in chaos. Crossing the countryside to the capital took days while avoiding the imperials who were already beginning to set up blockades across different regions. Along the way Kristoff sold his Republican trappings, and leveraged everything he had learned about guile to cross the distance without attracting attention. It was deep in the night when he reached the hillside vista that held his memory of Ala Mhigo.The once noble city Kristoff had known was in tatters. Shadows and smoke danced across the ancient buildings, lit just as well by burning homes and shops as by torchlight. The young man's heart caught in his throat when the smoke parted and he saw his family's home in the distance. Mercifully the building still stood, which was not the case for many of the features on the City's skyline he had remembered. Kristoff wasted no time and crossed into the city, using the same subtle merchant's path that had smuggled him out years before.Inside the walls the city was a prison of suffering. Injured people and broken possessions lined the streets. Men and women darted through the alleyways, breaking into the abandoned homes of the royalists and republicans alike and taking all they could carry before the Garleans, armed with their magitek could stop them. The sounds of screaming and sobbing echoed off the buildings, silenced only by the garlean patrols, who inspired so much fear that not even the children allowed themselves to cry when they drew near.As Kristoff moved to the high quarter, he'd find looters around his ancestral house. Though he wasn't properly armed, the burning feeling in Kristoff's chest, a potent mixture of fear, rage, and heartbreak, was all the fuel he needed. He was a far cry from the soft boy who'd escaped down the western window, now he was a young man, an accomplished soldier, and more than a match for the opportunistic souls desperately robbing the house that built him. With only his walking stick, Kristoff broke the thieves around his home until the ones that could move ran wailing through the streets. He rushed from hall to hall like a whirlwind, dispatching rouges and looking for his loved ones, but with each room he searched that fire in his chest turned to bitter ice. No sign of his family. Had they escaped? Had they been imprisoned? Were they even alive? Kristoff had no idea.As his blood cooled and the uncertainty in him twisted into despair he could see phantoms of his family everywhere. His mother by the far window braiding his sisters hair. His fathers patrons walking through the door being welcomed warmly by his parents. And most painfully himself, standing by the fireplace, saying the most hurtful things that his young mind could imagine to his own father. Would those be the last words they ever shared? His father had called him a disgrace, and those words had stung in Kristoff more than any battle wound. But somewhere inside the boy had known that one day he would prove his father wrong. He would build the republic that his father was too afraid to imagine, and in doing so be vindicated. Now as he stood in the burning rubble of their great city he was less sure.But Ala Mhigo was no place for self indulgent sorrow, and Kristoff could hear the uncharacteristic silence, and faint marching of boots that foreshadowed a garlean patrol. It was clear to him that his family was no where to be found, but maybe there was something they had left behind. The house was mostly empty, likely stripped clean by looters, but there was one place Kristoff was sure they wouldn't be able to find. The young man walked to the large doors that led to his father's study. It was funny to him, they seemed the size of mountains in his memory, now they were just doors, but all the same he wasn't sure he was strong enough to open them. With great emotional effort they creaked open. The room was in shambles, books and ledgers thrown around the floor. All his fathers trophies and baubles were missing, surely picked by the earliest of the thieves. Kristoff barely noticed. His eyes were staring into the past.In his glassy eyes the room was restored to its former glory. It was pristine, without a single book out of place, and his father sat like a king behind the imperious desk at the far end of the room. He remembered his fathers voice in its rarest form, a soft and gentle rumble. He was carefully explaining the nature their trade. He remembered his father telling him that one day, if Kristoff willed it, he would sit behind that desk and lead their family. The chair was gone now, so Kristoff stood, looking down at the desk. His face was frozen solid like a statue. So much emotion welled inside him that even the slightest expression threatened to break his composure like the crack that breaks the dam in a flood. His fingers traced the desk, and with the nimbleness of a musician playing an old, half forgotten melody, he pressed down hidden toggles in the hard wood.A small compartment shot open, hidden to everyone save father and son, and inside sat his father's signet ring; a brass circle with a small amethyst set in the center. Carved in the ring was the sigil of house Gelder, with some red wax still clinging to the recesses. Kristoff's heart tumbled. His father never took this ring off, never. Did he abandon it to let Kristoff know they had escaped? or did he leave it there for him to find before being marched to his death? The sound of boots marching in the distance grew louder, there was no time left to wonder. With his memento in hand, Kristoff fled the empty husk that once had been his home.Utterly alone and afraid Kristoff did the only thing he could think to do, he ran. He attempted to cut his way across Gyr Abania, back to the fringes, to the village his unit had settled in. However the Empire's fist had closed around Gyr Abania and getting toward Ala Mhigo proved much easier than moving away from it. It was impossible for Kristoff to travel unseen that far back to the country side. Instead, he was forced to settle at the far foot of the peaks, much to his disappointment. Without contacts or allies Kristoff feared it would be difficult to stay anonymous, however for what seemed like the first time in eons he had a stroke of luck, the imperials were not specifically targeting Royalists or Republicans, but instead uniformly subjugating the Ala Mhigan people.It was a brutal time for the citizens of Gyr Abania, but it meant that Kristoff did not have to worry about the empire specifically looking for him and his kind. In another stroke of mixed luck, the empire levied heavy taxes of stone, metals, and grain in order to fund the building of their new Castrums within the occupied territory. Most villages were depleted by the war and didn't have the manpower to feed the mines. Kristoff was able to leverage this and worked in small villages throughout the Peaks as a miner, helping smaller villages meet their quotas. All the while keeping the goal in mind to reunite with his former comrades. It wasn't much of a goal, but the young man needed something to keep him going.Mining seemed simple, but it was grueling work on the body. Kristoff's time as a solider had been brutal but it was nothing compared to the repetitive day to day stress of the mines. Hours melted away beneath the earth and each second Kristoff had to force his screaming muscles to lift the heavy pickaxe and bear it down on the unyielding stone. Supporting each village's quota would take months. Months spent in silence below the ground, focusing all your mind on just breaking the next rock over and over and over again. And as the time piled up like rubble at Kristoff's feet, the struggle made his body strong, even as his will felt weaker every day.The work in the mines was so draining that most days many barely had the strength to speak. And the only thing a man could do to drown out the incessant pangs of metal on rock was to think. In the solitude of his mind Kristoff reviewed his life, and it brought him no comfort. He ruminated on the futility of his republic, and all his countrymen who shed their blood only for the Garleans to fly their flag in Ala Mhigo. All the terrible things he had done for the promise of a better day that never came. All the things he had said, the years he had spent apart from his family, all those days he wasted.Still despite the harsh conditions and the somber nature, the miners found time and energy to speak and share their stories. Kristoff found himself working along side former Republicans and Royalists deep in the mines, equally crushed under the boot of the empire. In different circumstances Kristoff might have been driven to rage, but those differences seemed so unimportant now. Many of these former enemies were united by their distain for the empire. Oddly enough the mines seemed to attract people with that attitude. Deep under the stone there was a feeling that you could speak with true privacy. And most villages were so desperate for laborers that they didn't ask too many questions about who was going into the mines, as long as the stone and metal was coming out.The mines became one of the early breeding grounds for talk of resistance, and Kristoff was in a unique situation. His goal of cutting across to the fringes made him more mobile than most. So he would spend months helping a village meet its quotas, and learn the names and attitudes of his fellow workers. Then he would move on and do it all again, traveling what once took only days in half a year. Along the way he would inevitably find individuals who were looking to organize resistance, and deep in the mines he would bring their messages to like minded souls.Kristoff continued on in this way for a year and a half, until finally he made his way to the small village in the fringes where his unit had settled in. For a year and a half he'd thought that if he could only make it back here then he would be home. That amongst the brothers he had made in the war he could start a new life, maybe even join the fight to free Gyr Abania in earnest. But fate had other plans.By the time he reached the village, almost every member of his own unit had scattered. Most had stayed behind for a few months until it was clear that they wouldn't be hunted, then they left to make their own pilgramige back to their homes. Even amongst those who had no home to return to, only a few stayed put. For Kristoff the 2 years with the Republicans were some of the most formative years of his young life, but it had taken him nearly that much time just to return to this village, and in that time his comrades had moved on.With his plans now in shambles Kristoff found himself with no home, no family, and no purpose. The comrades who had remained in the village were not keen to enlist in another revolution when the last one had gone so poorly, and he couldn't blame them. What was worse is that the village had long since met its material quota so there wasn't much use for a miner. Kristoff felt lost, until an elder in the village approached him with an idea.Since imperal occupation travel within Gyr Abania had become treacherous. Monsters roamed the roads, and the fear of being inspected by unscrupulous garlean patrols was real, because of this trade had slowed down and the villages were getting desperate. With his experience traveling the country, not to mention as a solider and as the son of a merchant, Kristoff would be quite valuable. And more over Kristoff could connect with other traders, some might even know his father and might be able to tell him what happened to his family.Suddenly Kristoff's path seemed clear. He would travel with the traders, he'd connect with local merchants to try and find out the fate of his family. If he happened upon a village struggling to make its quota, he would work in the mines, helping them survive while taking messages from the early resistance and carrying them along his trade routes. Kristoff was not willing to join the resistance, finding his family was his priority now and he wouldn't abandon them again for an idealistic cause, but he would help out where he could. It wasn't much of a plan, but it was something and Kristoff needed something.

Kristoff Spent 6 long years under the Imperial boot in Gyr Abania in this pattern. Spending months in a mine, then traveling from town to town before settling into another mine for months. All along the way he'd ferry messages and try and locate his family. The time changed his body, the man grew visibly powerful from the back breaking work, his voice became rough and deep from the dust cutting at his lungs, and his hands grew strong and callused. He transmitted hundreds of messages across the early resistance in that time. But his own goals had much less progress.Kristoff had learned that his family had escaped Ala Mhigo, they had made it as far as the peaks. His mother had sold a white necklace there that he had bought back. The Merchant holding it sensed it was priceless to Kristoff and forced the man to pay him an exorbitant price, but it was worth it for Kristoff to have a piece of his mother back. But despite that victory in 6 years he hadn't been able to find where they went or what happened to them. He thought that eventually he would pick up their trail, maybe even find them if they were still alive. But as rumors swirled about the empire cracking down, he knew he was running out of time.The growing resistance had not gone completely unnoticed by the empire, and while at first it was tolerant of the peoples gripes, Kristoff had noticed shifts in the past year. Contacts of his in the resistance began to disappear. Rumors persisted about the black wolf's spy catchers quietly listening in taverns. For months he shrugged off these rumors, it wasn't the first time they'd come up, but then one day in the mines a close confidant never showed up for his shift. The next day an imperial proctor was present down in the shafts to 'ensure efficiency ', and Kristoff realized the threat was deadly serious.Months passed and he noticed a net begin to close around him. More and more of his regular contacts were being snatched up, and Kristoff knew it wouldn't be long until the empire pieced together how they were exchanging messages with one another. He began to avoid the mines and became desperate to escape Gyr Abania. Fortune found a path for him in a small village by the Loches, in the very shadow of imperial Ala Mhigo.Deep in a seedy tavern Kristoff found a familiar face, a Lomisian smuggler who had once worked for his family to supply rare goods. Kristoff's father usually preferred legitimate suppliers, but business was business and sometimes you needed a smuggler. The Man recognized Kristoff, and remembered his family. More importantly, his smuggling routes were still open, and he traded with Loominsian pirates to smuggle goods in and out of Ala Mhigo. Kristoff begged him to help him escape. The smuggler considered it, but it would cost Kristoff more than the goodwill of his fathers name.Seeing no other choice Kristoff bartered the only things he owned that might have any value to man . His fathers ring and his mother's necklace. It broke Kristoff's heart to part with the them , but he hoped that if his parents were still alive they would somehow understand.He left his home by way of sea, and was kept below decks with the cargo and rats as the ship had sailed around the horn of Thanalan. Deep in the dark hold Kristoff couldn't help but remember when he was a young boy, hidden amongst linens in a rickety cart escaping the same city. The last time he'd left he was sure he'd return home one day cloaked in glory. Now as he made his bed with the rats and weevils he wondered if he would ever see the highlands again.Above him the deck was busy as the sailors made their preparations, it was to be a long journey and Kristoff would not be allowed to see the sunlight until they made port in the white city, Limsa Lominsa.

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Limsa Lominsa

22-29 years old

• Ala Mhigo
• Limsa Lominsa
• The Maelstrom
• Mercenary
• The Astral Era

Chapters

• Refugee Marauder
• Demezel
• Pirate Dawn

Fortune found Kristoff smuggled with cargo that eventually found port in Limsa Loominsa. A frightened Kristoff walked off the boat, suppressed his native Ala Mhigan accent, and took the first work he could find in the white city. His miner’s physique and desperation made him a natural target for the Marauders; Kristoff picked up the axe and fought for his survival along the seas.Despite his survival and freedom his spirit had been crushed by the loss of the rebellion, of his country, and of his family. A deep depression took root in him, and he would fight half heartedly, using the rush of nearly dying to distract him from his sadness. However Kristoff would not stay alone for much longer.Roughly a year after he arrived in Limsa, Kristoff would sign on a several month contract to defend a merchant vessel from port to port. It was on this journey he met a beautiful young Midlander man named Demezel. For reasons Kristoff never understood Demezel took interest in him. Demezel showered the Highlander in compassion and concern, and Kristoff fed off the affection. It wasn't long before Kristoffs only compatriot became his first love.One Night Demezel woke Kristoff and confided in him a secret. Demezel was a pirate, placed on the ship to signal his comrades when to attack. He begged Kristoff to turn against the crew, and join him as a pirate. Kristoff barely had a choice. Demezel was all he had in Eorzea, he agreed and slaughtered his crew alongside the pirates.Adjusting to life with the Pirates was surprisingly simple for Kristoff. Their brutal customs came naturally to him due to his time in the Civil War. The immorality of his work did bother him a bit, but his love for Demezel was strong enough for him to ignore that. Though in his early days he did struggle with Demezel's promiscuous nature.Demezel did not believe in monogamy the way that Kristoff was raised to, and would not compromise this belief for the highlander. Kristoff was unwilling to adjust, and felt threatened by Demezels partners, specifically Bararael a Roegadyn sea wolf who had been a friend and lover of Demezel's for years. However over time Kristoff eventually warmed to Bararael and found comfort in her as well. Before long the three were thick as thieves, and they spent many great years as companions on their pirate ship.Eventually the three were given the opportunity to serve as the officers on a new ship in the pirate fleet, with Bararael as their captain. The work took them far away, to the Ruby sea, where the trio would plunder Garleans and civilians alike. For while things were good. Kristoff was surrounded by people he loved, and was able to twist the knife in the empire, and he was happy. But Demezel, who had always lusted for the freedom of command, resented Bararael for her leadership and began to plot.Demezel was approached by the Garleans with an opportunity to captain his own ship as long as he served as a Garlean Privateer. He eagerly presented the news of Kristoff and Bararael, spinning the move as their opportunity to get out from under their original captian's control. Bararael was uninterested, she didn't see the point in betraying her captain, only to answer to the empire. Demzel hoped he might have better luck convincing Kristoff to defect, but he had asked the one thing the Ala Mhigan couldn't do for him. Both rejected him outright, and as Demezel felt his sense of control slipping, he snapped.Demezel arranged to betray Bararael, selling her off to the Garleans in exchange for his own vessel. He sent off Kristoff on a task and arranged a private meeting with Bararael. Demezel didn't want to entangle Kristoff in his plot; deep down he midlander still hoped that his lover would come around. But Kristoff sensed something was wrong and accompanied Bararael to the meeting. When the three were together the Garleans struck out. Demezel had tried to warn Kristoff to run, but it was too late, the Garleans were watching and he couldn't let Bara and Kris get away. The lovers long and passionate history ended in seconds, with the two coming to blows and Demezel scarring Kristoff's face. With Kristoff's help Bararael was able to escape with his freedom and the two left Demezel behind.A heartbroken Kristoff attempted to return to his life of piracy with his Roe companion, but his heart could not heal. One day he learned that the Admiral Bloefhiswyn was offering amnesty to pirates who were willing to renounce their flag and join her new navy. Seeing an opportunity for a new life he bid farewell to Bararael and piracy, and chose to join the admiral's navy.

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Refugee Marauder

22 years old

• Ala Mhigo
• Limsa Lominsa
• The Maelstrom
• Mercenary
• The Astral Era

• Refugee Marauder
• Demezel
• Pirate Dawn

Kristoff had used his fathers signet ring to buy passage into Eorzea, it was his last phsyical reminder of his family and giving it up only made the sting of fleeing his motherland that much sharper. The heirloom bought him an escape from the empire, but no comfort. He spent weeks in total darkness smuggled alongside the ship's cargo below deck.The short time had assailed Kristoff's mind. All sense of time had melted away without light or companionship, and the young man's thoughts descended into paranoia. When the ship finally made its port and the captain called down to collect him Kristoff would not budge; he was certain it was some kind of trap. The Captain had to coax the husk of a young man to the deck and into the light of the white city of Limsa Lominsa.The Ala Mhigan's shock could not be understated. His whole life up tot his point was rocky highlands and murky salt flats, but now he was surrounded by an sea so vast he could hardly comprehend it. In his household he had grown up around Lomisian goods, and he had expected some kind of familiarity from the white city, but the baubles of his fathers trade left him ill prepared for the scale and beauty of the cosmopolitan port town.Still even the vast splendor of the free and open ocean could not calm the fear deep in Kristoff's mind. In Gyr Abania, spies had been everywhere. Even in the waning days of King Theodoric's reign, imperial agents were present in every level of Ala Mhigan society. At the time Kristoff had not even the faintest clue that Garlemond was undermining Ala Mhigo from within. How could he be sure that Limsa Lominsa was any safer that he thought Ala Mhigo had been?Kristoff was terrified that if anyone knew his Ala Mhigan origin he would be captured by Garlean spies and tortured to give up information about the resistance. He listened hard to the Lomisian accent and practiced it constantly to mask his origin. He wandered Limsa to try and learn the customs of its natives and to quickly secure work. Luckily for Kristoff, 6 years of working in the mines had made him strong. He was quickly was approached by a group called the Merchant Marauders and offered room and board in exchange for his services.In the days before the Maelstrom the Marauders were a disorganized caste of warriors that barely resembled the organized Guild they have today. A Marauder was simply a seafaring warrior who was trained in the axe, and their allegiances were are diverse as Limsa Loominsa itself. Some served as mercenaries and would be hired by merchants to serve as body guards against errant pirates, then by pirates to serve as extra combatants in boarding parties against those same merchants. Others exclusively worked with fierce pirate crews like the Bloody Executioners. Even the government of Limsa Lominsa itself used Marauders. The Knights of the Barracuda, Limsa's official navy in the days before the maelstrom, had an entire division of marauders who would one day become the Yellow Jackets. It was dangerous and sometimes unscrupulous work, but lucrative.The Merchant Marauders were a small band of fighters loosely affiliated with the Knights of the Barracuda. While they weren't officially a part of the Lominsian Navy, they often worked closely with them. They would hire and install Marauders on private merchant vessels to help defend against pirates. The strength an number of defenders on any given voyage depended on how much the ship's owner was willing to pay. Richer owners might have bands of four or even eight marauders present to protect their cargo, while more humble owners might only be able to afford a single defender. One Marauder might not have seemed like much compared to an entire boarding party of pirates, but unlike the common sailors the Marauder had one job, to fight to the death, and most pirates preferred to avoid the hassle of dealing with them and prefer to go after less defended vessels.Kristoff didn't care much for the politics of Limsa Lominsa, and the grand debate over pirates and merchants flew over his head. To him the Merchant Marauders represented something simple, be ready to fight, and in exchange get enough gil to live. They were a brutal organization that valued strength and bravery over more subtle tactics; Kristoff took to this well. His time as a soldier in the Ala Mhigan civil war had made him brave and numb to violence, and his time as a miner under the imperial yoke gave him strength and endurance for physical punishment. With the Maraduer's training he took to the axe, and was quickly given his first assignment on board a ship.While Kristoff learned to wield an axe quickly enough, he did not acclimatize as well to working on ships. In Ala Mhigo Kristoff had barely spent any time around the water, suddenly his whole days and nights were dominated by an unending expanse of blue. The intense vastness of the ocean was only broken up by the bloody and brutal battles that Marauder's work required. And this was not the only aspect of his new life that Kristoff had trouble adjusting to.As his drive to escape the empire faded and life settled into a type of routine, Kristoff found he had become a broken man. It had been almost a decade since the highlander had felt safe or a sense of home, and in that time he had lost his family, his comrades, a war, his freedom, and now even his homeland. As his eyes struggled to accept the unfamiliar oceanscape he often wondered if he had made a mistake in fleeing. Sure if he had stayed in Gyr Abania he would have been killed, but at least he would have died in his own lands. Not out fighting some pointless battle in an endless sea. But fight he did, it was the only thing about his new life that held any shred of familiarity. But event his small comfort was tainted.Fighting for profit was nothing like fighting for a cause, and the highlander found himself adrift without the higher purpose. In the war Kristoff could tell himself that all this violence was in service of a better tomorrow, but now he found himself killing almost at random, with no rhyme or reason beyond the bloody gil that lined his pockets. His fellow Merchant Marauders saw this decline in him and tried to change his perspective. They told him to focus on the people he was protecting from the pirates and the good he was doing. But on his long voyages Kristoff saw the merchant's whos lives he was saving do everything they could to swindle and rob their patrons. Many owners would even leave explicit instructions that he had been hired to protect the cargo, not the crew, and in the event of a raid he was to prioritize the goods on the ship over their lives. No matter how he looked at it all Kristoff could see himself fighting for was profit.The man hated what he was becoming, and in the preamble to each battle he was dreary and lethargic. With no goal or ambition he traded his gil for grog and spent the quiet hours dulling his mind with drink. Only the heat of battle and the very real threat of death would knock the young man out of his depression and warm his blood. In those life or death moments the doubt and fear would be pushed out of his mind and Kristoff would come alive, if only just long enough to dispatch his opponent. The man would move with the strength and purpose that had driven him through the Civil War, and for that short time he was a terrifying sight to behold. But after the killing was done and the danger had passed the fire inside Kristoff would die out again. And just like before he would slither into a bottle and a self destructive depression would again wrap around him.Many nights he'd lie awake and think about how alone and meaningless his life had become. He'd think of his family, and wonder if they had made it out, if perhaps they were on some other Lomisian vessel in this endless ocean. He'd dream that one day he would see his family's signet on a barrel and realize that he'd been hired to protect his father's cargo, surely if the resilient man had escaped Ala Mhigo then he'd be plying his trade as a merchant by now. What would would they say to each other?He spent almost a year and half trudging through this life. Working from ship to ship, protecting Merchants from pirates. He wandered aimlessly, simply moving to survive and feeling a little bit more of his heart die each day. But not even tragedy can last forever, and Kristoff would soon find purpose again.This time it would come in the form of a beautiful young man named Demezel.

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Demezel

23 years old

• Ala Mhigo
• Limsa Lominsa
• The Maelstrom
• Mercenary
• The Astral Era

• Refugee Marauder
• Demezel
• Pirate Dawn

Demezel was a young sailor on a merchant vessel Kristoff had been hired to defend for several months. The voyage was soft, and he found himself with a lot of time on his hands. For reasons he never quite understood, Demezel would approach him in these quiet moments and strike up conversation.He had originally been resistant to Demezel, he had no interest in forming attachments, and considered the young man's persistence to be suspicious. Kristoff was a crotchety drunk at this point, usually found leaning over the bow with a mug of mead in his hands, drinking his mind away on the long boring days. However the pretty Midlander was charismatic, and captivating in his own way. He would come and slip Kristoff a bit of spiced rum and ask the highlander about his history and passions. At first Kristoff found these intrusions annoying, but slowly after many, many nights he warmed to Demezel.The Midlander offered Kristoff something he hadn't felt since he left Gyr Abania, a genuine interest in who he was as a person. Everyone else he had met in Limsa Lominsa had seen Kristoff as a tool, or a means to an end. Even the Merchant Marauders had only been interested in him for his strength and combat ability. At the time he hadn't minded, he was paranoid that the empire was everywhere, so the fewer folk who asked questions the better. But it had been a little more than a year in this strange land, and he was lonely.At first Demezel kept some distance. He would hang around with Kristoff a bit more than the other crewmembers, but their chats were still few and far between. But things changed after a group of Miqo'te pirates attempted to raid the vessel.In the attack Kristoff had brutally defended the ship, killing many of the pirates, and directly saving Demezel's life. Demezel was suprisingly unshaken by the brush with death, but was deeply grateful to Kristoff. The midlander poured attention onto him, fetching drinks and keeping him company during his watch. He'd impressed Demezel, who like many of the crew doubted his abilities, writing him off as a drunk who's bark was worse than his bite.Kristoff ate up the attention. Many of the crew were grateful, but understandibly disturbed as how gruesome Kristoff had been. He was used to that, most sailors didn't have the stomach to watch him fight, but Demezel was undisturbed. He saw the person behind the violence, and Kristoff found himself becoming addicted to the recognition.Before the end of their second month at sea they were nearly inseparable. The two would slip off whenever free and spend long nights laughing and confiding in each others company. It had been years since Kristoff had grown close to anyone, and while he was loath to say it out loud, the Ala Mhigan refugee was delighted to have the company.That delight soon turned to fascination as his chats with Demezel grew more intimate. He learned that Demezel had no shortage of his own tragedy, as a boy the young midlander had fled his abusive father only to end up in the clutches of a wealthy merchant from Ul'dah. The merchant had exploited Demezel for most of his youth, until the young man was able to pay his passage on a ship and find his work and his independence. Kristoff was of course sympathetic, but more than that he was impressed, almost envious. His companion had suffered so much and yet unlike himself, Demezel was not crushed by the weight of his past.This resilient optimism was only one of the many ways Kristoff considered the Midlander to be his natural opposite. The two Hyur appeared to have been sculpted from completely different clay. Kristoff's skin was deep tanned crossed with coarse hair, Demezels was a gentle pale and smooth to the touch. Kristoff's hair was jet black and cascaded down his face in wild locks, Demezel's was golden as warm sunlight, and brushed until it was soft as silk. And of course Kristoff was large man, a mountain amongst Highlanders, and Demezel was a bit short even for a Midlander. The difference meant Kristoff was a full head taller than his friend, a fact that Kristoff quietly blessed. It was common on cold nights for sailors to share a blanket and embrace for warmth, and the difference in their height meant that when he held Demezel close the Midlanders head naturally nestled into the crook of Kristoff's neck.Kristoff pushed the confusing thoughts out of his mind. In Ala Mhigo he had been raised to understand that certain feelings were only to be had with women, but on the battlefield it was not unheard of for men to take comfort where they could. Kristoff was undereducated in these ways, his natural shyness stood between him and the lifestyle of his companions. But now Demezel was here, and Kristoff couldn't escape the way his heart beat when the two took warmth from eachother. For his part Demezel was perfect, soft and slow. He never pushed too hard or made Kristoff feel embarrassed for his feelings, just letting them sit and stew in the cold nights.Before the third month at sea the warmth of the two men's frienship had burned into passion, and the friends became lovers. They spent countless nights suspended in the rigging, staring up at the stars. Kristoff would hold the Midlander close and Demezl would lay on his chest while talking into the night, telling Kristoff his dreams and asperations. The heat of their romance nourished Kristoff, and he would smile and let Demezel's voice carry him into sleep. The young Ala Mihgan had been motivated by fear and rage for so long that he had forgotten how to live well, but Demezel had broken down his walls and found a way to remind him.For the first time since Kristoff had entered Limsa Lominsa, the Ala Mhigan opened up about his past, and his missing family. Demezel listened to Kris, and offered him tender words. He held the mountainous Ala Mhigan, and let him cry into his arms and be comforted without judgment. Kristoff knew in that moment he loved Demezel, and there was no home in all of Eorzea that tempted him more than the Midlander's embrace.For those short months on that ship all of his cares seemed to be lifted away. His new zeal infected every aspect of his life. His work as a sailor improved rapidly, and he began to find the vastness of the sea to be beautiful and comforting. The highlander spent his days on the deck working the ship, and his nights below holding Demezel until sleep took them. Kristoff could have stayed on that ship forever, but no happiness goes on eternal.One night Kristoff retired below deck, as was his routine. He expected to spend another night tangled in the hammock with his lover, but instead he found Demezel armed and battle ready. Demezel revealed himself to be a pirate, placed on the merchant vessel to signal his comrades to attack when the ship was heavy with loot and vulnerable. Kristoff was in shock, and could barely process the information. Demezel passionately begged Kristoff to turn on the merchant crew when the pirates came to raid the ship, and to join him. He reminded Kristoff of the cruelty of the their childhoods, and how to survive one could not afford to be kind. With tears in his eyes the Midlander beseeched his lover, the world might not allow them gentle lives, but they could always be an oasis to each other. Regardless the circumstance the two had an opportunity to be together, and to be free.Kristoff knew it was the wrong thing to do. He had spent months with this crew. He knew their faces, and their names. Moreover he had made a contract to protect them in the Merauders name, these people had trusted him to defend them from they very threat Demezel represented. But now his first, his only, love was asking him not only to abandon those men, but to kill them himself. A part of Kristoff wanted to say no, a part of him wanted to throw Demezel in irons, take him to the captain and rush back to Limsa Loominsa before the pirates could intercept them. A part of him knew that following his heart now would kill the last pure and good parts of him that survived Ala Mhigo. But another part of him was terrified of loosing this love. Before Demezel his heart had been cold and lonely. So many nights he'd stood alone on the deck, feeling that he'd already died on that ship out of Ala Mhigo. Now that his heart had warmed, he was terrified to return to that solitude. This grand debate in his mind raged on for seconds that felt like hours, but in the end it only took one look into Demezels ocean blue eyes to pierce his heart; he never really had a choice.When the pirates boarded in the middle of the night, Kristoff turned his axe on the men who had hired him. To break a contract voluntarily would leave him disgraced in the eyes of the Marauders, and would put a price on his head. Kristoff might have known that there was no way to escape that fate, but still he was sure not to leave a soul on the ship alive. Perhaps it was because he thought that if there were no witnesses then he might avoid punishment, or maybe he just couldn't stand the shame of letting someone he betrayed live to judge him. When asked he would say it was because he needed to impress the pirates to the point where he would be beyond suspicion. Whatever the reason, after the merchant crew had surrendered he slaughtered them all. A lifetime ago Kristoff had once been warm, but his childhood in the civil war taught him how to be ruthless, and without a noble cause to guide him, Kristoff could steel his heart and commit savage acts without a second thought. The pirates looked upon Kristoff's brutality and ruthlessness with some disgust, and some fear; all of course but Demezel, who always smiled warmly at Kristoff, even as he slit his former comrades throats.When the sun rose the deck was slick with blood. Every nook and cranny had been searched and the only the rats were left breathing. As the last of the cargo was being plundered Kristoff disembarked the merchant vessel and joined Demezel onboard their new home; The Dread Swarahl.

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Pirate Dawn

23-24 years old

• Ala Mhigo
• Limsa Lominsa
• The Maelstrom
• Mercenary
• The Astral Era

• Refugee Marauder
• Demezel
• Pirate Dawn

Kristoff’s transition to life on the Dread Swarahl was complicated.In some respects it wasn't as difficult as he'd anticipated. At this point Kristoff had been through several abrupt transitions, and compared to joining the rebellion or fleeing his homeland, going from marauder to pirate seemed rather straightforward. Physically the work was similar to what he did for the marauders, however as a pirate Kristoff was now expected to be equal parts sailor and solider. In the past sailing hadn't interested him at all. but now that the highlander had regained a sense of purpose he found that learning the hard work of keeping a ship sea-worthy wasn't too daunting.The fighting came even more naturally. As a rebel he gained valuable experience was with shock tactics and irregular combat which made him quite valuable in boarding parties. During the revolution Kristoff was introduced to shock and awe tactics. The Royalist's tended to use brutal methods to pacify rebellion, so the rebels learned to inflict maximum psychological damage in retaliation. Those skills were valuable to the pirates who operated very much the same way, and many of his new crewmates were astonished with the Ala Mhigan's ferocity.What didn't come naturally to Kristoff was the motivation to fight. The atrocities he committed in the war were justified as a means to an end, and so they were easy for him to do. Even as a marauder he was able to convince himself that he was just protecting the merchants, even if he didn't really believe it. But as a pirate he would fight for purely self interest, and that presented a problem. There wasn't any ideal to hide behind anymore, he had to face the fact that his monstrous actions were serving only himself. He had told himself when he was young that he never would have been able to do half the things he did in the war if not for the fact that his goal was so important. But as a pirate he found that the atrocities were just as easy for him to commit without a noble cause; it scared him.Kristoff compensated by moralizing, convincing himself that he wasn't like the rest of the pirates. He'd tell himself that he was just doing these things for survival, pure pragmatism, and when that failed he'd tell himself he was doing them for love. It was anything he could do to separate himself from the rest of his crew, who he saw as doing these things for sport. He tried to limit his interaction with them and his crewmates noticed. They thought he was a hypocrite for fighting so brutally but looking down on them, and they were right, but Kristoff wouldn't let himself see it.Kristoff's sense of superiority wasn't the only thing that caused the crew to distrust him. The Swarahl had begun her life as an exclusively Roegadyn ship with all her senior officers still hailing from the Sea-Wolf clans. After her first had retired the new Captain broke tradition and let other races serve on board the ship, as long as they could pull their weight. Still, Kristoff was one of few Hyur on the ship and racial tension remained; in though in truth Kristoff didn’t much mind the prejudice as long as he had Demezel.The Roegadyn’s cultural focus on independence and fortitude aligned well with the Ala Mhigan culture that Kristoff was raised in, and that familiarity was nice. Even their racism comforted him in an odd way. Kristoff had spent every day in Limsa Lominsa looking over his shoulder for spies or enemies who were never there. Having his fears validated by his crew grounded him in reality and helped to erode the paranoia that had taken root in Gyr Abania. Besides the Roedegarn weren’t so prejudiced that they would exclude an able body from their ship, and their prejudice made it easier for Kristoff to convince himself that he was different from them.Besides, the Highlander hadn’t joined the Swarahl to make friends or find a family amongst pirates, he had come to follow his heart; Demezel. Unfortunately for Kristoff, adjusting to their new life on the ship was quite a bit more difficult than adjusting to piracy. On the merchant ship Demezel and Kristoff had essentially been alone and totally enthralled in one another, but on the Swarahl Demezel had a life that predated the highlander, one filled with comrades, friends, and much to Kristoff’s dismay, lovers.Demezel’s desire for freedom was core to his personality and a large part of the reason Kristoff, who in his own mind felt so shackled, fell in love the midlander. But Kristoff had come from a traditional Ala Mhigan home and had never even considered that Demezel would not want a monogamous relationship. This discomfort manifested explosively during his first night on the Swarahl. Demezel was welcomed back like a hero for the easy haul, while Kristoff was relegated to the dark corners of the banquet alone. At the banquet Demezel had seemingly forgotten Kristoff and eagerly sat on the lap of a powerful Roe woman who’s hand never left the midlander’s thigh. Kristoff had stormed out that night and spent the banquet alone on the deck, an outburst that would be quite common for him in those first few months adjusting to his new life.Demezel did his best to try and soothe him. He listened to Kristoff’s concerns, though he dismissed the anger he expressed at Demezel hiding his partners. Demezel reminded his lover that he had been a pirate masquerading as a sailor, obviously there were several details that he wouldn’t share with the ship's protector; not at least until he could trust him. While the midlander did not give ground or apologize, he did explain to Kristoff that their relationship was different, more intimate. He reminded Kristoff that they had a special connection, and that he wouldn’t have brought the highlander aboard if he didn’t want to spend their lives together.The answers placated Kristoff for a time, but did not resolve his feelings. He couldn't help but wonder how genuine Demezel was being. A small voice inside would cry out to him, and tell him that he was being used, that Demzel had only needed him out of the way and it was easier to have him as a lover than an enemy. It wasn't farfetched, Kristoff would learn that a small number of the crew had been brought in by Demezel, and most had shared the midlanders bed. The revelation nearly shattered Kristoff's world, saved only for the fact that Demezel did actaully treat Kristoff different from the rest of the crew.Demezel would constatly call Kristoff to be at his side. He would hold his arm and tease any crewmate who tried to pull him away from Kristoff, telling them that "Us hyur need to stick together" before rejecting them for his Ala Mhigan. He would praise Kristoff often, rely on him for help, and spend most nights together with him. They'd share their hearts and minds until sleep claimed them both together and Kristoff was happy.But on those nights where Demezel took another lover, Kris would exile himself to the deck and would stew in his feelings. Demezel would usually invite him to stay, but Kristoff didn't see the point of sharing a hammock with someone he didn't love. He felt more comfortable there on the deck, staring into the ocean, trying to see where the sea ended and the stars began. He reminded himself that some of Demezel was better than none at all. He'd convince himself that even if Demezel couldn't love him the way he wanted, then at least Demezel could always need him, his strength, his fortitude, his loyalty. Most nights that was enough and he could cope, but some nights Demezel’s partner was Barrel, and on those nights Kristoff had no defense.Bararael Wistyrshisa was a powerful Roedegarn. She served as the Quartermaster on the ship, second only to the captain, and of all of Demezel’s companions she was the only other who’s attachment rivaled Kristoff. She and Demezel had been friends for years, ever since Demezel had joined on with the crew. She was a strong and confident woman, and she intimidated Kristoff to his very heart. Her presence made him feel obsolete. Like many of the Roe, she was stronger than the highlander, and a good few ilms taller too, which made the man feel small. Moreover she had an ease and familiarity with Demezel that made Kristoff feel excluded.He couldn't help but wonder if Demezel had sought him out on the merchant vessel because Kristoff could serve as some sort of poor copy of Bararael. With Dem's other lovers Kristoff could always find something to set himself apart, to prove to himself that he was better than Dem's flavor of the night. But Barra thwarted him at every turn. She was confident where he was uncertain, she was calm when he was nervous, and she radiated that same sense for freedom that Demezel was built from and that Kristoff coveted. The young man couldn't process the insecurity, and he hated Bararael for it.Demzel could recognize this animosity in Kristoff and did what he could to try and bridge the gap between his two loves. Always contriving of reasons for the three of them to share a shift, and speaking positively about them for both to hear. Bararael by contrast was fairly ambivalent. She didn't seem at all threatened by Kristoff, but she also didn't seem to take his hatred seriously, which of course only fed into the highlander's insecurities. She would give the two their space for the most part, but when she wanted to speak to Demezel, or keep his company, she wouldn't let Kristoff deter her.Meanwhile Kristoff tried to find ways to gain the edge in his one-sided rivalry. He would train harder with the Roe to build his strength, pressing his Hyur physique to its limits to be able to try and challenge the Sea-Wolves on equal footing. He'd challenge her to petty contests whenever he could, be it drinking, sailing, wrestling or even bilging. Sometimes he'd win, usually he'd lose, but no matter what she would keep that unflappable confidence. She'd go about her day and spend her time with Demezel as if Kristoff's rage wasn't even there.These competitions helped Kristoff to develop his skills as a sailor and as a pirate, and some of the crew began to look past their prejudice. Many might have even warmed to him, but Kristoff still kept everyone but Demezel at arms length. Many in the crew began to think of Kristoff as Demezel's enforcer, which made them suspicious. Demezel was well liked on the ship, many of the crew loved having him as a hammock-mate, but he was known to be self serving, and few trusted him the way Kristoff and Bararael did.It was precisely that distrust which would ultimately force the captain to separate Kristoff and Demezel, for a while.Roughly 8 months into Kristoff's life on The Swarahl, the captain saw another opportunity to install Demezel as a traitor on a merchant ship. Demezel wasn't reliable like Bararael or powerful like Kristoff, but what he lacked in strength he made up for guile. Demezel's charisma made it easy for him to masquerade on merchant vessels as a traveling trader. He would stay on that ship for months, recoding its comings and goings, all while doing what he could to weaken its defenses. Then when the ship was heavy with goods he'd signal the pirates to come and take the easy haul. It had been a lucrative engagement, and Demezel always relished the opportunity to get off the ship and work free from the supervision of the captain.Demezel was excited to take on another stint away from the rigid command of the captain, but Kristoff was anxious. The Ala Mhigan had not integrated well with the crew, and Demezel had been his only comfort for those last 8 months. The arrangement hadn't bothered him before, but the idea of being without Demezel for months was too much for him to bear. Demezel was unconcerned, with a confident wink and a sly grin he told Kristoff to sit back and let him take care of it.The Captain was skeptical. Kristoff was a powerful asset, sure, but he was also an unknown quantity, clearly more loyal to Demezel than the rest of the crew. The impish midlander was already difficult to control, with Kristoff's muscle at his beck and call, and no supervision there was no telling what trouble they would case.

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Maelstrom

29-34 years old

• Ala Mhigo
• Limsa Lominsa
• The Maelstrom
• Mercenary
• The Astral Era

in 1563 Merlwyb Bloefhiswyn won the trident and became the Admiral of Limsa Lominsa. One of her first and most controversial acts was to make outlaw free piracy in Limsa Lominsa. The move was celebrated by the other city states, but met with mixed reaction by the people of the white city, who historically had valued its freedom more than its diplomatic relationships with the rest of Eorzea.Bloefhiswyn had dreams to harness Limsa's scattered maritime might into a navy that could dominate the shores of Eorzea and even threaten the Garlean Empire. In a bold first step to this dream she established the Storm Surge corps, an early predecessor to what would eventually become the Maelstrom. As an incentive to integrate former pirates into her new order, Admiral Bloefhiswyn offered a pardon to criminal pirates who joined the Storm and served for at least 5 years.Kristoff, eager to leave his past with Demezel behind him, signed up. Service to the storm gave him an opportunity to earn clemency for his past crimes, put distance between him and Demezel, and perhaps most importantly, go to war with the Garleans. The only downside to his enlistment was travel would be difficult. As a former pirate Kristoff would be closer to a penal conscript than a true soldier, forced to live in the Storm's barracks and needing to be accompanied by a parole officer if he wanted to venture out; only when that contract was done would he be a free man.In the begining the travel restriction wasn't even an annoyance for Kristoff. For the first year he rarely decided to travel at all. Instead he focused on learning the drills and discipline needed to be a part of a military unit. His heart and spirit had been broken by Demezel's betrayal, and the rigid military of the Storm and their sense of duty reminded him of his days in Ala Mhigo. After nearly a decade of selfish living as a pirate, it felt good to fight for a cause again. But it had been more than a decade since he served in the Republican army, and the Storm Corps was far more regimented than his old revolutionary militia. There was a lot to learn.Despite his best efforts he would never become the perfect soldier, he was too old, and he had spent too much of his life fighting in irregular combat to thrive in regimented front lines. But the storm was full of former pirates like him who preferred more hectic battles and his experience as a gruella fighter in Ala Mhigo was of great interest to his commander. By his second year Kristoff had been appointed to a unit of raiders where the Storm could better leverage all of his skills.These raiders would move in smaller groups, pushing deep behind enemy lines to attack unsuspecting garlean targets like supply lines and manufacturing centers. They would slip in, hit hard, and get out before the empire's main host could mobilize. The work was bloody, dangerous, and gruesome as the raiders inflicted the maximum possible damage in the shortest amount of time; Kristoff excelled at it.By the end of his second year he had built up enough good will that his parole officer agreed to accompany him on regular excursions throughout Eorzea. Kristoff had seen the ports and seas of Eorzea, but its lands were still strange to him, and for the first time he felt at peace enough to explore. At first he didn't know what he was looking for, maybe a spot to settle down once he had earned his pardon? Somewhere nice and far from the sea.Before long Kristoff discovered Ul'Dah and he learned about the Ala Mhigan refugees. He had known some Ala Mhigans had fled to Eorzea, but he was shocked to see how organized his people were and how many of them resided around the Sultanna's city. Much to his delight, among the transplants he met several of his old friends. The reunions helped mend Kristoffs tattered soul, but more than that they provided him hope. One of his old comrades from the war told Kristoff that he had met his sister, and that she was working as a conjurer in the shroud.The information rocked his mind. He had long since given up hope of finding his family, but now it seemed they might be within reach. He dedicated all his shore leave to searching the black shroud for an Ala Mhigan woman. The search was hard, the shroud was a large place and the Ala Mhigan's there didn't have the same close knit community he found in Ul'Dah, but Kristoff never gave up his hope, and one day he met with an Elezen woman named Olselle who was able to lead him to his family.Kristoff's mother, father, and sister had managed to flee Ala Mhigo before the death of the King. They had found a humble home in Gridena where they lived modestly. His sister Sigberta had taken up the staff as a conjurer and his mother worked as a seamstress. His father worked nominally as a merchant, but had dedicated himself all those passed years to trying to find Kristoff, never having accepted that his son had died in the civil war.The revelation that his family was still alive had changed Kristoff's entire world. He felt as if he had been granted a second chance at a life he had long since abandoned hope in. He had initially joined the Grand Company to avoid the complications that came with being a wanted man. Now for the first time since he was a teenager Kristoff felt like he had the opportunity to be a better man.Kristoff stayed with his family for every moment until duty called him back to the Maelstrom. He had attempted to convince them to come with him to Limsa Lominsa, but was surprised to learn that his father had soured all his contacts searching for Kris. And besides, they had lived in Gridania for nearly15 years, and had established a comfortable life for themselves. Kristoff understood and promised to spend every moment he could with them.At first Kristoff's superior officer happily accompanied Kristoff on regular trips to visit his family, but as it become less realistic for the two to travel to gardenia together they established another arrangement. Olselle agreed to sponsor Kristoff, giving herself up as collateral in case he should try and flee his contract. With this arrangement Kristoff was free to visit Gridena at his leisure.Those years were without exception the warmest in Kristoff's adult life. He was well respected amongst his comrades in the Maelstrom, and spent his days with them striking out against Garlean targets. His nights off were spent in the company of his family, and he saved every gil to help lift them out of their poverty. And over time he and Olselle grew close. His future path seemed clear, once his time in the Maelstrom was up he would relocate to Gridenia, he would ask Olselle to marry him and they would start a life together beside his family. Kristoff had been scarred, but he felt now for the first time in his life that he had weathered the storm.In Kristoff's fifth year in the Maelstrom the tension with the garleans had reached its boiling point. The empire was using Ala Mhigo as a staging ground to conquer all of Free Eorzea. His contract was up and he was free to leave the Grand company behind, but Kristoff decided to stay, much to the chagrin of Olselle and his mother. The two women tried their best to convince Kristoff to leave the fighting behind and begin the hard work of healing his heart. Kristoff was tempted, but this war was one that he was all to eager to take part in, one that clawed at his lust for vengeance, and one that of course ended with the tragedy of the Seventh Umbral calamity.Kristoff and his raiders had been lucky, they had been ordered to strike north from Gridenia to disrupt supply lines supporting the Garlean position in Carteneau Flats. So when Dalmud fell and the calamity began they were far enough away to avoid being completely annihilated. Still the calamity had disorented his unit, and changed the landscape making it a struggle for the troop to return.Kristoff used the chaos to slip away and search for his family in the shroud. It was a harrowing journey as the land had been made new by the waves of aether. Despite this a determined Kristoff was able to reunite with Olselle and locate his family's homestead. Only tragedy awaited the man, as the whole of his family had been wiped out in the calamity, three more casualties to unchecked garlean ambition.Kristoff was overcome with grief and a burning desire for revenge. Olselle could not stand to see the man burnt up by those flames of hatred, and begged him to remain with her, to mourn his family and put them to rest so he could move on. Kristoff refused. He had loved Olselle, and she had loved him, but there was a violent darkness that had lived in Kristoff since he was a child that he could not restrain, and she could not accept. The highlander left her to pursue his grudge knowing that he would not be able to turn back.Kristoff returned to the Maelstrom, who in the chaos had barely noticed his little desertion. He was eager to rally his unit and begin retaliating against Garlemond, but the Grand Companies had little appetite for war with the destruction wrought by the calamity. They ended their alliance and pivoted back into isolationist and domestic concerns. Try as he might Kristoff could not convince his unit or his superiors to sanction aggressive moves against the empire.Without an outlet for his burning rage Kristoff resigned from his post. He had one clear purpose in life, to inflict as much pain to the empire and her people as he could. And if the Maelstrom would not help him to facilitate this goal, he would go out and fight them on his own terms as an independent Mercenary.

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Mercenary

34-38years old

• Ala Mhigo
• Limsa Lominsa
• The Maelstrom
• Mercenary
• The Astral Era

Work for Mercenaries in the wake of the calamity was booming. It was easy to find diverse and honest work throughout Eorzea repairing the damage from the seventh for both craftsmen and professional fighters. Many sellswords found their employment through the Grand Companies, working to chart the altered landscape and reestablish safe roads between the major trade centers in Eorzea. Many others would serve as bodyguards, protecting people, towns and villages from the threat of roaming monsters, aggressive beast tribes, ambitious upstarts, and even the garlean empire itself. While the war had cooled, and the official stance of Garlemand was to retreat and lick their wounds, several imperaels set their sights on the stunned Eorzea. Some fought to make small territorial gains so quickly that the Eorzeans couldn’t muster a response, others simply raided for personal gain, taking advantage of the weakened defenses of the Eorzean people. In those earliest days after the calamity Kristoff made his wage in ill-defended towns like those.He would travel all throughout Eorzea, stopping in any town near a Garlean castrum to work a few nights. If the garleans were aggressive, he’d stay and fight until the bleeding dried up. If there was no work to be had killing imperials then he’d stay just long enough to afford the journey to the next place. Along the way he’d spread his name, let the people know that if they needed work against the Garleans then he’d give a discounted rate, and how to contact him. In those early and chaotic days the work was plentiful but it barely satiated the raging warrior.Kristoff was a man fueled only by revenge. All of Kristoff’s past had been stolen and enslaved by the empire, and when dalmud fell and destroyed his family the empire had eliminated all hope for his future. The man’s heart was constantly broken, and his soul in a desperate pain. He tried to escape that pain any way he could: booze, gambling, women, men. But nothing could cool his flame more effectively than wetting it with the blood of garleans. Kristoff had become poisoned, while in the past he perpetrated brutal acts as a strategic tool, he was now doing them for sheer enjoyment. But there was a problem, most of the time Kristoff found himself on the defensive, waiting in some town or field for the garleans to attack. The calm days waiting for the empire to strike burnt at his mind like acid. On several occasions he would actively antagonize the Garleans to try to goad them into an attack, on some others he would actually strike first, much to the horror of his employers.As Eorzea stabilized in the wake of the calamity, the empire began to test the borders less and less, which meant Kristoff was spending more and more time seething in quiet towns waiting for raids that would never come. All the wine, flesh, and gil he could grasp did little to soothe that immense pain within the warrior, so he turned to other benefactors to fund his one man war against the empire. While the honest citizen was only interested in self defense against the empire, there were several criminal elements who were far more interested in aggressive operations, even after the chaos of the calamity had cooled down.Criminal enterprise stood a lot to gain by targeting the imperials. The grand companies tended to look the other way when criminal enterprise was pointed at the empire. Their underworld nature meant that they could strike the empire in ways that the Grand Companies couldn’t without inviting all out war. And this opening attracted all kinds of ambitious folk, some were hoping to steal expensive goods or tech for their own profit, others to steal information and broker power, some participated for their ideals, others were explicitly paid by the grand companies. For Kristoff it didn’t matter too much why they were targeting Garlemond, it was just enough that they were.The Criminal work against the garleans could be far more aggressive. Kristoff was often sent out to raid caravans, break out prisoners, and even into imperial territory propper to rob, threaten, and kill those others considered untouchable. The embittered warrior took well to his return to criminal life. The man had already been struggling with a growing darkness, and in the company of murderers and thieves he was quickly lost. Kristoff committed bloody and sadistic acts against Garlemald, and rarely distinguished innocent civilian from foe be them men, women, or children.Still, as the calamity grew older and older even the underworld’s appetite for antagonizing the empire shrank. Kristoff kept an open ear for opportunities to strike garlemald, but found himself more and more often doing other work. On a bounty hunting job in the Coerthas central highlands he happened to save a lesser ishgardian noble with ties to house Durendaire. In gratitude the noble began contacting Kristoff for work as an agent in greater Eorzea. The work was lucrative and began to take up more and more of Kristoff’s time.Eventually the lord, impressed with Kristoffs fighting, invited the mercenary inside the city to train his personal retinue. Despite the rarity of the offer, Kristoff struggled with the decision to take it. Previously he was still free to leave and attack garlemald when the opportunity arose, but inside the holy city he would be bound by their strict laws. Ultimately the coin was too tempting and Kristoff accepted the offer. in truth the break from his obsession was good for his soul, and helped to cool that fire inside him. Kristoff still hated the Garleans for what they did, but without the heat of the hunt he finally had time to accept what happened to his family, and to grieve.When Kristoff returned from his time with house Durendaire he was a more measured man. He was still angry, but he had learned to control it and channel it, rather than be led by it. He felt that he better understood the world. He knew that he alone couldn’t bring down the empire, and while he was happy to indulge himself in the pleasure of wounding them when the opportunity arose, he no longer felt compelled to seek out that fight. He stayed in Ishguard whenever he could, but as an outsider he was only allowed entrance into the city so long as he had work to justify it. So while he awaited the summons of a noble he wandered the great cities, chasing gil and all the immediate pleasures it could bring. Kristoff thought life would go on like this forever, he never expected that after 5 years licking their wounds that the Grand Companies would be eager to fight again, or Operation: Archon.

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The Astral Era

38-46 years old

• Ala Mhigo
• Limsa Lominsa
• The Maelstrom
• Mercenary
• The Astral Era

WIP

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Apperance

Kristoff is a large man by Highlander standards, with a thick and muscular frame built from almost three decades of manual labor and combat. He wears his hair long and keeps a full thick beard. Kristoff tends to like to wear flashy jewelry and accessories, a holdover from his days as a pirate. He is visibly powerful, with bulky arms, calloused hands, and broad shoulders.Three long scars mark his face, the most prominent of which carves a valley into the side of his nose. Countless other scars trace all along his body, though most are small or shallow enough to be hidden by his body hair.Despite his imposing frame, its clear to see that Kristoff is getting on in years. His skin is a deep leathery tan, and his face is sketched with wrinkles and laugh lines. His hair, once full and black, has thinned and weathered with strands of grey, giving him more of a salt and pepper color. Even his amber colored eyes often seem dulled and heavy from the weight of time, though in moments of intensity they come alive and blaze with the same sharpness and deadly focus of his youth.

Personality

At his core Kristoff is a curious man with a respect for the simple pleasures in life and a deep sense of regret for the years he wasted on vengeance and rage. He adopts a 'live in the moment' sort of philosophy, and tends to spend his time chasing one pleasure after another, or the gil needed to pay for that lifestyle.Kristoff's casual attitude can seem a bit self destructive at times. Decades of combat and wandering have made him accustomed to keeping his blood warm with the thrill of battle, hard drink, and easy company. In spite of this, he realizes that he's getting older and that continuing this lifestyle will kill him, more likely sooner than later, but he is too stubborn or scared to find a different way to live.He is a man of action who is intimately aware of the freedom granted by physical power in an unstable world. This worldview has led him to underestimate more intellectual folks. This is spurred on by his belief that most people overthink their problems without doing anything to solve them. But in spite of that prejudice Kristof often finds his walls pierced by more cerebral or emotionally in touch individuals who can see past his bluster, especially those who have the practical skills to back up their ideas and feelings.Hypocritically, Kristoff is highly judgmental of younger adventurers who live his kind of lifestyle, especially those who are driven to violence by a sense of idealism or fighting for a "greater good". Kristoff was not born a warrior, but was coaxed into this dirty and rough life by dreams of heroism and fighting for a better tomorrow. Looking back Kristoff feels that those dreams died an ugly death without amounting to anything positive. He deeply regrets the loss of the quiet, decent, life he could have had if he had chosen peace instead, and he hates watching the younger generation fall down the same path he did. As a result of this Kristoff tends to come off as severe and guarded to younger adventurers.Behind the surface there is a kind of lie to Kristoff's aloof personality. While all his flamboyant personality traits are genuine, they mask a deep wound and the regret that his violent past has caged him in.More than anything Kristoff considers himself to be a man left behind by time. He looks back on his life as a series of wasted opportunities and despite only being middle aged, he doesn't believe it possible to develop a sense of purpose or meaning anymore. Looking back on a lifetime of bloodshed and loss gives him little comfort in his advancing years, and he keeps going more out of habit than anything else.

Combat Ability

- Fighting Style -

Kristoff prefers to fight with a large two handed weapon, usually an axe with a sizeable head. His fighting style is pragmatic and rough, using everything at his disposal as a weapon. He is known for incorporating strikes and grappling in fights, preferring to get into the mix of things rather than hiding behind his weapon.With equal size or larger opponents Kristoff prefers to set up for heavy and devastating strikes, making his strength and ability to wield large weapons work for him. When working against smaller or more nimble opponents he will switch to tighter movements, using the axe more as a grappling tool to leverage his superior size and weight to overpower and overwhelm.Kristoff prefers to fight in heavy armors. He not only appreciates the protection they offer, but also the added weight the armor gives to his strikes and attacks. He has trained for decades to learn how to move fluidly and effectively even when heavily encumbered.The highlander has a lopsided relationship with the aetheric arts. He has never been particularly gifted at manipulating aether into spells which makes him a very inefficient caster, especially for long range spells. He can use aether as an extension of his weapon with reasonable confidence, but most of the time he focuses on using aether to enhance his physical body. Most often he will gather aether in specific muscle groups to give him temporary bouts of explosive strength when attacking, a method adapted from the Ala Mhigan tradition of monks.Kristoff's best use of aether is actually in self-healing. The man has trained himself to reflexively use aether to repair his joints and boost his stamina, which has helped mitigate years of wear and tear from fighting.

The Attack on the Merchant Vessel

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This is a work in progress, come back in a few days for the full story!The attack came in the night, when most of the crew was sleeping and ill prepared. The Miqo'te sent a handfull of fighters over to take the ship, each well enough armed to do the job. They might not have known Kristoff was there, but by the time he had rushed onto the deck and drawn his axe it was too late to turn back, and they committed to the assault. At first the Miqo'te had him on the back foot. They were fresh and excited, while Kristoff was tired and drunk. The large man struggled to fight them off and a Miqo'te's dagger sliced across his arm, drawing a thin wave of blood.The cut pulled adrenaline into Kristoff's veins and he began to come alive. Before his attacks had been slugish, and clumsy. But once that fire was lit inside of him Kristoff fought like a demon. His strikes were quick, precise, and crushingly powerful. The first Miqo'te to notice the transformation was far too late to do anything about it. Kristoff's axe splintered through his shield and cut out the arm behind it. the Miqo'te screamed loud enough to get the attention of fellow pirates, but another swift strike from Kristoff silenced him.The Miqo'te began to realize the threat Kristoff presented, and many of them stopped what they were doing in order to pile in on him. But it was too late, Kristoff was a awake now, and he whipped his axe around in a deadly crescent which watered the deck with pirate blood.Demezel, never one to miss a show, had crawled out of the hold and watched Kristoff's brutal display with fascination. The midlander, like most of the crew, had underestimated him, and assumed Kristoff to be a drunkard who's bark was worse than his bite. Now as he watched the Ala Mhigan's brutal dance, smashing apart muscle and bone with each step, he thought the opposite. Behind that apathetic vial Kristoff was someone truly terrifying.Demezel had grown a bit too enthralled in Kristoff's savage display, and in the commotion a Miqo'te raider had noticed the fine jewelry in Demezel's hair and had decided it was worth killing for. The pirate gripped the beautiful man's arm before Demezel knew what was happening. He shrieked instinctively and quickly moved to pull his own hidden knife and push it into the pirate's belly, but it was too late. The pirate's dagger lifted high in the air and was baring down on him.Suddenly metal whipped through the air followed by a low thrumming sound. The pirate's arm flew off just below the elbow. Demezel had expected to be hit with sharp steel, but hot blood dripped on his face instead. He and the pirate both looked equally shocked as a loud thunk came from just beyond them. The pirate, who hadn't yet registered the pain of the swift amputation, looked right to see Kristoff's axe lodged into the deck. Demezel had looked left, and saw Kristoff, eyes glowing with malice, marching toward them.Kristoff had made quick work of the pirates who had come to stop him, and had cut down the last of them just in time to hear Demezel's scream. The highlander acted on instinct and thew his massive two handed axe across the ship, cutting down the assaliants arm. Now....

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