Beneath Yon Burning Star (FFXIV)

You inhale. Exhale. Reach for the teachings of Rhalgr, the tenets of the Destroyer God that have guided you all your life. There is suffering in life that cannot be avoided, opposition with which you cannot contend. The path of Rhalgr is to accept this and endure it, and in enduring grow stronger, like diamond squeezed from coal. And yet this threat is not impersonable or unreachable, not some faceless unstoppable force of nature. This is the petty cruelty of a man with too much power, who wishes to make you suffer to assuage his own discomfort, who thinks not without reason that you lack the power or standing to demand his respect. You know all of this from experience, and that it seems is the problem.

Every man has his limits.

"A lesson for you, young master," you say pleasantly, Soaring Peak blinking at you in surprise as the air crystallises around your intent, "a saying from my homeland."

The young merchant has a yalm on you in height and is easily twice your mass, but when you put your weight behind a fist and drive it into his gut he folds like wet laundry. The sound a man makes when all air leaves his body is very distinctive, and the vulnerability so induced makes it the easiest thing in the world to sweep your leg behind his knees and send him toppling over. Soaring Peak crashes into the mud and the dirt, his fine clothes ruined in an instant, and oh but it feels good to see him fall. You drop into a crouch by his side, ignoring the shouts of shock and alarm from all those around you, leaning in to growl your next words into his ear.

"A starving dog may bite even a king," you hiss, your voice whisper-soft and dripping with hate, hate for this boy and this city and this life. "So be careful how you wield that wealth of yours, lest it leave men like me with little else to lose."

You have no time to elaborate, for a grip of iron lands on your shoulder and hauls you upright and away, and before you can recover Ubrent is between you and the wheezing lump on the ground, his spearpoint level with your throat.

"Hands off the young lord," he says, and while his eyes are sympathetic his voice is as cold as ice on the mountains. You think he understands you, even agrees with you in a way, but if you push your luck he won't hesitate to run that spear through your liver. Typical Ishgardian, really, no stomach for anyone raising a hand against their 'betters'.

"Relax, altar boy," you grunt, palming Soaring Peak's purse as you step away. Ubrent's gaze flickers down to it, but though he frowns for a moment he makes not a sound. "I'm done here."

You can hear the whispers now, the scandalised cries and calls for intervention from the merchants and labourers watching the scene from a safe distance. Ubrent can hear them too, his face twisting in displeasure, and you feel a brief pang of regret for making this difficult for him. He's an asshole, but he still doesn't deserve this.

"Yes, you are," he says instead, still holding you at spearpoint, standing protectively over his fallen master for all to see. "U'laan, get him out of here. If he would snarl like a beast, let him spend his nights like one, outside the settlement."

"Gotcha," U'laan says behind you, and you can almost feel the tension in her arms, the weight of the arrow set against her bow. "You heard him. Move."

You move. Of course you do. What else is there, having laid hands on a member of the Mirage Trust in the middle of Black Brush? You turn and you walk away in silence, U'laan shadowing you like a desert breeze, and without a word you pass through light and beneath the metal tracks and out into the darkness of the Thanalan night.

"Not the wisest move I've seen someone pull," U'laan comments at last, when you are far enough outside Black Brush that the risk of eavesdroppers has fallen away, her voice wry with bleak amusement. "I get why you did it, I do, but… you have to know that was a bad idea."

"Felt good though," you say dryly, weighing the stolen coin purse in your hand. Slowly, careful not to drop a single piece to be lost amid the desert sands, you begin transferring the coins into your own much humbler pouch. "Who knows, maybe he'll think twice of cheating anyone else out of their wages."

"And maybe he'll try evening the score with the next poor fool to cross his path," U'laan observes, but she doesn't stop you from taking the coins, or step away as you begin circling around Black Brush in the night. "You know you won't be finding any work in Ul'dah for a while, yeah?"

You grunt wordlessly, tossing Peak's empty pouch away to lie forgotten in the desert sands. It's not a pleasant thought, but you know she's right. Even the Trust's rivals are likely to shun you on principle, and even if they eventually forget your name and face, assigning the whole incident to 'just another dog of Ala Mhigo', but until that happens you should probably find somewhere to lay low.

"I'll figure something out," you say at last, stopping for a moment on the outskirts of the slag mounds. The nearby Nanawa mines don't have the facilities to dispose of their refuse, so they load it up on the trains and dump it out here, just downwind of Black Brush proper. You assume the toxic remnants get dealt with eventually, perhaps when they threaten to poison the water of someone important in the area, but until that happens they are left to sit here looming ominously in the darkness. "You should probably leave now. Tell the others honestly that you left me out here with the waste and garbage. Maybe the young master will get a laugh out of it."

U'laan looks at you suspiciously for a moment, her yellow eyes shining like mirrors in the dark, then looks past you to the desert wastes of Thanalan. There's something moving out there, you think, the rasp of segmented carapace and the click of closing mandibles, but you're still too close to the settlement to tell what. You think Cutter's Cry is around here somewhere, not that you're intending to go looking, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that U'laan nods, then turns around and heads back to the torchlight and the town's welcome embrace. You watch her go… then turn towards the other end of town and start walking.

The Coffer and Coffin is on the rowdier end of taverns, so much so that it's built into the side of a cliff outside the limits of the settlement proper to reduce the risk of collateral, but there's an honesty to it that you find refreshing. The name comes from an old story of a miner chained to a great chest, who swears to either fill it with wealth or his own dead body before the day is out. Some versions of the tale claim it a self-imposed challenge, a testament to the virtues needed to succeed in Ul'dahn society, while others frame it as a punishment and macabre commentary on the value of those who labour in their eyes of their betters. All you know is that the place serves quality drinks and offers clean beds to all who can pay even a modest charge, and that it is one of the few such establishments not barred to men of Ala Mhigo on principle.

The tavern is lit and active even at this late hour, filled with the sounds and smells of raucous celebration, and as you duck in through the door you can see why. A mining crew has just arrived from their shift, likely carried back into town by one of the great steam trains that you saw coming to and fro, and now they're busy drinking away their day's wages with abandon. You get a drink from the bar with relatively little fuss, staying well clear of the cheerful men and women in their hard-worn overalls, and after paying with a prince's coin you find a table near the far wall that manages to be unoccupied despite the celebrations. You prop your spear and shield against the wall, then doff your helmet and loosen the straps on your armour, allowing yourself to relax at last. You think you probably stink something fierce, as all men who do a forced march in full armour must surely do, but wearing your armour is why you're still here to complain about it so you'll just have to endure.

There's a temptation to join the miners in their drunken celebration, but you might yet need your wits about you if Soaring Peak recovers swiftly and sends men after you, so instead you stick to a lovely herbal tea. It's poisoned, of course, but so is virtually everything in Ul'dah - the Dunesfolk seem to believe that a dash of scorpion venom in their drinks adds a delightful kick, and you're not entirely convinced that they're wrong. You sip the tea slowly, savouring the taste, and instead of joining the miners content yourself with studying them. Most seem to be either Roegadyn or Lalafel, the former easily five or six times the height of the latter, who trade raw strength for the ability to operate in the smallest, narrowest of tunnels. You can see what you assume to be the crew chief, a massive hellsguard who would put even Soaring Peak to shame with his breadth and bulk, laughing roughly and doing his best to stay still as no less than four of his subordinates sit on his broad shoulders and raise their piping voices in an old worker's song.

You think they're celebrating a mythril strike, cashing in their immediate bonus and a few days off to enjoy themselves while reports are sent back to head office and new work plans are drawn up to best exploit the new find. You hear more than a few toasts raised to "Boss Sterne", head of the Miner's Guild, for the largess. Amajina & Sons Mineral Concern likes to boast about the generous terms it offers its workers, but everyone knows it is the Guild that forces their hand and keeps these honest souls from chains. Such is life in Ul'dah, ruled by plutocrats and the birthplace of organised labour, every right and privilege bought with coin or paid for in blood. Concessions granted begrudgingly only to be seized and held forth as banners of righteousness, self-evident arguments for the virtue of the system, a cudgel to bludgeon the less fortunate back into line.

There is a faint creak, and your melancholic thoughts are interrupted by the wholly unexpected arrival of a guest. A young Highlander boy, scarce twenty years of age if that, materialises from amid the jubilant crowds and flops down into the opposite chair with a casual ease that has you blinking in surprise.

"What's up, gramps?" He says, fixing you with gleaming eyes and a devil-may care grin, "Thinking of becoming a miner, are you?"

You study him for a moment. His skin is as dark as yours but far less weathered, marred only by the faint tan lines that echo facepaint long since discarded, and the roughspun cotton of his shirt could belong to a man in any of a hundred trades.

"Oh, I'm too old and set in my ways for that. I just have a soft spot for my countrymen and their work," you say carefully, aware of where your spear lies but not reaching for it just yet, watching this strange newcomer intently. "Adalberta Sterne… she was eight when the invasion happened, I hear. Arrived here with nought but the clothes on her back."

"Oh aye, a real success story, she is," the young man responds, flashing you a smile as he lays a hand over his heart in patriotic parody, "Kicking the Syndicate in the nads all day and all night, bleeding their purse with a warriors fervour. Downright inspirational, a story to bring a tear to the eye."

Ala Mhigan, definitely. Your kinsman, in a sense, though he's abandoned the face paint and done his best to erase the accent in favour of one more suited to Ul'dah. You say nothing, because what can you say? What right do you have to chastise this boy for living how he can, when you and yours failed to defend the home he never got the chance to know?

"Ah, but where are my manners," your guest says, still smiling, and there's definitely an edge to it now, "I'm Jayk, of nowhere in particular. Pleased to be meeting you, Master…?"

Article:

You are a Miqo'te, of the Seekers of the Sun, and by right of QM fiat you are male. What is your name? Conventional nomenclature is provided below, but is not strictly required; an unconventional name would suggest someone who shunned their tribe in favour of a self-chosen identity.

[ ] Write in

Spoiler: Seeker Naming Conventions

The Seekers of the Sun are organised into twenty six tribal groups, each of which migrated to Eorzea in a past age and took one letter of the local alphabet as their familial appellation (their seers believe that the number of available letters matching up so neatly with the number of tribes is a sign of divine providence, justifying their decision to settle in these lands).

That appellation is then applied as a prefix to their personal name. Male Seekers then follow their name with either Nunh, if they are settled and have children, or Tia, if they are not.

Thus, G'raha Tia would be a man of the G tribe with the personal name of Raha (used only by close friends or family), who has yet to sire children or settle down into a position of patriarchal authority.

The M and J tribes are known to have settled in Ala Mhigo, though sometimes branches of a given tribe will establish 'offshoot' settlements elsewhere, and thus you could fairly come from any tribe. Regardless, you are a Tia.

You tell him, because while there is something more going on here that's no reason to shun a kinsman's polite inquiry, and while you speak you study him more closely. He looks generic, unremarkable, anything like a thousand other refugees you might encounter in the camps or on a walk through an Ul'dahn alley… save, that is, for the strip of soft black cotton wrapped around his right forearm like a bandage.

"You know, it's funny," you observe in a neutral tone, nodding to the fabric, "I ran into some people earlier today wearing something remarkably similar."

"You're right, that is funny. One of life's little mysteries, eh?" Jayk says with a chuckle, leaning back in his chair and laying his hands on the table. He bears no weapon or armour, but there's no disguising the calluses on his fingers, or the faint pale scar on his wrist. "Me, well, I heard there was a Myrmidon around here somewhere. Imagine that - a real living piece of our legacy! Of course, he might not be living for much longer, given how he thrashed a merchant of the Mirage Trust in broad daylight."

You sip your tea. It's good stuff, after all, and you'd hate to waste it. You sip your tea and you watch this Jayk in silence, waiting for him to get to the point.

"Oh, playing hard to get? I can respect that," the boy says easily, the smile sliding piece by piece off his face. "Now, it might be that some friends of mine have a suggestion. A proposal, even. See, if the young master makes it back to Ul'dah and goes whining to his father, well, that could turn out very badly for my countryman. But if he were to, so to speak, have more important things to worry about…"

You set the cup down, very carefully. Every movement you make right now is careful, every word considered, the noise and uproar of the tavern and the celebrating miners fading slowly out of mind. You're a patient man, generally, but some matters deserve better than to be talked around and across.

"I'm no murderer," you say flatly, but Jayk merely shrugs.

"Suit yourself, gramps. Maybe you're a talker instead," he says, calm and focused now, staring at you like a snake. "We're kin, aren't we? Kin help out kin when they're in a pinch. So maybe you tell me some useful things - where they're going, the who and how many of the guards, what's in those crates. And maybe I see to it you get a cut and your old boss is too busy to come after you for what was, quite frankly, a well deserved bit of discipline."

You inhale. Exhale. Is this what your people are, now? Is this the path that the next generation will tread? More importantly, what are you going to do about it?

"I broke bread with those men," you say, and some part of you hates the rest for the hesitation in your voice, for the failure to reject such behaviour out of hand. "You can't expect me to betray them now."

"And what did that broken bread get you, when the chips were down? What will it get any of us, today or tomorrow?" Jayk says, and for all his youth there is a cynicism in his voice that burns like poison. "But sure. We can play nice, if you insist. Terms offered, surrenders honoured, not a hair on their heads harmed so long as they play along. May Rhalgr strike me down if I lie."

He leans forwards, fixing you with a look, his dark eyes burning with intensity. "Limited time offer, gramps. What's it gonna be?"

Article:

How do you respond?

[ ] Speak. Give Jayk and the bandits the information they want, in exchange for a promise to minimise the bloodshed and spare any who surrender.

[ ] Stay Silent. Say nothing, and send Jayk on his way. You'll not be a bandit, or consort with those who are.