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humble_scholarPlayer's Name: Birdy
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kyanve
DW:kyanve_te_shirhan
Character: Thancred
Canon: FFXIV: Realm Reborn
Version: N/A
Canon Point: Post-main storyline as of 2.0
Age: ~27
Gender: Male
History: The wiki has VERY VERY LITTLE.
(As a note, there's a few places with references to an Adventurer with the Echo, a power that's basically a "HI, MINE" from the 'mother-goddess', Hydaelyn. That would be a player character. The part that gets messy is that the storyline focuses on an individual player character, but each City-State has a different starting storyline, the different starting storylines DO interact with each other later and are definitely all canon occurrences, and some of the events include implications that there is a group being gathered, so basically by canon there's four to eight nameless customizable characters that start out in each of the various cities, converge into the organization Thancred's a part of, and end up being involved in several major events as a group.)
Thancred's originally from an isolated northern city-state in the mountains; Sharlayan was a city dedicated to the God of Knowledge, Thaliak. Thanks to geography and a few other factors, they didn't have much in the way of conflict, and the city-state centered around colleges and libraries. He's one of a small group of "Archons", people with a connection to one or another of the Twelve, the guardian deities of the world. One of the older and more powerful Archons, Louisoix, gathered Thancred and the others as students and followers, forming a group to work against various threats to the continent and world; while most of the others are mostly casters and likely from the colleges, Thancred is a bard and rogue that specializes more in trickery and likely didn't come from the colleges.
Under their mentor's leadership, they left their reclusive homeland to spread out across the continent, trying to work against various threats and bring the city-states that would listen together against the worst dangers; Thancred was responsible for working in and around Ul'dah, a desert city referred to as one where "anything could be bought" and "the city that turns sand into gold". While he managed to become familiar to the leadership and a few important figures as an ally, he and the others had limited success arranging an alliance until the larger and more powerful Empire from a neighboring continent conquered one of the northern city-states and destroyed Sharlayan in an aerial assault. That war came to a head in a major battle, with an Imperial legion met by the combined forces of three of the four remaining city-states, as well as various adventurers and mercenaries.
Louisoix and his students had uncovered an Imperial plan to break an ancient binding on the Elder Primal Bahamut, a being capable of wreaking devastation across the continent; Thancred and the other students spread out to shrines across the continent to try to channel aid from the Twelve to Louisoix, who took the field directly, in an attempt to re-bind the dragon god. The binding failed, and while Louisoix managed to sort-of banish the Primal, he was among the casualties; Bahamut's rage had wiped out nearly all of the forces on both sides that'd been on the field, as well as left scars and damage across the continent.
Left without their mentor, Thancred and the others joined forces with the remnants of another neutral group decimated in that Calamity, under the other group's leader, Minfilia. The newly formed Scions of the Seventh Dawn had their hands full trying to help rebuild, without much time to mourn their losses; Thancred set to helping Ul'dah recover, still shaken from the losses of the Calamity.
Five years passed, and while Ul'dah started to look like its normal self, the pile of grenades he was juggling hadn't really gone down; an attempted assassination of the Sultana signaled worse forces than the Empire and the various hostile beastman tribes moving against the people. His investigations into whoever was pulling strings and meddling kept coming up empty, and Thancred was getting stretched thin as it was when he ended up on an investigation of a string of kidnappings and thefts that pointed towards sacrifices and a summoning. He had some help from an adventurer that'd shown signs of a particularly strong Echo; after catching a merchant that'd been paid off to kidnap refugees and hand over to the beastmen for sacrifice, the adventurer went with a group of the Ul'dahn military to try to trap the beastmen before more damage could be done, while Thancred rode back to rally backup.
Instead of coming back to a battle, he came back to an empty site; the second traitor that'd been indicated by some clues he'd passed over had warned the Amal'jaa beastmen, and the entire "ambush party" had been captured. He led the backup into the heart of Amal'jaa territory too late to be any good; the Amal'jaa had managed to summon a manifestation of their Primal deity, Ifrit. While the Echo had protected the Adventurer and helped them fight off the Primal, Ifrit had "Tempered" the rest of the captives, irreversibly fusing his power to their being, claiming them in body and mind.
The deaths of the Tempered soldiers and refugees weighed heavily on his conscience, and formed the last weight on a list of other stresses, problems, and incidents of coming up short or just not being able to be everywhere enough to handle things; Thancred blamed himself for it, dodged Minfilia attempting to shake him out of it, and put on a show of acting like everything was fine to everyone else. He threw himself into his work harder, driving himself to exhaustion and still coming up with no answers on several major problems; his deteriorating mental state left an opening for something else to get a foothold without his knowledge.
He'd been investigating meddling by the Ascians, little-seen and less-understood agents of the Void that had long-term designs of dragging the rest of existence into enough chaos that the God of the Void could claim dominance and change reality to its will; they worked via taking human hosts, starting devil's bargains and manipulating events. Their leader, Lahabrea, had led the Imperial officer in charge of the last invasion to Bahamut, but lost his host in the Calamity.
Lahabrea took the opening Thancred left to start working on him, quietly fraying at Thancred's condition more to cover things and using Thancred's own ragged condition to keep the Archon from realizing how wrong things were. Threaded around things so that Thancred and the others would go none the wiser, Lahabrea began hijacking his body for short periods of time, causing problems across a large area. For what Thancred knew during this time, he was coming up with more problems, running himself ragged and worn thin; eventually, Minfilia ordered him to stay at the base and rest, worried about him.
Shortly after that, an Imperial squad struck their hidden base, the Waking Sands, in a pinpoint ambush timed for as little resistance as possible. Most of the agents and members within the base were slaughtered; Minfilia, two of the other Archons, and their secretary and record-keeper were taken prisoner. The two remaining Archons and the few agents and Adventurers that had been out in the field returned to a base filled with corpses and a last warning that their comrades were now Imperial captives. Thancred was unaccounted for; Lahabrea had taken over completely, and was now letting him be aware of what was going on, powerless to do anything about it.
After some scrambling, the others managed to stage a successful, if messy, rescue; Lahabrea tipped his hand as they fled, taking off his mask and hood so they'd know that his host was their comrade - fully aware that they'd know there wasn't any known way to save an Ascian's host.
Lahabrea had been helping the new officer in charge of Imperial assets on the continent rebuild an ancient weapon, the last great work of a now-dead civilization; once it was functioning, reports of its first movements against some of the Beast Tribes were allowed to get back to the Eorzean leaders, and the Imperial leader sent a demand of surrender to the leaders of the three City-States that'd taken the field six years previous.
Instead of a reply, the Scions helped the Alliance coordinate an assault, each of the City-States attacking one of the Empire's bases on the continent; the Adventurers with Hydaelyn's protection used the assault on the central base as cover to break into the sanctum where the Ultima Weapon was kept, with a secondary mission to try to save Thancred. Unknown to the Imperial officer, Lahabrea had been present when the Weapon was created; Lahabrea hadn't told him everything it was capable of, and had backdoors to take control of it. Lahabrea's main target was Hydaelyn's Chosen; once they were in the sanctum confronting it, he took over, activating a power that was essentially the Weapon being a reusable tactical nuke. Hydaelyn managed to shield them from the first blast, but the protection flagged and vanished as they defeated it. Lahabrea took this as an opening and attacked them himself, using Thancred as a virtual hostage; if they attacked him, they'd be killing their ally and comrade. Hydaelyn had other plans, and had kept just enough of what power she could spare for direct intervention in reserve to wait for her chosen to make an opening, driving Lahabrea off and breaking his hold over the Archon. The Goddess's power spent on that, they narrowly escaped the collapsing remains of the base with Thancred, alive and freed, but unconscious and the worse for wear.
While he physically recovered quickly, the possession had left other damage; he was faced with a long recovery and the others working on figuring out how to repair the harm done. The damage was substantial enough to bar him from going back to his usual work. As much as he wasn't happy to be stuck at base, he had no desire to risk repeating his past mistakes, and instead set to work helping go over intelligence brought in and assisting with research at the base.
Personality: Thancred is, canonly, a bard. You don't get to see him sing much in canon, but the ACTOR/performer part comes through loud and clear. On a good day, Thancred has a few edges of being sarcastic and smart-aleck, but is an upbeat, even occasionally flippant-seeming presence, quick-witted and cheerful, quick with compliments. He's clearly perfectly sharp, but will flounce through things in a way that it's hard to tell whether he was paying enough attention to notice or not - and him letting on what he did or didn't notice could come later in the conversation or two weeks later.
On a bad day, he has a few sharper edges of being sarcastic and a smart-aleck, but is an upbeat, even occasionally flippant-seeming presence, quick-witted and cheerful, and quick with compliments. He has a public face to maintain, after all.
He might occasionally express being worried, afraid, upset, or troubled to a very short listed of trusted few - Minfilia and occasionally one of the other Archons - but for the most part, if he's acting like something is actually wrong, then he's probably having some kind of a breakdown; he's a very good actor, and very good at keeping up a "public face" whether he's actually doing as well as he sounds or not. It will break a bit for a sort of "work mode" where it can gain a few sharper edges and he'll show anger more easily than anything else, but for the most part even in a sharper mood he doesn't really go somber unless the situation would make his usual act inappropriate.
Trust issues are definitely part of it; for all that he usually plays to "faith in humanity and hope for the future", he works intel in a city where "You could buy ANYTHING" is a descriptor, and often has to have a finger in all the worst areas. This is something that does show through if you're someone he's working with or someone involved in work in a position for him to be talking about it, as he can be a little paranoid and all too aware of how selfish people can be and how easily even good intentions can get warped. He's not likely to openly confront someone with suspicions until he has evidence to confirm them, and is perfectly capable of acting friendly and open in the meantime, but he will hide things like crazy until he's settled that someone is trustworthy. He likes people, he's social, but he's still evasive and doesn't let many actually close.
The other part of him keeping the same act when he's not in such a great place is a simple bit of idea of purpose. Louisoix gathered them to try to fend off a coming shadow over the land, and after Louisoix's death, the Scions of the Seventh Dawn had a stated mission to try to restore the land and bring it out of the darker era it was teetering into. Add that to the implications of having a support power-set that relies on using performance to mundanely lift spirits and help morale, with other power to turn that into a supernatural effect, and some of his evasive tendency to mask and play "public face" has another purpose than paranoia. He has a mission to try to maintain a sense of hope in the world, and it's a lot harder to encourage it in others if he's being a visible ball of fears and doubts himself.
For all his trust issues, paranoia, and awareness of the worst of human nature, Thancred actually likes people, and most sentient beings as a whole. Give him time off or even just time where he doesn't need to chase things as intensely, and he will be off in the city somewhere being more positively social; the shameless skirt-chasing seen before the Calamity had the mark that most of it was flattery and attention paid to the object - he flirts by building up the other person, and does seem to be in it as much to make others happy as to enjoy himself.
His current position requires him to deal with people that can be massively flawed, greedy, and selfish as "people he's protecting". As much as he's wary and cautious, he doesn't chafe at it, and his reaction when one of them crosses a moral event horizon is sometimes as much disappointment as righteous outrage. His paranoia is pragmatic and couched in an acceptance that people are often flawed, ignorant, misguided or stupid, but not necessarily "evil". As long as someone hasn't crossed enough of a moral event horizon, he's perfectly willing to keep arm's length and paranoid caution but still allow and encourage second chances.
(There are a few exceptions to "fondness for sentient beings, flaws and all". An Ascian or something too similar to them would reflexively be "The other side of the battlefield" without proof otherwise, and he has a prickly antipathy for some of the more violent and zealous beastman tribes they've been fighting off for decades. Considering the history, it's a prejudice founded in informed expectation of hostility.)
That same love of people turns into a selfless streak that, in its negative aspect, was a large part of what drove him into the hole. Even in his more cutting moments, he's devoted his existence to trying to protect others and improve the world, and the times he does get angry or spiteful are typically motivated by someone making others suffer for selfish, petty, hateful, or sadistic reasons. Normally, he does enjoy his work, and seeing someone he helped do well or getting to duck off and see people happy and the city doing well is a huge support to him. On the other hand, he worries about not being good enough and not being capable, and that others will suffer for it if he falls short or makes a mistake.
The mental breakdown that Lahabrea used was a vaguely recent one, although the beginnings of it started with Louisoix's death and the loss of his homeland. Beyond being a mentor and leader, Thancred is one of the ones that talks about Louisoix as a father-figure. The scars are still healing, and it's visible with Thancred in a few of his lapses; part of his breakdown includes the line, "If Louisoix were still here this never would've happened". Thancred lost a great deal of security, and then was thrown from that loss into trying to clean up the entire continent being damaged. His resolve that his job was the right thing to do didn't waver, but he gained a strong fear that they'd fail again on that scale, and an awareness that the continent and possibly the rest of the world would pay the price if they did. Besides Louisoix's death, even having high odds of a sketchy background, he has wistful comments about Sharlayan that leak through his mask; his homeland is something that exists in past tense. He also acts younger than the others, and is likely the youngest of the "Circle".
Lahabrea's possession left him in an even more complicated tangle. Besides the obvious external trauma of being used to kill and torture old friends and comrades, and try to destroy everything he cared about, Lahabrea was clearly able to rifle through his memories and thoughts, and there's heavy implications that Lahabrea was perfectly able to communicate with him and mess with him during the possession. The format of the game makes it hard to judge time, but going by what happened and about how much time it'd probably take, there was between six weeks and three months where Lahabrea was weaving in and out of control; after that, there's at least another two to four months of full active possession. From his dialogue and actions during the first part, Lahabrea was helping along his mental state and doing some active work to erode his stability further before taking over completely. While Hydaelyn's intervention burned out any remnants of Lahabrea's energy and gave a nice burst of support and encouragement, that's still a Hell of a mess to get drug through, and a lot to work on coping with. He definitely has gotten a guilt-ding that getting possessed by the leader of the Ascians was "screwing up"; he even frames the idea of eventually getting back to field work as "taking the tarnish off of my good name", and apologizes for it. The only people that would've known he was Lahabrea's host are the other Scions and maybe the leaders of the three City-States in the Alliance, none of whom made any motion to hold it against him; he's the one holding it against himself.
To his credit out of that trauma, his top priority is "NOT REPEATING THAT", and he's made some very self-aware nods to his own issues that got him into the mess in the first place. He isn't arguing with the idea of staying on desk work until other people feel like he's well enough to go out again - having faint wistful moments of unhappiness at being cooped up, but not arguing. It's a very delicate and awkward place where he does know what of his own mental state was used against him, but he's basically still worn out, exhausted, and bleeding all over the mental carpet a little. Knowing what got him into it hasn't made the issues go away, just made him aware of them and wary of the lines where they start turning dangerous.
As of his canon point, he's haggard, exhausted, and still reeling from the possession; while he'll have a gradual recovery, he's being taken from something where he's rebuilding himself from a serious mess of trauma, and will be off-kilter. He'll be trying to hold up his usual acts and masks, but they'll take time to recover; what will be in game for his first few Days/Nights will be Thancred picking up pieces and scraping himself up, and he likely will not do as well as normal for that time period keeping his masks together and keeping stable. He'll want people to believe he's fine, at least until he gets to where someone feels safe to him, but he's not nearly as superhuman as he'd like to believe and just plain doesn't have the energy and ability to do it consistently and well in his current condition.
Fears:
*Failure. He's very tactically clever and an intellectual pragmatist with a good idea of what's at stake and what kind of damage is done when they lose or fail, and he takes that responsibility very seriously. He's gotten a good whack on the nose for letting it drive him completely into despair, but some of his current drive to get better is still fear of failure and potentially repeating something like that.
As a corollary, innocent people suffering because of something he did, didn't do, or did wrong is a big fear of his.
*Ignorance, roughly; not knowing enough, not being able to tell what will actually work, not knowing what plans are good and what plans might make things worse, failing due to a gap in information and making things worse while trying to fix them. This partly ties to Louisoix's loss, as he lost a great deal of guidance; he trusts Minfilia's judgment, but not to the extent he did Louisoix, and he's lived most of his life at least able to check in with that when he was unsure of things.
*Being taken over or getting possessed. Lahabrea gave him a new phobia with all the damage done using his body, and it's helping keep him from complaining about being cooped up; he doesn't like being stuck indoors on deskwork, but it's better than risking getting Tempered or otherwise taken over again.
*Wearing literal masks. This is a mild headcanon addition. Lahabrea and the other Ascians used very distinctive masks to both cover their host's identity and identify themselves; he was fully aware through the worse part of the possession, and the only time Lahabrea took his own mask off was to taunt Minfilia and the others with Thancred's position as his host, and later, to try to use Thancred as a hostage and prevent his targets from fighting back effectively. You're probably not getting a mask on Thancred anytime soon without at least serious discomfort, if not a risk of worse phobic/trauma reactions.
Weaknesses:
*Human ferret: He IS capable of relaxing, but he doesn't do well with being told to sit still or being contained and restricted. If there's something to be doing he'll want to be involved, if there's something curious he'll want to investigate, and "stay here and don't leave" is a recipe for a very unhappy bard. He'll stay put if there's good reasons to sit still or stay put, but he won't really enjoy it.
*Overactive sense of responsibility: He's trying to be better and knows that it's a big part of what got him in trouble, but he still will take on more guilt than he's earned and feel responsible for more than what he can actually control.
*What no I'm fine :D: If something is bothering him or wrong, whether or not he'll let on will depend on who he's dealing with. It's NOT easy to end up on the list of people he'll trust or feel safe dropping the "I'm okay! :D " mask with, and his skill as an actor sometimes works against him, since he can be a few inches from falling apart and at least manage to not act as bad off as he actually is with most people. If the person he's talking to isn't a medic/healer, he can and will do this with physical injuries too, or try to.
*Daredevil Streak: His idea of a vote of confidence for someone heading into a likely conflict or dangerous situation is "save some for me", or a teasing comment about them getting all the fun. Just because he's primarily support and intel doesn't mean he can't be an adrenaline junkie given the chance. This sometimes doesn't help the balance between "desire to protect others" and "Survival Instincts".
*Never Say Die: He can be completely terrified of failure, falling apart mentally, running on twelve hours of sleep spread out over a week, and still be capable of dragging his carcass out to try to do something and keep struggling to change things. This is a weakness because it can mean he'll push himself far past his own limits and wear himself out, or past the point where he starts making stupid mistakes out of exhaustion. He's a little more aware of this as a personal weakness now that it's been taken advantage of horrifically, but he still isn't the best judge of his own limits; he will sometimes need someone smacking him over the head and telling him to take care of himself and stop pushing himself.
*Pre-industrial alien world: Eorzea's pre-industrial; Ul'dah shows signs of starting to build some of the technology that would be associated with an industrial revolution, but it's isolated and hasn't been embraced or spread. The Empire has higher technology, albeit of a sort that'd be completely unfamiliar to most Earth-type worlds, but he's only familiar with that in a tactical sense - capabilities, vague sense of what does what and how to sabotage it. Not only will he not have a clue what to do with technology past about early 1800's at the highest, he'll likely be thrown off occasionally by anything Earth-similar working differently from anything he'd recognize.
*Ascian Possession Survivor/Weakened Psychic/Spiritual Defenses: Yeah, that whole possession thing. Besides the psychological trauma and abuse he went through, his energy system's a little fucked up right now. Some of it will heal with time, but there's some of it that will take other help where there's essentially holes poked in him and things rearranged. He has the skillset of someone highly trained and experienced with his powers, but his reserves are a part of what's been hit, elaborated on in that section. Also, he's more susceptible to influencing effects; from how it's described, he's essentially got a few soul-level gaping wounds and a couple holes that're open that something else could use to alter or try to influence/interfere with him.
Mundane Strengths/Abilities:
*Combat experience: Thancred has a number of hidden and not-so-hidden knives and knows how to use them well, both close-range and thrown. He's very much a hit and run "aim for weak spots and don't get hit yourself" fighter, and he's not combat-focused, but he's good enough to do a job that comes with a massive target sign with confidence.
*Intelligence and Investigations: He spends much of his time information gathering one way or another, and it's the main skill and specialty he brings to the group. He's most experienced with urban areas and deserts, but has had to travel and deal with other environments before. He's capable with mundane stealth and sneaking up on/past people, although it's got the usual limitations of visibility, cover, attention and wariness of the target, etc. - sneaky, not supernaturally stealthed.
*Aetheric studies + education: He's not one of the mages, but he WAS taught by Louisoix and trained in the Sharlayan scholarly pursuits enough to keep up with the others. He has the rough equivalent of a university education circa the early 1800's, including study of metaphysics, magic, and spiritual energy among the more normal fields; the basic laws he's used to will be, at best, hit and miss to completely wrong, but he's used to a partly scientific/scholastic approach to understanding strangeness and handling unusual phenomenon by "try to figure out what it is".
*People skills: Thancred gets a chunk of his information by simply being around people and getting them talking, then putting pieces together or reading between the lines. He's usually sharp at handling people, has a good eye for reading reactions and figuring out their mentalities and personalities, and can often get along with people well.
*Never Say Die: He can be terrified that the odds are completely against him, running on twelve hours of sleep spread over a week, physically and emotionally wrung-out exhausted and still drag his carcass out to try and do something and keep struggling. He spent the entire possession struggling as much as he was capable of, even if it was mostly useless, and it's very hard to get him to actually give up. Hydaelyn's intervention and a desire to pay that forward will probably reinforce this.
*Performance, Acting, Music, Sleight of Hand: He's an excellent actor; besides the whole "public face" habit, he has a few canon incidents of pulling off other deceptions and acts, and shows signs of familiarity with at least street performance. (The shift to public face when he's worse off is clearly conscious and intentional, too; when Minfilia's trying to drag him out of his spiral, the second the door opens to the Adventurer walking in, he does a complete 180 on body language, voice inflection, EVERYTHING like flicking a switch.)
His powers set depends on being halfway competent musically and he's good at it; he can sing very well, and given how some of it is learned, would be familiar and competent with small harps even if he doesn't use them often. He's also VERY good at sleight of hand, enough to pickpocket, and demonstrates being able to do "small objects appear in hand" tricks, "where did those knives come from", and conceal things fast and without it being obvious what he did.
*Diverse world background: Eorzea has multiple sentient races living side by side, as well as Beast tribes that are sentient but isolated and vary in how approachable they are, and even occasions of some independent smaller Voidsent that are nonhostile. While there are prejudices in different areas, Thancred's in a position that mostly discourages picking them up. He' used to working side by side with all manner of nonhuman creatures as a normal, taken for granted, fact of life.
This extends to sentient constructs and artificial beings; they're not unheard of, and it's treated as fairly normal ethical standard that someone with a sense of morals will treat them as "people" deserving of basic respect. A sentient construct is also on the list of people he owes his life to. He will see the idea that an artificial being is "not a real person" as slightly odd and very dumb.
*Mostly Useless Survival Skills: He can survive well enough to travel, work, and spend extended periods out in the Thanalan desert. As there aren't large arid light scrub deserts in Maison, this will probably be mostly useless. It at least means he does have a GOOD understanding of dehydration and heat stroke and how to avoid/deal with them!
Considering his background, job, and the education he got from working with Louisoix, he probably has an early 1800's grasp of rescue first aid.
Sensitivity/Magical Ability: Thancred doesn't really sense things himself much past the sort of "something isn't right/this place is creepy/this place is safe" sort of vibes a normal person would get.
The Archon part is not exactly well explained in canon. There was a description of them as avatars and incarnations, but from where that story is found in canon, it could be true or it could be a case of the NPC in question being an unreliable narrator; it comes from an archivist in an isolated area who "learned" that from old folklore. If they are incarnations, it's in a somewhat Hindu sense, as functionally separate individuals from the god or goddess they're an incarnation of. Judging by what's said by the Archons themselves, while they don't give anything that'd be a direct answer to "are they or aren't they", the only one that seems like they'd have known for sure was Louisoix. None of them draw attention to it given a choice, and on the rare occasion it is mentioned, it's an offhand "...Well, it's a thing." where it sounds like they might not know themselves.
Going by how the world-physics work, it might also be an immaterial question of semantics.
As far as what this means in practice, going by what they're capable of, it mostly seems to be a boost to whatever magical or supernatural abilities they've learned, and some sort of longevity. Some of them have been known and active long enough to be older than they look; going by Louisoix, it's slowed aging rather than halted, but it's hard to tell how much, and Thancred seems to be the youngest. He will register as divinely-touched and that the main structure of his energy system is divine in origin, but between Lahabrea and being cut off from any active channel to his patron, he isn't capable of anything past "normal range for a human of his world". If his system were repaired, he'd be a bit stronger than a normal human with his main powersets, pretty much just enough for occasional "I call bullshit on you being normal/human" incidents.
He has tattoos on either side of his neck that were actually actively glowing during the group effort to channel power into Louisoix's binding of Bahamut. It's very much a canon thing that there are special inks made to carry and hold aetheric energy that're used in certain magics, there is canon implications of tattoos with enchantments or made to help focus power, and all the Archons have similar tattoos - they're passive focuses related to that.
He knows basic cure magic - what's already been discussed for a "Cure" spell; any given casting would heal a localized injury. Given that all of the Archons can do this, it's probably something Louisoix insisted they all learn whether they were going into magical studies or not. With his damage, assume he can manage two or three casts in a twenty-four-hour period in his current condition, and that using it will either weaken or preclude him using the bardic abilities for that period.
His main actual powerset is essentially a set of augmentation abilities channeled through song or music; the effects will last during and somewhere between ten minutes to a half-hour after, and will be a continual drain on his power for that time.
Ordinarily being actively and majorly hostile would be enough to mitigate or block the effects, but it's basically outright enmity; someone who is within hearing range (or here, in the same room) that finds him annoying and a total pain in the ass that they dislike will get the beneficial effect, someone intending to kill him or actively trying to harm him or those he's protecting/with won't. (Because honestly, outside of gameplay conventions, it'd be a pretty damn useless ability for "Often sent out to back up troops on the battlefield" if it were a completely non-discriminating AoE and what it will interact with makes that not seem like a huge stretch of logic.)
The existing powers in FFXIV are essentially recovery effects.
One is a "Mana/other-resource regen boost" in game mechanics; something that augments the recovery of reserves and power - essentially he can speed up the natural recovery of reserves for magic and other abilities enough to allow those within range to go a couple times past where they should've run out of power before they actually run dry so long as they're working while the effect is active.
He can do a sort of projective empathic effect with it.
The most obvious/commonly stated one is essentially doing the same sort of "speeding recovery/nudging towards a healthier state" for emotional trauma, stress, and exhaustion. Essentially, the empathic effect functions by helping restore mental energy and empathic support/encouragement with a very mild calming effect; it doesn't prevent backsliding, make external stresses go away, or create mental/emotional patterns that weren't at least possible for that person. It's described as essentially something that was used in battlefields to do for morale and stability what the other effects do for physical health and energy reserves, "bolstering and rousing spirits". (It's something that exists in storyline and lore as a major part of the "class" but doesn't have any translation in game mechanics normally. By story mechanics there's probably a few variations on the exact empathic effect, although all will follow the same basic rules.)
Gameplay-wise Bards are WEIRD in XIV compared to every other FF, so there's a couple things I'm going to fudge at.
The big one is a healing "Limit Break". It's essentially a recreation of what was a "hidden secret lost ability" for Bards in Tactics and a couple other games that functions as a gameplay "oh shit" button for groups. It's also a fucking AoE Raise/Curaga/Shell/Protect/Esuna, and I am invoking gameplay versus story segregation, interpreting it as a likely unattainable legend that would require active direct help from his divine patron to even attempt. No just no.
I would like to request swapping the stupid-ridiculous effect for something akin to the "Regen" song in some of the other games, XI, and if I remember right XIV 1.0, where it can work to speed physical healing and recovery the way his other powers work for other things. Much like the other two, it's increasing and spurring natural recovery and healing by giving power to it, not a direct healing effect itself; it would do enough to stabilize some life-threatening injuries, and shave a bit off recovery time for other things.
Since the effect draws on his reserves, he doesn't gain any benefit himself from the "mana regen" effect. He can get a lesser part of the benefit from the empathic/buffering effect and the healing-spur.
Fully healthy and with his energy system normal, his reserves would recover in an hour to a few hours; since he's not, I'd assume that for at least a few in-game "months" he's going to be looking at a full 24 hour period, and after that maybe 6-12 hours, as the "natural recovery/without assistance" scale.
They never specify which of the Twelve gods he's connected to as an Archon, but the energy inherent to it would be noticeable to anything/anyone with an ability to sense and identify energy or other beings. Given some of his tendencies, personality, and aptitudes, with a few other details, my headcanon guess is Oschon, the Wanderer, a wind-aspected deity said to watch over wanderers and vagrants, who also has close ties to the twin-deities that are Ul'dah's "protectors".
Supply List: Clothes, one short-sword type blade on a belt sheath, fifteen smaller knives and daggers of varying sizes (concealed). Three special items listed below.
Sharlayan visor: The thing clipped to his shoulder in most images; worn as a visor, it can be activated to allow whoever's wearing it to see Aetheric energy - essentially, he can see concentrations and patterns of "magic"/spiritual energy and life force while it's on. It's large, clunky, and not something that'd be possible to use in a high-stress situation. It's sturdily built, but if he can find tools he can adapt, he can only do minor maintenance, not serious repairs if it does get damaged.
It's oddly configured, very familiar before the possession, and the work of one of his comrades, so it wouldn't really trip the mask phobia.
In use
On the carrying clip
Bard "soulstone": A fairly old relic; soulstones were essentially used to pass down skills by the initial subject scribing bits of their skills, experience, and memory into it, for a future student to learn from. The civilization that created them would pass them down with later students adding some of what they learned to it.The stone looks like a small, somewhat flat piece of almost-opaque green gemstone of some kind with a harp engraved into it, about an inch and a half across.
They're finicky, and it takes both a basic skillset that's compatible with them to begin with and some degree of potential for the powers set to even use; once someone does manage to activate one, it's less anything fast and spectacular, and more a sort of semiconscious bits of guidance dribbled out, enough to get an idea of what you're trying to do and about how it should work to learn it properly yourself. Hypothetically there may be other information stored in them related to the general description, but nobody on Eorzea's managed to get more than the teaching aspect worked out.
At this point it's mostly a comfort thing and a minor support for the technical execution of his abilities while he's recovering; he's learned all he can without some sort of spectacular breakthrough in understanding how they work and how to interact with them, although hypothetically there may be other tricks possible to wring out of it somehow. (Can discuss, he WOULDN'T know how to get to it, so it's a "probably won't be a thing?"; there's a fairly broad pool of potential skills attached to the class-concept, so if it does come up I'd either point at any expansion/patch added things or something from a different FF that seemed fitting.)
Likely interpretation of the memory storage I'd say would be bits and fragments of things that'd be relevant, and maybe if someone were to figure out how to get deeper/more out of it, some bits about the people that actually scribed memories into it. While there might be some bits of the energy of the people that contributed, it's not a "soulstone" in the literal sense, and does not have any sentience or inhabiting being, nor is it made to do more than hold memories and bits of skills or knowledge.
*Linkpearl + Frame: Easily missed, it's basically a thin little jewelry-like frame around one ear with a small pearl-stone placed more like you'd expect of an earpiece than a decoration. It's an enchanted communication device, although it can only be used to "talk to" others of its "set", and has to be touch-activated to "send", although it'll "receive " freely. (Aka "Magical useless earpiece of +50 annoyance value" here.)
Game Transfers: N/A
Sample RP post: He was sure he'd dozed off at one of the tables in the Waking Sands. That should mean waking up in the same place, with the letters and messages he'd been going over, with people around and possibly specific people staying close in case there were any signs of something turning worse.
There weren't any rooms like this in the Waking Sands, or anywhere around Vesper Bay at all. He froze, closing his eyes and waiting, half hoping it'd turn out to be some kind of odd dream or the beginning of a half-waking nightmare, that he'd be what passed for home after.
When the slaughterhouse didn't go away, a hand went to his neck, fumbling around the cloth choker in case there was anything else; he wanted to be relieved that there wasn't a thin chain with a droplet pendant again, but that just raised a hundred more questions about why he'd apparently lost time, how he'd gotten here, and who or what had walked off with him. Had Lahabrea figured out a way to get a claw back in, or had something else managed to get at him even in what should've been a safe place?
Something creaked a little more loud nearby, and the next moment he'd gone from still leaning limply against the table to crouched with a knife in his hands; when there wasn't any sign of further attack, he lowered the knife, standing up slowly.
He hadn't been disarmed at all; in fact, nothing of his was disturbed, and there wasn't any sign of anything hostile directly present.
“Jumping at shadows.” He slipped the knife back into hiding, slipping back to a faint, unbothered smile at himself as he got a better look around at the room, and the ...shadows on the wall, something which got a flicker between the apparent shadows and the places people and hanging pieces of meat would have to be. “...Or hauntings.” Perfectly fine, nothing to worry about. He slipped towards the door, stepping around one of the hypothetical “there should be someone here” spots with a quiet “beg pardon”, out the door into the hallway.
When another look around revealed no sign of whoever'd taken him or what was going on, a hand went up to the thin bit of silver curled around one ear; if he were at least in Linkpearl range – But that was met with the kind of vague echoing-hiss that went with no ability to reach its siblings. “No calling home then.”, he muttered, a moment of flat annoyance covering for trying to not think about all of the things going wrong that could imply and how very much not up to acting without at least backup he was right now, and then the act was firmly back in place as he gave a look up and down the hallway.
“Anyone there? I seem to have misplaced myself.”
It wasn't as loud as it probably should've been for hailing down whoever was around, but he was still debating between “Act completely clueless and innocent” and “Be as paranoid as possible and try to avoid notice”; if he hadn't been restrained or disarmed, then it was a safe bet that whatever was responsible knew he was here and wasn't considering him a threat, assuming they were anywhere reachable, and who knew? Maybe it would be traps, maybe there'd be others within earshot in the same boat.
Contact info: shirhanblade (AIM),
DW:
kyanve_te_shirhanCharacter: Thancred
Canon: FFXIV: Realm Reborn
Version: N/A
Canon Point: Post-main storyline as of 2.0
Age: ~27
Gender: Male
History: The wiki has VERY VERY LITTLE.
(As a note, there's a few places with references to an Adventurer with the Echo, a power that's basically a "HI, MINE" from the 'mother-goddess', Hydaelyn. That would be a player character. The part that gets messy is that the storyline focuses on an individual player character, but each City-State has a different starting storyline, the different starting storylines DO interact with each other later and are definitely all canon occurrences, and some of the events include implications that there is a group being gathered, so basically by canon there's four to eight nameless customizable characters that start out in each of the various cities, converge into the organization Thancred's a part of, and end up being involved in several major events as a group.)
Thancred's originally from an isolated northern city-state in the mountains; Sharlayan was a city dedicated to the God of Knowledge, Thaliak. Thanks to geography and a few other factors, they didn't have much in the way of conflict, and the city-state centered around colleges and libraries. He's one of a small group of "Archons", people with a connection to one or another of the Twelve, the guardian deities of the world. One of the older and more powerful Archons, Louisoix, gathered Thancred and the others as students and followers, forming a group to work against various threats to the continent and world; while most of the others are mostly casters and likely from the colleges, Thancred is a bard and rogue that specializes more in trickery and likely didn't come from the colleges.
Under their mentor's leadership, they left their reclusive homeland to spread out across the continent, trying to work against various threats and bring the city-states that would listen together against the worst dangers; Thancred was responsible for working in and around Ul'dah, a desert city referred to as one where "anything could be bought" and "the city that turns sand into gold". While he managed to become familiar to the leadership and a few important figures as an ally, he and the others had limited success arranging an alliance until the larger and more powerful Empire from a neighboring continent conquered one of the northern city-states and destroyed Sharlayan in an aerial assault. That war came to a head in a major battle, with an Imperial legion met by the combined forces of three of the four remaining city-states, as well as various adventurers and mercenaries.
Louisoix and his students had uncovered an Imperial plan to break an ancient binding on the Elder Primal Bahamut, a being capable of wreaking devastation across the continent; Thancred and the other students spread out to shrines across the continent to try to channel aid from the Twelve to Louisoix, who took the field directly, in an attempt to re-bind the dragon god. The binding failed, and while Louisoix managed to sort-of banish the Primal, he was among the casualties; Bahamut's rage had wiped out nearly all of the forces on both sides that'd been on the field, as well as left scars and damage across the continent.
Left without their mentor, Thancred and the others joined forces with the remnants of another neutral group decimated in that Calamity, under the other group's leader, Minfilia. The newly formed Scions of the Seventh Dawn had their hands full trying to help rebuild, without much time to mourn their losses; Thancred set to helping Ul'dah recover, still shaken from the losses of the Calamity.
Five years passed, and while Ul'dah started to look like its normal self, the pile of grenades he was juggling hadn't really gone down; an attempted assassination of the Sultana signaled worse forces than the Empire and the various hostile beastman tribes moving against the people. His investigations into whoever was pulling strings and meddling kept coming up empty, and Thancred was getting stretched thin as it was when he ended up on an investigation of a string of kidnappings and thefts that pointed towards sacrifices and a summoning. He had some help from an adventurer that'd shown signs of a particularly strong Echo; after catching a merchant that'd been paid off to kidnap refugees and hand over to the beastmen for sacrifice, the adventurer went with a group of the Ul'dahn military to try to trap the beastmen before more damage could be done, while Thancred rode back to rally backup.
Instead of coming back to a battle, he came back to an empty site; the second traitor that'd been indicated by some clues he'd passed over had warned the Amal'jaa beastmen, and the entire "ambush party" had been captured. He led the backup into the heart of Amal'jaa territory too late to be any good; the Amal'jaa had managed to summon a manifestation of their Primal deity, Ifrit. While the Echo had protected the Adventurer and helped them fight off the Primal, Ifrit had "Tempered" the rest of the captives, irreversibly fusing his power to their being, claiming them in body and mind.
The deaths of the Tempered soldiers and refugees weighed heavily on his conscience, and formed the last weight on a list of other stresses, problems, and incidents of coming up short or just not being able to be everywhere enough to handle things; Thancred blamed himself for it, dodged Minfilia attempting to shake him out of it, and put on a show of acting like everything was fine to everyone else. He threw himself into his work harder, driving himself to exhaustion and still coming up with no answers on several major problems; his deteriorating mental state left an opening for something else to get a foothold without his knowledge.
He'd been investigating meddling by the Ascians, little-seen and less-understood agents of the Void that had long-term designs of dragging the rest of existence into enough chaos that the God of the Void could claim dominance and change reality to its will; they worked via taking human hosts, starting devil's bargains and manipulating events. Their leader, Lahabrea, had led the Imperial officer in charge of the last invasion to Bahamut, but lost his host in the Calamity.
Lahabrea took the opening Thancred left to start working on him, quietly fraying at Thancred's condition more to cover things and using Thancred's own ragged condition to keep the Archon from realizing how wrong things were. Threaded around things so that Thancred and the others would go none the wiser, Lahabrea began hijacking his body for short periods of time, causing problems across a large area. For what Thancred knew during this time, he was coming up with more problems, running himself ragged and worn thin; eventually, Minfilia ordered him to stay at the base and rest, worried about him.
Shortly after that, an Imperial squad struck their hidden base, the Waking Sands, in a pinpoint ambush timed for as little resistance as possible. Most of the agents and members within the base were slaughtered; Minfilia, two of the other Archons, and their secretary and record-keeper were taken prisoner. The two remaining Archons and the few agents and Adventurers that had been out in the field returned to a base filled with corpses and a last warning that their comrades were now Imperial captives. Thancred was unaccounted for; Lahabrea had taken over completely, and was now letting him be aware of what was going on, powerless to do anything about it.
After some scrambling, the others managed to stage a successful, if messy, rescue; Lahabrea tipped his hand as they fled, taking off his mask and hood so they'd know that his host was their comrade - fully aware that they'd know there wasn't any known way to save an Ascian's host.
Lahabrea had been helping the new officer in charge of Imperial assets on the continent rebuild an ancient weapon, the last great work of a now-dead civilization; once it was functioning, reports of its first movements against some of the Beast Tribes were allowed to get back to the Eorzean leaders, and the Imperial leader sent a demand of surrender to the leaders of the three City-States that'd taken the field six years previous.
Instead of a reply, the Scions helped the Alliance coordinate an assault, each of the City-States attacking one of the Empire's bases on the continent; the Adventurers with Hydaelyn's protection used the assault on the central base as cover to break into the sanctum where the Ultima Weapon was kept, with a secondary mission to try to save Thancred. Unknown to the Imperial officer, Lahabrea had been present when the Weapon was created; Lahabrea hadn't told him everything it was capable of, and had backdoors to take control of it. Lahabrea's main target was Hydaelyn's Chosen; once they were in the sanctum confronting it, he took over, activating a power that was essentially the Weapon being a reusable tactical nuke. Hydaelyn managed to shield them from the first blast, but the protection flagged and vanished as they defeated it. Lahabrea took this as an opening and attacked them himself, using Thancred as a virtual hostage; if they attacked him, they'd be killing their ally and comrade. Hydaelyn had other plans, and had kept just enough of what power she could spare for direct intervention in reserve to wait for her chosen to make an opening, driving Lahabrea off and breaking his hold over the Archon. The Goddess's power spent on that, they narrowly escaped the collapsing remains of the base with Thancred, alive and freed, but unconscious and the worse for wear.
While he physically recovered quickly, the possession had left other damage; he was faced with a long recovery and the others working on figuring out how to repair the harm done. The damage was substantial enough to bar him from going back to his usual work. As much as he wasn't happy to be stuck at base, he had no desire to risk repeating his past mistakes, and instead set to work helping go over intelligence brought in and assisting with research at the base.
Personality: Thancred is, canonly, a bard. You don't get to see him sing much in canon, but the ACTOR/performer part comes through loud and clear. On a good day, Thancred has a few edges of being sarcastic and smart-aleck, but is an upbeat, even occasionally flippant-seeming presence, quick-witted and cheerful, quick with compliments. He's clearly perfectly sharp, but will flounce through things in a way that it's hard to tell whether he was paying enough attention to notice or not - and him letting on what he did or didn't notice could come later in the conversation or two weeks later.
On a bad day, he has a few sharper edges of being sarcastic and a smart-aleck, but is an upbeat, even occasionally flippant-seeming presence, quick-witted and cheerful, and quick with compliments. He has a public face to maintain, after all.
He might occasionally express being worried, afraid, upset, or troubled to a very short listed of trusted few - Minfilia and occasionally one of the other Archons - but for the most part, if he's acting like something is actually wrong, then he's probably having some kind of a breakdown; he's a very good actor, and very good at keeping up a "public face" whether he's actually doing as well as he sounds or not. It will break a bit for a sort of "work mode" where it can gain a few sharper edges and he'll show anger more easily than anything else, but for the most part even in a sharper mood he doesn't really go somber unless the situation would make his usual act inappropriate.
Trust issues are definitely part of it; for all that he usually plays to "faith in humanity and hope for the future", he works intel in a city where "You could buy ANYTHING" is a descriptor, and often has to have a finger in all the worst areas. This is something that does show through if you're someone he's working with or someone involved in work in a position for him to be talking about it, as he can be a little paranoid and all too aware of how selfish people can be and how easily even good intentions can get warped. He's not likely to openly confront someone with suspicions until he has evidence to confirm them, and is perfectly capable of acting friendly and open in the meantime, but he will hide things like crazy until he's settled that someone is trustworthy. He likes people, he's social, but he's still evasive and doesn't let many actually close.
The other part of him keeping the same act when he's not in such a great place is a simple bit of idea of purpose. Louisoix gathered them to try to fend off a coming shadow over the land, and after Louisoix's death, the Scions of the Seventh Dawn had a stated mission to try to restore the land and bring it out of the darker era it was teetering into. Add that to the implications of having a support power-set that relies on using performance to mundanely lift spirits and help morale, with other power to turn that into a supernatural effect, and some of his evasive tendency to mask and play "public face" has another purpose than paranoia. He has a mission to try to maintain a sense of hope in the world, and it's a lot harder to encourage it in others if he's being a visible ball of fears and doubts himself.
For all his trust issues, paranoia, and awareness of the worst of human nature, Thancred actually likes people, and most sentient beings as a whole. Give him time off or even just time where he doesn't need to chase things as intensely, and he will be off in the city somewhere being more positively social; the shameless skirt-chasing seen before the Calamity had the mark that most of it was flattery and attention paid to the object - he flirts by building up the other person, and does seem to be in it as much to make others happy as to enjoy himself.
His current position requires him to deal with people that can be massively flawed, greedy, and selfish as "people he's protecting". As much as he's wary and cautious, he doesn't chafe at it, and his reaction when one of them crosses a moral event horizon is sometimes as much disappointment as righteous outrage. His paranoia is pragmatic and couched in an acceptance that people are often flawed, ignorant, misguided or stupid, but not necessarily "evil". As long as someone hasn't crossed enough of a moral event horizon, he's perfectly willing to keep arm's length and paranoid caution but still allow and encourage second chances.
(There are a few exceptions to "fondness for sentient beings, flaws and all". An Ascian or something too similar to them would reflexively be "The other side of the battlefield" without proof otherwise, and he has a prickly antipathy for some of the more violent and zealous beastman tribes they've been fighting off for decades. Considering the history, it's a prejudice founded in informed expectation of hostility.)
That same love of people turns into a selfless streak that, in its negative aspect, was a large part of what drove him into the hole. Even in his more cutting moments, he's devoted his existence to trying to protect others and improve the world, and the times he does get angry or spiteful are typically motivated by someone making others suffer for selfish, petty, hateful, or sadistic reasons. Normally, he does enjoy his work, and seeing someone he helped do well or getting to duck off and see people happy and the city doing well is a huge support to him. On the other hand, he worries about not being good enough and not being capable, and that others will suffer for it if he falls short or makes a mistake.
The mental breakdown that Lahabrea used was a vaguely recent one, although the beginnings of it started with Louisoix's death and the loss of his homeland. Beyond being a mentor and leader, Thancred is one of the ones that talks about Louisoix as a father-figure. The scars are still healing, and it's visible with Thancred in a few of his lapses; part of his breakdown includes the line, "If Louisoix were still here this never would've happened". Thancred lost a great deal of security, and then was thrown from that loss into trying to clean up the entire continent being damaged. His resolve that his job was the right thing to do didn't waver, but he gained a strong fear that they'd fail again on that scale, and an awareness that the continent and possibly the rest of the world would pay the price if they did. Besides Louisoix's death, even having high odds of a sketchy background, he has wistful comments about Sharlayan that leak through his mask; his homeland is something that exists in past tense. He also acts younger than the others, and is likely the youngest of the "Circle".
Lahabrea's possession left him in an even more complicated tangle. Besides the obvious external trauma of being used to kill and torture old friends and comrades, and try to destroy everything he cared about, Lahabrea was clearly able to rifle through his memories and thoughts, and there's heavy implications that Lahabrea was perfectly able to communicate with him and mess with him during the possession. The format of the game makes it hard to judge time, but going by what happened and about how much time it'd probably take, there was between six weeks and three months where Lahabrea was weaving in and out of control; after that, there's at least another two to four months of full active possession. From his dialogue and actions during the first part, Lahabrea was helping along his mental state and doing some active work to erode his stability further before taking over completely. While Hydaelyn's intervention burned out any remnants of Lahabrea's energy and gave a nice burst of support and encouragement, that's still a Hell of a mess to get drug through, and a lot to work on coping with. He definitely has gotten a guilt-ding that getting possessed by the leader of the Ascians was "screwing up"; he even frames the idea of eventually getting back to field work as "taking the tarnish off of my good name", and apologizes for it. The only people that would've known he was Lahabrea's host are the other Scions and maybe the leaders of the three City-States in the Alliance, none of whom made any motion to hold it against him; he's the one holding it against himself.
To his credit out of that trauma, his top priority is "NOT REPEATING THAT", and he's made some very self-aware nods to his own issues that got him into the mess in the first place. He isn't arguing with the idea of staying on desk work until other people feel like he's well enough to go out again - having faint wistful moments of unhappiness at being cooped up, but not arguing. It's a very delicate and awkward place where he does know what of his own mental state was used against him, but he's basically still worn out, exhausted, and bleeding all over the mental carpet a little. Knowing what got him into it hasn't made the issues go away, just made him aware of them and wary of the lines where they start turning dangerous.
As of his canon point, he's haggard, exhausted, and still reeling from the possession; while he'll have a gradual recovery, he's being taken from something where he's rebuilding himself from a serious mess of trauma, and will be off-kilter. He'll be trying to hold up his usual acts and masks, but they'll take time to recover; what will be in game for his first few Days/Nights will be Thancred picking up pieces and scraping himself up, and he likely will not do as well as normal for that time period keeping his masks together and keeping stable. He'll want people to believe he's fine, at least until he gets to where someone feels safe to him, but he's not nearly as superhuman as he'd like to believe and just plain doesn't have the energy and ability to do it consistently and well in his current condition.
Fears:
*Failure. He's very tactically clever and an intellectual pragmatist with a good idea of what's at stake and what kind of damage is done when they lose or fail, and he takes that responsibility very seriously. He's gotten a good whack on the nose for letting it drive him completely into despair, but some of his current drive to get better is still fear of failure and potentially repeating something like that.
As a corollary, innocent people suffering because of something he did, didn't do, or did wrong is a big fear of his.
*Ignorance, roughly; not knowing enough, not being able to tell what will actually work, not knowing what plans are good and what plans might make things worse, failing due to a gap in information and making things worse while trying to fix them. This partly ties to Louisoix's loss, as he lost a great deal of guidance; he trusts Minfilia's judgment, but not to the extent he did Louisoix, and he's lived most of his life at least able to check in with that when he was unsure of things.
*Being taken over or getting possessed. Lahabrea gave him a new phobia with all the damage done using his body, and it's helping keep him from complaining about being cooped up; he doesn't like being stuck indoors on deskwork, but it's better than risking getting Tempered or otherwise taken over again.
*Wearing literal masks. This is a mild headcanon addition. Lahabrea and the other Ascians used very distinctive masks to both cover their host's identity and identify themselves; he was fully aware through the worse part of the possession, and the only time Lahabrea took his own mask off was to taunt Minfilia and the others with Thancred's position as his host, and later, to try to use Thancred as a hostage and prevent his targets from fighting back effectively. You're probably not getting a mask on Thancred anytime soon without at least serious discomfort, if not a risk of worse phobic/trauma reactions.
Weaknesses:
*Human ferret: He IS capable of relaxing, but he doesn't do well with being told to sit still or being contained and restricted. If there's something to be doing he'll want to be involved, if there's something curious he'll want to investigate, and "stay here and don't leave" is a recipe for a very unhappy bard. He'll stay put if there's good reasons to sit still or stay put, but he won't really enjoy it.
*Overactive sense of responsibility: He's trying to be better and knows that it's a big part of what got him in trouble, but he still will take on more guilt than he's earned and feel responsible for more than what he can actually control.
*What no I'm fine :D: If something is bothering him or wrong, whether or not he'll let on will depend on who he's dealing with. It's NOT easy to end up on the list of people he'll trust or feel safe dropping the "I'm okay! :D " mask with, and his skill as an actor sometimes works against him, since he can be a few inches from falling apart and at least manage to not act as bad off as he actually is with most people. If the person he's talking to isn't a medic/healer, he can and will do this with physical injuries too, or try to.
*Daredevil Streak: His idea of a vote of confidence for someone heading into a likely conflict or dangerous situation is "save some for me", or a teasing comment about them getting all the fun. Just because he's primarily support and intel doesn't mean he can't be an adrenaline junkie given the chance. This sometimes doesn't help the balance between "desire to protect others" and "Survival Instincts".
*Never Say Die: He can be completely terrified of failure, falling apart mentally, running on twelve hours of sleep spread out over a week, and still be capable of dragging his carcass out to try to do something and keep struggling to change things. This is a weakness because it can mean he'll push himself far past his own limits and wear himself out, or past the point where he starts making stupid mistakes out of exhaustion. He's a little more aware of this as a personal weakness now that it's been taken advantage of horrifically, but he still isn't the best judge of his own limits; he will sometimes need someone smacking him over the head and telling him to take care of himself and stop pushing himself.
*Pre-industrial alien world: Eorzea's pre-industrial; Ul'dah shows signs of starting to build some of the technology that would be associated with an industrial revolution, but it's isolated and hasn't been embraced or spread. The Empire has higher technology, albeit of a sort that'd be completely unfamiliar to most Earth-type worlds, but he's only familiar with that in a tactical sense - capabilities, vague sense of what does what and how to sabotage it. Not only will he not have a clue what to do with technology past about early 1800's at the highest, he'll likely be thrown off occasionally by anything Earth-similar working differently from anything he'd recognize.
*Ascian Possession Survivor/Weakened Psychic/Spiritual Defenses: Yeah, that whole possession thing. Besides the psychological trauma and abuse he went through, his energy system's a little fucked up right now. Some of it will heal with time, but there's some of it that will take other help where there's essentially holes poked in him and things rearranged. He has the skillset of someone highly trained and experienced with his powers, but his reserves are a part of what's been hit, elaborated on in that section. Also, he's more susceptible to influencing effects; from how it's described, he's essentially got a few soul-level gaping wounds and a couple holes that're open that something else could use to alter or try to influence/interfere with him.
Mundane Strengths/Abilities:
*Combat experience: Thancred has a number of hidden and not-so-hidden knives and knows how to use them well, both close-range and thrown. He's very much a hit and run "aim for weak spots and don't get hit yourself" fighter, and he's not combat-focused, but he's good enough to do a job that comes with a massive target sign with confidence.
*Intelligence and Investigations: He spends much of his time information gathering one way or another, and it's the main skill and specialty he brings to the group. He's most experienced with urban areas and deserts, but has had to travel and deal with other environments before. He's capable with mundane stealth and sneaking up on/past people, although it's got the usual limitations of visibility, cover, attention and wariness of the target, etc. - sneaky, not supernaturally stealthed.
*Aetheric studies + education: He's not one of the mages, but he WAS taught by Louisoix and trained in the Sharlayan scholarly pursuits enough to keep up with the others. He has the rough equivalent of a university education circa the early 1800's, including study of metaphysics, magic, and spiritual energy among the more normal fields; the basic laws he's used to will be, at best, hit and miss to completely wrong, but he's used to a partly scientific/scholastic approach to understanding strangeness and handling unusual phenomenon by "try to figure out what it is".
*People skills: Thancred gets a chunk of his information by simply being around people and getting them talking, then putting pieces together or reading between the lines. He's usually sharp at handling people, has a good eye for reading reactions and figuring out their mentalities and personalities, and can often get along with people well.
*Never Say Die: He can be terrified that the odds are completely against him, running on twelve hours of sleep spread over a week, physically and emotionally wrung-out exhausted and still drag his carcass out to try and do something and keep struggling. He spent the entire possession struggling as much as he was capable of, even if it was mostly useless, and it's very hard to get him to actually give up. Hydaelyn's intervention and a desire to pay that forward will probably reinforce this.
*Performance, Acting, Music, Sleight of Hand: He's an excellent actor; besides the whole "public face" habit, he has a few canon incidents of pulling off other deceptions and acts, and shows signs of familiarity with at least street performance. (The shift to public face when he's worse off is clearly conscious and intentional, too; when Minfilia's trying to drag him out of his spiral, the second the door opens to the Adventurer walking in, he does a complete 180 on body language, voice inflection, EVERYTHING like flicking a switch.)
His powers set depends on being halfway competent musically and he's good at it; he can sing very well, and given how some of it is learned, would be familiar and competent with small harps even if he doesn't use them often. He's also VERY good at sleight of hand, enough to pickpocket, and demonstrates being able to do "small objects appear in hand" tricks, "where did those knives come from", and conceal things fast and without it being obvious what he did.
*Diverse world background: Eorzea has multiple sentient races living side by side, as well as Beast tribes that are sentient but isolated and vary in how approachable they are, and even occasions of some independent smaller Voidsent that are nonhostile. While there are prejudices in different areas, Thancred's in a position that mostly discourages picking them up. He' used to working side by side with all manner of nonhuman creatures as a normal, taken for granted, fact of life.
This extends to sentient constructs and artificial beings; they're not unheard of, and it's treated as fairly normal ethical standard that someone with a sense of morals will treat them as "people" deserving of basic respect. A sentient construct is also on the list of people he owes his life to. He will see the idea that an artificial being is "not a real person" as slightly odd and very dumb.
*Mostly Useless Survival Skills: He can survive well enough to travel, work, and spend extended periods out in the Thanalan desert. As there aren't large arid light scrub deserts in Maison, this will probably be mostly useless. It at least means he does have a GOOD understanding of dehydration and heat stroke and how to avoid/deal with them!
Considering his background, job, and the education he got from working with Louisoix, he probably has an early 1800's grasp of rescue first aid.
Sensitivity/Magical Ability: Thancred doesn't really sense things himself much past the sort of "something isn't right/this place is creepy/this place is safe" sort of vibes a normal person would get.
The Archon part is not exactly well explained in canon. There was a description of them as avatars and incarnations, but from where that story is found in canon, it could be true or it could be a case of the NPC in question being an unreliable narrator; it comes from an archivist in an isolated area who "learned" that from old folklore. If they are incarnations, it's in a somewhat Hindu sense, as functionally separate individuals from the god or goddess they're an incarnation of. Judging by what's said by the Archons themselves, while they don't give anything that'd be a direct answer to "are they or aren't they", the only one that seems like they'd have known for sure was Louisoix. None of them draw attention to it given a choice, and on the rare occasion it is mentioned, it's an offhand "...Well, it's a thing." where it sounds like they might not know themselves.
Going by how the world-physics work, it might also be an immaterial question of semantics.
As far as what this means in practice, going by what they're capable of, it mostly seems to be a boost to whatever magical or supernatural abilities they've learned, and some sort of longevity. Some of them have been known and active long enough to be older than they look; going by Louisoix, it's slowed aging rather than halted, but it's hard to tell how much, and Thancred seems to be the youngest. He will register as divinely-touched and that the main structure of his energy system is divine in origin, but between Lahabrea and being cut off from any active channel to his patron, he isn't capable of anything past "normal range for a human of his world". If his system were repaired, he'd be a bit stronger than a normal human with his main powersets, pretty much just enough for occasional "I call bullshit on you being normal/human" incidents.
He has tattoos on either side of his neck that were actually actively glowing during the group effort to channel power into Louisoix's binding of Bahamut. It's very much a canon thing that there are special inks made to carry and hold aetheric energy that're used in certain magics, there is canon implications of tattoos with enchantments or made to help focus power, and all the Archons have similar tattoos - they're passive focuses related to that.
He knows basic cure magic - what's already been discussed for a "Cure" spell; any given casting would heal a localized injury. Given that all of the Archons can do this, it's probably something Louisoix insisted they all learn whether they were going into magical studies or not. With his damage, assume he can manage two or three casts in a twenty-four-hour period in his current condition, and that using it will either weaken or preclude him using the bardic abilities for that period.
His main actual powerset is essentially a set of augmentation abilities channeled through song or music; the effects will last during and somewhere between ten minutes to a half-hour after, and will be a continual drain on his power for that time.
Ordinarily being actively and majorly hostile would be enough to mitigate or block the effects, but it's basically outright enmity; someone who is within hearing range (or here, in the same room) that finds him annoying and a total pain in the ass that they dislike will get the beneficial effect, someone intending to kill him or actively trying to harm him or those he's protecting/with won't. (Because honestly, outside of gameplay conventions, it'd be a pretty damn useless ability for "Often sent out to back up troops on the battlefield" if it were a completely non-discriminating AoE and what it will interact with makes that not seem like a huge stretch of logic.)
The existing powers in FFXIV are essentially recovery effects.
One is a "Mana/other-resource regen boost" in game mechanics; something that augments the recovery of reserves and power - essentially he can speed up the natural recovery of reserves for magic and other abilities enough to allow those within range to go a couple times past where they should've run out of power before they actually run dry so long as they're working while the effect is active.
He can do a sort of projective empathic effect with it.
The most obvious/commonly stated one is essentially doing the same sort of "speeding recovery/nudging towards a healthier state" for emotional trauma, stress, and exhaustion. Essentially, the empathic effect functions by helping restore mental energy and empathic support/encouragement with a very mild calming effect; it doesn't prevent backsliding, make external stresses go away, or create mental/emotional patterns that weren't at least possible for that person. It's described as essentially something that was used in battlefields to do for morale and stability what the other effects do for physical health and energy reserves, "bolstering and rousing spirits". (It's something that exists in storyline and lore as a major part of the "class" but doesn't have any translation in game mechanics normally. By story mechanics there's probably a few variations on the exact empathic effect, although all will follow the same basic rules.)
Gameplay-wise Bards are WEIRD in XIV compared to every other FF, so there's a couple things I'm going to fudge at.
The big one is a healing "Limit Break". It's essentially a recreation of what was a "hidden secret lost ability" for Bards in Tactics and a couple other games that functions as a gameplay "oh shit" button for groups. It's also a fucking AoE Raise/Curaga/Shell/Protect/Esuna, and I am invoking gameplay versus story segregation, interpreting it as a likely unattainable legend that would require active direct help from his divine patron to even attempt. No just no.
I would like to request swapping the stupid-ridiculous effect for something akin to the "Regen" song in some of the other games, XI, and if I remember right XIV 1.0, where it can work to speed physical healing and recovery the way his other powers work for other things. Much like the other two, it's increasing and spurring natural recovery and healing by giving power to it, not a direct healing effect itself; it would do enough to stabilize some life-threatening injuries, and shave a bit off recovery time for other things.
Since the effect draws on his reserves, he doesn't gain any benefit himself from the "mana regen" effect. He can get a lesser part of the benefit from the empathic/buffering effect and the healing-spur.
Fully healthy and with his energy system normal, his reserves would recover in an hour to a few hours; since he's not, I'd assume that for at least a few in-game "months" he's going to be looking at a full 24 hour period, and after that maybe 6-12 hours, as the "natural recovery/without assistance" scale.
They never specify which of the Twelve gods he's connected to as an Archon, but the energy inherent to it would be noticeable to anything/anyone with an ability to sense and identify energy or other beings. Given some of his tendencies, personality, and aptitudes, with a few other details, my headcanon guess is Oschon, the Wanderer, a wind-aspected deity said to watch over wanderers and vagrants, who also has close ties to the twin-deities that are Ul'dah's "protectors".
Supply List: Clothes, one short-sword type blade on a belt sheath, fifteen smaller knives and daggers of varying sizes (concealed). Three special items listed below.
Sharlayan visor: The thing clipped to his shoulder in most images; worn as a visor, it can be activated to allow whoever's wearing it to see Aetheric energy - essentially, he can see concentrations and patterns of "magic"/spiritual energy and life force while it's on. It's large, clunky, and not something that'd be possible to use in a high-stress situation. It's sturdily built, but if he can find tools he can adapt, he can only do minor maintenance, not serious repairs if it does get damaged.
It's oddly configured, very familiar before the possession, and the work of one of his comrades, so it wouldn't really trip the mask phobia.
In use
On the carrying clip
Bard "soulstone": A fairly old relic; soulstones were essentially used to pass down skills by the initial subject scribing bits of their skills, experience, and memory into it, for a future student to learn from. The civilization that created them would pass them down with later students adding some of what they learned to it.The stone looks like a small, somewhat flat piece of almost-opaque green gemstone of some kind with a harp engraved into it, about an inch and a half across.
They're finicky, and it takes both a basic skillset that's compatible with them to begin with and some degree of potential for the powers set to even use; once someone does manage to activate one, it's less anything fast and spectacular, and more a sort of semiconscious bits of guidance dribbled out, enough to get an idea of what you're trying to do and about how it should work to learn it properly yourself. Hypothetically there may be other information stored in them related to the general description, but nobody on Eorzea's managed to get more than the teaching aspect worked out.
At this point it's mostly a comfort thing and a minor support for the technical execution of his abilities while he's recovering; he's learned all he can without some sort of spectacular breakthrough in understanding how they work and how to interact with them, although hypothetically there may be other tricks possible to wring out of it somehow. (Can discuss, he WOULDN'T know how to get to it, so it's a "probably won't be a thing?"; there's a fairly broad pool of potential skills attached to the class-concept, so if it does come up I'd either point at any expansion/patch added things or something from a different FF that seemed fitting.)
Likely interpretation of the memory storage I'd say would be bits and fragments of things that'd be relevant, and maybe if someone were to figure out how to get deeper/more out of it, some bits about the people that actually scribed memories into it. While there might be some bits of the energy of the people that contributed, it's not a "soulstone" in the literal sense, and does not have any sentience or inhabiting being, nor is it made to do more than hold memories and bits of skills or knowledge.
*Linkpearl + Frame: Easily missed, it's basically a thin little jewelry-like frame around one ear with a small pearl-stone placed more like you'd expect of an earpiece than a decoration. It's an enchanted communication device, although it can only be used to "talk to" others of its "set", and has to be touch-activated to "send", although it'll "receive " freely. (Aka "Magical useless earpiece of +50 annoyance value" here.)
Game Transfers: N/A
Sample RP post: He was sure he'd dozed off at one of the tables in the Waking Sands. That should mean waking up in the same place, with the letters and messages he'd been going over, with people around and possibly specific people staying close in case there were any signs of something turning worse.
There weren't any rooms like this in the Waking Sands, or anywhere around Vesper Bay at all. He froze, closing his eyes and waiting, half hoping it'd turn out to be some kind of odd dream or the beginning of a half-waking nightmare, that he'd be what passed for home after.
When the slaughterhouse didn't go away, a hand went to his neck, fumbling around the cloth choker in case there was anything else; he wanted to be relieved that there wasn't a thin chain with a droplet pendant again, but that just raised a hundred more questions about why he'd apparently lost time, how he'd gotten here, and who or what had walked off with him. Had Lahabrea figured out a way to get a claw back in, or had something else managed to get at him even in what should've been a safe place?
Something creaked a little more loud nearby, and the next moment he'd gone from still leaning limply against the table to crouched with a knife in his hands; when there wasn't any sign of further attack, he lowered the knife, standing up slowly.
He hadn't been disarmed at all; in fact, nothing of his was disturbed, and there wasn't any sign of anything hostile directly present.
“Jumping at shadows.” He slipped the knife back into hiding, slipping back to a faint, unbothered smile at himself as he got a better look around at the room, and the ...shadows on the wall, something which got a flicker between the apparent shadows and the places people and hanging pieces of meat would have to be. “...Or hauntings.” Perfectly fine, nothing to worry about. He slipped towards the door, stepping around one of the hypothetical “there should be someone here” spots with a quiet “beg pardon”, out the door into the hallway.
When another look around revealed no sign of whoever'd taken him or what was going on, a hand went up to the thin bit of silver curled around one ear; if he were at least in Linkpearl range – But that was met with the kind of vague echoing-hiss that went with no ability to reach its siblings. “No calling home then.”, he muttered, a moment of flat annoyance covering for trying to not think about all of the things going wrong that could imply and how very much not up to acting without at least backup he was right now, and then the act was firmly back in place as he gave a look up and down the hallway.
“Anyone there? I seem to have misplaced myself.”
It wasn't as loud as it probably should've been for hailing down whoever was around, but he was still debating between “Act completely clueless and innocent” and “Be as paranoid as possible and try to avoid notice”; if he hadn't been restrained or disarmed, then it was a safe bet that whatever was responsible knew he was here and wasn't considering him a threat, assuming they were anywhere reachable, and who knew? Maybe it would be traps, maybe there'd be others within earshot in the same boat.
