how did i become a lookalike?

of someone you used to love

Zinaida Kirkegrim @ Seraph/Dynamis

Viera sometimes vacationing as a hyur for helmet rights. Pointy ears, masc model, character canonly F
- Coerthan mercenary, fake miqo'te || tank main, knight liker-Admin is 18+, this is an RP alt! also carrd is perpetual wip

like the shadow on the wall

Full name: Zinaida Kirkegrim (Zin, Kirke)
Age: Very
Gender: Cis Female (She/her any pronouns? He/they also's fun)AT A GLANCE:A wall of metal, usually. Unlike typical viera ears, the ends of hers seem cropped to a point and tattered. A slight slouch doesn't take away from their imposing figure nevertheless.Always wearing a wooden mask, and those who look very close (or simply catch her at an opportune time) might see she only has one eye behind it; the other covered by a patch, a bloom of scarred tissue around it. That which remains seems to glow at times, a sharp and bright blue... but most of the time, it's simply dull and tired-looking. Particular folks might notice the wooden mask's enchanted to alter the bearer's voice slightly, sounding more distant than where she actually stands. Offputting. What a weirdo.Right side of their head's hair is much messier and overgrown than the other. Plenty of oddly-trimmed locks and a hasty ponytail barely tidies it up. Honestly, a bit of a mess, but she doesn't mind it so much.For all this, she's quite cordial. Polite. She needs work, and therefore can't be flipping tables or snapping at every other person. Once she has work though--plenty of freedom to sic that anger when its needed on command of a superior.CANON JOBS:
Paladin, Dark Knight, Gunbreaker, Red Mage, Dragoon*, Samurai*, Sage* Blue Mage*
She's mostly wielding a sword of some size most of the time. Sheer brawn is usually enough, but she's a bit tricky with magic she's picked up over the many years as well, something one might not expect out of her. Glamour and her little disappearing/displacement act notwithstanding... She's quite fond of charging a weapon with lightning to give them a little extra hurt.A LITTLE MORE:
She's been fighting since long before adventurers' guilds were even a thought: while she'll care enough to lend a hand to new blood so they don't rush headlong into death, they have their own reputation to maintain.And, has her gil to earn from it more importantly. Name and image are valuable as the gold she's paid for her menacing mien. It's lost as quickly as it's earned somehow, keeping the eternal knight available for hire whenever she's so desired.Upon... particular events recently, she has yearned ever to travel further than her native Eorzea and East-Othard, damn the latest dangers of Bozja, of Ilsabard and Dalmasca! Damn their occupations. Damn especially that she hasn't the freedom to simply run there herself. What is her real name, behind Zinaida? Beyond Myste? Older still than ████?

so dark, how did something so sweet tear us apart
oh, on a sinking ship with a heavy heart

(this part's long 'cause it's partially writing notes for myself. honestly you don't need to read unless you're interested in lore that will otherwise never come up naturally..!)Full name: Zenaide Myste (Given), Zenaide Faulkner-Myste OR Arulaq-Myste (Married)
Aliases: Kirkegrim the Black Dog (1429 6AE), "Zee/Hyde" (??? 6AE), Zin, Zinaida of Coerthas (Guild ID)
Age: 250~?
Nameday: ~1350 6AE, sun and moon unknown. Given 11th sun, 2nd Umbral Moon (4/10)
Ethnicity: West Coerthan
Race: Southwest Othard/South Ilsabard, unknown, Veena Viera
Marital status: Widowed, questionably entangled

Zinaida's history stretches longer than she can remember, willingly or not. Decades of concussion-inducing strikes against her, only a foggy recollection of the years after her wife's passing from overwhelming grief, three separate occasions her heart has stopped in her chest and simply the time since those years has left her with a gap-filled memory of almost 100 years of her life.Stunted memory or not, Zinaida makes no mistake that she chose to and continues to be Kirkegrim, however dire her circumstances. She chose to bloody her hands and haunt the innocent to keep herself in good graces of the wealthy and the worse. Some of her acts of kindness and fairness are of the guilt that their lineage is one that she has wronged in that distant past, and an inflicted fear that if she should not do right by them this time, a particular ghost will return to haunt her too.listen. i ramble in the next part a little bit, as much as i try to condense it. you don't have to read this! it's here kindof for me too!

FIRST LIFE Over two hundred years ago, a viera sailor left on a trip with a baby girl in his arms, begged by her parents to see her to Hannish alchemists who could cure her ills. The violent sea shredded the feeble vessels on their return home, and left the girl, her guardian, and a scattering of the former merchants on the old shores of Eorzea. Lost, fearful of the Elementals of the Shroud's wrath, the guardian's crew fled further yet until they met rolling hills and evergreens. Here in Coerthas, in a little village, did the sailors settle.The Dravanian general Darkscale ravaged the idyllic hills at his sire's command. Father Florimont, accompanying a party of knights chasing the dragon and his devastation, found a maimed miqo'te bundled in the arms of a dying man. He pulled her away to bring her to medical attention immediately, promising her dying 'father' he would see her to good health.He named the girl Zenaide, in hopes of the dove's peace, and gave her the surname Myste, to mark her as not his blood. She found a brother in Alrekr, the priest's highlander boy, and a home with the rest of the clergy's children. Indebted to him forever, for saving her life from the arms of a burnt corpse.Zenaide fell in love with a red-haired knight-in-training outside her window—a woman, named Katrine Faulkner. Her parents won a favoured place in Haillenarte's Rose Knights for slaying a group of wyverns years ago, and Katrine sought to surpass them. Zenaide would cheer her on, emboldened by her enthusiasm despite her difficulty on her feet at first—like the girl lacked some internal balance. Yet she pressed on, and Zenaide and her brother made a trio of close friends.Zenaide, sickly still and maimed with her odd-shaped ears and missing tail, was denied most activities outside study and schooling: Father Florimont saw his half-elezen son experience the ills of Ishgard once, but now he would get things right. Alrekr detested his father for not supporting him until his mother passed, but afforded him the respect a clergyman deserved, and cherished his wounded sister enough to take her with him to meet the knights. As a future dragoon, he too was afforded mandatory respect that dissuaded some glares his parentage earned, and even should it betray his father's wish, she deserved some measure of childhood, wandering the streets with his protection.Once, when Katrine lay wounded in her sickbed following an excursion with her trainee group, Alrekr demanded leave from his post to bring her to Ishgard. He sought out his sister, and brought her to meet the woman's family. There she learned the secret he had known and kept from their father: the shimmer of scales on her cheeks, and broken thorn of what was once a horn besides. Alrekr wouldn't be able to stay here to upkeep her glamour, nor would her family. Alrekr rationalized that however infected with dragonblood her family may be, she had proven herself to him, more deserving of his faith even than his saintly father. And Zenaide believed the same: that, for all her adherence to faith, she would KNOW if they were dravanian. They were not. The woman she loved could not be. And she would keep her secret, burning her own aether day and night to hide Katrine's scales while she recovered, with the glamouring techniques of the Arulaq and their impeccable illusory magic.In unforeseen circumstance to Zenaide, yet an unfortunate eventuality in the eyes of Katrine, Alrekr's rage towards his father's callousness and mistreatment boiled over. The Dragoon attacked his father in the streets of Ishgard, the heartache in his chest too great to bear. Florimont was struck and collapsed. Zenaide cried for him to stop, reaching for her brother, pleading for his madness to end. With claw and blade did Alrekr lash at every knight and body around him to try and reach his father, to ensure that he was dead. Zenaide's vision went dark as the rake of iron crossed her face, and Alrekr disappeared before his brothers in arms could stop him.Her father's finances tangled in a mire of inheritance law that didn't include her by Mysteborn's name, and shame that simply denied her family any aid, Katrine stepped in to try and help her. Combined, only one eye could be salvaged with their payments to chirurgeons. Just as Zenaide had stayed with Katrine so many nights, did Katrine stay with her; sole comfort to a maimed woman now without family.Inevitably, Katrine and Zenaide married. Politically, to put Zenaide under the protection of the Faulkners of the Rose Knights and keep her receiving treatment from soldiers' chirurgeons, and because the two came to understanding that they cared for one another far more than they did even their beloved country if they would lie for each other.-Zenaide would outlive her wife, perpetually young as the red of her lover's hair became streaked with grey and the golden ring of her eye faded. Yet Kai Arulaq never held distrust in her heart for her beloved's agelessness, just as she never thought ill of her long-removed dragonlike scales. It was a simple fact like the rain pouring from clouds, Zenaide must have simply aged so well it made her look bad.After a lifetime of service to the knighthood and inquisition, Kai passed on her paladin's soulstone to her wife, in hopes its lessons imparted on her would protect her from what was to come.As soon as Katrine Faulkner passed away, Zenaide Myste disappeared, and the Faulkner home was burned down on suspicion of heresy on the miqo'te's part. No Faulkner legacy would protect her from the inquisition.

SECOND LIFE Zenaide fled Coerthas knowing Kai was right, and knowing there was no reason to remain without her love. Swearing to live, to fight for her right to no matter how the ills of the world have borne down on them over their many years together, Zenaide fled. Her home of so many years behind her, and with her beloved's weapons of war only to protect her.The inquisition sent hunting parties to retrieve her stolen arms and soulstone, but were no match for the lessons imparted on Zenaide and how far she was willing to run. Yet they all still took their toll, in time. Zenaide grieved her losses and fended off her would-be killers until she could grieve no more. Exhausted, hollow, wounded by the stares her fresh scars and wounds earned, even as the hunters steadily ceased, Zenaide gave up on 'being' Zenaide. Who could she be that for, when all it brought was an endless grief?In fugue state, Zenaide gave up. She no longer showed her face, be it by using masks or helmets to hide it, she couldn't bare any look. The fear of recognition, of yet again needing to run, crushed her. Her voice raw, exhausted, she stopped speaking beyond the minimum to find food or a bed. Underused and weak, it was more of a croak. Mind addled, wishing to forget, refusing to ignore her wife's last wish, she did not bother with her name or making one. Zenaide does not remember much of this time.Bundled in thick robes and padded armour to try to dissuade strikes, never without her beloved's weapons that they might never be lost, of imposing height and with a voice that rattled like a menace, the tall figure was hired to serve as a cheap mercenary hire. To seem imposing. Zenaide did not think as she acted, but let the memories of warfare and swordfaire forms from within her soulstone take over. It was ample skill, and Zenaide held no qualm following an order without thought. Her newest employer, intrigued by the strange knight, offered to hire her again if she would remain at his disposal. She agreed for lack of interest in otherwise.Loaned proper armour, and however-often used to simply look imposing (and back it up, if necessary), Church became a common if unremarkable sight, called so for their supposed history with the priesthood. Church became Kirke, when introducing the strange mercenary required a more proper introductions and dull mumblings were not accepted as name. Kirke found some will to continue on, and put some effort to make their employer look good—politely bowing, accepting given tasks, and finding their voice to speak with (however weak)—and they were thus rewarded. Kirke was lightly respected in turn. By now, the nobles who hired the figure entangled themselves in less savoury business, and pitted some of their hired hands in bloodsport. Kirke did not know what they were doing until they were there.In perfect, Old-Ishgardian swordfighting form, Kirke dueled their opponent to perpetual stalemate. Poor show for a fight—raised stakes insisted only one of their soldiers be let out alive. Kirke's enemy came to life, and they slowly began to fall, overwhelmed. Panic awoke Kirke like a bolt of lightning. Kai—Kai's promise. Kai herself—all of it would be forgotten after today, as the sole carrier of her memory would die. Kirke felt a terror beyond what she had ever felt. Kirke fought back like a cornered animal, with enough force her shield shattered against her arm with the force she would deflect her desperate enemy.The sight of Kai's shield broken across the floor numbed the ache of her similarly-affected arm. Kirke threw herself forward and mauled with tooth and claw and blade, driven by maddening grief and vengeance for her wife, as though she were the one laying broken upon the ground. Kirke was pulled off her opponent when the wounds to her body meant she could not so much as stand upright anymore—scoured and desperately clawed. The other man was beyond description.Kirke was beloved for her sudden ferocity, but the sight of her ruined shield reopened the heartache. Kirke turned to Kirkegrim, for if she was of any part of a church—if there were any man in that beast—they were a rabid dog at heart. Kirkegrim continued their work like this, barely functional and kept on cusp of madness by their own oaths. The mercenary hound was passed between employers, and while their situation eventually improved with better pay and respect for their craft, Kirkegrim would never shake the hollow feeling within them.They began to try, when they could. With decadence. With mimicking what should give meaning. By trying to recount steps of their old life with someone else even, but it remained all hollow, and even through their masks and facelessness Kirkegrim knew the looks upon their face were never the ones they wanted, never those that knew her before she had to run. Sickened, only remaining to remain for her wife's memory and demand, Kirkegrim took steady and constant work from a contractor who would cement their legacy as a vile, monstrous thing. A cabal, a den of the vile of Eorzea, who would welcome the devil sired by a voidsent. So long as she could afford to persist and had the eyes of her handler to manage her, it was acceptable.This monstrous knight was one of many mercenaries loosed in the Autumn War, on the side of the newly-founded Eorzean Alliance against Ala Mhigo. Alone it is rumour. A single report, never publicized, remarks that the mercenary division was one of several caught behind enemy lines and sieged for days before their scattered escape. Some contemporary bounty hunters of the time took this opportunity to attempt on The Kirkegrim's life. The aftermath of several of these bouts can be found in the trophy collection of the knight's many soulstones.After the war, The Kirkegrim retreated to familiar territory and names when money ran out. However a spurned employer took this chance themselves to slay the demon, both in vengeance for being targeted by them and in pursuit of prestige. Kirkegrim took a knife to their ribs, venom to the lung and a poisoned wine to their throat to ensure they would be put down, and still the monster persisted.Steadily petrified by the venom creeping through her torn lung, Kirkegrim feared their end again. Shambling out from their former-contractor's den, delirious from the concoctions meant to still their heart and the bloodloss combined, Kirkegrim could only find herself pleading for freedom, to live, to return home. And an armoured gauntlet smashed apart the manor's aetheryte, sending the voidsent and their wouldbe killers into the aether.Kirkegrim was tethered to life in Mor Dhona by a thread, and laid down to die at the steps of a little building. One owned by an auri family, one that once dwelled in Coerthas before deciding to opening their clinic somewhere with climes better suited to their kin. Mangled by metal and blood and bone, Kirkegrim laid there until someone realized the door was stuck from the outside and had to go around the back door of the thing to open it. And promptly found a still-living corpse muttering about home. The Arulaqi doctor cried out for their fellows to bring the heavy body in immediately.

THIRD AND FOURTH Mercy undeserved. Kept alive by the beating heart of her soulstone refusing to release her, and the careful work of the Arulaqi chirurgeons, was the broken knight revived. The mangle of armour and skin left her incapable of walking for years, and Kirkegrim (delirious from her wounds and sedation and tangle of foreign aether clouding her mind) tried to recall how to live. Their time in the Mor Dhonan hamlet was long enough she would, once strength slowly began to return, begin to help the surgeons and healers as best she could with her familiarity with priestly healing magics.Whilst none of the little clinic could figure out why the foreign knight knew their old family's glamours, 'Zee' as she lazily called herself, insisted she couldn't recall more. A half truth. Part of Zee yearned to stay around this distant, distant branch of her beloved's family and history, and sought to repay the debt of saving her life and preserving her addled memory.Zee was no bedside angel, but could mend wounds and it was for the better that she remain under watch for her unusual behavior and illnesses. Wounded knights and wanderers would come to their doors all the same as she, and Zee would treat them with the help and guidance of the clinic's healers. Once, however, a youngish miqo'te arrived at their old doors, with a glare at Zee that stopped them in their tracks, before he collapsed against the frame. Of course, Zee took to mending their many wounds and prying them out of their battered armour regardless, remaining at his side until he woke.As he did, and came to his senses, he uttered Zee's true name, and Kirkegrim, leering over the young bounty hunter, asked what it was he sought, to threaten her in her home, where she could just as easily have let him slip away into the darkness. Hunter and beast offered little more to each other, for fear of death and loss respectively.Wounds treated, and sent off with medicine for him to continue his journey delivering succor to those in need, R'Rqad left the Kirkegrim where she hid, both biding their time. R'Rqad would bring many and more wounded, maimed, sick, and lost to the clinic, and remain to watch them, watching Kirkegrim, until;R'Rqad offered the clinic a proposal. Zee could come with him. A healer with him would certainly serve better than making the trek back all the time, and he'd seen her skill, that she had the strength to travel again. She would be ample help as an extension of their services, and make sure he stayed in good health all the same. Perhaps she'd even regain some of her memory on their travels.Zee could not find out a way to argue out of the offer. For her debts, for the threats, she had to leave. As much as she wanted to continue to pretend, she donned pieces of her old armour once more, said her goodbyes, and joined R'Rqad for another lifetime of fighting.The knight that was the miqo'te shadow was Hyde. It's only in Hyde's lifetime they learned what a viera was. Not miqo'te like their partner's. A lifetime lasting barely a decade, until R'Rqad--like so many mercenaries and would-be heroes before him--allowed his recklessness to carry him to his grave.In that time, the had two became... not quite friends, but The Kirkegrim, Hyde, was a tame beast out of necessity. At his death, the miqo'te forced her to accept his creed of knighthood, on curse of his return if she should break her oath to him. The dead knight's aether, swarming like bramble, and that small part of her that wished desperately for this at least to stay the same...Hyde disappeared. They tried to settle. Tried to marry. Tried to repeat all the fragments of lives they'd lived before to little avail. Fear, anger, heartache ate away at them too much for it to last. Hyde let themself die, allowing all those with memories of him or Zee or whoever in between, to all fade away with time, as they always did.

THE SEVENTH UMBRAL AND ASTRAL ERASBEARING SINS OF THE PAST FOR OUR FUTURE IS TAKENZinaida of Coerthas is an adventurer of some reknown. A bodyguard, a huntress, a living relic of some kind. She claims to have firsthand account of the Autumn War a hundred years past, but can be a little wishy-washy on what else of the past she's done. Their memory is fickle, but undoubtably there is truth to her words, her certainty of her skill, and knowledge of the land itself. Zinaida seeks purpose in action, and if there's payment for that action, all the better. Whatever feels good and serves right in the moment, yea?Asked for a surname, Zinaida mostly refuses one on notion she hasn't a rich or noble enough background to have had a family name, but here and there she's tossed out with little thought Zinaida Kirkegrim or Myste.She is... searching, for something? Someone. Spacing out isn't all too uncommon for her if nothing is actively calling for her attention. She's content to sit there, mute. Something people have historically found offputting or strange, but Ms Myste doesn't mind smaller groups or silence.-
There are people who think the Kirkegrim was woken up by the Calamity's advent, and see that ghost haunting the corners again.
There is someone who has seen it and hunts it like a woman possessed, tainted by the madness that beast embodies.
People are disappearing. The generation before Eorzea's official adventurer's guilds is thinning out faster than it should.
-Tucked away under yalms of Coerthan permafrost is her first home she still returns to. An old cellar she doesn't defile with her footsteps. Tucked there, decorated with fragments of broken ships and centuries-old armour, is the Kirkegrim's den. What scraps she's kept over her lifetimes, from soulstones to pieces of armour and reports and dusty books and scrolls andZinaida is drowning in her own past and a desire to pretend it's all still there. Yalms underground is where she can pretend to be alive, that patter of footsteps overhead will mean someone else is with her too in this time.Zinaida is. Of very sound mind. Several lifetimes of love and loss have not broken her, because she is still breathing. Her heart still beats as long as she demands it does.Someone will come back. Someone has to come back. She'll help them find their way home just like she did.Zinaida of Coerthas/Hyde/Zee/Kirkegrim/Church/Zenaide Faulker/████ will not die until they are home.

how did we get so dark?

Hey hey!!! Thank ya for checking this carrd out first off.I'm Julian/Apex, also known as Afflatusazem on twitter! I like knights, eyepatches, neon blue... Ahah, if it wasn't obvious.While I don't really RP (not for lack of trying, it just... does not come to me that easy anymoreeee :')) I have in the past! I like to come up with stories and such on the side more I find. Maybe I will roleplay again soon. Maybe that's why I made this carrd who knows, I play XIV primarily on console with a keyboard though so it's a little tough.I love dark fantasy stories, hopeful or tragic, and reading lore. But make no mistake, rules are meant to be pushed n' broken!! I'd love to hear about your character's tale always, I am not here to police your oc.I'm in my twenties, though I'm not huge on nsfw regardless. It's a bit on and off for me as a subject, don't take that personally!I'm also lgbt if the many themes about identity didn't cue you in. I am begging you do not refer to myself or any of my characters with a slur please christregarding roleplay subjects: hey as long as there's no instakill dismemberment or sexual assault just go for it man. this rabbit is sad and tired and dubiously eats people and is a corpse and I mean it (I WILL avoid potentially triggering topics by DEFAULT, let me know if you're interested in them!)

now there’s no one you can trust.

>> Age:
Zinaida is flat out just real old man. Historical partnerships, contracts, "I really keep seeing you everywhere huh," old mercenary rivals, plenty of old potential familiarity.>> Aether:
Hers is tangled with someone else's in a way that might seem unsettling; sudden stillness and resurgence of that which lays within the soul, over and over. VERY close inspection might find there's several someones (someTHINGS), flickers of light and colour where there shouldn't be. Zinaida Kirkegrim's several soulstones, but particularly those of the Paladin and Dark Knight specialty, are distinctly wrong. Namely, they're warm as blood—and pulse like a heartbeat.>> Glamour:
The Arulaq's trademark incredible glamours. How she can seem several feet away and then not, like a trick of the eye. Such is the 'transformation' Kirkegrim was known for... It's all glamour. Not everyone catches it. Maybe you see through it? Maybe you recognize it.>> Illness:
She's a former surgeon, and has some healing magic besides. Still, she has 'something' she seeks a cure for that she has no clue how to begin with, with ever increasing urgency...>> Big-game hunting:
Kirkegrim collects soulstones. Like a dragon hoarding gold. Completely and utterly compelled to hold them herself, as she's lived long enough to keep her own, she has right to hold more and preserve their memory... That it gives her better knowledge of warfare et. al. and helps keep her alive is a plus. There Is No Downside To Collecting Souls Like This, I Promise. don't look at the quest saying holding too many makes you a little unwell with the burden of knowledge. come closer>> The Kirkegrim:
That old monster should be dead. They said they killed it. Killed it before it could hurt any more families or butcher any more travellers, almost a century ago. Why are there sightings of a long-limbed beast stalking Mor Dhona again..? It's a hoax—it's Silvertear and the Garleans and Calamity Panic unsettling the locals is all......Too many retired soldiers and mercenaries are winding up dead to really be coincidence.>> Generally speaking...:
Zinaida Kirkegrim touches on themes of undeath and attempting to ressurect someone who's been gone a very, very long time, and the sort of... grief-madness affiliated with that. How soulstones/jobstones have memories of their wielders in them, and all the potential of that. A soul reborn when part of its old self is remembered by someone else, STILL CARRIED by someone else... And playing a lot of course with how freakish long Viera live.Monstrous obsession and love, decaying alive and kept going by a pacemaker of a soulstone, a living remnant of Eorzea's tumultuous past, etc... If any of this sounds up your alley hey... let me kno...

just someone you used to love

Sirah'li Kheilsu

Sirah'li Kheilsu is a friend of Zinaida's, and ally, insofar as she saved his life as a young newbie adventurer and berated him about it until he quit for a secure life in the Limsan military.
She looks upon him the same way you might a wounded baby deer. Just-A-Little-Guy'd into her good graces. He looks upon her like the traveler he wished he could be. A dream for another lifetime, lived vicariously.He knows she was once a criminal. He doesn't know the extent. She considers this fair. He doesn't need to. They both believe it does not matter that much now, as Sirah'li trusts his judgement and once-saviour, and Zinaida likes it when he doesn't ask questions and answers hers.

Katrine 《Vespertine》Arulaq

Katrine Vespertine is a survivor of an attack from the resurgence of Kirkegrim. Katrine's life was altered by their meeting—that voidsent devil has marked her for death, she can feel the crawl of corruption through herself—and Zinaida, ever hollow, has felt something like finally being awake again.Something within their souls call for each other. Kai fears the beast haunts the corner of her vision, awaiting to pry her very soul—an unfamiliar anger burns in her to hunt the monster back before it can harm anyone else. Zinaida the Kirkegrim feels like she teeters closer to the edge of returning her wife to the waking world, the pull on her heart to reunite is maddening. If only her beloved could see... She will make her see...

just someone you used to love

another page im too tired to wrap up right now but already notched for my sections. hey, kirkegrim just means church grim! used it for the myth of the black dog. in the church grim's case, under the cornerstone of a church, a dog was buried alive that it might serve as a spectral guard dog that would fend off the devil and-or graverobbers who mean to do ill to the church. the black dog myth however is much broader and varies by region. one of my favourites is that the black dog goes on a procession through the roads baying and howling and those who would interrupt them would be struck with the dog's paw would recieve a wound there that never healed. to say nothing of the many stories and mythologies of monstrous dogs and hounds in the first place. kirkegrim the loyal hound, kirkegrim the leader of the funeral procession, kirkegrim the beast who's wounds upon another (perhaps not only physical) may never recover, and kirkegrim who was buried alive beneath the cornerstone of a venerated building that it may protect it. it's all very meaninful, no? though you could interpret me as an edgy guy who just likes wolves and dog allegories too much; you may not be wrong. but I like kirkegrim specifically being related to a dog because of their relation to being friendly, or family, and how over the course of a long life that faith and trust has been so twisted and perverted by the well-intentioned and not. for starters, that kirkegrim's wife (kai arulaq) who just wanted her to find somewhere else to be happy, to live, and how kirkegrim now feels she has to at any cost or else, and it is her duty to remember her or else or she has failed. have you ever watched hachi or heard about that dog that waited for its master everyday for seven years? yeahalso what if you thought yyou were THIS close to meeting your wife again after she left for cigarettes like 150 years ago, all you need to do is just do a little more killing to get her soul back into this rock and youd be happy again? i might go insane too. theyre not even real and i'm insane. could you imaginewe have room for one more funfact though. this one is about the lore. this is your cue to leave right now alright you're still here awesome The Arulaq in my canon are very good at illusions and glamour magic because of my reasoning that these guys managed to 'disappear from the steppe' for two hundred years or so and it turns out they were just living in the mountains north of the stepppe. how did they do that? just walk up. i guess no one looked, OR they were very good at hiding. every one of the steppe tribes has a cool thing or gimmick so I think the sorta chameleon deal is fair enough. how else would they disappear? maybe they dispersed! so my fellows left the area as well. they became sailors, and navigated around othard till they reached the general area between ilsabard, [the bozja/zadnor and dalmasca region], etc. the arulaq were on the ship, zinaida's folks were living on a port city somewhere and send their daughter with her uncle, they land in radz-at-han for her medicine and there does Mr Arulaq meet the future mrs arulaq, and then the ship fucking explodes at sea because i rolled sirensong sea too many times in one fateful night two years ago to not believe the seas are cursed before too.hey, what if i keep talking about kirkegrim. i mentionned that her heart's stopped three times but because i'm dumb i havent written down where those happened. the first two times were in her days as kirkegrim, of course, one case was when she was fighting off some of her would-be bounty hunters and learned (even when she's not officially a drk yet) what [Living Dead] is! and that with a little faith a Paladin can get themselves out of walking dead too. I think i calculated the amount of seconds the effect runs for when you translate it to the eorzean schedule, it's several minutes you just don't die. I imagine that feels awful. drks are powered by emotion, and somehow i think the panic of losing your wife is enough emotion to stir that skill right up. it's not without consequences though and that's why Zinaida has bad hands (fantasy arthritis) some days, as well as a weak if nonexistent sense of taste. the concussions probably added to that too. honestly getting hit on the head with swords for 200 years probably does more than brain fog and missing taste, but if i add more i worry I am going too far with this guy.oh right, the other deaths. well remember when I said she got stabbed and forced a teleport by smashing an aetheryte? she technically died there too! don't break aetherytes guys, did we learn nothing from sil'dih? two different toxins, a bleeding wound, and a petrifying lung on top of Not Quite Being Reassembled Right would probably trigger a near death scenario if you're not already in it. she couldn't walk for months because her bones were full of holes and metal chunks and maybe ghosts, and thus does she get horribly achy and beyond miserable when the weather is bad. but hey, she lived! what's a little haunted bone entangling if you live right. that's the whole theme weve got going on.the last time was when she finall found her old home again, in the seventh astral era! very recent! however it still did burn down, and she was having a terrible mental health moment, and started pleading for her only remains of her wife to please answer her (the remains are a paladin soulstone) (A ROCK) and uhhhhhhhhh. well even a shor t forced teleport is no good, and she managed to get into a basement that was forgotten under the now frozen ruins of her old home! sheer power of drk emotion strikes again! bad news though: for the crime of doing this again, and because you already have only one eye (and that one is going), every single wound in her reopened and she kiiiindof maybe had to treat it herself. how do you treat a wound you can't see and stitch clean shut, though? well she's got magic! lightning magic if you look to my left here.<----------------------really hot stuff! so if you wonder why zinaida's very old scars look like long very fresh burn tissue. well. you know!she lost half her innards down there. but hey she lived and found her home. doesnt that matter? gee why does this feel like an empty victory. why do i not feel better. what is this guilt, is it possibly related to me tainting this unmarred image of a beloved time of my life with my rancid dead blood? is it because I can never go back here? is it because i keep expecting the people I care about to show up here too but they never will?who knows. zinaida's a very smart women, and dying three times has surely not affected her mental state in any way, nor has the 100 years of concussions or depression brainfog or the not-eating-right. this is what a real normal knight looks like. i am going to find my wife's reincarnated soul and tear it out of her chest and put it in this rock and then put it back and then she'll come back because a soulstone is like a pacemaker, right? mine are, all six i have acquired totally legally.this isnt my funfacts format! what happened here. goodnight

someone you used to love

wao here's some more hushhush info- kirkegrim was kind of pathetic in the autumn war ("I GOT MY ASS BEAT I AINT POSTING THAT VIDEO") but she has genuinely no ill will about it. like damn i fucking suck lately i need to rest from all this fighting, its maybe getting to me after fifty years. gg guys (@ the military that sieged her unit for days). in her books that was legalized murder and now its just over so why keep doing it if no ones getting paid. and most of those guys are dead ANYWAYS now.- her name during and after her adventures with r'rqad was 'hyde' cause she panicked and couldn't come up with a better name than hyd-aelyn. it stuck. it stuck enough for her to marry a woman as a man named hyde- in the times after adventuring with r'rqad + his death, "hyde" got married again to an elezen woman. when she realized she was trying to fill in the space of her first wife with her, she left her behind and took nothing but a pittance out of guilt for stringing her along for years. she's still alive, but elderly, and never knew where hyde went after he had some kind of an emotional crisis...- her whole strange deal with Katrine Vespertine (the woman who has seen the Modern Voidsent Kirkegrim, and lived) is that zinaida's lived so long, her first wife's soul in the lifestream got reborn. her paladin stone with a part of the 'first' katrine's soul reacted to it on their meeting, and she's used it so long (and has some... dubious things going on), she can feel the pull of the soul seeking to reunite itself. like a maddenning tinnitus that says the only way to turn it off is to stuff them back together. necromancer has romance in it- zinaida can cook quite well, she cooked and cleaned for many years, and was good with a needle and thread. she just hasn't returned to any of those because she feels nice cooking is a waste now (no taste), doesn't have permanent residence, or much clothes/patients to take care of. domesticated hare woman. she loves archon loaf for its efficiency.- she can't use her red mage's soulstone too long before it starts to burn with anger for how she got it. all her soulstones resonate with their last carrier's memory much stronger, cause she's been half-dead so many times and carries wayyyy too many than what's healthy. did you know crafter jobstones say the last guy who carried more than three of those went nutso. what if it wasn't just knowledge of how to make chairs. what if the maddening knowledge was already about murder- zinaida can only use all her Arulaqi glamour magics when she's using her pld stone, because it's 'technically' a pld skill--it was her wife who taught it to her, and it got cut into the jewel. since zinaida was a surgeon and has done a wide swath of things... she can make some viscerally disturbing images to catch someone off guard. jumpscared by your own face without skin moment- oh right. in my canon, the arulaq steppe folks who disappeared 200 years ago was due to a schism among the people there of where to flee to. some fled north of the steppe, and hid with camouflage and glamours to avoid the other close-neighbouring tribes, while others left the region entirely, becoming sailors and merchants. here's how i have lore abiding xaela guys in coerthas and werlyt/gyr abania: the lore im abiding is mine.

land and skies, and seas yearn, finish the cycle of eternal return

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