Ranja Silverwillow< Of Unyielding Oath >

Character Information

Quick Facts

Ranja is clever, confident, inventive, and compassionate, if perhaps a bit of a grouch-although she has mellowed out significantly as she has gained a little age and wisdom.As a result of her half-Garlean heritage, she struggles to manipulate aether, and can usually only do so at about 1/3 the efficiency of a full-blooded Eorzean.She is, in both WoL and Non-WoL timelines, an extremely accomplished engineer. She makes use of these talents to overcome her aetherial difficulties with aplomb.

Character Bio

Ranja was born to an adventuring Golmore exile while she was staying briefly in Gridania. Her father's identity as a Garlean defector is unknown to her, as he died before she was born and her mother left no details.Her mother, unwilling or unable to stay in one place for long enough to raise a child, left the newly named Ranja with E-Sumi-Yan of the Conjurer's Guild, who raised her like his own daughter.Ranja had a nice, if not perfectly idyllic, childhood. She was brought up by the Guild as a whole, learning from each of the members as much as she could. She was inquisitive and clever, even from a young age, and E-Sumi found her to be a quick study of everything from letters and numbers to the art of Conjury.At the age of sixteen, she pled with him to be allowed to practice with the Guild as a fully certified Conjurer, and he gladly acquiesced. Ranja's tenure with the Guild in Gridania lasted the greater part of her adult life.After her first love, a fellow Conjurer named Ivoh, left the Guild to find her fortune as an adventurer, Ranja began to feel the pull of the open road and the urge to do the same. She asked for E-Sumi's blessing and received it, along with her forest-green Chocobo, Birdsley, and left her childhood home behind.

Ranja--now with the last name Silverwillow, taken from her favorite tree to read beneath as a child--found the trade of an adventurer to be exhilarating, taxing, and a bit frightening all at once. She made enough gil to survive on, and more, by plying her talents as a healer to other parties who needed it.Though she travelled predominantly alone, she did spend some time in the company of a Machinist from Ishgard, growing fascinated with his firearm and technical expertise. When she inquired about where she might learn to use one, he directed her to his home nation, where Ranja headed at once.Upon arriving in Ishgard and making her presence known to Stephanivien at the Skysteel Manufactory, she quickly demonstrated both her technical intelligence and skill with a firearm, rising in his estimation and becoming one of his most trusted compatriots.

As the Warrior of Light

Ranja, dispatched as a favor by the Manufactory to aid a group known as the Scions of the Seventh Dawn, was quickly identified for her gift of the Echo and took a break from her work at the Manufactory to aid them in their fight against the Primals.From this point, her story mirrors the story of most Warriors of Light, until it diverges after her return from Norvrandt.Her confrontation with Hades did not spend her surfeit of Light aether as it was supposed to, and she was left with a growing, enduring Lightsickness. Her return to the Source after his defeat was immediately followed by a desperate search for anything that might keep her alive, and it was that search that brought her to the doorstep of the Lemures of Ul'dah.Throwing herself on the mercy of Drusilla, their leader, she was able to bond a Voidsent named Skadi, who quickly became her closest companion and worst influence, even as she locked down Ranja's excess aether in exchange.Skadi was fuel for the fire of Ranja's worst impulses, and with the emotional wounds from her tenure as the Scions' weapon still raw, the Voidsent was very easily able to bend Ranja to her will, encouraging her violence and bloodthirst in the pursuit of more aether.If her friends among the Manufactory or the Scions noticed the change, they didn't say a word, and they were quickly confronted with the much more pressing concerns presented by the Final Days, through which Ranja and Skadi carved a bloody swathe.During Ranja's final fight with Zenos Viator Galvus, though, she became determined to push back against his--and Skadi's--insistence that she was naught more than a killer, and so though she left him bloody and dying at the end of the universe, and though she wished to, she did not strike a killing blow.It was that moment of defiance that allowed Ranja to push back against those accusations levied by her Voidsent, and it was that resistance that allowed her to hope, once she returned to Ul'dah to nurse her wounds.As the Warrior of Light, Ranja Silverwillow is still clever and inventive, but those are tempered by the weight of what she's done for the sake of the world and those she holds dear. She questions the morality of it, and whether or not she deserves the mantle of 'hero' as it is foist upon her. She is significantly more prone to darker emotions, frustration and anger.

After the events of Endwalker, Ranja met a Hyurian Paladin of the Ul'dahn order who, through no small amount of determination and no shortage of unconditional love, managed to pull her back from the brink. It is from her that Ranja learned how to fight like a Paladin-defensively, and for the sake of others-as well as use the leftover Light aether inside her to fuel her magic.After having done so, Ranja's a little more like her old self again, a little kinder, a little gentler, but still a little wiser from her past experiences. It is with this wisdom that she arrives in Tural to serve as a mentor to the young ruler-to-be, Wuk Lamat.After having experienced the style of Turali Vipers firsthand during her spar with Gulool Ja Ja, Ranja found it to be a perfect synthesis of her light, measured Paladin swordplay and the vicious strikes of the Reaper, but also found it to be a style that does not rely heavily on either her Light or the Voidal empowerment that Skadi grants. Before the incursion of the Everkeep, the Dawnservant had arranged for an old friend of his to meet with the Warrior of Light and teach her their ways; a grizzled Xbr'aal woman with whom he used to hunt.Following the incursion and subsequent collapse of Living Memory, Ranja trains with this former companion, nicknamed 'The Asp', and travels through Tural alongside the Gleaner, Erenville.

As an adventurer/Non-WoL

In a timeline where Ranja never met the Scions of the Seventh Dawn, she remained at the Skysteel Manufactory while someone else filled the role of Warrior of Light.She worked her way to minor fame amongst the Ishgardian crafting community, and frequently took jobs that required fine detail work for the nobility. Eventually, one such noble with ties to Sharlayan recommended that she make the trip there, telling her a bit of the art of Somanoutics.Feeling a similar bit of excitement to that which she felt when she first learned of Machinistry, Ranja put in a request for a sabbatical and followed the nobleman's recommendation, travelling to Sharlayan and applying to the Studium.There, she proved a quick study and learned the Sage's art without much trouble, finding it to be the perfect marriage of her healer background and technical expertise.In particular, this expertise allowed her to craft extremely efficient Nouliths and a similarly efficient Conjury Staff, both of which she uses to employ her healing arts like any other practitioner, compensating for her half-Garlean heritage's impact on her aether manipulation skills.Ranja now spends her time split fairly evenly between the Studium and the Manufactory, with occasional stints spent aiding as a healer in relief efforts, such as during the Final Days, and in the aftermath of the Everkeep's attack on Tuliyollal.

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Roleplaying Information

General Preferences

Potential RP Hooks

ERP

I am open to ERP, though this is very much on a case by case basis. If you are interested, let me know, and we can discuss character compatibility and the things we'd like to get from it.But!Don't be shy about asking. I'm not about to shame anyone for an inquiry.

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Gposes

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Ranja's Allies and Associates

Skadi the Bloodless

Before the Thirteenth Shard fell to Darkness and became the Void, it was home to a mercenary and assassin known as Skadi the Bloodless. One could scarcely find anyone more effective at her bloody work, or anyone more frightening, for Skadi established herself from a young age to be a ruthless, sadistic killer.Born without the ability to use aether in any capacity, Skadi compensated with her expert archery skills, loosing arrows into her targets with surgical precision. Her title was appended to her name in part due to her ghostly paleness, and in part because none who pursued her ever drew so much as a drop of her lifeblood from her. An expert tracker and survivalist, the only sign of her presence was often the eerily beautiful melodies she sang while hunting.In the present day, she serves as the bound Voidsent to the Warrior of Light, Ranja Silverwillow, her nature as a Voidsent stabilizing the surfeit of Light aether contained in the hero's body. She is ever-vigilant for a chance to claim the Warrior's skin for her own and continue her bloody work on the Source, but the two have achieved an uneasy truce, and are, perhaps, even something akin to companions.

Sapphire

Born in the Everkeep, Sapphire is an Eldite woman of twenty-eight years old, an engineer, a physician, and an extremely skilled fighter in the Arcadion who goes by the title "The Sapphire Storm".Sapphire grew up much like any other child, but was diagnosed with Levinsickness in her early twenties. Being rather resourceful, she combined her medical and engineering talents to construct herself a set of gauntlets and leg braces that augmented her limbs, and an Electrope focus in the style of a rapier, which enables her to burn away her excess lightning aether while fighting in the Arcadion.In this way, she has effectively mitigated most of the effects of Levinsickness, though she is rather weak without her gauntlets and braces.

Metis, Seat of Altima

The Ancient from whom Ranja, Skadi, and Sapphire were all Sundered, Metis the Meticulous is a curious creature. Being one of the very of her kind unable to use Creation magic, she had to turn to other avenues to craft her Concepts.Her solution was to simply do so by hand, using the raw materials she could gather from the planet itself to create her wonders. Metis made a great many things in her extremely long tenure on the star, for she never chose to return to the lifestream as many of her peers did. Her reasons for this decision were her own, but there were those who suggested, often in hushed tones, that her exceedingly long life left her more than a little cracked.After being elevated to the Seat of Altima, Metis completed her work on her magnum opus, the time-controlling mechanical titan that would come to be known as Alexander. In doing so, she managed to scry portions of the future, and foreseeing what was to come, she placed a tenth of her soul into the Concept, a portion of herself flung further down the timeline, a message in a bottle.She stood beside Venat during the Sundering as one of her allies, and in another day and age, Ranja Silverwillow collected the portion of Metis's soul placed inside of Alexander the first time she laid a hand upon him.This fragment now lives within Ranja as a seperate entity, but due to the Rejoinings that occurred before that point, Ranja's soul was dense enough to maintain complete control of herself.At least for now.Metis makes herself known through whispers and inspiration, driving Ranja to greater heights of engineering mastery. Whether or not she is scheming still, only Metis herself knows.

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