wordsworn | #FFXIVWrite2022 30 Day Challenge

Master post for all my entries into the FFXIVWrite challenge over on twitter/tumblr!

(Anything explicit or requiring cw: will be marked as such; everything else should be SFW.)

Prompt #1: Cross | ✧ Sizhu Jakkya (WoL) + G'raha Tia ✧ | ShB spoilers
[Just a snapshot of my wholesome catship LOL]

Prompt #2: Bolt | ✧ Sizhu Jakkya (WoL) + Emet-Selch + Hermes (+ mention of Hythlodaeus) ✧ | EW spoilers
[Total crack, written in an hour-long flurry of feverish writing, as usual if I don't feel super inspired by the prompt things get dumb, fight me, but it's still fun/funny to ME, CATTE IS CATTE, KNOCKING THINGS OFF TABLES, SIZHU GETS THE ZOOMIES LMAO, I might want to expand this one later idk LOL]

Prompt #3: Temper | ✧ Warrior of Light + Minfilia + Thancred ✧ | EARLY ARR spoilers ~~and maybe hints at some other spoilers but nothing obvious unless you Know Things already~~
[What if Thancred hadn't been late to the fight when you faced down Ifrit for the first time? AU, written to make Phase scream. CW: Tempering, brief violence, implied impending major character death]

Prompt #4: Free Prompt - θάρρος (Thárros); Courage | ✧ Sizhu Jakkya (WoL) x G'raha Tia ✧ | Spoilers up through 6.1
[More wholesome catship; on her return from another trip to Aglaia, G'raha is taken by surprise at Sizhu's attire.]

Prompt #5: Cutting Corners | ✧ Hades + Hythlodaeus (implied Hades -> Azem) ✧ | EW spoilers
[After assisting Azem with saving that island and its grapes, Hades confronts Hythlodaeus about the indisputable part he'd played in the whole fiasco--but their conversation does not go at all the way Hades had planned.]

Prompt #6: Onerous | ✧ Mikh'a Jakkya (non-WoL adventurer, WoL's twin brother) ✧ | SB spoilers
[What happened to Sizhu's twin brother when she was snatched away to the First? Mikh'a tells of it in his own words.]

Prompt #7: Pawn | ✧ Emet-Selch (Hades) -> WoL (& Azem) ✧ | ShB spoilers
[Emet-Selch always plays the long game. Musings on chess pieces and the Warrior of Light.]

Prompt #8: Tepid | ✧ Cres Shatterheart (non-WoL adventurer) ✧ | ...no spoilers really? stuff from a minor sidequest is mentioned
[The reasons vary from person to person, but most adventurers are somewhat the same, deep down. No matter how arduous or tedious, sometimes the task itself is its own reward.]

Prompt #9: Yawn | ✧ Talys Shatterheart (WoL) ✧ | EW Spoilers
[In this timeline, the WoL is a f!Viera Sharlayan scholar with zero battle experience, who is doing a Forum-funded field study about adventurers for her thesis...and who is pulled into being Very Personally Involved in everything when she realizes two facts: 1) she's actually pretty badass at this fighting stuff, and 2) somehow, the whole world needs her.]

Prompt #10: Channel | ✧ Hermes -> f(Miqo'te)!WoL ✧ | EW SPOILERS ALL THE WAY DOWN
[He wants her, even though he knows that he should not. But she’s the only one he’s ever met who truly understands how he feels...and his emotions have always proven difficult for him to tame. Why should these sorts of feelings be any different? EW spoilers, takes place during the Elpis questline. CW: depression (it's Hermes), slight dom contemplations/mild sexuality (no actual sex tho)]

Prompt #11: Free Prompt - Embrace | ✧ Hermes -> f(Miqo'te)!WoL ✧ | EW SPOILERS FOR DAYS, YO
[I enjoyed that last drabble so much, I picked up right where that one left off and did another. c:]

Prompt #12: Miss the Boat | ✧ Sarhnai Dotharl + Koharu Sumeragi (WoLs) + Scions ✧ | EW spoilers OF COURSE
[FINALLY wrote some Dargon Girls AU! In which there are TWO WoLs who are both shards of Azem, who both ended up on the Source--soul-sisters, if you will. c: Koharu is mine and Sarhnai belongs to my friend, the wonderful

incontrast. <3]

Prompt #13: Confluence | ✧ Sizhu Jakkya (WoL) + Ardbert ✧ | ShB Spoilers
[Phase gave me this idea, so these feels are her fault.]

Prompt #14: Attrition | ✧ Crystal Exarch (-> WoL) ✧ | Shadowbringers Spoilers LIKE WHOA man

Prompt #15: Row | ✧ Emet-Selch (Hades) + Azem (Persephone) ✧ | All The Endwalker Spoilers

Prompt #16: Deiform | ✧ Koharu (WoL) x Hien ✧ | EW role quest spoilers
[My soft dargon-girl has dokis for Hien pretty bad, and finds a way to show him a very small bit of just how badly. I still think it's kinda "eh" but Phase likes it, so it can't be terrible.]

Prompt #17: Novel | ✧ Koharu (WoL) x Hien (continued from previous prompt) ✧ | Spoilers for a Stormblood Dungeon, I Guess?
[Continued from the previous drabble, very short but my head is killing me, so. This will do. :c]

Prompt #18: Free Prompt - Fruit | ✧ Hermes -> f(Miqo'te)!WoL ✧ | Endwalker Spoilers OBVIOUSLY
[I wanted to keep writing more for that same Hermes idea...and it's a free prompt, so I did.]

Prompt #19: Turn a Blind Eye | ✧ Elidibus (Themis) + Azem ✧ | All The Spoilers, Especially for Pandæmonium
[Themis is concerned about Azem's censure, only to find that he needn't be. Pandæmonium spoilers, plus a hint of my own predictions about where that questline might go...]

Prompt #20: Anon | ✧ Aymeric x/+ unnamed F!WoL ✧ | ARR Spoilers, oh noes
[...Yeah, I hate this one. But, sucky prompt, sucky drabble. Only makes sense.]

Prompt #21: Solution | ✧ Talys Shatterheart (WoL) ✧ | No Spoilers, Lots of Anti-Garlean Feels

Prompt #22: Veracity | ✧ Sizhu Jakkya (WoL) + Emet-Selch (Hades) ✧ | ShB & EW Spoilers
[I don't much like this one either, but it's there.]

Prompt #23: Pitch | ✧ Fandaniel (+ hints of current one-sided and possible future-life Fandaniel/WoL) ✧ | Endwalker Spoilers FOREVER
[Get ready for a feels-punch, that is all]

Prompt #24: Vicissitudes | ✧ Thancred + Urianger + CATBABIES ✧ | No Spoilers, Just Headcanons
[This is really bad and really dumb, but these two catbabies are headcanon for me now...]

Prompt #25: Free Prompt - Halcyon | ✧ Hermes -> f(Miqo'te)!WoL ✧ | Endwalker Spoilers
[Con't from the previous free prompt~]

Prompt #26: Break A Leg | ✧ Koharu Sumeragi (WoL) + Sarhnai Dotharl (WoL) vs Zenos yae Galvus ✧ | SB spoilers
[COLLAB WITH PHASE \o/]

Prompt #27: Hail | ✧ Koharu Sumeragi (WoL) + Sarhnai Dotharl (WoL) ✧ | SB spoilers
[Con't from yesterday's. Koharu has a mad, and Zenos is 100% it.]

Prompt #28: Vainglory | ✧ Emet-Selch (Hades) i.e. "Solus zos Galvus" ✧ | All Spoilers, All The Time
[PHASE AND I PLAY CATCH WITH THE GARLEAN HATE BALL AGAIN. Uhhhh, I mean...Emet musings RE: building the ~~stupid bull$h!t that is the~~ Garlean Empire.]

Prompt #29: Fuse | ✧ Hythlodaeus (-> Azem) ✧ | Endwalker Spoilers
[Mehhhh this one is so unfocused...but oh well, it's done. Might revisit and turn it into something else later.]

Prompt #30: Sojourn | ✧ Sizhu Jakkya (WoL) + Venat ✧ | Endwalker Spoilers ;_;
[A good place to end. :c]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It’s all very calculated, the way that Emet-Selch builds the Garlean Empire.

He’s played this game before, setting up an empire that is overwhelmingly powerful, with the fire of conquest in their hearts and greed in their eyes as they look out over all the world--and even beyond, up to the moon and stars--and determine that it shall be theirs. Plenty of Allagan technology is still operating today, literally thousands of years later, which speaks more for that society’s strength than any amount of hollow boasting ever could. And yet, while in some ways it could be said that ancient Allag had been Emet-Selch’s magnum opus, he had yet been dissatisfied with it in certain ways. There are certain things that he is most certainly going to do differently this time, as he creates the Garlean Empire.

Placing himself in a leadership role, for one, rather than being the puppeteer skulking in the shadows--what great fun that promises to be, taking a far more active role for once. In part, he is curious--it has been so long since he dwelt in a vessel of flesh, and though he still scorns these imperfect shades of the magnificent beings who came before, his people, he is willing to give them a fair trial. He will live among them, break bread with them, marry, sire children, and set up another glorious empire. He will stir the embers among this displaced and bitterly downtrodden people, fanning them into a furious blaze that will engulf the world...and as he is the one laying the foundations, he can and will ensure that it is built to his exacting specifications.

It’s all very calculated, and designed to fail.

One such pivotal point will be their pride. How laughable it is, that these magickless echoes of true people should think themselves somehow better, superior to all the rest of the equally-sundered, identically-incomplete beings who now populate the Source and its reflections. He cares for them not a whit more than he cares for any of these lives--they are so fleeting, so imperfect, that Emet does not even consider them to be truly alive. Their worth is no more or less to him than that of the insects populating an anthill. And yet, that misplaced sense of pride and deeply-ingrained vainglory is easy to instill in the breasts of men who have been persecuted for their very existence. They were always afraid of you, always jealous of your true, overwhelming potential. You are destined for something more. You are stronger for having been forged and tempered in the fires of their hate. You will rule over them, as is your right, and grind them down beneath your iron-shod heel, a just recompense for the scorn they once showed you.

Another equally important point is the line of succession. For all that they are equal in strength of will and intellect, on the whole men have always had more warlike hearts than women, the desire to seize power and maintain that chokehold, the hunger to be in control and not only know it, but feel it. Again, perhaps it all traces back to pride, and how weak the hearts of men truly can be, how uncertain and wavering, in need of constant praise and reassurance.

Women, in Emet’s experience, tend to be far less proud and far more purposeful. And as he thinks of Venat--as he thinks of Azem--he tells himself no, no chances. He will not, cannot take the risk that one of her shards might be reborn only to take control of his empire and ruin everything. It’s precisely the sort of thing she would do, exactly the sort of controlled chaos she embodied, and it gives him a headache just thinking about the very possibility. Thus, his decision regarding the laws of inheritance: female heirs shall have no claim upon the throne. Being less of a mind for war and tactics, they shall be granted power only equal to that which they prove themselves capable of wielding; and their primary importance will be to ensure the line of succession continues unbroken, theirs the critical duty of guaranteeing that the bloodline of the true rulers runs strong, straight, and true.

Venat would mock him for such a thing, Emet knows, but there is some dark part of him that is deeply satisfied with this petty sort of revenge. That woman, that wretched Light, split the world and everything in it; if he causes her children, these pitiful beings who are scarcely even living to begin with, suffering and pain, he knows that she will feel it. The peoples of the nations oppressed by this internally and intentionally frail juggernaut of a civilization that he’s built will call on their various gods, and the strain will tell on Hydaelyn, sapping her of strength little by little, every summoning a bloodletting, a death (or perhaps doom) by inches.

...He doesn’t want to think about what she would say, were she here to see him drafting the laws of the Garlean Empire. Azem always did have quite a lot to say, often acting with her heart rather than her head and speaking the same way. Not to say that she wasn’t intelligent or capable of planning; she was simply a woman of action, inclined to leap before she looked so long as she believed the potential reward to be worth the risk. She trusted in her own overwhelming strength, and perhaps trusted even more in the strength of others, those she called friends-

No, Emet-Selch--or Solus, rather--tells himself decisively. It matters not what she might have thought. Should he and the other Ascians achieve their ends, should they manage to bring about all the necessary rejoinings, then...perhaps then, her soul might be made whole again. Whatever she might think of him then, however deeply she might loathe the actions he’s taken and the stains on his hands and soul...if it brings her back, he will count it worth every moment of the thousands of years of loneliness and suffering he’s endured. Even if she will never look at him the same way, will never trust him and call out to him again, warm and bright and playfully teasing; even if she will never be his, so long as she exists, he will be satisfied. Perhaps then his duty will be done, and he will simply return to the star, rather than ruin the idyllic memories of all the times spent together with his two dearest friends. Surely the two of them could manage to get along well enough without him. Surely they would understand how very weary he was, how much he longed for a rest, an ending.

And so as he looks over the laws he’s drafted for his latest machination of a country, Emet-Selch does not waver as he signs off on it, in that instant turning it from simple ink on a page into a way of life, a dogma, an entire nation’s creed. A seemingly-strong but intentionally flawed and fragile framework, one destined to come cascading down in a rush of blood and fire, as had the Allagan Empire of eld. These Garleans are but a pale imitation of that great empire, as washed out and faded in comparison as Ancient Allag was compared to that of his true people, the ancients; but weak and disgusting as their bodies may be, they will serve his ends, and to Emet-Selch, that is all that matters.