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antiquarians) wrote2022-05-26 11:15 am
INFORMATION.
About
Before she became the Warrior of Light, Anya Rose was a 24-year-old Miqo'te antiquarian and owner of "Thal's Lockbox", an Ul'dah-based antiques shop that caters to its clientele with a strict "appointments only" policy. The events of her childhood left her with a particular interest in anything and everything to do with the Void: her personal research bordered on the fanatic — there were no lengths to which she won't go in order to deepen her knowledge — which means she has been no stranger to adventuring in search of forbidden knowledge and cursed treasure. Artifacts, tomes, pieces of jewellery — you name it, chances are she wants to take a look at it, whether to add to her personal collection or to sell on through her shop.
While travelling, the Lockbox was left in the care of her trusted retainers. Sha'nico Nico, the Lalafell rogue, takes care of security and acquisitions, where her faithful Elezen arcanist Bertenaux Isterre oversees appointments and sales. Anya could be away for weeks at a time — sometimes longer, since taking up the duties of a so-called Warrior of Light — a role which which she initially agreed to in the hopes of furthering her research on how she might one day destroy the Void.
She has come a long way since the beginning of A Realm Reborn. While she still heads the Lockbox her retainers have taken on more responsibilities in her prolonged absences, and instead of seeking to destroy the Void, Anya has wholly committed to using it to do as much good as she can. Her methods are by no means conventional, and her handling of the dark arts is often a little terrifying to behold, but she's fortunate enough that there are no hard and fast rules on how to be a Warrior of Light.
As with all else in her life, Anya will do it her way.
Personality
Anya is a hot-headed, driven individual who generally prefers the company of her work to that of others, if only because up until recently there was precious little she valued higher than her research into the Void. The commitment she showed to her studies is comprable to that of the scholars of Sharlyan: she would have made a fine student had she been born in another place and another time, but the circumstances of her upbringing have, to her reckoning, cut her off from such a path forever. Chances are even the Students of Baldesion wouldn't take too kindly to the finer details of her life's work — her obsession with the Void.
It might come as a surprise to learn that she despises the Void with every fiber of her being. Indeed, it was the idea of one day subjugating it completely that had her so deeply committed to her studies, which offers a glimpse into how she deals with personal vendettas and grudges. Once Anya has decided she hates you there can be no escape from her flames: the Voidsent who drove her tribe into the arms of darkness will not be spared her wrath, and a searing punishment awaits all who would stand in the way of her revenge.
In matters that aren't quite so life and death she can still hold quite the grudge: Anya can be extremely petty when she wants to be, has no qualms with telling someone to their face precisely what she thinks of them, and would feel more than justified in hurling a fireball at someone who displeased her. She is slow to trust, can be over-judgemental of others, and has a tendency to assume the worst — or rather, a tendency to assume a hidden agenda instead of taking another's words at face value. When she started adventuring with the Scions there were only a small handful of people she considered to be her trusted friends: Sha'nico and Bertenaux, her retainers, alongside her fellow Beastman black mages, however this has more recently come to extend to the Scions themselves.
Her hesitance to trust is undoubtedly in part because she knows how she operates — or rather, how she operated before she committed herself to the role of the Warrior of Lights. Anya has ever been the kind of person who rarely fostered connections with people she didn't deem useful in some way: she initially joined the Scions of the Seventh Dawn because she rightly recognised how far their influence might extend, and she is gradually (and very purposefully) collecting Friends in High Places just in case she ever has need of a whisper in the right ear. That is the life Aju Piju taught her to live — it's the way of a wheeler and dealer, someone who considers the limits of the law to be somewhat flexible — and Anya took to it like a proverbial duck to water.
It is only natural that her time spent as both a Warrior of Light and Warrior of Darkness would alter her values just a little. Where she would once have been standoffish and disinterested Anya now has much more patience for others, and while her own research remains a top priority, it is now joined by the pain she holds for the Source, its remaining Reflections, and the suffering of the Ancients. Once she invests herself in something she has a tendency to take it personally: pursuing justice for those who are suffering becomes synonymous with pursuing justice for herself, and she can be vicious towards those she deems to be standing in her way. Since the initial events of A Realm Reborn Anya's goals have shifted: where she once sought to destroy the Void she is now determined to master it for good — and Gods, will she need the power of a ruined star if she's to live through what's to come.
If there's anything that can offer her a moment of respite from the weight of the remaining worlds, it's the promise of long-forgotten treasure, or the idea of uncovering a lost art somehow connected to black magic. Nothing lights up her eyes like a whispered rumour of the macabre: at times it is easy to make connection with common Voidsent — her foray into Haukke Manor, for example, and her later "research visit" to Amdapor Keep — but its when there the Void intersects with real intrigue that her blood begins to sing. This is in part why she's made such a powerful black mage in her own right: Anya wants it more than most, wants to master the Void and all its mysteries more than most — and she wants to be the one to overpower the darkest depths of its secrets. As such she isn't at all squeamish when it comes to blood, guts, and nightmarish abominations, nor does she shy away from such things on the path towards getting what she wants.
Lastly, it is worth mentioning that there is also a streak of something a little softer that runs through the most hidden parts of her core — and it goes without saying that she takes great care in making sure it rarely sees the light of day. She had great affection for old Aju Piju, and she saw it as her duty to take on Thal's Lockbox following his passing and keep it running in his memory. When she loves someone she takes it seriously — blood-pact seriously — and she would happily burn down the skies for those she cares about. The Scions, Kazagg Chah, the memory of the Ancients entrusted to her by Emet-Selch — woe betide anything that might dare threaten them while Anya yet lives.
Appearance
RELATIONSHIPS
ONETBA
TWO
TBA
THREE
TBA
History
V'anya Riohs was born into a fringe offshoot of the Vah tribe. This group of Vah lived separately from the other Miquo'te tribes of Thanalan — a necessity that came about in no small part because of their increasing affiliation with the Void. While it was a step away from true worship their actions could certainly be descriped as worshipful, which was enough for the other tribes to consider them outcasts, freaks, and to treat them as social paraiahs when mixing among their own.
During her ninth year — six years after losing her mother to a sweating fever — a ruinous drought swept through the area in which the Vah had made their home. Desperate for food and water the villagers turned to their brethren in search of sustenance and aid, only to find themselves repeatedly refused and rebuffed by tribes that wanted nothing to do with "their kind." It was her father, V'riohs Tia, who came up with a solution to their problem that only a thaumaturge could: the Voidsent were powerful beings, were they not? He'd heard tell of plenty who were capable of speech and conversation — who wielded powerful magics that could grant a man his greatest desires. It was in this moment of desperation that, unbeknownst to the tribe, he set out to find any Voidsent that would listen, offering his body to host a power he would never truly understand.
Unfortunately for the Vah, his journey was a successful one. The Voidsent that returned seemed ... reasonable, at first. It gave its name as Zebekt and promised that its habitation of Riohs's flesh was merely a temporary measure; promised to refill their pools and provide them with meat and fruit enough to see them through the drought — on the condition that the tribe threw all their efforts into furnishing it with aether. It needed a body of its own — needed to regain the form that it had once had, long ago — and it expected co-operation in exchange for the tribe's salvation.
It wasn't until months later when the fourth, perhaps fifth patient fell sick and died, that the Vah realised something was terribly, irrevocably wrong. Rihos's flesh was failing: V'anya watched with ever-increasing panic as the Voidsent inhabithing her father grew stronger, more erratic, all the while her Riohs's body rotted before her as it sapped him of his strength. By now the sickness had swept into a full-blown plague: all around her Vah were dying as the Voidsent drained them of their aether, until one night Anya awoke in a cold sweat to find herself feeling ... weaker, as though her very essence were depleting.
She may have only been ten at the time, but V'anya knew she had to leave.
She abandoned her father — if there was anything left of him in the shell of flesh that Zebekt not relinquished. She abandoned her tribe to their gruesome fate; a fate of which she would hear spoken of in Ul'dah years later, coming from lips that spoke in hushed tones and wore condescending frowns. She swore vengeance against Zebekt, against the Void itself, against the tribes who left them to starvation in the desert — who drove her father to invite death itself into their home.
Days later she would be found on the Steps of Thal by Aju Piju, a Lalafellian merchant who dealt in antiquities right out of Ul'dah itself. For all the merchants of Ul'dah are known for their cut-throat behaviour she must have stirred a long-dormant paternalism within the old man: V'anya was aether-weak, delirious, and muttering about Voidsent as she was ushered into his home above the shop, where he helped see her back to health before offering to take her on as a second pair of hands around the shop. That cramped apartment was where the second chapter of her life began. She left behind all traces of her tribe and let herself emerge from V'anya Riohs as the Ul'dahn 'Anya Rose', and she would dedicated the rest of her life to learning all she could about the Void.
One day, she will use the Void's own power to bring Zebekt to its end. If she has to take the entirety of the Void down with her? Well. It would be her most absolute pleasure to do so.