intros
Thrown into the lifestream by Louisoix to escape the Seventh Umbral Calamity, Ardwin woke up on a ship to Limsa Lominsa with her body intact, but her memories wiped clean. As she began building a new life for herself, she fell in with the Scions of the Seventh Dawn, and the rest is history.
Being exceptionally gifted with an axe - one of the talents that survived her amnesia - Ardwin wholeheartedly embraced the role of protector. However, her responsibilities rapidly spiraled out of control, expanding from teammates to countries to continents, and, ultimately, to entire worlds. Having already learned how to keep a tight leash on her inner beast, she began to lean on heavy compartmentalization and repression to handle the pressure. Unfortunately, this method had its limits, culminating in a series of breakdowns shortly after she returned from Ultima Thule - including the series of events that led to the genesis of the entity known as Fray. (With Ardbert having agreed to stay with her, her head has become a rather lively place.)
Since then, she's been healing, learning to live for herself (selves, if you count Ardbert, Fray, and her voidsent avatar/13th shard Other), and developing her hobbies. But there's only so long an Azem shard can go without adventure. Even in spite of The Horrors, Tural has overall been a great experience for her. She's happy, thriving, and looking forward to whatever's coming next (especially if it means making progress towards her ongoing personal sidequest of Shard Smooching Bingo).
Notable ships: Ardbert, Zenos* (former), Fray, Zero, Arkose (Zenos: mutual rivalry and mutual attraction, but neither of them figured out the second one until it was too late)
Tags: #ardwin tag, #ardwin pics, #ardwin lore
Seven years after the lightning dome went up over Yyasulani, Arkose was born. The standard newborn medical screenings tested positive for levinsickness, and their mother made the difficult choice to move from the Outskirts community into Everkeep's less aetherically volatile interior for their health.
Although Arkose was, in many ways, happy, being born with a literal traveler's soul into a world that was small and only growing smaller took a heavy psychological toll. They ultimately reached a turning point during their worst period of depression where they realized they did want to live - and that their regulator made the prospect of doing otherwise, without harming the people around them, too tempting, and they couldn't safely keep wearing it. The choice to take off the regulator led them to a much broader questioning of the systems underpinning life in Everkeep, and the answers eventually brought them into contact with Oblivion.
Then Ardwin helped blow a hole in the dome with a train, and upended their entire life.
Arkose, at age twenty-three, saw the real sky for the first time, and knew that nothing would ever be the same.
Being shards of the same soul allowed Ardwin to regularly siphon off the excess levin from Arkose through skin contact, providing a way to manage - and, by carefully limiting their time spent in the dome, slowly but permanently improve - their levinsickness symptoms. Arkose wanted to learn to fight, and since they couldn't reliably hold a weapon at first, a sage's nouliths were the perfect solution. Some very intense months of travel, training, and basically getting powerleveled by Ardwin have successfully gotten them caught up enough to pull their weight alongside the other Scions.
Which turns out to be a very good thing, because apparently fate has decided it's Arkose's turn to be the main character.
Notable ships: Eutrope (ex), Sphene*, Ardwin, Ardbert, Retsarra* (Sphene: friendship/platonic, ex-friends with Endless Sphene after fall-out over regulators, (re-)building friendship with real Sphene) (Retsarra: one-sided, the world's most poorly timed crush)
Tags: #arkose tag, #arkose pics, #arkose lore
