our journey will never end.

born 2nd sun of the 4th astral moon in the southern shroud, the trajectory of a newborn kiereaux's life was forever changed by the death of his father. a wildwood archer for the twin adder, he was killed by accidentally invoking the elementals' wrath. his mother, a duskwight, was left with few options but to return to tavern work while trying to raise her newborn. she quickly slipped into sleeping around, and some of kiereaux's earliest memories were of drunken strangers brought to their small home late in the nights. he learned quickly to keep out of the way, and to learn to care for himself when his mother would forget to; by extension, he tried appeasing her through housework- cooking her meals for when he came home, cleaning up after her around the house. it quickly became a mandatory part of his routine before he even saw his eleventh summer. and that was not beginning to count the additional children that slowly became his responsibility. for all the reckless nights his mother partook in, she only ended up with child five times in the following 30 summers kiereaux would spend bound to his childhood home- two of which were twins. most of them crossbreeds, shunned from gridania proper due to their unusual traits and partial duskwight parentage. when it became clear to his mother that kiereaux would pick up any work she would not do in raising them, her absences became more and more common. he denied a proper education to take care of them, raising them to the best of his abilities- when the youngest, myrtlette, was born and left in his arms when he was eighteen. she was exceedingly sickly, and kiereaux waited a week for his mother to return home to watch the rest of the kids while he went to seek treatment for her... before it became clear she would not be coming back. in the end, he had no choice but to carefully lead his family, hand in hand, to gridania. he met with conjurers who saw to her immediate health, but warned that he would need to procure medicine to keep her health consistent until she was old enough to overcome it. he made barely enough to keep food on the table, slaying lesser beasts for handfuls of gil, how was he going to afford medicine? his stress had been building, no word from his mother, the needs of five children to attend to… and he, himself, was barely an adult. he doesn't know what he would have done if buscarron hadn't reached out. a man who had decided to put down his lance and begin a small community based around a tavern, just near quarrymill, where he had lived all his life. he had experience cooking, and he was willing to pay consistently and decently for his skill. and if necessary, the children could stay nearby. he hadn't even begun his growth spurt yet. he needed a small stool to reach the counters and the ovens, but he worked diligently. myrtlette was like the star of the druthers, adventurers who had come in with a set scowl would coo at the little baby as she sat in a high-chair. as the older children grew, they began to pick up work of their own, helping greatly with getting food on the table. one of the twins, a sunny half-miqo'te elezen named roselle, joined the adder as a confident lance-wielder... only to be killed by the ixal in a skirmish. her brother beaulloix could not take the news and ran from home, never to be seen again. the others went their separate ways as they outgrew the small sights of their home- but kiereaux remained, always working, always giving himself to their futures before thinking of his own. by the time he was 37, myrtlette was healthy and eager to leave home for a job opportunity in ul'dah as a seamstress. he wished her well in her journey... and kiereaux knew then that if he didn't go now, he would never set foot outside of the shroud. he took up the bow, like he'd heard his father had done, before hopping aboard a carriage bound to new gridania... unto an adventure like he could have never anticipated.