#about.ishan

What’s their full name? Why was that chosen? Does it mean anything?

officially, Dayir’s name would be “Dayir Mol”, because they are of the Mol clan. the extended version, eir actual khatun-given name, is Dayir ak-rhono khadan Mol (a fallen star, a gift from the gods), which you’d only hear sung in ritual. that name was given because Dayir was found, not born -- no one has any earthly idea where this babe swaddled in starlight came from, so surely the gods are responsible (and considering I am content to let Dayir’s provenance be a mystery for now... hey, it’s possible. Dayir’s creators may very well be gods or godlike)

I’d tell you the Doylist reason behind Dayir’s name, but I don’t have one -- I have zero recollection of where I got eir name from and googling did not help because google seems to have little idea of what a Dayir could possibly be...

Ishan’s name is much easier to find Earthly origins for, and the in-universe meaning of his name is similar: “mover of stars”, “lord of the cosmic dance”, that sort of thing. if he had a surname or anything like that, he isn’t aware of it anymore (since his memories did not accompany him into the lifestream/underworld/whatever).

the body that Ishan occupies on Hydaelyn was named Seraphin Arnaud Laurent Desjardin, and the reason behind that beast of a name is “Ishgardians”. the more minor a house, the more likely it is to just pile a bunch of names onto their progeny. (I think the lawful limit is five names -- four if they’re especially long -- because after that you just run out of fucking space for it on every document ever)

and while we’re on the subject, I’m officially declaring their Amaurotian name to be Anubis, Hierophant of the Black Sun, Planeswalker and Far-seer, ze who would be Azem of the Convocation <3

and this is messy and awful, too, because other people care about Ishan aside from just Dayir. the Scions have a variety of opinions about him and treat him with varying levels of wariness, but he’s their potential powderkeg, and most of the Scions and Associated Allies do care about him. Raubahn is extremely fond of Ishan (Nanamo has a bad-boy crush on him haha... a lot of Ul’dahns do, which is how this one enterprising author started raking in the gil by writing a tawdry serial about him BUT I DIGRESS). Thancred and Estinien stand up for him constantly because they Get It. Haurchefant.... well, you know how Haurche is. he’s written whole essays about how vital Ishan is to all of their lives (yes, literal essays. Haurche is notorious for sending in impassioned editorials to any paper that will have him and they’re almost always about the Scions, if not about Dayir and/or Ishan specifically, although he did also send in one about corgis. that was actually Aymeric’s fault I DIGRESS AGAIN FUCK). Sidurgu and Gosetsu and Ysayle and Count Edmont and so many people have stepped in when people spoke ill about Ishan, completely blindsiding him -- he is chronically unable to see anything good in himself, let alone believe that anyone else sees anything good in him, and it always surprises him when people firmly assert otherwise

so it sucks that he’s almost entirely Dayir-focused, because other people care too. but that’s just how it is. call it the downside of the soul-bond, call it unhealthy attachment, but certainly call it tragedy. Ishan is more void than form. if he’d been raised in Garlemald, he would have been the spitting psychological image of Zenos yae Galvus. and upon whom did Zenos fixate? in whom did Zenos find the elusive thing he’d been hunting all his life? exactly

clothing matters are so hard for me because I think fashion is so cool and I love hearing other people share their knowledge about it, but I know just enough about fashion to recognise how much I don’t know and it makes me incredibly self-conscious considering how fashionable my characters are. it’s like that meme of having an incredibly smart Ph.D. havin type character and you, their writer, are just a gremlin with a GED or whatever lmaooooo (which is also true for me, most of my OCs are smarter than me. you gotta be to do Big Magykks)

I also have that problem where I’m so interested in fashion but I have no idea how to learn about what I want to learn about so I just stare at the vast repository of human knowledge like ;A; “halp”

okay, with that prefaced, I’ll do my best. I know Ishan prefers all his garb to be close-fitting, because he’s a predominantly melee fighter (Ishan+gun is being Considered but I haven’t made any determinations yet!) and needs to be aerodynamic and hard to latch onto. fashion-wise, he’s the proverbial “wears armour to the fete” type character. my DA2 OC, Elijah, and Ishan basically share a wardrobe -- Elijah just has more furs in his, haha. Ishan worships carbontwine and doesn’t even care that it’s no longer fashionable (as Warriors of Light, he and Dayir basically get to dictate Eorzean fashion anyway--), and much of his wardrobe is of Ironworks make. between that and his natural indestructibility, he’s basically a whole tank

Dayir is truly a visual opposite, which is actually pretty neat bc when they walk into an event together they are a real storybook vision -- the stoic, wiry, armoured Protector and his beautiful charge draped in silks, you know. the most rigid garment Dayir will wear is eir shapewear (which is also woven with carbontwine bc Ishan made sure of that) -- everything else is soft and billowy and probably some measure of revealing. except in Ishgard. then everything’s soft and fluffy and pulsing with heat magykks bc Dayir is Babey, haha. so yeah, plenty of soft wool there. (sidenote: the sheer liberation that Haurchefant felt when he first stepped into Ul’dah, lmaooooo... that boy literally just stopped wearing clothes immediately I swear)

(there’s a real cheeky outfit that some of the Dawn Throne NPCs wear that I desperately want to see Haurchefant in hhhhhhhhh)

(ANYWAY!!!)

there are snug garments that Dayir will wear but mostly it’s to provide contrast. like, ey’ll wear a snug under-top only to layer a billowy coat over it, or leggings under a flowing tunic. or a corset over a billowy shirt, that’s always a good look. ey also will do it when ey judge that the garment will highlight a particular body part better than that part just being bare would (kind of how semi-sheer stockings sometimes make legs look even sexier than just a bare leg would? that sort of thing)

and by “little post” I mean “whoops, not quite as little as I’d intended. sorry. lemme toss up a readmore after Dayir’s bit” (believe it or not, this is the short version. I can always Say More)

please feel free to ask as many questions as you like if anything is unclear or you want more info, I have no idea how any of this sounds to anyone else but me lol

Dayir, Heart of Darkness

non-combatant / defensive / support character by trade

defeats primals by absorbing their aether

does the above by virtue of an Allagan Heart (yes, exactly like the Ultima Weapon). the aether stored in eir Heart can be summoned for various purposes

originally (well, “originally”) from the Azim Steppe, so accepts “Dayir of the Steppe” as a form of address, but privately regards “Dayir of the In-Between” and “Dayir of the Prim” to be far more appropriate when it comes to place of origin

is trained in multiple varieties of dance and carries emself like it

would in some worlds be called a necromancer, or in other worlds an animancer, or in yet other worlds an avatar or a psychopomp or a shaman or a conduit. the class and job divides don’t really exist to em -- ey employ disciplines and concepts from multiple sources to achieve eir goals, and a couple of skills that frankly shouldn’t even exist

is spiritually accompanied by a todash-dwelling Qunari named Talan, whose stories of a world called Thedas tend to mesh uncannily with stories of Hydaelyn

think of an NPC, any NPC. there’s an 85% chance that they currently are or have been at some point a lover of Dayir’s (no, really) (”beast tribes” aside although there’s probably an Amalj’aa or two--) (most dragons also excepted) (I said most)

Do they usually live up to their own ideals?

Dayir has always regarded eir path as something ey follow without question -- likewise, ey think of emself as created, whole-cloth, and then refined by experience, rather than self-engineered. I say this to say... I’m not sure if Dayir has ideals aside from following whatever pulls at em. that makes em capricious by nature, so fortunately for everyone (including Dayir), what ey feel pulled by is rarely of the malicious persuasion, lol. (but that’s also how you get fiascos like Dayir putting emself in obvious danger in pursuit of Lord Zenos, and the fact that if it wasn’t for Alisaie and Urianger, ey probably would have never left Il Mheg) (Dayir definitely needs babysitters sometimes lmao)

but I think what balances Dayir’s fae-like qualities out is that ey genuinely care about everyone in eir life, even if they’re only in eir life for a brief period of time, so if I’d ascribe any abiding ideal to em it’d be the desire to quell suffering wherever ey can -- which, I daresay, ey live up to admirably.

Ishan, on the other hand... well, his ideal is to protect people like Dayir, to the death if need be... and also to dismantle empires. he hates Garlemald, lmao (his magnet-like attraction to one Garlean in particular notwithstanding. Zenos just has that effect on people and it’s annoying (especially to Zenos)). when Varis started goin on about fascism making all of Eorzea into one homogeneous land and all that nonsense during the “peace talks” Ishan had to be physically restrained in a separate room. ANYWAY my point is that Ishan definitely lives up to his ideals on the daily except in the sense that he has not yet destroyed Garlemald and he’s big mad about it

Do they actively seek romance, or do they wait for it to fall into their lap?

Ishan is pretty uninterested in romance as it’s usually presented -- the situation with Dayir is perfect for him because he gets to do what he’s good at in service of someone who appreciates it, and nothing further is asked of him. he’s at his best when he doesn’t feel like expectations are being placed upon him (yes, this is the root of every argument he’s had with Minfilia and Lord Edmont and so on. Raubahn is one of the few who knows how to just use him like a cannon -- point him at the enemy and shoot, and hope for the least amount of collateral damage), and Dayir is best at meeting people where they’re at and appreciating them as they are, so it works out.

Dayir, on the other hand, is very proactive in taking lovers and goes about it with unflappable enthusiasm. I legitimately think that if Dayir didn’t have a whole pokedex full of people to lavish eir attentions and delight upon, ey would probably combust. there’s probably a great scientific explanation to be made about eir aetheric capacity and its effect on eir emotionality, or a great spiritual explanation to be made about the soulshard of Nymeia ey absorbed during the Calamity, but whatever the reason, Dayir is an endless font of feels and needs a lot of outlets, lol

but the real crux of the matter is... there’s no clear evidence that it was supposed to be Seraphin and not Ishan. he just assumes that because of the whole wrong-body mixup. but the Warrior of Light really could just be... Ishan, and not Seraphin after all

as far as storybook fatebound heroes go, Ishan is a flat-out disappointment. he argues with Hydaelyn every time she deigns to speak to him, he spends all his money in pleasure dens and on Sapphire Avenue, one time Thancred caught him trying to flirt with Amal’jaa -- oh, right, right, we don’t talk about that

but that makes perfect sense. it wasn’t supposed to be him, you see. it was supposed to be Seraphin, the Ishgardian whose body and name and life Ishan automatically inherited when the Lifestream got its wires crossed during the apex of the Calamity. a scrambled signal, a misread soul signature, whatever it was, dumped Ishan into a foreign body and a foreign land, and to him, this whole situation is a punishment and a curse.

so every time Hydaelyn starts in on him, he just yells back, you’ve got the wrong one, you old nag! fix this mistake and we can all be happy!

unfortunately, that never happens. and eventually, eventually, Ishan has to come around to the truth, and the truth is as follows:

true, he is not Seraphin Augureau, but he will have to be, because the only other option is to die and let the Void sort it all out (and Ishan is totes allergic to dying, you see)

true, he starts out as piss-poor hero material, but there’s something about acting a part that changes a person over time no matter how much they fight it (and, by god, does he fight it)

true, he’s probably an embarrassment to the Scions of the Seventh Dawn for a while, but for some reason they put up with him, and that means something. he doesn’t know what it means, but he’s getting there... (spoiler alert: they’ve all known Ishans throughout their lives. there’s nothing remarkable about Ishan’s showy decadence, but there is something remarkable about Ishan that is worth excavating)

true, he’s bored by playing knight, but he craves the thrill of battle, and that’s one thing being the Warrior of Light keeps him flush in -- people to fight

true, he thinks he’s got himself sorted out, but actually he doesn’t know nearly as much about himself as he thinks he does -- Urianger said it, Minfilia said it, Zenos said it, but it doesn’t start to sink in until Emet-Selch says it (not to mention that conversation with Hythlodaeus...)

he might as well have not existed before the Battle of Carteneau. he has no recollection of being a person beforehand. he knows he has a history when he gets to Ishgard and is recognised by some folks, but it’s not his history, per se

that’s because he’s a walk-in

the details of the above are as yet uncertain but, in essence... there was a Warrior of Light who was at the Battle of Carteneau named Seraphin Arnaud Laurent Augureau, sure. but when Louisoix did his teleporty light magic something went kinda todash-y and... well, who knows where the original soul that was Seraphin went.

luckily this “new” Seraphin seems kind of used to appearing in new places and new bodies, and doesn’t raise much of a fuss

but he has his own name and it is Ishan, so you will call him Ishan

he seems to actually like the Ascians. there are reasons for that. (they are as yet uncertain but rest assured they’re probably as crazy as everything else I come up with) but he keeps it to himself because he figures it goes against, you know, the whole Warrior of Light thing

the Ascians can tell. but they keep it to themselves too, because this game is so much more interesting

he’s one of the few characters of mine that is a full combatant because... this story really seems to require it, lmao

but he still has the most silver of tongues because... duh (but instead of using it to get out of battle he usually uses it to... get into battle -- or someone’s bed. same thing really)

Good King Moggle Mog XII almost decimated his ass because he was so distracted by how marshmallow-squishy it was that he almost forgot to, you know, KILL IT

and last but not least because he is my character and we all know me: