#ffxiv fray

Was brainstorming ideas for what Meteor's Esteem would look like, especially after Shadowbringers and Our Closure. Ended up with this.

Normally after relinquishing the shards of Fray's soul back to the original after Our Closure, Esteem would have lost his ego and returned to being nothing but Meteor's hidden feelings in heart. However, much like how Fray himself grew new branches of himself from his damaged sense of self, Esteem ended up developing an ego of his own separate from the identity of "Fray" he'd been born with. That may have been his base, but now he's considered just as much a person as he is a part of Meteor himself (and likewise for any permutation of WoL Esteem may derive themselves from).

So while usually he's dormant, even when called out to battle, occassionally Meteor does bring him out for fun. The prospect of having a self of his own troubles Esteem considering he sees it as Meteor not being ready to accept his feelings back into himself, but what's happened happened.

With the helmet on, people hear him as they think he would sound like. E.g Sidurgu and Rielle would hear the original Fray's voice, Meteor hears the rough grizzled mentor he imagined Fray to be, and Lucient hears a mix of Meteor and the Fray attached to his soul.

Without the helmet, he actually sounds like Ardbert, as the lingering bits of Ardbert's self that had rejoined with Meteor/WoL ended up getting absorbed into him as well.