#ialyn

Since Kerra's my commander but very much not human, she doesn't ever earn the title of Hero of Shaemoor--instead, Minei ends up involved in that fight. Her adoptive father had been attacked by bandits, and she was traveling outside of the city to grab some specific medical supplies. She jumps into protecting Shaemoor when the city comes under attack, along with a decently-sized group of others, which is how she first meets Logan Thackeray. He recognizes that she's young, but based on her necromancy skill and mannerisms, he and the others at Shaemoor assume she's a young adult rather than a barely-15-year-old kid.

(Also, an important distinction here--Minei actually doesn't take the title of Hero of Shaemoor either, in part because her experience of the event is more a group effort than the in-game version. The reason that this distinction is so important is that she doesn't get the fame that goes with the title, but she does become friends with Logan. If she had earned the title and consequently become more famous, she never would have joined the Vigil--in that situation, it's far more likely that someone would have realized how old she actually was and wouldn't have allowed her to join.)

Logan agrees to help Minei track down the bandits responsible for attacking her father, and they manage to bring them to justice, but her father eventually succumbs to his injuries. Petra stays with family friends, and she ends up more or less in charge of the tavern with Minei supporting her and training alongside the Seraph. Minei considers officially joining them to help keep her sister and herself afloat, and Logan is supportive of the idea, though he tries to assist them as well as much as he can.

The turning point towards her joining the Vigil is her helping Logan and the Order representatives to kick the Risen out of Lychcroft Mere (which follows a similar but not identical storyline as the human level 30 personal story, the main difference being that Minei is more an assistant/trainee than an Advocate of any kind). She learns that the dragons are a serious threat, and she learns to respect the ideals of the Vigil as well as their representative, Crusader Hiroki. The Seraph are directly loyal to Kryta and the Queen, while the Vigil fights the dragons and isn't loyal to any particular nation. Minei cares about Kryta, but she's far more loyal to her sister than anything else, and the thought of dragon minions (specifically the Risen) taking Petra away is particularly terrifying to her. She knows death magic and how dangerous it can be. Zhaitan's corruption isn't the same as her necromancy, but it's close in some ways, and the similarity, oddly enough, is what frightens her. Considering all those factors, when Hiroki asks her if she'd perhaps like to join the Vigil, she says yes.

🖊️: Because this is the Minei space now, you also asked me about her and Grenth (and just her take on the Six in general), so have some facts about that! :D

She received Grenth's blessing when she was almost too young to remember, approximately four years old. Her birth parents both passed away at the same time*, and she, being a grieving, untrained child who only really understood that they'd gone somewhere she couldn't reach, tried to bring them back. All she succeeded in doing was becoming so exhausted that she ended up on the brink of death herself. Grenth was intrigued by this child who was so young and yet fought so hard for her parents, reminding him just slightly of himself. He could not return them to her (lest he return all parents who left behind young children), but he did help guide her back to her body**, and she was left with a strong connection to death--and, in a sense, to resurrection as well. It's the reason that raising minions is what comes most naturally to her.

The reason I compared her to Edward Elric from FMA before (who had the experience of "I met basically-God and still am agnostic", though those aren't quite her feelings on the subject) is that she understands that she was given a gift and is thankful for it, but she's also irreverent at the same time, an attitude brought on in part from growing up more-or-less alone for five years. She believes wholeheartedly that the Six exist and that they are powerful, but she doesn't see the need to worship them for it. Respect them? Absolutely. Worship them? Not really. It's a bit of a thin line to walk as well as an outlier point of view amongst humans, and she learned early on to stop sharing it lest others become scandalized, angry, or both. Her sister Petra is one of the few people who's come to accept her POV, though Petra doesn't share it.

*Minei doesn't know the reasons for this, and she's never really thought to ask. To her, them being gone has been a fact of her life, and she's had so much else going on that she's never thought to question why that is.

**She would have eventually found her way back on her own, but it would have taken longer. She basically got a god-chaperone, which has to be pretty neat.

(Side note: I bet you've read these, Nero, but I just went through all the Parables of the Gods on the wiki, and if you haven't read them please do, they're fascinating.)

“Our rens?” Ia asked. “Or ‘Rene?”

“Hmm…do you want to hear about how ‘Rene got big?” Rhi bounced the twins a bit, and they giggled. “Or how Mom met Uncle Rel, or how Ren grew up in the jungle? Or how Dad—” They froze. “Um, maybe not that one—”

“What about Dad?” Tev tilted his head to the side.

“Um…” Shoot. Rhi had never tried to come up with a kid-friendly version of this particular story before. “How…Dad became a weapons specialist for the Pact.” Sort of. I’ll go with that.

“Spe-cee-a-list,” Ia said, sounding out the word. “What’s that?”

“It means he was good with weapons,” Rhi answered.

“But there are lots of weh-pons,” Tev said slowly. “Like Mom’s bow. And Auntie Cay’s knifes.”

“Knives, Tev,” Rhi corrected. “But yes, you’re right.” They bopped his nose, and he batted their hand away, making a tiny, happy sound. “Dad’s good with lots of weapons.”

“Does he have a fav-rit?” Ia asked, bouncing up and down.

Before Rhi could answer, Tev’s eyes lit up. “Oh! Dad likes, um…” His eyebrows scrunched. He brought his hands together, clenched his hands into fists, and opened them again with a pshh sound. “Those!”

Rhi blinked. “Wait, who told you that?”

“Can we make pshh things?” Ia said, suddenly excited.

Oh, great. “No!” Rhi said quickly and a bit too loudly. In an attempt to both dissuade them and be honest, they blurted, “Not till you’re older.”

“But how much older?” Ia asked. “A week?” Her eyes got big. “As old as you?”

“I’m not that old!”

Tev blinked in the way he specifically did when trying to be cute. How he’d learned to do that, Rhi had no idea. “Small ones?”

“Even small ones are dangerous—they can hurt you,” Rhi explained. “So no pshh, okay?”

Tev nodded, but his sister’s brow furrowed. A tiny glowing ball appeared in Ia’s palm. “But…I can make pshh?”

“That’s fire!” Rhi’s voice cracked. “That’s different!”

“Why?” Ia cupped the ball in both hands, making it larger. “I can make it go pshh, too!”

“No no no, not inside the house!” Rhi grabbed a pitcher of water that was on a nearby table and dumped it unceremoniously over Ia (and directly into their own lap). The sprout spluttered as the fire went out, blinking at Rhi in shock, and there was a beat of silence. Rhi winced internally. Oh no, I hope she doesn’t cry—

Tev giggled, breaking the tension. “You look funny, Sissy!”

Ia made a disgruntled noise, turned to him, and shook her head rapidly, covering both Tev and Rhi in water droplets and making Tev shriek-laugh. Rhi grabbed Ia and lifted the cackling toddler up in the air before settling her back on their lap.

“I’m sorry I dumped water on you,” Rhi said, just to make extra sure no one was too upset. “I actually have a better story—do you want to hear about the time I went to Divinity’s Reach instead?”

Tev stopped messily trying to dry his face with his hands and jerked his head up. “Okay!” Ia looked less enthusiastic, but she nodded.

Rhi sighed, standing up and helping both her siblings to their feet. “Okay. But let’s dry off first. I’ll go find towels.”

Ia tugged at their hand. “Ri-Ri, I can—”

I don't think I've shared screenshots of Tev and Ia yet, so let's talk about the twins and also give you some pics! They're both still tiny in canon, but thinking about them makes me happy :)

Tev (pictured above) is thief-class (no elite specialty yet because he is also Baby in-game; just reached level 30). For other character design bits, he has his mom Kerra's eye color and his ren Nisha's bark color. His hairstyle is a reference to three separate things: 1) his dad Canach's original model back in LWS1, 2) Malyck, and 3) Riannoc. Lots of people have that sylvari ponytail, haha.

I mentioned this somewhere before, but I'll mention it here too: Tev's the only one of Kerra's kids to inherit her empathic abilities. He practices a lot at both sensing emotions and shutting them out--he hopes one day to be as skilled at it as his mother. When he eventually reaches that level, he's quicker to use his skills than Kerra is. He doesn't have the trauma associated with his abilities that she does.

Tev masters sarcasm and deadpan very quickly and has a natural way with words. You do not want to get into an argument with him--he can and will manage to make you so turned around you forget your original point. Also, Tev and his sister Ia are the prank masters. She comes up with the ideas and gets whatever they need, and he sets it up and makes sure (or at least does his best to make sure) that they don't get in trouble for it.

Also, this is what he looks like with his glow; he's much more menacing at night.

This is Ia! She continues down the track her older sibling Rhi set of absolute chaos children--I think I mentioned in a previous ask that you sent (though it might have been someone else) that she's an elementalist who zooms around the house via fire and air magic as a kid. (She, too, is Baby in-game, so no elite specs yet.) Caithe sometimes does a double-take when looking at her, which is entirely my fault as creator since she has baby Caithe's hairstyle and Faolain's face shape (which is really her ren Nisha's, but they look pretty close).

For some fun facts about her: Ia learns how to bake when she gets older and she really enjoys it. I haven't settled on a job idea for her, but one possibility is definitely running a bakery while working with the Pact/one of the Orders on the side. She fights without material weapons for the most part, though Rhi designs a staff for her that's the only one she really uses. She also get super close to Kerra's fern hound Phil when she's little, which is very sweet. And for a perhaps slightly less sweet headcanon, she's the one who takes after her dad Canach when it comes to explosives, because of course she is.