Art and Stuff

Name: Ardyn, "The Starbreaker" (Though he rejects this title)

Age: 26

Race: Sky Being, Heartlander

Height: 5'6

Ardyn is a figure of both remarkable willpower and unspeakable grief.

He is almost two entirely different people in one man. Rarely does anyone truly understand the extent of his identity and its nuances. He is strong, powerful, untouchable. As though no storm could pelt him. But he is also sorrowful, emotional, and erratic, a force of destruction and suffering.

Ardyn is also a transman (FTM).

He has long brown hair, in dark waves. He wears it up sometimes in tails or braids, and down others, letting his hair cast shadows across his face like a curtain.

His body is riddled in scars, mostly along his arms and back. His chest, especially, to show what he gained as well as lost. His body is a burden as much as it is his personal vessel.

Ardyn loves wholly, burns brightly. He is either loved or hated, knowing no inbetween, and always expecting loss.

He wields two impressive blades, manifested not from magic, but from his humanity:

The Blade of Grief

A black obsidian greatsword, cracked and jagged like shards of scattered dark glass. It is fueled by Ardyn's suffering, his sorrow and grief. It glows with a pale blue and crashes down like the weight of his burdens.

The Blade of Will

A fiery longsword. It shimmers with a gilded flame and glows like a burning star. He slashes with pure confidence in his resolve to protect, create, and build.

Ardyn can never use both weapons at once, but he is burdened with using both. It is a balance between his two resolves. His unbearable grief and his steadfast will.

"Ghosts":

He is inhabited by 3 identities, all are him, but he calls two his "ghosts". Ardyn's resolves all combat one another, as if speaking in a circle of discussion, but all are his inner voice, how he talks to himself.

Grief glows pale blue with sunken eyes and a darkness about him. He reminds Ardyn of his fears, losses, and pain. Grief is strong, protective, but also destructive. The self-criticism Grief provides destroys Ardyn from the inside.

Will is unmistakabley Ardyn at his most radiant, glowing with a warm gold. He is taller, stronger, more handsome. Everything Ardyn strives to be. Will reminds Ardyn of his drive, love, his refusal to bitter, his refusal to give up. But Will can make Ardyn burn so hot that he burns his own self out.

Finally, there is Lonliness, the vessel himself. Ardyn's body. What he considers his default state of being. Will and Grief will never help Ardyn make important choices, it is in his own hands, in silence, to decide.

The Starbreaker:

Sorseirgh is the God of Death and Shadow, one of the Gods of Creation who helped shape Ferra into what it is today. He is represented as a star in a sea of shadow. Many mistake him for the star, but he is actually the darkness that surrounds it.

Ardyn was given the title "The Starbreaker" for his expressions of will and grief.

When he is fueled by willpower, Ardyn burns hotter than the sun, brighter than a star, filling the void of space with radiant, overwhelming light.

But when Ardyn is fueled by grief, he is deemed as cold as space itself, darker than that void, a shatterer of any light that he may come across.

The Moon Elves who revere Sorseirgh were the first to give Ardyn the title of "Starbreaker", and ever since it has been a stain he bears unwillingly. They considered Ardyn to be a dark reflection of Sorseirgh, somehow darker than the Lord of Shadow himself.

Ardyn has always tried to put himself in front of others, to protect them, but his actions and his struggles to control both will and grief cause him to appear erratic, even dangerous. Many ostracize him, cast him out.

Starbreaker was given to him as a title of shame, to mark him more like a mythological beast than a man. A man, or perhaps merely a person, is all Ardyn wishes to be.

Ardyn travels across Ferra attempting to bring joy, safety, and light to the places he wanders. But Ardyn is not only his will. Many misunderstand him, thinking grief is something he can overcome or discard, but grief is just as a part of Ardyn's existence as his will. Rejecting him for it only makes it more tied to his experience.