(no subject)

[forest_born]

Appearance notes: When he isn't wearing gloves, he has rather nasty burn scars up both arms; they look freshly healed, and never quite heal further. A few patches of further scars have crept out from that; he doesn't often wear short sleeves/no shirt for it to be visible.

History: Isaudorel wasn't even from somewhere close to the city of Gridania proper; his family had a small orchard further out in the Twelveswood, which meant he grew up tending and around the trees a great deal anyway. It meant that for a while, he mostly registered as having a natural talent with the plants, and that it took a little bit to sink in and get noticed that some of his aptitude wasn't just a green thumb - that and an incident with knowing about something that didn't quite belong in that area that was dangerous before it got close.

He was brought to Stillglade Fane after "the trees told me" sank in, at ~13-ish. He studied there under the Padjali and other Hearers as a conjurer, and began doing work for the Fane and the city-state; he was never assigned to a specific town or city, although it was usually a battered-around idea that he would one day. In the meantime, most of his work was roving, going to back up the Wailers or towns in trouble spots.

When the Echo awakened, that brought several further complications to his life and his role in Stillglade Fane, as none of the Padjali were sure what to make of it; after a while, it was generally agreed that something was coming, and that he'd been marked to deal with it. He was sent out to try to follow this and see what he could learn of whatever was coming a little ahead of the borders opening up.

His inquiries led him to be found by the Path of the Twelve, where he was likely one of the easiest recruits ever, having basically set out seeking the same thing they were. He was still trying to adapt to being outside of the forest, and a bit of a train wreck in some ways despite being a very skilled healer, but he managed to both do well at his job and be an obvious shoe-in when they needed someone to work in the Twelveswood.

When the rumblings of the Seventh Umbral Era started, it was a little like a giant neon sign going off with "SO ABOUT THAT PREMONITION OF IMPENDING DISASTER"; he practically beelined for it, and was caught up in the chase to try to prevent the White Raven from bringing Dalamud down, throwing himself into it with the kind of obsessive focus of someone that is consciously chasing a goal that is potentially their life's purpose.

This led to him being with the contingent around Louisoix at Cartenaux; he managed to make a good acquitting as a healer through most of the fight, then around when Dalamud opened, he misjudged which parts of the local landscape were safe to draw on and which weren't, leading to a backlash that destroyed his staff, left him with some nasty burns, and threw him into "hearing colors and seeing sounds" for the rest of the battle, as his system gave up on processing normal reality between being half-dead and overloaded. His damaged state when Louisoix's spell went off didn't really help matters any.

When the light cleared, he was found by a trapper in Coerthas, and became an object of much confusion, since he had dragonfire burns with no sign of a dragon, a scorched and wrecked conjurer's arm, and a Gridanian ceremonial mask that was, itself, burned and barely recognizable. When he'd recovered enough to speak, he had no more memory of who he was than anyone else would've, and groggily took the vague explanation of the storm as "...I should go see what they're angry about", walking out into the snow to try to talk to the elements.

It didn't really work, and to this day the ice elementals in Coerthas aren't fond of him.

It did increase the confusion over who he was and how he got there; when the trapper made a trip into town, he brought Isaudorel with, flagging down someone more educated in town. The older Inquisitor recognized the remains of the Gridanian ceremonial mask, and the stunt with the storm, which gave him a direction - Gridania.

Thanks to the Divine Witness Protection Program aspect of the spell, nobody in Gridania recognized him, but his skill as a Conjurer and Hearer made it not that hard for E-Sumi-Yan and the others to have a good guess; he took to adventuring in the hopes of finding some clues that would explain things, which met with mixed success and him ending up in contact with the "frustratingly familiar" Archons, and drug into events with the Ascians and the Empire, around attempts at furthering his skill with conjury that led to dealing with A-Towa-Cant.



Personality: Isuadorel manages a sort of weird matter of fact balance. On the one hand, he's very devout and very dedicated to his service of higher powers, and takes his duty very seriously.

On the other, he's so used to dealing with higher powers by now thanks to the Elementals that he's matter of fact about it to the point of what would be irreverence from anyone else, taking the odd quirks of higher beings and immortals with a long-suffering eyeroll and a frank admission that his job as Hearer is as much "Translate and sometimes argue with the Elementals and other beings" as "relay Their Divine Will to Mortals". He has a great deal of respect for the Elementals, Hydaelyn, and the gods, but he's far too used to things like that as a part of his life to have the sort of distant awe most "devout followers" would have. A-Towa-Cant has fallen into much the same category, and he tends to parse the soul of the itinerant Padjali as "smarmy brat".

Being a healer that is, by now, a veteran hasn't really helped his typical air of long-suffering dedication; he's very intent on making sure his allies make it through things in one piece, even if he occasionally has to smack one over the head with his staff or throw a Repose on them to do it. Being raised as much by the forest as by his family meant he never quite picked up the stereotypical Elezen superiority-ego, but he's also experienced enough and occasionally lacking in patience for other people's stupidity enough to sometimes end up coming across that way anyway; fortunately it's a very equal-opportunity Dim View of Stupid that only goes off on Stupid, and otherwise he's mostly just calmly sarcastic and too busy working from a perspective of "I was raised by trees" to look down on others.

In fact, he's actually fairly likely to get irritated with overly prejudiced egos as "counterproductive, stupid, and making this harder", considering that he was raised by trees and is focused on his duty, not your silly petty complexes, thank you very much, which may mean him cutting someone off at the knees verbally for planning something dumb that would've gotten them killed, then turning around and laying into anyone who makes a "Stupid Ala Mhigan/Foreigner/Whatever" comment even worse.

Also one of the former group that didn't make it that he had worked fairly closely with was Ala Mhigan. Don't get into "worthless Ala Mhigans" around him. Just don't.

He's gotten to where he's more adapted to dealing with the other cities and cultures; it's hard not to recognize him as Gridanian, and he doesn't bother trying to blend in, but it mostly just leads to nasty surprises when someone from another city thinks they can pull one over on the "sheltered forestborn". At the same time, having gotten used to being outside the woods and having close allies and friends from outside the woods means that going back to Gridania often brings temptation to give some of his own people Attitude Adjustments via Percussive Maintenance.

He's very protective of the people around him, although his focus makes it hard to tell sometimes; his relationship with friends and those close to him tends to be "sarcastic and occasionally grouchy papa rooster". He's still a little lousy at expressing any kind of close regard or fondness for others under normal circumstances; it doesn't help that his "work" often means he's been dragging himself through areas that're hard on his sensitivity, leading to him having less in the way of energy and resources to deal with people. If some miracle leads to him having comfortable downtime, he does have a sense of humor and will go along with drinking and assorted other Less Solemn activity, although he tends to keep the Gridanian norm - there aren't a lot of technical TABOOS exactly, but he isn't as loose as someone from one of the other cities would be, and he tends to not talk about or advertise it, which likely just makes it all the more confusing when he IS caught "off-duty" enough to be taking a break. In many cases, if there isn't an extended period of a few days, "break" for him is "a few drinks and a book with peace and quiet" or taking time to go somewhere with a healthier landscape than what he has to go through, with "actively goofing off" reserved for when he's had time to recharge and still has "time off" to spare.


Strengths:


Weaknesses:

Notes: Having lost a few people from the original Warriors of Light? One to Nael, possibly another at Cartenaux before the spell went off, maybe one previously to something less spectacular, hence the "pulling in new that may as well be".