hexephre

let them grow up squenix you cowards

armour design is the reason im never going to finish any art of canon characters

toyhou.se | lodestone

now that i'm getting into the wolqotd stuff and my ffxiv brainrot is returning on the creative front, i should probably make a proper post about my WoL, xephre drakis!

(quick rundown of ffxiv: it's a mmorpg by square enix. your character's role or whatever is the Warrior of Light or WoL. it's basically a power trip where you save the world in increasingly extreme ways and everybody loves you. also everybody's hot, both characters and npcs. excepting the lalafells, who are chibi styled and look like actual children, even the ones with facial hair.)

xeph is a viera, aka a bunny person. for a while i had shapeshifter lore for them because i couldn't settle on a look, but then... i settled. viera are extremely Gender, and while neither male or female feels quite like what i'm looking for, with the addition of mods (for which the policy is basically "if you're not exploiting the game we'll look the other way, just don't blast it on main") i can get pretty darn close. their ears even look kinda like my fursona's ears!

xephre's Echo manifests in a time loop: every time they fail, they are reborn with all their memories intact, made to try again and again. after a few hundred loops you can imagine they're a little tired. they've tried everything to break the cycle: preventing the calamity, killing antagonists early, doing nothing and letting it all pass by. seems the only solution is to follow the script and try not to screw up too bad.

sometime a few dozen loops in, xeph makes a pact with not one, but three voidsent: sisters called the Keres, taking the form of beastly birds with jagged talons, whipped tails, and gaping maws full of teeth. xeph may not have mentioned in the contract that they reincarnate endlessly, though. the keres were none too happy to find that out.

also, you can read a little prose about xephre's meeting with the Keres here!

outside of canon stuff, i often portray or take pics of them smiling and laughing and having a good time, but that's more "me" than "them" if that makes sense. they're not a complete downer in-story, but their happiness then is a quieter one, tempered by hardships and coloured by the knowledge that it is hard-earned.

due to the combination of brainrot + everybody in this game is hot + the vast majority of the npcs gush over how brave and selfless and special you are, most of my writing looks at xeph's relationships with various npcs throughout their reincarnations. though each story is meant to be standalone, it's fun seeing xeph go from an earnest, overly humble adventurer, who would sooner efface themself from the annals of history than admit they played a key role in saving people, cities, and civilizations, to a jaded, sarcastic lil shit, who takes advantage of the kindnesses given to them and gladly listens to the exaggerated tales of their endeavours to stroke their ego. they fluctuate a little over time because they do have some kind of conscience, and straight up exploiting honest folk isn't really their style. it's just that they're so goddamn tired, and if people wanna help, then xeph may as well let them help.

there's no time to explain--

artfight attack for a friend of her bunboy! she always talks about eating eos, idk im not a scholar but i guess that's a thing?

attack link!

i wish i had metallic pants irl