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  biography   Xyphris was born F'lhihr to F'lesi Xal and F'xal Nuhn on the outskirts of Limsa Lominsa. Before him came an older brother, Ithil, and after, a younger set of twins, a sister named Eris and a brother named Nikklaus. He'd several other half-siblings borne of affairs on both of his parents' ends that he never bothered to consider family, save a half-brother from his mother's side by the name of Zephyr. F'lesi's disinterest in adhering to the traditional seeker way of life was unknown to no one, and the beautiful seeker woman had as many callers as the Nuhn himself, if not more.While his father's doings went unnoticed and were frankly expected, his mother's cost her her life. The final straw was when she took a visiting elezen pirate by the name of Auvroix Perrault, later revealed as Camsyn Zeddicus to bed. F'lesi was murdered when Xyphris was no more than twelve, and Camsyn, feeling guilty, adopted the five children, fearing they would suffer the same fate at F'xal's hand.He put the lot of them to work on his ship, the Bloody Raven, a vessel known for being proficient in both the sky and the sea. The five children were taught to clean, to cook the most basic of food to stay alive, to fight, and to steal. Everything they could possibly need to know to stay at a pirate's side, they learned. Camsyn did not ignore their formal education either, hiring only the best tutors to accompany them on the ship to teach the children. What they retained and what they did not varied upon the individual.

In later years, xyphris acted the part as a member of camsyn's crew, running things from drugs to artifacts all over the world for a company camsyn never would reveal. in their downtime, the shadecross' would return to limsa lominsa to haunt the areas where the shadecross siblings had been born. downtime, however, was few and far between; camsyn didn't believe in sitting idle for too long.

it was a particularly cold, stormy night in coerthas when camsyn's ship hit turbulence rough enough to send the miqo'te careening over the edge. Xyphris was unfortunate enough to land on a pile of destroyed stone and wood in the bowels of the Brume of Ishgard. It wasn't until well into the morning that one of its denizens found his broken body. He was taken into their makeshift hovel, the remains of a burned out, abandoned inn well beneath the Forgotten Knight, and cared for until he was strong enough to get back on to his feet.

It took months for the displaced miqo'te to heal. In that time he had many visitors: the homeless men, women, and children who were curious about the mysterious stranger who fell from the sky. He told the children stories as a way to keep them preoccupied while the others were out begging for food, or worse. But once he was renewed, Xyphris could not bring himself to leave. The children adored and looked up to him and the elderly respected him. He made a name for himself by helping to steal food and teaching the younger children everything he had been taught by the tutors Camsyn had hired for him and his siblings. He even made a friend-turned-protege, Ella. Here, as opposed to on his adoptive father's ship, he felt as though he was actually making a difference. Here, they needed him. How could he simply up and leave?

not all of xyphris' dealings in ishgard were noble, of course: he was no child, and he found his own delights in the pleasure of the flesh with the noble ladies when their husbands were away, and wasn't above thieving whatever he could from them once he was let into their homes. he gained a reputation amongst the nobility for it, not to mention a criminal record.it was in doing precisely that that he met a one pamina vallieres, the adopted daughter of a relatively upstanding noble family. she caught him when he broke into her room and rather than calling the guards, the two sat and talked long into the night. he learned that pamina was not the actual adoptive daughter of the lord and lady vallieres', but actually their captive, wanting to hone her magical abilities and sell her off to a higher esteemed household simply to make them rich. xyphris was in no position to actually save the girl, and instead began sneaking her out nearly nightly to the brume with him to meet and make friends with the people who lived there. the two became close friends, best friends even, and pamina aided in helping xyphris support the people of the brume in any way that she could. rarely were they ever caught by anyone from house vallieres, but when they were, xyphris was thrown into the gaol for a night and pamina was not seen for moons at a time.

eventually, xyphris decided the only way to truly help pamina would be to infiltrate house vallieres. despite being notoriously known as a thorn in the lord and lady's side and a (petty) criminal, he appealed to them as pamina's personal guard. he was the only person they could name that had successfully gotten close to her unnoticed and kept her safe: how could they say no? they suited him with armor and gave him a room with the rest of the guard, then tasked him with the duty of patrolling her end of the house. it had all gone so smoothly. too smoothly, in fact.

it was a farce. one late night, xyphris was uprooted from his bed and thrown into shackles. pamina was no where to be found, and his questions of her location were met with laughter and sharp kicks to his ribs. he was dragged down into the wine cellar, deep within it and hidden behind a curtain where no one could see or hear him. there, they strapped him to a table and tortured him, using everything from conventional methods to using his own aether against him. they tortured him daily, until he lost count of how many days passed. the cellar remained dark, and the only sounds he ever heard were the sounds of distant church bells.

one day, it all came to an end. several masked mages appeared adorned in lanternlight, though it wouldn't have mattered. his eyes had adjusted to the pitch black of the cellar so well that he couldn't have made out their features if he'd tried. the only person that was not masked or obscured was pamina's older "sister", jenevieve vallieres, one of the many noble women he had shared a tryst with. she did not appear to him as the quiet, shy elezen he had always known her as, but instead full of rage. he hadn't the strength to question her. she approached the table that he was chained to and kissed him.*"I tire of this. I tire of watching you squirm and endure. I tire of watching you LIVE."With the cruelest smile she could manage, Jenevieve ordered his death. the mages wasted no time in moving in on him. he could not have begun to explain what was happening to him, only that he was suddenly very, very hot, burning even. the burning feeling spread throughout his entire body until he was convinced that he was engulfed in flame. the pain was searing, and it was at the point where he felt his rib cage literally tearing apart that he felt his heart stop and his world went entirely black. the sixth bell for the day tolled until there was naught but silence.

xyphris came to in slow-motion. everything seemed wrong about it. his vision was blanketed in spiderwebs, and his blood felt like ice in his veins. any attempts at moving were met with excruciating pain, but he hadn't even the strength to cry out or scream. he heard two voices, different voices than those of his assailants, though he couldn't discern their identities. the last thing he heard before passing out was a female voice telling him, "you're safe now".

when he awoke again, he found himself on camsyn's airship and in his cabin, being watched over by the pirate and pamina. she explained to him that the lord and lady vallieres' had sold her to a slave caravan rather than their original plans for associating with the miqo'te, which was the same timeframe that they had chained him up in the cellar. she informed him that it hadn't been mere moons, but a full summer that had passed since she had been taken. she explained to him that she had finally found a keeper willing to not only set her free, but assist her in returning to ishgard to rescue him. she had contacted camsyn for transport before infiltrating her former house, and then the two of them cut a swath through the guards before finding xyphris. pamina alone had slain the lord and lady vallieres, just to find xyphris dead in the cellar.she had expended every ounce of her magicks to bring him back, completely unaware of how long he had actually been gone. the healing she had bestowed upon him following had been minimal; he had a long road to recovery ahead of him, and ishgard was simply unsafe for him to stay in. camsyn set sail for kugane to meet with a former contact of his, an old, ailing au ra and his granddaughter, Naime. there, xyphris would receive the care necessary to rejoin the rest of the crew.

naime and her grandfather set xyphris up in a spare bedroom of their home. they fed him, bathed him, and gave him medicine that pamina had supplied for turns until he was able to actually stand on his own two feet again. in that time, naime would come and sit with him daily, acting as his personal nurse. they would talk long into the night, sharing stories about both her life in kugane and his both in limsa and in ishgard. he told her tales from camsyn's ship, and she showed him paintings she did in her free time. they became close, and quickly, and eventually fell in love.even when he could move around, he was weak from being immobile for so long, and his recovery was not without lasting injury. there had been irreparable damage done to his lungs, something that needed constant tonics that pamina kept shipping in to him. it left scars all over most of his body that simply would not heal, particularly covering his torso.naime's grandfather took it upon himself to begin training xyphris to get him back to full strength and even enlisted naime's aid in the matter. as time went on and he recovered, he chose to remain with the two, much to naime's joy and her grandfather's approval. eventually, they revealed her grandfather's part in the black market trade in kugane, and convinced xyphris to take his place where he was too old to continue on. her grandfather gifted xyphris a set of sais for his acceptance.naime assisted xyphris in most of his endeavors, recovering ==ancient and magical artifacts and selling them on the markets for an employer he rarely saw the faces of. when they weren't working, the two were either drunk or partaking in various and copious amounts of drugs. the vices were free, so why not?but all was not perfect in their world. naime and xyphris fought almost constantly, sometimes about the excessive use of drugs or alleged infidelity on either end, often times leading to one or the other leaving for a night or two in a fit of rage. eventually, after her grandfather's death, xyphris purchased a loft high above shirogane, choosing to stay there mostly for security purposes. at times, she stayed with him, but there was a reptitive fight-and-make-up scenario that seemed to play out between the two of them. on those days, she would return to her grandfather's home.despite their on-and-off nature, one thing remained constant: after every job that naime could not follow him on, the au ra woman would wait for him at the end of the road on the path leading to his loft, between the stone and the well.xyphris asked naime to marry him and she accepted.

on a rainy night after a successful job, xyphris happened upon a body on the road leading to his home. it took several heartbeats for him to register that it was none other than naime, shot to death and left out in the storm will little more than the bullet wounds that had felled her and a small lotus pin that was the calling card of a rival organization her grandfather had been battling for years. broken, xyphris fled kugane on camsyn's airship.amidst xyphris' despair, camsyn revealed to him that the organization that had murdered naime was none other than the one that he had been working for for summers. he had become friends with naime's grandfather summers beyond, and the two entered a personal truce, vowing to take care of one anothers' (grand)children if ever there was need. xyphris was insistent upon camsyn leaving the organization and upon revenge, but when camsyn refused, xyphris left his ship and swore he would never speak to the elezen again.he spent every night between limsa and ul'dah with a different body, soaked in such a drunken and drug-induced haze that he never bothered to remember, nor even bother to learn, any of their names. several times he visited one of his and nikklaus' childhood friends, madison riley, in summerford. she was the place he went to weep, just to flee again come dawn. sometimes, they were joined by an old friend, Ana Iethil. she tattooed over the scarring on his body and beyond, including inking a memorial portrait of his slain lover down one arm.this trend continued for several summers, until eventually, madison revealed to him that she was with child: his. it was at the insistence and under the dubious care of both her and Ana that he sobered up. It was no easy task, and more often than not Madison considered kicking the miqo'te out, never to cross paths again. But she endured, and Madison eventually gave birth to their son, Mathieu. not terribly long after that, he was reunited with pamina. desperately needing something to keep his mind off of naime and his hands off of his drugs, he began working for her as both a guard and courier, delivering and procuring materials for and her finished potions and tonics for different customers.

he was reunited with his brother nikklaus in ul'dah, where he introduced him and pamina. together, the trio had many "adventures". for a short time, they worked for a different company in kugane, though xyphris found it wildly difficult to focus or even force himself to be in the area. the temptation to return to his substances was great, staved off only by the need to control nikklaus' own issues with the same vices.while there, he returned to the company that naime's grandfather had sworn him into. he stopped simply stealing goods for them, and became their resident assassin-for-hire. the first kill should have tormented the miqo'te, but all he felt was the ice in his veins return.in that time frame, he started seeing another woman seriously and even became engaged to her, but it was not meant to last. some might have said it was fated from the start what with their vastly differing personalities. others might have said it was just another body to warm his bed. xyphris never commented much on the matter.

by the time they had left kugane, xyphris and his passing romance had faded. he followed his brother to the Arae Soteria, though he was the only one to remain in the company for any length of time. the other half of his time was spent aiding pamina and continuing to work with her while also remaining on retainer in kugane. fascinated by all sorts of magicks, pamina had endeavored to learn more about the void. this led down a long, winding road that ended with xyphris pacted with a voidsent: a battle of willpower he was steadily losing. a broken man does not make for the best test subject for an entity of the void, and xyphris? was still shattered.

while still working for the soteria and dealing with his voidsent problem, xyphris grew close to a friend of his (second) former fiancee's, Pahja Entialpoh. The two bonded over their recent romantic misfortunes and became fast friends, but the more time that xyphris spent with the keeper, the more he felt the pieces of himself start to meld back together. he was fascinated by her stories of her childhood and of the shroud, and intrigued by her wonderment involving aetherology. there was a light that outlined her, one he was terrified to taint with the shadow that loomed over his shoulder. but try as he might, xyphris fell in love with the miqo'te woman, and the feelings were reciprocated. eventually, they married, and pahja became with child.these days, he no longer works for the soteria, but aids his brother in running his fight club known simply as Shady's. his pact is no more, and the connection to his life in kugane has become less distant call and more an impossible to ignore, persistent scream in his head.xyphris walks a thin line between being a man and being the monster that his life experiences have shaped him into, so thin one might argue that it doesn't actually exist. every day, he's tempted to let the shadows take him and let the monster out. it's a constant fight, a longing, a yearning, and sometimes...sometimes, the shadows win.