Mali Darksidhe

“I’ve no need of titles or accolades. I’m an adventurer of simple means, not one that seeks great fame or fortune. I fight, I win, I celebrate with a good meal!”

A reluctant veteran of many wars, and one of those thought lost in the Battle of Carteneau, Mali is often drawn in to the struggles of the Scions of the Seventh Dawn.
Over a decade of adventuring has taken its toll on his mental health, but while he may come off as brusque or grim he still cares infinitely more than he lets on._{(Note: Mali is explicitly NOT the "canon" WoL. He is a glorified errand boy.)}

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General Information

Appearance

Birthdate: 28th Sun of the 6th Umbral MoonGuardian: Nald'Thal, the TradersRace and Clan: Raen Au Ra Viera of the Veena tribesGender: Male (current body FTM)Age: 30sHeight: Tall for a male viera, but often laments being "shorter."Build: 100% pure muscle from all that adventuring, though still rather lithe all things considered.Skin Color: Deathly pale, with a hint of a purple sheen.Eye Color: Left eye icy pale blue, right eye deep blood red. Both eyes appear glassy and pupil-less, possibly blinded in battle.Hair Color and Style: Deep lavender with hints of red, left relatively unkempt and uncared for.Relationship Status: Taken, monogamous

Notable Traits

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Personality

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Abilities

• Abilities Not Publicly Known

Abilities Not Publicly Known

NOTE:
It is heavily recommended that you find out this information organically during play. All abilities listed are based on in-game lore and designed to be plausible and either underpowered or with significant downsides.

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Background

NOTE:
It is heavily recommended that you find out this information organically during play.This section is primarily for those who already know bits and pieces and would like a view of the cohesive whole. Spoilers abound for the game and its expansions, as well as Mali's personal history.Use discretion as you see fit.

Early Life, The Fall, Rebirth

Life Before A Realm Reborn

Mali remembers little of his time in Nagxia, where he was born the only child to two parents he assumes were loving. What he does remember is that his family had to run away under cover of night as their house burned down. Something about a “grievous act” committed by his father, disgracing the family lineage. He never did find out what it was that had turned his family into pariahs, but even at a young age he knew that he could never go back. They hid in Yanxia for a time under the protection of the Malaguld tribe, before making a deal with the confederates to be smuggled aboard a ship bound for Eorzea.
The journey did not end well. A storm took the ship by surprise, wrecking it atop a shore of sharp reefs on an uncharted island. Young Mali washed up on shore as the only survivor, and found the island was inhabited by ruthless pirates known as the Dark Harvesters, led by a captain known as Bloody Scythe. Mali, with his strange appearance and no knowledge of the local tongue, became a slave under their heels, working day and night to appease his foreign captors...or at least, that’s what he thought was going to happen. After a short stint as a slave he caught the eye of the Bloody Scythe herself, Blanaren Ganzsaldwyn. She had recently lost a son to a battle with a rival pirate crew, and saw in the young Au Ra the shimmer of something greater. She began teaching him the Eorzean tongue, which he quickly caught on to.
Once he had begun to learn his letters Mali never wanted for books to read to increase his vocabulary, though where they came from was always up for debate. He was found to have an aptitude for using the geometrical patterns of the arcanists guild, and summoned his first carbuncle at only the age of eight, and partially by accident. He was never taken on raids, but instead was kept secure and secret in the Dark Harvesters’ base, an interconnected series of caves. His adoptive mother, while raucous and fool-hardy with her crew, was always stern and protective of her young ward. Even when he came of age, and insisted he was ready for battle, Blanaren would not have it. She knew that Mali was meant for something big, not for the meager life of a pirate.
Just before his 19th birthday, Mali began having visions of meteors raining down from the sky, and a mysterious motherly voice that compelled him: Hear. Think. Feel. Of course Mali thought he was going mad. He told his mother of the visions, and she simply smiled. She knew that this was the sign, what he was always meant to do. She gave him her own axe, and set him on a small raft with these parting words:“Ne’er let the damn Lominsans know where you came from. Ye’re not a pirate, ne’er were and ne’er will be. Don’t let us weigh you down.”Knowing that his family name was “disgraced,” and having no other name from his time as a pirate’s ward, he made a name for himself as "Mali Darksidhe," a name taken from one of his favorite fairy tales growing up. He hid his race with full covering from head to toe to hide his scales and tail, and a "horned" helmet that obscured his face. He always intended to return to the people who raised him, to see the crew he’d grown up with as a surrogate family, to show them how brave he had been and what he had accomplished. But then he met Y’shtola, member of the Circle of Knowing, and was pulled into something bigger than his personal aspirations.
While Mali refused to officially join the Path of the Twelve, he ended up doing much of their dirty work anyway. Fighting the Garlean armies, confronting powerful primals, fetching items that needed fetching. After each task he swore it would be his last, that he would finally return home. But each task led to another, and then another, until ten years had passed and he found himself facing down the armies of Garlemald beneath the red visage of Dalamud. The battle was long and hard, and it took its toll on Mali. He lost his right eye and was dealt a near fatal blow, right before Bahamut was set free from its prison and began its slaughter. Just as he was sure that his end had come, he was engulfed in a bright light…
And awoke in a healer’s bed. The eye he thought he had lost had returned, though he no longer recognized it as it had turned a deep shade of red. Apparently he had been found on the side of the road and brought to a healer in Red Rooster Stead, just outside of Limsa Lominsa. Taking it as a sign, he rushed to the island that he had once called home...and found that it had been entirely obliterated by the Calamity. The Dark Harvesters were no more.
For him it had been an instant, but for the rest of the world it had been five years. No one remembered his deeds back then, not that he had ever been one to brag. Left with nothing but his skills, and the heat of battle still felt upon his back, he decided to start his life anew. Of course, creating a new identity is that much easier when no one remembers your previous exploits to begin with, and Mali intended to keep it that way. But old habits die hard, and Mali soon found himself doing the dirty work of the Circle of Knowing and Path of the Twelve once again, now combined under the moniker of the “Scions of the Seventh Dawn.”

Spoilers for the game's story to folllow

Ishgardian Exile

During the events of Heavensward

When the Scions were wrongly accused of the murder of the Sultana Mali was forced to flee northward into Ishgard with the few remaining members. With the recent influx of Doman refugees he no longer had to hide his appearance, but instead he had to hide from the very Grand Companies he had once helped establish so long ago.Much as had happened in the past, he was swept up in the Scions' adventures as they returned to their numbers one by one, and helped them bring an end to the Dragonsong War. He thought that would finally be the end of it; Nidhogg slain, peace achieved, the Scions' reputation in Eorzea restored. Finally he could put his blade down and rest.

The Hollow Knight

During the events of Stormblood

After witnessing so much more death with the atrocities committed at Baelsar's Wall, and another of his close allies among the dead, Mali became even more of a recluse than he already was. He shut himself off from all emotional ties and, while he dutifully continued his work as the Scions' errand boy, the joviality that could once be found in him with close friends had faded away.When he was asked to board the ship bound for Doma, and the homeland he barely remembered, he did so only because he feared the few allies he had left would come to harm. What should have been a chance to rediscover his heritage became just another job to complete, another order to fill. When he wasn't on the battlefield assisting the Scions he spent the majority of his time in his inn room or tent, alone.A modicum of what he once was returned after the liberation of Doma and Ala Mhigo, which made the eventual mysterious illness and inevitable comas of many of the head Scions even worse.

Those Left Behind

During the events of Shadowbringers

With the incapacitation of the most powerful of the Scions and the disappearance of their champion to another world entirely, Mali and what remained of the Warriors of Light were left to keep the peace... which mostly meant running errands and taking whatever jobs could be found to keep things running. Mali was not close enough to the higher ups to have warranted his own summons to the First, but he was close enough to be summoned by them in desperate battles...and have incredibly vivid dreams of the First whenever he tried to rest.For far too long he felt trapped in the space between the Shards, never allowed a moment of peace. In his waking hours he worked tirelessly for Tataru, in his sleep he was stuck watching the Scions struggle against the Sin Eaters. Unable to help outside from the few moments that he and other Warriors from other Shards were summoned, he felt a helplessness that shook him to his core.When the Scions were finally returned to their bodies and his unconscious intrusions into the First finally stopped, Mali found some amount of relief. They were all on the same Shard now. He could protect them properly now. The people he knew now he cared about more than he ever wanted to admit.When had he become so soft?

Darkness Calls

Prior to the events of Endwalker

While Mali's spirit was broken bit by bit as events piled up, the darkness within him grew. Literally. The dark side he already had a tenuous partnership with feasted eagerly on Mali's darkest fears and impulses, growing stronger as Mali's will to fight back grew weaker. And when the one eclipsed the other, his dark side saw the chance to strike. It rended Mali's soul to shreds and took hold of his physical body, twisted and contorted into a form not unlike a voidsent. Now unshackled from its undeserving master it could finally enact its revenge upon a world that had stepped on the weak and kind-hearted for far too long.The last and dying shard of Mali's consciousness had only one desire before it parted; to protect what he had held dear in life. To stop the horrid thing it had unleashed by its own weakness. Somehow, some way...Using what little strength he had left, Mali reached out to his darkness and took revenge, rending apart the thing that had destroyed him. He took enough aether back to stay conscious a while longer, while removing his dark side's ability to retain a physical shape. The two were now locked in an unsustainable struggle, both slowly degenerating as they fought, perfectly matched in waning strength. They fought on a battlefield of aether currents across Eorzea, following fluctuations that attracted monsters and adventurers alike. The battles on both sides were intense.When it seemed that both were on the verge of dissipating entirely Mali had a sudden insight upon seeing a fellow adventurer fall. He was intimately aware of how Ascians affected the physical world while having long lost their bodies. If those with the blessing of Zodiark could do it, why not those with the blessing of his primal twin? There was little to lose, and at least one small advantage to gain...And so it was that Mali found a physical form once more. The now unused body of the recently slain Viera took his soul into itself easily. He was whole and hale once more...if in a form wholly unlike him in just about every way possible. But it was enough. His darkness would dissipate, and he would live on.But...for how long? Would his dark side emerge anew? Would it be stronger, fiercer? Would it win out once more? The thought was not lost on his dark side either, and with its own selfish desire to exist it offered to make amends. It would give Mali new gifts befitting its previous ascendance and be beholden to him once more, in return for enough aether to remain, even if in an incorporeal form.Perhaps it was a deal that Mali should not have taken, but the prospect of newfound power--of using the thing he had nearly let run rampant to make amends and become stronger for his comrades--was an appealing proposition. He agreed and sealed the contract by naming his dark side; Lemure, the unexorcisable spirit.

Forge Ahead

During and after the events of Endwalker

Though he rejoined the scions yet again to fight against the coming darkness, as far as his comrades knew he was once more an unknown newcomer--a repeated event that pained his heart anew. His countenance again unknown to them, and fearing disdain should he divulge how he yet lived by a means he found distasteful at best, he was in no hurry to correct them. He never gave them his name. He hardly spoke. He did his duty to its fullest...and when the battle was over, he left. He could not endure the pain of living among those who had forgotten him any longer. He loved them so, but they hardly knew him at all.But with such a painful decision came an unexpected boon; freedom. For the first time in his life there was no one holding him shackled to their will, no one holding him to a duty or a cause. He was, truly and fully, free.And he had no idea what to do with himself in such a state. For all his stubborn blustering he had always followed others, always let someone else dictate the grand schemes of where to go and what to do. Now he could go anywhere, do anything, be anyone he wanted to, but with all the endless choices he felt lost more than anything. Still, as he had learned in his greatest, and final adventure with the Scions.......As long as there was hope, he could carry on.

Beyond The New Horizon

Before the events of Dawntrail

Mali's next adventure came from an encounter of pure happenstance with someone who radiated an aura not unlike his own--both alike and opposite in one--who took him into her employ and brought him to the loosely-aligned group of adventurers, merchants, and travelers that she had allied with. While they lacked the pinpointed direction he had had with the Scions, it gave him something to do with the freedom he'd never had.His specific abilities and their shared quirk also led to him accompanying his new employer as an equal partner on missions related to voidsent when she acquired them, and vice versa. It was not long before the two found they had more than just their draw to the void in common, and only slightly longer that she made it plain that she desired Mali as her partner in more ways than in business. She was wise to the world and no stranger to love while Mali had spent so long unable to even think of sharing a life with someone that it seemed nigh inconceivable...but when she looked at him so, cherished him so, he found he wanted nothing more.But he was quite literally a dead man walking, and he had borrowed time at best to spend with her. The pull of darkness had not been abated, and when it once again threatened to drag him under there was no fragment of himself to take it away. He had to make a choice; return quietly into the aether, or succumb to the pull and become the very sort of monster he had put to the blade again and again, to remain among the living as a thing that fed upon them.And yet, this time...she was there. She wanted him with her, whatever way it was, in whatever form it took. He had spent his life living for other people and doing what they wanted and it was only in death that he had even been given a chance to live for himself and find something to want at all.In the end, he chose her.

Embracing the Darkness Within

Concurrent with events during and after Dawntrail

He had more to live for than he ever had before, and felt more alive than he had since...well, since when he was alive. But the cost had been great, and he could not shake the visceral feeling in his very core that he had become a monster, just another thing for adventurers to hunt and kill as he had—and still did—for simple coin and a small hint of recognition. He found some small amount of solace in frequenting fighting rings and controlled bouts, where he could further learn to control himself, but the feeling was always there. He could feel the thing he really was just beneath his skin, eager to burst out of the cage he kept himself within.And whenever he was too distressed, too overworked, too desperate for the aether he refused himself, it escaped. Flesh and bone crunched and cracked and expanded into a beast made of claw and wing and fang, sharp and deadly from every angle. He sought out any means to fix it, to make himself "normal," but only came up empty. He would have to live with what he was.It did not help that old enemies of his partner (and later, wife), overzealous outcasts of the Reaper order from the outskirts of Garlemald, resurfaced with a thirst for his found family's blood. After continually targeting both her and the son she had thought lost lifetimes ago, reunited by happenstance, Mali had no other choice. To save the life he had chosen he would have to embrace every aspect of it—including fully embodying what he had become.

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Miscellanea

Optional Reading

• Character History

Friends and Allies

Affiliations

Playlist

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Potential Hooks

Blade for Hire

Mali is primarily an adventurer by trade, meaning he’s likely to take just about any job given to sustain himself as he has nothing more mundane to fall back on. While he does maintain a moral code and will not do a job that is overtly malicious, he’s not above getting his hands dirty if he finds the context amenable, nor will he turn down less “glamorous” tasks such as guard duty…or passing twelve items between people who can’t be arsed to do it themselves.

Thirst for Knowledge

More specifically, reading material of any and all kinds. He is especially interested in rare printings and obscure fiction, but won’t say no to any book he doesn't already own—a list that is slowly but surely shrinking in size.

Seeking new Horizons

Recently finding himself free of the shackles placed by both himself and others, Mali now seeks new purpose and possibilities in life. He’s willing to try anything once…as long as those around him are prepared for things to potentially go wrong in new and disastrous (or hilarious) ways.

Wandering Soul

Due both to his life as an adventurer and a natural wanderlust Mali can be found to pop up just about anywhere, for any reason. It is entirely possible to just stumble upon him by happenstance.

Unusual Aether

Due to his nature as...well, to put it plainly, an untethered soul and a voidsent cohabiting a risen corpse, Mali's aetheric signature is all kinds of wrong. If your character is aetherically sensitive they may notice this and find reason to investigate.
(Given that this is an obvious trait if your character is sensitive to aether, consider this an open "OK" to bring this into interactions as you please, even if it is not the main focus of the interaction.)

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Out of Character

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Behind The Glamour

Out of character I am a queer af asexual panromantic disabled trans man, pronouns he/him. If any of that word salad made you uncomfortable you and I are probably not a good fit. I try to be kind, open, honest, and understanding with others, and expect the same in return. My aforementioned disabilities can sometimes make typing difficult or slow, so I ask that you bear with me if it takes longer for a reply to come through. There are a few ways to make this easier for everyone, though! Here is my current favorite technique, and I'm willing to try others too: