Chris Ganale

Cris Ganale
Cris in his combat attire.
Gender	Male
Race	Hyur
Clan	Midlander
Citizenship	Ul'dah
Place of Birth	Ul'dah
Nameday	6th Sun, 4th Astral Moon (Age: )
Guardian	Althyk, the Keeper
Profession	Mercenary, professional bodyguard
Theme Song	Battle Born

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Cris Ganale is a male midlander hyur hailing from the city-state of Ul'dah. Formerly a non-commissioned officer of the Immortal Flames, he fought as a phalanx trooper at the Battle of Carteneau and survived the ensuing Calamity. Afterwards, he was discharged from service and changed his primary combat arms field from sword and shield to the axe, taking up work as a mercenary for hire and professional bodyguard.

Biography

Early Life

Born to a middle-class family in the city-state of Ul'dah, the desert jewel was all that Cris knew in his early life. His father a deadbeat that vanished less than two years after his birth, he was raised by his mother and grandparents, along with five aunts and an uncle--with their own respective families--living nearby in the city. His grandfather in particular acted as a stand-in father figure whom he has looked up to all his life and used as the measuring stick against which to judge his worth. Though not so well-off as to never want for anything, the financial status of his family meant that he never went hungry or lacked well-fitting clothing to protect him from the elements. This is not to say he was not unaware of the class warfare rampant in the city, as he was shunned by the richer kids and the poorer alike. Because of this, he developed an introverted personality very early on, preferring to keep to himself and thereby avoiding the shame of being ostracized by others.

Of his large immediate family, the vast majority had or were presently serving in the military, instilling in him a strong sense of patriotism and the values of honor, integrity, and dignity. Because of this, he settled on a career in the military from a young age, and spent most of his youth preparing for that by studying military tactics and history, weapons and armor use, and preparing himself physically for military service. He discovered a favor of swords and focused on the development of that particular combat arm, but kept his training in the other fields balanced for the sake of not handicapping himself.

Aside from his continuous drive to prepare himself for the military, little else of note occurred during his teen years.

Military Service

At the age of eighteen, he enlisted into the Immortal Flames and was assigned to the 5th Phalanx Corps, a unit specializing in the use of heavy shields and spears to serve as a mobile blocking force against enemy infantry units. He displayed high skill with the combined use of shield and spear, as well as an impressive talent for tactics and improvisation. Though the majority of the Flames' military activity at the time consisted of ensuring the territorial integrity of Ul'dah and the occasional skirmish with the Amalj'aa, Cris distinguished himself well and earned several promotions over the course of the next five years.

Even as his military career rose steadily, events in his private life were not going so well. Only a year into his service, his grandfather passed away from age and failing health. As devastated as the loss of his role model and father figure left him, it was followed shortly by a series of ill-fated efforts at romance. A miqo'te woman he had been trying unsuccessfully to court for three years prior, despite repeated warnings from friends and family alike that she was merely taking advantage of his affections, finally drew his ire by making unflattering remarks about his grandfather. The next several would-be significant others followed the pattern of being highly-affectionate and in love with him, only to be caught within months by any number of his friends in relations with other individuals. As this trend continued, his trust in people he didn't already have established camaraderie with withered as an unwatered garden, and he in turn grew more taciturn to people outside his close group of friends, family, and the Phalanx Corps.

After close to a year, it seemed at first as though his luck in love would finally turn around, with the arrival of a new member into his unit, Rinh Orho. Possessed of a strong professional attitude when on duty, she was warm and friendly when out of uniform, and her interest in Cris was genuine. Despite initial misgivings by their commander, their relationship served to strengthen their bonds in the field and assisted in increasing the proficiency of the formation overall. As is often the case, however, it was not long before the ultimate test was put in their path.

The Battle of Carteneau

War had come to Eorzea. Spearheaded by the VIIth Imperial Legion, the Garlean Empire advanced into the heartland of the region, bent on conquering all that laid before them. Along with the threat of the Empire, another peril presented itself in the form of the lesser moon Dalamud, falling from the heavens to the earth below. Though capable of scant little against the threat presented by the falling moon, the armed forces of the Eorzean Alliance could very well contest the Garlean invasion. Knowing that the very site of the battle they would wage against the Empire was also ground zero for the falling moon, Cris bid his family goodbye and departed with the Immortal Flames to give his life preserving as much of the world as he could.

At the fields of Carteneau Flats, the Alliance met the Empire head-on in a pitched battle. Despite the clear technological edge of the Garleans, the Alliance managed to hold their own through clever application of magic and the desperate strength born of a fight for utter survival. The 5th Phalanx Corps, their shields and arms magically-treated to resist the heavier weapons and magitek of the Garleans, wrought havoc on the light infantry that comprised the bulk of the Imperial force, all but invincible to the blades of those ground troops while seeming to strike down numerous platoons' worth of troops with frightening ease. Singular attacks by Garlean magitek reapers were ineffective at breaking the Corps or halting their advance, as the magicks applied to the Corps' shields diffused the energy of their cannon fire across the entire formation, rendering their energy impotent. Attempts by multiple heavy Garlean weapons to turn their attention to the Corps left them vulnerable to devastating flank assaults by the Alliance's lighter infantry and chocobo knights, or unexpected attack from the 'mobile artillery batteries' of the Alliance's thaumaturges.

Working alongside archer teams from Gridania and marauder units from Limsa Lominsa, the Corps further disrupted Imperial efforts to track and neutralize them by breaking apart unexpectedly into smaller strike units, making swift lightning raids through the enemy lines before regrouping into their full phalanx and, aided by the other allies keeping the enemy distracted, hammered them with the full force of the phalanx. In this method, the Corps was credited with the total destruction of two full Imperial companies. To all outside appearances, it seemed that all the Eorzeans needed was time to let attrition and the furious combat of their armed forces swing the battle in their favor.

Time was not an ally of Eorzea on that fateful day.

Without warning, the falling Dalamud disintegrated, flinging monstrous chunks of itself in every direction. By unfortunate happenstance, one such falling fragment wiped out two-thirds of the 5th Phalanx Corps in the blink of an eye. As it turned out, those among them that were killed instantly happened to be the fortunate ones. The elder primal Bahamut revealed himself from within the shattering lunar prison, his roar of rage unleashing utter hell upon the battlefield. In an instant, nearly all animosity between Eorzean and Garlean was forgotten, both sides fleeing together from the wrath of the wyrmking. No second order to retreat needed have been given by the Three Commanders, as the very sight of Bahamut had routed both sides near immediately.

Bahamut's awakening had occurred in the midst of another of the Corps' breaking maneuvers, leaving the different squads separated from one another, and most worryingly to Cris, leaving him separated from Rinh. Barely refraining from uncompromising, animal-panic flight from Bahamut, he strove to find her as he retreated from the field with the rest of his squad. Initially unable to find her, he directed his squad to shelter behind a rocky outcrop that offered some protection from Bahamut's meteoric storm, considering going back out into the battlefield to find her, or at least some trace of her. As he increasingly considered this, a stray bolt of energy from the wyrmking's assault struck their path of retreat, directly where they would have been had they continued running.

A unit of Garleans, seeing that attack, also dove behind that rocky outcropping, and for once, Cris' immediate reaction to having a Garlean within reach was not to joke the life out of them, but demand if they had seen an Ul'dahn miqo'te matching Rihn's description. The Garlean leader, initially taken off-guard by that question, soon realized the purpose behind it and responded sadly in the negative, but pointed out that it did not mean that she was not still alive, and that if they stayed in that place any longer, they were likely to die. Reluctantly agreeing with that assessment, Cris gave the order to move out, saying nothing when the Garleans came with them.

In the darkness of that day, hope returned when a linkpearl signal broke through the aetheric interference of Bahamut's presence: contact from Rinh's squad. Wasting no time at all, he changed the direction of their flight to rendezvous with Rinh, who was down to just three men of her squad, and also with a small number of surviving Garleans in tow. There was no time for dramatic reunions; the glow of the sky indicated that some effort was underway by a force beyond their power to contain Bahamut, and there was nothing more the lot of them could do but escape with their lives.

As they fled, a blast of energy struck the rear of their group, killing several of Cris' squad and some of the Garleans as well. Expecting it to have been one of Bahamut's energy blasts, they looked to see the attack had come from a magitek reaper, its Garlean driver half-burned by a near-miss from the wyrmking's attack. The Garlean squad leader demanded the soldier stand down and escape with them, but the reaper driver, either mad with pain or consumed with the single-minded intent to kill the Eorzeans, ignored the order and trained another cannon blast directly at Rinh and her survivors.

Without hesitation, Cris charged into the path of the blast, shoulder-checking Rinh out of the way as he raised his shield to intercept the attack. Its magicks saved his life, but without other shields around it to diffuse the energy, it couldn't handle the force of the blast. The shield shattered on impact, superheated shards of its metal and residual magic energy of the reaper's cannon attack peppering his left arm with shrapnel and rendering him unconscious.

Aftermath

The Garlean squad leader himself had shot the frenzied driver of the reaper dead, then ensured the rest of the survivors safely escaped from the killing fields of Carteneau. Instructing his troops to burn their Imperial uniforms and cast off their ties to an Empire that had knowingly sent them to their deaths, the squad leader and the few survivors of the 5th Phalanx Corps made their way back to Ul'dah.

It took three days for Cris to regain consciousness, plagued now by blinding pain in his left arm. The twisted fragments of metal and aether were practically fused to his arm now, and he was informed that, despite the best efforts of every conjurer they could call, there had been a reaction between the magicks of the shield and the Garlean magitek energy that rendered the shrapnel unable to be healed or removed by magical means. Though this was a major concern, and the pain made it difficult to think, he ignored the damages to himself and inquired as to Rinh's whereabouts. No sooner had the conjurer at hand given the answer than Cris was gone, stumbling down the halls of the medical ward until he found Rinh's room.

When she became aware of him, he was shocked that instead of the greetings he had expected, she snarled in hatred and sent the meal she had been struggling to eat flying in his direction. Evacuating quickly, he was met in the hall by the Garlean squad leader, who had since adopted Ul'dah as his new home and already begun a career as an adventurer. His former enemy explained that moments after Cris had pushed her to safety from the path of the reaper cannon, an energy blast from Bahamut had struck the nearby cliff face, scattering superheated shards of rock in every direction. Those shards had taken off Rinh's right leg above the knee and right hand at the elbow, and deeply scarred her side. Though she had been healed well--disregarding the loss of her limbs--it had become apparent that some combination of the sight of Bahamut and the trauma of her injuries had damaged her mental state, inexplicably causing her to lay the blame of her trauma on Cris.

Stunned speechless by that turn of events, Cris had simply gone back to his recovery room and spent the rest of his stay in silence, speaking only enough to give full and direct answers to any questions asked, and then resuming his silence. He didn't recover from this state until after being allowed to return to his home to continue healing, where he learned that his family had survived what had come to be called the Calamity. Even still, the wound in his heart from losing Rinh in spirit but not to death, whom he had truly considered to be his one love, did not mend so easily, and to this very day still colors his actions when dealing with the opposite sex.

After recovering enough so that the pain in his arm was not an intolerable constant in his life, he returned to duty with the Flames. He discovered, less to his horror and more to cynical resignation, that he was unable to effectively wield a shield anymore as a phalanx trooper, nor could he wield a bow properly. Because of his exemplary service record and the performance of the 5th Phalanx Corps at Carteneau, he was offered to transfer to any of a number of non-combat duties, but he no longer felt as though he had any value to the Flames, and chose to leave the service instead. He was honorably discharged from the Immortal Flames within a week.

A Change of Arms

For several years, Cris bummed around Ul'dah, doing nothing with his time and merely living off the pension provided from the Flames. He spent a considerable amount of time drinking in an ill-advised attempt to forget Carteneau and everything he had lost, but because of his distaste for most of the stronger alcoholic substances, he could only manage to consume 'bitch' drinks which lacked the alcohol by volume to let him get drunk. One by one, he lost contact with the survivors of his squad, and unwilling to burden his family with what he perceived as his weakness, he took to living in the streets, shunned as much by the refugees already living there for his military service as he was by the more well-off citizens.

Trivia

Other

• Due to the game engine's word filtration, Cris' in-game name is Cris Ga'nale. This is not reflected on this wiki or anywhere in his in-character interactions.

Rumors Some of these rumors are untrue or are greatly exaggerated. Please feel free to add your own rumors under PC! ◢ Common Rumors (Easily overheard) ■ "Aurochs shite! Nobody what was at the Killing Fields (of Carteneau) lived to tell about it!" ■ "Got a fondness for the catfolk, that one does. Won't look twice at a passin' scantily-clad lady of his own kind, but all a miqo lass has to do is swish her tail in his direction and 'e's fallin' all over hisself to do whatever it is she wants." ■ ◢ Uncommon Rumors (Moderately difficult to overhear) ■ ■ ■ ◢ Rare Rumors (Very difficult or rarely overheard) ■ "Sergeant Ganale was medically discharged from the Flames after the Calamity due to crippling injuries received fighting our common foe on the fields of Carteneau." - Commander Swift ■ ■ ◢ PC Rumors (Rumors from the character's of other players) ■ "Oh, Cris? Ya I know him! He puts so much sugar in his tea it turned to sludge!" - Herfang "Fae" Villieldr ■ "That guy has the emotion span of a wet sock, an' he's about as romantic. Just ask that poor girl who's been fawnin' over 'im. I don't think 'e even knows 'er name." - Devil ■ ■

Relations ♥ Romantic Interest ♥ Platonic Love ● Good Standing ● Poor Standing ♦ Enemies ♥ Sabine Aislihn : Description ● Vervara Rozthan : Description ● Gunnbjorn Darkblade : Description

Annotations

22-Sept-14: Page created. More to come.

23-Sept-14: Added some quotes.

26-Sept-14: Added theme song.