History
WIKI UNDER CONSTRUCTION
The White Masks
"If you're heading the way of the Upper Paths, pray keep your eyes and ears open. There's been a spate of attacks from the White Masks. Wretched creatures they are, bereft of color with serrated teeth. Lately I've heard tale of some what went and turned traitor to their own, but we all know with those Duskwights recidivism is a matter of if, not when. You see any once you reach Gridania, give them a wide breadth."
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The White Masks have long been the stuff of rumor in the South Shroud. They are most commonly looked down upon as the descendants of the Gelmorrans who had a visceral fear of change, those who chose to tarry and toil as their better cousins and the Hyur ascended from the darkness to live in what would become Gridania. The conjectures about them are many and varied — and as often wrong as they are right.
The White Masks do not sharpen their teeth. They are not cannibals partial to the flesh of Wildwoods. Perhaps the most prominent fact of the matter is they do not refer to themselves as White Masks at all.
The Blanchets boast theirs were the ancestors to hold out longest in Gelmorra . . . and every other family among the so-called "White Masks", without exception, would swiftly assert the same. What all can agree is that between them are some of the only pure Gelmorran lines left in Eorzea. To the men, women, and children of this faction, they are as much Gelmorrans as they've ever been. Nothing more, and certainly nothing less.
And yet.
And yet like Gelmorra, they would suffer population decay in time. Half their people remained loyal, but half had begun to run off together into the night for whatever refuge they could hope to find. Brother turned on brother, sons betrayed their own fathers, and for a time it seemed history would indeed repeat itself. Then the leader of the "Gelmorrans," a man named Mourefort, decreed that every child that should come of age within their ranks, they would impress the importance of their heritage upon them not only through story and song, but through indelible ink; a mask, he said, so they may never wear the likes of another.
After sightings of these distinctly white-masked Duskwights earned them their sobriquet, departure rates plummeted, and those that did leave were forced to travel far beyond the Twelveswood so as not to be recognized. Once in Menphina's blue moon, though, there would be such a soul emboldened enough to brave Gridania.
Celie Blanchent would come to count herself among those scarce few — just not of her own violition. It was after a harsh summer of near-constant assaults from a group of Wood Wailers and run-ins with roving beasts; it was after a summer where they had too little meat, and their withered crops had but a tiny rivulet that ran thinner by the day; it was after a summer where they dug more graves than they celebrated births that Celie's mother lost hope in their cause and fled with her two children. Through many lies about having been forced to remain with the White Masks, through denouncing their kith and kin, it is said... and the less gentle version of the tale pays mention to a certain few, ahem, favors to a Hearer and perhaps Wood Wailer or two. In the end, the family was permitted to reside in Gridania.
Celie's brother, Ivant, took well to their new home in his own way. Despite prejudice staring him in his tattooed face, he insisted not only would he be accepted in time, but that his sister would as well. He was determined they would be enrolled in the Conjurers' Guild, and so they were. He was determined at least one of them would prove to be a Hearer sooner or later, but for this hoping was not enough, and neither sibling ever heard so much as a whisper from any Elemental.
After their mother passed, the now-mostly-grown duo made their way to Limsa Lominsa, a place Celie found much too chaotic but that her brother, as ever, made his own. It was there they would cobble together a ragtag group of sellswords and caretakers that would become their makeshift family. And it was there they would lose Ivant and a great many others to a mission gone awry.
In present day, Celie can be found in the company of what remains of their company.
