Kisha Taluun

Kisha Taluun
Left Drawn by Imogen-Mobberly, Right Drawn by Nadia
Gender	Female
Race	Miqo'te
Clan	Keeper
Citizenship	Sharlayan
Age	36
Birthyear	6th Astral Era - 1543
Nameday	30th Sun of the 5th Astral Moon
Occupation	- Freelance Conjurer
Guardian	Menphina, the Lover
Alignment	Neutral Good

Appearance and Personality

A somewhat weathered Miqo’te woman, tall on her feet and legs for one of the feline people. Kisha can mostly be seen sporting a dark blue outfit robe which appears to be decorated with small blue, gold and red details along with a simple felt hat in the style of Limsa Lominsa. She is often also seen wearing either a pair of glasses or an eyeglass monocle. Her black hair is cut off in a simple manner though it appears to be somewhat messy and weathered, especially if she travels through somewhat uncivilized areas. Her dark grey complexion makes it difficult to read her features in poorly lid conditions, along with her equally dark blue eyes.

Kisha's personality is equally hard to pinpoint. To strangers and while being in a foul mood, she can be considered a cold, hard and distant personality who only cares about facts, knowledge, herself and little about emotions or empathy. The advantage this gives her is that she is often a beacon of reason during an emotionally laden meeting. However, those present at such a meeting may find her actually hard to speak with due to the fact she always chooses for the 'calculated most optimal outcome choice' instead of actually showing empathy and risk to aid those in need. Towards friends Kisha can be a bit more welcoming and warm, but it takes time and effort to get to that level. When a friend has aided her however, she will do anything she can to repay the favour and she typically remains friends with these folk long after the friendly deed has been done. She does have the tendency to often 'verbally' shoot herself in the feet and get right back to the 'cold and haughty' level of conversation. In essence: She is very much a split personality. Often cold, harsh and unfriendly, but towards proven friends a staunch polite ally.

6th Astral Era - 1543 to 1563 - Years of Study

Kisha was born in the year 1543 as the daughter of Mirina Taluun, a well-regarded Sharlayan Keeper Miqo'te Conjurer and headmistress of several classes of apprentices. Though Kisha knows little of her father, she does know that her existence was the result of a 'one-night-stand' between her mother and a Seeker Gladiator known as U'nahr Tia. Kisha had a very sheltered upbringing during her first decade of life. Although she had inherited the wisdom and clarity of her mother, Mirina actually wanted Kisha to become even better at the art of Conjuration and often pushed her daughter to extreme lengths to accomplish this. As such, Kisha's first 15 years of life can be summarized in but two words: Study hard. However, even in these relatively mundane years for her, there was one event that caused Kisha to hate The Garlean Empire for the rest of her life. Shortly before the evacuation of Sharlayan in Dravania, Kisha and some of her friends got trapped by a scouting party of Garlean soldiers. Although Kisha managed to escape using her Conjuration skills which were years ahead of the rest, her friends were not so lucky and they got abducted. Kisha never saw them again.

Related Short-Stories
The Golden Chocobo
The Red Haze

As Sharlayan got evacuated, Kisha of course travelled with the rest of her fellow students back to their ‘homeland’ but decided to return to Eorzea at the age of 17 to write a thesis on ‘Garleans and their rumoured connection to Ascians’. Though her assignment was thought to be ‘insane’ and her theory ‘improbable’ by her masters, she decided to stick to her plans regardless, seeing it as an ideal way to get away from the 'yoke' of the headmasters. After two years of research her thesis assignment failed as she was naive enough to think any Garlean would speak with her willingly about such claims. The Sharlayan University felt Kisha had to be taught a lesson for not listening to her master’s advice, and thus was excommunicated for a year.

6th Astral Era - 1563 to 1572 - Years of Criminal Behaviour

Related Short-Stories
Debts

After Kisha received her letter of excommunication, she ceased to get any financial support from the Sharlayan. This prompted her to look for other means of income. Seeing things in a practical sense, Kisha decided to look for other work which eventually lead her to take certain jobs in The Black Shroud. Not wanting to tie herself down to an entire Grand Company though, she didn’t join the Twin Adder. This ‘free-spirited’ approach did mean she was often having difficulties staying afloat financially. Thus..she made a calculated risk decision and started to work on illegal endeavors. Through her training as a Conjurer, she also received instructions on the concept of 'Glamour' and being in obvious financial peril, Kisha decided to glamour small pieces of iron into counterfeit Gil coins.

Her career as a counterfeit Gil creator proved to be rather successful and she quickly gathered a number of fellow ‘conspirators’ to her side from all sorts of unsavory parts of Eorzea in the following years. Her fellow colleagues saw her as an ‘arrogant know-it-all’ but didn’t complain too much as Kisha was just very good at producing not only fake coin, but of a good quality at that. Though Kisha turned out to be quite ‘wealthy’ from this trade, in the end the Twin Adder discovered her activities and came down hard on her. Following a year of forced labor and a severe beating which included a punishment of 30 lashings of the whip, her sentence was cut short by the Calamity and the ensuing events.

7th Umbral Era - 0 to 6 - Years of Redemption

Related Short-Stories
A Night to Remember

As Eorzea was in turmoil following the Calamity, Kisha’s crimes were not forgotten, but she did get a chance to redeem herself which she grabbed with both hands. She assisted the Twin Adder in aiding those dislocated and injured by the destruction for the next two years. Her deeds were recognized but due to her obvious earlier criminal background, she would never be able to rise very high up within the ranks of the Adds. It was at this time that Kisha was given an offer by her commanding officer to join the newly formed Crystal Braves. She needed little encouragement to accept the offer. Following several months of hard work serving within the Braves, her service was cut short due to the events after the Royal Banquet in celebration of the Defense of Ishgard. In the chaos that ensued following Teledjii Adeledjii's betrayal and that of the Crystal Braves themselves, Kisha managed to escape back to the Shroud. This was a time where she was at her lowest due to the fact that she was seen as a traitor by both those supporting the actual ideals of the Crystal Braves and the Scions as well as those believing that the Crystal Braves were the actual traitors. Without the aid of the Adders, the Crystal Braves, Sharlayan or anyone else. She turned to working for various Free Companies, though never staying with one for too long due to her somewhat arrogant character.

7th Umbral Era - 4 and 5 - Years of Intelligence and Song

Several months later and after it was revealed that various members of the Crystal Braves were framed, Kisha's position was restored in the Adders and a formal apology was given to her by her former Adder Commander. Although Kisha rejoined the ranks of the Twin Adders, she was given a position within the intelligence agency of the Adders: A information gathering network. One of the network's initiatives was to organize various Free Companies throughout Eorzea to aid in the coming struggle against both Garlemald as well as to combat Primal activities. It was with this assignment in the back of her mind when she elected to join the Winter's Wake Free Company. It was during this time that a sad event was quickly followed by a joyous one. One day Kisha received an urgent letter from Sharlayan that her mother had an accident during a Conjuration class and that she was injured beyond mend. After she journeyed to Sharlayan as fast as she could, Kisha learned the true identity of her father U'nahr along with a letter her mother Mirina had received from him decades ago. As Mirina passed away, Kisha received a new resolve to seek her father out. As Kisha returned to Eorzea, she enlisted the aid of three friends to follow the thin trail of clues that her father had left behind. Although the journey was not exactly without incident, including a not-so-subtle brawl with a pair of brigands in Ul'dah's back alleys, Kisha and her friends eventually found her father at a small house in The Golden Bazaar. Although daughter and father hadn't known each other for their entire lives, Kisha quickly grew fond of her father who offered her to tuition in the art of singing and storytelling.

7th Umbral Era - 5 to 7 and onward - Falling and Standing Up

As Kisha's activities for the Adder's intelligence agency grew, so did her risk taking. She secretly manipulated the Winter's Wake Free company to aid her goals while they knew none the wiser of it. This strained relation eventually grew to an end when a job in Othard spectacularly failed and the company walked out on Kisha, calling her a manipulative liar. Alone in a strange land and penniless, Kisha finally resorted to her old 'escape' and fabricated fake Gil to pay for her journey back to Eorzea. Luckily sailors aren't picky about shinies and they didn't discover yet another one of her schemes.

Finding herself back in Limsa Lominsa, she was awaited by a handful of other Adders who had a clear message for Kisha: She was expelled from the Adders due to her incredible lack of tact, her manipulations and most of all her criminal and destructive behavior in Ul'dah prior to her journey to Othard. Having little to defend herself from these claims, Kisha fell into a deep metaphorical hole and spent the next few months in La Noscea doing odd-jobs to support herself. These jobs fell into an increasing amount of criminal tendencies ranging from creating more fake gil to aiding brigands and slave peddlers.

Just at the moment when Kisha was about to fall back into her old criminal tendencies, another visit to the Golden Bazaar (the hometown of her father), resulted in her meeting the Miqo'te Keeper man Zala'to. Kisha and Zala'to soon became smitten with each other, seeing somewhat of a morbid link in their common criminal past. Wishing to keep their bond a secret to all but those living in the Golden Bazaar, Kisha and Zala'to were secretly wed by the innkeeper's daughter making their bond that much stronger. They both vowed to protect each other and their new home in Thanalan. This finally resulted in Kisha also finding 'honest' work as a part-time mender at 'The Royal Cafe' in Ul'dah.

Quirks and Rumours

Rumours ◢ Common Rumors (Easily overheard) ■ "She always glares if I ask if she wants to have a bag along with her vegetables, saying I should remember for once" - Gridanian Grocier ■ "That woman served time in the Gridanian military, forced I heard." - Gridanian Sergeant ◢ Moderate Rumors (Moderately difficult to overhear) ■ "That cursed woman hoodwinked me and all the other merchants in Gridanian, bloody fake coin!" - Gridanian Merchant ■ "Hm, I think I read her name once in Sharlayan correspondence on Garlean research" - Sharlayan Student ◢ Rare Rumors (Very difficult or rarely overheard) ■ "She served under me a few years back, had to keep a sharp eye on her: Penal Service you see. She thought to outsmart the whole of Gridania with her fake Gil coin." - Gridanian Commander

Relations ♥ Romantic Interest ♥ Attraction ● Good Standing ● Poor Standing ♥ Zala'to - After years of flings and failed relations, Zala'to finally was the man with who Kisha was certain she wished to spend the rest of her life with. Their mutual bond is completely solid and it seems not even a meteorite could harm their relation. ● Thya Burwani - A fellow Keeper who Kisha recently met at The Royal Café. They seem to be able to talk with each other well, despite the fact Kisha knows nothing about living in the wilds of the Shroud as a traditional Keeper. ● Momone Mone - A curious Lalafel who Kisha also recently met at The Royal Café. Momone has offered Kisha the opportunity to work at the tavern as a part-time mender, a position for which Kisha is extremely grateful, especially after Momone shrugged Kisha's previous criminal tendencies to the side. ● Claisent Vaucotier - An Elezen which Kisha has known for a few years, though not intimately. Meeting him first as a colleague within Winter's Wake, Kisha once again met Claisent at The Royal Café as one of the tavern's 'bouncers' of sort. Kisha has a deep respect for Claisent's calmness and steady demeanour even in the face of great challenges.

Likes ■ Reading ■ Researching ■ Plotting ■ Gil ■ Knowledge ■ Silence ■ Song

Dislikes ■ Gridanian Torturers ■ 'Dumb' folk ■ Garleans ■ Backstabbing ■ 'Shouty' folk