Sigurd Rainecourt

Sigurd Rainecourt
Nearsighted Thaumaturge
Gender	Male
Race	Hyur
Clan	Midlander
Citizenship	Ul'Dah
Nameday	32st Sun of the 6th Umbral Moon
Age	25
Height	5 fulms 11 ilms
Birthplace	Highbridge, Eastern Thanalan

Character

Appearance

Sigurd prefers to wear half-robes and tunics. Long or short, it doesn't particularly matter as long as it doesn't have a hood. He claims hoods tend to get in the way of his visual lines when casting magic. Truthfully, he simply doesn't care for them and prefers to wear them down or not at all.

As Thanalan is often hotter than hell during the day, Sigurd tends to wear lighter colors, preferring beige, white, and similar shades. Underneath the tunic, he often wears tights to keep warmer during the cool evenings. He pulls his two-toned hair, cutting the sides very short to keep cool.

Sigurd's most noticeable feature is his bright eyes. While much of his family has blue or green ones, he has bright orange eyes. His family claims it's his connection with the aether which he uses in his thaumaturgy as he is the only one in his line to practice the art.

Personality

Sigurd comes off as relatively easy going, usually calm and collected. Not much seems to get under his skin, though that's simply the outward impression he gives. He'd grown thick skin from working in his family's trading business year after year, dealing with people from across the continent who were tired of the heat or just plain rude.

Underneath, Sigurd is a very passionate and ambitious man, genuinely concerned for those around him. He wishes for the well-being of Thanalan and wants to do whatever he can to help prevent another Calamity. He lives with a regret in his heart, believing an incident that happened right before the Calamity was entirely his fault when in truth, it wasn't. He buries the regret deep within him, never showing it with other people as he attempts to hide it.

Being taught to read and keep complex business records at an early age, Sigurd is highly academic. He tends to stick his nose in books and read the things cover to cover whenever he can. He often keeps small books in his pockets when traveling long distances. Despite never receiving a day of formal education, Sigurd knows a wide span of information, mostly by talking to others and reading whatever books he could get his hands on.

With his work with the family tradepost, Sigurd has gotten to know a wide variety of customs from various races. He is accustomed to being surrounded by people and thrives in crowds. When alone or simply not traveling with other people, he has a strange tendency to talk to himself, particularly when sarcastically remarking on the current situation.

Being a desert boy, Sigurd doesn't thrive well in other lands. He has a bad tendency to get sea sick and prefer land travel, by foot or chocobo, if at all possible. While he hasn't yet gotten air sick, he isn't quite fond of the form of travel, though it certainly is much faster than traveling by land. Traveling to Limsa, he found himself sea sick. Traveling to Gridania, he'd never seen so many trees in his life. And it rains there. A lot.

Family

Sigurd comes from a rather large family. 5th borne, he's nearly the middle child of 8 kids. His family runs a tradepost along one of the main trade routes near Highbridge in Eastern Thanalan. The post offers a place out of the sun and a refuge when sandstorms would blow across the desert. The post sells various items made by family members. While Sigurd isn't good at any hand crafts, he is good at math and writing, leaving him to keep the books. While the tradepost still stands after the Calamity, his family was thinned out by the Lambs of Dalamud.

Parents:

• Aldwin (father)
• Aeditha (mother, sacrificed to Dalamud)

Kids

1. Kineburga (sister, sacrificed to Dalamud)
2. Fredderick (brother)
3. Averil (sister, sacrificed to Dalamud)
4. Lyell (brother)
5. Sigurd
6. Hilda (sister)
7. Athelyna (sister)
8. Leofwin (brother)

Trivial information

• Aldgoat steak is his favorite dish, though he is preferential to any sort of grilled meat. His travels have introduced him to grilled dodo. Sigurd's favorite snacks are ginger cookies and pretzels. His least favorite food is raw oysters.
• Sigurd has a bad habit of chewing on the arm of his glasses when he's reading. While he generally wears his glasses, he doesn't need them for reading or anything close. In fact, he didn't know he needed them until one of his guildmasters realized he couldn't read the tapestries on the far end of the building. Sigurd had believed things were blurry in the distance for everyone and never thought anything of it. The guildmasters then sent him to the goldsmith's guild immediately to get glasses. On occasion, he forgets to wear them.
• Sigurd prefers two-handed staves and will only use a one-handed weapon at last resort.
• Sigurd doesn't experience visions. It's the crystals whispering in the aether. Before the Calamity, the crystals were sometimes understandable, murmuring in common on occasion. Yet after the Calamity, the crystals seem to now speak a language he can't understand.
• According to his father, Sigurd can barter his way out of a fight with the Beastmen. While he certainly knows his way around a trade, Sigurd claims his skills are not as great as his father says.
• His family calls him Sig, though his youngest brother calls him Siggy. While he doesn't mind the nicknames, he will always introduce himself as Sigurd.
• He calls Thancred his personal stalker.

History

Before the Calamity

Sigurd was born into a trading family. The family owned a popular tradepost where they would sell wares and food to travelers wishing to seek solace from the sun or harsh weather. It was also a popular place traveling merchants would trade and sell stock as well. Growing up, Sigurd quickly learned he wasn't adept at any of the tradecrafts, making poor leathers and even poorer food. While all family members could read, Sigurd was particularly adept at reading and math at an early age and kept the books for the family.

The first good few years of his life were the typical life of a trader, involving manual labor and bookkeeping. He began gathering supplies as a hobby, trading extra supplies for books with traveling merchants. Sigurd studied any books he could get his hands on, his favorites were books about thaumaturgy and other magical arts. His older sister fashioned a staff for him, and at 15 he learned to cast his first elemental spell, fire. It was an unusual talent for the family, as no one in the known history was ever a mage of any kind.

While old enough to venture on his own and start his own life, Sigurd chose to stay with the family and the tradepost while venturing out. He took to travel, delivering messages and supplies around the area. He was drawn to Camp Drybone, seeking out the Aetherite crystal. He was certain the thing was talking to him, but he brushed it off as heat exhaustion. Returning home, he arrived just in time to help fend off a small band of Amalj'aa who had ventured near the outpost. It was his first true battle, and it was exciting as he used his fire magic to do good.

For the next five years, whenever Sigurd visited or passed by Camp Drybone, he swore the crystal was speaking to him. While he couldn't quite understand the words, he knew it was speaking. One day, he finally approached it again, staring up at its tall towering height. It sure was a pretty thing, filled with that aether which fascinated him greatly. As he reached out and touched it, he was struck with loud voices and words filling his mind. For the first time, the crystal spoke in something he could understand, repeating over and over again that the moon was falling. Danger was coming. The words were so loud and the energy emitting from the crystal so intense that it knocked Sigurd out cold.

Several days later, he awoke at the local inn. The crystal was still murmuring but its words had changed once again. "Lambs of Dalamud," it whispered. Sigurd had heard of them. Cultists. Worried, he quickly returned home to learn his mother and two of his siblings had been lured away, their bodies found mutilated just the day before. Distraught, he stepped outside for some air and saw what the Crystal was babbling about. Dalamud fell to the earth.

The New Era

After the threat of the Lambs and Dalamud had quieted, the world busied repairing itself. Most of it, anyway. The incident with the Lambs had driven a strange rift between Sigurd and his eldest brother Fredderick. He blamed Sigurd for the incident, claiming that if Sigurd had been there, he could've saved them from the Lambs with his magic. Sigurd wished to defend himself but he couldn't quite explain what had happened that day. He didn't fully understand it himself. Sigurd came to blaming himself for the entire ordeal.

A few months later, Sigurd decided that he wanted to leave the family business. He wanted to make a difference somehow, though he wasn't entirely sure how he could do so. Perhaps he wanted to atone for everything he felt he'd done wrong, to make up for his own failure in protecting his family.

For four years, he ventured from place to place, helping people out in Eastern Thanalan and attempted to refine his Thaumaturgy. He found himself having difficulty with the refinement, often missing far targets or finding himself worn out. Hearing of the Thaumaturgy Guild in Ul'dah, he caught a lift from a merchant's cart to Ul'dah, offering the driver some odd items he'd collected around the area as payment for his troubles. For the first time since the Calamity, Sigurd began to hear the crystals whispering. Shaking it off, passing it off as aether sickness, he continued on his way, joining the Thaumaturgy Guild.

Sigurd dedicated much of his time divulging in the books of thaumaturgy and practicing the arts. Until he'd arrived at the guild, he could spark enough of a flame to fight a small pack of Amalj'aa and light some bushes on fire, but nothing more. When he received a new staff from the guild, his magic quickly improved, allowing him to also summon ice. While the elements soon came to him, Sigurd found himself having trouble with proper targeting. At first, the guild masters thought it was perhaps a focus issue. In the guild hall, when discussing a banner on the far end of the room, they discovered that it wasn't a focus issue but instead that he simply couldn't see his targets clearly.

It took a few days to adjust to the new glasses, and there were times when he simply forgot to wear them. But soon he grew attached to them, only removing them when pouring over books or similar close activities. Finally back on track with his studies, Sigurd ventured out on a quest from the Adventurers Guild. The guild had received a request to investigate some strange rock formations around a hillside near the train depot. Believing it to be some sort of magic, Sigurd took the job.

On his way to the depot, he passed Black Brush where he was certain the aetherite crystal there was speaking to him again. He couldn't understand the words, but for the first time since he started hearing the crystals talking, this one called out for him by name. Sigurd. Vi devas esti zorgema. Danĝero kuŝas antaŭe. He approached the crystal and touched it, but no vision came this time. Just words he couldn't understand.

Unable to know the crystal was warning him, he continued on his way toward the depot. The place was crawling with coblyns, which didn't seem to care that he was there. He shooed them away anyway, and they chattered at him while then ran off. A large shadow overtook him and he quickly realized he wasn't scary enough to frighten coblyns. This large creature was.

The creature quickly assaulted Sigurd and nearly overwhelmed him had it not been for a blond hyur stranger jumping into the fray. They quickly felled the creature, and the blond explained the creature was called a voidsent and was after shifts in aetheric energy. The two parted ways, the blond saying he had someone very important to find.

The incident left Sigurd interested in this voidsent creature and what sort of aetherial shift it could be after. Sigurd spoke with Cocobuki, the thaumaturgy guild master, about what he'd encountered. Cocobuki explained what he knew about voidsent, though his knowledge about them was limited. He also warned Sigurd that the voidsent may have been after him, given his strong attunement to the aether (that's what the guildmaster had sensed, at the very least).

The vague information left Sigurd interested to find more. With the warning in mind, Sigurd continued to research more about the aetheric flow, hoping to connect it with the voidsent or perhaps the crystals which kept whispering in his ears when he'd pass them.

(more to come soon.)