Valen Stalhart

	Valen Stalhart
	; The Crestfallen Magitek Knight
Gender	Male
Race	Hyur
Clan	Unknown
Citizenship	Garlean
Age	41
Marital Status	Single
Occupation	Relic Hunter/Airship Mechanic for Arcadeus
Nameday	25th Sun of the 6th Umbral Moon

Attributes

Strength

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P.Defense

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Dexterity

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M.Defense

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Martial Prowess

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Intelligence

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Magic Affinity

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Luck

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Valen Stalhart is a Garlean soldier who was inducted into a twisted experiment in which his body was outfitted with Magitek implants along with a small atherite crystal into his palm which was used to power the Magitek. After surprisingly surviving the experiment, Valen was sent to serve in the Empire's secretive Magitek Knight Battalion. Shortly before the Calamity, he defected from the Empire and tried starting a new life in Eorzea. While being sure to keep his past affiliations a secret, Stalhart was able to secure a position as an agent for the Maelstrom, but now works full time as the airship mechanic for the relic hunters of Arcadeus. Since joining Arcadeus, he is now open about his former affiliation with Garlemald, but very rarely goes into detail on what sort of ventures he went on while with the Empire. He is a kind person who will always be quick to help those in need, and will even try to avoid resorting to violence whenever possible. However, those who betray his trust or wish to bring harm to those he cares about will find he can still be just as ruthless and merciless as he was during his time serving the Empire.

Appearance & Personality

Nature & Demeanor

Demeanor: While he may appear stoic at times, Valen is generally an easy person to get along with. Even when faced with conflict, he remains level-headed, and will rarely act brashly unless given little other choice. He's a dependable person who is always eager to help those who ask for it, and is fairly quick to lay at least some degree of trust those who appear genuine to him.

Nature: His memories from serving the Garlean Empire are so deeply ingrained within him that not a day goes by that he doesn't feel some form of guilt for all the lives he took in the past. Because of this, he has grown to sometimes be overly protective of those he cares about. He tries to mask this with stoicism and a dry sense of humor, and so far he's been successful in keeping those feelings hidden even from those closest to him. He also has a deeply rooted love for combat due to conditioning he received during his time with the Empire. Despite this, he deeply detests fighting for sport. He feels that violence should only be a route taken as a last resort, and that there is nothing glorious about it.

Habits: Valen can often be seen wearing his Magitek visor, even when there's no need for it. For some reason, he finds comfort in wearing it and viewing the world through its lenses. Sometimes if he has trouble sleeping, he'll even sleep with it on. However, he tries to keep wearing the visor for the purposes of comfort to a minimum, especially when in the company of others.

Notable Features

Common Appearance: Though most would believe Valen to be somewhere in his early twenties due to his youthful features, he's actually quite older than he appears. Though he is unsure, he believes his graceful aging is due in part to the Magitek augmentations he was given during his time serving Garlemald. His body itself is quite thin and lithe, but beneath his somewhat scrawny appearance is nothing but muscle. However to call it pure muscle wouldn't be entirely be true. His muscles have been laced with carbontwine fibers, granting him incredible strength while also allowing him to remain lithe and nimble, and His bones have been reinforced with Magitek as well, allowing them to support a large amount of weight without shattering.

Tastes

Likes

Solitude
Being helpful
The heat of combat

Dislikes

The Garlean Empire
Fighting for the sake of fighting
Those who betray his trust

Hobbies

Reading
Fishing
Tinkering with Magitek

Prejudices

The only prejudices Valen carries is for the Garlean Empire's current regime as well as those who so zealously follow it. He loves his home, and he loves the people within it, but he hates those who currently rule it.

Abilities

Strengths

Due to the numerous Magitek augmentations he's received, Valen is both incredibly powerful and very nimble, and his body is much more durable than most, being able to take a substantial amount of damage before finally failing him.

Weaknesses

Valen has little to no aetheric capabilities outside of that the aetherite crystal in his palm can provide. He can sometimes use it to absorb magic based attacks as well, but that also comes at the cost of possibly overloading the crystal, which would destroy it and shut down his Magitek augmentations.

Combat

Valen exclusively uses a Magitek spear that was given to him during his service with the Magitek Knights, and has since been heavily modified. It's incredibly light, and incredibly dangerous. Pulses of energy are sent through its razor edged tip to create vibrations in the blade to allow for it to also saw through anything it pierces. His style is a blend between flurries of vicious brutality and precisely landed devastating blows. Though he is by no means the mightiest of all lancers, he is still a force to be reckoned with in combat.

People & Places

♥ Romantic Attraction – ♥ Attraction – ♥ Platonic Love – ♥ Family – ✔ Business – ✖ Deceased – ● Positive – ● Negative – ● Neutral – ≈ Unsure

●Rihxo Matoi: Despite everything that has happened, Rihxo holds no grudge against Valen, and is even quite kind to him. Stalhart sees her as a friend, and is happy to have her on his side.

●Nanagi Nagi: Though they've had their differences in the past, they have since moved past that, and now Valen seeks to help the lalafell in her search for her mother.

●Adelaide Levenson: A fellow defected Magitek Knight. He was weary of her at first, but has since come to accept her as both a helpful companion and a friend.

Rumors

Common Rumors

"That man is quite odd. He seems nice enough, but something about him just seems off. Maybe it's the visor?" ~Storm Soldier
"He really knows a lot about all that fancy, hi-tech stuff. I mean, have you seen that spear on his back? It has so many buttons and switches on it, I’d probably lose an eye just trying to hold the damn thing." ~Sailor in La Nosca

Rare Rumors

"Stalhart is not a man, he is a weapon; a weapon that now wields a mind of its own." ~Vitus Mal Luro, the creator of the Magitek Knights
"He slew Mitus, and brought the base to ruin with the help of a lalafell and a miqo'te. The Magitek Knight however was able to escape and delivered combat data on Stalhart. This information will be sent to Garlemald for further study." ~Garlean Incident Report

PC Rumors

"Despite our differences in the past, he has helped me greatly. He is someone you can rely on. I owe him a great debt, t'is the least I can do. Oh and he can't keep a secret, be aware of that too." ~Nanagi Nagi
"People can change... and... well, I never thought I'd trust him like I do. He's a very important friend to me." ~Rihxo Matoi
"Valen is a kind man, perhaps more than people give him credit for. You didn't hear that from me, though. Got it?" ~Adelaide Levenson

History

Early Life

Born into a family of fisherman in the grasp of the Garlean Empire, Valen was raised with a very humble upbringing. Not being a full-blooded Garlean, he spent most of his childhood living hand-to-mouth, but always managed to get by. He had no brothers nor sisters, but did share a very close relationship with his mother and father. However, the life of a fisherman wasn’t for him. Once he came of age, he traded in his gaff for a spear, and through vigorous training managed to join the ranks of the Garlean Empire’s Military.

Service Under Garlemald

For three years he served as a lancer for The Empire, scratching and clawing his way through the ranks. Despite his efforts, he never managed to become anything more than a lowly Legionarius due to his inherent lack of true skill Since he was neither skilled, nor a full-blooded Garlean, his superiors had no hesitation to induct him into a dangerous experiment to blend the line between mortal and machine, the Magitek Knights.

As a part of his induction, Valen was implanted with a Magitek chip directly into his brain, as well as various other Magitek augmentations throughout his body. The implants enhanced both his physical and mental capabilities, allowing him to emulate similar abilities to that of a Dragoon, all the while without needing to wield the soul of a dragon. While neither he nor any of his fellow inductees were expected to survive the trial process, he alone managed to pull through it, and was quickly put to use by the Empire.

Due to the relative secrecy of the Magitek Knights, Valen's duties mostly consisted of low-key assassinations, sabotage, or seek and destroy missions. During one such mission, he was sent to kill a lalafell merchant on a trade route through Thanalan. However, he was under the guard of the highly skilled archer, X'matoi Tia. Tia managed to keep Valen at bay while the merchant escaped, and even tried to dissuade Stalhart from continuing to fight for the Garlean Empire. While X'matoi was unable to convince Valen, his words did not fall unto deaf ears.

Ultimately, Stalhart managed to close the distance between him and X'matoi, and stabbed him with his spear. He thought the Miqo'te to be dead, and left him to rot. However, X'matoi still yet lived, as Valen found out a few years later when he overheard tales of the archer's exploits while he was on assignment.

After the battle with Tia, Stalhart considered the Miqo'te's seemingly genuine request for him to abandon Garlemald and come to the other side. It was this seed that planted skepticism in him, and ultimately helped him come to the realization that he had no true sense of free will. The chip in his brain had been forcing him to obey the Empire's commands, and he had been made none the wiser to it until his confrontation with X'matoi. When he tried to resist his commands, the chip would send pulses throughout his entire body, leaving him in agony. This left him with no other choice but to follow through with the orders he was given, lest he wish to suffer at the Empire's hands.

Defection, and Days Leading to the Calamity

After eight grueling years of serving as a Magitek Knight, through either his own sheer will or faulty programming on the part of the implant, or perhaps both, Valen managed to overcome the chip’s grasp while on assignment, and fled shortly thereafter. Valen was declared a traitor to his nation and his people, and the Garlean Military was given the order to kill him on sight.

However, due to the fall of Dalamud, which Valen bared witness to from Mor Dhona, the Garlean Empire was unable to spare the manpower to hunt him down. By the time the Empire had regained footing after The Calamity, the tracker built into Valen’s Magitek chip had long since shorted out after going so long without proper maintenance. With no trace of him to follow, Valen vanished from the Garlean Empire entirely, but to this day still remains an enemy to the nation.

After the Calamity

Valen spent the following years after the Calamity wandering Eorzia until he ultimately found his way to Limsa Lominsa. He served as a sort of freelancer for the Maelstrom so he could make enough to keep a roof over his head. Though it wasn't ideal, it did get him by. It was by chance he stumbled upon Anelia Sadowyn’s residence, which also acted as a base of operations for the Free Company, Arcadeus.

Since then, Valen has made a home for himself within Arcadeus, becoming their Magitek expert and airship mechanic. His fellow members have become like a second family to him, and for the first time since his defection, he feels as though he finally has a place he can call home. While he does long for his friends and family back home in Garlemald, he has found at the very least a surrogate comfort within the Free Company.

Art

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