Graymin's FFXIV Adventures

This is my Final Fantasy XIV page...thingy? I'm honestly still not sure of everything I'm going to put here but for now this is the hub where I talk about my playable character, or as the community collectively refers to them, the Warrior of Light.

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that if you're reading this, you already know that FFXIV is an MMORPG famous for its very generous free trial and critical acclaim. While all that's well and good, as someone who has had a fascination with useless game trivia over the years, to me this game is also a wonderful celebration of Final Fantasy series as a whole; often referencing and synthesizing various concepts throughout the series to create a sprawling fantasy world and a narrative that surprisingly holds up (if not above) with the rest of the series. I'm still very new to this game myself, but I knew pretty early on that I wanted to use my website as a way to help track my progress through this game and very lightly dabble in some the role-playing aspects of the game that many players enjoy.

Originally, I was livetweeting my playthrough of this game on Twitter until 2024 when I flet compelled to delete my twitter account and jump ship to Bluesky. Since then, I've been keeping my FFXIV liveblog threads there, and it's where you can find my reactions/review of the Stormblood and onwards expansions. I also take and upload a lot of screenshots. Be warned.

Warrior of Light

In short, the Warrior of Light is the term that both the game and the community use to refer to the playable character of FFXIV which as an avatar character can be heavily customized and thus needs a general title like "Warrior of Light" to be referred to, especially since FFXIV's Main Story Quests often feature pre-recorded voice acting. As for what makes every person's avatar a Warrior of Light is that they have recieved the blessing of Hydaelyn, who is the source of Light in the world of FFXIV and also happens to share a name with the planet FFXIV takes place on. Throughout the Final Fantasy series, there have been many Warriors of Light who have also received blessings from magical crystals and have most often served as those games' main protagonist. Among the FFXIV community, many players get invested in role-playing as their WoL either by giving them unique backstories and personalities which is more or less what I ended up doing. Let me introduce her.

• Name: Elakdornn Lyngtoumwyn
• Race: Sea Wolf Roegadyn
• Gender: Nonbinary (She/They)
• Patron: Nophica the Matron
• City-State: Gridania
• Main Classes: Dragoon (ARR, Post-HVW, STB, SHB), Summoner (Base HVW)
• Age (At Beginning of ARR): 30

Roegdayn? What's that?

So for those who are unfamiliar with FFXIV, like many other MMORPGs, FFXIV has it's own list of races the player can choose for their character and also inhabits the world as NPC characters.Roegadyns are one of FFXIV's five initial races the player could choose from along with the Hyurs, Elezen, Miqo'te, and the Lalafell. While these terms probably seem strange, for the most part they all align with an archetype of other well-known fantasy races as Hyurs are the standard human race, Elezen are based on elves, Lalafell are based on dwarves and gnomes, Mi'qote are just cat people, and Roegadyns are closest to an orc race. Roegadyns are a bit different to orcs though mainly that in FFXIV they are largely associated with marine warfair, giving them a bit of viking and pirate flair, though this is most prevalent among the most common tribe of Roegadyns in Eorzea: The Sea Wolves. The other tribe of Roegadyns, the Hellsguard, come from a volcanic region and tend to be better practicers of magic and are visually distinct from the Sea Wolves with their warmer skin tones and the dark spots they have on the bottom of their noses. There are also several non-playable Roegadyns that hail from regions other than Eorzea, namely the continent of Othard.

As cool as all this is, Roegadyns are notoriously under-represented in FFXIV's Main Story Quests as well as not being popular as playable characters. However, as I've always tended to gravitate towards unpopular starting characters, classes, and factions in RPGs, a Roegadyn seemed like the perfect choice for my playable character in FFXIV! Not only that, but I just love how unique they look due their large statures, the blue-green skintones of the Sea Wolves, and the way the Hellsguard look like they have animal noses. Because of this, Elakdornn would eventually become my main Warrior of Light, and I settled on Sea Wolf as her tribe in order to have access to the green skin tone I wanted for her.

Name Meaning

-But first I had to give her a fitting name. Sea Wolf Roegadyn names are roughly based on old Welsh. Elakdornn's first name means “Elk Thorn” and her last name means “Daughter of Long Dream”. I knew from the beginning that I wanted Elakdornn to have motifs associated with forests, nature, deer and knighthood as she is partially inspired by Virizion from Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity, and I feel like her first name encapsulates that perfectly! Technically, Elakdornn's name isn't exactly canon compliant as female Sea Wolf Roegadyns are supposed to encorporate very specific words into their name that are usually very traditionally feminine (such as Swys (sister), Wyb (woman), Bryda (Bride), etc). Needless to say, I didn't vibe with this restriction at all, so in universe, I feel that Elakdornn changed her name to better fit her identity as a nonbinary person. As for her surname, all Sea Wolf surnames end with either Syn (son of) or Wyn (daughter of), but the first two components are pretty free to choose on your own. In the end, I settled on "Long Dream" because I myself am an avid day dreamer and the concept of dreams and dream worlds are very commonly used in fantasy to deliver important plot developments and all-in-all, it felt very fitting for a protagonist of a Final Fantasy game.

If you want to learn more about Roegadyn naming conventions check out the fandom wiki page on the topic, and the Roegadyn dictionary on the FFXIV official forums.

Backstory and becoming a Warrior of Light

Elakdornn Lyngtoumwyn is the only child of Solkgrein Lyngtoumsyn (botanist who immigrated from La Noscea) and Valiant Elm (historian who immigrated from Gyr Abania) and grew up in the Southern Black Shroud around Quarrymill. Elakdornn grew up hunting in the forest and always had great confidence in her skills which eventually drew the attention of the Wood Wailers who would go on to recruit and train her as a Lancer. Elakdornn would go on to serve as a Lancer for the Twin Adders during the 7th Umbral Calamity and witnessed Louisiox's sacrifice from Carteneau Flats when she was 25 years old. Upon witnessing Bahamut's awakening, Elakdornn also manifested the Echo, her unique blessing that was gifted to her from Hydaelyn. After that, she became disillusioned with the Eorzean Grand Companies and briefly visited Limsa Lominsa to study Arcanima, though she never became a true master of the craft. Some would even go so far to say that Elakdornn had a morbid fascination with "summoning" and the nature of Primal entities.

As a comparatively subpar arcanist, Elakdornn struggled to maintain her career in La Noscea. However, she eventually received a letter from Ywain Deepwell, the guildmaster of the Lancer's Guild in Gridania requesting Elakdornn's aid in helping the Wood Wailers investigate a disturbance affecting the elementals in the Black Shroud. Reluctantly, Elakdornn responds to the letter and decides to move to Gridania, taking up her lance once more to see if she can make it as an adventurer. After a few months of doing odd jobs, Elakdornn was eventually dragged into an incident where she successfully defended the Guardian Tree from attack. This event causes Elakdornn to garner the attention of the Elder Seedseer, Kan-E-Senna, who decides to appoint Elakdornn as her personal envoy to go visit the other City State Leaders in an attempt to reforge the Eorzean Alliance.

Reluctantly, Elakdornn completes this mission and does a few more jobs for the City States until she is approached and invited to join the Scions of the Seventh Dawn, an organization that (among other things) is dedicated to preventing Primal summonings, and if necessary, will dispatch Primals before they can cause widespread harm throughout the realm. Elakdornn is suspicious of their leader, Minfilia's, promise of a "family-like" workplace environment, but ultimately accepts to the promise of consistent employment and the opportunity to witness Primal activity in person.With the Scions, Elakdornn is successful in subduing numerous Primals, but is taken completely off-guard when she returns to the Waking Sands to find a number of Scions dead or missing, apparently killed or captured by operants of the Garlean Empire, who appear to be building up to an attack on the Eorzean Alliance. Elakdornn is then approached by Alphinaud Leveilleur, grandson of the legendary Louisiox who seems to be intent on rescuing the missing Scions and pulling off a decisive victory against the Garlean Empire before conflicts can escalate further. Elakdornn finds Alphinaud incredibly arrogant and reckless for his age, but lacking her own plan on what should be done instead, she decides to follow along with him for the interim, at least to keep him out of trouble.

In between Scion business, Elakdornn continues doing work with the Lancer's Guild until Ywain comes to her with a unique problem that an acquaintance of his is having, citing that Elakdornn is one of the few members of the Lancer's Guild possessing both the experience and trustworthiness required for the task. Elakdornn is sent to Coerthas where she meets with Alberic of Ishgard, who decides to give Elakdornn the task of tracking down Estinien Wyrmblood, the legendary Azure Dragoon who has recently gone rouge in order to use a sacred relic, the Eye of Nidhogg, to draw the attention of the Dravanian Horde away from Ishgard and go about his dragon slaying duties on his own terms. In exchange, Alberic decides to train Elakdornn as a Dragoon. Elakdornn is eventually successful in tracking down Estinien, who himself recognizes Elakdornn's prowess as well as claiming that the Eye of Nidhogg has deemed her worthy of the mantle of "Azure Dragoon."In truth, Elakdornn has concerns about being dragged into business concerning Ishgard and the Dravanian Horde, knowing how long and destructive their conflict has been. Elakdornn in particular is disturbed by Estinien's desperation to seemingly throw himself into the maw of the Horde through such extreme measures, worrying that the Dragoon may be beyond reason. Elakdornn is mortified by the possibility that she may be forced to take up Estinien's mantle and ultimately be forced to suffer and die a meaningless and bloody death all alone.

Eventually, Elakdornn and Alphinaud are successful in their mission to rescue the missing Scions with the exception of Thancred Waters, who has been possessed by an Ascian, an arcane entity that works in the shadows with their own organization in order to sew chaos throughout the land. Going to the Alliance Leaders, the Scions hatch a plan to destroy the Empire's Ultima Weapon that is called Operation Archon. This plan culminates with Elakdornn infiltrating the Praetorium where she defeats Gaius, frees Thancred's from Lahabrea's possession, and successfully destroys the Ultima Weapon. Despite all her apprehensions about being turned into nothing but an obedient servant for the Eorzean Alliance, Elakdornn is principally opposed to the Garlean Imperial project, and her travels have taught her to better appreciate Eorzea for all its faults, or at the very least, the normal people that live here. More importantly, assisting the Scions slay Primals has given Elakdornn a purpose. While she may not fully trust them, the Scions do seem to trust her, and Elakdornn would much rather endure their company than going back to fully looking out for herself. While she may not believe that she's capable of it, if Eorzea truly believes that she is their Champion, Elakdornn will play pretend that she's up to the task to make everybody else happy. And thus the Warrior of Light is born...