Oops, All Eyebrows!

▍   QIQYAT RUHN, WITCHLING ♂
Twelveswood miqo'te. The (ex?) apprentice of a witch mysteriously missing, gone wandering to look for her in the wider world, absolutely won't be back by supper.

▍   MERYEM HALILOVIĆ, ESCHVAN REFUGEE ♀
Bozjan-Eschvan raen. 'Refugee' & trade factor. From girl to cossack to spy to question mark; a thousand miles from a home that hasn't been home since before she was born. Dutiful, melancholic, alcoholic.

▍   ISHME-ANU ILU, AMDAPORI GOLEM ♂
An Amdapori killing machine, a golem searching for meaning, or a robot that just wants kith? Predator posing as a housepet. Charming, obsessive, cruel.

▍   MEHRI IMASHA, COURT MAGE UNDERSTUDY ♀
Vylbrandian miqo'te. Arcanima student representative & tennis athlete for the admiralty academy of arcanima & natural philosophy. A little collectivist, a little authoritarian, closeted gay.

▍   NIDA'LI QENWA, PROFESSIONAL RASCAL ♂
Twelveswood miqo'te. Itinerant worker, professional rascal, and odd jobs enthusiast who decided to pack it up and head for greener pastures... in the desert, no less. Self-serving & playful.

▍   ESTHER of BARSHAM, PSYCHOPOMP ♀
Twelveswood hyur. Sickle-Sister from the Gentle Ministers of Thal’s Lantern and the Green Halls of Barsham. Monastic psychopomp that cleans tombs and guides the restless dead back to the Wheel. Shrewd, dutiful, repressed.

▍   MOUTH MAERWYN, ??? ♀
Prophetess or apostate. Sisyphean & tragic. "That's a question of mirrors, of labyrinths, of forks in the road and trapeze swingers and snakes chasing their own tails."

▍   OTTILIA von TROSBERG, DRAVANIAN ♀
A lady of the Marches and Hochbern Estates. Heir to the duchess & elector-prince seat of Trosberg. Heavy Dravanian headcanon of petty states, dwindling glory, and dragon-blooded sorcerers.

▍   ANKHESEN AMUNET, ULDAHN RAEN ♀
Court mage & priestess. On loan from the Cult of Nald & Thal to advise the Divan of Law and carry out their will abroad. Corrupt, cruel, and unexpectedly maternal.

▍   'HONOURABLE AUGUSTINO', DEMON-PRINCE ♂
Lord-Huntsman of the Endless Evening. Royal Houndmaster of the Kennels of Qara. Emissary to the Sovereign of Doors. And Harlequin-Prince of the House of Boundless Love. Corrupting & cruel.

the miqo'te of the kokkish diaspora

A truncated, biased ethnography (with some biological elements) involving the Kokkish ethnic group that most of my miqo’te belong to. This is a work of headcanon and a constant work-in-progress. As with all ethnographies, none of these are hard-and-fast or part of an exact science (besides maybe the curse stuff, who knows). Sort of an excuse for me to beat certain themes to death: magical addiction, emotional intensity, and really cute female model males! Oh, I'm also not a fan of normal miqo'te names.

the drowning guildmasters of bellegrada

Once a Vylbrandian principality spanning the island city-states and shores of the eastern Sellsword Coast (so named for the many mercenaries drawn there by its proximity to Aldenard, where 'oh, there's always some war being fought on the mainland'), the Kingdom of Bellegrada was torn apart by a bitter war for succession that left it unable to impose authority over its neighbours. In its modern form, however, the seven districts of the sprawling, seaside metropolis and the Signoria of Guildmasters that rules over it have regained some level of prosperity, and host all manner of trade by ship or cart, even as rising water levels claim precious inches every decade.

the marches of east dravania

The Marches, referred to in official documents as the Marches of East Dravania and the Hochbern Estates, are less a single nation and more a shifting mosaic of elector-princes and prince-bishops, matriarchal duchies and borderland baronies, stitched together by a complex web of oaths, treaties, customs, ceremonies, and handshake-agreements. It has that distinctly-fractured 'Holy Roman Empire' energy mixed with a bit of dragon worship and my wish that Square Enix cared more about cultural worldbuilding.

the poor fellow-magi of oldcross house

The Poor Fellow-Magi of St. Saerwyth & the Order at Oldcross House is a secret, (genderless) fraternal order, occult society, and quasi-knighthood of magi that takes inspiration from historical hermetic groups such as Aleister Crowley's Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. As a hallmark of occult orders and contrasted against the more modern, secular organisations of aetherology that one might find in the likes of Sharlayan, it retains a deeply-ceremonial, ritualistic sense of pageantry and tradition.

the admiralty academy of arcanima

Located in one of Limsa Lominsa's more regal, imposing seastack-towers, the La Noscean Admiralty Academy of Arcanima & Natural Philosophy, commonly shortened to the Admiralty Academy of Arcanima or simply AAA ('Triple A') by its students, is a Lominsan institution of higher learning with close ties to the Admiralty's Navy, Mealvaan's Gate, and the Nymian Restoration Society. The wealthiest and most talented of Vylbrand's budding arcanists attend Triple A as a far more rigorous, prestigious, and thorough understanding of arcanima.

Of the Provinces

"His High Princely Grace, Kasimir von und zu Hohenwald, Margrave & Warden of the Imperial Rittenmark of Hohenwald-Fahlburg, Grandmaster of the Aneskan Order of Friar-Knights, Staghound of the Reaches, Sorcerer-Lord & Elector-Prince of the Marches."

A densely forested and mountainous border province that guards the eastern passes between the Coerthas-adjacent breadbasket and Dravania proper, and derives a large portion of its wealth from the tolls levied on merchants and imperial shipments passing through. Famous for its ancient watchtowers, knight-producing cliffside monasteries, crenellated, corridor-spanning walls, and quarries of rare white granite that its central administrative and defensive building, the Pale Keep, is made from. Unlike their lowland, Seraph counterparts, the Aneskan Order is far more reclusive and clannish, even to the feudal subjects they directly oversee. Rumours abound regarding strange bacchanals and wild hunt rituals practiced in secret, or of what might lurk behind the veils of their war-priestesses. Kasimir is, like all seeress-selected Margraves, a young, passionate knight known for his sense of monastic devotion and tradition. Despite this, his court tolerates several eccentric natural philosophers studying subjects in remote, specialised monasteries often considered ‘too fringe’ for the interior.

"Her Enduring Devotion, Yngvifrid IV, vesseled by Ermengard von Altenburg, Bride-Abbess of Velburg, Countess of Altenburg, Sorcerer-Lord & Elector-Prince of the Hochbern Estates."

A religious polity in a mist-cloaked caldera, the province is known for its illuminated manuscripts, wine-producing abbeys, and a pilgrim-drawing relic believed to be a strip of cloth from Shiva’s bridal wear. Its administrative centre of Velburg stretches along the shores of a great lake and through its theocratic bureaucracy, the clergy governs the peasantry from a nearby, semi-monastic island dominated by the Cathedral of the Sacred Knot where the Bishop of Velburg resides. Yngvifrid IV is devout but rumored to dabble in forbidden sorcery beneath her sanctum.

"Her Illustrious Grace, Adelheid von Falkenau zu Nebelhain, Margravine of Nebelhain, Baroness of Falkenau, March-Warden of the Imperial Verge, and Huntress Paramount of the Autumn Exception."

A vast border forest of oak and dark pine where villages cluster around ancestral ring-clearings. The local culture and customs are dominated by its notably high concentration of Kokkish-Merovecht miqo’te suffused with Marcher ecclesia. Each autumn, Nebelhain’s charter explicitly permits a weeks-long sanctioned hunt-revel known as the Running of the Bounds, combining game pursuit, feasting, and nightlong pyrelit gatherings. Masks are customary and identities are not pursued as social hierarchies temporarily invert: peasants may challenge knights; counts and trappers alike join in communal dances; disputes are settled through ritual contests rather than court, which are adjourned for the duration; and fines and penalties are suspended save in cases of arson, murder, and excessive violence. Official doctrine frames this as a reminder of the chaos before Imperial order, and of the impermanence of all things in the face of the coming winter. The province and some of its neighbours share a tense, uneasy relationship with the abbacies and Hochbern Estates of the heartland due to rituals with wild drakes considered “irreverent and parasitic” by many.

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"His High Princely Grace, Oskar IV von und zu Trosberg, Duke of Trosberg and Mondstein, Lord of Himmelswacht, Sorcerer-Lord & Elector-Prince of the Hochbern Estates."

Once a grand ducal seat famed for its excellent statesmen and martial processions, Trosberg is now a land of rotting glory. Ringed by fens and draped in blackwood swamps, the province is a patchwork of crumbling moated keeps, fortified monasteries, and bitter baronial estates, each ruled by houses more loyal to ancestral grudges than the duchy — and more isolated, too, with roads becoming more overgrown and consumed by forest year after year. The city of Trosberg itself - ancient, perched atop a weathered acropolis, rising from a land wreathed in fog and Spanish moss - remains nominally sovereign, though its decrees must often be bartered in the form of public pilgrimages and politicking. Oskar is a man of long silences and longer shadows. A formalist by nature, he clings to ritual and precedence with quiet desperation, governing not through strength but through sheer inertia. Once sharp, once feared, he has aged into a cold, slow echo of his former self. His voice is soft, his will is weaker than it once was, and his memory? Poor or simply selective.

"Her High Princely Grace, Ser Iseulde von Reffan, Margravine of Eisenhauch, Grandmaster of the Poor Seraph-Soldiers of the Sickle, Castellan of the Imperial Hall of Eisenhauch, Sorcerer-Lord & Elector-Prince of the Marches."

A small province dominated by a walled, imposing citadel-settlement strategically built on acres of raised land, centred between and surrounded by a handful of the most prosperous breadbasket provinces for the quick projection of military force. Administered and defended by their knightly order, the Seraphs consist of light, lowborn hussars outfitted with lances and arquebuses, led by their noble counterparts: heavy, elite mage-knights wearing rear, decorative wings used to demoralise their enemies and act as arcane focuses for their war magic (yeah, like winged hussars...).

"Guildmarshal Maela Vos Rein, Chartermaster of Dornbrecht & Grandmaster of the Company of the White Ribbons."

A wealthy trade hub with autonomy granted by imperial charter. Controlled by a council of guildmasters, Dornbrecht is renowned for its arcane banking systems, private mercenary companies, and towered university where arcanists develop binding pacts with lesser imps. Maela is a sharp-tongued, former-landsknecht captain that began her career fighting on the Rittermark frontiers before eventually setting up her own security detail in Dornbrecht with comrades that had served alongside and under her. She rose through the Merchant’s Collegium by ruthlessly (and extralegally) outmanoeuvring competitors and elevating her company’s prominence as the preferred security solution for the most prominent guilds.

The Seven Quarters

The Subura, or “lower city” is a man-made region of the city composed of foundations built directly in the water and criss-crossed by canals. This area encompasses the city’s geographically lowest, economically poorest, and most populous districts: the Quartiere Stranero and Vyleporta. The poorest of the two, the Stranero was historically manufactured as a ghetto for Kokkish migrants from the islands, but today acts as a more general slum beset by rampant crime and poverty. It is home to several ethnic 'conclaves' where dispossessed and marginalised peoples group together into collectivist communes for security against the poorly-enforced criminal activity in the district.

A sea-stack centered in the Struma Harbour, the Insula Struma is home to both the Piazza della Bacciana (the city’s most iconic market square) and the forward castle which overlooks the sea. The quarter is referred to as “the Plumes” by the common folk due to its high concentration of soldiers (the Casavinieri, "house guard") which are colloquially referred to as “Pigeons” for the bright plumage they wear in their hats and helmets and because “they’re everywhere, they’re useless, and they tend to shit on everything.” A less common term for the district is the “Gibbeting Gardens” due to the castle’s prison attachment and its field of gibbets and gallows which overlook the bay.

Bellegrada is known as the Jewel of the Sellsword Coast and even Esquiliera, the partially submerged district now known as the Drowned City, is not without a morbid beauty of dying or dead splendor. Once a district for the wealthy’s summer and seaside homes, the rising water has made it mostly unlivable with only squatters calling it home. It is said that there are many lost riches to still be found in the submerged estates, but when the tide goes out, with nothing but the looming Sea Wall to oversee its change into a hotbed of crime, there are few who wish to chance their luck at such a gamble.

Considered the less beloved brother of the Casacallino Bends, Altelario mostly hosts craftsmen who occupy a respectable but less renowned rung of society than its southern counterparts across the Struma. It is often known as the Horseshoe for the shape of the river it sits on as well as its population of agrarian blacksmiths (on account of its closeness to the southwestern gate where most of the region’s rural folk come through).

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Unlike the Stranero, the Vyleporta is the half of the Subura that the city watch has a vested interest in maintaining some level of order due to the important role it plays in the region’s economy. Due to the city's size and its eastern-shore proximity to Aldenard, it is a symbolic “Port to Vylbrand,” sprawling with wharves, warehouses, and loading docks, peopled by sailors and sellswords speaking a dozen different tongues at any given time while labourers hustle cargo between ships or onto carts. It is a place rich with industry and poor in niceties.

Montepalacio is the most affluent quarter in the city, hosting the Gonfaloniere’s palace, the Assembly Hall of the Signoria, and the richest estates in the city. It is not only towering in a symbolic sense, though, as it has also been built on the tallest hill in the city with the palace itself built on a cliff-face overlooking the harbour and the Insula Struma. Its colloquial, “the Dovecote,” is earned due to its connotations with the nobility ("doves") and the aforementioned guards ("pigeons") who prioritise their security over the poor, with huge attachments safeguarding the Gonfaloniere and the Signoria.

Casacallino is the oldest district in the city where migrant people first settled in the hills along the winding banks of the River Struma and the mouth to the ocean. Of course, with the construction of the Subura, the sheer cliffs of Casacallino’s south-end now tower above the poorer districts instead of the sea. It is a quintessentially middle-class suburb, with the lower end of that spectrum - skilled tradesmen and the senselessly lucky - dominating the north-end (“the Bends”) while the more affluent and well-off merchants gawk down at the Subura from the south-end (“the Bluffs”). It is a highlight for most travellers as, although the Piazza has the densest concentration of shops, Casacallino’s sheer size boasts the most in addition to its numerous historical buildings.

Although not a proper district, the catacombs are as much of one as any of its official counterparts. Spidering beneath most of Esquiliera and Casacallino, its network of tunnels and crypts are favoured by the less lawful types of the city who use it as a means of smuggling and discarding. Besides its obvious role of housing the dead, the catacombs do boast another legitimate means for its use: the Undermarket. Those unfamiliar with its labyrinthine and ancient geography are best advised to note venture beyond this, though, for every year more folk end up lost and starved inside it or drowned in one of its submerged sections.

The Signoria of Guildmasters

In Bellegrada, everything moves at the turn of a coin. The Gonfaloniere, the city’s governor, serves a largely ceremonial title while the Signoria leads the city through legislation and extralegal means. A parliamentary body made up of representatives from the city’s many guilds, the Signoria’s power became absolute following Bellegrada’s war of succession and the subsequent weakening of the crown's influence. The guilds maintain this equilibrium by strict adherence to their individual trades and wheelhouses and pass laws almost solely for economic benefit. Although technically several factions (forty-four, to be exact), the Signoria as a whole discuss the city at large and will occasionally defer “jobs” to their Office of Enterprising Citizens. An individual (or group) who wishes to take such jobs will be delegated to one of the Signoria’s ‘handlers’ – bureaucrats who oversee the execution of their tasks.

Guilds of Note

Their likeness borne on every tavern, brothel, and coffeehouse, the Fellowship of Innkeepers is the rumoured heart of the criminal underworld. Every secret muttered in ecstasy to a favoured whore and every key to every door to every rented room for a night’s stay passes between their shadowy hands. Of course, in Bellegrada, this remains rumour and hearsay for one will find few people willing to publicly slander men who could slip into their room at the witching hour with nothing but the turn of a lock.

Headquartered at Santa Pieta, the iconic, leaning tower near the city’s center, the Watchful Order oversees arcane happenings in the city. Wizards and the like who fail to register with the guild are disallowed the use magic, and if one casts a spell outside of this they can often expect a not-so-friendly knock on their door.

They’re luthiers. They string violins, right?

An occupational guild and livery company native to Limsa Lominsa, the Worshipful Company of Tidewrights serves the Vylbrandian populace by licencing and regulating specialised arcanists (known as Tidewrights) who provide a myriad of solutions to seafaring ills: wave-cutters, wind-shapers, seer-like navigators, and otherwise. With their clannish, insular reputation and strange brand of pageantry - oaths, rites, traditions, chanting, and dancing - many of the more modern and secular guilds regard them as eccentric, superstitious, and ritualistic.

The Coffee-Makers came to Bellegrada about five years ago from Kokkish communities in the southern slopes of the Kapeza Range. Their primary motivation at the moment is to become a recognised guild in the city, but have made an enemy of the Innkeepers who view coffee and coffeehouses as direct competition to their taverns, brothels, and hotels. They refer to them solely as the Kapezin and smear their name through the city by “othering” their goods and culture. So far, the Innkeepers have been successful in staunching their rise to the Signoria, but as of late the Kapezin have found allies in the Guild of Watermen who have been long-standing rivals to the Innkeeper for political dominance in Bellegrada. The Watermen allow the Coffee-Makers to sell their wares on floating coffee houses in the canals where their jurisdiction reigns supreme.

Non-Comprehensive List

Think of this more like a reference-sheet to the kinds of guilds you might find. These are largely not self-invented, but pulled from various sources such as TTRPGs, London livery companies, and medieval guilds.

Sellswords for the
Sellsword Coast

For those heavy with coin, Bellegrada, like her coastal neighbours, is home to the greatest mercenaries in the known world. In the markets, condottieri from over a dozen different companies call out to gaudily-dressed merchants and visiting lords in hopes of earning their favour and gold. In amphitheatres, arenas, and platforms made of wooden scaffolding, soldiers of fortune pit their best men against one another to show their skills while veteran commanders draft up contracts with clients. These are killers who care not for the size of your ambition, but for the quality of your coin purse.

Led by Armas Vanamëlmo, an ex-Kokkish corsair, the Brotherhood of the Black Bands is one of the largest and most prosperous free companies in the Sellsword Coast. Boasting thousands of soldiers of varying skill sets, it was they who repelled the Pavan invasion of Renzia and they who even now still occupy and claim ownership of it. Although Armas’ rule is unrecognised by other political bodies, he claims that Marcio Banchi, the last doge of Renzia, promised his throne upon his death to the Kokkish sellsword should they be successful in their war against Pava. Unfortunately, when he at last passed away two years ago, it surfaced that he had promised that same throne to two other people: a son and a nephew who has since fled to Bellegrada. Armas is rumoured to currently be in Bellegrada as well, looking to make his sovereignty of Renzia recognised in the Signoria’s eyes.

A company consisting solely of pavise shield-bearers and crossbowmen, Ser John’s Pavisiers are most effective in urban engagements where they turn alleyways into murder-chutes. They are currently contracted by the Crown and Signoria to support their Plumes with the quarantine.

Although separate from the Plumes, the Gyve works closely with the Gonfaloniere and his soldiers due to being a patriotic, pan-Vylbrandian free company. The company has taken part in several military conflicts on Bellegrada’s side and membership is reserved exclusively to those who have spent the majority of their life on the island and can pass certain “Vylbrandian” tests. Their name and banner, a gyve, alludes to their charter which orders its members to “embrace the honourable shackles of servitude.”

A Kokkish- and mixed-miqo'te-exclusive mercenary company, they are suspected to also run organised crime in miqo'te neighbourhoods. Although they do not discuss current clients, it is believed that they are under an exclusive contract with a new employer.

Started by retired, Garlean legionnaires, the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Corintia began as a way for a handful of dispossessed men and women to support their families through the only way they knew how: war. They have a well-known rivalry with the Gyve who dislikes their occasionally xenophobic treatment of their communities. This rivalry tends to be harmless drinking contests and bar brawls, but has been known to turn into bloody turf wars on occasion. Although technically mercenaries, between military campaigns they are often more affordable and will generally cut deals with civilians whose plight moves them. They value martial honour, order, and compassion.

A secretive, religious order of knights from the Vylbrandian breadbaskets. All that is known of their central faith is that it is monotheistic and incorporates fire in its rituals.

They say there were only forty-five of them that held Tchotskie. Scholars often remark it's ignoring some finer points.