Wyra'li Polaali

Wyra'li makes a point to be as lackluster as can be when it comes to his public figure. He plays the part of an innkeeper, tending to his herb garden and making mundane runs into town for his farmer's market's bounty, which he uses to try out new recipes at the Bistro Fork. He isn't an amazing chef, but he is proud of the few dishes he has mastered, and he seems content in his mediocrity. After all, it's less attention on him and the inn. Although the inn isn't actually open. Wyra'li keeps the Bistro Fork open to very few patrons, claiming instead that his rooms are booked through the month. Those few patrons are likewise secretive, and like Wyra'li, they wish for anonymity and seclusion.

There are those who whisper and mutter about the innkeeper, studying the close similarities between him and a merchant and mercenary dynasty in Revenant's Toll.

It's also said that, when the light is dim, there seems to be a dim glow in the center of his chest, underneath the many layers of his clothes.

Wyra'li, although being the owner and provider for the Bistro Fork, seems to either hole up in the place for weeks, or disappear entirely for months on end. No one seems to be able to track him, despite his insistence on staying away from aether travel.

Wyra'li seems to have extremely sensitive aether sickness, choosing to keep a fair distance away from areas of high aetheric activity, if not immediately evacuate, hands over his mouth as he fights the urge to retch.

Beneath Bahamut's Belly

Years later, in the ensuing Calamity, the Polaali family would be one of the few that did not flee the oncoming chaos. Despite seeing the great red moon of Dalamund creep ever closer to landfall, they stayed in the midst of it all, finding wealth in panic. Merchants, desperate to move their cargo would pay through the nose to get the kind of help the Polaali family offered, and at the command of the mother, they would not forget to take advantage of every merchant fearful enough to turn over their coin purse in favor of safety. Even still, as the moon grew closer, painting the land of Mor Dhona with shades of red through the night and through the day, Wyra'li would not doubt his family. He had placed his complete trust within them and he knew, even if they were in the most dangerous place to be of all Eorzea, he trusted his family would be there to support one another in the coming fall. This trust would be tested the hour that Dalamund finally began to crack and split overhead. Even as the comets fell upon the earth like a rain, Wyra'li felt no fear in his heart. Aiding panicking merchants, who paid him handsomely for his help escorting them to safety, Wyra'li was passing by the crystalline mass that was left of the original Camp Revenant's Toll's swallowed up aetherite when the very ground beneath him burst with energy, crackling from the mere presence of Bahamut, who had shaken free of his prison. A river of explosions belched free underneath the sweep of Bahamut's path, his flight bringing in a curtain of explosions that littered the earth, and as his path took him over the already ravaged land of Mor Dhona, Wyra'li was unprepared for the ensuing blasts. A nearby explosion knocked Wyra'li off of his feet and into the air mere moments before he would have been able to complete his job and return to the sides of his family, who were running nearby, also guiding panicked merchants to safety in the rain of terror. Spun in the air, Wyra'li was unable to stop himself from falling onto a spire of corrupted crystal from the original site of Camp Revenant's Toll, spearing him through the chest. Somehow, the spire had miraculously missed his internal organs, sparing him from immediate death, but he knew that his mortality would be impossible to escape if he didn't free himself from the crystal. Wyra'li looked to the fleeing backs of his family, expecting them to spin on their heels and rush to his aide as he writhed helplessly on his spire of crystal, when he saw them turn, connect their gaze, and continue running. In that moment, Wyra'li watched helplessly as his brothers and sister, his mother and father, took one look at him through the clouds of ember and smoke and left him for dead. Thankfully for Wyra'li, the pain of having a crystal splitting his chest in twain was no match to the pain of betrayal. Urged on by adrenaline and the desperate need to survive, even as panicked people ran by his prone form, Wyra'li managed to ground his legs on the trembling earth and pull himself up the length of crystal, carefully dislodging himself from its spire. Unfortunately though, it was in that panic of lifting himself from its point, that Wyra'li broke off a chunk of corrupted crystal within his chest. It was perhaps also because of that crystal shard that he didn't entirely bleed to death the moment he stumbled to his knees, crawling onto the path of panicked refugees. A merchant that he had worked for before noticed him on the ground, a large Roegadyn who paused just long enough to hear Wyra'li's begging voice, offering anything in return for aid, and Wyra'li was plucked from certain death and into the Roegadyn's arms. He was carried into Revenant's Toll and into the merchant's bunker, where he then received the life saving procedure that would spare his life, though not without condemning it thanks to the unnoticed crystal shard snugly tucked against his beating heart. Outside, Wyra'li could hear the raging battle, his eyes still flooded with images of flashing red light, the sound of comets pummeling his ears, and the images of his family turning their backs to him as he lay speared onto the crystal. For the duration of the following weeks, he would fall in and out of unconsciousness, locked in a state of shock and heartbreak.

Left Behind

Weeks passed and Wyra'li spent his time healing up underneath the watchful gaze of his employer, and it was in that time that Wyra'li realized that his family had seriously left him for dead. There had been no visits on their part, no attempts to discover him or even find his body, and Wyra'li's entire understanding of the world changed in that short time. He developed a healthy suspicion of others, and determined that blood was as thin as perfume, poignant and short lasting. Too angry to even consider facing his family, Wyra'li condemned them silently and prayed that he never find them again. If they would treat him as if he were already dead, then he would do the same. Raging and upset, Wyra'li could only express his grief by throwing himself to the feet of his savior, a man whom he pledged his servitude to in return for his care. This gave him the opportunity to flee his home, journeying among the land of Eorzea as he helped the Roegadyn peddle his trade near and far throughout the land. He worked underneath him for two years before working off his debt and freeing himself from his employment, and from that point on, swore to be his own man. He worked again as a mercenary for different trade companies and services, lending himself out in the way that he knew how, all the while carrying an intolerable pain in his chest. The further and further away from Revenant's Toll that he got, however, the less it hurt, and he determined to free himself of the past and his family's memories. Assuming that it was the pain of grief that he had felt for those first couple years, it took it's growth in pain as well as the growing hard lump underneath his skin after countless painful aetheric healings and casual teleportation to realize that it wasn't the pain of betrayal that he had been feeling. Five years after his wandering away from Revenant's Toll, while he was underneath the employment of a great trading company, Wyra'li became aware of the true source of ache in his heart: the growing corrupted crystal.

A Heart Made of Crystal

Alerted to the fact that there was something growing beneath his scar, Wyra'li sought the help of the trading company's healers and scholars in order to determine exactly what was ailing him. Several tests were made, Wyra'li subjecting himself to all matters of probes and cautionary yet exploratory efforts, and the truth of the hurt came to light shortly before the crystal itself broke free of his skin. The spear that he had been thrown upon in the wake of the Calamity had lost a large chunk of itself in his very chest, and since then, had been corrupting the aether of his body with each teleportation and spot of healing. With the corrupted crystal not only gathering aetheric energy, but converting his natural aetheric self, Wyra'li's chest was becoming a road map of crystalline growth, snaking around his heart and lungs. Almost immediately, he began trying to find ways to cure the growing crystal, searching with friends that he had made as well as garnering friends through his search. No matter what though, it seemed like every path of research led to a dead end, and with Wyra'li's movements becoming all the more restrained thanks to his declining health, transporting him to those who might aid him, became increasingly difficult. He began dreading that he would end up like those lost souls in the bowels of Pharos Sirius, and that fear alone, anticipating himself to become corrupted to the point that he would lose his sense of self, Wyra'li bowed down to his pride and abandoned his position at the trading company. Not only that, but he feared a pitiable death, hating the thought of being surrounding by a bunch of people who he had grown to care about standing by his side, helpless and unhelpful. Wyra'li took it upon himself to flee to the outskirts of society in order to hide himself from those who might come looking. Finding solitude in the Hermit's Hovel at the edge of Outer La Noscea, Wyra'li finally allowed himself to become bedridden as the crystal began to take more and more of his energy. He would not find himself left to his death, however. A passerby would find him and seek out the aid of the Scions of the Seventh Dawn to help find a solution for Wyra'li's unique case of aether sickness. Said passerby was on his way to Saint Conarch's in Revenant's Toll and had bright red hair and mismatched eyes, and an aptitude for learning about aether and technology. Through his help, Wyra'li was able to survive thanks to experimental uses of Auracite, which the scions used to siphon the corrupted aether out of Wyra'li's crystal, able to redirect the crystal's hunger to absorb atmospheric aether instead of Wyra'li's own corporeal aether. This meant that Wyra'li could finally begin recovering now that his crystal wasn't eating his body and growing anymore, and so he began his long recovery, but it was through that initial contact that the Scions discovered Wyra'li's Echo. Since then, they have offered to shelter him and provide him access to further material and study of his crystal in return for his aid as a mercenary in helping them in their quest.

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