Adelaide Adelier

At a Glance

Personality:A studious lalafell with a great appetite for new knowledge. Born to a new money family in Ul'Dah that lost almost everything in the Calamity, she had a higher class upbringing and a lower class transition into adulthood. She has a strong sense of curiosity which (along with the need to find a way to support herself) pushed her to leave home and begin traveling. Most of her earnings go into her personal library--both the physical location and expanding its contents.When there's a problem at hand, she's quick to come up with a plan (or several). She keeps copious amounts of notebooks to document things she encounters for the first time, and keep track of magical experiments that she conducts as she learns more about the world's arcane workings. New fields and skills excite her, leading her to possess an incomplete experience with many subjects. She is "passable" at physical combat, magic, and healing, but can't match an expert in any of these fields. Sometimes, her slapdash cross-skill techniques can surprise foes and earn a victory that way, but it's rare she can carry a team in a fight.Despite being more comfortable with books, she was trained in negotiation and socialization and is comfortable across most conversational settings.Class/Job: Arcane TinkererAdelaide was raised with the economic, statistical, and financial education needed to succeed in Ul'dah's cutthroat business environment (with a dash of thaumaturge training for status), when she left that life behind and learned of arcanima, her comfort with mathematics saw her pick up the basics quickly. Her freshly indulged wanderlust, however, refused to let her remain and study. So she bought up with books she could and is largely self taught.A curious person at heart, Adelaide takes great interest in various disciplines she encounters and tries to practice them to at least novice level as well, and incorporate what she's learned with arcanima. Mathematics can explain every phenomenon, right?Which leads to her magicks, which are comprised of "homebrew" arcanima inspired by the fighting styles and natural/magical phenomenon she encounters on her journey. Due to her self-taught understanding of the arcanima and her often ambitious ideas, these magicks are typically unstable. The primary effect is usually along the lines of what she intends, but there are often side effects that are only conceptually related to the spell at hand.All that said, she will practice other disciplines when the circumstances allow and the fancy strikes her as a way to increase her breadth of knowledge, just don't expect her to be able to fill in for a master of those other styles.Timeline:
As Adelaide gets older, she gets more confident, relaxed, and knowledgeable. Her competency with magic also increases, though so does her ambition. Which really just means she gets better at producing simple and moderately complex spells with consistency (and less chance of complication) but that she also has spells in her pocket capable of greater boons and more devestating backfiring than before.I imagine in most cases she'll just be whatever "current content" age is (and thus rather chill), but if you're reading this and want to do a "what if they met around XYZ world event" or "what if they knew each other since they starting adventuring" and go from there, I'm open to it!Likes:
- Discovering new things
- Maps
- Books (both academic and recreational)
- Birds
- Working on some magitek nonsense
- Fruit tea and dark chocolate
- Traveling by air and seeing the land below
- Nemo's singing
- Rainy daysDislikes:
- Societal/Familial expectations
- Her own ignorance
- Willful ignorance / Closed-mindedness
- Controlling others' access to education
- Littering

Hooks

Adelaide drawings that I got as gifts or commissioned!The first is by rabbitlegs, the second is by bluecaeri, and the third is by littlemissmau on tumblr whose account is sadly no longer around. (If anyone knows where they're at now, please let me know so I can link them!)

Adelaide drawings by Kittykichi, who plays Nemo Nenno, Adelaide's spouse

Screenshots and outfits! Adelaide often switches up her hair or outfit, but there is typically some purple, either by dyeing her hair or on her clothes.I'm not particularly skilled with gpose and usually just take outfit refs at my house.She typically oscillates between this short hair, the twintails in most drawings above, or the one ponytail shown in the other drawings.

Family and Backstory
Adelaide has a strained relationship with her parents, though she does speak to them and support them from time to time, the three often get into arguments. Her mother, Adada Ada was an adventurer in her youth who was mildly successful, but quickly got jaded and cynical. She turned her small profits to get an in to Ul'dah business life and became a cutthroat financier, making enemies as her profit rose. Her father, Adelito Yaralito was a Limsan farmer who profited heavily from the claim of kobold lands when Limsa Lominsa violated their agreement with them. A profit he earned by selling the mineral rights to Adada's firm. The two bonded during this experience and he ended up moving in with her in Ul'dah.Adelaide is one of seven siblings, and she's right in the middle of them all. They were raised and educated with the expectation that they would all take on roles within her mother's business, with the eldest son, Adelief Adeline to inherit it some day. As he grew into adulthood, however, he became disillusioned with the harmful actions his mother currently employed and the ones his father used to in order to get to where he was in life now. He ended up leaving to become an adventurer himself, writing letters to some of the siblings about his travels until he disappeared at Carteneau.Adelaide learned a lot about the world from her brother and in many ways followed in his footsteps. While she was not as bold as him, when he left she still saw her parents' misdeeds even without him around to call them out, and guilt accumulated over not being as brave as her brother to leave it behind.Then the calamity happened. Her mother's business failed due in large part to the destruction, but if that was all, it would have been salvageable. Alongside it, those merchants businesses she had stepped on to climb higher in Ul'dahn society saw weakness and did the same to her as she did to them. The family's wealth vanished and they plummeted to poverty, even having to sell their estate just to cover debt.Crammed into a small home and with the loss of their lifestyle, five years of fighting resulted in siblings leaving one by one. The youngest, Addan Dadan is the only one who remains at home. Adelaide views him as a saint for supporting their parents despite their flaws, trying to help them understand why their actions and views aren't okay, and being willing to work any job no matter how demeaning or tough, if it means keeping them fed and with a roof over their heads.Adelaide left to follow in Adeleif's footsteps. Though she assumes he is long dead, she wants to at least know what impact he had on the world before he left--speak to those he helped, see the places he helped protect, and so on. As she succeeds in adventures she does return home on occasion to help support her brother Addan, and to do her part when it comes to their parents, though she can still only handle them in small doses.Adelaide's mother, Adada, in her youth, had been a traveling thaumaturge, and so Adelaide started her own journey there as well...

Nemo Nenno, husband
Adelaide met Nemo a couple years into her own adventuring. At the time, she had a handle on things and he was just getting started. She was no expert with a bow, but she knew the basics and the two teamed up to take on simple jobs together.Though the two didn't always get along perfectly, they did make a great team! Adelaide would do research and prepare for their upcoming jobs, while Nemo practiced singing and wrote songs. His melodies calmed her and kept her focused.They've been through all sorts of hazards large and small together, and are true partners in every way.

WoL Adelaide
I talk about this a little bit in the OOC, but Adelaide was originally thought of as being a supporting character to other players' WoLs, or as a member of a party of WoLs. Shadowbringers and Endwalker make that a little funkier to reconcile though.WoL Adelaide has roughly three "character phases" as of the time of writing this.I try to be light on spoilers below, but probably don't read them if you're not caught up to be safe!ARR, Heavensward, and into Stormblood: Adelaide would prove to be a nervous WoL who is a people pleaser and anxious about making plans to handle how things going wrong. She picks up arcanima, finding the formulas natural to her due to her math-heavy education and the shielding nature of Scholar would prove another natural fit due to her forward thinking and desire to address harm before it happens.She would press on despite her nervousness thanks to the Echo, the support from Nemo, Tataru, and other close allies, and using the memory of her eldest brother as a guide. Reconnecting with some of her scattered siblings along the way also serves to help convince her that she should be trying to take on these dangerous tasks, even if she's unconvinced she'll be able to succeed at them. The 2.X events that lead to Heavensward would really hit her hard and she'd spend a lot of Heavensward doubting herself before climbing back to heroism.Stormblood, Shadowbringers, and into Endwalker: would be where her edgelord arc happens. Zenos and the events at Rhalgr's reach cause Adelaide to realize that she can't just protect people by healing harm that comes to them. She also needs to defeat those who would cause harm (also I didn't like the healer changes). She picks up Red Mage and starts learning to balance healing and harming. As these expansions, especially Shadowbringers, progress, she starts to believe that she has to be strong enough to take down any foe. It's her duty as warrior of light to be able to face impossible odds no matter the danger to herself. Because if she doesn't, people get hurt.In Shadowbringers she really leans into the Warrior of Darkness persona to embrace this, and that persona does start becoming the "real" her as the pressure mounts. In Endwalker, she starts to realize that this mask she's worn might not be able to ensure she succeeds, and she spends the second half of the expansion trying to hide the grayscale creeping up her arm from her building despair and self doubt threatening to break her confident facade.End of Endwalker and Dawntrail: with the end of Endwalker's events and the catharsis there, Adelaide takes a step back for a while, genuinely rests, and Dawntrail proves a very valuable experience for her. The opportunity to act as a mentor begins to relieve her anxiety of having the weight of the world on her shoulders as the WoL. She finds traveling in Tural for the right of succession incredibly refreshing and it inspires her to consider training more successors not only to alleviate pressure on herself, but as a way to help more people and put her experience to use in non-violent ways.

About me:
I've been playing FFXIV since a little after ARR release (I missed the initial purchase and had to wait until they allowed them again when they stopped for a while! Remember that? Wild times)! Nemo's player started not long after, and the two of us play through MSQ together and do "light" roleplaying over voice as we progress. Things like "oh, how would Nemo react to this?" or "would Adelaide get along with this npc?" that kind of stuff. Despite this, I have almost nothing written down about Adelaide--something I've been trying to rectify over recent months! And as a part of it, I've made this little RP carrd for her!I don't know if anyone will end up reading through this, but if you do and are interested in doing some scenes, please do let me know!Nemo's player and I do stream our MSQ (and first time major sidequest) stuff, but usually aren't streaming for dailies or anything like that.

Gameplay:I'm pretty casual in FFXIV. Frequently subbed and I do most of the different side content, but I haven't done savages or extremes on release in a long time.I picked up tanking for the first time in Dawntrail and am still getting comfy with it and am happy to tank roulettes with people to get some practice in!Adelaide has all jobs leveled, but I rarely heal these days (I miss Heavensward Scholar and its million dots so, so much).Roleplaying Style:
I haven't actually done freeform roleplaying in a long time (back in the forum days!), nor have I roleplayed within FFXIV itself, but I have plenty of TTRPG experience. I've also written a lot of fiction for myself outside of FFXIV. I feel like I write a lot, but I may end up revising this if this page actually does lead to me writing scenes with people!All this to say, I don't have much FFXIV-specific RP experience, so please forgive any formatting missteps or clumsiness.Main Story RP:
From what I can tell, this is relatively uncommon in FFXIV, but I'll note it down here anyway.Adelaide is a very natural fit for a "B" or "C" scion who could eventually be added to a WoL's party, or as a member of an independent mercenary group who could be hired then integrated in the same way. I actually originally wrote her as a supporting character with the Echo who could join battles later on, much like how Krile ended up being.I only really started seeing Adelaide as a WoL during Shadowbringers! Until then I always viewed her as a supporting character to other players' WoLs. If you're interested in writing in your WoL canon with Adelaide, I am happy to! If you want to write in hers, check out the Details tab.Contact / Links:
Right now, Adelaide is on Greg server. I've thought occasionally about moving, but I have a small house in the Goblet and dealing with that to move servers seems intimidating hahahaYou can find me on bluesky and tumblr and if we have a scene or two I can pass you my discord then!