quick info

[surecast]

basic stats;

★ Age: 19~20 (?)
★ Height: 5'6" even.
★ Nameday: 32nd Sun of the 5th Umbral Moon (?)
★ Guardian deity: Rhalgr, the Destroyer.
★ His hair is fairly short, mostly swept back from his face, and mostly pale blond with a number of irregular dark streaks peppered throughout; his eyes are a very pale gold in color, although his left is noticeably paler than his right.
★ He bears two deep scars on either cheek, unusually symmetrical to have originated in the heat of battle.

background;

While traveling through the Thanalan desert, a young man was viciously attacked by a ferocious beast, and would surely have perished were it not for the intervention of a passing squad of Brass Blades. He was taken to the nearby Silver Bazaar to recover, but when he awoke, he soon discovered that all of his memories, all he knew of himself and what he was doing before that fateful attack, were utterly gone. Nevertheless, he resolved not to be discouraged by his newfound condition, and once he was fully recovered from his wounds – and upon discovering a latent talent for the working of aether – he set off for Ul'dah to take up the study of thaumaturgy and make a new life for himself.

At least, this is the story he presents to all those curious enough to ask about his life … and for the most part, it is entirely true. The only fiction lies in his supposed amnesia, for in reality, he hasn’t forgotten a thing about his actual origins – and the truth sounds much more like fiction than the lie.

(Another, albeit much smaller fiction is the nature of the beast which so viciously attacked him in the west of Thanalan. But hey, you try being a level-zero novice without a clue or any combat skills dealing with an angered hammerbeak, and we’ll see how well you handle it.)

The reality is that this young man was “born” some thousands of years ago, as one of many clones produced by the Allagan empire. Unlike most of his brethren, however, this clone in particular was designed as part of a privately commissioned, highly experimental, and extremely top secret series, and also unlike his brethren, even within this private series, he didn’t come out…right. While his capacity for aetheric manipulation somewhat exceeded the expected norm, many of his physical parameters – such as his strength, stature, and even his eyesight – were substantially diminished compared to his peers. As a result, he was summarily marked for disposal. Rather than being sent straight to the great Allagan trash bin in the sky, however, he was instead diverted to an experimental facility in Azys Lla for reasons left unknown to him.

Not that he had much opportunity to learn what those reasons might have been, of course, as he was placed in a stasis chamber for the journey – a journey which wound up taking several thousand years longer than planned. When the clone finally awoke, his stasis vat was wrecked and rapidly filling with seawater, and it took all his strength to break free and swim to the nearest land, which turned out to be a remote stretch of shore in western Thanalan. Exactly how he had wound up in the Rhotano was a complete mystery to him, as he had no conscious memory of his time within the vat… But it seemed, at least for the moment, that he had escaped his Allagan creators, and thus – at least for now – escaped certain imprisonment or death.

It was at this point that he wandered into the desert and had his ill-fortuned encounter with a vicious hammerbeak. After he was taken to the Silver Bazaar, he was questioned mercilessly: what was his name? Where had he come from, and where was he going? What was he doing traveling in Thanalan without any guards or weapons of his own, particularly in such strange attire? He had no answers for any of these questions, and so it was assumed that he had lost his memory, either from the attack or the heat of the desert or some other unknown trauma. He had no reason to correct them; in fact, it seemed to him that those who thought him an amnesiac were more likely to pity him for it, and thus show him kindness and generosity, something he had never before experienced in his incredibly short life. So he allowed the assumptions to continue, and he continues to lean on these assumptions to this day.

Over time, and with the help of a particularly kind-hearted (and very, very patient) chirurgeon, he started to learn how to function like a normal, not-cloned hyuran being. He came to choose a name for himself – Robyn Lanner, after the birds which he had come to see as a symbol of his newfound freedom – and despite his previous failing grades at thaumaturgy, he decided to head for Ul'dah and take the chance to study it properly. It hasn’t been an easy road for him, but he takes each step with enthusiasm nevertheless, ever looking forward to what each new day of his new life brings.

personality;

In a word: naive.

In many more words than that: Robyn’s worldly inexperience is plainly evident though most of his words and actions, and only rarely does he make any attempt to hide it. So much of Eorzea is so strange and so new to him, and he’s so eager to learn and see as much of it as he can that he can hardly bring himself to think of what others may think of him. His cover story as an amnesiac works well in this endeavor, and so far he’s encountered little in the way of resistance or doubt when using it to explain away his ignorance and curiosity. Should he ever encounter someone who doesn’t believe him so easily, however… Well, that’s a bridge he’ll have to cross when he comes to it.

The flipside of this is that he is easily trusting – far, far too easily trusting. If somebody tells him anything, no matter how outrageous, he’ll have little reason to believe it untrue unless someone shows or tells him otherwise; for example, the first Au Ra he met told him that others of his kind used their hands to hear rather than the horns on their head, and Robyn did not doubt him for even a moment until his next meeting with an Au Ra, during which he attempted to shout directly into the poor man’s hands. Thankfully, he has yet to encounter anyone who might take advantage of his gullible nature for more nefarious means, but given his residence in Ul'dah, perhaps this is only a matter of time.

Despite his generally (and often detrimentally) trusting nature, so far he hasn’t found anyone he trusts nearly enough to share the truth of his origins with. Part of this is due to his doubt that anyone would believe him even if he was open about it, but for the most part this decision is motivated by fear. Not necessarily fear of the Allagans – although if he had any reason to believe they were still kicking around in this day and age, he certainly would be very afraid of them – but fear of what might be done to him were it to be discovered that he himself is the result of Allagan experimentation. He only escaped death through the narrowest and unlikeliest of circumstances, and managed to escape what might well have been eternal imprisonment through even unlikelier circumstances, and now that he finally has the chance to experience life freely and to the fullest, he’s all too desperate not to let that chance slip from his grasp.