Fergus Alvane

Fergus was always an unassuming boy, simple, some would say, but that was part of his charm.
His parents were an unlikely match: a dashing foreigner to Gyr Abania from the parts of Thavnair the guides all tell you to avoid, and a tribal Miqo'te pugilist with a serious and incurable case of wanderlust. When Garlemald came stampeding across Eorzea for the first time, claiming Ala Mhigo, the pair found themselves stuck on the wrong side of Baelsar's Wall, and in short order, they bore a son: Fergus Alvane, bearing the same name as his father.
Little Fergus found himself surrounded by love the second he was born, with two parents who adored him and spent every waking moment attempting to spare him from the horrors of life under Imperial occupation. He learned swordplay and woodworking from his father, and cooking and archery from his mother. The usual fare, really, but as he grew into adolescence he learned ever more important lessons from them: compassion, mindfulness, kindness, and empathy.
He never had terribly many friends, owing to the territory of being mixed-race in a Hyuran village in a Garlean territory, mostly, but from childhood he did have one steadfast companion, one who cared little about his ancestry and far more about his caring heart. His name was Wulfric, a Highlander lad, from a farm not a stone's throw from the Alvanes'.
Wulfric was a nice enough young man by most accounts, if a little lacking in social graces. This didn't intimidate Fergus much though, who had heretofore not been easily dissuaded by a mass of thorns as long so it guarded something beautiful. And so, as young people often do, the pair quickly found themselves with more strange, unknown, and not entirely unwelcome feelings than either of them knew what to do with.
Their romance bloomed, as Garlemald tightened its grip on the Aan, and sadly, it was not meant to last. Once Wulfric's parents, now vocal supporters of the Garlean regime, found out about their son's repulsive dalliance with a 'savage half-breed', he became very scarce overnight. Fergus was, predictably, heartbroken, and waited every day at sunset for Wulfric to come over the hill dividing them again, only to be disappointed every time. One day it had so happened that young Wulfric was selected for an education in engineering back in the city of Garlemald itself. That day, Fergus remembered, was when he realized in its entirety the power that the Empire really had.
The Alvanes were always benefactors of the Resistance, but it wasn't until the death of Emperor Solus that the whole family, all three, decided to lend their strength to liberating their homeland. His father's son, he always favored the sword and axe, and though his gentle soul was hardly befitting of a soldier, he found not only a greater purpose, but also, for the first time in his life, a large circle of friends toward which to direct all the affection he had been neglected earlier in life.
When Rhalgr's Reach was assaulted by the crown prince himself, Fergus watched nearly all of his new, cherished companions perish before his eyes. He had even taken a lover, or two or three, as the case may be, and all of them were gone in barely as much time as it takes to blink an eye.
He struggled. That's putting it mildly, of course, but he was never the type to let someone see him cry, no matter how much his tender heart hurt. He perservered: and when the Ala Mhigan flag finally flew over the Queen's gardens, for the first time in 25 years, and in his life, for that matter, his heart swelled with so much pride that he could not hold the river of tears back.
Since Ala Mhigo's liberation, Fergus has returned to farm life, but knowing not only that the world beyond Baelsar's Wall is open to him as well as that his country is, for the time, safe and free, he aches to see where the sun rests in the west, and a particular young Keeper lady is certainly doing her part in coaxing him over the border.

( Made with Carrd )