INFO POST FOR BLOOD TITHE

NAME: Ardyn Izunia (Ardyn Lucis Caelum) A.K.A.: (Ex) High Chancellor of Niflheim, The Usurper, The Immortal Accursed CANON: Final Fantasy XV HOMEWORLD: Eos AGE: 2000+ GENDER: Male SPECIES: Human/Daemon APPEARANCE: yikes HEIGHT: 6'2" - 6'3" BUILD: Muscular (Mesomorphic) HAIR: Red-Violet EYES: Gold DRESS: Just Terrible SCENT: Faint musk, anise, sandalwood VOICE: "a man of no consequence." DEMEANOR: Grandiloquent, humorous, flippant, spiteful BACKTAGGING: ✔ 4TH-WALLING: ✘ THREADJACKING: ✔ MIND-READING: ✔ FIGHTING: ✔ ROMANCE: ✔ (requires intensive CR development) INJURY: ✔ KILLING: ??? I mean it's BT, so.

@ blood tithe Ardyn Izunia is a difficult man to parse. At first glance, he is built upon contradictions which make little sense when compared to each other; but upon further inspection and knowledge of his past experiences, all these bizarre pieces come together to neatly form a whole. To begin, it’s easiest to start with outside appearances. The Chancellor of Niflheim is a lofty title, one that might invoke the imagery of a stern and unrelenting man. And yet, instead you get Ardyn — supercilious and fueled by a condescending sort of humor, aimed at nearly everyone around him. He is malleable as he is silver-tongued, eloquent in words (as a politician must be), and oddly unaffected in general. He is theatrical and even sarcastic; he’s just as quick to pay a compliment as he is to throw out verbal barbs, and his expression remains the same regardless of which he chooses. As his English VA once described him, he is full of “insincere sincerity”. He’s a difficult man to read, because he seems fluid and unnecessarily fills the air with words that may not have much meaning to them to begin with. In this way he is both ineffable and confusing, even frustrating, but undoubtedly dripping in charm the entire time. He's shrewd and intelligent, confident and subtly cocky. He can get under your skin with some well-placed words, which is admittedly the way he prefers to do it. Whereas some of this persona is a farce, some of it is a sincere a part of Ardyn’s character. He’s a man who has lived for two thousand years, and only a small fraction of this time was he driven by action in the narrative (the events shortly prior to, and during, the game); the rest of this time, Ardyn was merely living in Eos, unheard of by others. Floating through the ages, and being dismissive about people, events, and other transient things was just a part of an immortal life. In this sense, Ardyn lacks empathy, which can be clearly seen once he shows his more devious, darker side in the later chapters of the game. How he kills Lunafreya without so much batting an eye, how he patronizingly taunts Noctis throughout all of Chapter 13, and how eager he is to bring darkness to all of Eos, just for the sake of getting revenge on the Caelum line and the astrals, two thousand years in the future. If he seems lackadaisical, it's because he simply doesn't care about the "smaller picture", the day-to-day moments and considerations. He's seen centuries pass, and he's geared himself to look at everything in a wider scope. This is especially true given his goals in the game. The other side of Ardyn Izunia is the ugly half. It’s the devious mind that lies beneath the surface of what most think is a puzzling man; it’s the fact that often his empty words are empty for a reason, because he’s either manipulating someone by holding back the truth, or merely sees no reason to share it at all. He thinks with a calculating mind, lending well to his station as Chancellor. Ardyn pulls the strings from afar — throughout the game, he aids Noctis and his companions, who are technically his enemies. All of this because it lends to his end goal of being able to turn Noctis into the True King, so that he can end the Lucis Caelum line with the King’s death and his own. And it takes a bitter, twisted sort of man to cover the world in literal darkness just for the sake of his own vendetta. When you dig even deeper, there’s an anger and a cruelty there that, coupled with his apathy, makes him a very dangerous person. He even takes a sadistic sort of pleasure in toying with others, one that he doesn't bother hiding when the curtains have been drawn back completely. It isn't a stretch to say that a very, very long time ago, Ardyn may have been a nicer person. He had been a King and leader, as well as a healer; he healed countless, the implication being that there was a clear devotion to the goal, and a possession of empathy for those suffering from the Starscourge. In the game, we no longer see him utilizing these powers at all. He's lost any sense of humanitarianism beyond achieving a clear-cut objective. There's no warmth, no real concern for those around him; he's quick to even betray those he had allied with, simply because they outlived their usefulness -- in a true villainous fashion. This is important to point out, because this clear transition from healer king to Man Who Wants to Fuck Up the World was brought on by a betrayal that defined him for millennia to come. This betrayal was by both gods and family, and in its completeness Ardyn became angry and spiteful. Shrewd and motivated. In his most revealing moments, he tells Noctis that he had been left in the darkness for ages, the resentment finally spilling forth in uncommon forthrightness. It reveals the anger he has kept bubbling in the pit of his chest for countless years, a bitterness that has been the motivation behind his very existence. Revenge turns a mind dark and its purpose razor-sharp, and the same could be said for Ardyn Izunia. This, along with the burden of countless daemons he keeps within himself, only fueled this venom within him. So, Ardyn is a villain, we get that now. But there's one final thing worth mentioning; as immortal as the man is, as eager as he can be to destroy the Lucis Caelum line, there is a part of him that wishes for his own death, so that he can finally be unburdened by the daemons he carries and pass peacefully. This adds a bit of tragedy to his otherwise unsavory character faults, and though it does not excuse the travesties he wishes to place upon Eos, it does provide further motivation for Ardyn. In various bits of dialogue, there's hinting that Ardyn almost expects Noctis to kill him during the final battle, so that he can finally be free. This lends itself to the notion that there may be the tiniest amount of regret he harbors, or at the very least, a stark awareness of the monster he's become over millennia. It's enough for him to pursue the only way in which he can actually die, which is to have Noctis become the True King to kill him. As a result, this desire for revenge (and possible freedom) is what makes up the ugly core of Ardyn, completely disregarding any sort of decent individual he might have been in the past. He's calculating with more than enough potential to be cruel, though he usually keeps all of this hidden behind a veneer of patronizing humor, questionable charm, and clever wordplay. In the end, most everything he does is either for the sake of manipulation, or in contrast, because something is unimportant enough in his eyes to actually care. His past experience as a king, his betrayal by his own family line and the astrals, and the thousands of years wrought on his humanity was more than enough to unfortunately shape him into the man he is during the events of the game: a man bent on throwing the world into darkness simply because of the injustices incurred upon him thousands of years ago. Canon history can be found here. Arrived on November 17th. Was given the cover of a researcher of elven magical artifacts, Ardyn Rhaenar, to more easily blend in as a native traveling with the army. Memories from his homeworld wiped on the 20th, in order to more thoroughly pass any investigations thrown his way, due to another outworlder posing as a fellow researcher (Fai) being investigated for treason. As a result, currently believes himself to be his cover story. On December 1st, the Irkallan army is ambushed by the elven army while passing through the Black Crags. Ardyn is captured and collared, rending all of his abilities and magic useless. He is taken with other fellow prisoners to a teleportation seal on the 7th, and is transported to the elven city of Aallotar. They are sequestered into cells in the dungeon, and tortured for information. Ardyn is assigned to Pryast, who bleeds him and tests the transformative properties of his blood by injecting it into a soldier and a rat, and accelerating the process with elven magic. In late December, Ardyn is visited by Felix in his cell, who offers his freedom for a vial of his blood. Ardyn accepts and is brought to the mirror world. He manages to save Waver soon after from an elven attack on the Irkallan rescue camp. They save Ben and Dominic next. The elves start a pre-emptive attack on the Tamt, and the Tamt invade the castle, using the mirror world to warp the space inside the castle. Ardyn stumbles across Flagg in the mirror world, and they fight the Red Dragon, a Tamtish godling. The wound it and it flees to the real world to devour the Servitors being held in the castle. It is defeated, with the help of Waver and a freed Servitor. The Servitors, however, are angry and disoriented after having been woken up, and whisk themselves away -- placing a curse upon all those who are before them. Ardyn and the other outworlders and Irkallans are free to roam about the castle and the city, for both their aid in the battle and due to the fact that, realistically, they have become a minor side-problem with this new brewing war with the Tamt. ABILITIES: IMMORTALITY - Due to the countless daemons he harbors within himself, Ardyn became immortal. He can be shot, stabbed, and frozen solid by a literal goddess, but even that is not enough to kill him. He literally came back from any attack thanks to his darker powers; the only thing that felled him in the end was someone of equal power, none other than Noctis' return as the True King himself. As a result of his immortality, he is also far stronger and possesses more stamina than any mortal in Eos. He also feels a lessened amount of pain than what most would upon receiving injures, and heals from them quickly (with the help of the daemonic essences within him). NOTE: Nerfed in-game. Is exceedingly difficult to kill and will adhere to game mechanics if/when it does happen, but this is a feat that would require immense effort, thanks to the dark healing aspects of the Starscourge in his body. WARP MAGIC/ARMIGER - Like all from the royal line, Ardyn can also utilize warp magic. This includes being able to phase through solid objects, to "teleport" his own body from point A to point B, leave a light-like still image of himself to distract enemies after he warps, to store various items (weapons, mainly) in a magical hammerspace until called upon, and to send them back there again once no longer needed. He can also call upon his own version of his Armiger, which is basically calling forth all of his versions of Royal Arms to utilize an attack on his enemies. This also lets him fly through the air and do a whole lot of crazy warping that he wouldn't be able to do normally. DAEMONIC POWERS - Ardyn's darker powers have also manifested in a few more interesting ways. He can manipulate the mind of a person to view someone/something as something else completely, effectively creating illusions for at least a single individual. During the train sequence, he has also been seen to manipulate time to his liking, stopping and/or slowing it as he sees fit. When time resumes as normal, no one ever seems the wiser that anything had changed at all. He can also use his aforementioned powers to literally knock others unconscious with a blast of daemonic power, or just conjure it up out of nothingness to wreck havoc, or to imbue his weapons with it, as seen in the final battle. It is also through his possession of the Starscourge that he manages to bring the world into darkness for 10 years. NOTE: Time manipulation has been nerfed. He no longer can do this in Blood Tithe. GENERALIZED COMBAT - Ardyn is familiar with a wide range of weapons (as indicated by him having his own Armiger), and is a skilled combatant on the field, though seeing him actually fight is a rare occasion; only at the end of the game does he wield any sort of melee weapon, but even then he's shown as more than competent. I mean. Final boss and everything, you know. ELEMANCY - Using his magic, he is also able to create what are basically elemental spells for everyday people to use. He can find and absorb elemental energy, concentrate it into a physical object (like a flask), and store it for later. HEALING - While he was initially given the power to heal people suffering from the Starscourge (and presumably others who are simply wounded and afflicted), Ardyn does not use these skills any longer. He's not inclined to carry more darkness in him than he already has, nor does he particularly care enough about the civilian population of Eos to be the same selfless man he once was. There's nothing to say that he doesn't still possess these abilities, but good luck getting him to ever use them again. MASTER MANIPULATOR - It's worth mentioning that Ardyn is a very manipulative individual. Many long years of existence have made him a far-seeing man in terms of knowing how people will react, and how to subtly push them in the right direction to get what he wants. He's particularly good at manipulating the emotions and motivations of others by mere words alone. This, coupled with an innate cleverness, makes him a very shrewd individual. HIS OWN VERSIONS OF THE 13 ROYAL ARMS. So many weapons, nestled nicely into his Armiger (hammerspace) for now. INVENTORY ITEM #2. Inventory item #2 description here. INVENTORY ITEM #3. Inventory item #3 description here.

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