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Player
Name: Joh
Age: 30
Personal Journal: volition
Contact: love.a.riddle@gmail.com
Other In-Game Characters: Flynn Scifo | dammit_yuri | Tales of Vesperia

Character (Original Universe)
Name: Lailah (True Name: Fethmus Mioma; Lailah the Pure)
Age: Unknown. Physically she looks to be in her mid-twenties, but chronologically she is hinted to be several hundred years old.
Gender: Female
Canon: Tales of Zestiria
Canon Point: Post-game, post-Alisha DLC

History:
Lailah @ The Aselia Wikia
Tales of Zestiria's timeline is a clusterfuck. It's a shame since it was so close to being one of the best Tales games, but the timeline makes no bloody sense and most attempts to make a cohesive history for its characters end up in nothing but tears. Bitter tears.

In the world of Tales of Zestiria, in addition to humans as sapient beings there also exist the seraphim - ethereal beings who are able to harness the mana that permeates the world, as well as being usually unseen by humans and also being extremely susceptible to malevolence. If a seraph is tainted by malevolence, they may become a hellion, or its final stage: a dragon. There is a duty that befalls a human who makes a pact with a seraph who can give them the power to wield purification, this human becoming known as the Shepherd. Only seraphim are capable of becoming dragons through this manner, but anything - humans, seraphim, animals, plants, and even toys - can become hellions. Hellions are not usually able to be seen by humans, but instead appear as natural disasters such as waterspouts or tornados. Once they progress to becoming dragons, however, they are able to be seen by humans.

Lailah is one of the few seraphim who is shown to be able to become a Prime Lord. While the power of purification is not hers to wield, through making a pact with her and becoming her vessel the Shepherd can wield the flames of purification to quell the hellions and eventually face the Lord of Calamity, a being with such intense malevolence whose goal is to plunge the world into darkness. There are no details on Lailah's origins, whether she was born a seraph or became one after living her life as a human or some other means. It is unknown how many Shepherds that Lailah has made a pact with, but there are two she contracted with that are important to Zestiria's story.

The first is a previous Shepherd by the name of Michael, who was a Shepherd who was active about twenty years prior to the events in Tales of Zestiria. Not much is known about the circumstances surrounding their contract or relationship, but an Earthen Historia (a gem which can play back images of the past like a movie) showed that Michael and Lailah were a very potent pair, perfectly in sync when it came to combat situations. It is unknown the circumstances which Michael decided to resign from being a Shepherd - he wasn't well known as a Shepherd since most records date the last Shepherd to be about two hundred years prior to the events of Tales of Zestiria, but his writings - known as the Celestial Record - are well known throughout the continent and are writings that helped inspire Sorey (as well as Mikleo and temporarily Alisha) to become an explorer. Whatever the circumstance, Lailah respected Michael's decision; this would be something she would come to regret heavily later.

Michael was too pure a soul, and in his desperation and pit of helplessness he succumbed heavily to malevolence to the point of sacrificing his newborn nephew in order to turn Maotelus into a hellion, and thus transform Georg Heldalf into the next Lord of Calamity. While Lailah was not directly responsible for bringing in the next Age of Chaos, she kept her guilt in her heart and formed a pact. People who undergo a pact are granted a particular ability or power, at a particular cost. One character gained much power at the cost of never being able to directly kill another person. In Lailah's case, in exchange for never speaking about what had happened regarding the hellionization of Maotelus or almost anything relating to it, she gained the power to bestow the power of purification upon any Shepherd who vows to become her vessel. It is implied that after this event, Lailah is the only known seraph with the ability to bestow purification on a Shepherd. She does not have the power of purification herself, but is merely a conduit from which it may be materialized.

Afterwards, she waited in the city of Ladylake, the capital of the Hyland Kingdom. It is unknown if she was the original lady of the lake or if she inherited the title from someone else, but for the next twenty years she would wait next to her Sacred Relic, the sword in the stone (yes, this game has superficial Arthurian legends references up the wazoo). From there, she met Sorey, Mikleo, and Alisha and made a pact with Sorey, enabling him to become the next Shepherd who would fight against the Lord of Calamity and purify the continent to be free of malevolence. While she was aware of the true circumstances surrounding Sorey's journey and met Zenrus (the adoptive grandfather of Sorey and Mikleo), she could not warn Sorey and his friends about her role in why the land was in chaos.

However, she did her best to make sure Sorey's journey was one full of laughter. She made terrible puns and was willfully abstrusive when it came to pertinent information, but as she kept on reminding Sorey to not take his burdens on all by himself (in order to not repeat the same mistakes Michael made) she grew to accept her companions as her equals and help Sorey carve his own path, taking each step as he was ready to. She may be annoying, but she is also a tragic figure with reasons behind her motivations and actions and is an integral part of everyone's story in Zestiria.

Personality:
Lailah proves to be a driving force behind Sorey's journey to becoming a full-fledged Shepherd, providing a bit of a motherly or sisterly role to the traveling party with her experience and wisdom. Like most of the seraphim, Lailah is a bit outspoken, most likely to being able to get away with it since the majority of humanity cannot see her and the lack of numerous seraphim around the same area. Lailah is likely the oldest female of the group and has had a bit more life experience than the others, and as the Prime Lord takes her responsibility for guiding the group in the correct path rather seriously; out of the playable group fo characters, only Zaveid is hinted at being older than she is. As such, most of the time during the story's more solemn moments Lailah takes on a more serious tone and feeds into the mysteries surrounding the Age of Chaos given her involvement in it and her pact.

Outwardly, Lailah is the epitome of a dainty lady. No, seriously. Well, she's the most ladylike of the main cast anyway, and that's even including Mikleo. Zestiria does a fairly good job of subverting tropes - for instance, fire is usually a powerful element reserved for the main protagonist of a tale or some super musclebound meathead with a fiery temper, and Lailah is none of these things. She dresses in frilly clothes, takes it upon herself to guide the others, and admonishes Zaveid (behind his back) about wearing such skimpy clothing in front of a delicate lady. She is also the one with the most experience when it comes to the Shepherd's journey and instead of just telling the group what to do (most of the time), she instead gently guides them to what she believes to be the optimal path. There are only a few instances where she aggressively charges forward to stop Sorey and the others from making mistakes she thinks they cannot return from. Her leadership is also shown in a more grating manner by in-game tutorials where she will discuss with another party member the importance of fusing equipment, among other gameplay mechanics.

One quite obvious trait of her personality is her airheadedness, or rather, feigned ignorance of certain topics which she will inexplicably change the subject or bring up something completely random. A time where she finally gave up is when she "ran out of bugs" [to talk about]. It is unclear what would happen to Lailah if she broke the terms of her pact, but given what happened to someone else during the story it's possible it could end up in death on her part. Another hobby of hers is drawing fortunes from the paper slips she uses as her weapon in battle - many after-battle victory sequences use her fortune telling.

She takes her role as a Prime Lord rather seriously, as she warns Sorey about taking up her sword and becoming her vessel, even if it meant that the malevolence in the shrine would overtake them all. One example of making sure Sorey didn't overexert himself was when she sternly told him to not be an errand boy for Neif, delivering the medicine to Marlind, because she saw what happened before when humanity took advantage of the Shepherd's innate kindness. She also goes out of her way to recruit certain Sub-Lords, such as Mikleo despite Sorey's objections, and also recrutiing Dezel, whose personality clashed with everybody else in order to expand Sorey's worldview. The biggest example of her sense of responsibility, however, as stopping Sorey as his partner during the events at Igraine, Shrine of the Trial of Fire - as a test of spirit, Sorey was told to scar either his or his Prime Lord's face with fire in order to seal the pact and gain the power of the element of fire. Seeing that Sorey was about to choose to scar himself, she immediately took the fiery blade in her own hands and reminded Sorey to not take the burden of the Shepherd on alone, swearing that she would "not make the same mistake, not again".

(Don't worry, there was a happy ending! They decided to kick the ass of the test taker instead and tell him to stuff it. Apparently that was good enough to unlock the Fire Armatus mystic arte, Flamberge.)

While her role in bringing forth the Age of Calamity may be debatable, that doesn't change the fact that Lailah harbors intense guilt behind it. Given the ambiguous nature of what happens to the Shepherds after they purify their respective Lords of Calamities, it can be assumed that many of them die - a handful have been shown to become seraphim themselves, but it is likely that this is not always the case. As such, Lailah made every effort to ensure that Sorey's journey would give him joys he would only be able to experience as a human together with his friends, as well as recruit Rose as his new Squire to replace Alisha as she would be able to connect with Sorey as a human in ways that the seraphim never could.

She may appear lighthearted, Lailah comes off as a fairly tragic figure trying to mask her doubt and fears with laughter and fun. After beating the game, it is possible to witness a cutscene that unlocks her ultimate mystic arte as a sign that she has learned to share her burdens with her friends, a lesson she tried so hard to teach Sorey without practicing it herself.

Lailah has an easygoing personality and enjoys reminding the party members to eat their snacks and keep up their health - she also tends to get along with almost anyone, as she is the one who told Sorey about Edna and recommending that he make a pact with her. During Alisha's DLC Epilogue, she does what she can to have Rose and Alisha make amends without overstepping her self-imposed boundaries. She's also a bit of a heartbreaker, given that she spurns the advances of no less than three men over the course of the game. It could possibly be a defense mechanism where she keeps others at arms' length in order to make sure she doesn't break her pact, or as self-inflicted penance for her role in the past.

Part of her experience also lies in telling the group about the hellions they encounter, and shortly describing the majority of them

Other than that, Lailah tends to try to keep an uplifting outlook and cheer the others on - she is the mood-maker of the group aside from Zaveid, after all. She's not incredibly deep in her sadness, but she plays an important role in the development of the group's dynamic and keeping the peace between everyone. She doesn't like lording over others, and in her own words even with the titles of Sub-Lords and her ability as a Prime Lord to override their actions, she prefers that everyone remain friends and comrades.

Third-Person Sample:
Being a seraph meant that there were times when you had no choice but to wait. It made humans seem impatient by comparison, but then again the seraphim were not subject to the ravages of age and time was a luxury to them. The encroaching darkness, however, made it all the more obvious that this was the Age of Chaos. It may be only a small footnote in the history of a well-aged seraph, but the fact remained that Lailah was subject to the suffering of the humans around her due to the malevolence that was growing inherently into the scared populace. Many hellions made their home in Ladylake and its surrounding region, a reality that saddened her.

It had been several days since she took a seat in front of the altar. This was the fifth year that the humans stopped the tradition of attempting to draw out the sword in a reenactment of overseeing the birth of a new Shepherd. There seemed to be little to no point in moving from this spot – the closest individual she knew was Edna, who was practically in a completely different region.

Clasping her hands in her lap, she replayed the moments she had with Shepherd Michael over and over again in her mind, wondering if there was anything she could have done differently. If she could have made their journey more joyous. If she led him down a path of forgiveness rather than vengeance. If she didn’t remind him of the burden of being the Shepherd and having to quell the malevolence that resided in nearly every soul, whether from humans or seraphim. Perhaps if she acted more like a mother rather than a partner, or had Michael form pacts with those with different world views so his own would have expanded. Countless different scenarios ran through her mind, the different things she could have done. Maybe if she put up more of a fight when Michael announced he no longer wished to be the Shepherd.

But none of that mattered.

This Age of Chaos was bought forth into the world by the hands of one who was meant to deliver it from evil.

Her throat closed up whenever she thought about it.

If only I wouldn’t have to relive those moments again… if only I could redo everything… if only I had the power to take back what was once lost!

Tears fell from her eyes, falling gently onto her hands. Abruptly standing up, she turned and looked at the sacred relic, the sword that Michael had relinquished when he stepped down. “Why, Maotelus?! Why did it come to this?!”

She clenched her fists, and slammed them against the sword. “Being a Prime Lord means nothing without the power of purification!” She hated her own weakness so much for letting things come this far. She had lived through several Shepherds, and while she wasn’t the Prime Lord for all of them, what was the point of going through with all of this if malevolence would rear its ugly head again and again?

Gasping for air, trembling, Lailah lowered her head. Nobody was in the sanctuary to hear her cries, and even if humans were around, her cries would fall on deaf ears as nobody with any amount of respectable resonance has entered this domain for years.

The last time she encountered another seraph, they had asked her if she knew what caused the Age of Chaos to pour forth. She couldn’t answer them. She didn’t want to answer them. Telling them what happened would be like admitting her own sin, her own failure, as being unable to aid her partner in his darkest moment. They were so focused on purifying their surroundings they neglected to purify the malevolence from their own hearts.

Looking up, the stained glass window had a light emerge from the image of an ancient Shepherd, gently wafting its way down before stopping midair before Lailah.

“Is this your way of giving me a second chance…?” Lailah whispered, tears still streaming down her face.

It was an oath.

A heavy burden to bear, but it was something that Lailah wanted to escape. She didn’t ever want to admit her part in bringing forth the Age of Chaos. Without hesitation, she accepted it – it merged into her chest, granting her a warmth she had never felt before. The power of purification. The ability to undo everything that had occurred.

Turning around, she gazed at the door to the shrine. One day, a youth would step through those doors, and they would go together on a journey to see the world. A journey to regenerate what was lost, and meet new friends and enemies alike.

She would make sure that this time, their journey would be full of laughter.

Mognet Sample:
I usually send out these letters by folding them into paper cranes to letting them fly, but delivering them by Mognet is so convenient!

Anyway, I have an interesting proposition for everyone! I think it would be absolutely lovely to have an outside picnic with sweets in the plains as a thank-you to everyone for all of your hard work! It could even be a mixer! I know I certainly don't know everyone here, and I think it would be fabulous if we had a sweets potluck and got to mingle a bit! I've never been around this many people aware of my presence before!

Plus, think about all of the different treats we would see from different recipes across the different worlds! Even if you don't have a sweet tooth, this sort of thing should spark your intellectual curiosity, shouldn't it?

I really hope this idea takes off! Let me know if anyone is willing to help!

Other Samples:
http://melodiesoflife.dreamwidth.org/131077.html?thread=16834821#cmt16834821
http://melodiesoflife.dreamwidth.org/131077.html?thread=16832517#cmt16832517

Crystallis
Moogle Name: Michael
Moogle Gender: Male
First Job: Programmer
Second Job: Scholar
Limit Break: Primal Embrace