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Fandom: FFXIV
Summary: Snowballed headcanon!
Chapter Summary: Thancred wins at refuge in audacity, panics the college, and gets screwed over by dumb luck. Brief guest appearances by Urianger, to whom we deeply apologize.
Warnings: Half-failures at translating Tomes of Forbidden Lore.
There were a few problems with getting to the main towers, and the first of them was getting anywhere nearby. It was hard to live in Sharlayan and not have at least a sense of the colleges and library as a massive presence, the pride and heart of the city, and all of that, and maybe even know that the complex formed its own district, that you could see the main towers from miles away outside the city, but that didn't quite put across the size of it.
He'd managed to get some better clothes, a few scarves, and some henna off a trader's wagon to make his hair less noticeably uncommon, but that didn't really work for the college proper, which had some standards of dress that didn't quite hit 'uniform' but weren't the same as street dress, particularly for students, and he knew he wasn't going to pass for one of the scholars or researchers.
It took him a while casing laundry lines to piece together enough that fit and would plausibly look like he belonged there, although thankfully the cold meant keeping a couple scarves around was not out of place, as long as he minded keeping darker colors where it wouldn't get potentially marked by his hair.
After that, the place was busy enough that it wasn't hard to just walk in; as long as he didn't stick around any smaller instruction groups or places where he'd be likely to stick out as unfamiliar, he was probably safe, although he did end up getting hijacked to help move some kind of dismantled alchemic equipment from one room to another, and learning very quickly how to bullshit “I am from a this set of classes/dormitory hall that is different from yours” off the cuff, just getting to the library.
The library that filled two of the towers and had its own, large, building.
He was thankful that there actually was an organization scheme, and one with maps of which collection was where set into walls spaced around the library; it saved him having to ask and risk getting caught, and from spending a few weeks wandering the massive labyrinth of shelves getting lost.
He didn't even try the door to the smaller tower that had the special collections; it looked like it had windows now that he could place which spire it was and match that to the outside, but those were probably the worst place to try to break in, even if they weren't a several story climb up bare stone to reach. The door was locked, but there was a flat recess with something distinctly familiar from seeing arcanist's tomes engraved into it above the lock. That likely meant there was more than just a key lock, and that probably meant that trying to get past the lock without something to disarm the ward spell would at least sound alarms, if not have some kind of trap, probably something incapacitating.
He found a random book from one of the shelves within sight of it, and settled sitting against the wall, paging through reading about the changes in naturalistic ecology caused by altered life forms, at an angle where he could see anyone coming and going.
There weren't many that came and went from that tower; the recess seemed to match some kind of small keyed, enchanted stone, held to it while the key was turned; if he had one of the stones and a key, he could get in without a problem.
The first one he'd seen go in was a Hyur lady with a conjurer's wand and a ward-protected coat that'd been repaired a few times over and had some faded spots; someone who did dangerous field work, bad mark. There was a hooded Elezen that was in and out several times; not only did he seem a little too wary, but if he was around the collection that much, there'd be too much risk of a missing key being caught before he could put it back. Lalafell lady with the trappings of one of the higher councils; bad idea, too big of a noise if anything went wrong, probably too guarded most of the time.
Hyur professor, a few chemical stains but otherwise no sign of being one of the ones that would be dealing with places that risked a fight, older, and not nearly as jumpy.
He spent two days tailing the professor, blending in to students and normal traffic, getting a good idea of habits; he did teaching and work around some of the busier areas early in the day, and wasn't in and out of the upper levels of the library very often, which made it relatively easy to just wait until he was dealing with a crowded hallway and pickpocket the keys.
After that, he spent another day getting a feel for traffic in and out of the restricted collection, found a good time at an odd hour of morning in between guards checking on it and most of the traffic, and a small detour for a fairly typical-looking knapsack.
Walk in, abuse that it was well organized enough to find the books he was looking for easily, slip them in the knapsack – he'd seen the Elezen carrying books in and out, and there weren't any signs of enchantments on the shelves or books, so there wouldn't be an alarm ward on removing them, probably avoiding any interaction between the books and another magic – and walk out.
His only stop leaving the campus was to pass by the professor he'd “borrowed” from, slipping the keys back where he'd gotten them. He was pretty sure there'd be alarms raised when the spots on the shelves were missing, and he didn't want to be anywhere on grounds when it happened.
In fact he didn't want to be anywhere near the grounds, and headed back for slightly more familiar territory, where he knew good hidey-holes to spend time reading.
He very quickly ran into a very simple problem.
One of the books was in Allag – slow, but he could puzzle through it with some time and work.
He wasn't even sure what the other one was in, and given that there was already starting to be word about a lockdown and small panic on the campus because of a couple of dangerous tomes going missing, it was probably a bad time to try to return it.
After two days of study, he hadn't gotten nearly as far as he would've liked, but had little bits and pieces, describing them as self-described messengers of the Void, among the highest order beings there; there were some things he only got parts of that seemed to be describing general principles behind a device for attempting to catch and bind one in a bodiless state. Even the lower-order ones were usually old, and more than intelligent enough that there was apparently ideas in the Empire of entrapping them for information, an idea that had him reading with a raised eyebrow at the faulty wisdom of trying to imprison some ancient powerful being, shake it for information, and trust that information to not end up blowing up in your face somewhere.
Allag's bane, indeed. He wondered how much the answer to the studies on “what killed the Allagan Empire” would be “Assisted suicide”.
The next part of what he hit was honestly not useless, but not very helpful for “how do I fight this”, since it was an in-depth study of how an aetheric being native to the void had a natural command of the (now-lost) art of full black magic, with a great deal of technical equations on apparently a relatively smaller one they'd managed to study, with some discussion of the conditions ideal for drawing attention or drawing one in.
Most of what he got from it was that they were capable of a great deal of power on an instinctive, reflexive level, and that a simple manifestation of their internal energy would be enough to severely harm or kill a human.
It wasn't very encouraging.
He had, at least, picked an area a little off from his normal haunts after a short check of the clocktower that found no sign of anything having been touched since he'd been there last; he was keeping up the dye and change of wardrobe to something more normal for the less poor area, and was finding an occasional need to go out for air before his eyes crossed too badly at the dead language he'd learned from ballads and poems.
He hadn't realized, on one of those jaunts, that he'd strayed closer to the area near the college district until a glowing flash of color below knee-hight caught his attention – someone had a carbuncle out.
And behind it was the hooded Elezen from the college. He couldn't get a good look from across the larger square and between people, but the man looked distinctly unhappy and definitely hunting for something, following the carbuncle as it skittered across the square, pausing to test the air occasionally.
Carbuncles were aetheric beings, capable of tracking energy, and the books he was carrying in a pack over his shoulder had distinct enough such that it wasn't safe to alarm-ward them.
About on cue for that realization, the carbuncle froze, ears raising and swiveling around as its attention fixed on the side of the square he was on; the Elezen's attention fixated about as fast, clearly scanning to try and figure out what it'd caught, and he saw the man saying something.
If he bolted he'd flag himself fast, there was a cathedral two blocks down that he might be able to break trail with, all he really had to do was keep walking and hope he got there before it caught up close enough for him to tell who it was reacting to.
He'd forgotten how fast they could move when they wanted to, the blue streak darting halfway across the square before he'd even gotten close to out of it, then it stopped; there were enough other people his direction that its master was having a hard time picking out who it was minding, judging by the hesitation and further study of the crowd, but he was pretty sure the carbuncle had singled him out...
Head tilted and one ear lowered in confusion.
He didn't pause, and kept walking, trying to get lost in the crowd.
He spent a while in the cathedral, just finding side rooms and “praying” at altars, granted half the prayers were “Twelve, if they come in here, please don't let them look over here” and “What have I gotten myself into”. He waited a couple bells to leave; if they did enter, he didn't see them, or possibly had his back to where they were coming in.
Another couple pages that were half unintelligible due to being almost as much aetheric calculus as Allag, and something that he suspected might've been a discussion of using a Void-puncture as a power source and theoretical containment thereof that to him cemented the inherent stupidity of the Allagan Empire, and he went out to find something hot to drink that would kill the headache.
Even groggy he was perfectly capable of ending up with some coin on the way to a square a good bit more removed from the college than where he'd nearly gotten caught, and a nice, slightly crowded little cafe out of the main traffic.
He'd gotten through half the mug of mountain-herbal tea when recognition dinged of the Roegadyn that was struggling to not fall asleep two tables away, and the thaumaturge next to her that looked tired, haggard, and generally out of sorts.
Oh, of all the people he didn't want to see.
His hair was dyed and he had the scarf pulled up partway around his face and he was dressed different and Twelve please let them be too tired to recognize him anyway, he was calmly sipping his tea and there was nothing wrong in the world at all other than being kind of exhausted, he was not going to watch them because that would probably get their attention, he was just lucky he was sitting … facing the inspector … where he could catch any signs of sudden movement easily. He wasn't sure if he was glad or terrified that he couldn't actually hear their conversation over the background noise of the crowd.
There was movement, but a hazy glance found them getting up to leave and handing over coin to the waitress; they were heading his way, but looked just as tired and haggard as they had a minute ago, so he kept his attention on his mug.
And they were going right by him.
Tea. Tea was wonderful. He stirred the part that was left idly, watching the bits of leaves in the bottom of the cup.
They were stopped right by him.
That processed with a tiny mental curse, and he ducked and slid out of the chair just in time to not end up with the Roegadyn's hand on his shoulder, just brushing past the strap on his bag.
He didn't go for the gate, going over the fence around the tables instead, and got a sideways glimpse of the Roegadyn moving to draw her pistol and the Inspector putting out a hand to stop her – it'd be firing into a crowd, too much risk of bystanders getting hurt; if he could vanish into the crowd he was fine.
Unfortunately, sleep spells didn't really bring risk of collateral damage.
Summary: Snowballed headcanon!
Chapter Summary: Thancred wins at refuge in audacity, panics the college, and gets screwed over by dumb luck. Brief guest appearances by Urianger, to whom we deeply apologize.
Warnings: Half-failures at translating Tomes of Forbidden Lore.
There were a few problems with getting to the main towers, and the first of them was getting anywhere nearby. It was hard to live in Sharlayan and not have at least a sense of the colleges and library as a massive presence, the pride and heart of the city, and all of that, and maybe even know that the complex formed its own district, that you could see the main towers from miles away outside the city, but that didn't quite put across the size of it.
He'd managed to get some better clothes, a few scarves, and some henna off a trader's wagon to make his hair less noticeably uncommon, but that didn't really work for the college proper, which had some standards of dress that didn't quite hit 'uniform' but weren't the same as street dress, particularly for students, and he knew he wasn't going to pass for one of the scholars or researchers.
It took him a while casing laundry lines to piece together enough that fit and would plausibly look like he belonged there, although thankfully the cold meant keeping a couple scarves around was not out of place, as long as he minded keeping darker colors where it wouldn't get potentially marked by his hair.
After that, the place was busy enough that it wasn't hard to just walk in; as long as he didn't stick around any smaller instruction groups or places where he'd be likely to stick out as unfamiliar, he was probably safe, although he did end up getting hijacked to help move some kind of dismantled alchemic equipment from one room to another, and learning very quickly how to bullshit “I am from a this set of classes/dormitory hall that is different from yours” off the cuff, just getting to the library.
The library that filled two of the towers and had its own, large, building.
He was thankful that there actually was an organization scheme, and one with maps of which collection was where set into walls spaced around the library; it saved him having to ask and risk getting caught, and from spending a few weeks wandering the massive labyrinth of shelves getting lost.
He didn't even try the door to the smaller tower that had the special collections; it looked like it had windows now that he could place which spire it was and match that to the outside, but those were probably the worst place to try to break in, even if they weren't a several story climb up bare stone to reach. The door was locked, but there was a flat recess with something distinctly familiar from seeing arcanist's tomes engraved into it above the lock. That likely meant there was more than just a key lock, and that probably meant that trying to get past the lock without something to disarm the ward spell would at least sound alarms, if not have some kind of trap, probably something incapacitating.
He found a random book from one of the shelves within sight of it, and settled sitting against the wall, paging through reading about the changes in naturalistic ecology caused by altered life forms, at an angle where he could see anyone coming and going.
There weren't many that came and went from that tower; the recess seemed to match some kind of small keyed, enchanted stone, held to it while the key was turned; if he had one of the stones and a key, he could get in without a problem.
The first one he'd seen go in was a Hyur lady with a conjurer's wand and a ward-protected coat that'd been repaired a few times over and had some faded spots; someone who did dangerous field work, bad mark. There was a hooded Elezen that was in and out several times; not only did he seem a little too wary, but if he was around the collection that much, there'd be too much risk of a missing key being caught before he could put it back. Lalafell lady with the trappings of one of the higher councils; bad idea, too big of a noise if anything went wrong, probably too guarded most of the time.
Hyur professor, a few chemical stains but otherwise no sign of being one of the ones that would be dealing with places that risked a fight, older, and not nearly as jumpy.
He spent two days tailing the professor, blending in to students and normal traffic, getting a good idea of habits; he did teaching and work around some of the busier areas early in the day, and wasn't in and out of the upper levels of the library very often, which made it relatively easy to just wait until he was dealing with a crowded hallway and pickpocket the keys.
After that, he spent another day getting a feel for traffic in and out of the restricted collection, found a good time at an odd hour of morning in between guards checking on it and most of the traffic, and a small detour for a fairly typical-looking knapsack.
Walk in, abuse that it was well organized enough to find the books he was looking for easily, slip them in the knapsack – he'd seen the Elezen carrying books in and out, and there weren't any signs of enchantments on the shelves or books, so there wouldn't be an alarm ward on removing them, probably avoiding any interaction between the books and another magic – and walk out.
His only stop leaving the campus was to pass by the professor he'd “borrowed” from, slipping the keys back where he'd gotten them. He was pretty sure there'd be alarms raised when the spots on the shelves were missing, and he didn't want to be anywhere on grounds when it happened.
In fact he didn't want to be anywhere near the grounds, and headed back for slightly more familiar territory, where he knew good hidey-holes to spend time reading.
He very quickly ran into a very simple problem.
One of the books was in Allag – slow, but he could puzzle through it with some time and work.
He wasn't even sure what the other one was in, and given that there was already starting to be word about a lockdown and small panic on the campus because of a couple of dangerous tomes going missing, it was probably a bad time to try to return it.
After two days of study, he hadn't gotten nearly as far as he would've liked, but had little bits and pieces, describing them as self-described messengers of the Void, among the highest order beings there; there were some things he only got parts of that seemed to be describing general principles behind a device for attempting to catch and bind one in a bodiless state. Even the lower-order ones were usually old, and more than intelligent enough that there was apparently ideas in the Empire of entrapping them for information, an idea that had him reading with a raised eyebrow at the faulty wisdom of trying to imprison some ancient powerful being, shake it for information, and trust that information to not end up blowing up in your face somewhere.
Allag's bane, indeed. He wondered how much the answer to the studies on “what killed the Allagan Empire” would be “Assisted suicide”.
The next part of what he hit was honestly not useless, but not very helpful for “how do I fight this”, since it was an in-depth study of how an aetheric being native to the void had a natural command of the (now-lost) art of full black magic, with a great deal of technical equations on apparently a relatively smaller one they'd managed to study, with some discussion of the conditions ideal for drawing attention or drawing one in.
Most of what he got from it was that they were capable of a great deal of power on an instinctive, reflexive level, and that a simple manifestation of their internal energy would be enough to severely harm or kill a human.
It wasn't very encouraging.
He had, at least, picked an area a little off from his normal haunts after a short check of the clocktower that found no sign of anything having been touched since he'd been there last; he was keeping up the dye and change of wardrobe to something more normal for the less poor area, and was finding an occasional need to go out for air before his eyes crossed too badly at the dead language he'd learned from ballads and poems.
He hadn't realized, on one of those jaunts, that he'd strayed closer to the area near the college district until a glowing flash of color below knee-hight caught his attention – someone had a carbuncle out.
And behind it was the hooded Elezen from the college. He couldn't get a good look from across the larger square and between people, but the man looked distinctly unhappy and definitely hunting for something, following the carbuncle as it skittered across the square, pausing to test the air occasionally.
Carbuncles were aetheric beings, capable of tracking energy, and the books he was carrying in a pack over his shoulder had distinct enough such that it wasn't safe to alarm-ward them.
About on cue for that realization, the carbuncle froze, ears raising and swiveling around as its attention fixed on the side of the square he was on; the Elezen's attention fixated about as fast, clearly scanning to try and figure out what it'd caught, and he saw the man saying something.
If he bolted he'd flag himself fast, there was a cathedral two blocks down that he might be able to break trail with, all he really had to do was keep walking and hope he got there before it caught up close enough for him to tell who it was reacting to.
He'd forgotten how fast they could move when they wanted to, the blue streak darting halfway across the square before he'd even gotten close to out of it, then it stopped; there were enough other people his direction that its master was having a hard time picking out who it was minding, judging by the hesitation and further study of the crowd, but he was pretty sure the carbuncle had singled him out...
Head tilted and one ear lowered in confusion.
He didn't pause, and kept walking, trying to get lost in the crowd.
He spent a while in the cathedral, just finding side rooms and “praying” at altars, granted half the prayers were “Twelve, if they come in here, please don't let them look over here” and “What have I gotten myself into”. He waited a couple bells to leave; if they did enter, he didn't see them, or possibly had his back to where they were coming in.
Another couple pages that were half unintelligible due to being almost as much aetheric calculus as Allag, and something that he suspected might've been a discussion of using a Void-puncture as a power source and theoretical containment thereof that to him cemented the inherent stupidity of the Allagan Empire, and he went out to find something hot to drink that would kill the headache.
Even groggy he was perfectly capable of ending up with some coin on the way to a square a good bit more removed from the college than where he'd nearly gotten caught, and a nice, slightly crowded little cafe out of the main traffic.
He'd gotten through half the mug of mountain-herbal tea when recognition dinged of the Roegadyn that was struggling to not fall asleep two tables away, and the thaumaturge next to her that looked tired, haggard, and generally out of sorts.
Oh, of all the people he didn't want to see.
His hair was dyed and he had the scarf pulled up partway around his face and he was dressed different and Twelve please let them be too tired to recognize him anyway, he was calmly sipping his tea and there was nothing wrong in the world at all other than being kind of exhausted, he was not going to watch them because that would probably get their attention, he was just lucky he was sitting … facing the inspector … where he could catch any signs of sudden movement easily. He wasn't sure if he was glad or terrified that he couldn't actually hear their conversation over the background noise of the crowd.
There was movement, but a hazy glance found them getting up to leave and handing over coin to the waitress; they were heading his way, but looked just as tired and haggard as they had a minute ago, so he kept his attention on his mug.
And they were going right by him.
Tea. Tea was wonderful. He stirred the part that was left idly, watching the bits of leaves in the bottom of the cup.
They were stopped right by him.
That processed with a tiny mental curse, and he ducked and slid out of the chair just in time to not end up with the Roegadyn's hand on his shoulder, just brushing past the strap on his bag.
He didn't go for the gate, going over the fence around the tables instead, and got a sideways glimpse of the Roegadyn moving to draw her pistol and the Inspector putting out a hand to stop her – it'd be firing into a crowd, too much risk of bystanders getting hurt; if he could vanish into the crowd he was fine.
Unfortunately, sleep spells didn't really bring risk of collateral damage.
