Vielle Janlenoux
Lominsan Elezen adventurer and reporter
Age: 29 (as of Dawntrail launch)
Personality
If Vielle was a song, it would be Wind in My Hair from Tangled: The Series. (Lyrics)
She’s a happy-go-lucky kind of person who acts first and thinks later. She’s very social and straightforward, and prone to flirting with both men and women. She’s not academically minded and is in fact somewhat disdainful of “eggheads”, rather relying on her wits, skill with a bow and knife, and talking her way out of trouble.
Vielle puts a lots of emphasis on presentation and theatrics, on fancy clothes and dramatic poses. She enjoys attention and wants to be liked, or, at the very least, talked about. It doesn’t matter to her if she succeeds or fails in her latest endeavor, as long as she looks dashing doing it.
Another way of thinking of her is as a poseur in high society, as exemplifed by
Yankee Doodle came to town
A-riding on a pony,
Stuck a feather in his cap
And called it macaroni.
She’s friends with some nobles, but didn’t grow up as one, and is prone to committing faux pas. As a Lominsan, she can occasionally slip into her native dialect, though it’s unclear how much of it is genuine and how much she’s consciously faking.
Background
Vielle was born and raised in Limsa Lominsa. Her parents moved there from Gridania, but didn’t elaborate on the reasons they left the Twelveswood, and Vielle didn’t pry. Nonetheless, they had contempt for Gridanians and their traditional ways, and their daughter inherited it.
At a young age, Vielle enrolled in the Lominsan Arcanists’ Guild, more at her parents’ insistence than anything else. However, her teacher soon discovered that her student was “regrettably hopeless at mathematics”, and so Vielle never progressed to actually trying to control aether. She found her passion in archery instead; despite her parents’ displeasure at her practicing a traditionally Gridanian craft, they were supportive and wished her godsspeed.
Having no patience for science books, Vielle instead embraced books of another kind: adventure novels. Inspired by tales of dashing swashbucklers fighting pirates and sea monsters, she signed up as a guard on for the merchant company Kryst Kontor, only to discover that sea life was far more prosaic than it seemed and was mostly uneventful, and she was mostly there to keep away thugs and beggars in ports — with no time to ever properly explore the towns themselves. Nonetheless, she stayed at sea throughout her adult years, especially after the Calamity, when sea routes became more profitable with so much of the land wrecked.
This continued until one summer, during an extended shore leave, she took the chance to explore the countryside of Thanalan and wandered into the Silver Bazaar during a public market night. She met the crew of the Daily Moogle, including a very quirky Elezen in a butterfly costume whom she quickly became smitten with; and in the local taverns, she came upon a supportive patron who encouraged her to follow her dreams and embrace her true calling: adventuring. On her ship’s very next stop in Limsa Lominsa, she handed the company a resignation letter and applied for the Adventurers’ Guild the same night.
For the next two years, Vielle became involved in adventures throughout southern and occasionally northern Eorzea, even at one point sailing to the Far East as part of an expedition to investigate problems with local aetherytes. She remained on amicable terms with her former employers, the Kryst Kontor, eventually starting a reporter career in an upstart newspaper funded by the company, The Harborwatch.
More on Chaos Archives
Behind the scenes
Vielle was the first character I created in FFXIV, shortly after discovering it, and jumped into RP right away, before even knowing all the lore. Because of this, I made some unusual choices: I picked the most elf-looking race, but also a starting city where that race, as I later learned, was not commonly found lorewise. Rather than retcon anything, however, I backfilled the details, doing what worldbuilders tend to do. I took the unusual facts about the character, made them part of the story, and asked myself: “Why is this true?” And thus, her being a daughter of migrants, born after her Gridanian parents moved to the maritime city of Limsa Lominsa, became an important part of her characterization.
There are some common traits between the two characters. Both are elves (kinda, in Vielle’s case), trained in archery, constantly curious travelers, and fairly nice and compassionate people. However in most other ways I deliberately contrasted the two characters. Where Lintian is a thoughtful, introverted bookworm afflicted by analysis paralysis, Vielle is a lot more social, not academically inclined, and acts on instinct. And where Lintian is borderline asexual, Vielle shamelessly flirts with both men and women.
The reporter angle wasn’t planned. However, after the demise of the Daily Moogle, I wanted to keep a news feature on the Chaos Archives front page, and stepped in. At about the same time, I watched the 2021 TV series Around the World in 80 Days, a loose adaptation of Jules Verne’s novel, and became curious about original character Abigail Fix’s historical inspiration, Nellie Bly. Bly was the first person to complete Phileas Fogg’s fictional journey in real life (as a woman in the 19th century, no less!), and her book about the trip, Around the World in Seventy-Two Days, painted her as exactly the kind of intrepid adventurous reporter that I pictured Vielle would be if she took the job, especially considering she was about the age Bly was when she made the trip.
No, seriously, read Bly’s book. It’s in the public domain, and quite entertaining!