| Ethnicity | Sharlayan Keeper |
| Gender | Cis Male |
| Age | Twenties |
| Orientation | Bisexual, Polyam |
| Profession | Celebrity Adventurer |
| Archetype | Well-meaning Demonologist |
"Thanks for the letter, mother! Say hi to dad for me and give Little Isha a smooch - tell her that her big brother will come home soon, he promises! Tell her that he'll be bringing gifts!"
Themes
Magic prodigy, but are demonologists meant to be this adorable; prone to wanderlust and uncovering secrets best left buried; a bit pervy; astonishingly well-connected; two degrees of separation from everyone, probably; has exchanged a couple letters with the warrior of light; probably been in the same room with a couple scions; is either humble about it or arrogantly pretends to be; enjoys mentoring; rarely stays in one place for any time at all; prefers descending into subterranean cities with groups, but will do so alone if necessary.Writes to his family often; and his friends; and his associates; couriers make a killing off of him; likes to keep busy so he's always finding new projects to work on; trauma from the Calamity, probably; able to return home whenever he wants to, but can't bring himself to it; very driven and passionate but tries not to step on people on the journey; sometimes he does without realising it; can get tunnel-visioned; curiosity will one day kill this cat, he knows this, he's weirdly fine with it.
The scenarios below come off as quite specific, but that’s only to make them atmospheric and cinematic for sparking creativity in myself and others. They’re there to be tweaked to better fit your character! Or, if you're an altaholic like me, to brainstorm a new character! However, the ‘A Jumble of Sparknote Hooks’ at the bottom are a bunch of brief sentences alluding to a potential hook-theme that I just... didn’t do a bigger write-up for, mostly for quick and accessible reading.
Adventure Associates
Mercenaries, condottieri, landsknecht– there’s a dozen words to try and dress up what you are: a career murderer. Maybe you’d met him, once, several years ago. Things were so much more chaotic back then: the moon falling; the shelling and endless fire; the awful silence. So with the world torn asunder, maybe you didn’t really blink twice when a boy thirteen, fourteen years old is alongside you as you run into the fray. He’s good at what he does, a bit of a magic prodigy really, and besides, nothing makes sense anyways. A lot of kids lived through the Calamity and had it even worse. Maybe the two of you kept in contact the entire time – a role model or simply an older friend who probably often gave him a good ribbing – or maybe you lost contact only to sign up for a job years later and find him in the same squad as you. Just as beaming and polite as before.
Children of the Calamity
You knew Solomon before the collapse. Maybe you went to the same school as him or maybe you were simply a childhood friend that used to write to him when he was studying abroad. One day, though, it happened and of course the letters stopped or you watched him get dragged off and pressganged into soldiering at twelve. The world needed order and sacrifices had to be made, but in the blink of an eye... he was gone. Fate decides to turn strange yet again and, out of the ether there the two of you are, in a borderland tavern or disembarking from different ships on the same pier... or maybe he’s unknowingly trying to collect a bounty on you.
Demonologist: Humble Beginnings
You’ve been with Solomon since the beginning. You are the first who bore witness to his knack for ripping things from between worlds – sometimes, accidentally – when he was still a child. Maybe you’re the mentor that guided him on his initial steps, or maybe you’re the first demon he’d ever laid eyes on, let alone pulled squirming into the meat and noise of the Source. You nurtured this skill, most likely for your own aims and personal gain, but it’s not like he didn’t flourish, and he’s probably even grateful.
Demonologist: The Courteous Leash
Secretly, Solomon keeps a handful of Outsiders as... retainers, carefully thrice-bound to a host of his make. It might be a little humiliating, being coaxed around by someone who looks like a particularly aggressive spring breeze might knock him down, but he’s polite and respectful and asks surprisingly little. He also doesn’t egotistically punish you for getting snarky like many demonologists like to do, just to remind you of ‘your place,' either. He even talks to you like an equal– though maybe that’s pretty unintentionally insulting for someone of your lineage. He does, however, expect you to behave out in public.
A Jumble of Sparknote Hooks
Solomon the Exorcist; old ex-lovers or recurring tristes prone to bickering; the demon he'd bound into a severed hand / mirror / dinner fork gets unruly and wouldn't you know it, you're right there when it happens; family members; Solomon the Tutor; university study-buddies & rivals; the witch-hunter gets wise to Solomon’s bullshit.
Characteristics
| Scholarly | Sentimental | Curious | Playful |
| Show-off | Ambitious | Pervy | Polite |
| Romantic | Goofball | Shrewd | Opportunistic |
| Famous | Cute drunk | Clumsy | Traumatised |
General Details
He's an S-Ranked adventurer and due to his size, cute appearance, and alarmingly-intuitive mastery of the arcane, he's somewhat of an idol and mascot among the various Adventurer's Guilds where he offers his services as a mercenary-for-hire.
From a respectable Sharlayan family with branches seeded on a couple of its islands as well as one in Ul'dah. He has two younger sisters that he thinks will surely invent time travel since they clearly went back to put the sun in the sky.
He spent the first several years of his life studying aetherology, some in the Sharlayan Studium, some under a master in Ul'dah, and some at the La Noscean Admiralty Academy of Arcanima and Natural Philosophy.
Began adventurering at the tender age of twelve due to the Calamity which landed him suddenly far from home in a sundered world. He's served a number of (NPC) Free Companies and still offers his services as a contractor for many of them.
Believes in the proliferation of magical knowledge and yet is (hypocritically) very reticent to share his own lore to any save those he's deemed worthy of his tutelage.
Has an unhealthy understanding of many occult traditions and a knack for ritual. Continues as an adventurer in part to uncover many of these mysteries. More specifically (and secretively), demonology tends to be his special interest subject.
( ooc ) The player plays very fast-and-loose with the demonology stuff. We can call them voidsent, demons, daemons, outsiders, neighbours, whatever sounds coolest, I'll probably be using pretty much all of them. That said, I'm not going to get super hung-up on the Void's lore and will often bend and probably occasionally break it entirely! ♡ I'm just here to tell fun stories and sometimes FFXIV lacks the themes I'm scratching at.
yes, please
brainstorming & gushing about character stuff together
maturity & kindness
flashback rp! specifically really enriches this character
headcanon & worldbuilding
i like literature and sometimes it might show
being 25+ irl strongly preferred; i don't care what your character's age is, but it might understandably limit the ways solomon interacts with you depending on that age
no, thanks
plotless shipping, smut, romance, et cetera; happy for this to a point, and i know he's adorable, but please connect with the character on more
anything related to solution 9 (cool place, one day i'd like to make a character for it, but it breaks the vibe for solomon specifically; i'm pretending it doesn't exist)
ooc capitalists/libertarians, fascists, misogynists, anti-Palestinians
ooc/ic transphobes (there's just no ic basis for this, so one probably implies the other)
miscellany
i have a few alts, and so although not necessary, i like adding people to discord if we vibe; it's just easier to get in contact with me!
sometimes i will drop words like 'try' and 'attempt' because i think it's linguistically clunky; if i do this, i'm not godmodding, just explain what actually happens in your post and i'll roll with it
pissbaby