Character

There are many hidden glens and secret places nestled beneath the emerald shadows of the Twelveswood. Even the secretive Miqo'te make no claim to know all its mysteries, and the ancient trees of the Black Shroud guard stories whose details are now forever lost to the fire and devastation that ushered the Seventh Umbral Era. This is one of them.

When the Hyur first arrived on Eorzea's shores a thousand years ago, it's said that the few settlers who dared to venture into the Black Shroud often vanished, leaving behind only their belongings and half-built dwellings. Some believed such disappearances to be the work of the elementals, offended by the arrogance and impiety of the newcomers, while others blamed them upon the predatory raids of the Ixal. Still other scholars insist that the true culprit was simply a lack of preparation for the harsh conditions that awaited travelers within the Twelveswood.

Among those ancient and strangely abandoned settlements, though, one Hyuran colony wasn't so much lost as simply forgotten over time, the magic of the Twelveswood's twilight glades veiling the sight of it from friend and foe alike. The conjurers of Parvaley learned to forge and honor their own truce with the elementals, and for centuries lived in such harmony with the forest that their manner came to resemble the native Elezen more than their own kind.

In time they forgot the old myths they'd brought with them from across the sea and instead invented new stories to accompany Eorzea's doctrine of the Twelve, legends about a vast abyss of water and sky that their ancestors once crossed to reach this realm of forest and light they now inhabited. From the distant memory of those waters, and in honor of the crystal streams and pools that wound their way beneath the trees and nourished the village, Parvaley adopted Nymeia the Spinner as its patron rather than Nophica the Matron, though its people kept such faith with each of the Twelve that no offense was given. The village prospered without trade or contact with, or indeed even much knowledge of, the world that lay beyond the edge of the Shroud.

And so it remained, until the day of the Calamity...

Elysia's Journal - Introduction