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The Will to Resist

This piece was commissioned by Seiryuuden in August of 2021.

At the time, Shadowbringers was still the most recent expansion in Final Fantasy XIV, and the Bozja/Resistance Weapons were the major focus of much of the side content available. Since my character is a Hrothgar, and Bozja is his canonical homeland, the muse started flowing and I wrote a short story that served as the basis for this art.

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“How long has it been since I’ve last set foot upon these lands? How long since I last considered Bozja my home?”

The Rabrandt of those days may as well have been a different person. Back then, he was only the scion of a backwater farming village, without so much as a surname, before youthful wanderlust took hold. For a young Hrothgar both looking to travel the world and provide for his family, there was only one realistic route: The Garlean Army.

For many, the idea of working for “the enemy” would have been an unsavory prospect. To Rabrandt, the occupation occurred before he could form many meaningful memories of what Bozja was like before. Were it not for them, he would have lacked the education standard for all Garlean citizens. And without the welfare programs offered by the Empire, it was obvious that his family and friends wouldn’t have been able to stay afloat. Following the promise of adventure, and greater social standing for his loved ones once he made a name for himself, he enlisted shortly after his sixteenth birthday, taking on the name “Razorclaw” as both a nod to his feline nature and a way to make himself sound more impressive to his future comrades.

Barely two years into his military career, the unthinkable happened: The Bozja Incident, the direct result of Garlemald’s own lunar transmitter overloading with energy from the Red Moon, Dalamud. Among the ruins of the territory lied the annihilated remnants of his humble origins. Their young and elderly, who yet remained, had perished along with so many others. Fortunately, many of his own generation had seen fit to follow in his example, joining his squad. For that reason, and that reason alone, they were spared the devastation, away on assignment.

To say that planted a seed of doubt in the young Hrothgar and his brothers and sisters-in-arms would have been an understatement. They knew they could no longer serve their masters with a clear conscience. As the one with the most training, and the one whose example they all followed, it was up to Rabrandt to get them out. Better to live the lives of fugitives than serve the cold, callous machine who so carelessly or maliciously allowed their loved ones to die.

So it was that they successfully escaped their former lives. However, with not much else but their shared home tying them together, these restless souls found their group falling apart. There was no big event that dissolved the team, their interests simply had each one breaking off in their own direction as the years passed, eventually leaving Rabrandt on his own. With his homeland lost, nowhere else to turn, and the status of a wanted fugitive, he turned to Eorzea. Between the Garlean invasion and the fallout from the Calamity, there was sure to be work for a man of his experience.

He could never have predicted where that simple decision would have taken him. Never in his wildest dreams did that simple farm boy ever suspect he would become a vaunted hero the world… nay, worlds over. And between the adventures, the tragedy, and the pain, he found a new family to protect with all he had until a notice came from their allies in the East. A rebellion had formed in the ruins of old Bozja, and those who remained were fighting to reclaim their homeland from the Empire who had devastated it so long ago.

Rabrandt Razorclaw, now in his early thirties, was a far cry from that fresh-faced, naive young man of his past. As far as was concerned, that chapter of his life had come to a close… and yet.

And yet he could not deny the feelings that were once more stirred within his breast. Not patriotism, his worldly attachments to Bozja had been severed the day he lost his family, but compassion for those who shared in that loss right alongside him. Before he knew it, his body had already boarded the airship where promising adventurers like himself had gathered to join the efforts.

His position as deicide and Champion of Eoreza granted him status among his fellow rebels. Though people suspected he had roots in Bozja, as most Hrothgar once did, few would have recognized him among the flood of Garlean deserters in the aftermath of the Incident.

Nearly twenty years after leaving, the Scion has returned, at last, a changed man. Drawing his massive sword, and conjuring his own dark powers, the Warrior of Light had joined the fight for freedom.