i want to hit people over the head with a hammer in ffxiv and get rewarded with the metal pan bonk noise

thinking ab my wols today had me feeling kinda sappy so i wanted to make something sweet for them 😭 i'm only posting in the tags bc i spent several hours on these but auauhghh i love these losers

ran

rationalizing that *maybe* because it's been 5+ years since they last saw him and he's changed a lot since then doesn't occur to him, of course. healthily coping with this stuff has never been something ran was capable of in the first place

he just answers with "no. no, you do not know me." because fucking *ouch* what do you mean he's been forgotten by the people that raised him. again, they reinforce the belief that he was disposable to them just because he didn't fit the mold

ran overhears this and he just.

gets a pit in his stomach.

tries to walk away but is stopped by one of them. the woman asks where they could speak to the ruler of the city. ran gives her directions. then she squints and is like "do i know you?"

internally, something snaps for ran

had a thought that maybe the final days had creeped just far enough into the golmore jungle where his village is.

post-EW suddenly there's people he recognizes from his old home in radz-at-han pleading for aid/materials to help them rebuild because the damage was far too big to rebuild themselves

but even if he doesn't want anything to do with his old home anymore, he doesn't actually want the people back there to get harmed or worse.

he's bitter, yes, but not cruel

it's not so much the forests that make him uncomfortable as the jungles of thavnair are his old stomping grounds to hunt and how he earned his keep while staying there—in fact, they bring him a sense of calm.

it's the particular way of living that will get him on edge