L'aiha Kh — Ask Her Things!

How It's Going
Most anyone who first meets L'aiha notices three things about her: her tattoos on her neck, her griffin-motif rapier, and her deer-in-the-headlights expression. How an Archon and war hero can be so shy and skittish is anyone's guess, but there she stands—assuming she hasn't scurried away while you weren't looking.

Yet should you get the chance to actually talk to her, the fourth thing you will probably notice is that she's actually really nice. Get past the startle and she'll cheerfully indulge you with conversation, especially that of the scholarly sort, but any topic seems to go well with her. Maybe too well? Oh, wait, she's just scared to tell you she's busy. Oh dear.

Well—that's not completely true. She is amicable to conversation, she's just bad at talking to strangers, acquaintances, friends, authority figures, friends-of-friends, anyone she has ever thought was a little cool, and pretty women. Oh, and gods. She has recently learned she's very bad at talking to gods.

No, seriously, how did she get here, being so... like that?

How It Started
L'aiha Kh, as she has only recently discovered, was born J'nhala Eiha, to parents Eih'a Kiplhi and J'nako Rhaq, in the island nation of Old Sharlayan. Being the daughter of a Sharlayan researcher and a gleaner set up young and ambitious Nhala for success from the beginning. She was enrolled in a prestigious school, and eventually accepted into the Studium at fourteen summers. She graduated at nineteen with a thesis on akasa, made possible by a generous donation from a man whose grandchildren she babysat. This donation allowed Nhala to travel to Thavnair for research purposes, and she made it very clear that all she learned was already well-understood by academics in Radz-at-Han.

Even so, her thesis popularized the field of study in Sharlayan, and many incorrectly attributed the breakthroughs she wrote about to herself, not the scholars and alchemists she interviewed. This drove her a little bit bananas, to say the least, and it was far from the only thing that maddened her about Old Sharlayan. Around the time of her graduation, the Forum had announced that they would be recalling the Sharlayan colony settlement from the shores of Eorzea, following Ala Mhigo's defeat at the hands of the Garlean Empire.

Nhala's maternal family had immigrated from Gyr Abania years before her birth, and to see Old Sharlayan simply abandon it and the rest of Eorzea incensed her, even as her mother agreed with the Forum's decision. This difference between them would become far more than a wedge, building over the next six years until her parents, and all of Old Sharlayan, would discover the true purpose of the Circle of Knowing, an organization Nhala had joined at the behest of the self-same man that funded her trip to Thavnair; an organization that sought to forsake Sharlayan's pacifism and join the fight against Garlemald.

In the chaos, Nhala would be disowned, and she would welcome it. Then twenty and six summers old, Nhala's sterling reputation had only grown. She continued her research on akasa, as well as aetherology, history and botany, and she excelled in all these fields. She had recently been accepted into Labyrinthos like her father, and was anticipated to one day be invited onto the Forum's ninety-nine, a position her paternal grandmother had once held as well. Yet in one fell swoop, Nhala's prestige was destroyed, burned by her own hand as she set sail for Eorzea with the Circle of Knowing.

For the four years that followed, Nhala would do everything within her power to aid Louisoix Leveilleur in defying the Calamity he prophesied. She owed everything to him, and respected him utterly. This devotion would take her all the way to the Carteneau Flats, where she would perish to Dalamud and the Elder Primal Bahamut.

... Or, that's everyone thought.

Awakening with no memory of herself, the once brown-haired, brown-eyed J'nhala Eiha rose out of her own grave with golden features and a massive, healed scar in her chest. She would eventually be rescued from the wilderness by a clan belonging to the L Tribe, and while they would in time reveal themselves to be untrustworthy, they would be the source of her new name: L'aiha Kh, for the sound she purportedly uttered to one of their huntresses at death's door, and for the only friend she found among them.

L'aiha would spend much of the next few years searching for her forgotten past. She would discover the tattoos on her neck indicated she was an Archon in Sharlayan, but try as she might, she could not easily reach the distant nation, being penniless and without any identifying credentials. So she would wait patiently until an opportunity arose. She would join the Students of Baldesion shortly after its present leader arrived in Eorzea, and she would work hard for them, both out of a genuine love for the job and with the hope that one day, they would be her ticket across the sea.

Until then, she would use her apparent intelligence and affinity for magic to aid those around her, no one more so than Ala Mhigo. It was with the Resistance she would earn her griffin rapier and matching focus, and her service remains one of her proudest achievements; proof that, despite her cowardice in the face of insurmountable odds or power, she can make a difference.

When at last the Students of Baldesion returned to Old Sharlayan, L'aiha was among them. Her Archon tattoos were declared authentic, much to the bewilderment of herself and the officers who had determined as much. It was here L'aiha met one of the Students' newer recruits, a Keeper woman named Lhana Eiha—and it was only after the Final Days were averted did either of them realize who they were to one another: sisters.

So was the mystery of L'aiha's tattoos solved: she was the believed-to-be dead Archon J'nhala Eiha. L'aiha had spent all her remembered life looking for answers, and now in the face of them, she finds herself balking. As much as she ached to know, as much as she felt she couldn't belong until she knew, she has an identity all her own now—she is L'aiha Kh, and she has put weight and meaning to that name—and she finds Nhala to be someone she just... doesn't really like.

Perhaps that's how you get such a peculiar Archon.

Where She's Going Now
L'aiha is at a weird crossroads in her life. While she's come to accept that she is L'aiha, and can no longer be Nhala, Old Sharlayan is struggling to catch up with her. Absolved of her twenty-year-old treason, Nhala's reputation is rapidly healing, and L'aiha doesn't want much of anything to do with it. What's more, her one and so far only encounter with her parents went more than a little badly, as a combination of expectations and unresolved betrayals poisoned any joy to be found in the reunion. She does very much enjoy her little sister's company, and it is perhaps the only thing giving her hope that this whole mess between past and present selves can ever be reconciled. Even so, L'aiha is more or less avoiding Old Sharlayan, focusing on a new academic interest: astronomy, particularly cosmology and space travel.

But as new leads in her research dwindle and word of her 'true' identity spreads, the Three Continents grow more and more suffocating, and disappearing a second time doesn't sound like such a bad thing—preferably without the profound amnesia this time. She's had a few suitable distractions, namely in assisting the Students with their investigation in Omphalos, but what she really needs is an excuse to go somewhere nobody will have ever heard of Nhala.

Good thing her boss recently gave her a shiny new assignment to be executed this summer.



i hope this isn't too long LMAO. i'm still building up the courage to post around here more, so i thought this might be a good way to try and get comfy :') despite the length of this post, there's soooo much lore behind this 5'1 catgirl, and i'm always itching to think about more, hehe!!

i've seen a few people responding to their questions in character, and that looks SOOOOOOO fun, but l'aiha is. kind of a closed book. (or maybe a "forcibly shut and locked" book is more accurate.) so i'll try to do that, but also answer ooc so her muse isn't just going 'the horrifying ordeal of being known? absoLUTELY not' at everyone. LMAO.

okay thank you so much for reading aaaaa <33

Oh, interesting! I read through the post a couple of times just to make sure I got some details correct before I posited my question for L'aiha. My question is this: when it concerns your Archon marks, is it ever a point of contention? If there are things you cannot remember, specifically about your former field of interest, surely there are some that also bear the marks or even some values of Sharlayan that you have encountered that frown upon what feels like unearned marks?

PaintedScales wrote:

Oh, interesting! I read through the post a couple of times just to make sure I got some details correct before I posited my question for L'aiha. My question is this: when it concerns your Archon marks, is it ever a point of contention? If there are things you cannot remember, specifically about your former field of interest, surely there are some that also bear the marks or even some values of Sharlayan that you have encountered that frown upon what feels like unearned marks?

"Twas certainly a contentious subject upon my arrival," L'aiha admits, face smiling and ears pinning. A polite sort of mortification. "I discovered that the incident in Carteneau changed my aether considerably, so much so that even though the marks were deemed authentic, I could not be correlated to any Archon on record."

She sighs from her nose and averts her eyes. "But, as you surmise, not everyone has taken the truth of the matter well. J'nhala's—my past transgressions have been forgiven by the state, but that which is legally absolved is far from necessarily publicly absolved. I am not unaccustomed to such doubts, but I suppose it is one of the lesser reasons I have made Sharlayan a... less frequented haunt.

"Still, I cannot deny J'nhala and I share some interests. I had resumed many of my old studies long before stepping on Sharlayan's shores, namely aetherology, so I like to think I can hold my own in those conversations. Akasa, on the other hand... I work in Radz-at-Han often these days, so my knowledge is growing, but the fact remains: J'nhala's achievements are not mine own. Many expect me to know as much as she did, only to be disappointed."

She smiles again, utterly sheepish. "Tis humiliating, really. Would that I could go back in time and never come to..." Her face falls, and she shakes her head. "No, I was desperate for answers, even if I have complicated feelings for the ones I found."



thank you so much!!!! it's a lot for her too ASJYSKLG

What an interesting backstory!  
I'm curious to know more about your stay with the L tribe, and the friend you made there! Are you still in touch? What revealed the clan as untrustworthy, and how did that parting go?

calico-heart wrote:

What an interesting backstory!  
I'm curious to know more about your stay with the L tribe, and the friend you made there! Are you still in touch? What revealed the clan as untrustworthy, and how did that parting go?

L'aiha holds her breath, and looks as if she can't let it out. The moment passes and leaves a tight pain in her throat, but she thinks of her dearest friend and relaxes.

"Yes, we're still in touch," she says, remarkably easily. "His name is L'khilo Tia, and he's like a brother to me. He was kind to me during our time in the Lochs, and if not for him, I would likely not be here.

"It was Khilo, in fact, that revealed the clan's true intentions to me. They found me half-starving in the wilds, not long after Carteneau, and took me in. At the time, they claimed I was a daughter of the clan, and that I had been missing for weeks. They told me I had lived with them since I was young, and that my name was L'aiha."

She swallows. "Though I did not know it in my mind, something within me sensed the lie for what it was. I could see it in the huntresses, my so-called sisters; how they spoke to me as if they pitied me. I thought it was because I could not remember them.

"Khilo was not like that though. He made an effort to befriend me shortly after I recovered from my supposed 'run in with a Garlean armor'. At the time, he kept his true self a secret; he had come to the clan a huntress, but in the years following knew himself to be a Tia. This was one of many secrets he kept from L'vhanan Nunh and his blood-daughters.

"Everything began to crumble when the Garleans came. I watched L'vhanan Nunh greet them like friends, and he gave them four of our huntresses like they were cattle. I wanted to intervene, but Khilo stopped me. The Garleans left; I will never forget L'irha's sobs."

Her ears pin flat against her head, eyes fixed on the ground in front of her; her posture falters, uncharacteristically, as if a great weight bears down on her.

"Khilo explained everything to me later on. The Garleans occupied Ala Mhigo, and to 'protect' his clan, L'vhanan Nunh periodically gave them his best non-blood daughters as conscripts. He never surrendered his mates or blood daughters—he would even send huntresses out to destroy other clans, kill their Nunhs, and take their daughters so he could train them up and send them to die for Garlemald.

"The rest of us were kept hungrier, while his mates and blood daughters enforced his rule. We were dissuaded from any kind of objection, and we did not object for fear of being next."

She sighs. "Khilo revealed to me a truth that shattered me at the time. I was not a daughter of L'vhanan Nunh's clan; neither he nor anyone else had ever seen me before I was found in the wilds. L'rhen, one of his blood daughters, brought me back to their den, and L'vhanan Nunh—as Khilo told it—saw signs of physical prowess in my battered body. He believed I could be made into a conscript worth months of the Garleans' mercy.

"Khilo resented all of this, and had been working even before my arrival to radicalize our sisters and overthrow L'vhanan Nunh. But the process had to be slow, and incredibly secret. If his mates or blood daughters found out, we'd be felled before we had even stood. This is what compelled me to stay; I wanted to help Khilo save everyone. They were complicit in my would-be damnation only for fear of joining me in it. I could not blame them for that."

There's a quiet afterwards, as memories flicker in L'aiha's eyes. She seems as if to sift through them, looking for what next to say.

"Ultimately, our plan failed. Khilo's intentions were discovered, and our sisters were quick to deny any involvement. I alone stood by Khilo's side, and we were chased from the clan; their intention to kill us, had we not escaped. I know he does not think it, but I cannot help but wonder: had I never wandered into his life, would he still have his home? Would our sisters be free?"

Another stretch of quiet. L'aiha collects herself, and finds the will to smile.

"In Seeker culture, daughters have a second name: their father's. I did not know mine's name, of course, but Khilo was family to me. My brother. Thus, I styled my second name after his. Kh."



thank you so much for the question!!!! i have a LOT of seeker headcanons/canon-divergences i use to help make them make more sense to me + facilitate headcanons for other L seeker players, namely 1) that while there are only 26 tribes, there are several "clans" within each tribe, each led by a nunh; and 2) that clans often exchange "daughters" (any non-mate woman) whether by 'insurance' for clan alliances or by uhhhh killing each others' nunhs and taking said daughters. oops.

l'vhanan led his clan in one of the worst ways a nunh could, but his style isn't at all meant to reflect all clans/tribes! many seekers would agree that he's a heinous son of a bitch. it's another reason i like the "tribes vs clans" headcanon, because it allows a lot more room for different kinds of politics to exist in rp!

anyway i just wanted to share that too because it affects a TON about how i refer to seeker tribes!! and i felt the context would be beneficial. :'D thanks again for your question i Love talking about my seeker lore LMAO

OHHH this is good lore I am putting it in my mouth yes
I looove how much you've put into her story and the characters around her!! Taking Khilo as a last name aaaaa ;A; My heart

Same about the seeker headcanons, and honestly I think that's pretty much canon anyway that there's lots of clans within each tribe! I have the Encylcopedia Eorzeas bc I'm a bit of a lore bug and the Seekers page says Tias either challenge their current Nunh and take over OR set out to win followers and form their own settlement. And obviously there's a lot of variation between how some of that is handled just in the tribes we meet in game. So that makes total sense and I really like how you expanded on things (I snooped a bit on your headcanon page in your carrd LOL)

Permit me to offer you a hypothetical situation:

You have one moon to do nothing but study whatever you want, and limitless access to all the texts you could ever need on the topic.

What topic are you going for first-- for fun!-- and why?

WanderersWay wrote:

Permit me to offer you a hypothetical situation:

You have one moon to do nothing but study whatever you want, and limitless access to all the texts you could ever need on the topic.

What topic are you going for first-- for fun!-- and why?

The way L'aiha's eyes widen is remarkably telling. They almost seem to sparkle under the ceiling lights at the question.

"One moon?" she repeats, as if she's been told an entire cake is all for her. "What I would give for that kind of uninterrupted time! Oh, ah—excuse me, your question, yes..."

She doesn't consider it long. "Twas only recently I—and I daresay most people—realized it was possible to travel into the stars, but it begs so many questions. The resources required of the Ragnarok were vast, but science has proven time and again that a method can be improved upon... If we could explore what lies beyond our own sky, who knows what we could find! What we could learn!

"Obviously, no such knowledge exists in our libraries—yet! But that is what I would spend my time on: learning how to facilitate more efficient travel, as all of my most burning questions lie beyond the hurdle that is the Ragnarok's insatiable fuel tanks. If there were a way to lessen its demand, or perhaps substitute what it demands... Perhaps if one were to take the ship's construction process and build something more feasible from the ground up?

"Then again, the foremost purpose of the Ragnarok was to ferry as many people as possible from Hydaelyn to the moon, and its repurposed mission was to reach the end of the sea of stars, hence the staggering fuel demand. So it stands to reason that a smaller ship that were meant to go any distance less than that edge would already be significantly easier to create and supply." Her ears twitch with great intrigue. "With this in mind, it becomes clear that before we can construct a suitable vessel, we must first determine what it is to be suited for. How many people must it carry, and how far must it go? We need, more than anything, a destination."

Her thumb and forefinger touch her chin, eyes focused elsewhere as she thinks. "Perhaps, at least for now, we do not need any people at all. Mammets might suffice, and they have considerably less needs than we do—namely food and sleep. So with the issue of passengers put aside, we now have to figure out where we're going, and how much fuel it will take. But all anyone knows is Hydaelyn and that place at the edge of existence—at least to my knowledge.

"So... Instead, we simply choose an amount of fuel equal to a certain distance. We can calculate this based on how much fuel the Ragnarok was missing upon its return, the total being the round trip's worth. By choosing a fraction of that amount, and accounting for our new mammet-piloted vessel being considerably smaller and more fuel-efficient, we can determine roughly how far the vessel can travel before it needs to make its return. We send it off, and have the mammets record any data regarding what it finds, particularly other non-sun stars and how far into the journey they were discovered. When the vessel returns, if it found any such stars, we now have at least one destination to more accurately design future vessels around. If no stars were found, we try again with a larger amount of fuel."

Her tail swishes. "That is what I would study, and what I do study as time does allow for it—the ability to explore the sea of stars. I could go on forever about how we would then reach and explore the star—everything we know about Hydaelyn may not apply to other stars, of course, like what we breathe, drink, eat—but spreading my research too thin when I have not even answered the prerequisite questions would see the research take far longer, if it could be completed at all.

"There is one other question I think travel could help me answer though... What created all of this? How did something so vast and complicated, something that takes a nearly unfeasible amount of aether to traverse in its entirety, come to be? What entity has such power, and what intentions might such a being harbor? Is it a being at all? Is it even comprehensible to you or I? I should like to try and understand it, impossible though the task might be. And while I cannot know its intentions, if it is indeed an entity capable of such, I do hypothesize... It must know love. Love is, I believe, the core of creation. To make something is to love—whether that is the process of making it, the product that is made, or the idea of what that product could become. Somewhere in the making, there is love."



hehehehe thanks for indulging her!!! space travel is a very new concept to her, but being a shard of a traveler (azem in her main verse ofc, but even in her non-wol verse (which i default to here) her ancient was a word of azem, and thus wanderlusting by nature) makes it easily one of the most fascinating things to her. in her non-wol verse, she's never traveled space herself, so it's a HUUUUUGE life goal of hers since 6.0!! catgirl wants to be an astronaut LMAO.

Are you looking forward to the prospect of travelling to Tural, where you have no reputation to precede you?

LilBittyMonster wrote:

Are you looking forward to the prospect of travelling to Tural, where you have no reputation to precede you?

"Yes, achingly," L'aiha sighs, and her posture even wavers for a moment; slouched shoulders, leaning more on one leg than the other. She swiftly realizes and corrects it. "There are yet matters to wrap up at the Annex before we depart, but while they keep me blissfully cooped up most of the time, I admit I am itching to set sail."

An ear flickers, as if that itch were very real. She perks up as a thought strikes her. "And my sister is coming with us! She has been receptive to my concerns regarding the whole 'J'nhala Eiha' business, and it is my hope this will be a good opportunity to get to know each other as L'aiha and Lhana.

"Besides this, what Lady Krile has told us about her meeting with Princess Wuk Lamat excites me greatly. Tural remains largely a mystery to those of us hailing from the Great Continents, and I look forward to sitting quietly and learning, as opposed to the amount of teaching that has been expected of me as of late." She laughs a bit, visibly uncomfortable. "Tis hard to believe, sometimes, but I can hardly wait to leave Old Sharlayan behind for a while. Perhaps things will have settled down some when I must return?"

She's hopeful, but there's a lot of doubt behind the smile she puts on her face. A girl can dream!



thank you so much!! even in her wolverse, tural is so unimpacted by the warrior of light that she's still pretty exited to just be Kind Of Some Guy out there, lol! she's always loved learning about other cultures and their arts and ESPECIALLY their sciences. so cool. always opens her brain up a lil more. best business trip ever LMAO