Source

The Beasts Must Die (20, 26)The War Against the Machines (11, 20)Critical Engagement: The Shadow of Death's Hand (35, 26)The War Against the MachinesCE: The Shadow of Death's Hand

Description

Race: Hrothgar
Age: 47
Birthplace: Bozja (unverified)

Xeven is a member of Gunnhildr's Blades, and assumed to be a native of Bozja...though none claim to know this for certain. Notoriously reticent, the little he has divulged of his past suggests his road led through many lands─Thavnair to the south, Hingashi to the east, even the imperial capital of Garlemald to the north─in his quest to master the arts of the arcane.

His obsession with magery began with a journey to Eorzea. He had traveled with his father to Gridania, desperate to find a cure to the wasting disease which afflicted his mother. Their efforts, however, were to be in vain─the illness took her life even as they sought the means to her salvation. Knowing only that his mother's ailment began with the Empire's occupation of Bozja, the young Xeven's grief soon grew into a wrathful hunger for vengeance against those he held responsible for her passing.

He considered the magecraft he had witnessed in his travels, and swore to take that knowledge back with him to Bozja. He would make his own study of the world's magicks, and bring those powers to bear against the imperial invaders.

Yet although Xeven succeeded in creating a unique school of spellweaving, he refrained from sharing this expertise with others. He simply could not risk his wisdom─focused as it was on dealing destruction─becoming the catalyst for misery in the hands of an unscrupulous practitioner.

Xeven himself soon became a peerless mage, his presence on the battlefield akin to a vengeful god, inspiring awe and terror in equal measure. He does not fear death. He tempts it─welcomes it, even. Such fatalism stems from a prophecy pronounced upon him by a seer of unknown origin, whom he chanced across in the ruined halls of Dalmasca. Though the words spoken were foreign to his ear, Xeven was nevertheless able to divine their meaning: when the fires of revolution stained the skies of Bozja, his doom would be at hand.

And now that the southern front is consumed by turmoil, he believes it is there that his grave awaits. He will not seek to avoid this fate, but carve a red trail through his foes as a proud blade of Gunnhildr, until such time as his inevitable demise rises up to claim him. He does not fear death.

With every moment that passes, the prophecy edges ever closer to fulfillment.