Zera Valera

"*A thief with a heart of gold? If I had one, I'd have sold it by now!*"
— Z
**Zera Valera** was a Lalafellin adventurer active during the Seventh Astral Era of Eorzea. A cunning and mischievous mage, they had an obsession with excavating valuable occult artifacts, variously finding work as a professional thief, merchant of curiosities, and mercenary to fund their expensive ventures across the world of Hydaelyn.Though a wanted criminal in most Alliance provinces, their wealth and shrewdness allowed them to maintain active membership in the Adventurer's and Thaumaturge's Guilds in their dwelling of Ul'dah, giving them access to an extensive network of underworld contacts which kept them perpetually one step ahead of their pursuers, both state and private. They generally used the pseudonym "Dantalion" in the place of their true surname and was simply called Z (or "Zee") by their friends.

Born to a humble clan of Lalafell, Zera came of age in the idyllic farming commune of Summerford, colonized several decades prior by the thalassocratic Limsa Lominsa. The Valeras immigrated to Limsa amid ethnic tensions in their native Nym, surviving as peasant laborers for some time before being selected to colonize the mainland as part of the citystate's homesteading program due to the growing crop shortage crisis. The riverside town of Summerford was well-suited to provide for Limsa's burgeoning population due to its amiable landscape and record fertile soil. However, its settling required the forced removal of the indigenous Kobolds, who had previously signed a pact with Limsa guaranteeing mutual respect of historical borders. Shortly after Zera's birth, the Kobolds finally retaliated in force, pillaging many such communes and slowly re-appropriating the stolen farmland. At the height of the renewed war with Limsa Lominsa, a rogue detachment of Kobolds clandestinely introduced a devastating toxin to Summerford's water source, poisoning its river beyond repair and thus rendering the soil useless indefinitely.

The villagers plead for aid from the city but received none, as the national Lominsans feared an armed response would dash any hopes for a prospective peace conference with the natives. Thus, the farmers waged a brief and deadly guerilla war with the Kobolds, with both sides sustaining heavy losses until it became clear that Summerford would be overrun in a matter of weeks. In desperation, the Valeras along with several other families made a controversial pact with the local Pixies, a mischievous but mostly harmless clan of fae who mostly kept to themselves unless provoked, under which circumstances they would bombard their foes with cruel illusions and other magick trickery until the danger passed. The families offered their first-born progeny to the Pixies, who in bygone times were known to abduct young children to steal their dreams and extend their lifetimes by centuries. Though the practice of forceful abduction had ended with the arrival of the Lominsans, it was an open secret that they still occasionally had dealings with mortals offering up their children in exchange for boons in hard times. Zera and a dozen other children were thus handed over to the fae; robbed of all memory of their past families, they were steadily melded into new members of the clan, raised a second time as kin to the Pixies.

As mortals by birth, however, the children could never truly become fae-folk and were thus fated to leave behind the playful bliss of the Pixies and return to the world of man before they came of age. Those who absolutely refused to leave were permitted to stay, but Zera was happy to leave, curious to learn about the world outside as well as the life they once lived; the children who remained were petrified, immortalized as stone statues to forever haunt the magicked gardens. Zera was cast into the Lifestream, their body and consciousness reduced to faint glints of aether drifting across Eorzea before materializing somewhere in the southern desert of Thanalan, miles from civilization with only their peasant rags and a vague memory of being raised by winged creatures with blurry faces which he could not recall.

By chance, Zera's limp body was discovered by a chocobo-drawn merchant caravan in the night, taking them to a nearby spring and then to the gleaming city of Ul'dah, capital of the prosperous sultanate which had controlled Thanalan for centuries. Upon arrival at the city's gates, the merchant Kokojillo left Zera behind as the government had banned immigration indefinitely, confining hundreds to cramped tent cities in the outskirts, plagued with banditry and disease. Koko agreed, however, to keep Zera as his merchant apprentice, teaching them the tools of the trade and bringing them on caravan missions when he had clients outside the city. The arrangement continued for over a year, with Zera honing their skills as a trader as well as a petty thief, using their residual fae magicks to swindle anyone they could get away with, from other refugees to scimitar-wielding guards. One freezing desert night, however, Koko caught Zera attempting to rob his own caravan filled with diamonds and other precious gems, prompting him to hand them over to the city guards. The thief was hauled off to the dungeons in the heart of the city.

Though the conditions of the prison were harsh and brutal, it didn't take long for the small and unassuming rogue to formulate an escape plan, feigning illness to coax a guard into exposing themselves and allowing Zera to beguile him with their thaumaturgy. Disguised as a guard and armed with the keys to the entire underground fortress, Zera instigated a mass riot, breaking free from the dungeons along with an army of disgruntled refugees and petty criminals. The resulting chaos shook the city to its core, with the paramilitary Brass Blades dispatched en masse to restore order, though most of the inmates simply returned home to their apartments or camps without engaging with the inspectors. For their part, Zera laid low in the alleys amid the gangs while the heat died down, offering their services as a tenured thief to small-time street bosses in exchange for a steady flow of heavy gil sacks. Despite starting with the humblest of beginnings, Zera gradually made a name for themself as rumors of an expert thief named Dantalion, capable of breaking into any vault in Ul'dah, began to diffuse throughout the thriving criminal underworld. With a steady flow of untraceable income, Zera purchased membership into the coveted Thaumaturge's Guild, one of the foremost mage institutions in Eorzea. Under the guildmaster's tutelage, the young thief honed their skills in destructive magicks to aid in their ever-more lucrative heists; in time, however, Zera grew tired of petty crime and came to believe that they were destined for much greater things.