have you heard about the Hit MMORPG FINAL FANTASY XIV

[voyagerchef]

HELLO FRIENDS WOULD YOU LIKE TO HAVE A FF14 MINGLE, LET'S DO THAT. Bring your wols and such and go ham. Maybe everyone is crammed into the Waking Sands or something I don't know I'm not your mom/dad/parent.

Or maybe you want to AU other characters into FF14? I'm also not your momdad, you can do that too.
Be mindful of spoilers! Just chuck a note in your subject line if you think it's getting into spoilers territory so other people can be all I Do Not See It.

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[voyagerchef]

[ here is mr tall and slightly bemused ]

[diviirtissement]

[I'm a bunny.]

[sharpcaster]

Ohh, no. Oh, it's better than Mum's. If you ever meet her don't tell her I said that.

[Do you ever eat a slice of warm bread and literally cry? Osha doesn't always, but she's doing it for Ankh right now, while for some mysterious reason a lot of the other Scions are avoiding the kitchen area.]

I never thought I'd meet a foreigner who could make a decent cricket bread...

[voyagerchef]

Ah, I wouldn't! [ Ankh's reaction is a honest one. Perish the thought. ] Telling that kind of thing to a mother wouldn't go well. [ He grins sheepishly. ] And I think I'd get in trouble too.

[ The kitchen area isn't exactly a disaster zone, mostly because Ankh is meticulous about cleaning up after himself, but it does contain more chopped and ground crickets than most people are probably used to seeing.

Ankh himself has already tested one slice. ]

If you catch them at different times, they taste different. Mixing them together in a flour makes it less gritty...I think. [ Clearly more testing is going to be needed.

Much to the other Scions' horror, most likely. They'll probably get used to it. ]

[diviirtissement]

[Hello sir you're from warm climates you need a sweater, right? It gets cold here in Mor Dhona.

So your FC leader brought you a sweater. And a scarf. And mittens. And horn warmers. And--

Do you ever get the sense Rosalyn needs other hobbies, Ankh?]

[catti]

[Your local gremlin catdude.]

[voyagerchef]

[ She does seem kind of overeager to pile him with clothing... ]

Ah. Something wrong? [ He tilts his head, peering curiously up at Rosalyn from where he's sitting. ]

[diviirtissement]

[She pauses in the midst of passing him another pair of socks. Look, sometimes you get stressed and you knit an entire wardrobe's worth of clothing? This is a perfectly healthy coping mechanism???]

...I had thought you might be cold. The winters here are a fair bit more frigid than on the Steppes...

[voyagerchef]

I have my own clothing, and my own cloth! [ His voice is cheerful. ] Don't worry, don't worry. I can fend for myself. [ It's a point of pride for him as a Dazkar, learning to adapt his old techniques to new climates. It means he was taught well.

He runs his fingers over the seams of the clothing he's been given, his attention given entirely on the details of its make. It's not the same kind of stitching he's used to, but he wonders if it was something she learned from the home she came from, or it was learned later. ]

[diviirtissement]

[Well, she is a master weaver in her own right, but there's a story to be told here, to be certain. Rosalyn's memories are jumbled, and so is her influence--doman here, from the Vii's forest here, the patterning mimicking Ronkan designs as well as some more contemporary Limsan fashion. Blacks, reds, golds and greens are prominent throughout all of it, and she's chosen heavy coerthan wool that's soft, warm, and damn near indestructible, befitting something meant for heavy use.

That she produced any coherent aesthetic from this, in her anxiety-induced haze, is frankly a miracle directly from the Crystal. It's very, uh, colorful.]

Oh! I don't mean to imply you couldn't...but I had the time and materials, I saw no reason not to share.

[voyagerchef]

They're good gifts. Thank you. [ He gives her an honest grin. ]

[ His own designs, compared to hers, are intricate in a more traditional way, unified within the patterns he's lived his whole life with. He decorates his gifts and clothing alike with bright colours and stylized patterns of plants and stars, the stubbornly curled horns of rams and dzo, the flying arrows of archers. To them he adds little touches of his own journey; dark spirals between the stars, white shards of ice, crimson fire, and other things besides, all laid out on canvases of traditional Dazkar brown.

The kaleidoscope he sees before him is more telling of the creator than anything else; it fascinates him. More than once he's wondered at the course of Rosalyn's wandering before they met. ]

This is very mixed. You must have had a long journey.

[diviirtissement]

Long, and winding...the Viis are long-lived, if aught else.

[She does smile, though. She was never a Xaela, but she took the time to learn the colors, another lifetime ago (and there's a phrase that's haunting her dreams now, isn't it?), and that warm brown seems friendly, for all she hasn't much experience with the Dazkar themselves.

Still, Ankh is such an endlessly warm person, she can't imagine the clan is too unwelcoming to have raised such a man.]

Sometimes it's hard to keep all of it straight.

[sharpcaster]

Nah, Ankh, I don't see you gettin' in trouble. Probably she'd just try to adopt you, maybe see if there's some kinda trade-in program.

[When it's time to finish cleaning up Osha might, somewhat uncharacteristically, join in. She's not entirely used to favors being non-transactional, and anyway part of the baking nostalgia experience is having to help wash everything after.]

And sure, sure, you definitely got a nice smooth texture on this. Not that the crunch on a whole one ain't good too, 'specially with a little cinnamon and honey on.

[voyagerchef]

[ He laughs a little, at that. ] I don't think I could replace you, so I hope not! I would have a lot to live up to. [ Osha is far more skilled at certain aspects where he is not, for a start. They're opposites in temperament, but he's fond of her all the more for that. ]

Ah, I haven't heard of coating them with cinnamon and honey before! [ He does still have some crickets... ] That sounds good. Maybe the bread could do with some sweetening, too... [ Maybe a cricket sweetbread? There's still a bit of graininess to the bread's texture; adding sugars might help it go down more easily. ]

In Kugane, they boil locusts in soy sauce and sugar and sell them as snacks. If you go there, you should try them! [ He's only had them once, while he was waiting for a ship to take him to Limsa, but he found them easy to eat. A little too salty for his liking, though. ]

[forgesahead]

[someone has taken over the kitchen to bake, and the miqo'te responsible is currently aggressively kneading the bread dough she'd whipped up against the counter, clearly working out some tension with an otherwise scrunched up expression. occasionally she's grumbling to herself, tail flicking back and forth.]

[voyagerchef]

[ It's not odd to see Aster in what Ankhbayar would call 'her usual mood'. What is odd is that she's using the kitchen to do so, and that makes him curious.

He doesn't know much about Aster; what she likes, what she dislikes. He knows only that she's a friend of Ganzor's, which endears him already (more than he already is with most people he meets), but she doesn't seem to be the social type. ]

Oh! Aster! [ He says, with his usual sunny smile. ] What are you baking?

[forgesahead]

Ankhbayar.

[She offers by way of greeting, with a slight inclination of her head as she looks up from her furious handiwork. Aster lets out a soft huff through her nostrils and brushes her hands against her apron to clean them vaguely of excess flour as she turns to face him proper; her cheek is dusted with a smear of it, though she hasn't seemed to notice. With a bit of a shrug at his question, she glances down at her dough, tail still flicking back and forth every once in a while to betray the remaining irritations she was feeling, despite the calm voice.]

Nothing unusual. Just bread. Did you need the kitchen?

[He was the one usually calling the shots in here, after all, or so she had come to notice.]

[forgesahead]

[pls help me voicetest aster! since she's a bit of a grump which im not super used to, just lmk if you ever need me to rework a tag to be more respondable! will think up a prompt for us if needed, or you can, the choice is yours.]

[voyagerchef]

Ah! Not now. Don't worry. [ (Even with the Echo, the thing that facilitates communication between them, he insists on trying to speak Eorzean when he can, to practice. It makes his sentences a little clipped and clumsy, occasionally; the manner of someone trying to wrap their head around different sounds from the ones they've used all their life.)

He has plans for using the kitchen later, but he doesn't need to sit in the kitchen to form them. He thinks better when he's in the fresh air.

Sometimes that means he's thinking about recipes when he's being taught how to use an axe, but as long as he uses his axe properly, it's probably fine. ]

What kind? [ He's used to flatbread, things that are easy to make and store and travel with. Fluffier, lighter bread is something he only learned to make during his training in Limsa. ] Travel bread, or soft bread?

[ He shuffles over to peer at the dough Aster is pummeling, keeping a polite distance. ]

[forgesahead]

A softer bread, light and fluffy with not as hard a crust. Something good for a loaf tin.

[Growing up in the wilderness, even with the Sharlayan colonies nearby, she didn't really have a proper oven for this sort of bread in her youth, so it was something she'd picked up in her travels, as well. Something to make in an actual kitchen setting, when you have all the time in the world to let it rise and hungry bellies weren't growling at you to get it all done and over with so they could eat.

She almost tenses up when Ankh starts to approach, but her shoulders relax when he keeps his distance, not quite in the mood at the moment for close company. Begrudgingly though, she'd admit that having someone to idly chat with wasn't a terrible burden to bear right now, so she wasn't trying to dismiss him away or anything of the sort. Just... being a little standoffish, is all.]

Nothing too unusual. Yeast, flour, salt, water.

[voyagerchef]

Ah, then the ingredients are the same. [ He smiles at the point of commonality, but since he usually smiles, it just makes it bigger. ]

Do you decorate it? At home, we decorate ours before we bake them. Many, many patterns! [ If he'd had dough in front of him, he might demonstrate, but he keeps his hands tucked into his coat so he's not tempted. Nobody appreciates their dough being repurposed without permission, after all. ] For special occasions, though, or when we go to Reunion. Mostly we fry it in oil. It's faster.

But baking here is very different! I was surprised. [ If Aster doesn't want to talk, that's fine with him; Ankhbayar can talk more than enough, apparently...specifically about bread. ] Life moves much more slowly here, in some ways.