(For those of you who don’t play FF14, don’t worry! Any in-game terms will be explained.)

Lani is a friendly Viera (for those unaware, a humanoid with rabbit features) with a taste for adventure, a love of the sea, and a fondness for animals, as well as an interesting curse.

Lani grew up like any other Viera born in the great forest known as the Twelveswood, though she was always curious about everything. At 13, the age Viera become adults, she was taken out of her village to learn to become one of the Wood-warders, all-male guardians of the forest. (Lani was born male, so she wasn't an exception.) Over the next few years, she began to feel some gender dysphoria, like she didn't belong in her own body. At 16, though, Lani's lucky break came when a caravan belonging to the villainous, technologically advanced empire of Garlemald came through the forest, on its way to the bordering region, the mountainous region of Gyr Abania. The main cargo being brought along was prisoners who'd gone snooping around Garlean bases in Eorzea, the alliance of countries containing the Twelveswood, and was likely heading for Ala Mhigo, a Gyr Abanian city that had been conquered by the Garleans thirteen years prior. Lani and Kaz sprang into action, driving away the Garlean soldiers and rescuing the prisoners. One of them was particularly rich, and thanked Lani by providing her with a box before heading back, telling her that she could use or sell what was inside.

Opening the box, Lani was surprised to discover a multitude of glass bottles of a blue-green liquid - this was fantasia, a special potion that couldn't be made by normal people due to the ingredients being a close-kept secret. Anyone who downed a bottle would wake up the next morning, their body changed exactly the way they want, making it quite expensive. This was perfect for the gender-dysphoric Lani, who immediately chugged a whole bottle. She didn't think about any particular changes she wanted, so her subconscious took over. When she woke up, she took a look in a river's reflection, and was excited - she was still similar to how she was before, with black hair, heterochromic eyes, and ears that, halfway up, flopped back down, but she was now more obviously feminine. She began to experiment with her look outside of what the fantasia had done, but the most obvious was with her hair. She kept it washed, of course, but otherwise, her hair stayed "messy" and fluffy, since she had always thought girls with that sort of hair were cute.

At the age of 18, Lani was contemplating leaving the forest for good when Dalamud, one of the world’s two moons, began to descend from the sky. Eventually, one fateful day, it drew incredibly close, with a huge battle between the Eorzeans and the Garleans happening below, though Lani didn’t see herself as ready to join in. Through the trees, she watched as the red moon slowly approached, then completely shattered, sending fragments everywhere. Taking this as a sign, Lani took what little belongings she had and began traveling west. Leaving behind her forest name, she took on a new name, much as many Viera leaving their homes had done prior to her - “Lani” from a far-off realm’s word for “sky.”

After arriving at a port on the western edge of the continent, Lani took a ship to the scholarly island nation of Sharlayan and applied to join the Studium, their foremost place of research, studying zoology. To earn her keep, she also became a gleaner, someone who travels the world procuring rare and endangered specimens of plants and animals, as well as rare and unique books and artifacts for preservation and study. She was tasked with learning how creatures live, act, think, and move, as well as how to survive in the wild, so she could safely capture these creatures without harming them. (She was very busy in the years after the fall of Dalamud, an event which came to be known as an Umbral Calamity. Coerthas, a region to the north of the Twelveswood, had suddenly shifted from a lush forest to a frozen wasteland, and so a lot of gleaners were tasked with rescuing creatures that weren't used to it.) On her off time from studies and work, a research organization called the Aspen Initiative (an alternate version of the Aspen Institute from my Anomaly Earth canon) paid for her room and board. The Initiative is led by a Miqo'te couple, A'taryn Tia and his wife Abha Hutchinson, as well as their children, A'lysa Taryn (who also goes by a second name, Alyssa Hutchinson, due to her mother being of a different clan than her father), A'alyx Tia and Aerie Hutchinson, all of whom Lani came to know fairly well.

Five years after the Calamity, Lani heard about the Sons of Saint Coinach, a Sharlayan research group focused on investigating the ancient Allagan Empire, an ancient civilization with more technological advancements than the Garleans, and protecting its secrets from falling into the wrong hands. Alyssa, who was part of the Students of Baldesion, a research organization specializing in the paranormal, told her about a big expedition the Sons and the Students were planning as a joint effort. Lani decided to temporarily join out of curiosity - she'd known about the Allagans for a while, and had an interest in them. She was surprised to learn that the Warrior of Light, the FF14 protagonist who'd made a name for themself, was leading the expedition, which would focus on the mysterious Crystal Tower that had risen from the ground in the Umbral Calamity's aftermath. Expecting a fight, she brought along a pair of knives that she typically used while out in the field, which were quite useful in combating the defenses in the labyrinth outside the tower. She ended up staying for the whole expedition - after exploring the tower itself and taking a trip to an alternate plane of reality called the void in the process, she developed a taste for adventure.

After the Crystal Tower expedition, she decided to leave her job and become a freelance adventurer for hire, and a year later, she still continues in this line of work, having made contributions to a few different adventures including the Omega experiments. While she’s still sometimes called to help as a temporary gleaner, including a particularly large assignment during the events of FF14 Endwalker, she’s no longer tied to any particular location. She has a house near the maritime city-state of Limsa Lominsa, upset over the moodiness of the Twelveswood’s mysterious masters, the Elementals, and being highly against the incredibly unbalanced economy of Ul’dah, the desert nation where the rich rule the state while the poor are dragged through the mud.

When not adventuring, Lani likes to relax in her home, especially in her library room downstairs. Packed with bookshelves covering all but one wall, there's enough reading material to last a lifetime there. A visit with her might typically involve relaxing downstairs with a good book and a nice, tall glass of juice. (She doesn't like alcohol, after a few glasses of Bacchus wine at a party honoring the Warrior of Light led to a hangover the next morning. She's... kind of a lightweight.) Sometimes she might also experiment with her tomestone, an Allagan device similar to a smartphone, or she might hang out with one of her friends or her eternally bonded, a Miqo'te named Xeoda.

(Note about non-FF14 settings: Lani can travel between universes with the Aspen Initiative's help. She has some tech from Anomaly Earth's Aspen Institute, allowing her to use her tomestone to communicate with people in other universes. She knows about Final Fantasy 14, and occasionally plays it, as a character named Tilda Horowitz.)

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Thanks to nerdyreindeer on Twitter, I finally have artwork for my FF14 character that I can post on this account! I came up with Lani while messing around with mods, and I liked the idea of this character so much I decided to keep her around.

(For those from my NSFW account, by the way, careful - I don't think the artist wants too many NSFW accounts interacting with them.)

Viera, Final Fantasy XIV, and related trademarks are copyrighted by Square Enix Games
Lani is owned by DomanDragon
Art by Nerdyreindeer