General

Information

Full Name Novum Solus
Age 34 (Endwalker)
Nameday 9th sun of the 3rd Umbral Moon (6/8)
Height 5'9"
Race Viera (Veena)
Origin Garlemald; effectively raised in Ul'dah
Job Black Mage
Server Diabolos (Crystal)Nova suffers at the mercy of his own mind. All that he witnessed during his time with the imperial military and all that he did at their behest has broken him on a fundamental level. Factor parricide into the equation, and you're left with so much rage, so much hatred, so much self-loathing, so much confusion, so much pain. He is of the belief that he is the true definition of a monster for what he's done and that he is far, far past the point of redemption. There is no saving a creature like him, and while he feels as though death is far too kind a fate, he longs for it, and he longs to take everyone who hurt him down with him. However, at his very core, Nova is unconscious to his own loneliness, and his broken heart aches for friendship, love, and belonging.The face that Nova presents to the world is one that is flippant, aloof, and callous. During battle, he tends to lose himself. The longer a fight rages on, he is robbed of control of his faculties and wherewithal until eventually he is unable to discern friend from foe. Use of his magic causes him to relive all of the nightmares of his days as an imperial soldier — it's as if he's been dropped right back into those memories, and can no longer differentiate past from present. It is because of this that he makes it expressly clear to all who come in contact with him that if one values their life, they should steer clear of his path, or else risk getting burned.

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Backstory

Childhood → Pre-arr

Novum Solus was born the first and only child of his parents Cassius mal Faustus and Aurora nan Quintus — the former a highly decorated commander and field medic, the latter a brilliant and feared magitek engineer. The pair were originally defectors of their village within the Skatay Range, exiled for selling out their kin to the Garlean Empire during its invasion and occupation of Othard in exchange for their own safety. Shunned by their clanmates for their inability to manipulate aether, they found that their ideals aligned with those of the Empire, and pledged servitude to their formidable military, hoping to put their skills to use and assimilate enough to become respected Garlean citizens themselves. Secure this foothold they did, due to their respective affinities, and eventually the couple had the means to move "home" to Garlemald to bear a child that would carry their legacy.As little Novum grew, it became apparent that he had a particular knack for the arcane. Resenting him but sensing an opportunity to grow their status, his parents pushed him to hone his skills and further his studies with the intent to eventually enlist their son in the military to serve the Empire just like them. Novum dutifully accepted his mission, wanting to make his strict and distant parents proud. He turned out to be quite gifted, with magick coming easier to him than much else, and he earned himself the nickname "Nova" from his peers for the way his magick seemed to manifest similarly in both power and visage to that of exploding stars.Around the age of six, Nova's childhood — and subsequent life — was changed forever the day he accidentally stumbled through the aetheryte at Tertium while out playing on his own, as he often did. The aetherial slipstream landed him in Ul'dah, a vibrant and bustling city in stark contrast to the frozen north of Ilsabard. As Nova wandered the crowded streets, he bumped into another young Viera about his age, along with his two parents, a burly Hrothgar and gentle Au Ra. The cheery Rava introduced himself as Keloth Molkoh, and soon afterward he and his parents whisked young Nova back to their bakery to ascertain how a young boy from Garlemald managed to make it all the way to the city in the desert. With a belly full of warm food and baked goods, Nova told them what happened, and soon after he and Keloth became fast friends. After spending the entire day together, meeting the rest of Keloth's four older siblings, and voicing insistent pleadings of wanting to visit again, Mama and Papa Molkoh helped Nova attune to Ul'dah's aetheryte so that he may return whensoever he pleased. And return he did — many times. Every single day, in fact, for three years. And when his parents sent him away to live at a military prep boarding school around the age of eight, Nova arrived in Ul'dah that day with his arms full of his few belongings, asking the Molkohs if he could live with them and simply take the aetheryte back and forth to school each day. Mama and Papa agreed, relieved to be able to remove him from his neglectful home environment, and Nova came to live every kid's dream: moving in with your best friend. Nova and Kel's relationship only grew as the next five years passed, their bond woven deep; the pair became inseparable, and Nova came to regard Ul'dah and the Molkoh Bakery as his true home and the Molkohs as his family. Kel was Nova's sun, his shining light throughout his childhood, and when it came time for Nova to leave for the imperial military per his parents' wishes, their goodbye was an agonizing and tearful one. Clutching Kel's hands in his, Nova promised he'd return in a few years once his time was served, having no concept of just what enrolling in the Empire's military truly entailed.Nova was enlisted at the age of thirteen; incredibly young, but he was coveted for his talents. He underwent two years of preliminary training before being assigned to his own squadron, comprised of three other magickly gifted kids in addition to himself. They were part of a newer, more experimental branch of the imperial military called ARCSPEC, standing for Arcane Specialization. At the start, their missions were innocuous enough: overseeing supply drops, escorting important personnel, cleaning and polishing magitek machines, guard duty. Over time, however, things began to grow more suspicious, until eventually they were presented with dossiers of hit marks. It was then that Nova and his comrades realized the Empire's true intention for their unit and others within ARCSPEC: they were elite assassination regiments. Though they tried to push back and even attempt to leave the military, they were punished, beaten, and threatened with the well-being of their families. Some of them even became subjects of experimentation; this torturous process was how Nova obtained his materia eye, a crude mimicry of the black mages of eld. With nowhere to turn, they swallowed it down and carried on, and Nova began to slowly lose little pieces of himself and his mind along the way.Things eventually came to a head four years after enlistment, at the age of seventeen, when Nova's group received their most gut-churning mission yet: they were to infiltrate a tiny Garlean village on the fringes of imperial territory, which had been marked as a growing "resistance threat". The teens were instructed to "cut out the infestation at its source" — in other words, decimate the town's only school while class was in session, kill off all remaining civilians, and torch the entire town on their way out. A massacre. Nova and his friends were revolted, but carried on out of fear, assured they were doing the right thing "for the future of the Empire". The plan went off without a hitch, until Nova spotted a child escaping the town. The two locked eyes, and in a moment of mercy — and perhaps the last moment of sanity Nova would experience for years — the child was left to go. Nova reported that all life had been eradicated. The mission was deemed a success, and the group returned to the capital.After that, Nova’s mental state began to deteriorate severely. He was tormented with nightmares, screaming himself so hoarse that his throat bled. When awake, he would often lose himself somewhere far away, scenes of everything he’d done replaying ad nauseum in his mind’s eye. He could often be heard muttering frantically, almost as if he was talking to someone invisible. He would scratch his skin raw, tear out chunks of his hair, and burst into spontaneous fits of sobs and wails so relentless that he was unable to be roused for hours. Though his three friends fared better than him, it wasn't by much, for they too were turned in various ways by what they’d done.Eventually, word began to spread across neighboring Eorzea that four imperial individuals were spotted and responsible for the complete slaughter and decimation of a small Garlean village that they had been on good terms with. Nova and his friends were identified; the witness, none other than the escaped child, who had made their way to Gridania seeking refuge. Once this information reached the Empire, Nova and his squad were severely punished, stripped of rank, disbanded, and dishonorably discharged, the death sentence avoided due only to their age. Nova would never see two of his friends alive again; he would come across their bodies after taking up a job collecting corpses on the battlefield of Carteneau many years later. To his dismay, they had fought on the side of the Garlean empire even then. His third friend, Ventus, was mysteriously unaccounted for.Not wanting to incriminate the Molkohs by sheer association with him, after being discharged Nova instead made his way back to his parents, hoping that at least they would take him in. He couldn't have been more wrong, for no sooner did he arrive at their doorstep than he was greeted with yelling, screaming, and denying they knew who he was. But his parents both still served in the Garlean military — it was why they had insisted on enrolling him. To carry on some sort of family legacy, to climb the ranks of Garlean society and stake their claim within it despite being outsiders. They knew what the Empire and the imperial military really were. They knew, and they raised him for it anyway. They knew, and still they sent him away. They knew, and they were pretending they didn’t. They knew, they knew, they knew…..And so the last thread tying Nova to reality finally snapped.Living up to his namesake, in an explosive burst of arcane rage and despair and the culmination of years of agony and trauma, he detonated like a supernova, killing both of his parents and completely destroying their home. He came to consciousness what felt like days or even weeks later, nothing but dust and ash and shriveled unrecognizable remains to mark what had been before.From there, he simply left. For eleven years he wandered the realm — sleeping behind dirty taverns, eating trash to survive, and taking up any shitty job he could find in order to earn coin. Over the course of those years, there surfaced whisperings of a deranged Viera, murderer and Garlean defect, who both laughed and wept as he killed and spoke of nothing but vengeance. Though he had no need for a reputation, people took to calling him "The Hollow Flame", and he resigned himself to accept it. It was who he was, after all. Crazy. Murderer. Killer. A monster.But as Nova drifted across the land, somewhere deep within the furthest reaches of his memory he saw....a desert. He remembered warmth. He remembered peace and laughter and love. He remembered someone. A smile. If only he could find that again....he needed to find that again.And so Nova's addled subconscious led him back to the only home he'd ever known, back to Ul'dah, where his and Kel's journeys would collide....

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Timeline

Arr → Endwalker