A new Begining.

It was a warm and dry day when Hugus arrived back in Ul´Dah, the slow moving caravan held aloft by air balloons and pulled by a team of chocobos. The city appeared in the horizon just as another mountain in the airy desert with its keep aimed at the sky.

At arrival I noticed a procession with wild beasts, the largest an enormous goobbue being carried at the head or file kept bound by Thaumaturgical skills. The whole city was in festivity mode, people lingered in the streets laughing and drinking with friends and lovers and artists performed their arts dancing and singing along the route.

Suddenly and unexpectedly the magic keeping the gobbue dissipated and to everyone’s surprise the herbkin turned on its keeper throwing the Elezen clear across the street. Everyone started running, screams and sobs filled the air as the monster kept attacking everyone in its path and I included.

Eventually the goobbue was killed but the devastation wrought was clearly noticeable in the people and walls laying in the street and the festive mood was over, people still lingered the streets but where before there had been smiles in many faces, this same were now wet with tears and soot. Where the air had been filled with laughter and songs it now hung heavy with silence only interrupted by sobs and cries.

Eventually I found myself heading to the Quicksand, an inn and the hub for adventurers in Ul’Dah. It felt strange when Momodi didn´t recognise me but after so many years away from home and the few scars I gathered across my journeys I think I understand. I had never spent that much time drinking here, maybe when meeting potential buyers which for some reason couldn´t or wouldn´t meet me at my workshop.

Rumours abounded of the beast that had gotten free in the parade and how the Garlean Empire must have been behind it but there was no proof. Mostly people were trying to get back to their usual lives, leaving behind events that they could or would not understand. I ended up returning home to find it empty and in disrepair, since the last time I left it appeared that my creditors had resourcefully taken my tools and furniture to pay for my debts.

With none of my tools and much of my knowledge forgotten in the futile search for the fabled Crimson Blade I found myself starting my life again. To fund my new life I started taking on jobs for the Adventurer’s Guild, looking for new possible mines and attempting to do armour that would have a few years back be behind my notice and skill.

With the small funds I was able to get from Momodi I bought myself a Weathered Doming Hammer and a Weathered Pickaxe and started to recover my skills at both Armour crafting and Mining with some limited success. Mining wasn’t very hard once you found a suitable vein but the art I had once possessed in making armour was almost completely gone, I struggled with even the simplest materials.

Sometime later while mining I remembered a particular conversation I had overheard in my initial tour of the city and decided to go to Momodi and see if she had heard anything about it. With her help I discovered that what had happened the day of my return might not have been a mistake or even just bad luck, it looked quite possible that some members of the Syndicate might have been involved in purposefully freeing that beast and causing the mayhem that ensued to strengthen the belief of the people that war was upon us.