Stories from Rhen's Life!!
Hi There! This part of the site is where you'll find stories on Rhen! From his history to random adventures he has been a part of! Please know that this does not mean you know the stories or his past IC unless discussed otherwise with me!
History of Rhen
History is marked as spoiler because of trigger warns such as physical/psychological abuse and child death.
Rhen was found as a baby in the middle of the desert, in the remains of a burned-out village. No one knew where the fire had started, or why the village had been destroyed. The only survivor was a crying infant, his small body wrapped in a half-burned blanket, the edges charred and blackened. A Highlander pugilist, passing through on his way to the next brawl or bottle, found the child and took him in.For five years, Rhen lived with this man, though "lived" might be too generous a word. The pugilist was a cruel, drunken soul who saw the young Miqo'te boy as little more than a stray pet, worth feeding only if he could fight back when struck. Those years were filled with harsh lessons, the man teaching Rhen basic stances and how to form a proper fist, not out of love or care, but because the boy showed promise and could hit back hard enough to be entertaining.When the pugilist's addiction grew worse, and gil became scarce, Rhen was sold. Not to a family, nor to a school, but to an "educational facility" that promised to turn promising children into something useful. The transaction was quick, and without ceremony. A sack of gil was exchanged, and Rhen was loaded onto a cart. The pugilist never looked back.The facility was no school. It was a front for a slave-trading operation, dealing in child soldiers. The children taken there were not taught reading or writing; they were trained to kill. To obey. To endure.Rhen's promise with hand-to-hand combat made him stand out. He wasn’t particularly fast at first, nor the strongest, but he was relentless. When others fell from exhaustion, Rhen kept moving. When others hesitated, he struck without mercy. The instructors noticed, and he was pushed harder. Starved for days to "teach discipline." Beaten bloody for the slightest failure. Yet, no matter how many times he was knocked down, he got back up.The headmistress of this hell was a ruthless Elezen woman known only as Madame Vestra. She ran the facility like a queen presiding over her twisted kingdom. No one knew her origins, and the rumors surrounding her were a mixture of horror and awe—some said she had once been nobility, disowned and exiled, others claimed she had built her fortune on trafficking and bloodshed. Whatever the truth, Vestra's wealth was immeasurable, her influence extending well beyond the walls of the orphanage.
She was cold, calculating, and above all, possessive. To her, the children were not people—they were assets. Property. Tools to be sharpened and maintained, never wasted. She despised waste.Rhen's tenacity caught her eye, and at the age of ten, he was chosen to become one of her elite guards—one of six children who would serve as her personal protectors.
It was a twisted form of honor. The six were given better food, warmer beds, and even names (most of the other children were called by numbers). But the price was steep: the training intensified, the punishments for failure became harsher, and their lives became a constant cycle of blood and obedience.The orphanage had many enemies—rival organizations, those who had lost children to its operations, and mercenaries hired to take Vestra's head. None ever succeeded. The six guards, children trained to kill with precision and without hesitation, were always there, unseen shadows that ended threats before they could become problems.Rhen, the youngest of the six, became the deadliest. While others died in ambushes or succumbed to wounds, Rhen always survived. He fought with his fists, refusing to use blades or guns, and earned a reputation as a brutal, efficient killer who could bring down grown men twice his size.But he wasn’t alone. Among the six, two stood out as Rhen’s closest friends—Talia, a sharp-witted Elezen girl with a talent for strategy, and Kain, a Roegadyn boy who fought with reckless strength and an unwavering loyalty. Both were older, sixteen at the time of their deaths. The three of them formed a bond, rare in that cruel place, protecting each other when they could, and offering quiet comfort when they couldn’t.That bond was tested on what should have been a routine mission—an ambush on a caravan suspected of carrying information that could expose Vestra’s operation. Rhen was fourteen. Something went wrong. The intelligence was false, the enemy prepared. The ambush turned into a massacre. Rhen, Talia, and Kain fought desperately, but they were overwhelmed.Rhen survived. He always survived. But Talia and Kain did not.
He remembered Kain’s final roar as he shielded Rhen from a killing blow, the light fading from Talia’s clever eyes as she bled out beside him. The failure haunted him, a weight he could never shed. Madame Vestra, cold as ever, dismissed their deaths as the cost of doing business, offering no comfort, only a demand that Rhen learn from the mistake.The years passed in a grim haze of violence and survival. Rhen learned to suppress his emotions, to fight with cold efficiency, and to accept that his life was not his own. Yet, somewhere deep inside, a spark of defiance remained. He saw friends die, saw children dragged away and never return, and knew that if he stayed, he too would be ground into nothing.One night, during a rare lapse in the orphanage's security, Rhen made his escape. He was sixteen. The journey through the desert nearly killed him, but he pressed on, driven by the simple, desperate desire to be free.Now, years later, Rhen roams Eorzea, a scarred and silent wanderer. The punching gloves he wears are not just a reminder of his training, but a treasured gift from Talia and Kain—something they gave him on his last birthday before the failed mission. A symbol of their bond, and of his choice to fight on his own terms. The memories of the orphanage still haunt him, but each step forward is a victory, a quiet act of rebellion against the past that tried to break him.
