Erston Greatman wielding a greatsword
Erston closeup

Race Highlander
Gender Male
Hair Black, streaked with grey
Eyes Red
Height 6'3" (75 ilms)
Weight 225 pz
Age 38 years
Has the Echo No
Occupation Smith, Occasional Wanderer
Primary Job Dark Knight (soul crystal awakened)
Secondary Job Sage Initiate (formerly), Blacksmith, Armorsmith, Goldsmith
Homeland Old Sharlayan
Residence Melchior's Forge (Shirogane)

Keepsakes

⚒️ Melchior’s Hammer
Once wielded by the 86th’s smith and quartermaster. Given to Erston in trust before Melchior’s passing, it remains both tool and memorial.

🗡️ Tsukiyo no Lamina
His greatsword, named in a fusion of Doman and Garlean tongues as the “Blade of the Moonlit Night.” Its black, jagged steel catches moonlight in silver shards along its carved edges, a weapon that has carried him through exile, resolve, and the long road back to himself.

🚩 Shard of the Banner
A tattered scrap from the 86th’s standard, torn during their desperate escape. He carries it as proof that the detachment lived — and bled — together.

🪨 The Dark Knight’s Soul Crystal
Safeguarded for years by Melchior after a fallen comrade of the 86th, it resonated with Erston during the Final Days, awakening fully when he stood at the edge of despair.

🌀 Nouliths
A relic of his first path as a Sage. Though rarely used, he keeps them polished — a reminder of what might have been, and the mentor who first set him on that course.

Description

Erston stands tall and broad-shouldered, his 75-ilm frame carrying the sturdy bulk typical of Highlanders. Scars mark him as one shaped by battles, often mistaken for a sellsword or pirate at first glance. Streaks of grey thread his black hair, a quiet reminder of the years behind him. Simple glasses rest upon his face, softening the impression of a warrior into something more measured.

Disposition

Once eager and idealistic, Erston’s years as a soldier ground away much of his naïve outlook, leaving behind a tempered resolve shadowed by darkness. Though not quick to act rashly, he does not hesitate when action is required, and will end a conflict decisively if need be.Socially, he is personable and respectful, often friendly in first impressions. Yet long experience has taught him how easily courtesy is mistaken for weakness, and so he keeps most at arm’s length. To those who earn his trust, however, he is unshakably loyal — willing to fight to the very depths of the hells to protect them.

Themes

The Scholar’s Shadow
Once guided by a Sage mentor in Sharlayan, Erston still carries the echo of a life steeped in study and healing. Though he never truly fit the mold of academia, this alternate path haunts him as a road forever closed.

The Hardened Survivor
Decades as a Garlean conscript and officer of the 86th forged him in brutality. The scars on his body and spirit alike tell a story of survival, loss, and endurance against impossible odds.

The Dark Knight’s Burden
The greatsword is both his weapon and his confession. Every strike channels the weight of rage and grief, yet also shields those who cannot stand for themselves. The blade mirrors the conflict in his heart.

The Quiet Forge
Smithing began as survival, but in time it became something more: a salve against memory. At the anvil, Erston finds purpose where words and prayers fail him.

The Guarded Companion
Personable yet distant, he offers respect easily but trust rarely. Those few he allows close, he shields with unyielding loyalty — even if it means walking once more into darkness.

Act I — The Scholar’s PathErston Greatman was born in Sharlayan, a boy too restless for cloisters and too eager for action to fit neatly into scholarly expectations. Even so, his Sage mentor — a woman of patience and piercing insight — recognized promise where others saw only distraction. She taught him the art of the nouliths, not as a mere discipline of spellcraft but as a path of responsibility: to heal, to defend, and to act when others would only study.For Erston, the nouliths represented a future he could scarcely name — a chance to forge meaning beyond books and idle words. He was still young, and the road ahead seemed boundless.

Act II — ConscriptionThat road ended abruptly when Garlean forces advanced. Erston, traveling abroad with his mentor, was seized during a campaign of brutal conscription. His mentor was slain in the chaos, leaving him unmoored, a child cast into the jaws of war.The Garleans did not care that he was Sharlayan, nor that his training lay with the nouliths. To them, he was fodder — a body to be thrown into battle. Stripped of choice, Erston learned the soldier’s trade not from discipline but from desperation, surviving each day in a war that ground countless others to dust.

Act III — The 86thSurvival carried him into the 86th Special Detachment, a unit comprised of conscripts, prisoners, and those the Garlean war machine considered expendable. It was there he met Beatrix Dalmascus, commander of the 86th, and Melchior, the detachment’s smith and quartermaster.From Melchior, Erston learned rudimentary gear care — sharpening blades, setting mail, repairing harnesses. At the time, it was no therapy, merely another necessity of survival. Yet it was the first thread of a craft that would one day mean more.The 86th was no place for idealists. Cruelty and attrition ruled. But it was here Erston’s path changed: under Melchior’s tutelage, he first took up the greatsword, beginning the harsh lessons of the Dark Knight. The weight of the blade matched the weight in his heart.

Act IV — Chains of CommandAmong the horrors of war, the Schwarzwald mercenaries stood apart. They fought for Garlemald not out of duty but out of hunger for slaughter. It was within the ranks of the 86th that Erston first crossed paths with the Black-Armored Knight, a figure from their number whose presence left a shadow that would haunt him long after.Even so, Erston endured. His resilience and refusal to break earned the respect of comrades who had seen too many fall. In time, he became Beatrix's trusted executive officer, shouldering the impossible burden of keeping the 86th alive.

Act V — EscapeThe breaking point came when Erston found Beatrix, captured and tortured by Siderus, a Garlean officer of notorious cruelty. Refusing to abandon her, he freed her from captivity and rallied what remained of the 86th.Their desperate retreat was met with slaughter. The Schwarzwald fell upon them, cutting down many before freedom could be won. Only a fraction of the 86th escaped — Erston, Melchior, and a handful of others — scarred, broken, but alive.For Erston, escape was not liberation. It was another exile, this time back to the city of his birth.

Act VI — The Bitter HomecomingWhen at last Erston returned to Sharlayan, he sought to reclaim the path he had abandoned — the way of the Sage. Yet the Forum and his peers did not welcome him. Whispers followed him through the halls; disdain clung to him like a second skin. Some saw him as tainted by war, others as a traitor who had borne arms when Sharlayan chose neutrality.It was a homecoming colder than exile. Like many soldiers in the wake of war, Erston found himself alien among his own people, his sacrifices dismissed, his scars invisible to those who had never left their walls. The bitterness of it drove him eastward, away from the marble towers of his youth.And then the skies burned. The Final Days swept across the world, and Erston, wandering and untethered, faced the same calamity as all others: the end of hope itself.

Act VII — The Edge of DespairIn those dark days, despair clawed deep. The weight of years — Garlemald, the 86th, Sharlayan’s rejection — finally broke through the armor around Erston’s heart. As the Final Days tore the world apart, he came perilously close to succumbing to the same doom as countless others, his ether fraying, his will collapsing, his form threatening to twist into a Blasphemy.But a voice cut through the chaos.Melchior.Older now, and worn by captivity and hardship, yet steady as ever. He dragged Erston back from the brink with both hands and a voice honed by years of surviving what should have killed him.And in that moment — at the very edge of oblivion — something stirred.From Melchior’s coat, a soul crystal shimmered: the Dark Knight’s stone, one he had safeguarded since the fall of a comrade in the 86th. He had never pressed it upon Erston. He had simply kept it, waiting for the soul it belonged to.Now, it resonated.The crystal recognized Erston not from rage, but from resolve — the refusal to surrender, the will to stand against despair.
Melchior tempered him thereafter, teaching him the Dark Knight’s true discipline: to wield the blade not as an instrument of vengeance, but as a bulwark against the darkness within. And in the ringing of steel and the grind of the Forge, Erston found the first fragile rhythm of healing.

Act VIII — The Passing of the TorchMelchior grew old, his hands stiffening, his breath shortening. In time, he passed away not in battle, but quietly, at peace. For Erston, it was a moment of both sorrow and revelation. That a man who had borne so much blood and pain could depart the world gently was a truth as heavy as any blade.Left with his memories, his forge, and his scars, Erston Greatman stands now at a crossroads. He remains a Dark Knight by habit, a smith by solace, and a veteran without a war. Peace is both a gift and a burden, and though he does not yet know the shape of his future, he carries the weight of his past — and the Forge Melchior left in his care — with every strike of the hammer and every swing of the blade.

Act IX — Toward TuralWord of discovery and upheaval to the west reached even Erston’s quiet forge. Tural — a land of unbroken horizons and new dangers — called to him not as a scholar nor as a soldier, but as a man searching for meaning beyond scars. The hope of purpose. To walk lands untouched by Garlemald’s yoke, to see cultures not drowned in Sharlayan’s debates — it was a promise of something different.He carried no illusions of peace. The shadows of war had followed him across continents, and he expected no less in Tural. But where once he had fought because there was no choice, now he journeys because he chooses. Each step westward is both escape and pilgrimage — a chance to decide whether Erston Greatman is more than the sum of his wars.

Erston's Timeline

1542, Year of the Sixth Astral Era – Birth in Old Sharlayan

  • Born during the waning years of Garlemald’s height of expansion.

  • Taken under the tutelage of a female Sage mentor, who saw promise in his bold, action-driven instincts.

1555, Year of the Sixth Astral Era – Conscripted by Garleans

  • While abroad with his mentor, both are caught by Garlean forces during conscription sweeps.

  • His mentor is killed; Erston is forced into youth soldiery.

1555–1558, Sixth Astral Era (Ages 13–16) – Garlean Grunt Years

  • Serves in low-level fodder units, forced into campaigns across Ilsabard.

  • Survives enough battles to draw the eye of the 86th Special Detachment.

1559, Sixth Astral Era (Age 17) – Assigned to the 86th Special Detachment

  • Joins Beatrix Dalmascus’ 86th, alongside conscripts, prisoners, and rejects.

  • Meets Melchior, smith and quartermaster.

  • Learns gear care, takes up the greatsword, begins the Dark Knight path.

  • Encounters the Schwarzwald mercenaries and the Black-Armored Knight.

1559–1579, Sixth Astral Era (Ages 17–37) – Years in the 86th

  • Earns respect of comrades.

  • Rises to become executive officer under Beatrix.

1572, Seventh Umbral Era (Age 27) – The Calamity

  • The fall of Dalamud and Bahamut reshapes the world.

  • Erston remains entangled in Garlean conflicts, the chaos echoing even into the 86th.

1579, Seventh Astral Era (Age 37) – Escape from Garlemald

  • Discovers Beatrix imprisoned and tortured by Siderus, a Garlean officer.

  • Rescues her, rallies the battered 86th — including Melchior — and leads a desperate escape as Legatus Noah van Gabranth’s IVth Legion campaigns drive the Empire into escalating brutality.

  • The Schwarzwald ambush them during the retreat; most of the 86th are cut down.

  • A small remnant survives and scatters. Erston flees west.

1579, Seventh Astral Era (Age 37) – Return to Sharlayan

  • Returns home, but treated as a collaborator and outcast.

  • Attempts Sage study again but faces scorn and whispers.

  • Leaves Sharlayan embittered, drifting east.

1579, Seventh Astral Era (Age 37) – The Final Days

  • As the skies burn and the Final Days sweep across the world, Erston nearly succumbs to despair, teetering on the edge of becoming a Blasphemy.

  • He is saved by Melchior, who finds him once more and pulls him back from the brink.

  • In the moment between despair and salvation, the Dark Knight’s soul crystal Melchior had safeguarded for decades resonates with Erston, awakening fully and marking the true beginning of his path as a Dark Knight.

  • Melchior brings Erston to his home-forge in Shirogane and Erston begins to embrace smithing as a form of therapy under Melchior’s guidance.

1579–1580, Seventh Astral Era (Ages 37–38) – The Quiet Forge

  • Lives in relative peace in Shirogane, balancing the weight of war with the solace of craft beneath Melchior’s guidance.

  • Melchior’s long-carried injuries and years of hardship finally catch up with him; he dies peacefully in the Forge-house, the first gentle passing Erston has ever witnessed.

1580, Seventh Astral Era (Age 38) – Journey to Tural

  • He heads for Tural, seeking purpose in the new frontiers of the New World, carrying his greatsword, his nouliths, the legacy of the Forge, and the scars of wars past.

  • For the first time, Erston looks forward not with dread, but with the faintest spark of possibility.

Erston closeup

The 86th's Ghosts
A few veterans recall the ill-fated 86th — a detachment of conscripts who should never have survived as long as they did. Stories linger of Beatrix Dalmascus and the Highlander who stood beside her until the end.

Sharlayan’s Outcast
Rumor in Old Sharlayan speaks of a man who left as a child of the Forum’s future and returned as a soldier of Garlemald. Whether traitor, victim, or something between depends on who tells the story.

Echoes of the Final Days
He does not speak of it, but some who were in Thavnair during the Final Days swear they saw a man like him on the edge of breaking — only to walk away from the fire with a darkened crystal and a steadier blade.

The Smith’s Hand
Travelers and adventurers alike know of Melchior's Forge in Shirogane — now run by Erston. He repairs arms and armor with a meticulous calm that belies the brutality he survived. Anyone who knew Melchior may recognize some of the old man’s habits in him.

The Oath to the Fallen
He carries a ragged scrap of the 86th’s banner in his belt pouch. He never speaks of why — but those who recognize the colors tend to fall silent.

Out-of-Character

Hi, I'm Erston! Or John. I'm good for either. I'm a Web Developer by day, FFXIV thing-doer by night. I have many interests, but I do especially love storytelling. That being the case, it should be no surprise that I've been into TTRPG's for ages now from D&D to Pathfinder to White Wolf/Onyx Publishing to many more obscure systems like Mekton or Heavy Gear.