Outwardly, Leif is a soft-spoken, yet pretentious man, intentional or not. He likes to perform and conduct great songs to all of Gaia, swooning everyone in the process with his great charm. However, this is all outward. Even in his most generous moments, he can only be doing it to bolster his own popularity, and often makes decisions based solely on whether or not it would boost his fame. In fact, many of his qualities are horrendously exaggerated, and deep down, he has flaws he would not dare show to the world. When Saiph came into the picture, however, everything changed.

Origins - Stowaway Bard

The rain kept falling in Burmecia. It never stopped coming, and a young Leif despised that more than anything. He’d always ask his father the same question: was there ever a break in this tapping, intrusive noise? The same answer would always come: no, for the rain would protect the great empire of Burmecia from the tainted blood of their enemies. If the rain would not protect them, then the soldiers would.

That is where Leif Alba would come in.

His father, a regular, everyday Dragoon in the Burmecian army, had all the hopes in Gaia that his boy would grow up to be a better soldier than him. However, the sweet sound of his mother playing the violin for him upon being tucked in brought the rat-tailed fellow immense adoration. Why would anyone want to be a Dragoon when they could enjoy such a beautiful melody? A melody of life… It was all Leif ever wanted to show the world. He no longer wished to plague the world with the sharpest of spears. He wished to be a musician, like his mother.

Leif had always been “mama’s little boy”, but he decided he needed to go behind her back to get better at his craft. Whenever she would leave to fetch food from the markets, young Leif would scramble to steal her violin, and reach for sheet music underneath his bed to practice draining out the sound of rain after a long, unfulfilling day of fiddling with a wooden spear. It was truly what made him happiest.

For a few years, Leif would repeat his routine. Survive learning fighting tactics, wait for his mother to leave, pull out her violin, and try and enjoy the sweet sound of it before his family would return. However, as time ticked on, Leif had turned 16; twas the age that all young Burmecian men were forced into entering the Burmecian army. For one day, he had trained with them.

One day was all it took to realize that it wasn’t the life for Leif. Not after receiving a pair of nasty scars below his eyes after a sparring match with a superior.

That night, he played his violin very slowly, tensely. He had never struggled so much with playing it, the feeling always felt natural to him. He just couldn’t figure out why, when suddenly…

SNAP.

...One of the strings on his mother’s precious violin had snapped in an instant. From just his grueling day of training, his hands had grown far too tense to handle the precious instrument. Everything had grown far too tense around him. With his mother coming home soon, as well as his father, how would he ever come to be able to explain himself?

The answer? He’d never be able to. He knew that deep down.

Come his parents’ arrival home, they went in to see that Leif was not inside, nor was his mother’s precious violin. He had taken the last cargo airship out of Burmecia with haste, but with a little force to it. For what seemed like hours, he remained behind mountains of crates, bound for an unknown future free of Dragoon training…

Where he ended up turned out to be Treno, and for two fateful years, he had lived on the streets with only his broken violin, unsure of how to fix it. One day, an old, shagged man looked down at him as he tried playing at his violin, now missing two strings.

”Gracious… We’d better get those strings of yours fixed up, young man.”

Cecil Pembroke is the name he gave to Leif. He was a man with terribly large cataracts that obscured most of his vision, though through his one monocle that just barely sharpened his vision, he could see the suffering in the young adult’s eyes. As it turned out, Cecil had just invested in a home within Treno, and invited Leif in just to fix his strings up… but he couldn’t just leave the Burmecian outside, and ended up taking care of him for three years, until Leif was 21. It was thanks to Cecil, a formerly triumphant figure in the musical world of Gaia, that the Burmecian was able to turn his life around and become the musician he is today. Though unfortunately, that would not come without trouble.

One night, Leif sat himself down to prepare a new song to present to Cecil, for the old man had tasked him with preparing one for an upcoming holiday performance he had set out to Alexandria to arrange.. He was to produce something in light of Queen Branhe’s late husband, in order to try and lift her spirits. For hours, he eagerly awaited Cecil to return, playing… and playing… and playing…

...Until he learned that he too would be bereft of a loved one.

Knights from the kingdom of Alexandria came to Leif and Cecil’s manor to report of the old man’s death, and the cause of it: hypothermia from the Ice Cavern’s grueling temperatures, bolstered by the winter months. All the men traveling with him had died to the bittercold as well. Leif was bestowed one, precious remainder of his mentor: a golden bracelet, which he had bitterly slipped onto his tail. For days he grieved, unable to touch his violin without the thought of breaking into tears. All he could do was wave about the baton he had used to conduct some local performances under Cecil’s watchful, clouded eye. When suddenly, a dubious light cloaked the manor harshly.

Leif kept his eyes obscured underneath his tensening hands, until the light faded. What awaited him when he peeled his hands back was a tiny green creature with a ruby embedded in its forehead, fluttering its ears in confusion. It couldn't seem to disappear, and just stayed motionless for a while as Leif stared in disbelief.

Carbuncle had appeared before him.

Only after Cecil’s death was Leif able to summon the impossible: an Eidolon.

He still had to find the answer, though... Why?

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• Leif is able to summon Eidolons like his beloved Carbuncle, Carby, thanks to the bracelet on his tail. Much like the stone in Saiph's brooch, the sapphire in Leif's bracelet is special, and is one of the few remnants of the summoners' existence. Some rumor that the soul of a powerful summoner lies within...
• Considering his Treno upbringing, he speaks rather eloquently often, refusing to sound "simpler", as he puts it.
• He sings sea shanty-like songs when he wants to break the silence on his adventures with Saiph, Mori, and the rest of the crew. Saiph wonders why they sing sea shanties on land, but he sings along anyways.
• He is pansexual, but apparently, he's wooed many ladies over time. Whether or not he actually committed to a relationship with any one of them is a mystery.
• Leif used to dislike his birthday quite a lot, considering everything that happened on that fateful day he was enlisted in the Burmecian army. However, the support of his fans bolstered his confidence over that day, and slowly, it had become more of a bittersweet day to him; one he celebrates, but only ever in the public eye. Alone, he sulks about it.