Sygna

BACKSTORY

Part of mass human experimentation in Garlemald— seeing how much people can survive with the aid of magitek.

Sygna was abducted from his home in Eorzea and had his memory wiped, he has no recollection of his life before arriving at the facility. He does not know his real name. They were not given names at the facility, rather just experiment numbers, treated as inhuman.

Sygna was experiment #545. He was subject to one of the most inhumane experiments at the facility— the beheading experiments. The empire had wishes of figuring out how to reattach severed heads to their bodies and have the subject survive. Plenty of previous subjects had died from this experiment, Sygna was the first to survive. Being put under the guillotine, then having a magitek brain attached to his severed brain stem to keep his heart pumping blood. Then, his severed head was reattached using new magitek technology developed solely for such a purpose.

Of course, being the first to survive such a procedure... it wasn't without it's complications. Sygna's brain wasn't reattached quite properly, leaving him with constant seizures, the inability to speak, and paralysis of his left arm. Due to these complications, the experiments continued in finding remedies for these problems. An incision was cut into his face behind his left eye to reconfigure parts of his brain. This surgery failed to fix anything and he was left with a large scar on the left side of his face and a broken iris causing blindness. Another surgery was attempted to fix his paralysis, by injecting specialized aether into his arm. However this quickly turned south as his arm grew intoxicated with aether and began to turn aetherically scarred. This only added to his suffering, and did not revert the paralysis.

A few days after his failed eye surgery, there was a breach in the facility from one of the subjects, who had organized an escape for everyone who had been enslaved to the experiments. Barely able to operate his own body properly, Sygna managed to fall into the revolting crowd of subjects. However, the masses were not so lucky. Plenty of others had been restrained and killed, very few had made it very far to the exit. For the sake of his own life, Sygna faked a seizure to be taken by a lab tech, only to grab a scalpel off a table and stab them in the chest before sprinting off while the chaos was still occurring. Managing to make it to the exit— his freedom— Sygna ran into the winter wasteland of the edges of Garlemald where the facility was located, far away from any civilization. Following another escapee outside, he watched as said man in front of him was shot and killed by Garlean soldiers outside.

Surrounded by soldiers, Sygna was sure his own death was to arrive in mere moments. Sure enough, the sound of a shot firing through the air and the stinging pain of a bullet ripping through skin arrived not a second later. Yet, consciousness still remained. Clutching at his bleeding side, Sygna fell to the ground, bleeding out. However, his story would not end there. Barely conscious, he could hear the sound of a blade slicing through the air and the screams of the soldiers. Before his vision would fully give, he saw an armoured hand reaching for him.

Waking, Sygna was in a pitch black room. He presumed he was dead, and in whatever... purgatory hell created for him. Looking down at his own body revealed it to be made of light and nothing else. A voice called to him.

Sole Survivor. It called. Turning to see the source, Sygna saw a shadowy armoured figure with the only feature he was able to make out being their strikingly bright white star-shaped pupils. Stepping towards the figure, Sygna asked, his words manifesting despite the lack of his own speech. Am I dead? No, the answer was. Merely, that this place was between life and death. And that he was the only survivor to have escaped the Garlean facility. Everyone else either shot dead or restrained despite the work of this... figure. Sygna wanted to ask so much more, like why? how? why not save the others? why me? Yet, the figure did not answer. merely, it offered him a choice. Do you want another chance?

Before he could answer however, the figure spoke again. There are caveats. You must devote yourself. devote yourself to the cause of saving others. Saving those who are not as lucky to get a second chance if unsaved. In this devotion, I will heal parts of you broken by them. Your paralysis, your blindness, your mutism, your seizures. In your promise, I will rid of these blights. Your scars will remain, to remind you of your past. What was taken from you and what you must reclaim.

He barely had to think, his answer was yes. The figure reached out to him, touched a hand to his chest— that was the last thing he remembered before waking up in an inn in Ul'dah. Beside him was propped a greatsword. His mission, he knew. The Sole Survivor he was, and revenge he would get.