FFXII was a pleasant surprise for me; listing off all the things that made it awesome would be quite tl;dr, so I'll just say it had wonderful gameplay, a world that you could become completely immersed in, an incredible script, gorgeous music, beautiful graphics, and something of a return to good the ol' dragon slaying-type fantasy that I've missed. While the main characters and their relationships weren't exactly the focus of the game, I still loved the main cast and their interactions. Which is certainly saying something! It's a rare occurrence when all the main characters are actually likeable. After beginning to play the game, I decided that some sort of character shrine on my part was in order. My collective is sadly devoid of much FF goodness, which seems to be the fandom most represented in your typical gaming collective. I've been wasting my time with a bunch of silly Tales of sites that maybe two people visit, so something dedicated to my other favorite RPG series which people actually play seemed like a good idea :P. Ashe was the last character I ever thought I'd make a tribute to, but stranger things have happened ;). Real work on this site began in spring of 2007 after I completed the game.

I don't really know how to describe this site. I'd like to offer up my ideas and observations on Ashe's character and be informative at the same time, but I'm not trying to go into ridiculous detail and gather every bit of trivial information there is. I figured I'd write about and present what interests me and keep this something of a medium-sized site. And hopefully make it interesting at the same time. (And... hopefully make some sense, too. I really need to work on doing that.)

Aurora. What does that mean and what does it have to do with Ashe? Well! One thing you're bound to notice in FFXII is the overwhelming theme of sky, heavens, and anything celestial. You've got sky pirates, shards of the dusk, midlight, and dawn variety, the Sun Cryst, a plethora of airships, and much more. The aurora, a.k.a the northern lights, is a natural phenomenon: a display of swirling, bright colors in the night sky. Ashe's Quickenings associate her with this sort of celestial occurrence; Northswain's Glow, Heaven's Wrath, and Maelstrom's Bolt all show Ashe drawing up some amazing power within the heavens. I'm not sure what the heck a Northswain is, but a glow in the north certainly sounds like the northern lights. "Aurora" is also the name of the Roman goddess of the dawn (similar to the Greek goddess Eos), and aside from the obvious connection to the Dawn Shard (proof of Ashe's lineage), the goddess was said to fly through the skies to announce the coming of the sun. The "dawn of a new day" is something of a goal in FFXII; breaking away from both the Occuria and Vayne's control is something that Ashe ultimately accomplishes in order to bring a new era to Dalmasca. Additionally, wikipedia has alerted me to the fact (?) that some cultures (Vikings, according to this site) saw the aurora as spirits or souls of the dead, something that certainly relates to Ashe's visions of Rasler.

If that doesn't make sense, you can just go with the fact that it sounds pretty. And the northern lights kind of looks like Mist :B! (And Aurora was totally an old screen name of mine back in the day and is still part of my MSN email account, hahaha, so it's got some special meaning for me.)

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"Final Fantasy XII" and its characters © Square-Enix. All other content belongs to Michelle.