Ivalice.
A strange land, a kingdom lost to time and space, one that was home to many beings and a vibrant civilization. Humans, Bangaa, Moogles, Viera, all made this place home and interacted with each other. They traded, fought, traveled, all under the auspices of the ruling kingdom, who maintained order via the Judges that served to regulate the various guilds that existed.
But Ivalice wasn't simply a place that you could walk to, or travel to by boat. No, it was a magical land that existed in the deepest fantasies, a charmed world that ensnared those who entered it, the few individuals that it based itself off of. And in return it gave them what they wanted, their hopes and inner desires, so that they would never have a reason to leave and return it to dormancy. Yet the people of this world were unaware of that. They merely lived their lives, and let come what may in turn.
And now the time had come again for a new character to enter that world, drawn from another by a magical artifact. It had tapped into her mind, and while she slept the world had been rewritten, changed all around her, until her old world was gone and Ivalice was all that remained. Even she had been changed, slightly, to reflect the new world that existed now.
It was a new world, for her. A world in which the sun dawned people went about their business like nothing was the matter, like they had not sprung from the aether all of half a day ago but rather had lived there their entire lives, with their own histories and struggles. And a woman would awaken in a somewhat dirty, dusty, and empty alleyway, to confront what had happened to her and what she would do about it.<|im_end|>
There were artifacts in this world that men were not meant to mess with. Books and spheres and all manner of things that could end poorly for those who took such unassuming power into their own hands and did as they desired with them.
The sphere had seemed harmless enough, a simple trinket in the ruins. The young woman had been separated from her two friends when she activated it, sure that it would simply be some manner of historical record or some such.
Paine had been wrong.
She awoke in a dusty and shaded alleyway, her body cramped up and her head feeling like it had been packed to the brim with cotton. Other women might have been very concerned about what had happened. Had they had a drugged drink? Had they been the victim of some type of attack?
Paine, however...
"Eugh... what fresh hell is this?" she muttered to herself as she slowly dragged herself up the wall behind her. She felt warmer somehow, like she was still wrapped up in a fuzzy blanket that hit all the right spots. Her body was caressed by the wind itself, and she groaned audibly as she stretched out tired and cramped muscles.
"Now where's the others?" Paine called down the alleyway. "Yuna! Rikku! You two screwing around?"<|im_end|>