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Early life.

Childhood and the years before enlisting in the army.

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Garlean Soldier

Training, indoctrination and his years in service to the Garlean Empire.

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Early life.

Zrix was born in a forgotten village, the third son of a family of poor farmers in Doma after the start of the Garlean occupation.
So for him, growing up under Garlean rule was normal, and he did not see anything wrong with it, like almost everyone else in the village.He grew to like the structured order of the Empire, even if there wasn't much in the middle of nowhere. A few guards to patrol and keep order in the village mostly. Zrix made the mistake of making his opinion on the Garlean Empire loud and clear during a village meeting.
He was shunned by the entire village, his family made into pariahs.
His family disowned him and his father was one the leading members of casting him out of the village.Alone and confused he came upon a patrol who took the young boy with them after he had told what had happened.
Not knowing that the entire village was purged later on charges of treason and plotting rebellion.The guards dropped him off at the next city, and he was in awe.
Never had he seen such a place before!
He spent hours just wandering around, taking in all the sights.
But when night came, he suddenly realized he had several problems.
1. He was hungry.
2. He was cold and dirty.
3. He had nowhere to sleep.
And only one of those could he actually solve.
He loitered around one of the food stands at the market, and when the vendor was busy he stole a little food before leaving the area with a crowd.This gave the boy both a means to eat, and just a little later, a means to survive.
He was small and fast, easy to miss in a crowd, even being a Au Ra in an area where they were not at all common.
He started stealing for other people and in turn got paid for it. This was how he spent the next couple of months, until one day when he found out that he could enlist with the Garlean Military.
The very next day he had signed up, not for the promised citizenship after a set amount of service, but because he actually wanted to serve.In his spare time over the years he had pieced together from rumours and eavesdropping on how things were before the occupation, and he was horrified. He wanted to protect the Doma as it was now.

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Garlean Soldier

He and other recruits where sent back to Garlemald for what they were told would be their training.He was in awe when he saw the Imperial city for the first time, never in his life had he even seen anything like it!
And although he was not allowed to walk around the city and explore, they were almost immediately put in a barracks and ordered to stay put until they were collected.Their "training" begun the very next day. Zrix and the other "recruits" had been selected for the revival of a previously abandoned re-conditioning program of conscipts.The conditioning was brutal and had an over 60% fatality rate.
But what it did do was to make the surviving savages zealously loyal towards Garlemald, especially pureblood Garleans.After the completion of the program he was integrated into the Garlean military, more precisely the XIVth legion and he was shipped off to Gyr Abania to serve under Gaius van Baelsar.
When he arrived in Ala Migho he was disgusted!
He saw what He had seen in his old village. People almost everywhere he turned, resentful and angry that they were under Garlean rule, and contrary to most others in the province, he took great pride in his name, Zrix aan Marcialis. Something that did not really win him many favors with the population and the conscripts he served with, usually being called a kissup, since he always strived to please his superiors, and whenever possible go beyond what was expected of him.He fought against the alliance at Carteneau, and that battle just solidified and proved what he had been taught.
The alliance knowing they would lose and the cowards that they are used their vile magic to pull down the moon!
But then as it always is with magic, it has a cost. And the cost for the Alliance was a very steep one.
Somehow they had summoned a Eikon and it wreaked havoc on the battlefield, killing anything indiscriminately.
The order to retreat was sounded and the XIVth legion pulled back to to Gyr Abania. The only satisfying thing about this disaster is the massive scarring and destruction to Eorzea.After what the Eorzean came to call the Calamity things mostly returned to normal for Zrix.
Being a low ranked soldier he had not been informed about Project Meteor, and when his commanding officer blamed the Eorzean, that became the truth he still believes.Years later when most of the XIVth legion moved to Eorzea, Zrix remained in Ala Migho, his platoon having been transferred over to Crown Prince Zenos's XIIth Legion.After that it was just bad news after bad news.
The Eorzean Alliance had reformed and attacked the XIVth Legion, leading up to van Baelsar's castrum being blown up by the savage attackers.Then it happened as some of the more traitorous citizen and even some soldier whispered of. The Eorzean Alliance did their cowardly attack on Baelsar's Wall, and as if that wasn't enough! Some of those terrorists summoned one of their Eikons when they saw the battle would be lost, it was the battle of Carteneau all over again, and they had to fall back.Full of anger at the invaders he was eager to help drive them out, although he was not lucky enough to be a part of the force that drove them from their base, he was still overjoyed to hear that Lord Zenos had defeated them, believing them to have been killed.
He volunteered to go on purge missions after their victory, visiting places the Alliance had been to before their defeat, and showed them what happens to traitors.Things returned mostly to normal then, at least until word came of what had happened in Doma.
The previously crushed rebellion had beaten the Empire and put the previous puppet leader's son as their new leader.
Zrix was furious when he heard, not able to fully comprehend how broken down farmers could beat the might of the Garlean Empire.After that it was just loss after loss, the Alliance slowly pushed the Empire back on every front, but he did not lose hope yet, that only happened after the battle of Castrum Abania. He had heard rumours about the Crown Prince and his detached and seemingly disdain for ruling the province and more importantly keeping it from the Eorzeans.
But the fact that Zenos opened fire on his own troops and on top of that failing to kill the Eorzean champions made him for the first time feel resentment and actual anger towards a Garlean.After that disaster he started to listen more closely to the rumours among the other soldiers, and that's when he learned that instead of exterminating the rebels when he had the chance, Crown Prince Zenos had let them go, for the simple reason he wanted someone strong to play with.
And now the Champions of Eorzea was leading an army that was defeating the Garlean forces on every front, just so Zenos could have his fun.Unluckily, or maybe it was lucky for him, he got wounded in the battle for Ala Migho. he had removed his armor to try and tend to the wound, and that's how he was when a patrol of Alliance soldiers found him.
They thought he was one of the Soldiers from Doma, and he did nothing to try and change those thoughts.
They brought him back to their camp and during the victory party that night, he stole what supplies he could, made his way towards Baelsar's Wall and ran.

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Mercenary

He kept moving for days, no idea where he was. All he knew was that he's surrounded by enemies. After almost a week he made it to Gridania.
He went straight to the nearest inn he could see, not knowing that it was also the Adventurer's Guild where he was mistaken for a adventurer, something he was not going to deny.For weeks he stayed there, listening to any rumours and doing any job he could find to stay alive.
One of those jobs took him to Ul'dah, where he heard rumours of a Garlean soldier having been arrested and forced into being a gladiator, and as luck would have it, the Brass Blades were showing the gladiators off to the public and he got to meet her.
Before he could actually be of any real help to her though he got into a fight in the middle of the street.
Some guy who had been out fighting against the Garlean Empire where overheard bragging to everyone who'd listen, that was sadly not new to him, but the continued insults and how these savages would shout out how they'd soon destroy Garlemald made him snap.
He attacked and almost killed the unknown man right there.
The rest of that day is still somewhat of a haze to him, and he's surprised he did not wake up either in a cell or did not wake up at all, but somehow he made an escape and ended up in Mor Dhona.He only stayed in the outpost briefly, quickly being hired as a guard for a caravan heading for Ishgard, and he figured that's a good a place as any to hide until he can figure out what to do next.He spent several moons in Ishgard, mostly doing small jobs around the city or inside Coerthas never actually leaving the province, and always declining bigger or riskier contracts in an effort to not draw too much attention to himself, because of fear of him being hunted after the incident in Ul'dah.One day like many others while out looking for work. he wound up in a bar and met someone that at least on the surface seems to be of great help to him. A noble lady from Ul'dah recognized him from one of the wanted posters, but instead of trying to haul him in for the bounty, she instead offered him work and assured him she could get him a full pardon.
Obviously weary at first, he did accept, and some time later an agent of hers arrived in the city with a copy of the pardon.
Zrix packed up his things and left Ishgard the same day.