Britches and Hose



Britches and Hose is pleased to supply Wayward Pines with quality sleepwear and lingerie for a range of genders and humanoid body types. See our screened section for items of a more intimate nature. The owner is happy to provide information and insights about both our products and the town in general.

Open 9-5, closed Sundays and public holidays.

Owner: Aranea Highwind (unweaving)
Staff: Natasha Romanoff (vdova), Chase Collins (bastardofipswich)
Consultations: By appointment

NOW HIRING

I'm SUPER EXCITED to play with false memories, and open to pretty much anything. Hit me up here or on plurk at fourstrings and we'll hash things out - current false memories behind the cut.

( where is my mind? )

Lady A's Christmas Chaos!!!

Saving the world from assholes dressed like a sofa is hard work, and even heroes need to let loose. What better time than the festive season? So what if you're in a world where Christianity isn't a thing! It's time to don your ugliest Christmas sweater, put on your dancing shoes, and tell those around you just how much you love tolerate them. Dance, sing, bone down on the couch, get so drunk on eggnog you puke on the carpet -- Aranea doesn't care, she's way too smart to do his in her own damn house! GET TO PARTYING.

NAME: Tilly
CONTACT: pm or fourstrings
OTHER CHARACTERS IN THE PINES: n/a



NAME: Aranea Highwind
CANON: Final Fantasy XV
CANON-POINT: After Noctis enters the crystal but before the timeskip.



HISTORY: Here on the Final Fantasy Wiki. I'm happy to try to expand on this if necessary, but it's about the sum of what we're told in-game about her.

WHAT ARE YOUR CHARACTER'S STRENGTHS?:

Aranea's main strength is her self-determination. When she first appears in canon she's 30, and apparently has made enough of an impact as a mercenary to be offered the her own Airborne unit in the Niflheim Empire's army. While there are some obvious differences between the military in Eos and irl (like the correct application of the rank of Commodore) I don't think it's too much of a stretch to assume that going from being a civilian straight to being in a position of command is remarkable, meaning that when she mercenaried? She mercenaried hard enough to be considered an asset despite a lack of miltary training or discipline. Likewise, in her first altercation with Noctis she decides for herself that she's not going to fight him any longer, and when the reality of what the Empire is doing becomes too much for her to tolerate she leaves the army and joins the relief effort instead – including showing up to help Noctis and his party if they're fighting high-level daemons after midnight. Basically, when she decides to do something she gives it her all until she decides she doesn't want to do it anymore, and then she has no qualms about changing her path.

She doesn't let pride stop her from doing any of that either; when she decides to stop fighting Noctis it's without any of the grandstanding and posturing we might see from, say, Loqi – she makes a crack about not working after hours and chuffs off into the sky, and she's perfectly content to have her “the Empire are fuckups and I don't think I want to work for them anymore” conversation with three young men who have every right to consider her the enemy at that point, and whose perfectly justified response to to her realizing that is along the lines of “no shit”.

It's not something that's immediately apparent without a bit of a closer look at her behaviour, but she's also quite the optimist. An optimist in pragmatist's clothing, for sure, but it's there. She seems to expect things to go right for her and whether it's coincidence, sound judgment or just sheer force of will, they usually do. She leaves the Niflheim army during wartime and starts lending help to Noctis and his party, making her not just a deserter but a defector, and seems to have zero expectation that any blowback from that will be more than she can handle. She advocates that attitude to others, too; when she meets up with the party when they've lost Prompto and don't know where to start looking for him, her advice is simple but weirdly sunny: “Quit moping, keep hoping. And in the meantime, handle what's at hand.”

WHAT ARE YOUR CHARACTER'S WEAKNESSES?:

Aranea is a zero-tact zone, which is probably going to be less than helpful for her in a place like Wayward Pines. When she re-meets a party member after he's suffered a facial injury that resulted in blindness, her first question is “What did you do to your eyes?” and her second is “Can you see?”. Even in offering her condolences (“That sucks. It's a cruel world”) she's about as delicate as a rubber mallet.

Similarly, she's not great at hiding her opinions even in situations where it's dangerous for her to dissent. In a scene where the Niflheim Emperor orders the Oracle found and killed Aranea has no speaking lines, but she's there in the background with a facial expression that makes it clear she's not comfortable with the order. When Verstael, a Bad Dude who does Horrible Experiments, suggests that they take Luna alive because “she could unlock many secrets”, Aranea goes from resting bitchface to something as obviously displeased as Michelle Obama at Trump's inauguration. She's in front of the emperor and surrounded by his soldiers, and she still makes a face like she wants to tell them to go suck eight dicks.

She's also very casual, to the point where she won't modulate her attitude to fit the scenario. As the leader of the 86th Airborne she should have been in a position of importance and befitting of respect, but she takes a very casual attitude with her troops (they refer to her as “Lady A”). This was probably a contributing factor to her being asked (and agreeing) to do things that really ought to have been beneath her rank, like showing three “recruits” (Noctis, Ignis and Prompto) through a dungeon to gather materials. And you know the saying "loose lips sink ships"? Apparently, Aranea doesn't. During her time training those recruits (i.e, the last remaining member of the royal line that her Emperor is trying to wipe out and his closest companions) she has absolutely no hesitation in telling them about the Empire's harvesting of daemons to make their Magitek soldiers, despite the fact that she still only claims to be thinking about leaving the Empire.

WHAT EVENTS OR CIRCUMSTANCES IN YOUR CHARACTER'S PAST HAVE IMPACTED THEM THE MOST?:

Being made Commodore and given a unit to command, both for the experience this gave her and the information about what the Empire was actually up to. It's this knowledge that spurred her to make the change from doing potentially morally questionable work for good money to being part of the relief effort; saving lives and hunting daemons turns out to earn her a huge amount of respect, but it probably pays shit.

WHAT MOTIVATES YOUR CHARACTER?:

The opportunity to excel. She's very confident in her abilities and likes to show them off, whether that's as an in-demand mercenary, a military commander, or proving that being one of the good guys doesn't mean you have to give up being a badass.

WHAT IMPRESSION DO OTHERS TEND TO HAVE OF YOUR CHARACTER?:

She's ruthless, will do anything for the right payout, and a huge flirt.

IN WHAT WAYS DOES THAT IMPRESSION DIFFER FROM WHO YOUR CHARACTER REALLY IS?:

There's a definite limit to what she's willing to tolerate or participate in, and while her moral compass might not always point true north she definitely has one. The flirting thing's about right, though.

HOW DOES YOUR CHARACTER HANDLE CRISIS OR ADVERSITY?:

If there's a solution to a problem and it's within her capability, she'll put that into action; see discovering the depth of the fucked-uppedness of what the Niflheim army was up to and her decision to leave, or the fact that when Eos loses daylight she puts so much work into being part of the daemon hunting/search and rescue effort that character giving an infodump describes her as being revered.

If she doesn't see a solution, she'll act on that too, just maybe less effectively.

WHICH 5 THINGS WILL YOUR CHARACTER REMEMBER UPON ARRIVAL, AND WHY DID YOU CHOOSE THEM?:

1: Her name
2: She no longer holds the rank of Commodore
3: Prince Noctis is important, and should be assisted
4: She's from a place called Niflheim
5: It's dangerous to be out after dark

The first is just because I don't really want to play out an "I don't know my own name" scenario. The others are because they're all things that are pretty important to her character arc within the game, but as standalone memories without all the linking pieces between them there's a lot of potential for fun confusion.

IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE YOU FEEL WE NEED TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR CHARACTER?:

Nope!


SKILLS, ABILITIES, & PHYSICAL WEAKNESSES:

As mercenary-turned-military-turned-daemon hunter she's fit and strong, and adept with polearms. She's also extremely agile, something that's boosted considerably by her inertia controller. She is only human, though; she's strong within the limitations of a normal human body and therefore subject to all the normal wear and tear.

INVENTORY:

- Her clothing: a black leather bodice and black leather pants, red boots, and a black and white half-skirt hip-cape thingy
- Her dragon mail and ridiculous pointy helmet
- Her Stoss spear, inertia controller (helps her jump like a goddamn flea), electric actuator (helps to power the inertia controller) and powershield (provides protection in combat)



PROSE-HEAVY: brackets, but introspection-heavy
DIALOGUE-HEAVY: Prompt was I'm sorry I threw a frog in your car last night.