Backstory

Gwyn is the daughter of a medicine woman from the quarrying town of Ala Gannha. Though having never known her father, her mother boasts that he is an Ala Mhigan griffin rider. At the age of 10, Gwyn traveled with a drove that set out from Ala Gannha to escape the Imperial invasion. Her drove crossed over into the Twelveswood, intending to pass through for Thanalan, but becoming easily lost - the forest held the still-lingering and hated memory of the Autumn War, so the Elementals made their journey difficult. The drove, unable to rest at night, would walk long bells through the blackness and fret for their survival. They would hurry in the direction of the moonlight whenever the trees above let little hairs of it through, and it was during one of these nights that they found Quarrymill. The highlanders of that group have since thanked Menphina for their lives.

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Gwyn's desire to live by Menphina's edicts and shadow the actions of her Saints would be a factor in what resulted in the indiscriminatory establishment she would eventually create, though the greatest motivator was how frequently the forest sought to harm her and her Highlander kin. It was her mother who taught her all she needed to know to run her medical practice, Gwyn originally assisting her mother with her own sort of makeshift clinic. The plan to escape to Thanalan and seek a better life there rested in the backs of minds, but the group could not properly meet conditions that would afford them to make the trip. The drove found ways to compromise and settled into begrudging life within the Twelveswood.

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Once an approximate decade of winters had passed, Gwyn decided to leave Quarrymill with a few of her companions, they found the presence of Wailers to be imposing and grew tired of the forest's general annoyances. Perhaps its other parts would be better, and in this envisioned elsewhere, perhaps she could find the means to get at least her and her mother out of The Shroud.

The small group's journey took them nearly across the Twelveswood, and was not an easy one, the lengthy voyage put to an abrupt end by a terrible Ixal encounter, which left a few injured but lost them nearly all their funds and supplies. Gwyn and her companions were able to escape with their lives into Hyrstmill. Here the group would stay to try and recuperate, they could establish themselves for however long they might need. Which, Gwyn hadn't anticipated might be upwards of another decade, but that wound up being the case.

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In the most ideal alignment of circumstances, Gwyn would finally leave Hyrstmill and The Shroud entirely. By the time she did, the hamlet had received aid and attention not only from Gridania but the Warrior of Light as well. The Calamity had long rendered the woodland much less treacherous. With Ala Mhigo's liberation, her mother sought to return to Ala Gannha. Gwyn departed from her old hamlet along with a man she'd fostered a close friendship with over the last seven winters. The two now operate the same clinical practice from The Goblet, where they found the desert in no short supply of folk down on their luck and in need of help.

Gwyn is an independent chirurgeon and physician with a no chocobo shit kind of attitude. The experience of growing up in The Black Shroud as a Highlander has permanently shaped her and how she conducts her business; Gwyn is never one to refuse a roof, meal, or medical care to anyone who needs it, regardless of who they are or where they come from - she doesn't care to know, doesn't ask unnecessary questions, and when she lived in Hyrstmill she'd never go looking for Wailers. Her clinic grew most popular with The Shroud's more "unsavory" sort, who she simply regarded as regular people with no options left.