Rinha’li grew up in the deep southern Shroud, close to the festering boil where Amdapor once stood. Life in the haunted woods is harsh and brutal, sometimes, and there is little room for building much of anything. They lived in small stilt-houses designed to be as painless as possible to rebuild, in the event that the Twelveswoods’ monsters or climate or curses tore it down. His family was not migratory, per se, but everything was temporary. It had to be. The longest-lasting thing his clan built was their record of lineage, meticulously kept throughout the generations to ensure the family trees of the Moonkeeper tribes never bleed together too badly. 

The trees were there forever, though. They were older than your ancestors and watched you night and day, uncaring. They were so tall that they seemed to reach the sky, and their canopy so dense that it blocked the sight of the moon and stars. Their roots broke through the ruins of ancient civilizations, churning their carefully laid stones into so much meaningless rubble.

The first time he ever saw a structure bigger than a stilt-house that wasn’t in ruins was Gridania, and there they took care to construct their buildings more humble than the trees. The Limsans had no such compunctions, and in fact seemed to delight in taunting the elements; the soaring towers and gleaming white stone of Limsa Lominsa were visible from far out at sea, and every time Rinha’li thought the ship had almost reached the docks, he found instead that they were just larger and further away than he imagined. The world had been wracked by the Calamity and the powers of the land ground the works of Man into dust…except Limsa Lominsa was still here, taller than any tree and built up by her own citizens according to their design. 

Rinha’li didn’t think he had ever seen something so incredible. 

Ul’dah was even older, even taller, and even stronger. Walking through the streets, gazing up at the high walls, he fancied he could imagine the engineers that had built the place, their works inscribed forever on the face of Eorzea. Though the people of the city set his ears back, the high cathedrals of Ishgard were enough to leave him in stunned, reverent silence – not for the glory of Halone, but for the aspiration of the church’s architects. And, in the end, hadn’t all the powers of the earth and the very maw of hell itself opened up to swallow the city of Amdapor, yet failed to erase its mark forever?

Rinha’li would never be an engineer, nor an architect, but he thought that was the most impressive thing of all.