Balthier (Dropped)

This small two-person vehicle is the fast, magitech-powered Ivalician answer to the common motorcycle. It has the same general agility and speed as a motorcycle, but it has limited flight capabilities, and it can ascend high enough to be dangerous... or useful, depending on who you ask. When he needs a vehicle but the Strahl is overdoing it, Balthier will have Fran drive the "hover" while he rides shotgun. Literally.

Piracy is not a gentle vocation, and Balthier keeps himself both well-armed and well-practised as a result. His go-to weapon is a rifle-like firearm dubbed Altair, both a piece of elegant workmanship and a very functional, accurate weapon. It doesn't hurt that Balthier happens to be a crack shot with it, practising often to keep his aim sharp. He prefers to keep his distance, and to talk his way out of trouble in most cases. That's not always possible, though, and a good bluff or threat is often just as useful as an actual assault.

Balthier stole this airship on his way out of the Archadian Empire, and over the course of the years he's made of it the perfect marriage of form and function. Though its armaments and defenses are markedly thin, the Strahl's high-performance engines lend it blistering agility and speed, built to outrun its foes. Its cargo hold is expanded to accommodate all manner of goods and supplies, able to carry up to eight or nine passengers plus cargo. Lastly, the Strahl can hide in plain sight with optical camouflage, though its anchor and tether are still visible.

He's in it for the challenge, but Balthier is still undeniably very good at wholesale thievery. He knows what he can abscond with that will fetch him the highest price when unloaded on the black market; he tends to have more than enough liquid assets in any given world to keep his ship in good repair, his crew happy, and himself living well. If he needs money to cover some kind of sudden, unexpected expense, he can usually get it quickly.

Charming and suave, at least to some, Balthier is a model sky pirate. He is adaptable, well able to think on his feet when fate ruins his plans. Cool in the face of adversity, his decisiveness may come across as arrogance, but Balthier's faith in himself is a matter of survival. At the end of the day he's a consummate professional with absolute confidence in his skills. He takes pride in his work: If he's going to be a thieving outlaw, by the gods, he's going to do it right!

Sky pirates are known for many feats of derring-do, but the thing they almost all have in common is thievery. Taking other people's stuff in some form or another is a sky pirate's livelihood, and Balthier is among Ivalice's best. Being clever, determined, and good at improvisation, he and Fran both are masters at the basic skills of pickpocketing and sleight of hand. (He'll never take a PC or NPC's stuff without his player asking first, though. He's a considerate fellow like that.)

A warrior of the hare-like viera people, Fran is a consummate professional like her partner Balthier. She is a woman of few words, oft letting her hume partner handle social interactions, but her observations tend to be astute and thoughtful. Possessing the incredibly tuned senses of smell and hearing common to the viera, her sensitive ears can hear a heartbeat across a room and she can follow scent trails. Fran is also able to sense Mist, or concentrated magic, following it with a sense not unlike scent. Aboard the Strahl, she serves as Balthier's backup, driver, mechanic, and equal partner. The two share an unshakeable bond of trust and understanding. She also happens to have a scary good poker face.

Nono is the Strahl's chief mechanic. Being a small Moogle, he and his crew fit into places the average hume can't. He has unparalleled knowledge of magitech engineering, and he knows the Strahl inside and out. He can modify the ship, make repairs. With his team, he's also in charge of loading and unloading cargo. Moogles aren't much for combat, and he'll usually run or hide if things get dangerous.

Sky pirates are an independent breed. They do things their own way with very little regard for outside sensibilities. Balthier is no exception to this rule, doing things his way and blowing off what consequences don't directly involve him. This may make him seem unreliable and untrustworthy, and that wouldn't really be wrong! This can be a problem when he's expected to work with other parties, as he only tends to be invested as long as it's beneficial to or otherwise convenient for him. Actually being responsible for others is an exasperating study in frustration, for Balthier, and he's not afraid to nope right out of a confrontation if it means saving his ship or his skin. This gives him something of a reputation of unreliability.

Although he's an experienced and clever sky pirate, Balthier's natural confidence and charm can sometimes come off as overweening confidence that borders on arrogance. This might not win him many allies or friends; no one likes that one guy who never loses his cool or panics. It can also mean butting heads with similarly strong personalities at the most inopportune of moments.

Magitech is usually very reliable, except for key natural phenomena in Ivalice called "jagd." These are areas where magitech fails due to the high concentration of Mist, or ambient magic, in the atmosphere and in ores in the ground. In the World Tree, that can include local equivalents to such phenomena. Jagds can be temporary or they can be permanent; even a single person wielding magic-nullifying abilities could represent a dangerous threat to the Strahl's or the hoverbike's engines.

Fran, Balthier's co-pilot, is highly sensitive to Mist, a form of concentrated magic in Ivalice. Other equivalents of places saturated in energy, magic, or what-have-you may also have the same effect on her. When affected by Mist, it can sicken and weaken her, but at its worst, it can drive her into a berserk rage, savagely attacking foes bare-handed. It's not always a problem, but it tends to be incredibly inconvenient for Balthier when it is.

Although Fran can track a man by scent and pick out the heartbeat of a specific individual across a room, there are dangers inherent to such finely tuned senses. Too much stimuli can not only disorient, but can actively cause damage and pain. If her senses are muddled by too many strong scents, Fran can't isolate one to track; likewise, if there's too much of a cacophony, she won't be able to hear what she's listening for. Strong substances like pepper can actually hurt her nose.