Harrow Lévesque - Origins

Creation

My first contact with Final Fantasy XIV was early in 2017, just before Stormblood was released, but I only ever got as far as the last stretch of 2.0, and subsequent attempts to get into the game didn't take me any further. It wasn't until August of 2020 that I finally fell victim to the critically acclaimed MMO. The main thing that attracted me back to the game was the Dark Knight (DRK) questline, which I of course had spoiled myself for in anticipation. If my previous forays into the game had failed because I was in it more for the playing-with-friends aspect, without much regard for the role-playing part of the experience, this time around I was highly interested in the story and in creating my own character, which gave me the motivation I needed to play through and really take in the MSQ and side content. My eagerness to see what Heavensward and Ishgard were all about and unlock the Dark Knight class immediately became the basis upon which I built the rest of my character.

I picked Lancer as my starting class, because my previous characters had both been Pugilist/Monk and I just wanted to try something new. While I didn't yet have a lot of ideas for his backstory, one thing was absolutely certain: I wanted him to be named Harrow. The surname was different back then, and once his lore started to solidify I realised I had to change it to keep in with the theme, which I eventually did in mid-2021. ("Harrow" wasn't exactly on-theme either, but I allowed myself this indulgence!) So, a catboy who started out in Gridania as a Lancer and for some reason really wanted to go to Ishgard where his utopian image of the city would be shattered and he would then become a Dark Knight; that was the rough premise I settled on at the beginning.

I knew that DRK was a tank job, but since I had little experience with MMO's with a role trinity, I didn't know exactly what that meant, though it sounded like responsibility and I was content being just a little DPS pressing my glowy buttons. On one hand, I was super excited to unlock DRK, meet the NPC Fray (who I knew was very neocore) and uncover the widely praised questline, but on the other hand, that meant actually playing as a DRK, and I was mortified by the idea of being the tank. But as I levelled up and gained confidence in my skills, the role began to really grow on me. By the time I was done with Heavensward, I was already a "tank main", and few things in this game have brought me as much personal satisfaction as my growth into a pretty good tank. My journey as a player once again bled into my character's lore, as I naturally made the role change part of his story.

After a few months of intense questing, studying and brainstorming, a clear idea of my WoL's story took shape in my head, and it's on that foundation that I've continuously developed his character, expanding, refining and infusing it with all my favourite tropes (or almost all of them).

Harrow Lévesque (/ha.ɹəʊ le.vaɪ̯k/) — A Miqo'te who, orphaned as an infant, was taken in by an Ishgardian Elezen family and raised as one of their own. Devoted to the goddess Halone and determined to enter the Holy See of Ishgard, his journey would lead him to meet the Scions of the Seventh Dawn and defeat the enemies of Eorzea, ascending as the Warrior of Light with the power granted by the enigmatic Hydaelyn.

The screenshots below are not an accurate depiction of his appearance, they're only meant to showcase his different outfits throughout the expansions. For a better look at Harrow's design, check the illustrations at the top of the page! (I'm planning to make a new page for him eventually, where I will move all my drawings)

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Naming

Coming up with names is often the most difficult part of creating an OC, for me. I deliberate over possibilities for a long time, and always try to choose a name that doesn't just sound cool but also carries some thematic significance or a reference to something I enjoy. As with everything about Harrow, I am very proud of the names I've chosen for him and others in his lore. Here are some details about their meanings and origins:

Harrow is a dark priest-themed playable character in the game Warframe, associated in lore with the syndicate Red Veil. His abilities and equipment bear names linked to religious concepts: "Condemn", "Penance", "Covenant", "Scourge" and "Reliquary" to name a few. With an eponym such as this, it was natural that I'd make religion a central theme for my WoL — allowing me the great self-indulgence of deeply exploring all the religious tropes I love!
According to Wiktionary, the word "harrow" can mean: 1. "to break up with a harrow" (the farming tool); 2. "to traumatise, frighten or torment" (emotionally); and 3. "to wound, lacerate" (physically). It has an alternate origin in "harry", meaning "to plunder, assault, lay waste"; this latter definition connects to Christian theology in the term "Harrowing of Hell". Being super edgy and owning it, I felt a deep connection to this name and had been wanting to make an OC named Harrow since way before this one.
Lévesque is a French surname derived from "évêque", or "bishop". Once I decided I had to change my character's surname for lore reasons, I spent many days researching candidates before finding inspiration in my great friend and brother Jim Bishop. It really fit like a glove: not only does it roll off the tongue nicely, it's also coherent with the religious themes around Harrow.
Around the same time that I picked this name I saw a meme on twitter about Ishgard being an equivalent to Québec (rather than France), and immediately adopted that as headcanon. Only later did I learn that Lévesque is, in fact, a very common Québécois surname, with a pronunciation ranging from [ɛɪ̯] to [aɪ̯], and this coincidence directly contributed to my bonding with my static leader at the time, who would later become my very own partner!
The names of Harrow's adoptive parents, Perceval and Evangelyne, are references to the French animated series Wakfu, based on the game by Ankama taking place in the same universe as Dofus, an MMO I played a lot as a kid. Despite not knowing any French, I followed the show when it was first coming out and it was one of my first exposures to the language. I've also come up with names for some extended family members, but those are just French names I thought looked nice.
Harrow's Company-issued chocobo is named Antoine, after Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the author of my favourite literary work of all time, The Little Prince.
The village Harrow's family lived in was named Voile Rouge, a direct translation of Red Veil, the faction in Warframe as mentioned above. My idea was that, just as Red Veil sheltered and worshipped Rell whose spirit was sealed in his Warframe Harrow, so did the village of Voile Rouge come together to raise an outsider child they believed to be sent by Halone Herself.
The name of Harrow's Azem, Deimos, is both another reference to Warframe and to the god of terror and dread in Greek mythology, which connects to one of the meanings of the word "harrow" and keeps in with the Greek-inspired themes of Amaurotine society.
Though it has no bearing on his story and was thought of only for backstory flavour, Harrow's Miqo'te birth name is Brann'a, ostensibly derived from "bran", the Irish word for "raven", but secretly also a nod to Bran Stark from Game of Thrones, and Brann Dailor, the drummer of Mastodon.

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Design

Over the course of all these years I've put a lot of thought not just into Harrow's story, from his backstory to in-game events to future possibilities, but also his design. While I played all of ARR to ShB as a Miqo'te, I gradually realised my idea for the character could not be accomplished in-game, not even with mods, as a Miqo'te, and what I envisioned was in fact more closely aligned with the Elezen models. So, I've been playing as an Elezen since EW (with occasional fantasias to Hrothgar) and honestly don't intend to ever go back to being a catboy. However, this is only for personal aesthetic reasons; in the story, Harrow is a Miqo'te, albeit one with all the bearing of a noble Ishgardian knight.

Here are some notes on Harrow's design and its evolution:

I made Harrow's hair white without even knowing he would end up surrounded by white-haired NPCs, because his initial appearance was basically an expy of my Twisted Wonderland OC Fyodor, whose design was based on a white Siberian tiger; in lieu of Fyodor's sideburns, his in-game model had some facepaint. The real ones came about thanks to Urianger's appearance in Shadowbringers: I reasoned that giving him sideburns like Urianger's would easily convey the idea that, having been raised by Ishgardians, Harrow inherited a distinctively Elezen sense of style.
The pointy Elezen-like sideburns have been a staple of Harrow's design since the early days and once I even went so far as to attempt to mod them onto my Miqo'te model. They remained his only real non-Miqo'te physical trait until some time after the friend-breakup of 2022, when I decided to revamp Harrow's look as a way to turn over a new leaf. My in-game character being a Duskwight face 2, I decided to fully commit to the facial hair and gave him the moustache and chin hair too, though my vision of the sideburns and hair being white while the rest is black can't be reproduced due to the game's limitations. In this rework, I also did away with the Miqo'te clan markings under the assumption they were painted on or tattooed; there is one ancient source that claims they're meant to be a birthmark but if that's the case I am choosing to ignore it.
Moustaches weren't among my favoured traits until I actually put a disgusting caterpillar above Harrow's lip and instantly got a crush on him, he became so much more handsome and I have no idea how he ever existed without one. I originally borrowed the visual from Petyr Baelish from Game of Thrones, and a certain presenter on Radio-Canada, though over time the moustache became bigger and more powerful. I recently discovered that Dev Patel in the film The Green Knight is a remarkably good reference for what Harrow's facial hair might look like irl.
I eventually revised the timeline of Harrow's facial hair growth and decided to do a small retcon, having him begin A Real Reborn with only a baby moustache, and start to grow out the rest from Stormblood onward, as a marker of his evolution from a proud, aloof and single-minded young man into a seasoned warrior with a softened heart and a heavy burden. The changing hairstyles every few expansions is also meant to accompany his character arc, but also throw in some humanity; people sometimes change things up just because.
I hate how Miqo'te ears look in-game, like in what world are those cat ears. So nowadays I've taken to drawing Harrow's ears as more rounded, kind of like a snow leopard's. His tail is long and fluffy, though he generally keeps it concealed under coat, cloak or robes, and when it is out, it's not very expressive. Like other Keeper of the Moon Miqo'tes, he has round pupils and sharp canines (top and bottom, in my vision). But for as little allegiance as I have to Miqo'tes, I do feel like my choice is meaningful in his story and I wouldn't retcon him as any other race. Perhaps Hrothgar, but I prefer him to look like not-quite-an-Elezen, over a more beastman type.
Harrow is abnormally tall for his race, measuring 200 cm/6'7". I always wanted that to be the case because I thought it would be nice to give him a rough height parity with Elezen friends and pairings, and a cute height difference with others. There isn't a super important in-universe explanation for his unusual stature, but I do like the idea that admirers of the Warrior of Light would speculate that it was the typical cuisine of Ishgardian Elezens that helped him grow to such an impressive height. I am quite small irl, so imagining how tall Harrow would be next to me is terrifying.
While Harrow has had white hair for as long as he remembers, I have a theory that his hair was originally black and went grey as a result of the trauma of having his whole birth family massacred by beasts in the wilderness. Of course, it would've been an extremely premature and near instantaneous transformation if he arrived at Voile Rouge's gates with hair white as snow, but hey, I can take some artistic license. This idea came to me thanks to Jonathan Harker from Dracula.

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Jobs

Harrow's combat style progression reflects my changes in gameplay preferences as a player. This is a timeline of his job changes from an OOC perspective; an in-universe contextualisation will be in the future lore page.

Harrow began his adventures, in ARR, as a Lancer and eventually became a Dragoon after receiving the soul stone from the former Azure Dragoon, and being bestowed the Eye's power. This matches my starting class and job, though he would've already had plenty of combat experience by the time of ARR's beginning.
Over the course of HW, Harrow discovered, reluctantly learned, and finally came to accept the Dark Knight arts. As mentioned before, my primary goal upon starting this game was to meet Fray and experience the DRK quests, so naturally they played an important role in shaping Harrow's story up until HW on a meta level. The point of no return for Harrow was Haurchefant's death, just as it was around the dungeon The Vault that I began to fully enjoy being a tank. I remember running that dungeon for the first time as DRG, either because I was too scared to go as tank or because my DRK wasn't quite levelled enough, but after that point I continued mainly as Dark Knight.
Going into SB, I'd already played as DRK enough that I started to outpace MSQ in terms of level, so in order not to waste experience points I did portions of it as DRG. I mirrored that in Harrow's story by making him still fluctuate between those jobs, but leaning more towards Dark Knight given his newly found sense of purpose as a protector.
Upon reaching ShB and losing my sprout, my transformation into a DRK main had long since crystallised. Judging by screenshots and achievement dates, I probably played through all of ShB as Dark Knight, so it became clear that if I didn't intend to keep maining Dragoon, then neither should Harrow.
Once I was caught up with MSQ at the time, I began to focus on leveling up all jobs. I eventually gathered enough courage to try Black Mage, which I'd put off playing forever out of fear of its long cast times and immobile playstyle; instead, I ended up loving the job and decided to integrate it into Harrow's story. I came up with a leg injury that made it harder for Harrow to fight as a Dragoon and led him to seek a new combat style that would let him continue fighting from a distance, without relying so much on his legs. Originally this idea took place in early SB against Zenos, but after endearing myself to Elidibus I moved the episode to the encounter with Elidibus-as-Zenos, in 4.56. With the injury exacerbated by the events in ShB, Harrow decided to pick up Thaumaturgy and subsequently Black Magic during the downtime after 5.0, officially retiring his lance.
Paladin was the last tank I levelled initially and, like BLM, I enjoyed it enough to make it one of my main jobs at the time. However, since I didn't vibe with the job's lore, I never made it canon for Harrow. What I did was graft the "holy" aspect of its skillset onto Dark Knight's kit, making Harrow a hybrid Dark Knight-Paladin. Warrior is another job from which I've only borrowed some elements, disregarding the lore, including the weapon because I think Harrow would look hot with a giant war axe sometimes.

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That's all for now, but I might think of something else to put in here! And I will work on a new page for detailed lore and in-universe details too. Check back later!