Personality

Ya'ya is, overall, kind and caring, though his experiences in life have taught him to guard himself from showing anything that could be construed as weakness. As a result, he can take a while to warm up to others, even if keeping to himself causes him (and those he cares about) more harm than good. He tends to view the glass as 'half empty' more often than not, and knows all too well what it costs to fill it back up.

That said, Ya'ya's a decent actor, able to play at being the 'perfect' Miqo'te guest or partner if he feels there's value in doing so, but with the mask off, he tends towards being frigid and insensitive unless he's comfortable.
He's also a business-savvy slut, by his own admission, and is willing to use his body for gain, either in brokering deals or earning gil on the quick. He just happens to know the full value of those transactions, and keeps an accounting book of all deals made, in case he needs to collect (or make another transaction) in the future.

Owing, in large part, to his early life, Ya'ya has a deep dislike and distrust for Elezen, seeing them as generally haughty, holier-than-thou, and self-centered. The treatment he and his clan often got from the Wildwood Elezen around their settlement hammered this home, and Ya'ya learned a number of unsavory terms to use in place of Elezen. Learning that he's half-Duskwight Elezen himself hasn't changed this gut-reaction.

Family

Ya'ya is the youngest of eight boys and 2 girls, a shockingly large family by most standards, and with a high number of sons to boot. Due to naming conventions and the number of boys, they generally refer to each other with the last syllable of their mother's name, and their respective suffix.

Most of his brothers assist the clan as hunters and trappers, to further increase their mother's standing. Of them, Ya'ya is closest to Ya'ra, as he paid the most attention to his younger brothers.

Ya'ya's eldest sister, Mejah (26), had very little contact with him before he left, as she was prized as the heir and Xahya intended to protect her from any possible harm, leading to her being very sheltered and not terribly interested in her brothers. She mostly learns at their mother's elbow, and she has little interest in the competition her younger sister puts up.

Nahji (21) is Ya'ya's twin sister, and the older of the two. They were exceedingly close growing up, with Ya'ya determined to serve as her assistant and confidant. Nahji is considerably taller than her brother, loud-mouthed, brash, and determined to get what she wants... and extremely possessive of what she does have. She's determined to outperform Mejah and rise to leading the whole clan, and sees both Ya'ya and Ya'ra as instrumental in doing so.

Xahya Delde, Ya'ya's mother, was not particularly close with her sons (or, truthfully, any of her children) growing up. Pressured from all sides with her control of the clan's traderoutes, and moreso following the Calamity, she was both relieved and annoyed when Ya'ya left home to go adventuring.

Cini'a Delde is Ya'ya's uncle and mentor. He serves his older sister as her chief bookkeeper as well as keeping an eye on her children, and made a point of taking Ya'ya under his wing early on. He taught Ya'ya how to maintain accounts, how to haggle to ensure the best deal, and, most importantly, how to create and maintain contracts with others to ensure a mutually beneficial transaction. He's generally kindly towards his nephew, but is more concerned with keeping his sister happy than with their well-being.

Xahya'ya was born the younger twin, an immediate afterthought both in birth order and in having come within minutes of his more wanted sister, Nahji. Cini'a and the two older boys, Ya'a and Ya'to, quickly took over caring for the twins, and the close bond between the twins was strongly encouraged by Cini'a and, in turn, the older children as well. It was also stressed to the young Miqo'te, with every misadventure that Nahji got the two of them into, that she was more important, more valuable, than Ya'ya was. If she was hurt in any way on his watch, Ya'ya would be the one to face consequences.

When Ya'ya and Nahji were six years summers old, an illness swept through their clan's settlement. While most, including Ya'ya, recovered without much difficulty, it ravaged others, killing Ya'li and putting Nahji at death's door. Ya'ya, especially panicked after the death of his jokester of an older brother, blurted out his fears in front of the wrong person: his mother. Silently grieving the death of one child and terrified of the likely loss of one of her only daughters, Xahya made it crystal clear to her youngest son that his existence only held meaning so long as Nahji lived; if she had to choose to lose one of them, she wouldn't bat an eye in saving Nahji over Ya'ya, telling him:

"I have no need for another worthless, mewling son."

The heartbreak might have been worse if Ya'ya had felt closer to his mother, but it clearly affected him. He devotedly nursed his sister back to health, staying by her side at all hours until the fever broke and she fully recovered. Cini'a took him under his wing not long after, training him in managing the numbers and contracts that ensured the smooth operation of their family's hunting trade. Nahji, for her part, began scheming with her brother to achieve her own goals: she wanted to overtake Xahya's position within the clan and, ultimately, leadership of the full clan. In order to succeed, she'd need Ya'ya's assistance, as her success in managing traderoutes and family business would be key in her plans. Ya'ya agreed to help without hesitation. After all, without Nahji, he was nothing.

From there, Ya'ya's young life fell into a comfortable pattern: Help manage accounts, do whatever Nahji might need, and ensure that everything ran smoothly. In his free time, he helped his cousins and brothers with hauling goods in and out of storerooms or drinking whatever they could weasel out from under their aunts' noses Simple stuff, but they were simple folk. And, overall, things looked good for the twins, with their combined efforts helping to outshine Mejah. In his sixteenth summer, as Nahji stood poised to overtake Mejah as heir , disaster struck.

Or, more specifically, the Calamity struck.

Overnight, things changed for Ya'ya. The region's Elezen population, always disdainful in having made deals for animal goods with a clan of Miqo'te, began backing out of their contracts, using the loopholes that Cini'a had always included and intended as formalities. Ya'ra, determined to keep Ya'ya from falling into despair along with their uncle, took his younger brother with him on a trip to nearby Quarrymill to quickly sell some hides to adventurers passing through.

Later in the day, Ya'ya separated from his brother to buy them a cheap meal in the tavern. One Elezen, who had reneged on his contract, offered the young Miqo'te a healthy amount of gil for 'a few minutes' of his time. Ya'ya was not as sheltered as his sisters; he'd heard the other men in his family telling bawdy tales, and had stumbled across more than one couple who'd thought his favourite spot behind the storehouse was private. And, well, the gil offered was more than they'd managed to make all day. He agreed, and when he showed up later looking a mite disheveled and with a heavier purse than he'd left with, Ya'ra didn't bother to ask, and Ya'ya saw no point in telling his family exactly how he'd earned such a healthy payout.

From there, Ya'ya perfected his new business venture. Sure, it was a handy way to make quick cash, and most of the Elezen interested in his services were discreet (who would confess to hiring a young male Miqo'te when they were openly against their presence in the Twelveswood to begin with?), but he had to be careful, and he had to make sure that whatever he did only served to increase Nahji's standing in the clan. So he began crafting his business dealings as a way to win back trade agreements, trading his body and his growing repertoire of skills in exchange for the return of their gil to the Delde clan's coffers. When Cini'a asked how Ya'ya was winning back their former clients, he got an innocent shrug and a 'well, you always said the best way to get through to a man was to feed him and know what he wants, Nuncle,' which sated what little curiosity his family had. Business was on an upswing, Xahya and, in turn, Nahji, looked immaculate for having saved their line of the trade, and Ya'ya used the extra coin he made to dig into his growing interest in the arcane arts, which he saw as 'applied mathematics'.

For several years, things seemed good for Xahya'ya. His family was recovering their standing back to pre-Calamity levels, he had a steady list of clients, and Nahji had told him more than once that their mother had begun asking for her to sit in on important clan matters instead of Mejah. The infrequent headaches and visions that haunted Ya'ya, he dismissed as byproducts of having gone too long in a session, or mere hallucinations.

Close to their 21st birthday, Nahji accompanied Ya'ra and Ya'ya to a small town to the north, insisting that she be allowed to join them as she deserved a break from stuffy lectures from their great-aunt. While she and Ya'ra settled in at a shady tavern to drink with some of the rough'n'tumble hunter friends Ya'ra had made in the area, Ya'ya slipped away with a homely Roegadyn trader with a generous offer. It wasn't until they came back a while later that Ya'ya realized his mistake in having brought his sister along.

Nahji was no stranger to strong drink, but without Ya'ya hovering over her, and with Ya'ra distracted with swapping stories over tankards of ale, she'd had a bit too much, and bumped into a particularly stuffy Elezen just outside the tavern.

A stuffy Elezen who just happened to have been a return customer of Ya'ya's, remarkably tightlipped about his proclivities thanks to his belief that Miqo'te were no more than lazy poachers who were breeding and bleeding the woods dry. Nahji's slurred non-apology only made the situation worse, and the situation swiftly escalated out of Ya'ya's control. It was only thanks to the intervention of Ya'ra's burly friends that Nahji suffered no more than a handful of bruises and scrapes, and Ya'ya escaped with a sprained wrist. By now, Ya'ra had a good idea of how his younger brother had been making gil and trade deals, though his anger was more at how his indiscretions had risked the well-being of their sister than anything else.

"I don't care what or who you want to do," he told Ya'ya, having pinned him against a wall just far enough from their sister's room to be out of both sight and earshot, "but you'd best make yourself scarce before Mother and Nuncle catch wind of it, or you'll be short your favorite part."

Booking passage to Limsa Lominsa wasn't cheap, but that was just as well, as Ya'ra felt the excessive distance would help keep any more trouble from affecting the clan's reputation.

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